This is a transcript of Lex Fridman Podcast #336 with Ben Shapiro.
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I seek only to understand, and in so doing, hopefully add a bit of love to the world. This is Lex Fridman podcast to support it. Please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here’s Ben Shapiro.
So I would imagine it’s coming from that. From his comments, I would also imagine that he’s doing the logical mistake that a lot of anti-Semites or racist or bigots do, which is somebody hurt me, that person is a Jew, therefore all Jews are bad. And that jump from a person did something to me I don’t like, who’s a member of a particular race or class, and therefore everybody of that race or class is bad. That’s textbook bigotry and that’s pretty obviously what Ye’s, engaging in here.
If you’re racist against the Jews, you’re antisemitic. Then there are actually a few different ways that breaks down. You have antisemitism in terms of ethnicity, which is like Nazi antisemitism. You have Jewish parentage, you have Jewish grandparent, therefore your blood is corrupt and you are inherently going to have bad properties. Then there’s old school religious antisemitism, which is that the Jews are the killers of Christ, or the Jews are the sons of pigs and monkeys, and therefore Judaism is bad and therefore Jews are bad. And the way that you get out of that antisemitism historically speaking is mass conversion, which most antisemitism for a couple thousand years actually was not ethnic. It was much more rooted in this sort of stuff. If a Jew converted out of the faith, then the antisemitism was alleviated.
And then there’s a bizarre antisemitism that’s political antisemitism, and that is members of a group that I don’t like are disproportionately Jewish. Therefore all Jews are members of this group or are predominantly represented in this group. So you’ll see Nazis saying the communists are Jews. You’ll see communist saying the Nazis are Jews. Or you’ll see communist saying that the capitalists rather are Jews. And so that’s the weird thing about antisemitism. It’s like the Jews behind every corner. It’s basically a big conspiracy theory. Unlike a lot of other forms of racism, which are not really conspiracy theory, antisemitism tends to be a conspiracy theory about the levers of power being controlled by a shadowy cadre of people who are getting together behind closed doors to control things.
It was Papen who had stumped for Hitler to become chancellor. Papen was a Catholic Democrat. He didn’t like Hitler. He thought that Hitler was a radical and a nut job, but he also thought that Hitler being a buffoon, as he saw it, was going to essentially be usable by the right forces in order to prevent the communists from taking power, maybe in order to restore some legitimacy to the regime because he was popular in order for Papen to retain power himself. And then immediately after Hitler taking power, Hitler basically kills all of Papen’s friends. Papen out of ‘loyalty’ stays on. He ends up helping the Anschluss in Austria. All this stuff is really interesting, mainly because what it speaks to is the great lie we tell ourselves that people who are evil are not like us. They’re class apart. People who do evil things, people who support evil people, they’re not like us.
And that’s an easy call everybody in history who has sinned is a person who’s very different from me. Robert George, the philosopher over at Princeton, he’s fond of doing a thought experiment in his classes where he asks people to raise their hand If they had lived in Alabama in 1861, how many of you would be abolitionists? And everybody raises their hand and he says, “Of course that’s not true.” The best protection against evil is recognizing that it lies in every human heart and the possibility that it takes you over.
And so you have to be very cautious in how you approach these issues and the back and forth of politics, the bipolarity of politics or polarization in politics might be a better way to put it, makes it very easy to fall into the Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots that eventually could theoretically allow you to support somebody who’s truly frightening and hideous in order to stop somebody who you think is more frightening and hideous. And you see this kind of language by the way now, predominating almost all over the western world. My political enemy is an enemy of democracy. My political enemy is going to end the republic. My political enemy is going to be the person who destroys the country we live in. And so that person has to be stopped by any means necessary, and that’s dangerous stuff.
So yeah, I think you have to constantly be thinking along those lines and hopefully you try to avoid it. You can only do the best that a human being can do. But yeah, the answer is yes. I would say that I spend an inordinate amount of time reflecting on whether I’m doing the right thing and I may not always do the right thing. I’m sure a lot of people think that I’m doing the wrong thing on a daily basis. But it’s definitely a question that has to enter your mind as a historically aware and hopefully morally decent person.
So I understand both sides of it. I wasn’t offended by Ye’s comments in that way though, because if you’re a pro-life human being, then you do think that what’s happening is a great tragedy on scale that involves the dehumanization of an entire class of people, the pre-born.
The second distinction again is when I talk about the right versus the left, typically I’m talking about a battle of competing philosophies. And so I’m not speaking about, typically… It would be hard to, if you put a person in front of me and said, “Is this person of the left or of the right?” Having just met them, I wouldn’t be able to label them in the same way that if you met somebody in the name of Greenstein, you’d immediately go Jew, or you make a black person, they’re a black person. And that the adherence to a philosophy makes you a member of a group. If I think the philosophy is bad, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you as a person are bad. But it does mean that I think your philosophy is bad.
That’s a conversation that we can have. And then we’ll have to discuss how much power they have, what the actual perspective is, delve into it. But I think that he was being over broad and labeling all of his political enemies under one rubric. Now again, in politics, this stuff happens all the time. I’m not going to plead clean hands here because I’m sure that I’ve been in exact. But somebody who would be good in that particular situation is for somebody to read me back the quote and I’ll let you know where I’ve been inaccurate. I’ll try to do that.
And so the difficulty for me is I take politics seriously, but also I have the ability to of flip the switch and suddenly it all becomes incredibly funny because it really is like if you just watch it from a pure entertainment perspective and you put aside the fact that it affects hundreds of millions of people. Then watching President Trump being president, he’s one of the funniest humans who’s ever lived watching Kamala Harris be Kamala Harris and talking about how much he loves Venn diagrams or electric buses. That’s funny stuff. So if I can’t make fun of that, then my job becomes pretty morose pretty quickly.
We can play this game all day long. And I find that the people who are most intensely focused on playing this game are people who tend to oppose the politics of the person as opposed to actually believing sincerely that this has driven somebody into the arms of the God of violence. But I have 4.7 million Twitter followers. I have 8 million Facebook followers, I have 5 million YouTube followers. I would imagine that some of them are people who are violent. I would imagine that some of them are people who do evil things or want to do evil things. And I wish that there were a wand that we could wave that would prevent those people from deliberately or mistakenly misinterpreting things as a call of violence. It’s just a negative byproduct of the fact that you can reach a lot of people. And so if somebody could point me to the comment that I suppose ‘drove’ somebody to going literally murder human beings, then I would appreciate it.
So I could talk about the comment, but don’t… Mainly because I just think that if we remove agency from individuals, and if we blame broad scale political rhetoric for every act of violence the people who are going to pay the price are actually the general population because free speech will go away. If the idea is that things that we say could drive somebody who is unbalanced to go do something evil, the necessary byproduct is hate, is that speech is a form of hate. Hate is a form of violence, speech is a form of violence. Speech needs to be curbed. And that to me is deeply disturbing.
She wouldn’t say that Somalis wouldn’t deserve a state in Somalia. She wouldn’t say that that Germans don’t deserve a state in Germany. She wouldn’t say for the 50 plus Islamic states that exist across the world, that they don’t deserve states of their own. It is only the Jewish state that has fallen under her significant scrutiny. And she also promulgates laws about one specific state in the form of suggesting, for example, that Israel is an apartheid state, which it is most eminently not considering that the last unity government in Israel included an Arab party, that there are Arabs who sit on the Israeli Supreme Court and all the rest. And then beyond that, obviously she’s engaged in some of the same antisemitic ropes that you heard from Ye. The stuff about, it’s all about the Benjamins, that American support for Israel is all about the Benjamins, and she’s had to be [inaudible 00:29:36] by members of her own party about this stuff before.
The basic rule for the region, in my view, is if these groups were willing to make peace of Israel, they would have a state literally tomorrow. And if they are not, then there will be no peace. And it really is that simple. The formulas typically used, it’s become a bit of a bumper sticker, but it happens to be factually correct. If the Palestinians put down their guns tomorrow, there would be a state. If the Israelis put down their guns, there’d be no Israel,
I’m very lucky. I got married when I was 24, my wife was 20, so she’s known me long before I was famous or wealthy or anything. So she’s a good sounding board. I have a family that’s willing to call me out on my bullshit as you talk to Ye about. I have friends who are able to do that. I try to have open lines of communications with people who I believe have my best interests at heart. But one of the sort of conditions of being friends is that when you see me do something wrong, I’d like for you to let me know that so I can correct it, and I don’t want to leave that impressions out there.
Then the internet explodes and all of a sudden you can get news everywhere, and the way that people are accessing that news is… You’re, I believe, significantly younger than I am. But we used to do this thing called bookmarking, where you would bookmark a series of websites and then you would visit them every morning, and then social media came up.
Suddenly outlets like mine were able to see new eyeballs because it was all centralized in one place. You didn’t have to do it through Google optimization. You could now just put it on Facebook and so many eyeballs were on Facebook, you’d get more traffic. Everybody seemed pretty happy with this arrangement until precisely the moment Donald Trump became president. At that point, then, the sort of pre-existing supposition of a lot of the powers that be, which was, “Democrats, are going to continue winning from here on out, so we can sort of use these social media platforms as ways to push our information and still allow for there to be other information out there.” The immediate response was, “We need to reestablish this siphoning of information. It was misinformation and disinformation that won Donald Trump the election. We need to pressure the social media companies to start cracking down on misinformation and disinformation.”
Actually see this in the historical record. I mean, you can see how Jack Dorsey’s talk about free speech shifted from about 2015 to about 2018. You can see Mark Zuckerberg gave a speech at Georgetown in 2018, which he talked about free speech in its value, and by 2019 he was going in front of Congress talking about how he was responsible for the stuff that was on Facebook, which is not true. He’s not responsible for the stuff on Facebook. It’s a platform. Is AT&T responsible for the stuff you say on your phone? The answer is typically no. So when that happened, because all the eyeballs had now been centralized in these social media sites, they were able to suddenly control what you could see and what you could not see. The most obvious example was obviously leading up to 2020, the election; the killing of the Hunter Biden story is a great example of this.
So Elon coming in and taking over one of the social media services and saying, “I’m not playing by your rules. There’s not going to be this sort of group of people in the halls of power who are going to decide what we can see and here. Instead, I’m going to let a thousand flowers bloom. There’ll be limits, but it’s going to be on more case-by-case basis. We’re going to allow perspectives that are mainstream but maybe not mainstream in the halls of academia or in the halls of media. Let those be said.” I think it’s a really good thing. Now that comes with some responsibilities, I think, on his personal part, which would be to be, for example, I think more responsible and dissemination of information himself. Sometimes he got himself in trouble the other day for tweeting out that story about Paul Pelosi that was speculative and untrue.
I don’t think what he did is horrific. He deleted it when he found out that it was false. That’s actually a free speech working. He said something wrong, people ripped into him, he realized he was wrong, and he’s deleted it, which seems to be a better solution than preemptively banning content, which only raises more questions than it actually stops. With that said, as the face of responsible free speech, and that’s sort of what he’s pitching at Twitter, he I think should enact that himself and be a little more careful in the stuff that he tweets out.
The other one by posting the Pelosi thing is probably to expand the Overton window. Like saying, “We could post stuff, we could post conspiracy theories and then through discourse figure out what is and isn’t true.”
I mean, I’m not criticizing MSNBC for not putting on right wing opinions. I mean that’s fine. I run a conservative site. We’re not going to put up left wing opinions on a wide variety of issues because we are conservative site. But if you pitch yourself as a platform, that’s a different thing. If you pitch yourself as the town square, as Elon likes to call it, then I think Elon has a better idea of that than many of the former employees did. Especially now that we have that report from the Intercept suggesting that there are people from Twitter working with DHS to monitor “disinformation” and being rather vague about what disinformation meant.
Every so often, I’ll still do some of that. I do think actually the amount of snark on my Twitter feed has gone down fairly significantly. I think if you go back a couple of years, it was probably a little more snarky. Today, I’m trying to use it a little bit more in terms of strategy to get out information. Now that doesn’t mean I’m not going to make jokes about, for example, Joe Biden. I will make jokes about Joe Biden. He’s the president of the United States. Nobody else will mock him. So the entire comedic establishment has decided they actually work for him.
The downside of Trump is that he has no capacity to use any sort of… There’s no filter between brain and mouth. Whatever happens in his brain is the thing that comes out of his mouth. I know a lot of people find that charming and wonderful, and it is very funny. But I don’t think that it is a particularly excellent personal quality in a person who has as much responsibility as President Trump has. I think he says a lot of damaging and bad things on Twitter. I think that he seems consumed in some ways by his own grievances, which is why you’ve seen him focusing on election 2020 so much. I think that that is very negative about President Trump. So I’m very grateful to President Trump is a conservative for many of the things that he did. I think that a lot of his personality issues are pretty severe.
As far as his politics, he seems like a slap-on-the-back kind of guy, and I don’t mind that. I think that’s nice so far as it goes. It’s sort of an old school politics where things are done with handshake and personal relationships. The thing I don’t like about him is I think sometimes that’s really not genuine. I think that that’s sometimes. I think that’s his personal tendency, but I think sometimes he allows the prevailing wins of his party to carry him to incredibly radical places, and then he just doubles down on the radicalism in some pretty disingenuous ways, and there I would cite the Independence Day speech, or the independence hall speech, which I thought was truly one of the worst speeches I’ve seen a president give.
I mean, this kind of stuff is very radical stuff, and this is not a president who has pursued a unifying agenda, which is why his approval rating sank from 60% when he entered office to low 40s or high 30s today, unlike President Trump, who never had a high approval rating. Trump came into office and he had a 45% approval rating, and when he left office he had about a 43% approval rating, and bounced around between 45 and 37, pretty much his entire presidency. Biden went from being a very popular guy coming in to a very unpopular guy right now, and if you’re Joe Biden, you should be looking in the mirror and wondering exactly why.
Then the secondary reason that the story is big is actually because the reaction of the story. The banning of the story is in and of itself a major story. If there’s any story that implicates a presidential candidate in the last month of an election and there is a media blackout including a social media blackout, that obviously raises some very serious questions about informational flow and dissemination in the United States.
The biggest problem with this story is that it wasn’t allowed to take the normal life cycle of a story, which is original story breaks, follow-on questions are asked, follow-on questions are answered. Story is either now a big story or it’s nothing. When the life cycle of a story is cut off at the very beginning when it’s born, then that allows you to speculate in any direction you want. You can speculate, “It means nothing. It’s nonsense. It’s a Russian laptop. It’s disinformation,” or on the other hand, “This means that Joe Biden was personally calling Hunter and telling him to pick up a sack of cash over in Beijing, and then he became president and he’s influence pedaling.”
So this is why it’s important to allow these stories to go forward. So this is why actually the bigger story for the moment is not the laptop, it’s the reaction to the laptop because it cut off that life cycle of the story. Then at some point I would assume that there will be some follow-on questions that are actually answered. I mean, the House is pledging if it goes Republican, to investigate all of this. Again, I wouldn’t be supremely surprised if it turns out that there was no direct involvement of Joe in this sort of stuff. Because it turns out, as I said before, that all of politics is veep.
This is always the story with half the scandals that you see is that everybody assumes that there’s some sort of deep and abiding clever plan, that some politician is implementing it, and then you look at it and it turns out now it’s just something dumb, right? This is perfect example of this, President Trump with the classified documents in Maralago. So people on the [inaudible 00:54:05], “It’s probably nuclear codes. Probably he’s taking secret documents and selling them to the Russians or the Chinese.” The real most obvious explanation is Trump looked at the papers and he said, “I like these papers.” Then he just decided to keep them right. Then people came to him and said, “Mr. President, you’re not allowed to keep those papers.” He said, “Who are those people? I don’t care about what they have to say. I’m putting them in the other room, in a box.”
Which is, it is highly likely that that is what happened. It’s very disappointing to people, I think, when they realize it. I mean, you know this better than I do, but the human brain is built to find patterns. It’s what we like to do. We like to find plans and patterns because this is how we survived in the wild; is you found a plan, you found a pattern, you cracked the code of the universe. When it comes to politics. The conspiracy theories that we see so often, often it’s largely because we’re seeing inexplicable events. Unless you just assume everyone’s more on. If you assume that there’s a lot of stupidity going on, everything becomes quickly explicable. If you assume that there must be some rationale behind it. You have to come up with increasingly convoluted conspiracy theories to explain just why people are acting the way that they’re acting. I find that, I don’t say 100% of the time, but 94% of the time the conspiracy theory turns out just to be people being dumb, and then other people reacting in dumb ways to the original people being dumb.
It doesn’t necessarily have to be from a foreign source; it can be from a domestic source. It could be somebody misinterpreting something here. It could be somebody interpreting something correctly, but PolitiFact things that it’s out of context, and that sort of stuff gets very murky very quickly. So I’m deeply uncomfortable with the idea that Facebook, I mean, Zuckerberg was on with Rogan and talking about how the FBI had basically said lookout for Russian interference in the election, and then all of these people were out there saying that the laptop was Russian disinformation. So he basically shut it down. That sort of stuff is frightening, especially because it wasn’t Russian disinformation. I mean, the laptop was real. So the fact that you have people who seemed to… Let’s put it this way, maybe this is wrong. It seems as though when a story gets killed preemptively like this, it is almost universally a story that negatively affects one side of the political aisle.
I can’t remember the last time there was a story on the right that was disinformation or misinformation where social media stepped in and they went, “We cannot have this. This cannot be distributed. We’re going to all colludes that this information is not distributed.” Maybe in response to the story being proof false, it gets taken down. But, well, what made the Hunter Biden thing so amazing is that it wasn’t relieving in response to anything. It was like the story got posted. There were no actual doubts expressed as to the verified falsity of the story. It was just supposition that it had to be false and everybody jumped in. So I think that confirmed a lot of the conspiracy theories people had about social media and how it works.
I think when I was younger I was much more pro-drug legalization than I am now, at least on the local level. On a federal level, I think the federal government can’t really do much other than close the borders with regard to fentanyl trafficking, for example. But when it comes to how drugs ruin local communities, you can see how drugs ruin local communities pretty easily.
So that was mistakes in the run up to the war. Once the war began, then the responsibility of the West began and became to give Ukraine as much material as is necessary to repel the invasion. And the West did really well with that. I think we were late on the ball in the United States. It seemed like Europe led the way a little bit more than the United States did there. But in terms of effectuating American interests in the region, which being an American is what I’m chiefly concerned about, the American interests were several fold. One is preserve borders. Two is degrade the Russian aggressive military because Russia’s military has been aggressive and they are geopolitical rival of the United States. Three, recalibrate the European balance with China. Europe was sort of balancing with Russia and China, and then because of the war they sort of rebalanced away from China and Russia, which is a real geo-strategic opportunity for the United States.
It seemed like most of those goals have already been achieved at this point for the United States. And so then the question becomes what’s the off ramp here and what is the thing you’re trying to prevent? So what’s the best opportunity, what’s the best case scenario, what’s the worst case scenario? And then what’s realistic? So best case scenario is Ukraine forces Russia entirely out of Ukraine, including Luhansk, Donetsk, and Crimea. That’s the best case scenario. Virtually no one thinks that’s accomplishable, including the United States. The White House has basically said as much, it’s still cool to imagine particularly Crimea, the Russians being forced out of Crimea.
The Ukrainians have been successful in pushing the Russians out of certain parts of Luhansk and Donetsk, but the idea they’re going to be able to push the entire Russian army completely back to the Russian borders, that would be at best a very, very long and difficult slog in the middle of a collapsing Ukrainian economy, which is a point that Zelensky has made. It’s like it’s not enough for you guys to give us military aid. We’re in the middle of a war, we’re going to need economic aid as well. So it’s a pretty open-ended and strong commitment.
It’s an unpredictable scenario that could devolve into really, really significant problems. The other worst case scenario could be a best case scenario. It could be a worse, we just don’t know, is Putin falls, what happens after that? Who takes over for Putin? Is that person more moderate than Putin? Is that person a liberalizer? It probably won’t be Navalny, if he’s going to be ousted, it’ll probably somebody who’s a top member of Putin’s brass right now and has capacity to control the military, or it’s possible the entire regime breaks down. What you end up with is Syria in Russia where you just have an entirely out of control region with no centralizing power, which is also a disaster area. And so in the nature of risk mitigation, in sort of an attempt at risk mitigation, what actually should be happening right now is some off ramp has to be offered to Putin.
The off ramp likely is going to be him maintaining Crimea and parts of Luhansk and Donetsk. It’s probably going to be a commitment by Ukraine not to join NATO formally, but a guarantee by the West to defend Ukraine in case of an invasion of it borders again by Russia like an actual treaty obligation, not like the BS treaty obligation and when Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in the nineties, and that is likely how this is going to have to go. The problem is that requires political courage, not from Zelensky, it requires courage from probably Biden because the only… Zelensky is not in a political position where he can go back to his own people who have made unbelievable sacrifices on behalf of their nation in freedom and say to them, “Guys, now I’m calling it quits. We’re going to have to give them Luhansk and Donetsk and give Putin an off ramp.”
I don’t think that’s an acceptable answer to most Ukrainians at this point in time. From the polling data and from the available data we have on the ground, it’s going to actually take Biden biting the bullet and being the bad guy and saying to Zelensky, “Listen, we’ve made a commitment of material aid. We’re offering you all these things, including essentially a defense pact. We’re offering you all this stuff, but if you don’t come to the table then we’re going to have to start weaning you off.” There will have to be a stick there, it can’t just be a carrot. And so that will allow Zelensky, if Biden were to do that, it allows Zelensky to blame Biden for the solution everybody knows has to happen. So Zelensky can go back to his own people and he can say, “Listen, this is the way it has to go. I don’t want it to go this way, but it’s not my… I’m signing other people’s checks, right? I mean, this is not my money.”
And Biden would take the hit because he wouldn’t then be able to blame Ukraine for whatever happens next, which has been the easy road off I think for a lot of politicians in the West. It’s for them to just say, “Well this is up to the Ukrainians to decide. It’s up to the Ukrainians to decide.” Well is it totally up to the Ukrainians to decide, because it seems like the West is signing an awful lot of checks and all of Europe is going to freeze this winter?
If it’s a private meeting, maybe that’s the best thing. If it’s a public facing forum, I think it’s a problem because Putin’s afraid of being humiliated at this point. If it’s a private meeting, then sure, except that again, I wonder whether when it comes to a person as canny as Putin and to a politician that I really don’t think is a particularly sophisticated player in Joe Biden. And again this is not unique to Biden, I think that most of our presidents for the last 30, 40 years have not been particularly sophisticated players. I think that’s a risky scenario.
So if it’s going to be a debate of ideas and we’re just going to discuss and critique and clarify, then we can do that. If somebody comes loaded for bear, then I will respond in kind, because one of the big problems I think in sort of the debate/ discussion sphere is very often misdiagnosis of what exactly is going on. People who think that a discussion is debate and vice versa. And that can be a real problem. And there are people who will treat what ought to be a discussion as, for example, an exercise and performance art. And so what that is mugging or trolling or saying trolley things in order to just get to the… That’s something I actually don’t do during debate. I mean, if you actually watch me talk to people, I don’t actually do the trolling thing. The trolling thing is almost solely relegated to Twitter and me making jokes on my show. When it comes to actually debating people. That sounds actually a lot. What we’re doing right now is just the person maybe taking just an adverse position to mine. And so that’s fine. Usually half the debate or discussion is me just asking for clarification of terms. “What exactly do you mean by this?” So I can drill down on where the actual disagreement may lie. Because some of the time people think they’re disagreeing and they’re actually not disagreeing. When I’m talking with Ana Kasparian, and she’s talking about how corporate and government have too much power together, I’m like, “Well, you sound like the Tea Party. You and I are on the same page about that.” That sort of stuff does tend to happen a lot in discussion. I think that when discussion gets termed “Debate”, it’s a problem, when debate gets termed “Discussion”, it’s even more problematic because debate is a different thing.
That is verboten. That is not something that can be had. It’s one of the strangenesses of our politics. It’s what I’ve called the “Happy Birthday Problem”, which is I have a lot of friends who are of the left and are publicly of the left and on my birthday they’ll send you a text message, ” Happy birthday”, but they will never tweet happy birthday, less they be acknowledging that you were born of woman and that this can’t be allowed. So on the Sunday special, I’ve had a bevy of people who are on the other side of the aisle, a lot of them ranging from people in Hollywood like Jason Blum, to Larry Wilmore, to Sam, to just a lot of people on the left.
I think we’re in the near future, probably going to do a Sunday special with Ro Khanna, the California congressperson. Very nice guy. I had him on the show. That kind of stuff is fun and interesting. But I think that the easy way out for a clip that people don’t like is to either immediately clip the clip, it’s like a two minute clip and clip it down to 15 seconds where somebody insults me and then that goes viral, which is, welcome to the internet. Or to say, “Well, you’re only debating college… You’re only talking to 20…” I mean, I talked to a lot more people than that. That’s just not the stuff you’re watching.
And so I’m going through the list with him and this interview was solidly 20 minutes. I mean, it was a long interview and I make a couple of particularly annoyed mistakes in the interview. So annoyed mistake number one is the ego play. So there’s a point in the middle of the interview where I say, “I don’t even know who you are,” which was true. I didn’t know who he was. It turns out he was a very famous person in Britain. And so you can’t make that ego play.
And finally I got up and I took off the microphone, and I walked out. And immediately I knew it was a mistake. Within 30 seconds of the end of interview, I knew it was a mistake. And that’s why even before the interview came out, I believe I corrected the record that Andrew Neil is not on the left, that’s a mistake by me. And then took the hit for a bad interview. And so as far as what I wish I had done differently, I wish I had known who he was. I wish I’d done my research. I wish that I had treated it as though there was a possibility that it was going to be more adversarial than it was.
I think I was incautious about the interview because it was pitched as, “It’s just another book interview,” and it wasn’t just another book interview, it was treated much more adversarially than that. So I wish… That’s on me. I got to research the people who are talking to me and watch their shows and learn about that. And then obviously the kind of gut level appeal to ego or arrogance, that’s a bad look and shouldn’t have done that. And losing your cool is always a bad look.
That stuff is really it. So yes, the source of my greatest happiness, the source of my greatest stress. So they get me up at about 6:15 in the morning. I feed them breakfast. I’m kind of scrolling the news while I’m making the eggs and just updating myself on anything that may have happened overnight. I go into the office, put on the makeup and the wardrobe or whatever, and then I sit down and do the show. A lot of the prep is actually done the night before because the news cycle doesn’t change all that much between kind of late at night and in the morning. So I can supplement in the morning. So I do the show.
Because my show relies very heavily on being able to play people so you can hear them in their own words. And so that’s sort of the media eye. So I sit down, I do the show, and then once I’m done with the show, I usually have between… Now it’s like 11:15 in the morning maybe, because sometimes I’ll prerecord the show. So it’s 11:15 in the morning, I’ll go home and if my wife’s available, I’ll grab lunch with her. If not, then I will go and work out. I try to work out five times a week with a trainer, something like that. And then I will…
Which is a good way for me to remember what it is that I’ve read. Because I read probably somewhere between three and five books a week, and then in a good week five, and then I write, I read, and then I go pick up my kids from school at 3:30. So according to my kids, I have no job. I’m there in the mornings until they leave for school. I pick them up from school, I hang out with them until they go to bed, which is usually 7:30 or so. So I’m helping them with their homework and I’m playing with them, and I’m taking them on rides in the brand new Tesla, which my son is obsessed with.
And then I put them to bed and then I sit back down, I prep for the next day, go through all those media sources I was talking about, compile kind of a schedule for what I want the show to look like, and run a show. It’s very detail oriented. Nobody writes anything for me. I write all my own stuff. So every word that comes out of my mouth is my fault. And then hopefully I have a couple hours or an hour to hang out with my wife before we go to bed.
The good news for me is that my job isn’t to be a full expert on any of these subjects, and I don’t claim to be. I’m not a Russia expert. I know enough on Russia to be able to understand when people talk about Russia, what the system looks like, how it works and all of that, and then to explicate that for the common man, which a lot of people who are infused with the expertise can’t really do. If you’re so deep in the weeds that you’re a full on academic expert on a thing, sometimes it’s hard to translate that over to a mass audience, which is really my job.
Then in the modern world, we’ve really driven toward the idea that what we are is how we feel on the inside without reference to the outside world, and it’s the job of the outside world to celebrate and reflect what we think about ourselves on the inside. So what that means is that we are driven now toward fighting institutions because institutions are in positions. So everything around us, societal institutions, these are things that are crimping our style. They’re making us not feel the way that we want to feel, and if we just destroy those things, then we’ll be freer and more liberated. It’s a, I think, much deeper model of how to think about why our social politics particular, are moving in a particular direction is that a ground shift has happened in how people think about themselves. This has had some somewhat shocking effect in terms of social politics.
If pregnancy changes women in a way that it doesn’t change men, it’s a form of sex discrimination for women to ever have to go through with pregnancy, which is an argument that was made by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, kind of. Those are the arguments, the softer version is the more, I would say, emotionally resonant version of the argument, which is that bodily autonomy ought to outweigh the interests of the fetus up till point X. Then people have different feelings about what point X looks like. Is it up to the point of viability? Is it up to the point of the heartbeat? Is it up to 12 weeks or 15 weeks? That really is where the American public is, broadly speaking, not state by state where there are various really, really varied opinions. But broadly speaking, it seems like the American public by polling data wants somewhere between a 12 and 15 week abortion restriction. They believe that up until 12 or 15 weeks, there’s not enough there to not be specific, but to be how people feel about it to outweigh a woman’s bodily autonomy. then beyond that point, then there’s enough of an interest in the life of the pre-born child that’s developed enough then now we care about it enough that it outweighs a woman’s bodily autonomy.
Now you will find people who will say, “Well, the good reason is that it’s not sufficiently developed to outweigh the mental trauma or emotional trauma that a woman goes through if, for example, she was raped or the victim of incest.” That is a fairly emotionally resonant argument, but it’s not necessarily dispositive. You can make the argument that just because something horrific and horrible happened to a woman does not rob the human life of its interest in life. One of the big problems in trying to draw any line for the self-interest of life in the human life is that it’s very difficult to draw any other line that doesn’t seem somewhat arbitrary. You say that independent heartbeat, well, people have pacemakers. If you say brain function, people have various levels of brain function as adults. If you say viability, babies are not viable after they are born. If I left a newborn baby on a table and did not take care of it would be dead in two days. So once you start getting into these lines, it starts to get very fuzzy very quickly. So if you’re looking for a bright line moral rule, that would be the bright line moral rule, and that’s the pro-life case.
The reason for that was because then if you have sex and you produce a child, then the child will grow up in a two-parent family with stability, so not a ton of sympathy there. When it comes to rape and incest, obviously heavy, heavy sympathy. So that’s why I think you see, statistically speaking, a huge percentage of Americans, including many pro-life Americans, people who consider themselves pro-life would consider exceptions for rape and incest. One of the dishonest things that I think happens in abortion debates is arguing from the fringes. This tends to happen a lot, is pro-choice activists will argue from rape and incest to the other 99.8% of abortions, or you’ll see people on the pro-life side argue from partial birth abortion to all of abortion, that you actually have to take on the mainstream case and then decide whether or not that’s acceptable or not.
If you’re talking about Green New Deal, net zero by 2050, the carbon is up there in the air and the climate change is going to happen. Also, you’re assuming that geopolitical dynamics don’t exist, so everybody’s going to magically get on the same page and we’re all going to be imposing massive carbon taxes to get to net zero by 2050, hundreds of times higher than they currently are. Now, that’s not me saying that, that’s Klaus Schwab saying this of the World Economic Forum who’s a big advocate of exactly this policy. The reality is that we’re going to have to accept that at least 1.5 degrees Celsius of climate change is baked into the cake by the end of the century. Again, not me talking, William Nordhaus, the economist who just won the Nobel Prize on this stuff talking. So what that suggests to me is what we’ve always known, human beings are crap at mitigation and excellent in adaptation.
We are very bad at mitigating our own fault. We are very, very good at adapting to the problems as they exist, which means that all of the estimates that billions will die, that there will be mass starvation, that we’ll see the migration in just a few years of hundreds of millions of people. Those are wrong. What you’ll see is a gradual change of living. People will move away from areas that are inundated on the coast. You’ll see people building sea walls. You’ll see people adapting new technologies to suck carbon out of the air. You’ll see geoengineering. This is the stuff that we should be focused on. The bizarre focus on what if we just keep tossing hundreds of billions of dollars at the same three technologies over and over in the hopes that if we subsidize it, this will magically make it more efficient, I’ve seen no evidence whatsoever that that is going to be the way that we get ourselves out of this. Necessity being the mother invention, I think human beings will adapt because we have adapted and we’ll continue to adapt.
Then what I’m proposing is that there’s something that I would call role ethics, which is there are a series of roles that we play across our lives, which are also the things that we tend to put on our tombstones and find the most meaningful. So when you go to a cemetery, you can see what people found the most meaningful because it’s the stuff they put on the stone that has four words on it, like beloved father, beloved mother, sister, brother, and you might have a job once in a while, a creator, a religious person. These are all roles that have existed across societies and across humanity, and those are the things where we actually find meaning. The way that we navigate those roles brings us meaning. I think that God created us in order to fulfill those roles for purposes that I can’t begin to understand because I ain’t him.
The more we recognize those roles and the more we live those roles and then we can express freedom within those roles, I think that the liberty exists inside each of those roles and that’s what makes all of our lives different and fun. We all parent in different ways, but being a parent is a meaningful role. We all have spouses, but how you interact that relationship is what makes your life meaningful and interesting. That is what we were put on earth to do. If we perform those roles properly, and those roles do include things like being a creator, we have a creative instinct as human beings, being a creator, being an innovator, being a defender of your family, being a social member of your community, which is something that we’re built to do. If we fulfill those roles properly, then we will have made the world a better place than we inherited it. And we’ll also have had the joy of experiencing the flow they talk about in psychology where when you engage in these roles, you actually do feel a flow.
And where does liberty come into that? How do you avoid the idea of a tyranny in that? Right? You have to be a mother, you must be a father, you must be a… Where does freedom come into that? Can you reject those roles totally as a society and be okay? The answer probably is not. So you need society that actually promotes and protects those roles, but also protects the freedom inside those roles.
And that raises a more fundamental question of what exactly liberty is for. And I think that both the right and the left actually tend to make a mistake when they discuss liberty. The left tends to think that liberty is an ultimate good. That simple choice makes a bad thing good, which is not true. And I think the right talks about liberty in almost the same terms sometimes. And I think that’s not true either. The question is whether liberty is of inherent value or instrumental value. Is liberty good in and of itself or is liberty good because it allows you to achieve X, Y or Z?
And I’ve thought about this one a lot and I tend to come down on the latter side of the aisle. I mean, you asked me areas where I move, this may be an area where I’ve moved. Because I think when you think more shallowly about politics, or maybe more quickly, because this is how we talk in America, is about liberties and rights, we tend to think that the right is what make… not the political right, rights make things good, liberties make things good.
The question really is what are those rights and liberties for? Now, you have to be careful so that doesn’t shade into tyranny, right? You can only have liberty to do the thing that I say that you can do. But there have to be spheres of liberty that are roiling and interesting and filled with debate, but without threatening the chief institutions that surround those liberties. Because if you destroy the institutions, liberties will go too. If you knock down the pillars of the society, the liberties that are on top of those pillars are going to collapse. And I think that if people are feeling as though we’re on the verge tyranny, I think that’s why.
And then there’s the question of just the natural cruelty and vicissitudes of life. And the answer there is, I think that God obscures himself. I think that if God were to appear in all of his glory to people on a regular basis, I think they would make faith and you wouldn’t need it. There’d be no such thing as faith. It would just be reality, right? Nobody has to prove to you that the sun rises every day. But if God is to allow us the choice to believe in him, which is the ultimate choice from a religious point of view, then he’s going to have to obscure himself behind tragedy and horror and all those other things.
I mean, there’s a fairly well known capitalistic concept called [foreign language 02:08:08] in Judaism, which is the idea that when God created the universe, he sort of withdrew in order to make space for all of these things to happen.
You can perfectly well be an atheist living a good, moral, decent life, because you can live a good, moral, decent life with regard to other people without believing in God. I don’t think you can build a society on that because I think that that relies on the sort of goodness of mankind, natural goodness of mankind. I don’t believe in the natural goodness of mankind.
So this is, universalism I’m not a believer in. I think that you have some values that are fairly limited that all human beings should hold in common. And that’s pretty much it. I think that everybody should have the ability to join with their own culture. I think how we define tribe is a different thing. So I think that tribes should not be defined by innate physical characteristics, for example. Because I think that, thank God, as a civilization, we’ve outgrown that. And I think that that is a childish way to view the world. All the tall people aren’t a tribe. All the black people [inaudible 02:12:25], all the white people aren’t a tribe.
So if you’re a good father, this means that you are bringing up your child in durable values that is going to bring them up healthy, capable of protecting themselves and passing on the traditional wisdom of the ages to future generations, while allowing for the capacity for innovation. That’d be being a good father. Being a good spouse would mean protecting and unifying with your spouse and building a safe family and a place to raise children. Being a good citizen of your community means protecting the fellow citizens of your community while incentivizing them to build for themselves. It becomes actually much easier to think of how to…
This is why I like the Role Theory because it’s very hard, since sort of in Virtue Theory to say be generous. Okay, how does that manifest? I don’t what that looks like. Sometimes being generous might be being not generous to other people. When Aristotle says that you should be benevolent, what does that mean? This is very vague. When I say be a good dad, most people sort of have a gut level understanding of what it means to be a good dad. And mostly, they have a gut level understanding what it means to really be a really bad dad. And so what it means to be a good man is to fulfill those roles, as many of them as you can properly and at full function. And that’s a very hard job.
And I’ve said before that, because I engage a lot with the public and all of this, the word great comes up a lot. What is it to be a great leader? What is it to be a great person? And I’ve always said to people, it’s actually fairly easy to be great. It’s very difficult to be good. There are a lot of very great people who are not very good. And there are not a lot of good people. And most of them, frankly, most good people die, mourned by their family and friends and two generations later they’re forgotten. But those are the people who incrementally move the ball forward in the world sometimes much more than the people who are considered great.
As far as other advice, I’d say engage in your community. There’s no substitute for engaging in your community. And engage in interpersonal action because that will soften you and make you a better person. I’ve become a better person since I got married. I’ve become an even better person since I’ve had kids. So you can imagine how terrible I was before all these things. And engaging your community does allow you to build the things that matter on the most local, possible level.
I mean the outcome, by the way, of the sort of politics, of the politics of fulfillment that I was talking about earlier, is a lot of localism. Because the roles that I’m talking about are largely local roles. So that stuff has to be protected locally. I think we focus way too much in this country and others, on world beating solutions, national solutions, solutions that apply to hundreds of millions of people. How we get to the solutions that apply for 5, and then we get to the solutions that apply to 20, and then we get to the solutions that involve 200 people or 1,000 people. Let’s solve that stuff. And I think the solutions at the higher level flow bottom up, not top down.
From my mom, practicality. My dad is more of a dreamer. My mom is much more practical. And so the sort of lessons that I learned from my dad are that you can have… This is the counter-lesson, is that you can have a good idea, but if you don’t have a plan for implementation, then it doesn’t end up as reality. And I think actually, he’s learned that better over the course of his life too.
But my dad, from the time I was very young, he wanted me to engage with other adults and he wanted me to learn from other people. And one of his roles was if he didn’t know something, he would find somebody who he thought did know the thing for me to talk to. That was a big thing. So I’m very lucky. I have wonderful parents.
As far as of other mentors, in terms of the media, Andrew Breitbart was a mentor. Andrew, obviously, he was kind of known in his latter days, I think more for the militancy than when I was very close with him.
And then I think Twitter got to him. Twitter is one of the lessons I learned from Andrew, is the counter-lesson, which is Twitter can poison you. Twitter can really wreck you. If you spend all day on Twitter, reading the comments and getting angry at people who are talking about you, it becomes a very difficult life. And I think that in the last year of his life, Andrew got very caught up in that because of a series of circumstances.
As far as sort of other mentors, I had some teachers when I was a kid who said things that stuck with me. I had a fourth grade teacher named Miss Genetti who said, “Don’t let potential be written on your tombstone.” Which is a pretty-
And so what that means is sometimes you take to heart the wrong thing or you take it to heart too much, you’re not light enough about it. You take it very, very seriously. You lose sleep over it. Man, I can’t tell you the number of nights where I’ve just not slept because of some critique somebody’s made of me. And I’ve thought to myself, maybe that’s right. And sometimes it is right.
The role of love is important in binding together human beings who ought to be bound together. And the role of respect is even more important in binding together broader groups of people. I think one of the mistakes that we make in politics is trying to substitute love for respect or respect for love. And I think that’s a big mistake. So I do not bear tremendous love in the same sense that I do for my family for random strangers. I don’t. I love my family, I love my kids. Anybody who tells you they love your kid as much as you love your kid is lying to you. It’s not true. I love my community more than I love other communities. I love my state more than I love other states. I love my country more than I love other countries. That’s all normal and that’s all good.
The problem of empathy can be when that becomes so tight-knit that you’re not outward looking, that you don’t actually have respect for other people. So in the local level, you need love in order to protect you and shield you and give you the strength to go forward. And then beyond that, you need a lot of respect for people who are not in the circle of love. And I think trying to extend love to people who either are not going to love you back or are going to slap you in the face for it, or who you’re just not that close to, it’s either it runs the risk of being ersatz and fake or it can actually be counterproductive in some senses.
There might be the rare human being who’s capable of literally loving a homeless man on the street the way they do loves his own family. But if you respect the homeless man on the street, the way that you respect your own family, because everyone deserves that respect, I think that you get to the same end without forcing people into a position of unrealistically expecting themselves to feel a thing they don’t feel.
One of the big questions in religion that comes up is God makes certain requests that you feel certain ways. You’re supposed to be [foreign language 02:28:05], you’re supposed to be happy about certain things or you’re supposed to love thy neighbor as thyself. Right? You’ll notice that in that statement, it’s thy neighbor, it’s not just generally anyone. It’s love thy neighbors. In any case, the-
Because with love comes a certain expectation of solidarity. And I think, right, I mean, when you love your family, you love your wife, there’s a certain level of solidarity that is required inside the home in order to preserve the most loving kind of home. And so if you love everybody, then that sort of implies a certain level of solidarity that may not exist. So maybe the idea is, for me, start with respect and then maybe as people respect each other more, then love is an outgrowth of that. As opposed to starting with love, and then hoping that respect develops.
And now, let me leave you with some words from Ben Shapiro himself. “Freedom of speech and thought matters, especially when it is speech and thought with which we disagree. The moment the majority decides to destroy people from engaging in thought it dislikes, thought crime becomes a reality.”
Thank you for listening. I hope to see you next time.
Click link to jump approximately to that part in the transcript:
- 2:01 – Kanye ‘Ye’ West
- 9:41 – Hitler and the nature of evil
- 17:47 – Political attacks on the left and the right
- 23:31 – Quebec mosque shooting
- 33:26 – Elon Musk buying Twitter
- 46:29 – Trump and Biden
- 51:03 – Hunter Biden’s laptop
- 1:02:36 – Candace Owens
- 1:06:15 – War in Ukraine
- 1:16:24 – Rhetoric vs truth
- 1:21:19 – Infamous BBC interview
- 1:24:35 – Day in the life
- 1:39:31 – Abortion
- 1:52:26 – Climate change
- 1:59:48 – God and faith
- 2:10:58 – Tribalism
- 2:15:34 – Advice for young people
- 2:19:20 – Andrew Breitbart
- 2:21:50 – Self-doubt
- 2:23:52 – Love
Ben Shapiro
The great lie we tell ourselves is that people who are evil are not like us. They’re class apart. Everybody in history who has sinned is a person who’s very different from me. Robert George, the philosopher over at Princeton, he’s fond of doing a thought experiment in his classes where he asks people to raise their hand If they had lived in Alabama in 1861, how many of you would be abolitionists? And everybody raises their hand and he says, “Of course that’s not true.” The best protection against evil is recognizing that it lies in every human heart and the possibility that it takes you over.
The great lie we tell ourselves is that people who are evil are not like us. They’re class apart. Everybody in history who has sinned is a person who’s very different from me. Robert George, the philosopher over at Princeton, he’s fond of doing a thought experiment in his classes where he asks people to raise their hand If they had lived in Alabama in 1861, how many of you would be abolitionists? And everybody raises their hand and he says, “Of course that’s not true.” The best protection against evil is recognizing that it lies in every human heart and the possibility that it takes you over.
Lex Fridman
Do you ever sit back in the quiet of your mind and think, Am I participating in evil?
Do you ever sit back in the quiet of your mind and think, Am I participating in evil?
Lex Fridman
The following is a conversation with Ben Shapiro, a conservative political commentator, host of the Ben Shapiro show, co-founder of The Daily Wire, and author of several books, including The Authoritarian Moment, The Right Side of History and Facts Don’t Care About Your Feelings. Whatever Your political leanings, I humbly asked that you tried to put those aside and listen with an open mind trying to give the most charitable interpretation of the words we say. This is true in general for this podcast, whether the guest is Ben Shapiro or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Donald Trump, or Barack Obama, I will talk to everyone from every side, from the far left to the far right, from presidents to prisoners, from artists to scientists, from the powerful to the powerless, because we are all human, all capable of good and evil, all with fascinating stories and ideas to explore.
The following is a conversation with Ben Shapiro, a conservative political commentator, host of the Ben Shapiro show, co-founder of The Daily Wire, and author of several books, including The Authoritarian Moment, The Right Side of History and Facts Don’t Care About Your Feelings. Whatever Your political leanings, I humbly asked that you tried to put those aside and listen with an open mind trying to give the most charitable interpretation of the words we say. This is true in general for this podcast, whether the guest is Ben Shapiro or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Donald Trump, or Barack Obama, I will talk to everyone from every side, from the far left to the far right, from presidents to prisoners, from artists to scientists, from the powerful to the powerless, because we are all human, all capable of good and evil, all with fascinating stories and ideas to explore.
I seek only to understand, and in so doing, hopefully add a bit of love to the world. This is Lex Fridman podcast to support it. Please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here’s Ben Shapiro.
Kanye ‘Ye’ West
Lex Fridman
Let’s start with a difficult topic. What do you think about the comments made by Ye formerly known as Kanye West about Jewish people?
Let’s start with a difficult topic. What do you think about the comments made by Ye formerly known as Kanye West about Jewish people?
Ben Shapiro
They’re awful and antisemitic and they seem to get worse over time. They started off with the bizarre death con 3 tweet, and then they went into even more stereotypical garbage about Jews and Jews being sexual manipulators. I think that was the Pete Davidson, Kim Kardashian stuff, and then Jews running all of the media, Jews being in charge of the financial sector. Jewish people… I called it on my show, there’s Sherman Nazism, and it is. It’s like right from protocols of the Elders of Zion type stuff.
They’re awful and antisemitic and they seem to get worse over time. They started off with the bizarre death con 3 tweet, and then they went into even more stereotypical garbage about Jews and Jews being sexual manipulators. I think that was the Pete Davidson, Kim Kardashian stuff, and then Jews running all of the media, Jews being in charge of the financial sector. Jewish people… I called it on my show, there’s Sherman Nazism, and it is. It’s like right from protocols of the Elders of Zion type stuff.
Lex Fridman
Do you think those words come from pain, where they come from?
Do you think those words come from pain, where they come from?
Ben Shapiro
And it’s always hard to try and read somebody’s mind what he looks like to me, just having experience in my own family with people who are bipolar is he seems like a bipolar personality. He seems like somebody who is in the middle of a manic episode. And when you’re manic, you tend to say a lot of things that you shouldn’t say, and you tend to believe that they’re the most brilliant things ever said. The Washington Post, posted an entire piece speculating about how bipolarism played into the stuff that Ye was saying, and it’s hard for me to think that it’s not playing into it, especially because even if he is an anti-Semite, and I have no reason to suspect he’s not given all of his comments, if he had an ounce of common sense, he would stop at a certain point. And Bipolarism tends to drive you well past the point where common sense applies.
And it’s always hard to try and read somebody’s mind what he looks like to me, just having experience in my own family with people who are bipolar is he seems like a bipolar personality. He seems like somebody who is in the middle of a manic episode. And when you’re manic, you tend to say a lot of things that you shouldn’t say, and you tend to believe that they’re the most brilliant things ever said. The Washington Post, posted an entire piece speculating about how bipolarism played into the stuff that Ye was saying, and it’s hard for me to think that it’s not playing into it, especially because even if he is an anti-Semite, and I have no reason to suspect he’s not given all of his comments, if he had an ounce of common sense, he would stop at a certain point. And Bipolarism tends to drive you well past the point where common sense applies.
So I would imagine it’s coming from that. From his comments, I would also imagine that he’s doing the logical mistake that a lot of anti-Semites or racist or bigots do, which is somebody hurt me, that person is a Jew, therefore all Jews are bad. And that jump from a person did something to me I don’t like, who’s a member of a particular race or class, and therefore everybody of that race or class is bad. That’s textbook bigotry and that’s pretty obviously what Ye’s, engaging in here.
Lex Fridman
So jumping from the individual to the group.
So jumping from the individual to the group.
Ben Shapiro
That’s the way he’s been expressing it, right? He keeps talking about his Jewish agents, and I watched your interview with him and you kept saying this, “So just name the agents. Just name the people who are screwing you.” And he wouldn’t do it. Instead, he just kept going back to the general, the group, the Jews in general. That’s textbook bigotry, and if we’re putting any other context, he would probably recognize it as such.
That’s the way he’s been expressing it, right? He keeps talking about his Jewish agents, and I watched your interview with him and you kept saying this, “So just name the agents. Just name the people who are screwing you.” And he wouldn’t do it. Instead, he just kept going back to the general, the group, the Jews in general. That’s textbook bigotry, and if we’re putting any other context, he would probably recognize it as such.
Lex Fridman
To the degree that’s what fuels hate in the world. What’s the way to reverse that process? What’s the way to alleviate the hate?
To the degree that’s what fuels hate in the world. What’s the way to reverse that process? What’s the way to alleviate the hate?
Ben Shapiro
When it comes to alleviating the stuff that he’s saying, obviously debunking it, making clear that what he’s saying is garbage. But the reality is that for most people who are in any way engaged with these issues, I don’t think they’re being convinced to be antisemitic by Ye. I think that there’s a group of people who may be swayed that antisemitism is acceptable because Ye is saying what he’s saying and he’s saying so very loudly and he’s saying it over and over. But for example, there were these signs that were popping up in Los Angeles saying, Ye is right. That group’s been out there posting antisemitic signs on the freeways for years, and their groups like that posting antisemitic signs where I live in Florida, they’ve been doing that for years, well before Ye was saying this sort of stuff. It’s just like the latest opportunity to jump on that particular bandwagon. But listen, I think that people do have a moral duty to call that stuff out.
When it comes to alleviating the stuff that he’s saying, obviously debunking it, making clear that what he’s saying is garbage. But the reality is that for most people who are in any way engaged with these issues, I don’t think they’re being convinced to be antisemitic by Ye. I think that there’s a group of people who may be swayed that antisemitism is acceptable because Ye is saying what he’s saying and he’s saying so very loudly and he’s saying it over and over. But for example, there were these signs that were popping up in Los Angeles saying, Ye is right. That group’s been out there posting antisemitic signs on the freeways for years, and their groups like that posting antisemitic signs where I live in Florida, they’ve been doing that for years, well before Ye was saying this sort of stuff. It’s just like the latest opportunity to jump on that particular bandwagon. But listen, I think that people do have a moral duty to call that stuff out.
Lex Fridman
So there is a degree to which it normalizes that idea that Jews control the media, Jews control X institution. Is there a way to talk about a high representation of a group like Jewish people in a certain institution like the media or Hollywood and so on without it being a hateful conversation?
So there is a degree to which it normalizes that idea that Jews control the media, Jews control X institution. Is there a way to talk about a high representation of a group like Jewish people in a certain institution like the media or Hollywood and so on without it being a hateful conversation?
Ben Shapiro
Sure, of course. A high percentage of higher than statistically represented in the population, percentage of Hollywood agents are probably Jewish. A higher percentage of lawyers generally are probably Jewish. A high percentage of accountants are probably Jewish. Also, A higher percentage of engineers are probably Asian. Like the statistical truths are statistical truths. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything about the nature of the people who are being talked about. They’re a myriad of reasons why people might be disproportionately in one arena or another. Ranging from the cultural to sometimes the genetic. There are certain areas of the world where people are better long distance runners because of their genetic adaptations in those particular areas of the world. That’s not racist, that’s just fact. What starts to get racist is when you are attributing a bad characteristic to an entire population based on the notion that some members of that population are doing bad things.
Sure, of course. A high percentage of higher than statistically represented in the population, percentage of Hollywood agents are probably Jewish. A higher percentage of lawyers generally are probably Jewish. A high percentage of accountants are probably Jewish. Also, A higher percentage of engineers are probably Asian. Like the statistical truths are statistical truths. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything about the nature of the people who are being talked about. They’re a myriad of reasons why people might be disproportionately in one arena or another. Ranging from the cultural to sometimes the genetic. There are certain areas of the world where people are better long distance runners because of their genetic adaptations in those particular areas of the world. That’s not racist, that’s just fact. What starts to get racist is when you are attributing a bad characteristic to an entire population based on the notion that some members of that population are doing bad things.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, there’s a jump between… It’s also possible that record label owners as a group have a culture that Fs over artists.
Yeah, there’s a jump between… It’s also possible that record label owners as a group have a culture that Fs over artists.
Ben Shapiro
Sure.
Sure.
Lex Fridman
Doesn’t treat artists fairly. And it’s also possible that there’s a high representation of Jews in the group of people that own record labels, but it’s that small, but a very big leap that people take from the group that own record labels to all Jews.
Doesn’t treat artists fairly. And it’s also possible that there’s a high representation of Jews in the group of people that own record labels, but it’s that small, but a very big leap that people take from the group that own record labels to all Jews.
Ben Shapiro
For sure. And I think that one of the other issues also is that antisemitism is fascinating because it breaks down into so many different parts, meaning that if you look at of different types of antisemitism, if you’re a racist against black people, it’s typically because you’re racist based on the color of their skin.
For sure. And I think that one of the other issues also is that antisemitism is fascinating because it breaks down into so many different parts, meaning that if you look at of different types of antisemitism, if you’re a racist against black people, it’s typically because you’re racist based on the color of their skin.
If you’re racist against the Jews, you’re antisemitic. Then there are actually a few different ways that breaks down. You have antisemitism in terms of ethnicity, which is like Nazi antisemitism. You have Jewish parentage, you have Jewish grandparent, therefore your blood is corrupt and you are inherently going to have bad properties. Then there’s old school religious antisemitism, which is that the Jews are the killers of Christ, or the Jews are the sons of pigs and monkeys, and therefore Judaism is bad and therefore Jews are bad. And the way that you get out of that antisemitism historically speaking is mass conversion, which most antisemitism for a couple thousand years actually was not ethnic. It was much more rooted in this sort of stuff. If a Jew converted out of the faith, then the antisemitism was alleviated.
And then there’s a bizarre antisemitism that’s political antisemitism, and that is members of a group that I don’t like are disproportionately Jewish. Therefore all Jews are members of this group or are predominantly represented in this group. So you’ll see Nazis saying the communists are Jews. You’ll see communist saying the Nazis are Jews. Or you’ll see communist saying that the capitalists rather are Jews. And so that’s the weird thing about antisemitism. It’s like the Jews behind every corner. It’s basically a big conspiracy theory. Unlike a lot of other forms of racism, which are not really conspiracy theory, antisemitism tends to be a conspiracy theory about the levers of power being controlled by a shadowy cadre of people who are getting together behind closed doors to control things.
Lex Fridman
The most absurd illustration of antisemitism, just like you said, is Stalin versus Hitler over Poland that every bad guy was a Jew. So every enemy… There’s a lot of different enemy groups, intellectuals, political and so on. Military. And behind any movement that is considered the enemy for the Nazis and any movement that’s considered the enemy for the Soviet army are the Jews. What is the fact that Hitler took power teach you about human nature? When you look back at the history of the 20th century, what do you learn from that time?
The most absurd illustration of antisemitism, just like you said, is Stalin versus Hitler over Poland that every bad guy was a Jew. So every enemy… There’s a lot of different enemy groups, intellectuals, political and so on. Military. And behind any movement that is considered the enemy for the Nazis and any movement that’s considered the enemy for the Soviet army are the Jews. What is the fact that Hitler took power teach you about human nature? When you look back at the history of the 20th century, what do you learn from that time?
Hitler and the nature of evil
Ben Shapiro
There are a bunch of lessons too. Hitler taking power. The first thing I think people ought to recognize about Hitler taking power is that the power had been centralized in the government before Hitler took it. So if you actually look at the history of Nazi Germany, the Weimar Republic had effectively collapsed. The power had been centralized in the Chancellor and really under Hindenburg for a couple of years before that. And so it was only a matter of time until someone who was bad grabbed the power. And so the struggle between the reds and the browns in Nazism, in pre Nazi Germany led to this up spiraling of radical sentiment that allowed Hitler in through the front door, not through the back door, he was elected.
There are a bunch of lessons too. Hitler taking power. The first thing I think people ought to recognize about Hitler taking power is that the power had been centralized in the government before Hitler took it. So if you actually look at the history of Nazi Germany, the Weimar Republic had effectively collapsed. The power had been centralized in the Chancellor and really under Hindenburg for a couple of years before that. And so it was only a matter of time until someone who was bad grabbed the power. And so the struggle between the reds and the browns in Nazism, in pre Nazi Germany led to this up spiraling of radical sentiment that allowed Hitler in through the front door, not through the back door, he was elected.
Lex Fridman
So you think Communists could have also taken power?
So you think Communists could have also taken power?
Ben Shapiro
There’s no question Communists could have taken power. There were serious force in pre Nazi Germany.
There’s no question Communists could have taken power. There were serious force in pre Nazi Germany.
Lex Fridman
Do you think there was an underlying current that would’ve led to an atrocity if the communist had taken power?
Do you think there was an underlying current that would’ve led to an atrocity if the communist had taken power?
Ben Shapiro
Wouldn’t have been quite the same atrocity, but obviously the Communists in Soviet Russia at exactly this time were committing the Holodomor. So there were very few good guys in terms of good parties. The moderate parties were being dragged by the radicals into alliance with them to prevent the worst case scenario from the other guy, so if you look at… I’m fascinated by the history of this period because it really does speak to how does a democracy break down? The 1920s, Weimar Republic was a very liberal democracy. How does a liberal democracy break down into complete fascism and then into genocide? And there’s a character who was very prominent in the history at that time named Franz von Papen, who was actually the second to last chancellor of the Republic before Hitler. So he was the chancellor, and then he handed over to Schleicher, and then he ended up collapsing, and that ended up handing power over to Hitler.
Wouldn’t have been quite the same atrocity, but obviously the Communists in Soviet Russia at exactly this time were committing the Holodomor. So there were very few good guys in terms of good parties. The moderate parties were being dragged by the radicals into alliance with them to prevent the worst case scenario from the other guy, so if you look at… I’m fascinated by the history of this period because it really does speak to how does a democracy break down? The 1920s, Weimar Republic was a very liberal democracy. How does a liberal democracy break down into complete fascism and then into genocide? And there’s a character who was very prominent in the history at that time named Franz von Papen, who was actually the second to last chancellor of the Republic before Hitler. So he was the chancellor, and then he handed over to Schleicher, and then he ended up collapsing, and that ended up handing power over to Hitler.
It was Papen who had stumped for Hitler to become chancellor. Papen was a Catholic Democrat. He didn’t like Hitler. He thought that Hitler was a radical and a nut job, but he also thought that Hitler being a buffoon, as he saw it, was going to essentially be usable by the right forces in order to prevent the communists from taking power, maybe in order to restore some legitimacy to the regime because he was popular in order for Papen to retain power himself. And then immediately after Hitler taking power, Hitler basically kills all of Papen’s friends. Papen out of ‘loyalty’ stays on. He ends up helping the Anschluss in Austria. All this stuff is really interesting, mainly because what it speaks to is the great lie we tell ourselves that people who are evil are not like us. They’re class apart. People who do evil things, people who support evil people, they’re not like us.
And that’s an easy call everybody in history who has sinned is a person who’s very different from me. Robert George, the philosopher over at Princeton, he’s fond of doing a thought experiment in his classes where he asks people to raise their hand If they had lived in Alabama in 1861, how many of you would be abolitionists? And everybody raises their hand and he says, “Of course that’s not true.” The best protection against evil is recognizing that it lies in every human heart and the possibility that it takes you over.
And so you have to be very cautious in how you approach these issues and the back and forth of politics, the bipolarity of politics or polarization in politics might be a better way to put it, makes it very easy to fall into the Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots that eventually could theoretically allow you to support somebody who’s truly frightening and hideous in order to stop somebody who you think is more frightening and hideous. And you see this kind of language by the way now, predominating almost all over the western world. My political enemy is an enemy of democracy. My political enemy is going to end the republic. My political enemy is going to be the person who destroys the country we live in. And so that person has to be stopped by any means necessary, and that’s dangerous stuff.
Lex Fridman
So the communists had to be stopped in Nazi Germany, and so they’re the devil. And so any useful buffoon, as long as they’re effective against the communists would do. Do you ever wonder because the people that are participating in evil may not understand that they’re doing evil. Do you ever sit back in the quiet of your mind and think, Am I participating in evil?
So the communists had to be stopped in Nazi Germany, and so they’re the devil. And so any useful buffoon, as long as they’re effective against the communists would do. Do you ever wonder because the people that are participating in evil may not understand that they’re doing evil. Do you ever sit back in the quiet of your mind and think, Am I participating in evil?
Ben Shapiro
So my business partner and I, one of our favorite memes is from… There’s a British comedy show, the name escapes me, of these two guys who are members of the SS and they’re dressed in the SS uniforms and the black uniforms, the skulls on them, and they’re saying to each other, one says to the other guy, “You notice the British, the symbol is something nice, it’s like an eagle. But ours it’s a skull and crossbones. You see the Americans, you see the blue uniforms very nice and pretty. Ours are a jet black. Are we the baddies?” And that’s it. And the truth is, we look back at the Nazis and we say, “Of course they were the baddies. They wore black uniforms and they had jack boots and they had this and that.” And of course they were the bad guys. But evil rarely presents its face so clearly.
So my business partner and I, one of our favorite memes is from… There’s a British comedy show, the name escapes me, of these two guys who are members of the SS and they’re dressed in the SS uniforms and the black uniforms, the skulls on them, and they’re saying to each other, one says to the other guy, “You notice the British, the symbol is something nice, it’s like an eagle. But ours it’s a skull and crossbones. You see the Americans, you see the blue uniforms very nice and pretty. Ours are a jet black. Are we the baddies?” And that’s it. And the truth is, we look back at the Nazis and we say, “Of course they were the baddies. They wore black uniforms and they had jack boots and they had this and that.” And of course they were the bad guys. But evil rarely presents its face so clearly.
So yeah, I think you have to constantly be thinking along those lines and hopefully you try to avoid it. You can only do the best that a human being can do. But yeah, the answer is yes. I would say that I spend an inordinate amount of time reflecting on whether I’m doing the right thing and I may not always do the right thing. I’m sure a lot of people think that I’m doing the wrong thing on a daily basis. But it’s definitely a question that has to enter your mind as a historically aware and hopefully morally decent person.
Lex Fridman
Do you think you’re mentally strong enough if you realize that you are on the wrong side of history to switch sides? Very few people in history seem to be strong enough to do that.
Do you think you’re mentally strong enough if you realize that you are on the wrong side of history to switch sides? Very few people in history seem to be strong enough to do that.
Ben Shapiro
I think that the answer I hope would be yes. You never know until the time comes and you have to do it. I will say that having heterodox opinions in a wide variety of areas is something that I have done before. I’m the only person I’ve ever heard of in public life who actually has a list on their website of all the dumb stupid things I’ve ever said. So where I go through and I either say, “This is why I still believe this, or this is why what I said was terrible and stupid.” And I’m sure that list will get a lot longer.
I think that the answer I hope would be yes. You never know until the time comes and you have to do it. I will say that having heterodox opinions in a wide variety of areas is something that I have done before. I’m the only person I’ve ever heard of in public life who actually has a list on their website of all the dumb stupid things I’ve ever said. So where I go through and I either say, “This is why I still believe this, or this is why what I said was terrible and stupid.” And I’m sure that list will get a lot longer.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, I look forward to new additions to that list.
Yeah, I look forward to new additions to that list.
Ben Shapiro
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, exactly.
Lex Fridman
It actually is a super, super long list. People should check it out. And it’s quite honest and raw. It’s interesting to ask you, given how pro-life you are about, Ye’s, comments about comparing the Holocaust to the 900, 000 abortions in the United States a year.
It actually is a super, super long list. People should check it out. And it’s quite honest and raw. It’s interesting to ask you, given how pro-life you are about, Ye’s, comments about comparing the Holocaust to the 900, 000 abortions in the United States a year.
Ben Shapiro
So I’ll take this from two angles. As a pro-life person, I actually didn’t find it offensive because if you believe as I do that unborn and pre-born lives deserve protection, then the slaughter of just under a million of them every year for the last almost 50 years is a historic tragedy on par with a holocaust. From the outside perspective, I get why people would say there’s a difference in how people view the pre-born as to how people view, say a seven year old who’s being killed in the Holocaust, like the visceral power and evil of the Nazi shoving full grown human beings and small children in the gas chambers, can’t be compared to a person who even from pro-life perspective, may not fully understand the consequences of their own decisions or from a pro-choice perspective, fully understands the consequences, but just doesn’t think that that person is a person. That, that’s actually different.
So I’ll take this from two angles. As a pro-life person, I actually didn’t find it offensive because if you believe as I do that unborn and pre-born lives deserve protection, then the slaughter of just under a million of them every year for the last almost 50 years is a historic tragedy on par with a holocaust. From the outside perspective, I get why people would say there’s a difference in how people view the pre-born as to how people view, say a seven year old who’s being killed in the Holocaust, like the visceral power and evil of the Nazi shoving full grown human beings and small children in the gas chambers, can’t be compared to a person who even from pro-life perspective, may not fully understand the consequences of their own decisions or from a pro-choice perspective, fully understands the consequences, but just doesn’t think that that person is a person. That, that’s actually different.
So I understand both sides of it. I wasn’t offended by Ye’s comments in that way though, because if you’re a pro-life human being, then you do think that what’s happening is a great tragedy on scale that involves the dehumanization of an entire class of people, the pre-born.
Lex Fridman
So the philosophical you understand the comparison.
So the philosophical you understand the comparison.
Ben Shapiro
I do. Sure.
I do. Sure.
Political attacks on the left and the right
Lex Fridman
So in his comments, in the jumping from the individual to the group, I’d like to ask you… You’re one of the most effective people in the world that are attacking the left, and sometimes it can slip into attacking the group. Do you worry that’s the same kind of oversimplification that Ye’s, doing about Jewish people that you can sometimes do with the left as a group?
So in his comments, in the jumping from the individual to the group, I’d like to ask you… You’re one of the most effective people in the world that are attacking the left, and sometimes it can slip into attacking the group. Do you worry that’s the same kind of oversimplification that Ye’s, doing about Jewish people that you can sometimes do with the left as a group?
Ben Shapiro
So when I speak about the left, I’m speaking about a philosophy not really speaking about individual human beings as the leftist like group, and then try to name who the members of this individual group are. I also make a distinction between the left and liberals. There are a lot of people who are liberal who disagree with me on taxes, disagree with the foreign policy, disagree with me on a lot of things. The people who I’m talking about generally, and I talk about the left in the United States, are people who believe that alternative points of view ought to be silenced because they are damaging and harmful simply based on the disagreement. So that’s one distinction.
So when I speak about the left, I’m speaking about a philosophy not really speaking about individual human beings as the leftist like group, and then try to name who the members of this individual group are. I also make a distinction between the left and liberals. There are a lot of people who are liberal who disagree with me on taxes, disagree with the foreign policy, disagree with me on a lot of things. The people who I’m talking about generally, and I talk about the left in the United States, are people who believe that alternative points of view ought to be silenced because they are damaging and harmful simply based on the disagreement. So that’s one distinction.
The second distinction again is when I talk about the right versus the left, typically I’m talking about a battle of competing philosophies. And so I’m not speaking about, typically… It would be hard to, if you put a person in front of me and said, “Is this person of the left or of the right?” Having just met them, I wouldn’t be able to label them in the same way that if you met somebody in the name of Greenstein, you’d immediately go Jew, or you make a black person, they’re a black person. And that the adherence to a philosophy makes you a member of a group. If I think the philosophy is bad, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you as a person are bad. But it does mean that I think your philosophy is bad.
Lex Fridman
So the grouping is based on the philosophy versus something like a race. The color of your skin or race as in the case of the Jewish people. So it’s a different thing. You can be a little bit more nonchalant and careless in attacking a group because it’s ultimately attacking a set of ideas.
So the grouping is based on the philosophy versus something like a race. The color of your skin or race as in the case of the Jewish people. So it’s a different thing. You can be a little bit more nonchalant and careless in attacking a group because it’s ultimately attacking a set of ideas.
Ben Shapiro
It is really nonchalant in attacking the set of ideas. And I don’t know that nonchalant would be the way I’d put it. I try to be exact, you don’t always hit. But if I say that I oppose the Communists and then presumably I’m speaking of people who believe in the Communists philosophy. Now the question is whether I’m mislabeling, whether I’m taking somebody who’s not actually a communist and then shoving them in that group of Communists, that would be inaccurate.
It is really nonchalant in attacking the set of ideas. And I don’t know that nonchalant would be the way I’d put it. I try to be exact, you don’t always hit. But if I say that I oppose the Communists and then presumably I’m speaking of people who believe in the Communists philosophy. Now the question is whether I’m mislabeling, whether I’m taking somebody who’s not actually a communist and then shoving them in that group of Communists, that would be inaccurate.
Lex Fridman
The dangerous thing is it expands the group as opposed to you talking about the philosophy you’re throwing everybody who’s ever said, “I’m curious about communism. I’m curious about socialism.” There’s like a gradient. It’s like to throw something at you, I think Joe Biden said, “Maga Republicans.” I think that’s a very careless statement because the thing you jump to immediately is all Republicans.
The dangerous thing is it expands the group as opposed to you talking about the philosophy you’re throwing everybody who’s ever said, “I’m curious about communism. I’m curious about socialism.” There’s like a gradient. It’s like to throw something at you, I think Joe Biden said, “Maga Republicans.” I think that’s a very careless statement because the thing you jump to immediately is all Republicans.
Ben Shapiro
All Republicans voted for Trump.
All Republicans voted for Trump.
Lex Fridman
Vote for Trump versus I think in the charitable interpretation that means a set of ideas.
Vote for Trump versus I think in the charitable interpretation that means a set of ideas.
Ben Shapiro
My actually problem with the maga Republicans line from Biden is that he went on in the speech that he made in front of Independence Hall to actually trying to define what it meant to be a maga Republican who was a threat to the republic, was the kind of language that he was using. And later on in the speech, he actually suggested, “There are moderate Republicans and the moderate Republicans are people, people who agree with me on the inflation reduction acts.” It’s like, that can’t be the dividing line between a maga Republican and a moderate Republican is somebody who agrees with you. You got to name me a Republican who disagrees with you fairly strenuously, but is not in this group of threats to the republic. You make that distinction, we can have a fair discussion about whether the idea of election denial, for example, makes somebody a threat to institutions.
My actually problem with the maga Republicans line from Biden is that he went on in the speech that he made in front of Independence Hall to actually trying to define what it meant to be a maga Republican who was a threat to the republic, was the kind of language that he was using. And later on in the speech, he actually suggested, “There are moderate Republicans and the moderate Republicans are people, people who agree with me on the inflation reduction acts.” It’s like, that can’t be the dividing line between a maga Republican and a moderate Republican is somebody who agrees with you. You got to name me a Republican who disagrees with you fairly strenuously, but is not in this group of threats to the republic. You make that distinction, we can have a fair discussion about whether the idea of election denial, for example, makes somebody a threat to institutions.
That’s a conversation that we can have. And then we’ll have to discuss how much power they have, what the actual perspective is, delve into it. But I think that he was being over broad and labeling all of his political enemies under one rubric. Now again, in politics, this stuff happens all the time. I’m not going to plead clean hands here because I’m sure that I’ve been in exact. But somebody who would be good in that particular situation is for somebody to read me back the quote and I’ll let you know where I’ve been inaccurate. I’ll try to do that.
Lex Fridman
And also you don’t shy away from humor and occasional trolling and mockery and all that kind of stuff for the fun, for chaos, all that kind of stuff?
And also you don’t shy away from humor and occasional trolling and mockery and all that kind of stuff for the fun, for chaos, all that kind of stuff?
Ben Shapiro
I try not to do trollery for trollery’s sake, but if the show’s not entertaining and not fun, people aren’t going to listen. And so if you can’t have fun with politics… The truth about politics is we all take it very seriously because it has some serious ramifications. Politics is Veep, it is not House of Cards. The general rule of politics is that everyone is a moron unless proven otherwise, that virtually everything is done out of stupidity rather than malice. And that if you actually watch politics as a comedy, you’ll have a lot more fun.
I try not to do trollery for trollery’s sake, but if the show’s not entertaining and not fun, people aren’t going to listen. And so if you can’t have fun with politics… The truth about politics is we all take it very seriously because it has some serious ramifications. Politics is Veep, it is not House of Cards. The general rule of politics is that everyone is a moron unless proven otherwise, that virtually everything is done out of stupidity rather than malice. And that if you actually watch politics as a comedy, you’ll have a lot more fun.
And so the difficulty for me is I take politics seriously, but also I have the ability to of flip the switch and suddenly it all becomes incredibly funny because it really is like if you just watch it from a pure entertainment perspective and you put aside the fact that it affects hundreds of millions of people. Then watching President Trump being president, he’s one of the funniest humans who’s ever lived watching Kamala Harris be Kamala Harris and talking about how much he loves Venn diagrams or electric buses. That’s funny stuff. So if I can’t make fun of that, then my job becomes pretty morose pretty quickly.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, it’s funny to figure out what is the perfect balance between seeing the humor and the absurdity of the game of it versus taking it seriously enough because it does affect hundreds of millions of people. It’s a weird balance to strike. It’s like I am afraid with the internet that everything becomes a joke.
Yeah, it’s funny to figure out what is the perfect balance between seeing the humor and the absurdity of the game of it versus taking it seriously enough because it does affect hundreds of millions of people. It’s a weird balance to strike. It’s like I am afraid with the internet that everything becomes a joke.
Ben Shapiro
I totally agree with this. I will say this, I try to make less jokes about the ideas and more jokes about the people in the same way that I make jokes about myself. I’m pretty self-effacing in terms of my humor. I would say at least half the jokes on my show are about me when I’m reading ads for Tommy John and they’re talking about their no wedgie guarantee, I’ll say things like that would’ve helped me in high school because it would’ve, just factually speaking. So if I can speak that way about myself, I feel like everybody else can take it as well.
I totally agree with this. I will say this, I try to make less jokes about the ideas and more jokes about the people in the same way that I make jokes about myself. I’m pretty self-effacing in terms of my humor. I would say at least half the jokes on my show are about me when I’m reading ads for Tommy John and they’re talking about their no wedgie guarantee, I’ll say things like that would’ve helped me in high school because it would’ve, just factually speaking. So if I can speak that way about myself, I feel like everybody else can take it as well.
Quebec mosque shooting
Lex Fridman
Difficult question. In 2017, there was a mosque shooting in Quebec City, six people died, five others seriously injured. The 27 year old gunman consumed a lot of content online and checked Twitter accounts a lot, of a lot of people. But one of the people he checked quite a lot of is you 93 times in the month leading up to the shooting. If you could talk to that young man, what would you tell him? And maybe other young men listening to this that have hate in their heart in that same way. What would you tell them?
Difficult question. In 2017, there was a mosque shooting in Quebec City, six people died, five others seriously injured. The 27 year old gunman consumed a lot of content online and checked Twitter accounts a lot, of a lot of people. But one of the people he checked quite a lot of is you 93 times in the month leading up to the shooting. If you could talk to that young man, what would you tell him? And maybe other young men listening to this that have hate in their heart in that same way. What would you tell them?
Ben Shapiro
You’re getting it wrong. If anything that or anyone else in mainstream politics says drives you to violence, you’re getting it wrong. Now again, when it comes to stuff like this, I have a hard and fast rule that I’ve applied evenly across the spectrum. And that is I never blame people’s politics for other people committing acts of violence unless they’re actively advocating violence. So when a fan of Bernie Sanders shoots up a congressional baseball game, that is not Bernie Sanders’s fault. I may not like his rhetoric. I may disagree with him on everything. Bernie Sanders did not tell somebody to go shoot up a congressional baseball game when a nut case in San Francisco goes and hits Paul Pelosi with a hammer. I’m not going to blame Kevin McCarthy, the house speaker for that. When somebody threatens Brett Kavanaugh, I’m not going to suggest that that was Joe Biden’s fault because it’s not Joe Biden’s fault.
You’re getting it wrong. If anything that or anyone else in mainstream politics says drives you to violence, you’re getting it wrong. Now again, when it comes to stuff like this, I have a hard and fast rule that I’ve applied evenly across the spectrum. And that is I never blame people’s politics for other people committing acts of violence unless they’re actively advocating violence. So when a fan of Bernie Sanders shoots up a congressional baseball game, that is not Bernie Sanders’s fault. I may not like his rhetoric. I may disagree with him on everything. Bernie Sanders did not tell somebody to go shoot up a congressional baseball game when a nut case in San Francisco goes and hits Paul Pelosi with a hammer. I’m not going to blame Kevin McCarthy, the house speaker for that. When somebody threatens Brett Kavanaugh, I’m not going to suggest that that was Joe Biden’s fault because it’s not Joe Biden’s fault.
We can play this game all day long. And I find that the people who are most intensely focused on playing this game are people who tend to oppose the politics of the person as opposed to actually believing sincerely that this has driven somebody into the arms of the God of violence. But I have 4.7 million Twitter followers. I have 8 million Facebook followers, I have 5 million YouTube followers. I would imagine that some of them are people who are violent. I would imagine that some of them are people who do evil things or want to do evil things. And I wish that there were a wand that we could wave that would prevent those people from deliberately or mistakenly misinterpreting things as a call of violence. It’s just a negative byproduct of the fact that you can reach a lot of people. And so if somebody could point me to the comment that I suppose ‘drove’ somebody to going literally murder human beings, then I would appreciate it.
So I could talk about the comment, but don’t… Mainly because I just think that if we remove agency from individuals, and if we blame broad scale political rhetoric for every act of violence the people who are going to pay the price are actually the general population because free speech will go away. If the idea is that things that we say could drive somebody who is unbalanced to go do something evil, the necessary byproduct is hate, is that speech is a form of hate. Hate is a form of violence, speech is a form of violence. Speech needs to be curbed. And that to me is deeply disturbing.
Lex Fridman
So definitely that man, that 27 year old man is the only one responsible for the evil he did. But what if he and others like him are not nut cases? What if they’re people with pain, with anger in their heart? What would you say to them? You’re exceptionally influential and other people like you that speak passionately about ideas. What do you think is your opportunity to alleviate the hate in their heart?
So definitely that man, that 27 year old man is the only one responsible for the evil he did. But what if he and others like him are not nut cases? What if they’re people with pain, with anger in their heart? What would you say to them? You’re exceptionally influential and other people like you that speak passionately about ideas. What do you think is your opportunity to alleviate the hate in their heart?
Ben Shapiro
If we’re speaking about people who aren’t mentally ill and people who are just misguided, I’d say to him the thing I said to every other young man in the country, you need to find meaning and purpose in forming connections that actually matter in a belief system that actually promotes general prosperity and promotes helping other people. And this is why the message that I most commonly say to young men is, It’s time for you to grow up, mature, get a job, get married, have a family, take care of the people around you, become a useful part of your community. Never at any point in my entire career suggested violence as a resort to political issues. The whole point of having a political conversation is that it’s a conversation. If I didn’t think that it were worth trying to convince people of my point of view, I wouldn’t do what I do for a living.
If we’re speaking about people who aren’t mentally ill and people who are just misguided, I’d say to him the thing I said to every other young man in the country, you need to find meaning and purpose in forming connections that actually matter in a belief system that actually promotes general prosperity and promotes helping other people. And this is why the message that I most commonly say to young men is, It’s time for you to grow up, mature, get a job, get married, have a family, take care of the people around you, become a useful part of your community. Never at any point in my entire career suggested violence as a resort to political issues. The whole point of having a political conversation is that it’s a conversation. If I didn’t think that it were worth trying to convince people of my point of view, I wouldn’t do what I do for a living.
Lex Fridman
So violence doesn’t solve anything?
So violence doesn’t solve anything?
Ben Shapiro
No, it doesn’t.
No, it doesn’t.
Lex Fridman
As if this wasn’t already a difficult conversation. Let me ask about Ilhan Omar, you’ve called out her criticism of Israel policies as antisemitic. Is there a difference between criticizing a race of people like the Jews and criticizing the policies of a nation like Israel?
As if this wasn’t already a difficult conversation. Let me ask about Ilhan Omar, you’ve called out her criticism of Israel policies as antisemitic. Is there a difference between criticizing a race of people like the Jews and criticizing the policies of a nation like Israel?
Ben Shapiro
Of course. I criticize the policies of Israel on a fairly regular basis, I would assume from a different angle than Ilhan Omar does. But yeah, I criticize the policies of a wide variety of states. And to take an example, I’ve criticized Israel’s policy in giving control of the temple mounts to the Islamic walk, which effectively prevents anybody except for Muslims praying up there. I’ve also criticized the Israeli government for their Covid crackdown. You can criticize the policies of any government, but that’s not what, Ilhan Omar does. Ilhan Omar doesn’t actually believe that there should be a state of Israel. She believes that Zionism is racism and that the existence of a Jewish state in Israel is in and of itself the great sin. That is a statement she would make about no other people in no other land. She would not say that the French don’t deserve a state for the French.
Of course. I criticize the policies of Israel on a fairly regular basis, I would assume from a different angle than Ilhan Omar does. But yeah, I criticize the policies of a wide variety of states. And to take an example, I’ve criticized Israel’s policy in giving control of the temple mounts to the Islamic walk, which effectively prevents anybody except for Muslims praying up there. I’ve also criticized the Israeli government for their Covid crackdown. You can criticize the policies of any government, but that’s not what, Ilhan Omar does. Ilhan Omar doesn’t actually believe that there should be a state of Israel. She believes that Zionism is racism and that the existence of a Jewish state in Israel is in and of itself the great sin. That is a statement she would make about no other people in no other land. She would not say that the French don’t deserve a state for the French.
She wouldn’t say that Somalis wouldn’t deserve a state in Somalia. She wouldn’t say that that Germans don’t deserve a state in Germany. She wouldn’t say for the 50 plus Islamic states that exist across the world, that they don’t deserve states of their own. It is only the Jewish state that has fallen under her significant scrutiny. And she also promulgates laws about one specific state in the form of suggesting, for example, that Israel is an apartheid state, which it is most eminently not considering that the last unity government in Israel included an Arab party, that there are Arabs who sit on the Israeli Supreme Court and all the rest. And then beyond that, obviously she’s engaged in some of the same antisemitic ropes that you heard from Ye. The stuff about, it’s all about the Benjamins, that American support for Israel is all about the Benjamins, and she’s had to be [inaudible 00:29:36] by members of her own party about this stuff before.
Lex Fridman
Can you empathize with the plight of Palestinian people?
Can you empathize with the plight of Palestinian people?
Ben Shapiro
Absolutely. Some of the uglier things that I’ve ever said in my career are things that I said very early on. When I was 17, 18, 19, I started writing a syndicated column, I was 17, I’m now 38. So virtually all the dumb things… I’d say virtually all, many of the dumb things, the plurality of the dumb things that I’ve said came from the ages of, I would say 17 to maybe 23. And they are rooted again in sloppy thinking. I feel terrible for people who have lived under the thumb and currently live under the thumb of Hamas, which is a national terrorist group, or the Palestinian authority, which is a corrupt oligarchy that steals money from its people and leaves them in misery or Islamic Jihad, which is an actual terrorist group.
Absolutely. Some of the uglier things that I’ve ever said in my career are things that I said very early on. When I was 17, 18, 19, I started writing a syndicated column, I was 17, I’m now 38. So virtually all the dumb things… I’d say virtually all, many of the dumb things, the plurality of the dumb things that I’ve said came from the ages of, I would say 17 to maybe 23. And they are rooted again in sloppy thinking. I feel terrible for people who have lived under the thumb and currently live under the thumb of Hamas, which is a national terrorist group, or the Palestinian authority, which is a corrupt oligarchy that steals money from its people and leaves them in misery or Islamic Jihad, which is an actual terrorist group.
The basic rule for the region, in my view, is if these groups were willing to make peace of Israel, they would have a state literally tomorrow. And if they are not, then there will be no peace. And it really is that simple. The formulas typically used, it’s become a bit of a bumper sticker, but it happens to be factually correct. If the Palestinians put down their guns tomorrow, there would be a state. If the Israelis put down their guns, there’d be no Israel,
Lex Fridman
You get attacked a lot on the internet.
You get attacked a lot on the internet.
Ben Shapiro
Oh yeah, you noticed.
Oh yeah, you noticed.
Lex Fridman
I got to ask you about your own psychology. How do you not let that break you mentally? And how do you avoid letting that lead to a resentment of the groups that attack you?
I got to ask you about your own psychology. How do you not let that break you mentally? And how do you avoid letting that lead to a resentment of the groups that attack you?
Ben Shapiro
So there are a few-
So there are a few-
Lex Fridman
… that meant of the groups that attack you.
… that meant of the groups that attack you.
Ben Shapiro
I mean, so there are a few sort of practical things that I’ve done. So, for example, I would say that four years ago, Twitter was all-consuming. Twitter is an ego machine, especially the notifications button, right? The notifications button is just people talking about you all the time and the normal human tendency as, Wow, people talking about me, I got to see what they’re saying about me. Which is a recipe for insanity. So my wife actually said, “Twitter is making your life miserable. You need to take it off your phone.” So Twitter is not on my phone. If I want to log onto Twitter, I have to go onto my computer and I have to make the conscious decision to go onto Twitter and then take a look at what’s going on.
I mean, so there are a few sort of practical things that I’ve done. So, for example, I would say that four years ago, Twitter was all-consuming. Twitter is an ego machine, especially the notifications button, right? The notifications button is just people talking about you all the time and the normal human tendency as, Wow, people talking about me, I got to see what they’re saying about me. Which is a recipe for insanity. So my wife actually said, “Twitter is making your life miserable. You need to take it off your phone.” So Twitter is not on my phone. If I want to log onto Twitter, I have to go onto my computer and I have to make the conscious decision to go onto Twitter and then take a look at what’s going on.
Lex Fridman
I could just imagine you, there’s a computer in the basement; you dissent in to check Twitter in the darkness-
I could just imagine you, there’s a computer in the basement; you dissent in to check Twitter in the darkness-
Ben Shapiro
That’s pretty much, I mean, if you look at when I actually tweet, it’s generally in the run-up to recording my show, or when I’m prepping for my show later in the afternoon, for example.
That’s pretty much, I mean, if you look at when I actually tweet, it’s generally in the run-up to recording my show, or when I’m prepping for my show later in the afternoon, for example.
Lex Fridman
That doesn’t affect you negatively, mentally, like put you in a bad mental space.
That doesn’t affect you negatively, mentally, like put you in a bad mental space.
Ben Shapiro
Not particularly if it’s restricted to what’s being watched. Now I will say that I think the most important thing is you have to surround yourself with a group of people who you trust enough to make serious critiques of you when you’re doing something wrong, but also that they have your best interest at heart. Because the internet is filled with people who don’t have your best interests at heart and who hate your gods. So you can’t really take those critiques seriously or it does wreck you. The world is also filled with sycophants, right? The more successful you become, there are a lot of people who will tell you you’re always doing the right thing.
Not particularly if it’s restricted to what’s being watched. Now I will say that I think the most important thing is you have to surround yourself with a group of people who you trust enough to make serious critiques of you when you’re doing something wrong, but also that they have your best interest at heart. Because the internet is filled with people who don’t have your best interests at heart and who hate your gods. So you can’t really take those critiques seriously or it does wreck you. The world is also filled with sycophants, right? The more successful you become, there are a lot of people who will tell you you’re always doing the right thing.
I’m very lucky. I got married when I was 24, my wife was 20, so she’s known me long before I was famous or wealthy or anything. So she’s a good sounding board. I have a family that’s willing to call me out on my bullshit as you talk to Ye about. I have friends who are able to do that. I try to have open lines of communications with people who I believe have my best interests at heart. But one of the sort of conditions of being friends is that when you see me do something wrong, I’d like for you to let me know that so I can correct it, and I don’t want to leave that impressions out there.
Lex Fridman
The sad thing about the internet, just looking at the critiques you get, I see very few critiques from people that actually want you to succeed, want you to grow. I mean, they’re not sophisticated. I don’t know, they’re cruel. It’s not actual critiques; it’s just cruelty.
The sad thing about the internet, just looking at the critiques you get, I see very few critiques from people that actually want you to succeed, want you to grow. I mean, they’re not sophisticated. I don’t know, they’re cruel. It’s not actual critiques; it’s just cruelty.
Ben Shapiro
That’s most of Twitter. I mean, as I said, Twitter is a place to smack, and be smacked. I mean, anybody who uses Twitter for an intellectual conversation I think is engaging in category error.
That’s most of Twitter. I mean, as I said, Twitter is a place to smack, and be smacked. I mean, anybody who uses Twitter for an intellectual conversation I think is engaging in category error.
Lex Fridman
I use it to spread love. I think it’s [inaudible 00:33:24]-
I use it to spread love. I think it’s [inaudible 00:33:24]-
Ben Shapiro
You’re the only one. It’s you and no one else, my friend.
You’re the only one. It’s you and no one else, my friend.
Elon Musk buying Twitter
Lex Fridman
Right. On that topic, what do you think about Elon buying Twitter? What are you hopeful on that front? What would you like to see Twitter improve?
Right. On that topic, what do you think about Elon buying Twitter? What are you hopeful on that front? What would you like to see Twitter improve?
Ben Shapiro
So I’m very hopeful about Elon buying Twitter. I mean, I think that Elon is significantly more transparent than what has taken place up till now. He seems committed to the idea that he’s going to broaden the Overton window to allow for conversations that simply were banned before. Everything ranging from efficacy of masks, with regard to COVID to whether men can become women and all the rest. A lot of things that would get you banned on Twitter before without any sort of real explanation. It seems like he’s dedicated to at least explaining what the standards are going to be and being broader in allowing a variety of perspectives on the outlet, which I think is wonderful. I think that’s also why people are freaking out. I think the kind of wailing and mashing of teeth and wearing of sad cloth and ash by so many members of the legacy media, I think a lot of that is because Twitter essentially was an oligarchy in which certain perspectives were allowed and certain perspectives just were not. That was part of a broader social media-reimposed oligarchy in the aftermath of 2017. So in order for just to really understand, I think what it means for Elon to take over Twitter, I think that we have to take a look at of the history of media in the United States in two minutes or less, the United States, the media for most of its existence, up until about 1990, at least from about 1930s until the 1990s, virtually all media was three major television networks, a couple major newspapers and the wire services. Everybody had a local newspaper with wire services that basically did all the foreign policy and all the national policy. McClatchy, Reuters, AP, AFP, et cetera. So that monopoly oligopoly existed until the rise of the internet. There were sort of pokes at it in talk radio and on Fox News, but there certainly was not this plethora of sources.
So I’m very hopeful about Elon buying Twitter. I mean, I think that Elon is significantly more transparent than what has taken place up till now. He seems committed to the idea that he’s going to broaden the Overton window to allow for conversations that simply were banned before. Everything ranging from efficacy of masks, with regard to COVID to whether men can become women and all the rest. A lot of things that would get you banned on Twitter before without any sort of real explanation. It seems like he’s dedicated to at least explaining what the standards are going to be and being broader in allowing a variety of perspectives on the outlet, which I think is wonderful. I think that’s also why people are freaking out. I think the kind of wailing and mashing of teeth and wearing of sad cloth and ash by so many members of the legacy media, I think a lot of that is because Twitter essentially was an oligarchy in which certain perspectives were allowed and certain perspectives just were not. That was part of a broader social media-reimposed oligarchy in the aftermath of 2017. So in order for just to really understand, I think what it means for Elon to take over Twitter, I think that we have to take a look at of the history of media in the United States in two minutes or less, the United States, the media for most of its existence, up until about 1990, at least from about 1930s until the 1990s, virtually all media was three major television networks, a couple major newspapers and the wire services. Everybody had a local newspaper with wire services that basically did all the foreign policy and all the national policy. McClatchy, Reuters, AP, AFP, et cetera. So that monopoly oligopoly existed until the rise of the internet. There were sort of pokes at it in talk radio and on Fox News, but there certainly was not this plethora of sources.
Then the internet explodes and all of a sudden you can get news everywhere, and the way that people are accessing that news is… You’re, I believe, significantly younger than I am. But we used to do this thing called bookmarking, where you would bookmark a series of websites and then you would visit them every morning, and then social media came up.
Lex Fridman
Is this on AOL or-
Is this on AOL or-
Ben Shapiro
Yeah, exactly. You had the dial-up and it’s actually a can connected to a string and it would go. Then there came a point where social media arose and social media was sort of a boon for everybody because you no longer had to bookmark anything. You just followed your favorite accounts and all of them would pop up and you follow everything on Facebook and it would all pop up and it was all centralized. For a while everybody was super happy because this was the brand new wave of the future, made everything super easy.
Yeah, exactly. You had the dial-up and it’s actually a can connected to a string and it would go. Then there came a point where social media arose and social media was sort of a boon for everybody because you no longer had to bookmark anything. You just followed your favorite accounts and all of them would pop up and you follow everything on Facebook and it would all pop up and it was all centralized. For a while everybody was super happy because this was the brand new wave of the future, made everything super easy.
Suddenly outlets like mine were able to see new eyeballs because it was all centralized in one place. You didn’t have to do it through Google optimization. You could now just put it on Facebook and so many eyeballs were on Facebook, you’d get more traffic. Everybody seemed pretty happy with this arrangement until precisely the moment Donald Trump became president. At that point, then, the sort of pre-existing supposition of a lot of the powers that be, which was, “Democrats, are going to continue winning from here on out, so we can sort of use these social media platforms as ways to push our information and still allow for there to be other information out there.” The immediate response was, “We need to reestablish this siphoning of information. It was misinformation and disinformation that won Donald Trump the election. We need to pressure the social media companies to start cracking down on misinformation and disinformation.”
Actually see this in the historical record. I mean, you can see how Jack Dorsey’s talk about free speech shifted from about 2015 to about 2018. You can see Mark Zuckerberg gave a speech at Georgetown in 2018, which he talked about free speech in its value, and by 2019 he was going in front of Congress talking about how he was responsible for the stuff that was on Facebook, which is not true. He’s not responsible for the stuff on Facebook. It’s a platform. Is AT&T responsible for the stuff you say on your phone? The answer is typically no. So when that happened, because all the eyeballs had now been centralized in these social media sites, they were able to suddenly control what you could see and what you could not see. The most obvious example was obviously leading up to 2020, the election; the killing of the Hunter Biden story is a great example of this.
So Elon coming in and taking over one of the social media services and saying, “I’m not playing by your rules. There’s not going to be this sort of group of people in the halls of power who are going to decide what we can see and here. Instead, I’m going to let a thousand flowers bloom. There’ll be limits, but it’s going to be on more case-by-case basis. We’re going to allow perspectives that are mainstream but maybe not mainstream in the halls of academia or in the halls of media. Let those be said.” I think it’s a really good thing. Now that comes with some responsibilities, I think, on his personal part, which would be to be, for example, I think more responsible and dissemination of information himself. Sometimes he got himself in trouble the other day for tweeting out that story about Paul Pelosi that was speculative and untrue.
I don’t think what he did is horrific. He deleted it when he found out that it was false. That’s actually a free speech working. He said something wrong, people ripped into him, he realized he was wrong, and he’s deleted it, which seems to be a better solution than preemptively banning content, which only raises more questions than it actually stops. With that said, as the face of responsible free speech, and that’s sort of what he’s pitching at Twitter, he I think should enact that himself and be a little more careful in the stuff that he tweets out.
Lex Fridman
Well, that’s a tricky balance. The reason a lot of people are freaking out is because one, he’s putting his thumb on the scale by saying he is more likely to vote Republican. He’s showing himself to be center-right, and just having a political opinion versus being this amorphous thing that doesn’t have a political opinion. I think, I haven’t talked to him about it, but if I were to guess, he’s sending a kind of signal that’s important for Twitter, the company itself, because if we’re being honest, most of the employees are left-leaning. So you have to send a signal like a resisting mechanism to say, since most of the employees are left, it’s good for Elon to be more right to balance out the way the actual engineering is done to say, “We’re not going to do any kind of act activism inside the engineering.” If I were to guess, that’s the effective aspect of that mechanism.
Well, that’s a tricky balance. The reason a lot of people are freaking out is because one, he’s putting his thumb on the scale by saying he is more likely to vote Republican. He’s showing himself to be center-right, and just having a political opinion versus being this amorphous thing that doesn’t have a political opinion. I think, I haven’t talked to him about it, but if I were to guess, he’s sending a kind of signal that’s important for Twitter, the company itself, because if we’re being honest, most of the employees are left-leaning. So you have to send a signal like a resisting mechanism to say, since most of the employees are left, it’s good for Elon to be more right to balance out the way the actual engineering is done to say, “We’re not going to do any kind of act activism inside the engineering.” If I were to guess, that’s the effective aspect of that mechanism.
The other one by posting the Pelosi thing is probably to expand the Overton window. Like saying, “We could post stuff, we could post conspiracy theories and then through discourse figure out what is and isn’t true.”
Ben Shapiro
Yeah, again, like I say, I mean, I think that is a better mechanism in action than what it was before. I just think it gave people who hate his guts the opening to slap him for no reason. But I can see the strategy of it for sure. I think that the general idea that he’s pushing right where the company had pushed left before, I think that there is actually unilateral polarization right now in politics, at least with the regard of social media in which one side basically says, the solution to disinformation is to shut down free speech from the other side. The other side is basically people like me are saying, the solution to disinformation is to let a thousand… I’d rather have people on the left also being able to put out stuff that I disagree with than for there to be anybody who’s sort of in charge of these social media platforms and using them as editorial sites.
Yeah, again, like I say, I mean, I think that is a better mechanism in action than what it was before. I just think it gave people who hate his guts the opening to slap him for no reason. But I can see the strategy of it for sure. I think that the general idea that he’s pushing right where the company had pushed left before, I think that there is actually unilateral polarization right now in politics, at least with the regard of social media in which one side basically says, the solution to disinformation is to shut down free speech from the other side. The other side is basically people like me are saying, the solution to disinformation is to let a thousand… I’d rather have people on the left also being able to put out stuff that I disagree with than for there to be anybody who’s sort of in charge of these social media platforms and using them as editorial sites.
I mean, I’m not criticizing MSNBC for not putting on right wing opinions. I mean that’s fine. I run a conservative site. We’re not going to put up left wing opinions on a wide variety of issues because we are conservative site. But if you pitch yourself as a platform, that’s a different thing. If you pitch yourself as the town square, as Elon likes to call it, then I think Elon has a better idea of that than many of the former employees did. Especially now that we have that report from the Intercept suggesting that there are people from Twitter working with DHS to monitor “disinformation” and being rather vague about what disinformation meant.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, I don’t think activism has a place in what is fundamentally an engineering company that’s building a platform. The people inside the company should not be putting a thumb on the scale of what is and isn’t allowed. You should create a mechanism for the people to decide what is and isn’t allowed. Do you think Trump should have been removed from Twitter? Should his account be restored?
Yeah, I don’t think activism has a place in what is fundamentally an engineering company that’s building a platform. The people inside the company should not be putting a thumb on the scale of what is and isn’t allowed. You should create a mechanism for the people to decide what is and isn’t allowed. Do you think Trump should have been removed from Twitter? Should his account be restored?
Ben Shapiro
His account should be restored. This is coming from somebody who really dislikes an enormous number of Donald Trump’s tweets. Again, he’s a very important political personage. Even if he weren’t, I don’t think that he should be banned from Twitter or Facebook in coordinated fashion. By the way, I hold that opinion about people who I think are far worse than Donald Trump. Everyone knows I’m not Alex ones guy. I don’t like Alex Jones. I think Alex Jones parades-
His account should be restored. This is coming from somebody who really dislikes an enormous number of Donald Trump’s tweets. Again, he’s a very important political personage. Even if he weren’t, I don’t think that he should be banned from Twitter or Facebook in coordinated fashion. By the way, I hold that opinion about people who I think are far worse than Donald Trump. Everyone knows I’m not Alex ones guy. I don’t like Alex Jones. I think Alex Jones parades-
Lex Fridman
You think Alex should be back on Twitter?
You think Alex should be back on Twitter?
Ben Shapiro
I do actually. Because I think that there are plenty of people who are willing to say that what he’s saying is wrong. I’m not a big fan of this idea that because people I disagree with and people who have personally targeted me… By the way, I mean, Alex Jones has said some things about me personally that I’m not real fond of it.
I do actually. Because I think that there are plenty of people who are willing to say that what he’s saying is wrong. I’m not a big fan of this idea that because people I disagree with and people who have personally targeted me… By the way, I mean, Alex Jones has said some things about me personally that I’m not real fond of it.
Lex Fridman
You guys are not-
You guys are not-
Ben Shapiro
Well, we’re not besties. No, it turns out, yeah, all I’ve said is I don’t really enjoy his show. He’s said some other stuff about the anti-Christ and such, but that’s a bit of a different thing, I suppose. Even so, I’m just not a big fan of this idea. I’ve defended people who have really gone after me on a personal level; have targeted me. The town square is online. Banning people from the town square is unpersoning them. Unless you violated a criminal statute, you should not be unpersoned in American society as a general rule. It doesn’t mean that companies that are not platforms don’t have the ability to respond to you. I think Adidas is right to terminate its contract with Kanye, for example, with Ye, but Twitter ain’t Adidas.
Well, we’re not besties. No, it turns out, yeah, all I’ve said is I don’t really enjoy his show. He’s said some other stuff about the anti-Christ and such, but that’s a bit of a different thing, I suppose. Even so, I’m just not a big fan of this idea. I’ve defended people who have really gone after me on a personal level; have targeted me. The town square is online. Banning people from the town square is unpersoning them. Unless you violated a criminal statute, you should not be unpersoned in American society as a general rule. It doesn’t mean that companies that are not platforms don’t have the ability to respond to you. I think Adidas is right to terminate its contract with Kanye, for example, with Ye, but Twitter ain’t Adidas.
Lex Fridman
So the way your stance on free speech to the degree it’s possible to achieve on a platform like Twitter is you fight bad speech with more speech, with better speech. So if Alex Jones and Trump was allowed back on in the coming months and years leading up to the 2024 election, you think that’s going to make for a better world in the long term?
So the way your stance on free speech to the degree it’s possible to achieve on a platform like Twitter is you fight bad speech with more speech, with better speech. So if Alex Jones and Trump was allowed back on in the coming months and years leading up to the 2024 election, you think that’s going to make for a better world in the long term?
Ben Shapiro
I think that on the principle that people should be allowed to do this, and the alternative being a group of thought bosses telling us what we can and cannot see. Yes. So I think in the short term it’s going to mean a lot of things that I don’t like very much. Sure. [inaudible 00:43:49] the cost of doing business. I think that one of the cost of freedom is people doing things that I don’t particularly like, and I would prefer the freedom with all the stuff I don’t like than not the freedom.
I think that on the principle that people should be allowed to do this, and the alternative being a group of thought bosses telling us what we can and cannot see. Yes. So I think in the short term it’s going to mean a lot of things that I don’t like very much. Sure. [inaudible 00:43:49] the cost of doing business. I think that one of the cost of freedom is people doing things that I don’t particularly like, and I would prefer the freedom with all the stuff I don’t like than not the freedom.
Lex Fridman
Let me linger on the love a little bit. You and a lot of people are pretty snarky on Twitter, sometimes to the point of mockery derision, even a bit of, if I were to say, bad faith in the kind of mockery, and you see it as a war. I disagree with both you and Elon on this. Elon sees Twitter as a war zone, or at least has saw it that way in the past. Have you ever considered being nicer on Twitter as a voice that a lot of people look up to? That if Ben Shapiro becomes a little bit more about love, that’s going to inspire a lot of people or no? Is it just too fun for you?
Let me linger on the love a little bit. You and a lot of people are pretty snarky on Twitter, sometimes to the point of mockery derision, even a bit of, if I were to say, bad faith in the kind of mockery, and you see it as a war. I disagree with both you and Elon on this. Elon sees Twitter as a war zone, or at least has saw it that way in the past. Have you ever considered being nicer on Twitter as a voice that a lot of people look up to? That if Ben Shapiro becomes a little bit more about love, that’s going to inspire a lot of people or no? Is it just too fun for you?
Ben Shapiro
The answer is yes. Sure. It’s occurred to me. Let’s put it this way. There are a lot of tweets that actually don’t go out that I delete. I’ll say that Twitter’s new function, that 30 seconds function, is a friend of mine. Every so often, I’ll tweet something, and I’ll think about it in a second. I’ll be like, “Do I need to say this? Probably not.”
The answer is yes. Sure. It’s occurred to me. Let’s put it this way. There are a lot of tweets that actually don’t go out that I delete. I’ll say that Twitter’s new function, that 30 seconds function, is a friend of mine. Every so often, I’ll tweet something, and I’ll think about it in a second. I’ll be like, “Do I need to say this? Probably not.”
Lex Fridman
Can you make a book published after you pass away of all the tweets that you didn’t send?
Can you make a book published after you pass away of all the tweets that you didn’t send?
Ben Shapiro
I don’t know. My kids are still going to be around. I hope-
I don’t know. My kids are still going to be around. I hope-
Lex Fridman
[inaudible 00:45:09]-
[inaudible 00:45:09]-
Ben Shapiro
The legacy.
The legacy.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Ben Shapiro
I mean, sure, the answer is yes. There’s a good piece of what we would call [inaudible 00:45:15]. This is like, he’s giving a muse and schmooze right now. This is the kind of be a better person stuff. I agree with you. I agree with you. Yeah, I mean, I will say that Twitter is sometimes too much fun. I try to be at least, if not even, handed, then equal opportunity in my derision. I remember that during the 2016 primaries, I used to post rather snarky tweets about virtually all of the candidates Republican and Democrat.
I mean, sure, the answer is yes. There’s a good piece of what we would call [inaudible 00:45:15]. This is like, he’s giving a muse and schmooze right now. This is the kind of be a better person stuff. I agree with you. I agree with you. Yeah, I mean, I will say that Twitter is sometimes too much fun. I try to be at least, if not even, handed, then equal opportunity in my derision. I remember that during the 2016 primaries, I used to post rather snarky tweets about virtually all of the candidates Republican and Democrat.
Every so often, I’ll still do some of that. I do think actually the amount of snark on my Twitter feed has gone down fairly significantly. I think if you go back a couple of years, it was probably a little more snarky. Today, I’m trying to use it a little bit more in terms of strategy to get out information. Now that doesn’t mean I’m not going to make jokes about, for example, Joe Biden. I will make jokes about Joe Biden. He’s the president of the United States. Nobody else will mock him. So the entire comedic establishment has decided they actually work for him.
Lex Fridman
So the president of the United States, no matter who they are, get the snark [inaudible 00:46:17]-
So the president of the United States, no matter who they are, get the snark [inaudible 00:46:17]-
Ben Shapiro
Yes. President Trump, I think, is fairly aware that he got the snark from me as well. When it comes to snaring the president, I’m not going to stop that. I think the president deserves to be snark.
Yes. President Trump, I think, is fairly aware that he got the snark from me as well. When it comes to snaring the president, I’m not going to stop that. I think the president deserves to be snark.
Lex Fridman
So you’re not afraid of attacking Trump?
So you’re not afraid of attacking Trump?
Ben Shapiro
No, I mean, I’ve done it before.
No, I mean, I’ve done it before.
Trump and Biden
Lex Fridman
Can you say what your favorite and least favorite things are about President Trump and President Biden one at a time? So maybe one thing that you can say is super positive about Trump and one thing super negative about Trump?
Can you say what your favorite and least favorite things are about President Trump and President Biden one at a time? So maybe one thing that you can say is super positive about Trump and one thing super negative about Trump?
Ben Shapiro
Okay, so the super positive thing about Trump is that because he has no preconceived views that are establishmentarian, he sometimes willing to go out of the box and do things that haven’t been tried before, and sometimes that works. I mean, the best example being the entire foreign policy establishment telling him that he couldn’t get a Middle Eastern deal done unless he centered the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. Instead, he just went right around that and ended up cutting a bunch of peace deals in the Middle East or moving the embassy in Jerusalem. Sometimes he does stuff and it’s really out of the box and it actually works. That’s awesome in politics and neat to see.
Okay, so the super positive thing about Trump is that because he has no preconceived views that are establishmentarian, he sometimes willing to go out of the box and do things that haven’t been tried before, and sometimes that works. I mean, the best example being the entire foreign policy establishment telling him that he couldn’t get a Middle Eastern deal done unless he centered the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. Instead, he just went right around that and ended up cutting a bunch of peace deals in the Middle East or moving the embassy in Jerusalem. Sometimes he does stuff and it’s really out of the box and it actually works. That’s awesome in politics and neat to see.
The downside of Trump is that he has no capacity to use any sort of… There’s no filter between brain and mouth. Whatever happens in his brain is the thing that comes out of his mouth. I know a lot of people find that charming and wonderful, and it is very funny. But I don’t think that it is a particularly excellent personal quality in a person who has as much responsibility as President Trump has. I think he says a lot of damaging and bad things on Twitter. I think that he seems consumed in some ways by his own grievances, which is why you’ve seen him focusing on election 2020 so much. I think that that is very negative about President Trump. So I’m very grateful to President Trump is a conservative for many of the things that he did. I think that a lot of his personality issues are pretty severe.
Lex Fridman
What about Joe Biden?
What about Joe Biden?
Ben Shapiro
So I think that the thing that I like most about Joe Biden, two things. One, Biden seems to be a very good father by all available evidence. There are a lot of people who have put out tape of him talking to Hunter, and Hunter’s having trouble with drugs or whatever. I keep listening to that tape and thinking, “He seems like a really good dad.” The stuff that he’s saying to his son is stuff that, God forbid, if that were happening with my kid, I’d be singing to my kid. So you can’t help but feel for the guys. He had an incredibly difficult go of it with his first wife and the death of members of his family and then Beau dying. I mean, that kind of stuff obviously is deeply sympathetic. He seems like a deeply sympathetic father.
So I think that the thing that I like most about Joe Biden, two things. One, Biden seems to be a very good father by all available evidence. There are a lot of people who have put out tape of him talking to Hunter, and Hunter’s having trouble with drugs or whatever. I keep listening to that tape and thinking, “He seems like a really good dad.” The stuff that he’s saying to his son is stuff that, God forbid, if that were happening with my kid, I’d be singing to my kid. So you can’t help but feel for the guys. He had an incredibly difficult go of it with his first wife and the death of members of his family and then Beau dying. I mean, that kind of stuff obviously is deeply sympathetic. He seems like a deeply sympathetic father.
As far as his politics, he seems like a slap-on-the-back kind of guy, and I don’t mind that. I think that’s nice so far as it goes. It’s sort of an old school politics where things are done with handshake and personal relationships. The thing I don’t like about him is I think sometimes that’s really not genuine. I think that that’s sometimes. I think that’s his personal tendency, but I think sometimes he allows the prevailing wins of his party to carry him to incredibly radical places, and then he just doubles down on the radicalism in some pretty disingenuous ways, and there I would cite the Independence Day speech, or the independence hall speech, which I thought was truly one of the worst speeches I’ve seen a president give.
Lex Fridman
So you don’t think he’s trying to be a unifier in general?
So you don’t think he’s trying to be a unifier in general?
Ben Shapiro
Not at all. I mean, that’s what he was elected to do. He was elected to do two things; not be alive and be a unifier. Those were the two things. When I say not be alive, I don’t mean physically dead. This is where the snark comes in. But what I do mean is that he was elected to not be particularly activists. Basically, the mandate was, “Don’t be Trump, be sane, don’t be Trump, calm everything down.” Instead he got in, he’s like, “What if we spend 7 trillion? What if we pull out of Afghanistan without any sort of plan? What if I start labeling all of my political enemies, enemies of the republic? What if I start bringing Dylan Mulvaney to the White House and talking about how it is a moral sin to prevent the general mutilation of minors?”
Not at all. I mean, that’s what he was elected to do. He was elected to do two things; not be alive and be a unifier. Those were the two things. When I say not be alive, I don’t mean physically dead. This is where the snark comes in. But what I do mean is that he was elected to not be particularly activists. Basically, the mandate was, “Don’t be Trump, be sane, don’t be Trump, calm everything down.” Instead he got in, he’s like, “What if we spend 7 trillion? What if we pull out of Afghanistan without any sort of plan? What if I start labeling all of my political enemies, enemies of the republic? What if I start bringing Dylan Mulvaney to the White House and talking about how it is a moral sin to prevent the general mutilation of minors?”
I mean, this kind of stuff is very radical stuff, and this is not a president who has pursued a unifying agenda, which is why his approval rating sank from 60% when he entered office to low 40s or high 30s today, unlike President Trump, who never had a high approval rating. Trump came into office and he had a 45% approval rating, and when he left office he had about a 43% approval rating, and bounced around between 45 and 37, pretty much his entire presidency. Biden went from being a very popular guy coming in to a very unpopular guy right now, and if you’re Joe Biden, you should be looking in the mirror and wondering exactly why.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. Do you think that pulling out from Afghanistan could be flipped as a pro for Biden in terms of he actually did it?
Yeah. Do you think that pulling out from Afghanistan could be flipped as a pro for Biden in terms of he actually did it?
Ben Shapiro
I think it’s going to be almost impossible. I think the American people are incredibly inconsistent about their own views on foreign policy. In other words, we like to be isolationist, until it comes time for us to be defeated and humiliated. When that happens, we tend not to like it very much.
I think it’s going to be almost impossible. I think the American people are incredibly inconsistent about their own views on foreign policy. In other words, we like to be isolationist, until it comes time for us to be defeated and humiliated. When that happens, we tend not to like it very much.
Hunter Biden’s laptop
Lex Fridman
You mentioned Biden being a good father. Can you make the case for and against the Hunter Biden laptop story for it being a big deal and against it being a big deal?
You mentioned Biden being a good father. Can you make the case for and against the Hunter Biden laptop story for it being a big deal and against it being a big deal?
Ben Shapiro
Sure. So the case for it being a big deal is basically twofold. One is that it is clearly relevant if the president’s son is running around to foreign countries picking up bags of cash because his last name is Biden, while his father is vice president of the United States. It raises questions as to influence peddling for either the vice president or the former vice president using political connections. Did he make any money? Who was the big guy, right? All these open questions, that obviously implicates the questions to be asked.
Sure. So the case for it being a big deal is basically twofold. One is that it is clearly relevant if the president’s son is running around to foreign countries picking up bags of cash because his last name is Biden, while his father is vice president of the United States. It raises questions as to influence peddling for either the vice president or the former vice president using political connections. Did he make any money? Who was the big guy, right? All these open questions, that obviously implicates the questions to be asked.
Then the secondary reason that the story is big is actually because the reaction of the story. The banning of the story is in and of itself a major story. If there’s any story that implicates a presidential candidate in the last month of an election and there is a media blackout including a social media blackout, that obviously raises some very serious questions about informational flow and dissemination in the United States.
Lex Fridman
So no matter how big of a deal the story is, it is a big deal that there’s a censorship of any relevant story?
So no matter how big of a deal the story is, it is a big deal that there’s a censorship of any relevant story?
Ben Shapiro
When there’s a coordinated collusive blackout. Yeah, that’s a serious and major problem. So those are the two reasons why it would be a big story. A reason why it would not be a big story, perhaps, is if it turns out, and we don’t really know this yet, but let’s say that that Hunter Biden was basically off on his own, doing what he was doing, being a derelict or drug addict or acting badly, and his dad had nothing to do with it, and Joe was telling the truth and he really knew. But the problem is, we never actually got those questions answered. So if it turned out to be nothing of a story, the nice thing about stories that turned out to be nothing is that after they turned out to be nothing, they’re nothing.
When there’s a coordinated collusive blackout. Yeah, that’s a serious and major problem. So those are the two reasons why it would be a big story. A reason why it would not be a big story, perhaps, is if it turns out, and we don’t really know this yet, but let’s say that that Hunter Biden was basically off on his own, doing what he was doing, being a derelict or drug addict or acting badly, and his dad had nothing to do with it, and Joe was telling the truth and he really knew. But the problem is, we never actually got those questions answered. So if it turned out to be nothing of a story, the nice thing about stories that turned out to be nothing is that after they turned out to be nothing, they’re nothing.
The biggest problem with this story is that it wasn’t allowed to take the normal life cycle of a story, which is original story breaks, follow-on questions are asked, follow-on questions are answered. Story is either now a big story or it’s nothing. When the life cycle of a story is cut off at the very beginning when it’s born, then that allows you to speculate in any direction you want. You can speculate, “It means nothing. It’s nonsense. It’s a Russian laptop. It’s disinformation,” or on the other hand, “This means that Joe Biden was personally calling Hunter and telling him to pick up a sack of cash over in Beijing, and then he became president and he’s influence pedaling.”
So this is why it’s important to allow these stories to go forward. So this is why actually the bigger story for the moment is not the laptop, it’s the reaction to the laptop because it cut off that life cycle of the story. Then at some point I would assume that there will be some follow-on questions that are actually answered. I mean, the House is pledging if it goes Republican, to investigate all of this. Again, I wouldn’t be supremely surprised if it turns out that there was no direct involvement of Joe in this sort of stuff. Because it turns out, as I said before, that all of politics is veep.
This is always the story with half the scandals that you see is that everybody assumes that there’s some sort of deep and abiding clever plan, that some politician is implementing it, and then you look at it and it turns out now it’s just something dumb, right? This is perfect example of this, President Trump with the classified documents in Maralago. So people on the [inaudible 00:54:05], “It’s probably nuclear codes. Probably he’s taking secret documents and selling them to the Russians or the Chinese.” The real most obvious explanation is Trump looked at the papers and he said, “I like these papers.” Then he just decided to keep them right. Then people came to him and said, “Mr. President, you’re not allowed to keep those papers.” He said, “Who are those people? I don’t care about what they have to say. I’m putting them in the other room, in a box.”
Which is, it is highly likely that that is what happened. It’s very disappointing to people, I think, when they realize it. I mean, you know this better than I do, but the human brain is built to find patterns. It’s what we like to do. We like to find plans and patterns because this is how we survived in the wild; is you found a plan, you found a pattern, you cracked the code of the universe. When it comes to politics. The conspiracy theories that we see so often, often it’s largely because we’re seeing inexplicable events. Unless you just assume everyone’s more on. If you assume that there’s a lot of stupidity going on, everything becomes quickly explicable. If you assume that there must be some rationale behind it. You have to come up with increasingly convoluted conspiracy theories to explain just why people are acting the way that they’re acting. I find that, I don’t say 100% of the time, but 94% of the time the conspiracy theory turns out just to be people being dumb, and then other people reacting in dumb ways to the original people being dumb.
Lex Fridman
But it’s also to me in that same way, very possible, very likely, that Hunter Biden getting money in Ukraine, I guess, for consulting and all that kind of stuff is nothing burger, is he’s qualified, he’s getting money as he should. There’s a lot of influence pedaling in general, that’s not it corrupt.
But it’s also to me in that same way, very possible, very likely, that Hunter Biden getting money in Ukraine, I guess, for consulting and all that kind of stuff is nothing burger, is he’s qualified, he’s getting money as he should. There’s a lot of influence pedaling in general, that’s not it corrupt.
Ben Shapiro
I think the most obvious explanation there probably is that he was fake influence pedaling. Meaning he wants Ukraine and he’s like, “Guess what? My dad’s Joe,” and they’re like, “Well, you don’t have any qualifications in oil and natural gas, and you don’t really have a great resume, but your dad is Joe.” Then that was the end of it. They gave him a bag of cash, hoping he would do something. He never did anything.
I think the most obvious explanation there probably is that he was fake influence pedaling. Meaning he wants Ukraine and he’s like, “Guess what? My dad’s Joe,” and they’re like, “Well, you don’t have any qualifications in oil and natural gas, and you don’t really have a great resume, but your dad is Joe.” Then that was the end of it. They gave him a bag of cash, hoping he would do something. He never did anything.
Lex Fridman
I think you’re making it sound worse than it is. I think this in general consulting is done in that way. It’s not like you’re not-
I think you’re making it sound worse than it is. I think this in general consulting is done in that way. It’s not like you’re not-
Ben Shapiro
I agree with.
I agree with.
Lex Fridman
It’s not like he is some rare case, and this is an illustration of corruption. If you can criticize consulting, which I would-
It’s not like he is some rare case, and this is an illustration of corruption. If you can criticize consulting, which I would-
Ben Shapiro
That’s fair.
That’s fair.
Lex Fridman
… which they’re basically not providing. You look at a resume and who’s who. If you went to Harvard, I can criticize the same thing. If you have Harvard on your resume, you’re more likely to be hired as a consultant. Maybe there’s a network there of people that you know and you hire them in that same way. If your last name is Biden… There’s a lot of last names that sound pretty good at it, right?
… which they’re basically not providing. You look at a resume and who’s who. If you went to Harvard, I can criticize the same thing. If you have Harvard on your resume, you’re more likely to be hired as a consultant. Maybe there’s a network there of people that you know and you hire them in that same way. If your last name is Biden… There’s a lot of last names that sound pretty good at it, right?
Ben Shapiro
That’s for sure, for sure, for sure.
That’s for sure, for sure, for sure.
Lex Fridman
It’s not like [inaudible 00:56:32]-
It’s not like [inaudible 00:56:32]-
Ben Shapiro
Hunter Biden admitted that much, by the way, right. In an open interview. He was like, “If your last name weren’t Biden when you got that job?” He is like, “Probably not.” And you’re right.
Hunter Biden admitted that much, by the way, right. In an open interview. He was like, “If your last name weren’t Biden when you got that job?” He is like, “Probably not.” And you’re right.
Lex Fridman
That’s an honest-
That’s an honest-
Ben Shapiro
I agree with you.
I agree with you.
Lex Fridman
It’s not like he’s getting a ridiculous amount of money. He was getting a pretty standard consulting kind of money, which also would criticize because they get a ridiculous amount of money. But sort of even to push back on the life cycle or [inaudible 00:56:52] madness, the side that was concerned about the Hunter Biden laptop story. I don’t know if there is a natural life cycle of a story because there’s something about the virality of the internet that we can’t predict that a story can just take hold and the conspiracy around it builds, especially around politics, where some popular sexy interpretation of a story that might not be connected to reality at all will become viral. That from Facebook’s perspective is probably what they’re worried about is organized misinformation campaign that makes up a sexy story or sexy interpretation of the vague story that we have, and that has an influence on the populace.
It’s not like he’s getting a ridiculous amount of money. He was getting a pretty standard consulting kind of money, which also would criticize because they get a ridiculous amount of money. But sort of even to push back on the life cycle or [inaudible 00:56:52] madness, the side that was concerned about the Hunter Biden laptop story. I don’t know if there is a natural life cycle of a story because there’s something about the virality of the internet that we can’t predict that a story can just take hold and the conspiracy around it builds, especially around politics, where some popular sexy interpretation of a story that might not be connected to reality at all will become viral. That from Facebook’s perspective is probably what they’re worried about is organized misinformation campaign that makes up a sexy story or sexy interpretation of the vague story that we have, and that has an influence on the populace.
Ben Shapiro
I mean, I think that’s true. But I think the question becomes, who’s the great adjudicator there? Who adjudicates when the story ought to be allowed to go through even a bad life cycle or allowed to go viral as opposed to not. Now, that’s one thing if you want to say, “Okay, we can spot the Russian accounts that are actually promoting this stuff. They belong to the Russian government. Got to shut that down.” I think everybody agrees. This is actually one of the slides that’s happened linguistically that I really object to is the slide between disinformation and misinformation. You noticed there was this evolution. In 2017, there was a lot of talk about disinformation. There was Russian disinformation. The Russians were putting out deliberately false information in order to skew election results, was the accusation. Then people started using disinformation or misinformation, and misinformation is either mistaken information or information that is, “out of context” that becomes very subjective very quickly as to what out of context means.
I mean, I think that’s true. But I think the question becomes, who’s the great adjudicator there? Who adjudicates when the story ought to be allowed to go through even a bad life cycle or allowed to go viral as opposed to not. Now, that’s one thing if you want to say, “Okay, we can spot the Russian accounts that are actually promoting this stuff. They belong to the Russian government. Got to shut that down.” I think everybody agrees. This is actually one of the slides that’s happened linguistically that I really object to is the slide between disinformation and misinformation. You noticed there was this evolution. In 2017, there was a lot of talk about disinformation. There was Russian disinformation. The Russians were putting out deliberately false information in order to skew election results, was the accusation. Then people started using disinformation or misinformation, and misinformation is either mistaken information or information that is, “out of context” that becomes very subjective very quickly as to what out of context means.
It doesn’t necessarily have to be from a foreign source; it can be from a domestic source. It could be somebody misinterpreting something here. It could be somebody interpreting something correctly, but PolitiFact things that it’s out of context, and that sort of stuff gets very murky very quickly. So I’m deeply uncomfortable with the idea that Facebook, I mean, Zuckerberg was on with Rogan and talking about how the FBI had basically said lookout for Russian interference in the election, and then all of these people were out there saying that the laptop was Russian disinformation. So he basically shut it down. That sort of stuff is frightening, especially because it wasn’t Russian disinformation. I mean, the laptop was real. So the fact that you have people who seemed to… Let’s put it this way, maybe this is wrong. It seems as though when a story gets killed preemptively like this, it is almost universally a story that negatively affects one side of the political aisle.
I can’t remember the last time there was a story on the right that was disinformation or misinformation where social media stepped in and they went, “We cannot have this. This cannot be distributed. We’re going to all colludes that this information is not distributed.” Maybe in response to the story being proof false, it gets taken down. But, well, what made the Hunter Biden thing so amazing is that it wasn’t relieving in response to anything. It was like the story got posted. There were no actual doubts expressed as to the verified falsity of the story. It was just supposition that it had to be false and everybody jumped in. So I think that confirmed a lot of the conspiracy theories people had about social media and how it works.
Lex Fridman
So if the reason you want to slow down the viral spread of a thing is at all grounded in partisanship, that’s a problem. You should be very honest with yourself and ask yourself that question, ” Is it because I’m on the left or on the right that I want to slow this down?” Versus, is it hate, bipartisan hate speech? But it’s really tricky. But like you, I’m very uncomfortable in general, but then you kind of slowing down with any kind of censorship. But if there’s something like a conspiracy theory that spreads hate, that becomes viral. I still lean to let that conspiracy theory spread because the alternative is dangerous, more dangerous.
So if the reason you want to slow down the viral spread of a thing is at all grounded in partisanship, that’s a problem. You should be very honest with yourself and ask yourself that question, ” Is it because I’m on the left or on the right that I want to slow this down?” Versus, is it hate, bipartisan hate speech? But it’s really tricky. But like you, I’m very uncomfortable in general, but then you kind of slowing down with any kind of censorship. But if there’s something like a conspiracy theory that spreads hate, that becomes viral. I still lean to let that conspiracy theory spread because the alternative is dangerous, more dangerous.
Ben Shapiro
It’s sort of like the ring of power. Everybody wants the ring because with the ring, you can stop the bad guys from going forward. But it turns out that the ring gives you enormous power, and that power can be used in the wrong ways, too.
It’s sort of like the ring of power. Everybody wants the ring because with the ring, you can stop the bad guys from going forward. But it turns out that the ring gives you enormous power, and that power can be used in the wrong ways, too.
Lex Fridman
You had The Daily Wire, which I’m a member of.
You had The Daily Wire, which I’m a member of.
Ben Shapiro
I appreciate that. Thank you.
I appreciate that. Thank you.
Lex Fridman
I recommend everybody sign up to it. It should be part of your regular diet, whether you’re on the left and the right, the far left or the far right. Everybody should be part of your regular diet. Okay. That said, do you worry about the audience capture aspect of it because it is a platform for conservatives and you have a powerful voice on there. It might be difficult for you to go against the talking points or against the stream of ideas that is usually connected to conservative thought. Do you worry about that?
I recommend everybody sign up to it. It should be part of your regular diet, whether you’re on the left and the right, the far left or the far right. Everybody should be part of your regular diet. Okay. That said, do you worry about the audience capture aspect of it because it is a platform for conservatives and you have a powerful voice on there. It might be difficult for you to go against the talking points or against the stream of ideas that is usually connected to conservative thought. Do you worry about that?
Ben Shapiro
I mean, the audience would obviously be upset with me and would have a right to be upset with me if I suddenly flipped all of my positions on a dime. I have enough faith in my audience that I can say things that I think are true and that may disagree with the audience on a fairly regular basis, I would say. But they understand that on the deeper principle, we’re on the same side, at least, I hope, that much from the audience. It’s also why we provide a number of different views on the platforms, many of which I disagree with, but are sort of within the generalized range of conservative thought. It’s something I do have to think about every day though. Yeah, I mean, you have to think about, “Am I saying this because I’m afraid of taking off my audience or am I saying this because I actually believe?”
I mean, the audience would obviously be upset with me and would have a right to be upset with me if I suddenly flipped all of my positions on a dime. I have enough faith in my audience that I can say things that I think are true and that may disagree with the audience on a fairly regular basis, I would say. But they understand that on the deeper principle, we’re on the same side, at least, I hope, that much from the audience. It’s also why we provide a number of different views on the platforms, many of which I disagree with, but are sort of within the generalized range of conservative thought. It’s something I do have to think about every day though. Yeah, I mean, you have to think about, “Am I saying this because I’m afraid of taking off my audience or am I saying this because I actually believe?”
Ben Shapiro
I’m afraid of ticking off my audience or am I saying this because I actually believe this? And that’s a delicate dance a little bit. You have to be sort of honest with yourself.
I’m afraid of ticking off my audience or am I saying this because I actually believe this? And that’s a delicate dance a little bit. You have to be sort of honest with yourself.
Lex Fridman
Somebody like Sam Harris is pretty good at this, at fighting and saying the most outrageous thing that he knows. He almost leans into it. He knows it will piss off a lot of his audience. Sometimes you almost have to test the system. It’s like if you feel, you almost exaggerate your feelings just to make sure to send a signal to the audience that you’re not captured by them. So speaking of people you disagree with, what is your favorite thing about Candace Owens and what is one thing you disagree with her on?
Somebody like Sam Harris is pretty good at this, at fighting and saying the most outrageous thing that he knows. He almost leans into it. He knows it will piss off a lot of his audience. Sometimes you almost have to test the system. It’s like if you feel, you almost exaggerate your feelings just to make sure to send a signal to the audience that you’re not captured by them. So speaking of people you disagree with, what is your favorite thing about Candace Owens and what is one thing you disagree with her on?
Candace Owens
Ben Shapiro
Well, my favorite thing about Candace is that she will say things that nobody else will say. My least favorite thing about Candace is that she will say things that nobody else will say. I mean, listen, she says things that are audacious and I think need to be said. Sometimes I think that she is morally wrong. I think the way she responded to Kanye, I’ve said this clearly was dead wrong and morally wrong.
Well, my favorite thing about Candace is that she will say things that nobody else will say. My least favorite thing about Candace is that she will say things that nobody else will say. I mean, listen, she says things that are audacious and I think need to be said. Sometimes I think that she is morally wrong. I think the way she responded to Kanye, I’ve said this clearly was dead wrong and morally wrong.
Lex Fridman
What was her response?
What was her response?
Ben Shapiro
Her original response was that she proffered confusion of what Ye was actually talking about and then she was defending her friend. I wish that the way that she had responded was by saying, “He’s my friend and also he said something bad and antisemitic.” I wish that she had said that.
Her original response was that she proffered confusion of what Ye was actually talking about and then she was defending her friend. I wish that the way that she had responded was by saying, “He’s my friend and also he said something bad and antisemitic.” I wish that she had said that.
Lex Fridman
Right away.
Right away.
Ben Shapiro
Right away.
Right away.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. I think you can also… This is the interesting human thing. You can be friends with people that you disagree with and you can be friends with people that actually say hateful stuff, and one of the ways to help alleviate hate is being friends with people that say hateful things.
Yeah. I think you can also… This is the interesting human thing. You can be friends with people that you disagree with and you can be friends with people that actually say hateful stuff, and one of the ways to help alleviate hate is being friends with people that say hateful things.
Ben Shapiro
And calling them out on a personal level when they do say wrong or hateful things.
And calling them out on a personal level when they do say wrong or hateful things.
Lex Fridman
From a place of love and respect, and privately.
From a place of love and respect, and privately.
Ben Shapiro
Privately is also a big thing. I mean like the public demand for denunciation from friends to friends is difficult. And I certainly have compassion for Candace given the fact that she’s so close with Ye.
Privately is also a big thing. I mean like the public demand for denunciation from friends to friends is difficult. And I certainly have compassion for Candace given the fact that she’s so close with Ye.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, it breaks my heart sometimes the public fights between friends and broken friendships. I’ve seen quite a few friendships publicly break over COVID. COVID made people behave their worst in many cases, which breaks my heart a little bit because the human connection is a prerequisite for effective debate and discussion and battles over ideas. Has there been any argument from the opposite political aisle that has made you change your mind about something If you look back?
Yeah, it breaks my heart sometimes the public fights between friends and broken friendships. I’ve seen quite a few friendships publicly break over COVID. COVID made people behave their worst in many cases, which breaks my heart a little bit because the human connection is a prerequisite for effective debate and discussion and battles over ideas. Has there been any argument from the opposite political aisle that has made you change your mind about something If you look back?
Ben Shapiro
So I will say that the… I’m thinking it through because I think that my views probably on foreign policy have morphed somewhat. I would say that I was much more interventionist when I was younger. I’m significantly less interventionist now.
So I will say that the… I’m thinking it through because I think that my views probably on foreign policy have morphed somewhat. I would say that I was much more interventionist when I was younger. I’m significantly less interventionist now.
Lex Fridman
Can you give an example?
Can you give an example?
Ben Shapiro
Sure. I was a big backer of the Iraq war. I think now in retrospect, I might not be a backer of the Iraq war. If the same situation arose again based on the amount of evidence that had been presented or based on the sort of willingness of the American public to go at it. If you’re going to get involved in a war, you have to know what the endpoint looks like and you have to know what the American people really are willing to bear. The American people are not willing to bear open-ended occupations. And so knowing that you have to consider that going in. So on foreign policy, I become a lot more of a, I’d say almost Henry Kissinger realist, in some ways. When it comes to social policy, I would say that I’m fairly strong where I may have become slightly convinced actually by more of the conservative side of the aisle on things like drug legalization.
Sure. I was a big backer of the Iraq war. I think now in retrospect, I might not be a backer of the Iraq war. If the same situation arose again based on the amount of evidence that had been presented or based on the sort of willingness of the American public to go at it. If you’re going to get involved in a war, you have to know what the endpoint looks like and you have to know what the American people really are willing to bear. The American people are not willing to bear open-ended occupations. And so knowing that you have to consider that going in. So on foreign policy, I become a lot more of a, I’d say almost Henry Kissinger realist, in some ways. When it comes to social policy, I would say that I’m fairly strong where I may have become slightly convinced actually by more of the conservative side of the aisle on things like drug legalization.
I think when I was younger I was much more pro-drug legalization than I am now, at least on the local level. On a federal level, I think the federal government can’t really do much other than close the borders with regard to fentanyl trafficking, for example. But when it comes to how drugs ruin local communities, you can see how drugs ruin local communities pretty easily.
Lex Fridman
Which is weird because I saw you smoke a joint right before this conversation.
Which is weird because I saw you smoke a joint right before this conversation.
Ben Shapiro
It’s my biggest thing. I mean, I try to keep that secret.
It’s my biggest thing. I mean, I try to keep that secret.
War in Ukraine
Lex Fridman
Right. Well that’s interesting about intervention. Can you comment about the war in Ukraine? So for me it’s a deeply personal thing, but I think you’re able to look at it from a geopolitics perspective. What is the role of the United States in this conflict? Before the conflict, during the conflict, and right now in helping achieve peace?
Right. Well that’s interesting about intervention. Can you comment about the war in Ukraine? So for me it’s a deeply personal thing, but I think you’re able to look at it from a geopolitics perspective. What is the role of the United States in this conflict? Before the conflict, during the conflict, and right now in helping achieve peace?
Ben Shapiro
I think before the conflict, the big problem is that the West took almost the worst possible view, which was encourage Ukraine to keep trying to join NATO and the EU, but don’t let them in. And so what that does is it achieves the purpose of getting Russia really, really, really ticked off and feeling threatened, but also does not give any of the protections of NATO or the EU to Ukraine. I mean Zelensky is on film when he was a comedy actor making that exact joke. He has Merkel on the other line and she’s like, “Oh, welcome to the NATO.” And he’s like, “Great.” And she’s like, “Wait, is this Ukraine on the line? Oops.” But so that sort of policy is sort of nonsensical. If you’re going to offer alliance to somebody, offer alliance to them, and if you’re going to guarantee their security, guarantee their security and the West failed signally to do that.
I think before the conflict, the big problem is that the West took almost the worst possible view, which was encourage Ukraine to keep trying to join NATO and the EU, but don’t let them in. And so what that does is it achieves the purpose of getting Russia really, really, really ticked off and feeling threatened, but also does not give any of the protections of NATO or the EU to Ukraine. I mean Zelensky is on film when he was a comedy actor making that exact joke. He has Merkel on the other line and she’s like, “Oh, welcome to the NATO.” And he’s like, “Great.” And she’s like, “Wait, is this Ukraine on the line? Oops.” But so that sort of policy is sort of nonsensical. If you’re going to offer alliance to somebody, offer alliance to them, and if you’re going to guarantee their security, guarantee their security and the West failed signally to do that.
So that was mistakes in the run up to the war. Once the war began, then the responsibility of the West began and became to give Ukraine as much material as is necessary to repel the invasion. And the West did really well with that. I think we were late on the ball in the United States. It seemed like Europe led the way a little bit more than the United States did there. But in terms of effectuating American interests in the region, which being an American is what I’m chiefly concerned about, the American interests were several fold. One is preserve borders. Two is degrade the Russian aggressive military because Russia’s military has been aggressive and they are geopolitical rival of the United States. Three, recalibrate the European balance with China. Europe was sort of balancing with Russia and China, and then because of the war they sort of rebalanced away from China and Russia, which is a real geo-strategic opportunity for the United States.
It seemed like most of those goals have already been achieved at this point for the United States. And so then the question becomes what’s the off ramp here and what is the thing you’re trying to prevent? So what’s the best opportunity, what’s the best case scenario, what’s the worst case scenario? And then what’s realistic? So best case scenario is Ukraine forces Russia entirely out of Ukraine, including Luhansk, Donetsk, and Crimea. That’s the best case scenario. Virtually no one thinks that’s accomplishable, including the United States. The White House has basically said as much, it’s still cool to imagine particularly Crimea, the Russians being forced out of Crimea.
The Ukrainians have been successful in pushing the Russians out of certain parts of Luhansk and Donetsk, but the idea they’re going to be able to push the entire Russian army completely back to the Russian borders, that would be at best a very, very long and difficult slog in the middle of a collapsing Ukrainian economy, which is a point that Zelensky has made. It’s like it’s not enough for you guys to give us military aid. We’re in the middle of a war, we’re going to need economic aid as well. So it’s a pretty open-ended and strong commitment.
Lex Fridman
Can I take a small tangent on that and best case scenario, if that does militarily happen, including Crimea, do you think there’s a world in which Vladimir Putin would be able to convince the Russian people that this was a good conclusion to the war?
Can I take a small tangent on that and best case scenario, if that does militarily happen, including Crimea, do you think there’s a world in which Vladimir Putin would be able to convince the Russian people that this was a good conclusion to the war?
Ben Shapiro
So the problem is that the best case scenario might also be the worst case scenario. Meaning that there are a couple of scenarios that are sort of the worst case scenario and this is of the puzzlement of the situation. One is that Putin feels so boxed in, so unable to go back to his own people and say, “We just wasted tens of thousands of lives here for no reason,” that he unleashes a tactical, a tactical nuclear weapon on the battlefield. Nobody knows what happens after that. So we put NATO planes in the air to take out Russian assets, so Russians start shooting down planes, does Russia then threaten to escalate even further by attacking an actual NATO civilian center or even Ukrainian civilian center with nuclear weapons? Where it goes from there nobody knows because nuclear weapons haven’t been used since 1945. So that is a worst case scenario.
So the problem is that the best case scenario might also be the worst case scenario. Meaning that there are a couple of scenarios that are sort of the worst case scenario and this is of the puzzlement of the situation. One is that Putin feels so boxed in, so unable to go back to his own people and say, “We just wasted tens of thousands of lives here for no reason,” that he unleashes a tactical, a tactical nuclear weapon on the battlefield. Nobody knows what happens after that. So we put NATO planes in the air to take out Russian assets, so Russians start shooting down planes, does Russia then threaten to escalate even further by attacking an actual NATO civilian center or even Ukrainian civilian center with nuclear weapons? Where it goes from there nobody knows because nuclear weapons haven’t been used since 1945. So that is a worst case scenario.
It’s an unpredictable scenario that could devolve into really, really significant problems. The other worst case scenario could be a best case scenario. It could be a worse, we just don’t know, is Putin falls, what happens after that? Who takes over for Putin? Is that person more moderate than Putin? Is that person a liberalizer? It probably won’t be Navalny, if he’s going to be ousted, it’ll probably somebody who’s a top member of Putin’s brass right now and has capacity to control the military, or it’s possible the entire regime breaks down. What you end up with is Syria in Russia where you just have an entirely out of control region with no centralizing power, which is also a disaster area. And so in the nature of risk mitigation, in sort of an attempt at risk mitigation, what actually should be happening right now is some off ramp has to be offered to Putin.
The off ramp likely is going to be him maintaining Crimea and parts of Luhansk and Donetsk. It’s probably going to be a commitment by Ukraine not to join NATO formally, but a guarantee by the West to defend Ukraine in case of an invasion of it borders again by Russia like an actual treaty obligation, not like the BS treaty obligation and when Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in the nineties, and that is likely how this is going to have to go. The problem is that requires political courage, not from Zelensky, it requires courage from probably Biden because the only… Zelensky is not in a political position where he can go back to his own people who have made unbelievable sacrifices on behalf of their nation in freedom and say to them, “Guys, now I’m calling it quits. We’re going to have to give them Luhansk and Donetsk and give Putin an off ramp.”
I don’t think that’s an acceptable answer to most Ukrainians at this point in time. From the polling data and from the available data we have on the ground, it’s going to actually take Biden biting the bullet and being the bad guy and saying to Zelensky, “Listen, we’ve made a commitment of material aid. We’re offering you all these things, including essentially a defense pact. We’re offering you all this stuff, but if you don’t come to the table then we’re going to have to start weaning you off.” There will have to be a stick there, it can’t just be a carrot. And so that will allow Zelensky, if Biden were to do that, it allows Zelensky to blame Biden for the solution everybody knows has to happen. So Zelensky can go back to his own people and he can say, “Listen, this is the way it has to go. I don’t want it to go this way, but it’s not my… I’m signing other people’s checks, right? I mean, this is not my money.”
And Biden would take the hit because he wouldn’t then be able to blame Ukraine for whatever happens next, which has been the easy road off I think for a lot of politicians in the West. It’s for them to just say, “Well this is up to the Ukrainians to decide. It’s up to the Ukrainians to decide.” Well is it totally up to the Ukrainians to decide, because it seems like the West is signing an awful lot of checks and all of Europe is going to freeze this winter?
Lex Fridman
This is the importance of great leadership by the way. That’s why the people we elect is very important. Do you think there’s power to just one on one conversation, or Biden sits down with Zelensky, and Biden sits down with Putin, almost in person? Or maybe I’m romanticizing the notion, but having done these podcasts in person, I think there’s something fundamentally different than through a remote call and also a distant kind of recorded political type speak, versus like man to man.
This is the importance of great leadership by the way. That’s why the people we elect is very important. Do you think there’s power to just one on one conversation, or Biden sits down with Zelensky, and Biden sits down with Putin, almost in person? Or maybe I’m romanticizing the notion, but having done these podcasts in person, I think there’s something fundamentally different than through a remote call and also a distant kind of recorded political type speak, versus like man to man.
Ben Shapiro
So I’m deeply afraid that Putin outplays people in the one-on-one scenarios because he’s done it to multiple presidents already. He gets in one-on-one scenarios with Bush, with Obama, with Trump, with Biden, and he seems to be a very canny operator and a very sort of hard-nosed operator in those situations. I think that if you were going to do something like that, like an actual political face-to-face summit, what you would need is for Biden to first have a conversation with Zelensky where Zelensky knows what’s going on. So he’s aware and then Biden walks in and he says to Putin on camera, “Here’s the offer, let’s get it together, let’s make peace. You get to keep this stuff.” And then let Putin respond how Putin is going to respond. But the big problem for Putin, I think, and the problem with public facing forum, maybe it’s a private meeting.
So I’m deeply afraid that Putin outplays people in the one-on-one scenarios because he’s done it to multiple presidents already. He gets in one-on-one scenarios with Bush, with Obama, with Trump, with Biden, and he seems to be a very canny operator and a very sort of hard-nosed operator in those situations. I think that if you were going to do something like that, like an actual political face-to-face summit, what you would need is for Biden to first have a conversation with Zelensky where Zelensky knows what’s going on. So he’s aware and then Biden walks in and he says to Putin on camera, “Here’s the offer, let’s get it together, let’s make peace. You get to keep this stuff.” And then let Putin respond how Putin is going to respond. But the big problem for Putin, I think, and the problem with public facing forum, maybe it’s a private meeting.
If it’s a private meeting, maybe that’s the best thing. If it’s a public facing forum, I think it’s a problem because Putin’s afraid of being humiliated at this point. If it’s a private meeting, then sure, except that again, I wonder whether when it comes to a person as canny as Putin and to a politician that I really don’t think is a particularly sophisticated player in Joe Biden. And again this is not unique to Biden, I think that most of our presidents for the last 30, 40 years have not been particularly sophisticated players. I think that’s a risky scenario.
Lex Fridman
I still believe in the power of that because otherwise, I don’t know. I don’t think stuff on paper and political speak will solve these kinds of problems because from the Zelensky perspective, nothing but complete victory will do. As a nation, has people sacrificed way too much and they’re all in. If you look at, because I traveled to Ukraine, I spent time there. I’ll be going back there hopefully also going back to Russia, just speaking to Ukrainians, they’re all in. They’re all in.
I still believe in the power of that because otherwise, I don’t know. I don’t think stuff on paper and political speak will solve these kinds of problems because from the Zelensky perspective, nothing but complete victory will do. As a nation, has people sacrificed way too much and they’re all in. If you look at, because I traveled to Ukraine, I spent time there. I’ll be going back there hopefully also going back to Russia, just speaking to Ukrainians, they’re all in. They’re all in.
Ben Shapiro
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Nothing but complete victory.
Nothing but complete victory.
Ben Shapiro
Yep, that’s right.
Yep, that’s right.
Lex Fridman
And so for that, the only way to achieve peace is through honest human to human conversation. Giving both people a way to off ramp to walk away victorious. And some of that requires speaking honestly as a human being, but also for America to the… Actually, not even America, honestly, just the president be able to eat their own ego a bit and be the punching bag a little. Just enough for both presidents to be able to walk away and say, “Listen, we got the American president to come to us.” And I think that makes the President look strong, not weak.
And so for that, the only way to achieve peace is through honest human to human conversation. Giving both people a way to off ramp to walk away victorious. And some of that requires speaking honestly as a human being, but also for America to the… Actually, not even America, honestly, just the president be able to eat their own ego a bit and be the punching bag a little. Just enough for both presidents to be able to walk away and say, “Listen, we got the American president to come to us.” And I think that makes the President look strong, not weak.
Ben Shapiro
I mean, I agree with you. I think it would also require some people on the right, people like me, if it’s Joe Biden, to say, “If Biden does that, I see what he’s doing and it’s the right move.” I think one of the things that he’s afraid of to steel man him, I think one of the things he’s afraid of is he goes and he makes that sort of deal and the right says, “You just cower in front of Russia, you just gave away Ukraine,” whatever it is. But it’s going to require some people on the right to say that that move is the right move and then hold by it, if Biden actually performs that move.
I mean, I agree with you. I think it would also require some people on the right, people like me, if it’s Joe Biden, to say, “If Biden does that, I see what he’s doing and it’s the right move.” I think one of the things that he’s afraid of to steel man him, I think one of the things he’s afraid of is he goes and he makes that sort of deal and the right says, “You just cower in front of Russia, you just gave away Ukraine,” whatever it is. But it’s going to require some people on the right to say that that move is the right move and then hold by it, if Biden actually performs that move.
Rhetoric vs truth
Lex Fridman
You’re exceptionally good at debate. You wrote How to Debate Leftists and Destroy Them. You’re kind of known for this kind of stuff, just exceptionally skilled, the conversation, the debate, at getting to the facts of the matter and using logic to get to the conclusion in the debate. Do you ever worry that this power… Talk about the ring, this power you were given has corrupted you and your ability to see what’s… To pursue the truth versus just winning debates?
You’re exceptionally good at debate. You wrote How to Debate Leftists and Destroy Them. You’re kind of known for this kind of stuff, just exceptionally skilled, the conversation, the debate, at getting to the facts of the matter and using logic to get to the conclusion in the debate. Do you ever worry that this power… Talk about the ring, this power you were given has corrupted you and your ability to see what’s… To pursue the truth versus just winning debates?
Ben Shapiro
I hope not. I so I think one of the things that’s kind of funny about the branding versus the reality is that most of the things that get characterized as “Destroying” in debates with facts and logic, most of those things are basically me having a conversation with somebody on a college campus. It actually isn’t like a formal debate where we sit there and we critique each other’s positions or it’s not me insulting anybody. A lot of the clips that have gone very viral is me making an argument and then they’re not being an amazing counter argument. Many of the debates that I’ve held have been extremely cordial. I take the latest example about a year ago I debated Ana Kasparian from Young Turks. It was very cordial, it was very nice, right? Yeah. That’s sort of the way that I like to debate. My rule when it comes to debate and or discussion is that my opponent actually gets to pick the mode in which we work.
I hope not. I so I think one of the things that’s kind of funny about the branding versus the reality is that most of the things that get characterized as “Destroying” in debates with facts and logic, most of those things are basically me having a conversation with somebody on a college campus. It actually isn’t like a formal debate where we sit there and we critique each other’s positions or it’s not me insulting anybody. A lot of the clips that have gone very viral is me making an argument and then they’re not being an amazing counter argument. Many of the debates that I’ve held have been extremely cordial. I take the latest example about a year ago I debated Ana Kasparian from Young Turks. It was very cordial, it was very nice, right? Yeah. That’s sort of the way that I like to debate. My rule when it comes to debate and or discussion is that my opponent actually gets to pick the mode in which we work.
So if it’s going to be a debate of ideas and we’re just going to discuss and critique and clarify, then we can do that. If somebody comes loaded for bear, then I will respond in kind, because one of the big problems I think in sort of the debate/ discussion sphere is very often misdiagnosis of what exactly is going on. People who think that a discussion is debate and vice versa. And that can be a real problem. And there are people who will treat what ought to be a discussion as, for example, an exercise and performance art. And so what that is mugging or trolling or saying trolley things in order to just get to the… That’s something I actually don’t do during debate. I mean, if you actually watch me talk to people, I don’t actually do the trolling thing. The trolling thing is almost solely relegated to Twitter and me making jokes on my show. When it comes to actually debating people. That sounds actually a lot. What we’re doing right now is just the person maybe taking just an adverse position to mine. And so that’s fine. Usually half the debate or discussion is me just asking for clarification of terms. “What exactly do you mean by this?” So I can drill down on where the actual disagreement may lie. Because some of the time people think they’re disagreeing and they’re actually not disagreeing. When I’m talking with Ana Kasparian, and she’s talking about how corporate and government have too much power together, I’m like, “Well, you sound like the Tea Party. You and I are on the same page about that.” That sort of stuff does tend to happen a lot in discussion. I think that when discussion gets termed “Debate”, it’s a problem, when debate gets termed “Discussion”, it’s even more problematic because debate is a different thing.
Lex Fridman
And I find that your debate and your conversation is often in good faith. You’re able to steel man on the other side, you’re actually listening, you’re considering the other side. The times when I see that “Ben Shapiro destroys leftist”, it’s usually just like you said, the other side is doing the trolling because I mean the people that do criticize you for that interaction is the people that usually get destroyed are like 20 years old and they’re usually not sophisticated in any kind of degree in terms of being able to use logic and reason and facts and so on.
And I find that your debate and your conversation is often in good faith. You’re able to steel man on the other side, you’re actually listening, you’re considering the other side. The times when I see that “Ben Shapiro destroys leftist”, it’s usually just like you said, the other side is doing the trolling because I mean the people that do criticize you for that interaction is the people that usually get destroyed are like 20 years old and they’re usually not sophisticated in any kind of degree in terms of being able to use logic and reason and facts and so on.
Ben Shapiro
And that’s totally fine, by the way. I mean if people want to criticize me for speaking on college campuses where a lot of political conversation happens both right and left, that’s fine. I mean, I’ve had lots of conversations with people on the other side of the aisle too. I mean, right. I’ve done podcasts with Sam Harris and we’ve talked about atheism, or I’ve done debates with Ana Kasparian, or I’ve done debate with Cenk Uygur, or I’ve had conversations with lots of people on the other side of the aisle. In fact, I believe I’ve the only person on the right who recommends that people listen to his shows on the other side of the aisle. I mean, I say on my show, on a fairly regular basis, that people should listen to Pod Save America. Now, no one on Pod Save America will ever say that somebody should listen to my show.
And that’s totally fine, by the way. I mean if people want to criticize me for speaking on college campuses where a lot of political conversation happens both right and left, that’s fine. I mean, I’ve had lots of conversations with people on the other side of the aisle too. I mean, right. I’ve done podcasts with Sam Harris and we’ve talked about atheism, or I’ve done debates with Ana Kasparian, or I’ve done debate with Cenk Uygur, or I’ve had conversations with lots of people on the other side of the aisle. In fact, I believe I’ve the only person on the right who recommends that people listen to his shows on the other side of the aisle. I mean, I say on my show, on a fairly regular basis, that people should listen to Pod Save America. Now, no one on Pod Save America will ever say that somebody should listen to my show.
That is verboten. That is not something that can be had. It’s one of the strangenesses of our politics. It’s what I’ve called the “Happy Birthday Problem”, which is I have a lot of friends who are of the left and are publicly of the left and on my birthday they’ll send you a text message, ” Happy birthday”, but they will never tweet happy birthday, less they be acknowledging that you were born of woman and that this can’t be allowed. So on the Sunday special, I’ve had a bevy of people who are on the other side of the aisle, a lot of them ranging from people in Hollywood like Jason Blum, to Larry Wilmore, to Sam, to just a lot of people on the left.
I think we’re in the near future, probably going to do a Sunday special with Ro Khanna, the California congressperson. Very nice guy. I had him on the show. That kind of stuff is fun and interesting. But I think that the easy way out for a clip that people don’t like is to either immediately clip the clip, it’s like a two minute clip and clip it down to 15 seconds where somebody insults me and then that goes viral, which is, welcome to the internet. Or to say, “Well, you’re only debating college… You’re only talking to 20…” I mean, I talked to a lot more people than that. That’s just not the stuff you’re watching.
Infamous BBC interview
Lex Fridman
You lost your cool in an interview with BBC’s Andrew and Neil, and you were really honest about it after, which was kind of refreshing and enjoyable. As the internet said, “They’ve never seen anyone lose an interview.” So to me, honestly, it was like seeing Floyd Mayweather Jr. or somebody knocked down. Can you take me through that experience?
You lost your cool in an interview with BBC’s Andrew and Neil, and you were really honest about it after, which was kind of refreshing and enjoyable. As the internet said, “They’ve never seen anyone lose an interview.” So to me, honestly, it was like seeing Floyd Mayweather Jr. or somebody knocked down. Can you take me through that experience?
Ben Shapiro
Here’s that day. That day is I have a book released, didn’t get a lot of sleep the night before, and this is the last interview of the day, and it’s an interview with BBC. I don’t know anything about BBC, I don’t watch BBC, I don’t know any of the hosts. So we get on the interview and it’s supposed to be about the book and the host, Andrew Neil doesn’t ask virtually a single question about the book. He just starts reading me bad, old tweets. Which I hate, I mean, it is annoying and it’s stupid and it’s the worst form of interview when somebody just reads you bad, old tweets. Especially when I’ve acknowledged bad, old tweets before.
Here’s that day. That day is I have a book released, didn’t get a lot of sleep the night before, and this is the last interview of the day, and it’s an interview with BBC. I don’t know anything about BBC, I don’t watch BBC, I don’t know any of the hosts. So we get on the interview and it’s supposed to be about the book and the host, Andrew Neil doesn’t ask virtually a single question about the book. He just starts reading me bad, old tweets. Which I hate, I mean, it is annoying and it’s stupid and it’s the worst form of interview when somebody just reads you bad, old tweets. Especially when I’ve acknowledged bad, old tweets before.
And so I’m going through the list with him and this interview was solidly 20 minutes. I mean, it was a long interview and I make a couple of particularly annoyed mistakes in the interview. So annoyed mistake number one is the ego play. So there’s a point in the middle of the interview where I say, “I don’t even know who you are,” which was true. I didn’t know who he was. It turns out he was a very famous person in Britain. And so you can’t make that ego play.
Lex Fridman
But even if he’s not famous, that’s not…
But even if he’s not famous, that’s not…
Ben Shapiro
It’s a dumb thing to do and it’s an ass thing to do. So, saying that was more just kind of peak silliness. So, that was mistake.
It’s a dumb thing to do and it’s an ass thing to do. So, saying that was more just kind of peak silliness. So, that was mistake.
Lex Fridman
I enjoyed watching that. It was like, “Oh, Ben is human.”
I enjoyed watching that. It was like, “Oh, Ben is human.”
Ben Shapiro
Yes, I’m glad somebody enjoyed it. So, there’s that. And then the other mistake was that I just don’t watch enough British TV. So the way that interviews are done there, are much more adversarial than American TV. In American TV, If somebody is adversarial with you, you assume that they’re a member of the other side. That’s typically how it is. And so I’m critiquing some of his questions at the beginning and I thought that the critique of some of his questions is actually fair. He was asking me about abortion and I thought he was asking it from a way of framing the question that wasn’t accurate. And so I assumed that he was on the left, because again, I’d never heard of him. And so I mischaracterize him and I apologize later for mischaracterizing him. We finally go through the interview. It’s 20 minutes. He just keeps going with the bad, old tweets.
Yes, I’m glad somebody enjoyed it. So, there’s that. And then the other mistake was that I just don’t watch enough British TV. So the way that interviews are done there, are much more adversarial than American TV. In American TV, If somebody is adversarial with you, you assume that they’re a member of the other side. That’s typically how it is. And so I’m critiquing some of his questions at the beginning and I thought that the critique of some of his questions is actually fair. He was asking me about abortion and I thought he was asking it from a way of framing the question that wasn’t accurate. And so I assumed that he was on the left, because again, I’d never heard of him. And so I mischaracterize him and I apologize later for mischaracterizing him. We finally go through the interview. It’s 20 minutes. He just keeps going with the bad, old tweets.
And finally I got up and I took off the microphone, and I walked out. And immediately I knew it was a mistake. Within 30 seconds of the end of interview, I knew it was a mistake. And that’s why even before the interview came out, I believe I corrected the record that Andrew Neil is not on the left, that’s a mistake by me. And then took the hit for a bad interview. And so as far as what I wish I had done differently, I wish I had known who he was. I wish I’d done my research. I wish that I had treated it as though there was a possibility that it was going to be more adversarial than it was.
I think I was incautious about the interview because it was pitched as, “It’s just another book interview,” and it wasn’t just another book interview, it was treated much more adversarially than that. So I wish… That’s on me. I got to research the people who are talking to me and watch their shows and learn about that. And then obviously the kind of gut level appeal to ego or arrogance, that’s a bad look and shouldn’t have done that. And losing your cool is always a bad look.
Day in the life
Lex Fridman
So the fact that that became somewhat viral and stood out just shows that it happens so rarely to you. So just to look at the day in the life of Ben Shapiro, you speak a lot, very eloquently, about difficult topics. What goes into the research, the mental part… And you always look pretty energetic and you’re not exhausted by the burden, the heaviness of the topics you’re covering day, after day, after day, after day. So what goes through the preparation mentally, diet wise, anything like that? When do you wake up?
So the fact that that became somewhat viral and stood out just shows that it happens so rarely to you. So just to look at the day in the life of Ben Shapiro, you speak a lot, very eloquently, about difficult topics. What goes into the research, the mental part… And you always look pretty energetic and you’re not exhausted by the burden, the heaviness of the topics you’re covering day, after day, after day, after day. So what goes through the preparation mentally, diet wise, anything like that? When do you wake up?
Ben Shapiro
Okay, so I wake up when my kids wake me up, usually that’s my baby daughter who’s two and a half. We hear on the monitor usually about 6:15, 6:20 AM So I get up, my wife sleeps in a little bit. I go get the baby, then my son gets up, and then my oldest daughter gets up. I have eight, six, and two. The boy is the middle child.
Okay, so I wake up when my kids wake me up, usually that’s my baby daughter who’s two and a half. We hear on the monitor usually about 6:15, 6:20 AM So I get up, my wife sleeps in a little bit. I go get the baby, then my son gets up, and then my oldest daughter gets up. I have eight, six, and two. The boy is the middle child.
Lex Fridman
Is that both the source of stress and happiness?
Is that both the source of stress and happiness?
Ben Shapiro
It’s the height of both, right? I mean, it’s the source of the greatest happiness. So the way that I characterize it is this, when it comes to sort of kids in life, so when you’re single, your boundaries of happiness and unhappiness, you can be a zero in terms of happiness, you can be a 10 in terms of happiness. Then you get married and it goes up to a 20 and a negative 20, because your happiest stuff is with your wife, and then the most unhappy stuff is when something happens to your spouse, it’s the worst thing in the entire world. Then you have kids and all limits are removed. So the best things that have ever happened to me are things where I’m watching my kids and they’re playing together and they’re being wonderful and sweet and cute and I love them so much. And the worst things are when my son is screaming at me for no reason because he’s being insane and I have to deal with that, or something bad happens to my daughter at school or something like that.
It’s the height of both, right? I mean, it’s the source of the greatest happiness. So the way that I characterize it is this, when it comes to sort of kids in life, so when you’re single, your boundaries of happiness and unhappiness, you can be a zero in terms of happiness, you can be a 10 in terms of happiness. Then you get married and it goes up to a 20 and a negative 20, because your happiest stuff is with your wife, and then the most unhappy stuff is when something happens to your spouse, it’s the worst thing in the entire world. Then you have kids and all limits are removed. So the best things that have ever happened to me are things where I’m watching my kids and they’re playing together and they’re being wonderful and sweet and cute and I love them so much. And the worst things are when my son is screaming at me for no reason because he’s being insane and I have to deal with that, or something bad happens to my daughter at school or something like that.
That stuff is really it. So yes, the source of my greatest happiness, the source of my greatest stress. So they get me up at about 6:15 in the morning. I feed them breakfast. I’m kind of scrolling the news while I’m making the eggs and just updating myself on anything that may have happened overnight. I go into the office, put on the makeup and the wardrobe or whatever, and then I sit down and do the show. A lot of the prep is actually done the night before because the news cycle doesn’t change all that much between kind of late at night and in the morning. So I can supplement in the morning. So I do the show.
Lex Fridman
So a lot of the preparation, thinking through what are the big issues in the world is done the night before?
So a lot of the preparation, thinking through what are the big issues in the world is done the night before?
Ben Shapiro
Yeah. And that’s reading pretty much all the legacy media. So I rip on legacy media a lot, but that’s because a lot of what they do is really good and a lot of what they do is really bad. I cover a lot of legacy media, so that’s probably covering Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Daily Mail. And then I’ll look over at some of the alternative media. I’ll look at my own website, Daily Wire, I’ll look at Breitbart, I’ll look at The Blaze, I’ll look at maybe The Intercept. I’ll look at a bunch of different sources, and then I will look at different clips online. So Media Eye comes in handy here, [inaudible 01:27:14] comes in handy here, that sort of stuff.
Yeah. And that’s reading pretty much all the legacy media. So I rip on legacy media a lot, but that’s because a lot of what they do is really good and a lot of what they do is really bad. I cover a lot of legacy media, so that’s probably covering Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Daily Mail. And then I’ll look over at some of the alternative media. I’ll look at my own website, Daily Wire, I’ll look at Breitbart, I’ll look at The Blaze, I’ll look at maybe The Intercept. I’ll look at a bunch of different sources, and then I will look at different clips online. So Media Eye comes in handy here, [inaudible 01:27:14] comes in handy here, that sort of stuff.
Because my show relies very heavily on being able to play people so you can hear them in their own words. And so that’s sort of the media eye. So I sit down, I do the show, and then once I’m done with the show, I usually have between… Now it’s like 11:15 in the morning maybe, because sometimes I’ll prerecord the show. So it’s 11:15 in the morning, I’ll go home and if my wife’s available, I’ll grab lunch with her. If not, then I will go and work out. I try to work out five times a week with a trainer, something like that. And then I will…
Lex Fridman
Just regular gym stuff.
Just regular gym stuff.
Ben Shapiro
Weights and plyometrics and some CrossFit kind of stuff. I mean beneath this mild stool lies a hulking monster. And so I’ll do that. Then I will do reading and writing. So I’m usually working on a book at any given time.
Weights and plyometrics and some CrossFit kind of stuff. I mean beneath this mild stool lies a hulking monster. And so I’ll do that. Then I will do reading and writing. So I’m usually working on a book at any given time.
Lex Fridman
You shut off the rest of the world for that?
You shut off the rest of the world for that?
Ben Shapiro
So I put some music in my ears. Usually Brahms, or Bach, sometimes Beethoven, or Mozart, it’s those four. Usually those are on rotation.
So I put some music in my ears. Usually Brahms, or Bach, sometimes Beethoven, or Mozart, it’s those four. Usually those are on rotation.
Lex Fridman
No rap?
No rap?
Ben Shapiro
No rap. No rap. Despite my extraordinary rendition of “WAP”. Yeah, I’m not in fact a rap man.
No rap. No rap. Despite my extraordinary rendition of “WAP”. Yeah, I’m not in fact a rap man.
Lex Fridman
Do you still hate “WAP”, the song?
Do you still hate “WAP”, the song?
Ben Shapiro
I will say I do not think that it is the peak of western civilized art.
I will say I do not think that it is the peak of western civilized art.
Lex Fridman
Okay.
Okay.
Ben Shapiro
I don’t think that a hundred years from now people will be gluing their faces to a “WAP”, and protest at the environment.
I don’t think that a hundred years from now people will be gluing their faces to a “WAP”, and protest at the environment.
Lex Fridman
But about Brahms the rest will still be around.
But about Brahms the rest will still be around.
Ben Shapiro
Yes. I would assume if people still have a functioning prefrontal cortex in any sort of taste.
Yes. I would assume if people still have a functioning prefrontal cortex in any sort of taste.
Lex Fridman
Strong words from Ben Shapiro. So you got some classical music in your ears and you’re focusing, are you at the computer when you’re writing?
Strong words from Ben Shapiro. So you got some classical music in your ears and you’re focusing, are you at the computer when you’re writing?
Ben Shapiro
Yeah, at the computer. Usually we have a kind of room that has some sun coming in, so it’s nice in there. Or I’ll go up to a library that we just completed for me. So I’ll go up there and I’ll write and read.
Yeah, at the computer. Usually we have a kind of room that has some sun coming in, so it’s nice in there. Or I’ll go up to a library that we just completed for me. So I’ll go up there and I’ll write and read.
Lex Fridman
With physical books?
With physical books?
Ben Shapiro
Yeah, I love physical books. And because I keep Sabbath, I don’t use Kindle because when I’m reading a book and I hit Sabbath, I have to turn off the Kindle. So that means that I have tons and tons and tons of physical books. When we moved from Los Angeles to Florida, I had about 7,000 volumes. I had to discard probably 4,000 of them. And then I’ve built that back up now. So I’m probably going to have to go through another round where I put them somewhere else. I tend to tab books rather than highlighting them because I can’t highlight on Sabbath. So I have the little stickers and I put them in the book. So a typical book from me, you can see it on the book club, will be filled with tabs on the side. Things that I want to take note… Actually, I’d gotten a person who I pay to go through and write down in files the quotes that I like from the book, so I have those handy.
Yeah, I love physical books. And because I keep Sabbath, I don’t use Kindle because when I’m reading a book and I hit Sabbath, I have to turn off the Kindle. So that means that I have tons and tons and tons of physical books. When we moved from Los Angeles to Florida, I had about 7,000 volumes. I had to discard probably 4,000 of them. And then I’ve built that back up now. So I’m probably going to have to go through another round where I put them somewhere else. I tend to tab books rather than highlighting them because I can’t highlight on Sabbath. So I have the little stickers and I put them in the book. So a typical book from me, you can see it on the book club, will be filled with tabs on the side. Things that I want to take note… Actually, I’d gotten a person who I pay to go through and write down in files the quotes that I like from the book, so I have those handy.
Which is a good way for me to remember what it is that I’ve read. Because I read probably somewhere between three and five books a week, and then in a good week five, and then I write, I read, and then I go pick up my kids from school at 3:30. So according to my kids, I have no job. I’m there in the mornings until they leave for school. I pick them up from school, I hang out with them until they go to bed, which is usually 7:30 or so. So I’m helping them with their homework and I’m playing with them, and I’m taking them on rides in the brand new Tesla, which my son is obsessed with.
And then I put them to bed and then I sit back down, I prep for the next day, go through all those media sources I was talking about, compile kind of a schedule for what I want the show to look like, and run a show. It’s very detail oriented. Nobody writes anything for me. I write all my own stuff. So every word that comes out of my mouth is my fault. And then hopefully I have a couple hours or an hour to hang out with my wife before we go to bed.
Lex Fridman
The words you write, do you edit a lot or does it just come out, you’re thinking, “What are the key ideas I want to express?”
The words you write, do you edit a lot or does it just come out, you’re thinking, “What are the key ideas I want to express?”
Ben Shapiro
No, I don’t tend to edit a lot. So I thank God I’m able to write extraordinarily quickly. So I write very, very fast. In fact, in a previous life I was…
No, I don’t tend to edit a lot. So I thank God I’m able to write extraordinarily quickly. So I write very, very fast. In fact, in a previous life I was…
Lex Fridman
You also speak fast, so it’s similar.
You also speak fast, so it’s similar.
Ben Shapiro
Yeah, exactly. And I speak in paragraphs, so it’s exactly the same thing. In a previous life I was a ghost writer, so I used to be sort of known as a turnaround specialist in the publishing industry. And it’d be somebody who came to the publisher and says, “I have three weeks to get this book done. I don’t have a word done.” And they would call me up and be like, “This person needs a book written.” And so in three weeks I’d knock out 60,000 words or so.
Yeah, exactly. And I speak in paragraphs, so it’s exactly the same thing. In a previous life I was a ghost writer, so I used to be sort of known as a turnaround specialist in the publishing industry. And it’d be somebody who came to the publisher and says, “I have three weeks to get this book done. I don’t have a word done.” And they would call me up and be like, “This person needs a book written.” And so in three weeks I’d knock out 60,000 words or so.
Lex Fridman
Is there something you can say to the process that you follow to think. How you think about ideas like you… Stuff is going on in the world and trying to understand what is happening. What are the explanations? What are the forces behind this? Do you have a process or just you wait for the muse to give you the interpretation of the world?
Is there something you can say to the process that you follow to think. How you think about ideas like you… Stuff is going on in the world and trying to understand what is happening. What are the explanations? What are the forces behind this? Do you have a process or just you wait for the muse to give you the interpretation of the world?
Ben Shapiro
Well, I don’t think it’s a formal process, but because I read… So there’s two ways to do it. One is that sometimes the daily grind of the news is going to refer back to core principles that are broader and deeper. So I thank God, because I’ve read so much on so many different things of a lot of different point of views. Then if something breaks and a piece of news breaks, I can immediately channel that into, in the mental Rolodex, these three big ideas that I think are really important. And then I can talk at length about what those ideas are and I can explicate those. And so for example, when we were talking about Musk taking over Twitter before, and I immediately go to the history of media, that’s me tying it into a broader theme. And I do that, I would say fairly frequently. Well, we’re talking about say, subsidization of industry, and I can immediately tie that into, okay, what’s the history of subsidization in the United States going all the way back to Woodrow Wilson and forward through FDR’s industrial policy, and how does that tie into of broader economic policy internationally? So it allows me to tie into bigger themes because what I tend to read is mostly not news. What I tend to read is mostly books. I would say most of my media diet is actually not the stuff… That’s the icing on the cake, but the actual cake is the hundreds of pages in…
Well, I don’t think it’s a formal process, but because I read… So there’s two ways to do it. One is that sometimes the daily grind of the news is going to refer back to core principles that are broader and deeper. So I thank God, because I’ve read so much on so many different things of a lot of different point of views. Then if something breaks and a piece of news breaks, I can immediately channel that into, in the mental Rolodex, these three big ideas that I think are really important. And then I can talk at length about what those ideas are and I can explicate those. And so for example, when we were talking about Musk taking over Twitter before, and I immediately go to the history of media, that’s me tying it into a broader theme. And I do that, I would say fairly frequently. Well, we’re talking about say, subsidization of industry, and I can immediately tie that into, okay, what’s the history of subsidization in the United States going all the way back to Woodrow Wilson and forward through FDR’s industrial policy, and how does that tie into of broader economic policy internationally? So it allows me to tie into bigger themes because what I tend to read is mostly not news. What I tend to read is mostly books. I would say most of my media diet is actually not the stuff… That’s the icing on the cake, but the actual cake is the hundreds of pages in…
Ben Shapiro
… on the cake, but the actual cake is the hundreds of pages in history, econ, geography, social science that I’m reading every week, and so that stuff allows me to think more deeply about these things. That’s one way of doing it. The other way of doing it is Russia breaks in the news. I don’t know anything about Russia. I immediately go and I purchase five books about Russia and I read all of them. Well, the fortunate thing for me and the unfortunate thing about the world, and the unfortunate thing about the world is that if you read two books on a subject, you are now considered by the media an expert on the subject. That’s sad and shallow, but that is the way that it is.
… on the cake, but the actual cake is the hundreds of pages in history, econ, geography, social science that I’m reading every week, and so that stuff allows me to think more deeply about these things. That’s one way of doing it. The other way of doing it is Russia breaks in the news. I don’t know anything about Russia. I immediately go and I purchase five books about Russia and I read all of them. Well, the fortunate thing for me and the unfortunate thing about the world, and the unfortunate thing about the world is that if you read two books on a subject, you are now considered by the media an expert on the subject. That’s sad and shallow, but that is the way that it is.
The good news for me is that my job isn’t to be a full expert on any of these subjects, and I don’t claim to be. I’m not a Russia expert. I know enough on Russia to be able to understand when people talk about Russia, what the system looks like, how it works and all of that, and then to explicate that for the common man, which a lot of people who are infused with the expertise can’t really do. If you’re so deep in the weeds that you’re a full on academic expert on a thing, sometimes it’s hard to translate that over to a mass audience, which is really my job.
Lex Fridman
Well, I think it’s funny with the two books you can actually get a pretty deep understanding if you read and also think deeply about it. It allows you to approach a thing from first principles. A lot of times if you’re a quote, unquote, “expert,” you get carried away by the momentum of what the field has been thinking about, versus stepping back, “All right, what is really going on?” The challenge is to pick the right two books.
Well, I think it’s funny with the two books you can actually get a pretty deep understanding if you read and also think deeply about it. It allows you to approach a thing from first principles. A lot of times if you’re a quote, unquote, “expert,” you get carried away by the momentum of what the field has been thinking about, versus stepping back, “All right, what is really going on?” The challenge is to pick the right two books.
Ben Shapiro
Right. Usually, what I’ll try to find is somebody who knows the topic pretty well, or a couple people, and have them recommend books. A couple years ago I knew nothing about Bitcoin. I was at a conference and a couple of people who you’ve had on your show actually were there and I asked them, “Give me your top three books on Bitcoin.” Then I went and I read nine books on Bitcoin. So if you read nine books on Bitcoin, you at least know enough to get by. So I can actually explain what Bitcoin is and why it works or why it doesn’t work in some cases and what’s happening in the markets that way, so that’s very, very helpful.
Right. Usually, what I’ll try to find is somebody who knows the topic pretty well, or a couple people, and have them recommend books. A couple years ago I knew nothing about Bitcoin. I was at a conference and a couple of people who you’ve had on your show actually were there and I asked them, “Give me your top three books on Bitcoin.” Then I went and I read nine books on Bitcoin. So if you read nine books on Bitcoin, you at least know enough to get by. So I can actually explain what Bitcoin is and why it works or why it doesn’t work in some cases and what’s happening in the markets that way, so that’s very, very helpful.
Lex Fridman
Well, Putin is an example, that’s a difficult one to find the right books on. I think The New Tsar is the one I read where it was the most objective.
Well, Putin is an example, that’s a difficult one to find the right books on. I think The New Tsar is the one I read where it was the most objective.
Ben Shapiro
The one I read I think about Putin, it was one called Strongman and it was very highly critical of Putin, but it gave a good background on him, at the very least.
The one I read I think about Putin, it was one called Strongman and it was very highly critical of Putin, but it gave a good background on him, at the very least.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. I’m very skeptical of things that are critical of Putin, because it feels like there’s activism injected into the history. The way The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is written about Hitler I like because there’s almost not a criticism of Hitler. It’s a description of Hitler, which it’s easier to do about a historical figure, which with William Shirer with The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, it’s impressive because he lived through it. But it’s very tough to find objective descriptions about the history of the man in a country of Putin, of Zelensky, of any difficult … Trump was the same. I feel like-
Yeah. I’m very skeptical of things that are critical of Putin, because it feels like there’s activism injected into the history. The way The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is written about Hitler I like because there’s almost not a criticism of Hitler. It’s a description of Hitler, which it’s easier to do about a historical figure, which with William Shirer with The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, it’s impressive because he lived through it. But it’s very tough to find objective descriptions about the history of the man in a country of Putin, of Zelensky, of any difficult … Trump was the same. I feel like-
Ben Shapiro
That’s the hero villain archetype, right?
That’s the hero villain archetype, right?
Lex Fridman
Right.
Right.
Ben Shapiro
It’s like either somebody’s completely a hero or completely a villain, and the truth is pretty much no one is completely a hero or completely a villain. In fact, I’m not sure that I love descriptions of people as heroes or villains, generally. I think that people tend to do heroic things or do villainous things. The same way that I’m not sure I love descriptions of people as a genius, my dad used to say this when I was growing up, he used to say he didn’t believe that there were geniuses. He said he believed that there were people with a genius for something, because yes, there are people who are very high IQ and we call them geniuses, but does that mean that they’re good at EQ stuff? Not necessarily, but there are people who are geniuses at EQ stuff. In other words, it would be more specific to say that somebody’s a genius at engineering than to say just broad spectrum they’re a genius. That does avoid the problem of thinking that they’re good at something that they’re not good at. It’s a little more specific.
It’s like either somebody’s completely a hero or completely a villain, and the truth is pretty much no one is completely a hero or completely a villain. In fact, I’m not sure that I love descriptions of people as heroes or villains, generally. I think that people tend to do heroic things or do villainous things. The same way that I’m not sure I love descriptions of people as a genius, my dad used to say this when I was growing up, he used to say he didn’t believe that there were geniuses. He said he believed that there were people with a genius for something, because yes, there are people who are very high IQ and we call them geniuses, but does that mean that they’re good at EQ stuff? Not necessarily, but there are people who are geniuses at EQ stuff. In other words, it would be more specific to say that somebody’s a genius at engineering than to say just broad spectrum they’re a genius. That does avoid the problem of thinking that they’re good at something that they’re not good at. It’s a little more specific.
Lex Fridman
So because you read a lot of books, can you look back and it’s always a tough question because so many, it’s like your favorite song, but are there books that have been influential in your life that are impacting your thinking, or maybe ones you go back to that still carry insight for you?
So because you read a lot of books, can you look back and it’s always a tough question because so many, it’s like your favorite song, but are there books that have been influential in your life that are impacting your thinking, or maybe ones you go back to that still carry insight for you?
Ben Shapiro
The Federalist Papers is a big one in terms of how American politics works. The first econ book that I thought was really great because it was written for teenagers essentially, is one called Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt. It’s 150 pages. I recommend it to everybody 15 and up. It’s easier than say, Thomas Sowell’s Basic Econ, which is four or 500 pages.
The Federalist Papers is a big one in terms of how American politics works. The first econ book that I thought was really great because it was written for teenagers essentially, is one called Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt. It’s 150 pages. I recommend it to everybody 15 and up. It’s easier than say, Thomas Sowell’s Basic Econ, which is four or 500 pages.
Lex Fridman
It’s looking what at macroeconomics, microeconomics-
It’s looking what at macroeconomics, microeconomics-
Ben Shapiro
Mm-hmm, macro-
Mm-hmm, macro-
Lex Fridman
… that kind of stuff?
… that kind of stuff?
Ben Shapiro
Macro.
Macro.
Lex Fridman
Macro.
Macro.
Ben Shapiro
Then in terms of, there’s a great book by Carl Truman called Rise and Triumph for the Modern Self, which I think is the best book in the last 10 years. That’s been impactful on some of the thoughts I’ve been having lately.
Then in terms of, there’s a great book by Carl Truman called Rise and Triumph for the Modern Self, which I think is the best book in the last 10 years. That’s been impactful on some of the thoughts I’ve been having lately.
Lex Fridman
What’s the key idea in there that’s [inaudible 01:37:38]
What’s the key idea in there that’s [inaudible 01:37:38]
Ben Shapiro
The key idea is that we’ve shifted the nature of how identity is done in the West from how it was historically done, that basically for nearly all of human history, the way that we identify as human beings is as a mix of our biological drives and then how that interacts with the social institutions around us. So when you’re a child, you’re a bunch of unfettered biological drives and it’s your parents’ job to civilize you. Civilize you literally means bring you into civilization. You learn the rules of the road. You learn how to integrate into institutions that already exist and are designed to shape you. It’s how you interact with those institutions that makes you you. It’s not just a set of biological drives.
The key idea is that we’ve shifted the nature of how identity is done in the West from how it was historically done, that basically for nearly all of human history, the way that we identify as human beings is as a mix of our biological drives and then how that interacts with the social institutions around us. So when you’re a child, you’re a bunch of unfettered biological drives and it’s your parents’ job to civilize you. Civilize you literally means bring you into civilization. You learn the rules of the road. You learn how to integrate into institutions that already exist and are designed to shape you. It’s how you interact with those institutions that makes you you. It’s not just a set of biological drives.
Then in the modern world, we’ve really driven toward the idea that what we are is how we feel on the inside without reference to the outside world, and it’s the job of the outside world to celebrate and reflect what we think about ourselves on the inside. So what that means is that we are driven now toward fighting institutions because institutions are in positions. So everything around us, societal institutions, these are things that are crimping our style. They’re making us not feel the way that we want to feel, and if we just destroy those things, then we’ll be freer and more liberated. It’s a, I think, much deeper model of how to think about why our social politics particular, are moving in a particular direction is that a ground shift has happened in how people think about themselves. This has had some somewhat shocking effect in terms of social politics.
Lex Fridman
There’s negative consequences in your view of that, but is there also a positive consequence of more power, more agency to the individual?
There’s negative consequences in your view of that, but is there also a positive consequence of more power, more agency to the individual?
Ben Shapiro
I think that you can make the argument that institutions were weighing too heavily in how people form their identity, but I think that what we’ve done is gone significantly too far on the other side. We basically decided to blow up the institutions in favor of unfettered feeling/identity. I think that that is not only a large mistake, I think it’s going to have ramifications for everything from suicidal ideation to institutional longevity in politics and in society more broadly.
I think that you can make the argument that institutions were weighing too heavily in how people form their identity, but I think that what we’ve done is gone significantly too far on the other side. We basically decided to blow up the institutions in favor of unfettered feeling/identity. I think that that is not only a large mistake, I think it’s going to have ramifications for everything from suicidal ideation to institutional longevity in politics and in society more broadly.
Abortion
Lex Fridman
Speaking about the nature of self, you’ve been an outspoken proponent of pro-life. Can we start by you tried to steel man the case for pro-choice that abortion is not murder ,and a woman’s right to choose is a fundamental human right freedom.
Speaking about the nature of self, you’ve been an outspoken proponent of pro-life. Can we start by you tried to steel man the case for pro-choice that abortion is not murder ,and a woman’s right to choose is a fundamental human right freedom.
Ben Shapiro
I think that the only way to steel man the pro-choice case and be ideologically consistent is to suggest that there is no interest in the life of the unborn that counter weighs at all freedom of choice. What that means is we can take the full example or we can take the partial example. If we take the full example, what that would mean is that up until point of birth, which is the Democratic Party platform position that a woman’s right to choose ought to extend for any reason whatsoever up to point of birth. The only way to argue that is that bodily autonomy is the only factor. There is no countervailing factor that would ever outweigh bodily autonomy. That would be the strongest version of the argument. Another version of that argument would be that the reason that bodily autonomy ought to weigh so heavily is because women can’t be the equals of men If this institutes of biology are allowed to decide their futures.
I think that the only way to steel man the pro-choice case and be ideologically consistent is to suggest that there is no interest in the life of the unborn that counter weighs at all freedom of choice. What that means is we can take the full example or we can take the partial example. If we take the full example, what that would mean is that up until point of birth, which is the Democratic Party platform position that a woman’s right to choose ought to extend for any reason whatsoever up to point of birth. The only way to argue that is that bodily autonomy is the only factor. There is no countervailing factor that would ever outweigh bodily autonomy. That would be the strongest version of the argument. Another version of that argument would be that the reason that bodily autonomy ought to weigh so heavily is because women can’t be the equals of men If this institutes of biology are allowed to decide their futures.
If pregnancy changes women in a way that it doesn’t change men, it’s a form of sex discrimination for women to ever have to go through with pregnancy, which is an argument that was made by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, kind of. Those are the arguments, the softer version is the more, I would say, emotionally resonant version of the argument, which is that bodily autonomy ought to outweigh the interests of the fetus up till point X. Then people have different feelings about what point X looks like. Is it up to the point of viability? Is it up to the point of the heartbeat? Is it up to 12 weeks or 15 weeks? That really is where the American public is, broadly speaking, not state by state where there are various really, really varied opinions. But broadly speaking, it seems like the American public by polling data wants somewhere between a 12 and 15 week abortion restriction. They believe that up until 12 or 15 weeks, there’s not enough there to not be specific, but to be how people feel about it to outweigh a woman’s bodily autonomy. then beyond that point, then there’s enough of an interest in the life of the pre-born child that’s developed enough then now we care about it enough that it outweighs a woman’s bodily autonomy.
Lex Fridman
What’s the strongest case for pro-life in your mind?
What’s the strongest case for pro-life in your mind?
Ben Shapiro
The strongest case for pro-life is that from conception, a human life has been created. It is a human life with potential. That human life potential with potential now has an independent interest in its own existence.
The strongest case for pro-life is that from conception, a human life has been created. It is a human life with potential. That human life potential with potential now has an independent interest in its own existence.
Lex Fridman
If I may just ask a quick question, so conception is when a sperm fertilizes an egg?
If I may just ask a quick question, so conception is when a sperm fertilizes an egg?
Ben Shapiro
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
Okay. Just to clarify, the biological beginning of what conception means.
Okay. Just to clarify, the biological beginning of what conception means.
Ben Shapiro
Because that is the beginning of human life. Now there are other standards that people have drawn. Some people say implantation in the uterus, some people will suggest viability, some brain development or heart development. But the clear dividing line between a human life exists in a human life does not exist, is the biological creation of an independent human life with its own DNA strands and et cetera, which happens at conception. Once you acknowledge that there is that independent human life with potential, and I keep calling it that because people sometimes say potential human life, it’s not a potential human life; it’s a human life that is not developed yet to the full extent that it will develop. Once you say that, and once you say that it has its own interest, now the burden of proof is to explain why bodily autonomy ought to allow for the snuffing out of that human life. If we believe that human life ought not to be killed for quote, unquote, “no good reason.” You have to come up with a good reason. The burden of proof has now shifted.
Because that is the beginning of human life. Now there are other standards that people have drawn. Some people say implantation in the uterus, some people will suggest viability, some brain development or heart development. But the clear dividing line between a human life exists in a human life does not exist, is the biological creation of an independent human life with its own DNA strands and et cetera, which happens at conception. Once you acknowledge that there is that independent human life with potential, and I keep calling it that because people sometimes say potential human life, it’s not a potential human life; it’s a human life that is not developed yet to the full extent that it will develop. Once you say that, and once you say that it has its own interest, now the burden of proof is to explain why bodily autonomy ought to allow for the snuffing out of that human life. If we believe that human life ought not to be killed for quote, unquote, “no good reason.” You have to come up with a good reason. The burden of proof has now shifted.
Now you will find people who will say, “Well, the good reason is that it’s not sufficiently developed to outweigh the mental trauma or emotional trauma that a woman goes through if, for example, she was raped or the victim of incest.” That is a fairly emotionally resonant argument, but it’s not necessarily dispositive. You can make the argument that just because something horrific and horrible happened to a woman does not rob the human life of its interest in life. One of the big problems in trying to draw any line for the self-interest of life in the human life is that it’s very difficult to draw any other line that doesn’t seem somewhat arbitrary. You say that independent heartbeat, well, people have pacemakers. If you say brain function, people have various levels of brain function as adults. If you say viability, babies are not viable after they are born. If I left a newborn baby on a table and did not take care of it would be dead in two days. So once you start getting into these lines, it starts to get very fuzzy very quickly. So if you’re looking for a bright line moral rule, that would be the bright line moral rule, and that’s the pro-life case.
Lex Fridman
Well, there’s still mysterious difficult scientific questions of things like consciousness. So does the question of consciousness, how does it come into play into this debate?
Well, there’s still mysterious difficult scientific questions of things like consciousness. So does the question of consciousness, how does it come into play into this debate?
Ben Shapiro
I don’t believe that consciousness is the sole criterion by which we judge the self-interest in human life. So we are unconscious a good deal of our lives. We will be conscious again. When you’re unconscious, when you’re asleep, for example, presumably your life is still worth living. If somebody came in and killed you, that’d be a serious moral quandary at the very least.
I don’t believe that consciousness is the sole criterion by which we judge the self-interest in human life. So we are unconscious a good deal of our lives. We will be conscious again. When you’re unconscious, when you’re asleep, for example, presumably your life is still worth living. If somebody came in and killed you, that’d be a serious moral quandary at the very least.
Lex Fridman
But the birth of consciousness, the lighting up of the flame, the initial lighting up of the flame, there does seem to be something special about that. It’s a mystery of when that happens.
But the birth of consciousness, the lighting up of the flame, the initial lighting up of the flame, there does seem to be something special about that. It’s a mystery of when that happens.
Ben Shapiro
Well, Peter Singer makes the case that basically self-consciousness doesn’t exist until you’re two-and-a-half. So he says that even in infanticide should be oka. He’s the bioethicist over at Princeton. So you get into some real dicey territory once you get into consciousness. Also, the truth is that consciousness is more of a spectrum than it is a dividing line, meaning that there are people with various degrees of brain function, we don’t actually know how conscious they are. You can get into eugenic territory pretty quickly when we start dividing between lives that are worth living based on levels of consciousness and lives that are not worth living based on levels of consciousness.
Well, Peter Singer makes the case that basically self-consciousness doesn’t exist until you’re two-and-a-half. So he says that even in infanticide should be oka. He’s the bioethicist over at Princeton. So you get into some real dicey territory once you get into consciousness. Also, the truth is that consciousness is more of a spectrum than it is a dividing line, meaning that there are people with various degrees of brain function, we don’t actually know how conscious they are. You can get into eugenic territory pretty quickly when we start dividing between lives that are worth living based on levels of consciousness and lives that are not worth living based on levels of consciousness.
Lex Fridman
Do you find the aspect of women’s freedom, do you feel the tension between that ability to choose the trajectory of your own life versus the rights of the unborn child?
Do you find the aspect of women’s freedom, do you feel the tension between that ability to choose the trajectory of your own life versus the rights of the unborn child?
Ben Shapiro
In one situation, yes. In one situation, no. If you’ve had sex with a person voluntarily and as a product of that you are now pregnant, no. You’ve taken an action with a perfectly predictable result, even if you took birth control. This is the way that human beings have procreated for literally all of human existence, and by the way, also how all mammals procreate. The idea that this was an entirely unforeseen consequence of your activity, I find I have less sympathy for you in that particular situation because you could have made decisions that would not lead you to this particular impasse. In fact, this used to be the basis of marriage was when we were a apparently more terrible society. We used to say that people should wait until they get married to have sex, a position that I still hold.
In one situation, yes. In one situation, no. If you’ve had sex with a person voluntarily and as a product of that you are now pregnant, no. You’ve taken an action with a perfectly predictable result, even if you took birth control. This is the way that human beings have procreated for literally all of human existence, and by the way, also how all mammals procreate. The idea that this was an entirely unforeseen consequence of your activity, I find I have less sympathy for you in that particular situation because you could have made decisions that would not lead you to this particular impasse. In fact, this used to be the basis of marriage was when we were a apparently more terrible society. We used to say that people should wait until they get married to have sex, a position that I still hold.
The reason for that was because then if you have sex and you produce a child, then the child will grow up in a two-parent family with stability, so not a ton of sympathy there. When it comes to rape and incest, obviously heavy, heavy sympathy. So that’s why I think you see, statistically speaking, a huge percentage of Americans, including many pro-life Americans, people who consider themselves pro-life would consider exceptions for rape and incest. One of the dishonest things that I think happens in abortion debates is arguing from the fringes. This tends to happen a lot, is pro-choice activists will argue from rape and incest to the other 99.8% of abortions, or you’ll see people on the pro-life side argue from partial birth abortion to all of abortion, that you actually have to take on the mainstream case and then decide whether or not that’s acceptable or not.
Lex Fridman
But to you, the exception, just ethically without generalizing it, that is a valid ethically exception.
But to you, the exception, just ethically without generalizing it, that is a valid ethically exception.
Ben Shapiro
I don’t hold that there should be an exception for rape or incest because again, I hold by the bright line rule that once a human life with potential exists, then it has its own interest in life that cannot be curbed by your self-interest. The only exception that I hold by is the same exception that literally all pro-lifers hold by, which is the life of the mother is put in danger.
I don’t hold that there should be an exception for rape or incest because again, I hold by the bright line rule that once a human life with potential exists, then it has its own interest in life that cannot be curbed by your self-interest. The only exception that I hold by is the same exception that literally all pro-lifers hold by, which is the life of the mother is put in danger.
Lex Fridman
Such a tough, tough topic because if you believe that that’s the line, then we’re committing mass murder.
Such a tough, tough topic because if you believe that that’s the line, then we’re committing mass murder.
Ben Shapiro
Well, or at least mass killing, so I would say that murder typically requires a level of mens rea that may be absent in many cases of abortion, because the usual follow-on question is, “Well, if it’s murder, why don’t prosecute the woman?” The answer is because the vast majority of people who are having abortions don’t actually believe that they’re killing a person. They have a very different view of what is exactly happening. I would say that there are all sorts of interesting hypotheticals that come in to play when it comes to abortion, and you can play them any which way. Let’s put this way, there are gradations of wrongs. I don’t think that all abortions are equally blameworthy, even if I would ban virtually all of them. I think that there are mitigating circumstances that makes well being wrong, some abortions less morally blameworthy than others. I think that I can admit a difference between killing a two-week-old embryo in the womb and stabbing a seven-year-old in the face. I can recognize all that while still saying I think that it would be wrong to terminate a pregnancy.
Well, or at least mass killing, so I would say that murder typically requires a level of mens rea that may be absent in many cases of abortion, because the usual follow-on question is, “Well, if it’s murder, why don’t prosecute the woman?” The answer is because the vast majority of people who are having abortions don’t actually believe that they’re killing a person. They have a very different view of what is exactly happening. I would say that there are all sorts of interesting hypotheticals that come in to play when it comes to abortion, and you can play them any which way. Let’s put this way, there are gradations of wrongs. I don’t think that all abortions are equally blameworthy, even if I would ban virtually all of them. I think that there are mitigating circumstances that makes well being wrong, some abortions less morally blameworthy than others. I think that I can admit a difference between killing a two-week-old embryo in the womb and stabbing a seven-year-old in the face. I can recognize all that while still saying I think that it would be wrong to terminate a pregnancy.
Lex Fridman
Do you think the question of when life begins, which I think is a fascinating question, is it a question of science or a question of religion?
Do you think the question of when life begins, which I think is a fascinating question, is it a question of science or a question of religion?
Ben Shapiro
When life begins is a question of science. When that life becomes valuable enough for people to want to protect it is going to be a question that is beyond science. Science doesn’t have moral judgements to make about the value of human life. This is one of the problems that … Sam Harris and I have had this argument many times and it’s always interesting because Sam is of the opinion that you can get to ought from is, that science says is therefore we can learn ought. So human flourishing is the goal of life. I always say to him, “I don’t see where you get that from evolutionary biology.” You can assume it, just say you’re assuming it, but don’t pretend that that is a conclusion that you can draw straight from biological reality itself because obviously that doesn’t exist in the animal world, for example. Nobody assumes the innate value of every ant.
When life begins is a question of science. When that life becomes valuable enough for people to want to protect it is going to be a question that is beyond science. Science doesn’t have moral judgements to make about the value of human life. This is one of the problems that … Sam Harris and I have had this argument many times and it’s always interesting because Sam is of the opinion that you can get to ought from is, that science says is therefore we can learn ought. So human flourishing is the goal of life. I always say to him, “I don’t see where you get that from evolutionary biology.” You can assume it, just say you’re assuming it, but don’t pretend that that is a conclusion that you can draw straight from biological reality itself because obviously that doesn’t exist in the animal world, for example. Nobody assumes the innate value of every ant.
Lex Fridman
I think I know your answer to this, but let’s test it because I think you’re going to be wrong. So there’s a robot behind you. Do you think there will be a time in the future when it will be unethical and illegal to kill a robot because they will have sentience? My guess is you would say, “No, Lex, there’s because there’s a fundamental difference between humans and robots. I just want to get you on record because I think you’ll be wrong.
I think I know your answer to this, but let’s test it because I think you’re going to be wrong. So there’s a robot behind you. Do you think there will be a time in the future when it will be unethical and illegal to kill a robot because they will have sentience? My guess is you would say, “No, Lex, there’s because there’s a fundamental difference between humans and robots. I just want to get you on record because I think you’ll be wrong.
Ben Shapiro
It depends on the level of development, I would assume of the robots. You’re assuming a complexity in the robots that eventually imitates what we in the religious life would call the human soul-
It depends on the level of development, I would assume of the robots. You’re assuming a complexity in the robots that eventually imitates what we in the religious life would call the human soul-
Lex Fridman
Yes.
Yes.
Ben Shapiro
The ability to choose freely, for example-
The ability to choose freely, for example-
Lex Fridman
Yes.
Yes.
Ben Shapiro
… which I believe is the capacity for human beings.
… which I believe is the capacity for human beings.
Lex Fridman
The ability to suffer?
The ability to suffer?
Ben Shapiro
Yeah. If all of that could be proved and not programmed, meaning the freely willed capacity of a machine to do X, Y, or Z.
Yeah. If all of that could be proved and not programmed, meaning the freely willed capacity of a machine to do X, Y, or Z.
Lex Fridman
Could not pinpoint exactly where it happens in the program.
Could not pinpoint exactly where it happens in the program.
Ben Shapiro
Right.
Right.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Ben Shapiro
It’s not deterministic.
It’s not deterministic.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Ben Shapiro
Then it would raise serious moral issues for sure. I’m not sure I know the answer to that question.
Then it would raise serious moral issues for sure. I’m not sure I know the answer to that question.
Lex Fridman
Are you afraid of that time?
Are you afraid of that time?
Ben Shapiro
I’m not sure I’m afraid of that time any more than I’d be afraid if aliens arrived on in the world and had these characteristics.
I’m not sure I’m afraid of that time any more than I’d be afraid if aliens arrived on in the world and had these characteristics.
Lex Fridman
Well, there’s just a lot of moral complexities and they don’t necessarily have to be in the physical space, they can be in the digital space. There’s an increased sophistication in the number of bots on the internet, including on Twitter. As they become more and more intelligent, there’s going to be serious questions about “What is our moral duty to protect ones that have or claim to have an identity itself?”
Well, there’s just a lot of moral complexities and they don’t necessarily have to be in the physical space, they can be in the digital space. There’s an increased sophistication in the number of bots on the internet, including on Twitter. As they become more and more intelligent, there’s going to be serious questions about “What is our moral duty to protect ones that have or claim to have an identity itself?”
Ben Shapiro
That’ll be really interesting. Actually, what I’m afraid of is the opposite happening, meaning that people … the worst that should happen is that we develop robots so sophisticated that they appear to have free will and then we treat them with human dignity. That should be the worst that happens. What I’m afraid of is the opposite, is that if we’re talking about this particular hypothetical that we develop robots that have all of these apparent abilities and then we dehumanize them, which leads us to also dehumanize the other humans around us, which you could easily see happening, and the devaluation of life to the point where it doesn’t really matter. People have always treated, unfortunately, newly discovered other humans this way. So I don’t think there’s actually a new problem. I think it’s a pretty old problem. It’ll just be interesting when it’s made of human hands.
That’ll be really interesting. Actually, what I’m afraid of is the opposite happening, meaning that people … the worst that should happen is that we develop robots so sophisticated that they appear to have free will and then we treat them with human dignity. That should be the worst that happens. What I’m afraid of is the opposite, is that if we’re talking about this particular hypothetical that we develop robots that have all of these apparent abilities and then we dehumanize them, which leads us to also dehumanize the other humans around us, which you could easily see happening, and the devaluation of life to the point where it doesn’t really matter. People have always treated, unfortunately, newly discovered other humans this way. So I don’t think there’s actually a new problem. I think it’s a pretty old problem. It’ll just be interesting when it’s made of human hands.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, it’s an opportunity to either celebrate humanity or to bring out the worst in humanity, so the derision that naturally happens, like you said with pointing out the other. Let me ask you about climate change. Let’s go from the meme to the profound philosophy.
Yeah, it’s an opportunity to either celebrate humanity or to bring out the worst in humanity, so the derision that naturally happens, like you said with pointing out the other. Let me ask you about climate change. Let’s go from the meme to the profound philosophy.
Climate change
Ben Shapiro
Sure.
Sure.
Lex Fridman
Okay. The meme is, there’s a clip of you talking about climate change and saying that =
Okay. The meme is, there’s a clip of you talking about climate change and saying that =
Ben Shapiro
Oh, The Aquaman meme.
Oh, The Aquaman meme.
Lex Fridman
You said that for the sake of argument, and, “If the water level rises five to 10 feet in the next 100 years, people will just sell their homes and move.” Then the meme was, “Sell to who?” Can you argue both sides of that?
You said that for the sake of argument, and, “If the water level rises five to 10 feet in the next 100 years, people will just sell their homes and move.” Then the meme was, “Sell to who?” Can you argue both sides of that?
Ben Shapiro
That the argument that they’re making as a straw man, the argument that I’m making is over time, I don’t mean that if a tsunami’s about to hit your house, you can list it on eBay. That’s not what I mean, obviously. What I mean is that human beings have an extraordinary ability to adapt. It’s actually our best quality, and that as water levels rise, real estate prices in those areas tends to fall, that over time, people tend to abandon those areas. They tend to leave, they tend to, right now, sell their houses and then they tend to move. Eventually, those houses will be worthless and you won’t have anybody to sell to. But presumably not that many people will be living there by that point, which is one of the reasons why the price would be low because there’s no demand.
That the argument that they’re making as a straw man, the argument that I’m making is over time, I don’t mean that if a tsunami’s about to hit your house, you can list it on eBay. That’s not what I mean, obviously. What I mean is that human beings have an extraordinary ability to adapt. It’s actually our best quality, and that as water levels rise, real estate prices in those areas tends to fall, that over time, people tend to abandon those areas. They tend to leave, they tend to, right now, sell their houses and then they tend to move. Eventually, those houses will be worthless and you won’t have anybody to sell to. But presumably not that many people will be living there by that point, which is one of the reasons why the price would be low because there’s no demand.
Lex Fridman
So it’s over 100 years, so all of these price dynamics are very gradual relative to the other price dynamics-
So it’s over 100 years, so all of these price dynamics are very gradual relative to the other price dynamics-
Ben Shapiro
Correct. That’s why the joke of it, of course, is that I’m saying that tomorrow there’s a tsunami on your doorstep and you’re like, “Oh, Bob will buy my house.” Bob ain’t going to buy your house. We all get that, but it’s a funny name. I’ll admit, I laughed at it.
Correct. That’s why the joke of it, of course, is that I’m saying that tomorrow there’s a tsunami on your doorstep and you’re like, “Oh, Bob will buy my house.” Bob ain’t going to buy your house. We all get that, but it’s a funny name. I’ll admit, I laughed at it.
Lex Fridman
How is your view on climate change, the human contribution to climate change, what we should do in terms of policy to respond to climate change? How has that changed over the years?
How is your view on climate change, the human contribution to climate change, what we should do in terms of policy to respond to climate change? How has that changed over the years?
Ben Shapiro
I would say the truth is for years and years, I’ve believed that climate change was a reality and that anthropogenic climate change is a reality. I don’t argue with the IPCC estimates. I know climatologists at places like MIT or Caltech and they know this stuff better than I do. So the notion that climate change is just not happening or that human beings have not contributed to climate change, I find doubtful. The question is to what extent human beings are contributing to climate change, is it 50%? Is it 70%? Is it 90%? I think there’s a little bit more play in the joints there, so it’s not totally clear. The one thing I do know, and this I know with factual accuracy, is that all of the measures that are currently being proposed are unworkable and will not happen. So when people say Paris Climate Accords, even if those were imposed, you’re talking about lowering the potential trajectory of climate change by a fraction of a degree.
I would say the truth is for years and years, I’ve believed that climate change was a reality and that anthropogenic climate change is a reality. I don’t argue with the IPCC estimates. I know climatologists at places like MIT or Caltech and they know this stuff better than I do. So the notion that climate change is just not happening or that human beings have not contributed to climate change, I find doubtful. The question is to what extent human beings are contributing to climate change, is it 50%? Is it 70%? Is it 90%? I think there’s a little bit more play in the joints there, so it’s not totally clear. The one thing I do know, and this I know with factual accuracy, is that all of the measures that are currently being proposed are unworkable and will not happen. So when people say Paris Climate Accords, even if those were imposed, you’re talking about lowering the potential trajectory of climate change by a fraction of a degree.
If you’re talking about Green New Deal, net zero by 2050, the carbon is up there in the air and the climate change is going to happen. Also, you’re assuming that geopolitical dynamics don’t exist, so everybody’s going to magically get on the same page and we’re all going to be imposing massive carbon taxes to get to net zero by 2050, hundreds of times higher than they currently are. Now, that’s not me saying that, that’s Klaus Schwab saying this of the World Economic Forum who’s a big advocate of exactly this policy. The reality is that we’re going to have to accept that at least 1.5 degrees Celsius of climate change is baked into the cake by the end of the century. Again, not me talking, William Nordhaus, the economist who just won the Nobel Prize on this stuff talking. So what that suggests to me is what we’ve always known, human beings are crap at mitigation and excellent in adaptation.
We are very bad at mitigating our own fault. We are very, very good at adapting to the problems as they exist, which means that all of the estimates that billions will die, that there will be mass starvation, that we’ll see the migration in just a few years of hundreds of millions of people. Those are wrong. What you’ll see is a gradual change of living. People will move away from areas that are inundated on the coast. You’ll see people building sea walls. You’ll see people adapting new technologies to suck carbon out of the air. You’ll see geoengineering. This is the stuff that we should be focused on. The bizarre focus on what if we just keep tossing hundreds of billions of dollars at the same three technologies over and over in the hopes that if we subsidize it, this will magically make it more efficient, I’ve seen no evidence whatsoever that that is going to be the way that we get ourselves out of this. Necessity being the mother invention, I think human beings will adapt because we have adapted and we’ll continue to adapt.
Lex Fridman
So to the degree we invest in the threat of this, it should be into the policies that help with the adaptation versus the mitigation?
So to the degree we invest in the threat of this, it should be into the policies that help with the adaptation versus the mitigation?
Ben Shapiro
Right, seawalls, geoengineering, developing technology to suck carbon out of the air. Again, if I thought that there was more hope for the green technologies currently in play than subsidization of those technologies, I might be a little bit more for, but I haven’t seen tremendous progress over the course of the last 30 years in the reliability of, for example, wind energy or the ability to store solar energy to the extent necessary to actually power a grid.
Right, seawalls, geoengineering, developing technology to suck carbon out of the air. Again, if I thought that there was more hope for the green technologies currently in play than subsidization of those technologies, I might be a little bit more for, but I haven’t seen tremendous progress over the course of the last 30 years in the reliability of, for example, wind energy or the ability to store solar energy to the extent necessary to actually power a grid.
Lex Fridman
What’s your thoughts on nuclear energy? Is it [inaudible 01:56:51]
What’s your thoughts on nuclear energy? Is it [inaudible 01:56:51]
Ben Shapiro
Nuclear energy is great. Nuclear energy is a proven source of energy, and we should be radically extending the use of nuclear energy. To me, honestly, this is a litmus test question as to whether you take climate change seriously. If you’re on right or left and you take climate change seriously, you should be in favor of nuclear energy. If you’re not, I know that you have other priorities.
Nuclear energy is great. Nuclear energy is a proven source of energy, and we should be radically extending the use of nuclear energy. To me, honestly, this is a litmus test question as to whether you take climate change seriously. If you’re on right or left and you take climate change seriously, you should be in favor of nuclear energy. If you’re not, I know that you have other priorities.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, the fascinating thing about the climate change debate is the dynamics of the fearmongering over the past few decades, because some of the nuclear energy was tied up into that somehow. There’s a lot of fear about nuclear energy. It seems like there’s a lot of social phenomena, social dynamics involved versus dealing with just science. It’s interesting to watch. On my darker days, it makes me cynical about our ability to use reason in science to deal with the threats of the world.
Yeah, the fascinating thing about the climate change debate is the dynamics of the fearmongering over the past few decades, because some of the nuclear energy was tied up into that somehow. There’s a lot of fear about nuclear energy. It seems like there’s a lot of social phenomena, social dynamics involved versus dealing with just science. It’s interesting to watch. On my darker days, it makes me cynical about our ability to use reason in science to deal with the threats of the world.
Ben Shapiro
I think that our ability to use reason and science to deal with threats of the world is almost a timeframe question. So I think, again, we’re very bad at looking down the road and saying … because people can’t handle, for example, even things like compound interest. The idea that if, “I put a dollar in the bank today, that 15 years from now that’s going to be worth a lot more than a dollar,” people can’t actually see that. So the idea of, “Let’s foresee a problem then we’ll deal with it right now as opposed to 30 years down the road.” Typically, we let the problem happen and then we solve it and it’s bloodier and worse than it would’ve been if we had solved it 30 years ago, but it is, in fact, effective. And sometimes it turns out the solution that we’re proposing 30 years in advance is not effective and that can be a major problem as well.
I think that our ability to use reason and science to deal with threats of the world is almost a timeframe question. So I think, again, we’re very bad at looking down the road and saying … because people can’t handle, for example, even things like compound interest. The idea that if, “I put a dollar in the bank today, that 15 years from now that’s going to be worth a lot more than a dollar,” people can’t actually see that. So the idea of, “Let’s foresee a problem then we’ll deal with it right now as opposed to 30 years down the road.” Typically, we let the problem happen and then we solve it and it’s bloodier and worse than it would’ve been if we had solved it 30 years ago, but it is, in fact, effective. And sometimes it turns out the solution that we’re proposing 30 years in advance is not effective and that can be a major problem as well.
Lex Fridman
Well, that’s then the steel man, the case for fearmongering, for irrational fearmongering, we need to be scared shitless in order for us to do anything. I’m generally against that, but maybe on a population scale, maybe some of that is necessary for us to respond appropriate for two long-term threats. We should be scared shitless.
Well, that’s then the steel man, the case for fearmongering, for irrational fearmongering, we need to be scared shitless in order for us to do anything. I’m generally against that, but maybe on a population scale, maybe some of that is necessary for us to respond appropriate for two long-term threats. We should be scared shitless.
Ben Shapiro
I don’t think that we can actually do that, though. First of all, I think that it’s platonic lies or generally bad. Then second of all, I don’t think that we actually have the capacity to do this. I think that the people who are the elites of our society who get together in rooms and talk about this stuff, and I’ve been in some of those meetings at my synagogues Friday night, actually. No, but I’ve been-
I don’t think that we can actually do that, though. First of all, I think that it’s platonic lies or generally bad. Then second of all, I don’t think that we actually have the capacity to do this. I think that the people who are the elites of our society who get together in rooms and talk about this stuff, and I’ve been in some of those meetings at my synagogues Friday night, actually. No, but I’ve been-
Lex Fridman
I was going to make the joke but I’m glad you did.
I was going to make the joke but I’m glad you did.
Ben Shapiro
Yeah, I’ve been in rooms like Davos-like rooms, and when people discuss these sorts of topics and they’re like, “What if we just tell people that it’s going to be a disaster with tsunamis and day after tomorrow?” It’s like, you guys don’t have that power. You don’t. By the way, you’d dramatically undercut your own power because of COVID to do this stuff, because a lot of the, “What if we scare the living hell out of you to the point where you stay in your own house for two years and we tell you you can’t send your kids to school? Then we tell you that the vaccine is going to prevent transmission? Then we also tell you that we need to spend $7 trillion in one year and it won’t have any inflationary effect?” And it turns out you’re wrong on literally all of those things. The last two years have done more to undermine institutional trust than any time in probably American history. It’s pretty amazing.
Yeah, I’ve been in rooms like Davos-like rooms, and when people discuss these sorts of topics and they’re like, “What if we just tell people that it’s going to be a disaster with tsunamis and day after tomorrow?” It’s like, you guys don’t have that power. You don’t. By the way, you’d dramatically undercut your own power because of COVID to do this stuff, because a lot of the, “What if we scare the living hell out of you to the point where you stay in your own house for two years and we tell you you can’t send your kids to school? Then we tell you that the vaccine is going to prevent transmission? Then we also tell you that we need to spend $7 trillion in one year and it won’t have any inflationary effect?” And it turns out you’re wrong on literally all of those things. The last two years have done more to undermine institutional trust than any time in probably American history. It’s pretty amazing.
God and faith
Lex Fridman
Yeah, I tend to agree with the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Let me ask you back to the question of God, and a big ridiculous question, who’s God?
Yeah, I tend to agree with the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Let me ask you back to the question of God, and a big ridiculous question, who’s God?
Ben Shapiro
Who is God? I’m going to use the Aquinas formulation of what God is, that if there is a cause of all things, not physical things, if there is a cause underlying the reason of the universe, then that is the thing we call God, so not a big guy in the sky with a beard. He is the forest underlying the logic of the universe, if there is a logic to the universe, and he is the creator in the Judeo view of that universe. He does have an interest in us living in accordance with the laws of the universe that if you’re a religious Jew are encoded in the Torah. But if you’re not a religious Jew, it would be encoded in the natural law by Catholic theology.
Who is God? I’m going to use the Aquinas formulation of what God is, that if there is a cause of all things, not physical things, if there is a cause underlying the reason of the universe, then that is the thing we call God, so not a big guy in the sky with a beard. He is the forest underlying the logic of the universe, if there is a logic to the universe, and he is the creator in the Judeo view of that universe. He does have an interest in us living in accordance with the laws of the universe that if you’re a religious Jew are encoded in the Torah. But if you’re not a religious Jew, it would be encoded in the natural law by Catholic theology.
Lex Fridman
Why do you think God created the universe or as is popularly asked, what do you think is the meaning behind it? What’s the meaning of life?
Why do you think God created the universe or as is popularly asked, what do you think is the meaning behind it? What’s the meaning of life?
Ben Shapiro
What’s the meaning of life? I think that the meaning of life is to fulfill what God made you to do and that is a series of roles. I think that human beings, and here you have to look to human nature rather than looking to big questions. I’ve evolved something that I’ve really been working on, I’m writing a book about this actually, that I call colloquially role theory. Basically the idea is that the way that we interact with the world is through a series of roles, and those are also the things we find most important and most implementable. There’s virtue ethics which suggests that if we act in accordance with virtue like Aristotle, then we will be living the most fulfilled and meaningful life. Then you have deontological ethics like content ethics, it’s a rule-based ethic. You follow the rules, then you’ll find the meaning of life.
What’s the meaning of life? I think that the meaning of life is to fulfill what God made you to do and that is a series of roles. I think that human beings, and here you have to look to human nature rather than looking to big questions. I’ve evolved something that I’ve really been working on, I’m writing a book about this actually, that I call colloquially role theory. Basically the idea is that the way that we interact with the world is through a series of roles, and those are also the things we find most important and most implementable. There’s virtue ethics which suggests that if we act in accordance with virtue like Aristotle, then we will be living the most fulfilled and meaningful life. Then you have deontological ethics like content ethics, it’s a rule-based ethic. You follow the rules, then you’ll find the meaning of life.
Then what I’m proposing is that there’s something that I would call role ethics, which is there are a series of roles that we play across our lives, which are also the things that we tend to put on our tombstones and find the most meaningful. So when you go to a cemetery, you can see what people found the most meaningful because it’s the stuff they put on the stone that has four words on it, like beloved father, beloved mother, sister, brother, and you might have a job once in a while, a creator, a religious person. These are all roles that have existed across societies and across humanity, and those are the things where we actually find meaning. The way that we navigate those roles brings us meaning. I think that God created us in order to fulfill those roles for purposes that I can’t begin to understand because I ain’t him.
The more we recognize those roles and the more we live those roles and then we can express freedom within those roles, I think that the liberty exists inside each of those roles and that’s what makes all of our lives different and fun. We all parent in different ways, but being a parent is a meaningful role. We all have spouses, but how you interact that relationship is what makes your life meaningful and interesting. That is what we were put on earth to do. If we perform those roles properly, and those roles do include things like being a creator, we have a creative instinct as human beings, being a creator, being an innovator, being a defender of your family, being a social member of your community, which is something that we’re built to do. If we fulfill those roles properly, then we will have made the world a better place than we inherited it. And we’ll also have had the joy of experiencing the flow they talk about in psychology where when you engage in these roles, you actually do feel a flow.
Lex Fridman
So these roles are a fundamental part of the human condition?
So these roles are a fundamental part of the human condition?
Ben Shapiro
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
The book you’re working on is constructing a system to help us understand these roles?
The book you’re working on is constructing a system to help us understand these roles?
Ben Shapiro
It’s looking at, let’s assume that all that’s true. The real question in the book is, how do you construct a flourishing and useful society in politics?
It’s looking at, let’s assume that all that’s true. The real question in the book is, how do you construct a flourishing and useful society in politics?
Lex Fridman
So a society level, if this is our understanding of a human being, how do we construct a good society?
So a society level, if this is our understanding of a human being, how do we construct a good society?
Ben Shapiro
Right. Exactly, because I think that a lot of political theory is right now based in either J.S. Mill kind of thought, which is, all that a good politics does is it allows you wave your hand around until you hit somebody in the face-
Right. Exactly, because I think that a lot of political theory is right now based in either J.S. Mill kind of thought, which is, all that a good politics does is it allows you wave your hand around until you hit somebody in the face-
Ben Shapiro
All that a good politics does allows you to wave your hand around until you hit somebody in the face, or a [inaudible 02:04:05] thought, which is what if we constructed society in order to achieve the most for the least, essentially? What if we constructed society around what actually makes humans the most fulfilled, and that is the fulfillment of these particular roles?
All that a good politics does allows you to wave your hand around until you hit somebody in the face, or a [inaudible 02:04:05] thought, which is what if we constructed society in order to achieve the most for the least, essentially? What if we constructed society around what actually makes humans the most fulfilled, and that is the fulfillment of these particular roles?
And where does liberty come into that? How do you avoid the idea of a tyranny in that? Right? You have to be a mother, you must be a father, you must be a… Where does freedom come into that? Can you reject those roles totally as a society and be okay? The answer probably is not. So you need society that actually promotes and protects those roles, but also protects the freedom inside those roles.
And that raises a more fundamental question of what exactly liberty is for. And I think that both the right and the left actually tend to make a mistake when they discuss liberty. The left tends to think that liberty is an ultimate good. That simple choice makes a bad thing good, which is not true. And I think the right talks about liberty in almost the same terms sometimes. And I think that’s not true either. The question is whether liberty is of inherent value or instrumental value. Is liberty good in and of itself or is liberty good because it allows you to achieve X, Y or Z?
And I’ve thought about this one a lot and I tend to come down on the latter side of the aisle. I mean, you asked me areas where I move, this may be an area where I’ve moved. Because I think when you think more shallowly about politics, or maybe more quickly, because this is how we talk in America, is about liberties and rights, we tend to think that the right is what make… not the political right, rights make things good, liberties make things good.
The question really is what are those rights and liberties for? Now, you have to be careful so that doesn’t shade into tyranny, right? You can only have liberty to do the thing that I say that you can do. But there have to be spheres of liberty that are roiling and interesting and filled with debate, but without threatening the chief institutions that surround those liberties. Because if you destroy the institutions, liberties will go too. If you knock down the pillars of the society, the liberties that are on top of those pillars are going to collapse. And I think that if people are feeling as though we’re on the verge tyranny, I think that’s why.
Lex Fridman
This is fascinating by the way, it’s an instrumental perspective on liberty. That’s going to give me a lot to think about. Let me ask a personal question. Was there ever a time that you had a crisis of faith where you questioned your belief in God?
This is fascinating by the way, it’s an instrumental perspective on liberty. That’s going to give me a lot to think about. Let me ask a personal question. Was there ever a time that you had a crisis of faith where you questioned your belief in God?
Ben Shapiro
Sure. Let’s call it a crisis of faith and an ongoing question of faith, which I think is, I hope most religious people… And the word Israel in Hebrew, Israel, means to struggle with God. That’s literally what the word means. And so the idea of struggling with God, if you’re Jewish or Bnei Yisrael, the idea of struggling with God, I think is endemic to the human condition. If you understand what God’s doing, then I think you’re wrong. And if you think that that question doesn’t matter, then I think you’re also wrong. I think that God is a very necessary hypothesis.
Sure. Let’s call it a crisis of faith and an ongoing question of faith, which I think is, I hope most religious people… And the word Israel in Hebrew, Israel, means to struggle with God. That’s literally what the word means. And so the idea of struggling with God, if you’re Jewish or Bnei Yisrael, the idea of struggling with God, I think is endemic to the human condition. If you understand what God’s doing, then I think you’re wrong. And if you think that that question doesn’t matter, then I think you’re also wrong. I think that God is a very necessary hypothesis.
Lex Fridman
So struggle, the struggle with God, is life. That is the process of life.
So struggle, the struggle with God, is life. That is the process of life.
Ben Shapiro
That’s right. Because you’re never going to get to that answer otherwise you’re God and you aren’t.
That’s right. Because you’re never going to get to that answer otherwise you’re God and you aren’t.
Lex Fridman
Why does God allow cruelty and suffering in the world? One of the tough questions.
Why does God allow cruelty and suffering in the world? One of the tough questions.
Ben Shapiro
So we’re going deep here. There’re two types of cruelty and suffering. So if we’re talking about human cruelty and suffering, because God does not intervene to prevent people from exercising their free will, because to do so would be to deprive human beings of the choice that makes them human. This is the sin of the Garden of Eden basically, is that God could make you an angel, in which case you wouldn’t have the choice to do the wrong thing. But so long as we are going to allow for cause and effect in a universe shaped by your choice, cruelty and evil are going to exist.
So we’re going deep here. There’re two types of cruelty and suffering. So if we’re talking about human cruelty and suffering, because God does not intervene to prevent people from exercising their free will, because to do so would be to deprive human beings of the choice that makes them human. This is the sin of the Garden of Eden basically, is that God could make you an angel, in which case you wouldn’t have the choice to do the wrong thing. But so long as we are going to allow for cause and effect in a universe shaped by your choice, cruelty and evil are going to exist.
And then there’s the question of just the natural cruelty and vicissitudes of life. And the answer there is, I think that God obscures himself. I think that if God were to appear in all of his glory to people on a regular basis, I think they would make faith and you wouldn’t need it. There’d be no such thing as faith. It would just be reality, right? Nobody has to prove to you that the sun rises every day. But if God is to allow us the choice to believe in him, which is the ultimate choice from a religious point of view, then he’s going to have to obscure himself behind tragedy and horror and all those other things.
I mean, there’s a fairly well known capitalistic concept called [foreign language 02:08:08] in Judaism, which is the idea that when God created the universe, he sort of withdrew in order to make space for all of these things to happen.
Lex Fridman
So God doesn’t have an instrumental perspective on liberty?
So God doesn’t have an instrumental perspective on liberty?
Ben Shapiro
In a chief sense He does. Because the best use of liberty is going to be belief in Him. And you can misuse your liberty. There will be consequences if you believe in an afterlife, or if you believe in sort of a generalized better version of life led by faith, then liberty does have a purpose. But He also believes that you have to give people from a cosmic perspective the liberty to do wrong without threatening all the institutions of society. I mean, that’s why it does say in the Bible that if man sheds blood, by man shall his blood be shed, right? There are punishments that are in biblical thought for doing things that are wrong.
In a chief sense He does. Because the best use of liberty is going to be belief in Him. And you can misuse your liberty. There will be consequences if you believe in an afterlife, or if you believe in sort of a generalized better version of life led by faith, then liberty does have a purpose. But He also believes that you have to give people from a cosmic perspective the liberty to do wrong without threatening all the institutions of society. I mean, that’s why it does say in the Bible that if man sheds blood, by man shall his blood be shed, right? There are punishments that are in biblical thought for doing things that are wrong.
Lex Fridman
So for a human being who lacks the faith in God, so if you’re an atheist, can you still be a good person?
So for a human being who lacks the faith in God, so if you’re an atheist, can you still be a good person?
Ben Shapiro
Of course, a hundred percent. And there are a lot of religious people who are crappy people.
Of course, a hundred percent. And there are a lot of religious people who are crappy people.
Lex Fridman
How do I understand that tension?
How do I understand that tension?
Ben Shapiro
Well, from a religious perspective, what you would say is that it is perfectly plausible to live in accordance with a set of rules that don’t damage other people without believing in God. You just might be understanding the reason for doing that wrong, is what a religious person would say. There’s the conversation, again, that I had with Sam, basically, is you and I agree, I said this to Sam, you and I agree on nearly everything when it comes to morality, we probably disagree on 15 to 20% of things. The other 80% is because you grew up in a Judeo-Christian society and so did I. We grew up 10 miles from each other around the turn of the millennium. So there’s that.
Well, from a religious perspective, what you would say is that it is perfectly plausible to live in accordance with a set of rules that don’t damage other people without believing in God. You just might be understanding the reason for doing that wrong, is what a religious person would say. There’s the conversation, again, that I had with Sam, basically, is you and I agree, I said this to Sam, you and I agree on nearly everything when it comes to morality, we probably disagree on 15 to 20% of things. The other 80% is because you grew up in a Judeo-Christian society and so did I. We grew up 10 miles from each other around the turn of the millennium. So there’s that.
You can perfectly well be an atheist living a good, moral, decent life, because you can live a good, moral, decent life with regard to other people without believing in God. I don’t think you can build a society on that because I think that that relies on the sort of goodness of mankind, natural goodness of mankind. I don’t believe in the natural goodness of mankind.
Lex Fridman
You don’t?
You don’t?
Ben Shapiro
No. I believe that man has created both sinful and with the capacity for sin and the capacity for good.
No. I believe that man has created both sinful and with the capacity for sin and the capacity for good.
Lex Fridman
But if you let them be on their own, doesn’t-
But if you let them be on their own, doesn’t-
Ben Shapiro
Without social institutions to shape them, I think that that’s very likely to go poorly.
Without social institutions to shape them, I think that that’s very likely to go poorly.
Lex Fridman
Oh, interesting. Well, we came to something we disagree on, but that might reflect itself in our approach to Twitter as well. I think if humans are left on their own, they tend towards good. They definitely have the capacity for good and evil. But when left on their own, I tend to believe they’re good.
Oh, interesting. Well, we came to something we disagree on, but that might reflect itself in our approach to Twitter as well. I think if humans are left on their own, they tend towards good. They definitely have the capacity for good and evil. But when left on their own, I tend to believe they’re good.
Ben Shapiro
I think they might be good with limits. What I mean by that is that what the evidence, I think, tends to show, is that human beings are quite tribal. So what you’ll end up with is people who are good with their immediate family and maybe their immediate neighbors, and then when they’re threatened by an outside tribe, then they kill everyone. Which is sort of the history of civilization in the pre-civilization era, which was a very violent time. Pre-civilization era was quite violent.
I think they might be good with limits. What I mean by that is that what the evidence, I think, tends to show, is that human beings are quite tribal. So what you’ll end up with is people who are good with their immediate family and maybe their immediate neighbors, and then when they’re threatened by an outside tribe, then they kill everyone. Which is sort of the history of civilization in the pre-civilization era, which was a very violent time. Pre-civilization era was quite violent.
Tribalism
Lex Fridman
Do you think on the topic of tribalism in our modern world, what are the pros and cons of tribes? Is that something we should try to outgrow as a civilization?
Do you think on the topic of tribalism in our modern world, what are the pros and cons of tribes? Is that something we should try to outgrow as a civilization?
Ben Shapiro
I don’t think it’s ever going to be possible to fully outgrow tribalism. I think it’s a natural human condition to want to be with people who think like you or have a common set of beliefs. And I think trying to obliterate that in the name of a universalism, likely leads to utopian results that have devastating consequences. Utopian sort of universalism has been failing every time it’s tried, whether you’re talking about, now it seems to be sort of a liberal universalism, which is being rejected by a huge number of people around the world in various different cultures. Or you’re talking about religious universalism, which typically comes with religious tyranny or you’re talking about communistic or Nazi-ist sort of universalism, which comes with mass slaughter.
I don’t think it’s ever going to be possible to fully outgrow tribalism. I think it’s a natural human condition to want to be with people who think like you or have a common set of beliefs. And I think trying to obliterate that in the name of a universalism, likely leads to utopian results that have devastating consequences. Utopian sort of universalism has been failing every time it’s tried, whether you’re talking about, now it seems to be sort of a liberal universalism, which is being rejected by a huge number of people around the world in various different cultures. Or you’re talking about religious universalism, which typically comes with religious tyranny or you’re talking about communistic or Nazi-ist sort of universalism, which comes with mass slaughter.
So this is, universalism I’m not a believer in. I think that you have some values that are fairly limited that all human beings should hold in common. And that’s pretty much it. I think that everybody should have the ability to join with their own culture. I think how we define tribe is a different thing. So I think that tribes should not be defined by innate physical characteristics, for example. Because I think that, thank God, as a civilization, we’ve outgrown that. And I think that that is a childish way to view the world. All the tall people aren’t a tribe. All the black people [inaudible 02:12:25], all the white people aren’t a tribe.
Lex Fridman
So the tribes should be formed over ideas versus physical characteristic.
So the tribes should be formed over ideas versus physical characteristic.
Ben Shapiro
That’s right. Which is why, actually, to go back to the beginning of the conversation, when it comes to Jews, I’m not a big believer in ethnic Judaism. As a person who takes Judaism seriously, Judaism is more to me than you were born with a last name like Berg or Stein. And so-
That’s right. Which is why, actually, to go back to the beginning of the conversation, when it comes to Jews, I’m not a big believer in ethnic Judaism. As a person who takes Judaism seriously, Judaism is more to me than you were born with a last name like Berg or Stein. And so-
Lex Fridman
Hitler would disagree with you.
Hitler would disagree with you.
Ben Shapiro
He would disagree with me. But that’s because he was a tribalist, right? Who thought in racial terms.
He would disagree with me. But that’s because he was a tribalist, right? Who thought in racial terms.
Lex Fridman
Maybe robots will help us see humans as one tribe. Maybe that, as long as-
Maybe robots will help us see humans as one tribe. Maybe that, as long as-
Ben Shapiro
This is Reagan’s idea, right? Reagan said, “Well if there’s an alien invasion, then we’ll all be on the same side. So I’ll go over to the Soviets and we’ll talk about it.”
This is Reagan’s idea, right? Reagan said, “Well if there’s an alien invasion, then we’ll all be on the same side. So I’ll go over to the Soviets and we’ll talk about it.”
Lex Fridman
There’s some deep truth to that. What does it mean to be a good man? The various roles that a human being takes on in this Role Theory that you’ve spoken about. What does it mean to be a good…
There’s some deep truth to that. What does it mean to be a good man? The various roles that a human being takes on in this Role Theory that you’ve spoken about. What does it mean to be a good…
Ben Shapiro
It means to perform… Now, I will do Aristotle. It means to be, perform the function well. What Aristotle says, is the good is not like moral good, moral evil in the way that we tend to think about it. He meant that a good cup holds liquid, a good spoon holds soup. It means that a thing that is broken can’t hold those things, right? So the idea of being a good person means that you are fulfilling the function for which you were made. It’s a teleological view of humanity.
It means to perform… Now, I will do Aristotle. It means to be, perform the function well. What Aristotle says, is the good is not like moral good, moral evil in the way that we tend to think about it. He meant that a good cup holds liquid, a good spoon holds soup. It means that a thing that is broken can’t hold those things, right? So the idea of being a good person means that you are fulfilling the function for which you were made. It’s a teleological view of humanity.
So if you’re a good father, this means that you are bringing up your child in durable values that is going to bring them up healthy, capable of protecting themselves and passing on the traditional wisdom of the ages to future generations, while allowing for the capacity for innovation. That’d be being a good father. Being a good spouse would mean protecting and unifying with your spouse and building a safe family and a place to raise children. Being a good citizen of your community means protecting the fellow citizens of your community while incentivizing them to build for themselves. It becomes actually much easier to think of how to…
This is why I like the Role Theory because it’s very hard, since sort of in Virtue Theory to say be generous. Okay, how does that manifest? I don’t what that looks like. Sometimes being generous might be being not generous to other people. When Aristotle says that you should be benevolent, what does that mean? This is very vague. When I say be a good dad, most people sort of have a gut level understanding of what it means to be a good dad. And mostly, they have a gut level understanding what it means to really be a really bad dad. And so what it means to be a good man is to fulfill those roles, as many of them as you can properly and at full function. And that’s a very hard job.
And I’ve said before that, because I engage a lot with the public and all of this, the word great comes up a lot. What is it to be a great leader? What is it to be a great person? And I’ve always said to people, it’s actually fairly easy to be great. It’s very difficult to be good. There are a lot of very great people who are not very good. And there are not a lot of good people. And most of them, frankly, most good people die, mourned by their family and friends and two generations later they’re forgotten. But those are the people who incrementally move the ball forward in the world sometimes much more than the people who are considered great.
Lex Fridman
“Understand the role in your life that involves being a cup and be damned good at it.”
“Understand the role in your life that involves being a cup and be damned good at it.”
Ben Shapiro
Exactly. That’s right.
Exactly. That’s right.
Lex Fridman
“Hold the soup.” It’s very
“Hold the soup.” It’s very
Ben Shapiro
Jordan Peterson [inaudible 02:15:31].
Jordan Peterson [inaudible 02:15:31].
Lex Fridman
It’s very like [inaudible 02:15:32] or Jordan Peterson.
It’s very like [inaudible 02:15:32] or Jordan Peterson.
Ben Shapiro
Exactly.
Exactly.
Advice for young people
Lex Fridman
I think people will quote you for years and years to come on that. What advice would you give, a lot of young people look up to you, what advice, despite their better judgment? No, I’m just kidding. Only kidding. They seriously look up to you and draw inspiration from your ideas, from your bold thinking. What advice would you give to them? How to live a life worth living, how to have a career they can be proud of and everything like that?
I think people will quote you for years and years to come on that. What advice would you give, a lot of young people look up to you, what advice, despite their better judgment? No, I’m just kidding. Only kidding. They seriously look up to you and draw inspiration from your ideas, from your bold thinking. What advice would you give to them? How to live a life worth living, how to have a career they can be proud of and everything like that?
Ben Shapiro
So live out the values that you think are really important and seek those values in others would be the first piece of advice. Second piece of advice, don’t go on Twitter until you’re 26.
So live out the values that you think are really important and seek those values in others would be the first piece of advice. Second piece of advice, don’t go on Twitter until you’re 26.
Lex Fridman
Why 26?
Why 26?
Ben Shapiro
Because your brain is fully developed at that point. As I said early on, I was on social media and writing columns from the time I was 17. It was a great opportunity. And as it turns out, a great temptation to say enormous numbers of stupid things when you’re young. I mean, you’re kind of trying out ideas and you’re putting them on, you’re taking them off. And social media permanentizes those things and engraves them in stone and then that’s used against you for the rest of your life. So I tell young people this all the time, if you’re going to be on social media, be on social media but don’t post, watch, if you want to take in information. And more importantly, you should read books.
Because your brain is fully developed at that point. As I said early on, I was on social media and writing columns from the time I was 17. It was a great opportunity. And as it turns out, a great temptation to say enormous numbers of stupid things when you’re young. I mean, you’re kind of trying out ideas and you’re putting them on, you’re taking them off. And social media permanentizes those things and engraves them in stone and then that’s used against you for the rest of your life. So I tell young people this all the time, if you’re going to be on social media, be on social media but don’t post, watch, if you want to take in information. And more importantly, you should read books.
As far as other advice, I’d say engage in your community. There’s no substitute for engaging in your community. And engage in interpersonal action because that will soften you and make you a better person. I’ve become a better person since I got married. I’ve become an even better person since I’ve had kids. So you can imagine how terrible I was before all these things. And engaging your community does allow you to build the things that matter on the most local, possible level.
I mean the outcome, by the way, of the sort of politics, of the politics of fulfillment that I was talking about earlier, is a lot of localism. Because the roles that I’m talking about are largely local roles. So that stuff has to be protected locally. I think we focus way too much in this country and others, on world beating solutions, national solutions, solutions that apply to hundreds of millions of people. How we get to the solutions that apply for 5, and then we get to the solutions that apply to 20, and then we get to the solutions that involve 200 people or 1,000 people. Let’s solve that stuff. And I think the solutions at the higher level flow bottom up, not top down.
Lex Fridman
What about mentors and maybe role models? Have you had a mentor or maybe people you look up to, either you interacted on a local scale, like you actually knew them or somebody you really looked up to?
What about mentors and maybe role models? Have you had a mentor or maybe people you look up to, either you interacted on a local scale, like you actually knew them or somebody you really looked up to?
Ben Shapiro
For me, I’m very lucky, I grew up in a very solid, two-parent household. I’m extremely close with my parents. I’ve lived near my parents literally my entire life with the exception of three years of law school. And right now, they live a mile and a half from us.
For me, I’m very lucky, I grew up in a very solid, two-parent household. I’m extremely close with my parents. I’ve lived near my parents literally my entire life with the exception of three years of law school. And right now, they live a mile and a half from us.
Lex Fridman
What did you learn about life from your parents and your father?
What did you learn about life from your parents and your father?
Ben Shapiro
Oh man, so many things from my parents.
Oh man, so many things from my parents.
Lex Fridman
Good and bad.
Good and bad.
Ben Shapiro
That’s a hard one. I mean, I think the good stuff from my dad is that you should hold true to your values. He’s very big on, you have values, those values are important, hold true to them.
That’s a hard one. I mean, I think the good stuff from my dad is that you should hold true to your values. He’s very big on, you have values, those values are important, hold true to them.
Lex Fridman
Did you understand what your values are, what your principles are early on?
Did you understand what your values are, what your principles are early on?
Ben Shapiro
Fairly quickly. Yeah. Yeah. And so he was very big on that, which is why, for example, I get asked a lot in the Jewish community why I wear a kippah. And the answer is, it never occurred to me to take off the kippah. I always wore it. Why would I take it off at any point? That’s the life that I want to live. And that’s the way it is. So that was a big one from my dad.
Fairly quickly. Yeah. Yeah. And so he was very big on that, which is why, for example, I get asked a lot in the Jewish community why I wear a kippah. And the answer is, it never occurred to me to take off the kippah. I always wore it. Why would I take it off at any point? That’s the life that I want to live. And that’s the way it is. So that was a big one from my dad.
From my mom, practicality. My dad is more of a dreamer. My mom is much more practical. And so the sort of lessons that I learned from my dad are that you can have… This is the counter-lesson, is that you can have a good idea, but if you don’t have a plan for implementation, then it doesn’t end up as reality. And I think actually, he’s learned that better over the course of his life too.
But my dad, from the time I was very young, he wanted me to engage with other adults and he wanted me to learn from other people. And one of his roles was if he didn’t know something, he would find somebody who he thought did know the thing for me to talk to. That was a big thing. So I’m very lucky. I have wonderful parents.
Andrew Breitbart
As far as of other mentors, in terms of the media, Andrew Breitbart was a mentor. Andrew, obviously, he was kind of known in his latter days, I think more for the militancy than when I was very close with him.
Lex Fridman
So for somebody like me who knows more about the militancy, can you tell me what makes him a great man?
So for somebody like me who knows more about the militancy, can you tell me what makes him a great man?
Ben Shapiro
Well, what made Andrew great is that he engaged with everyone. I mean everyone. So there are videos of him rollerblading down the boulevard and people would be protesting and he would literally rollerblade up to them and he would say, “Let’s go to lunch together.” And he would just do this. That’s actually who Andrew was.
Well, what made Andrew great is that he engaged with everyone. I mean everyone. So there are videos of him rollerblading down the boulevard and people would be protesting and he would literally rollerblade up to them and he would say, “Let’s go to lunch together.” And he would just do this. That’s actually who Andrew was.
Lex Fridman
What was the thinking behind that? Just-
What was the thinking behind that? Just-
Ben Shapiro
That’s who he was. He was just careless. He was much more outgoing than I am actually. He was very warm with people. For me, I would say that with Andrew, I knew Andrew for, say I’m around 16, he passed away when I would’ve been 28. So I knew Andrew for 10, 12 years. And people who met Andrew for about 10 minutes knew Andrew 99% as well as I knew Andrew. Because he was just all outfront, like everything was out here. And he loved talking to people. He loved engaging with people. And so this made him a lot of fun and unpredictable and fun to watch and all of that.
That’s who he was. He was just careless. He was much more outgoing than I am actually. He was very warm with people. For me, I would say that with Andrew, I knew Andrew for, say I’m around 16, he passed away when I would’ve been 28. So I knew Andrew for 10, 12 years. And people who met Andrew for about 10 minutes knew Andrew 99% as well as I knew Andrew. Because he was just all outfront, like everything was out here. And he loved talking to people. He loved engaging with people. And so this made him a lot of fun and unpredictable and fun to watch and all of that.
And then I think Twitter got to him. Twitter is one of the lessons I learned from Andrew, is the counter-lesson, which is Twitter can poison you. Twitter can really wreck you. If you spend all day on Twitter, reading the comments and getting angry at people who are talking about you, it becomes a very difficult life. And I think that in the last year of his life, Andrew got very caught up in that because of a series of circumstances.
Lex Fridman
It can actually affect your mind, it can actually make you resentful, all that kind of stuff.
It can actually affect your mind, it can actually make you resentful, all that kind of stuff.
Ben Shapiro
I tend to agree with that. But the lesson that I learned from Andrew is engage with everybody. Take joy in the mission that you’re given. And you can’t always fulfill that, sometimes it’s really rough and difficult. I’m not going to pretend that it’s all fun and rainbows all the time, because it isn’t. And some of the stuff that I have to cover, I don’t like. And some of the things I have to say, I don’t particularly like. That happens. But that’s what I learned from Andrew.
I tend to agree with that. But the lesson that I learned from Andrew is engage with everybody. Take joy in the mission that you’re given. And you can’t always fulfill that, sometimes it’s really rough and difficult. I’m not going to pretend that it’s all fun and rainbows all the time, because it isn’t. And some of the stuff that I have to cover, I don’t like. And some of the things I have to say, I don’t particularly like. That happens. But that’s what I learned from Andrew.
As far as sort of other mentors, I had some teachers when I was a kid who said things that stuck with me. I had a fourth grade teacher named Miss Genetti who said, “Don’t let potential be written on your tombstone.” Which is a pretty-
Lex Fridman
That’s a good line.
That’s a good line.
Ben Shapiro
It’s a great line, particularly to a fourth grader. There was a guy in 11th grade, English teacher named Anthony Miller, who was terrific, really good writer. He had studied with James Joyce at Trinity College in Dublin. And so he and I really got along and he helped my writing a lot.
It’s a great line, particularly to a fourth grader. There was a guy in 11th grade, English teacher named Anthony Miller, who was terrific, really good writer. He had studied with James Joyce at Trinity College in Dublin. And so he and I really got along and he helped my writing a lot.
Self-doubt
Lex Fridman
Did you ever have doubt in yourself? I mean, especially as you gotten into the public eye with all the attacks, did you ever doubt your ability to stay strong, to be able to be a voice of the ideas that you represent?
Did you ever have doubt in yourself? I mean, especially as you gotten into the public eye with all the attacks, did you ever doubt your ability to stay strong, to be able to be a voice of the ideas that you represent?
Ben Shapiro
Definitely. I doubt my ability to say what I want to say. I doubt my ability to handle the emotional blowback of saying it, meaning that that’s difficult. I mean, again, to take just one example, in 2016, the ADL measured that I was the number one target of antisemitism on planet earth. That’s not fun. It’s unpleasant. And when you take critiques, not from anti-Semites, but when you take critiques from people generally, we talked about near the beginning, how you surround yourself with people who are going to give you good feedback. Sometimes it’s hard to tell. Sometimes people are giving you feedback and you don’t know whether it’s well motivated or poorly motivated. And if you are trying to be a decent person, you can’t cut off the mechanism of feedback.
Definitely. I doubt my ability to say what I want to say. I doubt my ability to handle the emotional blowback of saying it, meaning that that’s difficult. I mean, again, to take just one example, in 2016, the ADL measured that I was the number one target of antisemitism on planet earth. That’s not fun. It’s unpleasant. And when you take critiques, not from anti-Semites, but when you take critiques from people generally, we talked about near the beginning, how you surround yourself with people who are going to give you good feedback. Sometimes it’s hard to tell. Sometimes people are giving you feedback and you don’t know whether it’s well motivated or poorly motivated. And if you are trying to be a decent person, you can’t cut off the mechanism of feedback.
And so what that means is sometimes you take to heart the wrong thing or you take it to heart too much, you’re not light enough about it. You take it very, very seriously. You lose sleep over it. Man, I can’t tell you the number of nights where I’ve just not slept because of some critique somebody’s made of me. And I’ve thought to myself, maybe that’s right. And sometimes it is right.
Lex Fridman
Some of that is good, to stew in that criticism, but some of that can destroy you. Do you have a shortcut? So Rogan has talked about taking a lot of mushrooms, since you’re not into the mushroom thing, what’s your escape from that when you get low, when you can’t sleep?
Some of that is good, to stew in that criticism, but some of that can destroy you. Do you have a shortcut? So Rogan has talked about taking a lot of mushrooms, since you’re not into the mushroom thing, what’s your escape from that when you get low, when you can’t sleep?
Ben Shapiro
Usually, writing is a big one for me. So the writing for me is cathartic. I love writing. That is a huge one. Spending time with my family. Again, I usually have a close circle of friends who I will talk with in order to bounce ideas off of them. And then, once I’ve kind of talked it through, I tend to feel a little bit better. Exercise is also a big one. I mean, if I go a few days without exercise, I tend to get pretty grumpy pretty quickly. I mean, I got to keep the six pack going somehow, man.
Usually, writing is a big one for me. So the writing for me is cathartic. I love writing. That is a huge one. Spending time with my family. Again, I usually have a close circle of friends who I will talk with in order to bounce ideas off of them. And then, once I’ve kind of talked it through, I tend to feel a little bit better. Exercise is also a big one. I mean, if I go a few days without exercise, I tend to get pretty grumpy pretty quickly. I mean, I got to keep the six pack going somehow, man.
Lex Fridman
There you and Rogan agree. Well, we haven’t, aside from Twitter, mentioned love. What’s the role of love in the human condition? Ben Shapiro?
There you and Rogan agree. Well, we haven’t, aside from Twitter, mentioned love. What’s the role of love in the human condition? Ben Shapiro?
Love
Ben Shapiro
Man, don’t get asked for love too much. In fact, I was-
Man, don’t get asked for love too much. In fact, I was-
Lex Fridman
You don’t get that question on college campuses?
You don’t get that question on college campuses?
Ben Shapiro
No, I typically don’t actually. In fact, we were at an event recently, a Daily Wire event. And in the middle of this event, it’s a meet and greet with some of the audience. And in the middle of this event, this guy walks by with this girl, they’re talking and they’re talking to me and their time kind of runs, the security’s moving them. And he says, “No, no, no, wait. Hold on a minute.” And he gets down on one knee and he proposes the girl in front of me. And I said to him, “This is the weirdest proposal in human history. What is happening right now? I was your choice of cupid here?” He said, “Well, we actually got together because we listened to your show.” And I said, “I can perform a Jewish marriage right now. We’re going to need a glass, we’re going to need some wine. It’s going to get weird real fast.” But yeah, so love doctor, I’m typically not asked too much about.
No, I typically don’t actually. In fact, we were at an event recently, a Daily Wire event. And in the middle of this event, it’s a meet and greet with some of the audience. And in the middle of this event, this guy walks by with this girl, they’re talking and they’re talking to me and their time kind of runs, the security’s moving them. And he says, “No, no, no, wait. Hold on a minute.” And he gets down on one knee and he proposes the girl in front of me. And I said to him, “This is the weirdest proposal in human history. What is happening right now? I was your choice of cupid here?” He said, “Well, we actually got together because we listened to your show.” And I said, “I can perform a Jewish marriage right now. We’re going to need a glass, we’re going to need some wine. It’s going to get weird real fast.” But yeah, so love doctor, I’m typically not asked too much about.
The role of love is important in binding together human beings who ought to be bound together. And the role of respect is even more important in binding together broader groups of people. I think one of the mistakes that we make in politics is trying to substitute love for respect or respect for love. And I think that’s a big mistake. So I do not bear tremendous love in the same sense that I do for my family for random strangers. I don’t. I love my family, I love my kids. Anybody who tells you they love your kid as much as you love your kid is lying to you. It’s not true. I love my community more than I love other communities. I love my state more than I love other states. I love my country more than I love other countries. That’s all normal and that’s all good.
The problem of empathy can be when that becomes so tight-knit that you’re not outward looking, that you don’t actually have respect for other people. So in the local level, you need love in order to protect you and shield you and give you the strength to go forward. And then beyond that, you need a lot of respect for people who are not in the circle of love. And I think trying to extend love to people who either are not going to love you back or are going to slap you in the face for it, or who you’re just not that close to, it’s either it runs the risk of being ersatz and fake or it can actually be counterproductive in some senses.
Lex Fridman
Well, there’s some sense in which you could have love for other human beings just based on the humanity that connects everybody. So you love this whole project that we’re a part of. And actually, sort of another thing we disagree on, so loving a stranger, like having that basic empathy and compassion towards a stranger, even if it can hurt you, I think it’s ultimately, that to me, is what it means to be a good man. To live a good life is to have that compassion towards strangers. Because to me, it’s easy and natural and obvious to love people close to you, but to step outside yourself and to love others, I think that’s the fabric of a good society. You don’t think there’s value to that?
Well, there’s some sense in which you could have love for other human beings just based on the humanity that connects everybody. So you love this whole project that we’re a part of. And actually, sort of another thing we disagree on, so loving a stranger, like having that basic empathy and compassion towards a stranger, even if it can hurt you, I think it’s ultimately, that to me, is what it means to be a good man. To live a good life is to have that compassion towards strangers. Because to me, it’s easy and natural and obvious to love people close to you, but to step outside yourself and to love others, I think that’s the fabric of a good society. You don’t think there’s value to that?
Ben Shapiro
I think there can be, but I think we’re also discussing love almost in two different senses. Meaning that when I talk about love, what I think of immediately is the love I bear for my wife and kids or my parents or my siblings.
I think there can be, but I think we’re also discussing love almost in two different senses. Meaning that when I talk about love, what I think of immediately is the love I bear for my wife and kids or my parents or my siblings.
Lex Fridman
Or friendship.
Or friendship.
Ben Shapiro
Or the love of my close friends. But I think, that using that same term to describe how I feel about strangers, I think would just be inaccurate. And so that’s why I’m suggesting that respect might be a more solid and realistic foundation for the way that we treat people far away from us or people who are strangers. Respect for their dignity, respect for their priorities, respect for their role in life. It might be too much of an ask, in other words.
Or the love of my close friends. But I think, that using that same term to describe how I feel about strangers, I think would just be inaccurate. And so that’s why I’m suggesting that respect might be a more solid and realistic foundation for the way that we treat people far away from us or people who are strangers. Respect for their dignity, respect for their priorities, respect for their role in life. It might be too much of an ask, in other words.
There might be the rare human being who’s capable of literally loving a homeless man on the street the way they do loves his own family. But if you respect the homeless man on the street, the way that you respect your own family, because everyone deserves that respect, I think that you get to the same end without forcing people into a position of unrealistically expecting themselves to feel a thing they don’t feel.
One of the big questions in religion that comes up is God makes certain requests that you feel certain ways. You’re supposed to be [foreign language 02:28:05], you’re supposed to be happy about certain things or you’re supposed to love thy neighbor as thyself. Right? You’ll notice that in that statement, it’s thy neighbor, it’s not just generally anyone. It’s love thy neighbors. In any case, the-
Lex Fridman
I think that extends to anyone that follows you on Twitter, thy neighbor. Because God anticipated the social network aspect. That is not constrained by geography.
I think that extends to anyone that follows you on Twitter, thy neighbor. Because God anticipated the social network aspect. That is not constrained by geography.
Ben Shapiro
I’m going to differ with you on the interpretation on that. But in any case, the sort of extension of love outwards might be too big an ask. So maybe we can start with respect and then, hopefully, out of that respect can grow something more if people earn their way in. Because I think that one of the big problems when we were talking about universalism, is when people say, “I’m a world citizen. I love people of the other country as much as I love myself, or as much as I love my country,” it tends to actually lead to an almost crammed down utopianism. That, I think, can be kind of difficult.
I’m going to differ with you on the interpretation on that. But in any case, the sort of extension of love outwards might be too big an ask. So maybe we can start with respect and then, hopefully, out of that respect can grow something more if people earn their way in. Because I think that one of the big problems when we were talking about universalism, is when people say, “I’m a world citizen. I love people of the other country as much as I love myself, or as much as I love my country,” it tends to actually lead to an almost crammed down utopianism. That, I think, can be kind of difficult.
Because with love comes a certain expectation of solidarity. And I think, right, I mean, when you love your family, you love your wife, there’s a certain level of solidarity that is required inside the home in order to preserve the most loving kind of home. And so if you love everybody, then that sort of implies a certain level of solidarity that may not exist. So maybe the idea is, for me, start with respect and then maybe as people respect each other more, then love is an outgrowth of that. As opposed to starting with love, and then hoping that respect develops.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, there’s a danger that word becomes empty, and instead is used for dogmatic kind of utopianism versus-
Yeah, there’s a danger that word becomes empty, and instead is used for dogmatic kind of utopianism versus-
Ben Shapiro
I mean, this is the way that, for example, religious theocracies very often work. We love you so much, we have to convert you.
I mean, this is the way that, for example, religious theocracies very often work. We love you so much, we have to convert you.
Lex Fridman
So let’s start with respect. What I would love to see after our conversation today, is to see a Ben Shapiro that continues the growth on Twitter of being even more respectful than you’ve already been. And maybe one day, converting that into love on Twitter. That would, if I could see that in this world, that would make me die a happy man.
So let’s start with respect. What I would love to see after our conversation today, is to see a Ben Shapiro that continues the growth on Twitter of being even more respectful than you’ve already been. And maybe one day, converting that into love on Twitter. That would, if I could see that in this world, that would make me die a happy man.
Ben Shapiro
Wow. I can make that happen for you.
Wow. I can make that happen for you.
Lex Fridman
A little bit more in love in the world. For me, as a gift, for me.
A little bit more in love in the world. For me, as a gift, for me.
Ben Shapiro
I’ll try to make that happen. I do have one question. I’m going to need you to tell me, which jokes are okay? Are jokes still okay?
I’ll try to make that happen. I do have one question. I’m going to need you to tell me, which jokes are okay? Are jokes still okay?
Lex Fridman
So yeah, can I just run your Twitter from now on? You just send it to me.
So yeah, can I just run your Twitter from now on? You just send it to me.
Ben Shapiro
A hundred percent. I’ll prescreen you the jokes and you can tell me if this is a loving joke or if this is a hate-filled [inaudible 02:30:26].
A hundred percent. I’ll prescreen you the jokes and you can tell me if this is a loving joke or if this is a hate-filled [inaudible 02:30:26].
Lex Fridman
People will be very surprised by all the heart emojis that start popping up on your Twitter. But thank you so much for being bold and fearless and exploring ideas. And your Twitter aside, thank you for being just good faith in all the arguments and all the conversations you’re having with people. It’s a huge honor. Thank you for talking to me.
People will be very surprised by all the heart emojis that start popping up on your Twitter. But thank you so much for being bold and fearless and exploring ideas. And your Twitter aside, thank you for being just good faith in all the arguments and all the conversations you’re having with people. It’s a huge honor. Thank you for talking to me.
Ben Shapiro
Hey, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.
Hey, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.
Lex Fridman
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Transcript for Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War | Lex Fridman Podcast #445
This is a transcript of Lex Fridman Podcast #445 with Vivek Ramaswamy.
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It’s an assault and a crusade on the nanny state itself. And that nanny state presents itself in several forms. There’s the entitlement state, it’s the welfare state, presents itself in the form of the regulatory state. That’s what we’re talking about. And then there’s the foreign nanny state where effectively we are subsidizing other countries that aren’t paying their fair share of protection or other resources we provide them. If I was to summarize my ideology, in a nutshell, it is to terminate the nanny state in the United States of America in all of its forms, the entitlement state, the regulatory state and the foreign policy nanny state. Once we’ve done that, we’ve revived the republic that I think would make George Washington proud.
So what do we stand for as conservatives? I think we stand for the ideals that we fought the American Revolution for in 1776. Ideals like merit. That the best person gets the job without regard to their genetics. That you get ahead in this country, not on the color of your skin, but on the content of your character. Free speech, an open debate, not just as some sort of catchphrase, but the idea that any opinion, no matter how heinous, you get to express it in the United States of America. Self-governance and this is a big one right now, is that the people we elect to run the government, they’re no longer the ones who actually run the government. We, in the conservative movement, I believe, should believe in restoring self-governance where it’s not bureaucrats running the show, but actually elected representatives.
And then the other ideal that the nation was founded on that I think we need to revive and I think as a north star of the conservative movement is restoring the rule of law in this country. You think about even the abandonment of the rule of law at the southern border. It’s particularly personal to me as the kid of legal immigrants to this country. You and I actually share a couple of aspects in common in that regard. That also though means your first act of entering this country can’t break the law. So there’s some policy commitments and principles, merit, free speech, self-governance, rule of law. And then I think culturally what does it mean to be a conservative is it means we believe in the anchors of our identity, in truth, the value of the individual family, nation and God beat race, gender, sexuality and climate. If we have the courage to actually stand for our own vision. And that’s a big part of what’s been missing. And it’s a big part of not just through the campaign, but through a lot of my future advocacy, that’s the vacuum I’m aiming to fill.
That’s the core view of the modern left. I’m not criticizing it right now, I’m steel manning it, I’m trying to give you I think a good of why the left believes they have a compelling case for the government stepping into correct for historical or present inequalities. I can give you my counter rebuttal of that, but the best statement of the left, I think that it’s the fact that we’ve been imperfect in living up to those ideals. In order to fix that, we’re going to have to take steps that are severe steps if needed to correct for those historical inequalities before we actually have true equality of opportunity in this country. That’s the case for the left-wing view in modern America.
Why are we seeing that resurgence? In part, it’s because of I believe that left-wing obsession with racial equity over the course of the last 20 years in this country. And so when you take something away from someone based on their skin color, and that’s what correcting for prior injustice was supposed to do, the left-wing view is you have to correct for prior injustice by saying that whether you’re a white, straight, cis, man, you have certain privileges that you have to actually correct for. When you take something away from somebody based on their genetics, you actually foster greater animus towards other groups around you. And so the problem with that philosophy is that it creates several problems with it, but the most significant problem that I think everybody can agree we want to avoid is to actually fan the flames of the very divisions that you supposedly wanted to heal.
I see that in our context of our immigration policy as well. You think about even what’s going on in, I’m from Ohio, I was born and raised in Ohio and I live there today, the controversy in Springfield, Ohio. I personally don’t blame really any of the people who are in Springfield, either the native people born and raised in Springfield or even the Haitians who have been moved to Springfield. But it ends up becoming a divide and conquer strategy and outcome where if you put 20,000 people in a community where, 50,000 people, where the 20,000 are coming in don’t know the language, are unable to follow the traffic laws, are unable to assimilate, you know there’s going to be a reactionary backlash. And so even though that began perhaps with some type of charitable instinct, some type of sympathy for people who went through the earthquake in 2010 in Haiti and achieved temporary protective status in the United States, what began with sympathy, what began with earnest intentions actually creates the very division and reactionary response that supposedly we say we wanted to avoid. So that’s my number one criticism of that left-wing worldview.
Number two is I do believe that merit and equity are actually incompatible. Merit and group quotas are incompatible. You can have one or the other, you can’t have both. And the reason why is no two people, and I think it’s the beautiful things, true between you and I, between you, I and all of our friends or family or strangers or neighbors or colleagues, no two people have the same skillsets. We’re each endowed by different gifts. We’re each endowed with different talents. And that’s the beauty of human diversity.
And a true meritocracy is a system in which you’re able to achieve the maximum of your God-given potential without anybody standing in your way. But that means necessarily there’s going to be differences in outcomes in a wide range of parameters, not just financial, not just money, not just fame or currency or whatever it is. There’s just going to be different outcomes for different people in different spheres of lives. And that’s what meritocracy demands. It’s what it requires. And so the left’s vision of group equity necessarily comes at the cost of meritocracy. And so those would be my two reasons for opposing the view is one is it’s not meritocratic, but number two is it often even has the effect of hurting the very people they claimed to have wanted to help. And I think that’s part of what we’re seeing in modern America.
I can give you a very specific example. That might sound like, “Okay, well, is it such a bad thing if an organization doesn’t want to exclude people who are saying racist things on a given day?” We could debate that. But let’s get to the tangible world of how that actually plays out. I, for my part, have not really heard in ordinary America people uttering racial epithets if you’re going to restaurant or in the grocery store. It’s not something I’ve encountered, certainly not in the workplace. But that’s a theoretical case, let’s talk about the real world case of how this plays out. So there was an instance, it was a case that presented itself before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the EEOC, one of the government enforcers of the DEI agenda. And there was a case of a woman who wore a red sweater on Fridays in celebration of veterans and those who had served the military and invited others in the workplace to do the same thing.
And they had a kind of affinity group, you could call it that, a veteran type affinity group, appreciating those who had served. Her son had served as well. There was a minority employee at that business who said that he found that to be a microaggression. So the employer asked her to stop wearing said clothes too, the office. Well, she still felt like she wanted to celebrate, I think, it was Friday was the day of the week where they did it. She still wore the red sweater and she didn’t wear it, but she would hang it on the back of her seat, put it on the back of her seat at the office. They said, “No, you can’t do that either.” So the irony is in the name of this capital D diversity, which is creating a supposedly welcoming workplace for all kinds of Americans by focusing only on certain kinds of so-called diversity, that translates into actually not even a diversity of your genetics, which is what they claim to be solving for, but also a hostility to diversity of thought.
And I think that’s dangerous. And you’re seeing that happen in the last four years across this country. It’s been pretty rampant. I think it leaves America worse off. The beauty of America is we’re a country where we should be able to have institutions that are stronger from different points of view being expressed. But my number one criticism of the DEI agenda is not even that it’s anti-meritocratic, it is anti-meritocratic, but my number one criticism is it’s actually hostile to the free and open exchange of ideas by creating often legal liabilities for organizations that even permit certain viewpoints to be expressed. And I think that’s the biggest concern.
Today, to be a government contractor, for example, you have to adopt certain racial and gender representation targets in your workforce. That’s not the free market working. So I think you can’t have it both ways either. It’s going to be good for companies and companies are going to do what’s in their self-interest. That’s what capitalists like Mark Cuban and I believe. But if we really believe that, then we should let the market work rather than forcing it to adopt these top-down standards. That’s my issue with it.
It’s what I call the practice of blowing woke smoke to deflect accountability. You could say the same thing with respect to the educational system. It’s a lot easier to claim that, and I’m not the one making this claim, but others have made this claim, that math is racist because there are inequitable results on objective tests of mathematics based on different demographic attributes. You can claim using that then math is racist. It’s a lot easier to blow that woke smoke than it is to accept accountability for failing to teach black kids in the inner city how to actually do math and fix our public school systems and the zip code coded mechanism for trapping kids in poor communities in bad schools. So I think that in many cases, what these bureaucracies do is they use the appearance of signaling this virtue as a way of not really advancing a social cause, but of strengthening the power of the bureaucracy itself and insulating that bureaucracy from criticism.
So in many ways, bureaucracy, I think, cars the channels through which much of this woke ideology has flowed over the last several years. And that’s why part of my focus has shifted away from just combating wokeness because that’s just a symptom, I think, versus combating actual bureaucracy itself. The rise of this managerial class, the rise of the deep state. We talk about that in the government, but the deep state doesn’t just exist in the government. It exists I think in every sphere of our lives, from companies to nonprofits to universities. It’s the rise of we call the managerial class, the committee class, the people who professionally sit on committees, I think are wielding far more power today than actual creators, entrepreneurs, original ideators and ordinary citizens alike.
That’s why you need professional technocrats, educated elites, enlightened bureaucrats to be able to set limits that actually protect people from their own worst impulses. That’s the Old World view and most nations in human history have operated this way, but what made the United States of America itself, to know what made America great, we have to know what made America itself, what made America itself is we said hell no to that vision, that we the people, for better or worse, are going to self-govern without the committee class restraining what we do. And the likes of Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin and I could give you examples of John Adams or Robert Livingston, you go straight down the list of founding fathers who were inventors, creators, pioneers, explorers, who also were the very people who came together to sign the Declaration of Independence. And so yeah, this rise of bureaucracy in America in every sphere of life, I view it as anti-American actually. And I hope that conservatives and liberals alike can get behind my crusade certainly to get in there and shut most of it down.
I can’t give you option C, which is to say that I’m going to cut exactly the right amount, I’m going to do it perfectly. Okay, you don’t know ex-ante, you don’t know beforehand that it’s exactly how it’s going to, so that’s a meaningless claim. It’s only a question of which risk you’re going to take. I believe in the moment we live in right now, the second risk is the risk we have to be willing to take. And we haven’t had a class of politician, Donald Trump in 2016 was I think the closest we’ve gotten and I think the second term will be even closer to what we need, but short of that, I don’t think we’ve really had a class of politician who has gotten very serious about cutting so much that you’re also going to cut some fat, but not only some fat, but also some muscle.
That’s the risk we have to take. So the way I would do it, 75% headcount reduction across the board in the federal bureaucracy, send them home packing, shut down agencies that shouldn’t exist, rescind every unconstitutional regulation that Congress never passed. In a true self-governing democracy, it should be our elected representatives that make the laws and the rules not unelected bureaucrats. And that is the single greatest form of economic stimulus we could have in this country, but it is also the single most effective way to restore self-governance in our country as well. And it is the blueprint for, I think, how we save this country.
So is it possible? Yeah, it’s really possible. I’ll tell you one easy way to do it. This is a little bit, I’m being a little bit glib here, but I think it’s not crazy, at least as a thought experiment. Get in there on day one, say that anybody in the federal bureaucracy who is not elected, elected representatives obviously were elected by the people, but the people who are not elected, if your social security number ends in an odd number, you’re out, if it ends in an even number, you’re in. There’s a 50% cut right there. Of those who remain, if your social security number starts in an even number, you’re in and if it starts with an odd number, you’re out. Boom. That’s a 75% reduction done. Literally, stochastically, okay, one of the virtues of that, it’s a thought experiment, not a policy prescription, but one of the virtues of that thought experiment is that you don’t have a bunch of lawsuits you’re dealing with about gender discrimination or racial discrimination or political viewpoint discrimination.
Actually, the reality is you’ve at mass, you didn’t bring the chisel, you brought a chainsaw, I guarantee you do that on day one and do step two on day two, on day three, not a thing will have changed for the ordinary American other than this size of their government being a lot smaller and more restrained, spending a lot less money to operate it. And most people who have run a company, especially larger companies know this, it’s 25% of the people who do 80 to 90% of the useful work, these government agencies are no different. So now imagine you could do that same thought experiment, but not just doing it at random, but do it still at large scale while having some metric of screening for those who actually had both the greatest competence as well as the greatest commitment and knowledge of the Constitution.
That I think would immediately raise not only the civic character of the United States, now we feel, okay, the people we elect to run the government, they’ve got the power back, they’re running the government again, as opposed to the unelected bureaucrats who wield the power today, it would also stimulate the economy. The regulatory state is like a wet blanket on the American economy. Most of it is unconstitutional. All we require is leadership with a spine to get in there and actually do what conservative presidents have maybe gestured towards and talked about, but have not really effectuated ever in modern history.
I’ll give you what the number one reason was, is that they felt like they were unable to do the true maximum of what their potential was in their prior role. That’s the number one reason people leave their job. And by the way, I would say that as I’m saying that in a self boastful way that we would attract these people. I think that’s also true for most of the people who left the company as well, Roivant. And that was true at Roivant, it’s at other companies I’ve started. I think the number one reason people join companies and number one people leave companies, whether they’ve been to join mine or to leave mine in the past, have been that they feel like they’re able to do more than they’re able to with their skillset than that environment permits them to actually achieve. And so I think that’s what people hung for.
When we think about capitalism and true free market capitalism, and we used words earlier like meritocracy, it’s about building a system, whether it’s in a nation or whether it’s even within an organization, that allows every individual to flourish and achieve the maximum of their potential. And sometimes it just doesn’t match for an organization, where let’s say the mission is here and somebody’s skillsets could be really well aligned to a different mission, then the right answer is it’s not a negative thing, it’s just that person needs to leave and find their mission somewhere else. But to bring that back to government, I think part of what’s happened right now is that the rise of that bureaucracy in so many of these government agencies has actually obfuscated the mission of these agencies. I think if you went to most federal bureaucracies and just asked them what’s the mission, I’m just making one up off the top of my head right now, the Department of Health and Human Services, what is the mission of HHS in the United States of America? I doubt somebody who works there, even the person who leads it, could give you…
You could even say for the US military, what’s the purpose of the US military, the Department of Defense? I can give you one. I think it is to win wars, and more importantly, through its strength, to avoid wars, that’s it.
Well, okay, if that’s the mission, then you know, okay, it’s not tinkering around and messing around in some foreign conflict where we feel like it sometimes, and other ones where we don’t. And who decides that, I don’t really know, but whoever the people are that decide that, we follow those orders.
No, our mission is to protect the United States of America, to win wars, and to avoid wars, boom, those three things. What does protecting the United States of America mean? Number one, the homeland of the United States of America and the people who reside there. Good, that’s a clear mission.
The Department of Health and Human Services, maybe, could be a reasonable mission to say that I want to make America the healthiest country on Planet Earth, and we will develop the metrics and meet those metrics, and that’s the goal of the Department of HHS, to set policies, or at least to implement policies that best achieve that goal.
And maybe that’s the right statement of mission, maybe it’s not, but one of the things that happens is, when you’re governed by the committee class, it dilutes the sense of mission out of any organization, whether it’s a company or government agency or bureaucracy.
And once you’ve done that, then you lose the ability to track the best and the brightest, because in order for somebody to achieve the maximum of their potential, they have to know what it’s towards. There has to be a mission in the first place.
Then you’re not getting the best and brightest, you get more from the committee class, and that becomes a self-perpetuating downward spiral, and that is what the blob of the federal bureaucracy really looks like today.
It’s like a defensive mechanism that’s designed to reduce dynamism. But I think when that becomes cancerous in its scope, it then actually kills the host itself, whether that’s a school, whether that’s a company, whether that’s a government.
And so, the way I think about it, Lex, is, there’s sort of a balance of distributed power. And I don’t mean power in the Foucault sense of social power, but I mean just power in the sense of the ability to affect relevant change in any organization between what you could call the founder class, the creator class, the everyday citizen, the stakeholder class, and then the managerial class.
And there’s a role for all three of them. You could have the constituents of an organization, say in a constitutional republic, that’s the citizen, you could have the equivalent of the creator class, the people who create things in that polity, and then you have the bureaucratic class that’s designed to administer and serve as a liaison between the two.
I’m not denying that there’s some role somewhere for people who are in that managerial class, but right now, in this moment in American history, and I think it’s been more or less true for the last century, but it’s grown, starting with Woodrow Wilson’s advent of the Modern Administrative State, metastasizing through FDR’s New Deal and what was required to administer it, blown over and metastasizing further through LBJ’s Great Society, and everything that’s happened since, even aided and abetted by Republican presidents along the way like Richard Nixon, has created a United States of America where that committee class, both in and outside the government and our culture, wields far too much influence and power relative to the everyday citizen stakeholder and to the creators, who are, in many ways, constrained, hamstrung, shackled in straitjacket from achieving the maximum of their own potential contributions.
And I certainly feel that myself. I probably identify as being a member of that creator class most closely. It’s just what I’ve done, I create things. And I think we live in an environment in the United States of America where we’re still probably the best country on earth where that creator has that shot, so that’s the positive side of it, but one where we are far more constrictive to the creator class than we have been when we’ve been at our best, and that’s what I want to see change.
It might be at least a relevant question to ask before we decided what are we doing with it or not, what was the purpose of this thing that we created? To me, it seems to be a highly relevant question.
Yet, in this discussion about government reform, it’s interesting how eager people are to skip over that question and just to talk about, “Okay, but we’ve got the status quo, and it’s just going to be disruptive,” versus asking the question of, okay, this institution was created, it had an original purpose, is that purpose still relevant? Is this organization at all fulfilling that purpose today?
To me, those are some relevant questions to ask. So, let’s talk about that for the Department of Education. Its purpose was relevant at that time, which was to make sure that localities, and particularly states, were not siphoning taxpayer dollars away from predominantly Black school districts to predominantly White ones.
And that was not a theoretical concern at the time. It was happening, or there was at least some evidence that that was happening in certain states in the South. And so, you may say you don’t like the federal solution, you may say you like the federal solution, but like it or not, that was the original purpose of the US Department of Education, to make sure that, from a federal perspective, that states were not systematically disadvantaging Black school districts over predominantly White ones.
However noble and relevant that purpose may have been six decades ago, it’s not a relevant purpose today. There’s no evidence today of states intentionally mapping out which are the Black versus White school districts and siphoning money in one direction versus another.
To the contrary, one of the things we’ve learned is that the school districts in the inner city, many of which are predominantly Black, actually spend more money per student than other school districts for a worse result, as measured by test scores and other performance, on a per-student basis, suggesting that there are other factors than the dollar expenditures per school determining student success, and actually suggesting that even the over-funding of some of those already poorly run schools rewards them for their actual bureaucratic failures.
So, against that backdrop, the Department of Education has, instead, extrapolated that original purpose of what was a racial equality purpose, to, instead, implement a different vision of racial equity through the ideologies that they demand in the content of the curriculum that these public schools actually teach.
So, Department of Education funding, so federal funding, accounts for about, I’m giving you round numbers here, but around 10% of the funding of most public schools across the country. But that comes with strings attached.
So, in today’s Department of Education, this didn’t happen back in 1970, but it’s happening today, ironically it’s funny how these things change with the bureaucracies that fail, they blow oak smoke to cover up for their own failures, what happens with today’s Department of Education?
They effectively say you don’t get that funding unless you adopt certain goals deemed at achieving racial or gender equity goals. And in fact, they also intervene in the curriculum where there’s evidence of schools in the Midwest or in the Great Plains that have been denied funding because Department of Education funding, so long as they have certain subjects like Archery…
There was one instance of a school that had archery in its curriculum. I find that to be pretty interesting, actually. I think you have different kinds of physical education. This is one that combines mental focus with physical aptitude, but hey, maybe I’m biased, it doesn’t matter.
Whether you like archery or not, I don’t think it’s the federal government’s job to withhold funding from a school because they include something in their curriculum that the federal government deems inappropriate where that locality found that to be a relevant locus of education.
So, what you see then is an abandonment of the original purpose. That’s long past. You don’t have this problem that the Department of Education was originally formed to solve, of siphoning money from Black school districts to White school districts and laundering that, effectively, in public funds, that doesn’t exist anymore.
So, they find new purposes instead, creating a lot more damage along the way. So, you asked me to steelman, and can I say something constructive rather than just pounding down on the other side? One way to think about this is, for a lot of these agencies, were many of them formed with a positive intention at the outset? Yes. Whether that positive intention existed, I’m still a skeptic of creating bureaucracies, but if you’re going to create one, at least make it, what shall we call it, a taskforce. Make it a taskforce.
A taskforce versus an agency means, after it’s done, you celebrate, you’ve done your work, pat yourself on the back, and then move on, rather than creating a standing bureaucracy which actually finds things to do after it has already solved or addressed the first reason it was born in the first place.
And I think we don’t have enough of that in our culture. Even if you have a company that’s generated tons of cash flow, and it’s solved a problem, let’s say it’s a biopharmaceutical company that developed a cure to some disease, and the only thing people knew at that company was how to develop a cure to that disease, and they generated a boatload of cash from doing it, at a certain point you could just give it to your shareholders and close up shop.
And that’s actually a beautiful thing to do. You don’t see that happen enough in the American consciousness, in the American culture of, when an institution has achieved its purpose, celebrate it, and then move on. And I think that that culture in our government would result in a vastly restrained scope of government, rather than, today it’s a one-way ratchet.
Once you cause it to come into existence, you cause new things to come into existence, but the old one that came into existence continues to persist and exist as well, and that’s where you get this metastasis over the last century.
And I think a nation, it’s literally, I think, one of the chapters of this book, “A nation without borders is not a nation.” It’s almost a tautology, an open border is not a border. Capitalism is not going to solve that. What’s going to solve that is a nation.
Part of the job of the federal government is to protect the homeland of its nation, in this case, the United States of America. That’s an example of a proper function of the federal government, to provide physical security to its citizens.
Another proper role of that federal government is to look after, or in this case it could be state government, to make sure that private parties cannot externalize their costs onto somebody else without their consent. It’s a fancy way economists would use to describe it. What does that mean?
It means if you go dump your chemicals in somebody else’s river, then you’re liable for that. It’s not that, okay, I’m a capitalist and so I want to create things, and I’m going to do hell or high water, whether or not that harms people around me.
The job of a proper government is to make sure that you protect the rights of those who may be harmed by those who are pursuing their own rights through a system of capitalism.
In seeking prosperity, you’re free to do it, but if you’re hurting somebody, else without their consent, in the process, the government is there to enforce what is really just a different form of enforcing a private property right.
So, I would say that those are two central functions of government, is to preserve national boundaries in the national security of a homeland, and number two is to protect and preserve private property rights and the enforcement of those private property rights. And I think, at that point, you’ve described about 80 to 90% of the proper role of a government.
I don’t think you could rely exclusively on the private sector to provide the optimal level of that protection to a nation. But interstate highways, I think you could think about whether or not that’s a common good that everybody benefits from but nobody had the incentive to create. I think you could make an argument for the existence of interstate highways.
I think you could also make powerful arguments for the fact that, actually, you could have enough private sector co-ops that could cause that to come into existence as well. But I’m not dogmatic about this.
But broadly speaking, 80 to 90% of the goal of the federal government, I’m not going to say 100, 80 to 90% of the goal of the existence of a federal government, of government, period, should be to protect national boundaries and provide security for the people who live there, and to protect the private property rights of the people who reside there.
If we restore that, I think we’re well on our way to a revival of what our founding fathers envisioned, and I think many of them would give you the same answer that I just did.
For that to be a matter for municipalities and townships to actually decide, democratically, how they actually want that governed, whether it’s balance between a public school district versus making that same money available to families in the form of vouchers or other forms of ability to educational savings accounts, or whichever mechanism it is, to opt out of that, if that’s done locally, I’ll have views on that that tend to go further in the direction of true educational choice and diversity of choice.
The implementation of charter schools, the granting of state charters, or even lowering the barriers to granting one, I favor those kinds of policies. But if we’ve gotten the federal government out of it, that’s achieved 75% of what I think we need to achieve, that I’m focused on solving other problems, and leave that to the states and municipalities to cover from there.
I got to know him, as I was running for US president, in a couple of events that he came to, and then we built a friendship after that. So, obviously, I think it’s a great idea.
I think it would be a fun competition to see who ends up more hardcore. I don’t think there’s someone out there who’s going to be more hardcore than he or I would be. And the reason is, I think we share in common a willingness to take the risk and see what happens.
The sun will still rise in the east and set in the west. That much I guarantee you. Is there are going to be some broken glass and some damage? Yes, there is. There’s no way around that. But once you’re willing to take that risk, then it doesn’t become so scary anymore. And here’s the thing, Lex, so it’s easy to say this, let’s talk about where the rubber hits the road here. Even in a second Trump term this would be the discussion. President Trump and I have had this conversation, but I think we would continue to have this conversation, is where does it rank on our prioritization list, because there’s always going to be a trade-off.
If you have a different policy objective that you want to achieve, a good policy objective, whatever that is, you could talk about immigration policy, you could talk about economic policy, there are other policy objectives, if you’re going to trade off a little bit, in the short-run, the effectiveness of your ability to carry out that policy goal, if you’re also committed to actually thinning out the federal government by 75%…
Because there’s just going to be some clunkiness there’s just going to be frictional costs for that level of cut. So the question is, where does that rank on your prioritization list?
To pull that off, to pull off a 75% reduction in the size and scale of the federal government, the regulatory state, and the headcount, I think that only happens if that’s your top priority. You could do it at a smaller scale, but at that scale, it only happens if that’s your top priority.
Because then, as President, you’re in a position to say, “I know in the super short run, that might even make it a little bit harder for me to do this other thing that I want to do, and use the regulatory state to do it, but I’m gonna pass on that.
I’m gonna pass that up, I’m gonna bear that hardship and inconvenience because I know this other goal is more important on the scale of decades and centuries for the country.” So it’s a question of prioritization. And certainly, my own view is that, now is the moment where that needs to be a top priority for saving this country.
And if there’s one thing about my campaign, if I was to do it again, I would be even clearer about… Actually, I talked about a lot of things in the campaign, and we can cover a lot of that too. But if there’s one thing that I care about more than anything else, it’s dismantling that bureaucracy.
And moreover, it’s an assault and a crusade on the nanny state itself. And that nanny state presents itself in several forms. There’s the entitlement state, there’s the welfare state, presents itself in the form of the regulatory state, that’s what we’re talking about, and then there’s the foreign nanny state where, effectively, we are subsidizing other countries that aren’t paying their fair share of protection or other resources we provide them.
If I was to summarize my ideology in a nutshell, it is to terminate the nanny state in the United States of America in all of its forms; the entitlement state, the regulatory state, and the foreign policy nanny state. Once we’ve done that, we’ve revived the Republic that I think would make George Washington proud.
And I think it’s important for two reasons. The less important reason, it’s still an important reason, the less important reason is, it’s still money for us. It’s not like we’re swimming in a cash surplus right now. We’ve got a $34 trillion national debt, and growing, and I think pretty soon the interest payments are going to be the largest line item in our own federal budget.
So, it’s not like we have money willy-nilly to just hand over for free. That’s the less important reason, though. The more important reason is that it makes sure that our allies have actual skin in the game to not have skewed incentives to actually enter conflicts where they’re not actually bearing the full cost of those conflicts. So, take NATO for example, most NATO countries, literally a majority of NATO countries today do not pay or contribute 2% of their GDP to their own National Defense, which is supposedly a requirement to be in NATO. So the majority of NATO countries are failing to meet their basic commitment to be in NATO in the first place.
Germany particularly is, I think, arbitraging the hell out of the United States of America. And I don’t think that… I’m not going to be some shrill voice here saying, “So therefore, we should not be supporting any allies or providing security blankets.” No, I’m not going in that direction. What I would say is, you’ve got to pay for it.
Pay for your fair share, A, because we’re not swimming in excess money ourselves, but B, is, it tells us that you actually have skin in the game for your own Defense, which actually then makes nations far more prudent in the risks that they take, whether or not they’re in a war, versus if somebody else is paying for it and somebody else is providing our security guarantee, yeah, I might as well take the gamble and see where I end up at the end of a war, versus the restraint that that imposes on the decision-making of those allies.
So, now, let’s bring this home to the Department of Defense. I think the top goal of the US Defense Policy establishment should be to provide for the national defense of the United States of America. And the irony is, that’s what we’re actually doing most poorly.
Other than the Coast Guard, we’re not really using the US Military to prevent crossings at our own southern border and crossings at our other borders. In fact, the United States of America, our homeland, I believe is less secure today than it has been in a very long time.
Vulnerable to threats from hypersonic missiles where China and Russia… Russia certainly has capabilities in excess of that of the United States, missiles. Hypersonic means faster than the speed of sound that could hit the United States, including those carrying nuclear warheads.
We are more vulnerable to super EMP attacks, Electromagnetic Pulse attacks, that could, without exaggeration, some of this could be from other nations, some of this could even be from solar flares, cause significant mass casualty in the United States of America.
If the electric grid’s gone, it’s not exaggeration to say, if that happened, planes would be falling out of the sky because our chips really depend on those, well, will be affected by those electromagnetic pulses. More vulnerable to cyber attacks. I know people, okay, start yawning and say, “Okay, boring stuff, super EMP, cyber,” or whatever.
No. Actually, it is pretty relevant to whether or not you actually are facing the risk of not getting your insulin because your refrigerator doesn’t work anymore or your food can’t be stored or your car or your ability to fly on an airplane is impaired. So, I think that these are risks where our own National Defense spending has been wholly inadequate.
So, I’m not one of these people that says decrease versus increase National Defense spending. We’re not spending it in the right places. The number one place we need to be spending it is actually protecting our National Defense, protecting our own physical homeland.
And I think we actually need an increase in spending on protecting our own homeland. But that is different from the agenda of foreign interventionism and foreign nanny state-ism for its own sake, where we should expect more and demand more of our allies to provide for their own national defense and then provide the relevant security guarantees to allies where that actually advances the interest of the United States of America. So, that’s what I believe.
And I think this process has been corrupted by what Dwight Eisenhower famously in his farewell address called the Military Industrial Complex in the United States. But I think it’s bigger than just the… I think it’s easy to tell the tales of the financial corruption.
It’s kind of cultural corruption and conceit that just because certain number of people in that expert class have a belief, that their belief happens to be the right one because they can scare you with what the consequence would be if you don’t follow their advice.
And one of the beauties of the United States is, at least in principle, we have civilian control of the military. The person who we elect to be the US President is the one that actually is the true Commander in Chief. I have my doubts of whether it operates that way.
I think it’s quite obvious that Joe Biden is not a functioning Commander in Chief of the United States of America, yet, on paper, supposedly we’re still are supposed to call him that. But at least in theory, we’re supposed to have civilian control of the US Military.
And I think that one of the things that that leader needs to do is to ask the question of, again, the mission. What’s the purpose of this US Military in the first place? At the top of the list should be to protect the homeland and the people who actually live here, which we’re failing to do. So, that’s where I land on that question.
He wasn’t even sufficiently functioning to be the candidate after a debate that was held in June. There’s no way he’s going to be in a position to make the most important decisions on a daily and demanding basis to protect the leading nation in the world.
Now, more generally, though, I think we have a deeper problem, that even when it’s not Joe Biden, in general, the people we elect to run the government haven’t really been the ones running the government, it’s been the unelected bureaucrats in the bureaucratic deep state underneath that’s really been making the decisions.
I’ve done business in a number of places. I’ve traveled to Japan. There’s an interesting corporate analogy. Sometimes, if you get outside of politics, people can, I find, listen, and pay attention a little bit more, because politics, it’s so fraught right now that if you start talking to somebody who disagrees with you about the politics of it, you’re just butting heads but not really making progress.
So, let’s just make the same point, but go outside of politics for a second. So, I was traveling Japan, I was having a late night dinner with a CEO of a Japanese pharmaceutical company.
And it takes a while to really get him to open up, culturally speaking in Japan, a couple of nights of karaoke, and whatnot, maybe late night restaurant, whatever it is. Well, we built a good enough relationship where he was very candid with me.
He said, “I’m the CEO of the company. I could go and find the Head of a research unit and tell him, ‘Okay, this is a project we’re no longer working on as a company. We don’t wanna spend money on it, we’re gonna spend money somewhere else.’ And he’ll look me in the eye and he’ll say, ‘Yes, sir, yes sir.’.
I’ll come back six months later and find that they’re spending exactly the same amount of money on those exact same projects. And I’ll tell him, ‘No, we agreed. I told you that you’re not gonna spend money on this project, and we have to stop now. We should have stopped six months ago.’ Get a slap on the wrist for it.
He says, ‘Yes, sir, I’m sorry. Yes. No, no, no, of course, that’s correct.’ I come back six months later, same person is spending the same money on the same project.” And here’s why. Historically in Japan, and I should say, in Japan, this is changing now, it’s changing now, but historically, until very recently, and even to an extent now, it’s near impossible to fire people.
So, if somebody works for you and you can’t fire them, that means they don’t actually work for you. It means in some deeper, perverse sense, you work for them because you’re responsible for what they do, without any authority to actually change it.
So, I think most people who have traveled in Japan and Japanese corporate culture through the 1990s and 2000s and 2010s, and maybe even some vestiges in the 2020s, wouldn’t really dispute what I just told you. Now, we’re bringing it back to the more contentious terrain.
I think that’s basically how things have worked in the Executive Branch of the Federal Government of the United States of America. You have these so-called Civil Service protections on the books. Now, if you really read them carefully, I think that there are areas to provide daylight for a truly constitutionally, well-trained President to act.
That’s a contrary view that I have that bucks conventional wisdom. But apart from that caveat, in general, the conventional view has been, the US president can’t fire these people. There’s 4 million federal bureaucrats, 99.9% of them can’t be touched by the person who the people who elected to run the Executive Branch can’t even fire those people.
It’s the equivalent of that Japanese CEO. And so, that culture exists every bit as much in the federal bureaucracy of the United States of America as they did in Japanese corporate culture through the 1990s.
And that’s a lot of what’s wrong with not just the way that our Department of Defense is run and our Foreign Policy establishment is run, but I think it applies to a lot of the Domestic Policy establishment as well.
And to come back to the core point, how are we going to save this republic? This is the debate in the Conservative Movement right now. So, this is maybe a little bit spicy for some Republicans to swallow right now, and my top focus is making sure that we win the election, but let’s just move the ball forward a little bit and skate to where the puck is going here, okay?
Yes, let’s say we win the election, all is well and dandy. Okay, what’s the philosophy that determines how we govern? There’s a little bit of a fork in the road amongst Conservatives where there are those who believe that the right answer now is to use that regulatory state and use those levers of power to advance our own pro-Conservative, pro-American, pro-worker goals.
And I’m sympathetic to all of those goals, but I don’t think that the right way to do it is to create a Conservative regulatory state that replaces a Liberal regulatory state. I think the right answer is actually to get in there and shut it down. I don’t want to replace the left-wing nanny state with a right-wing nanny state. I want to get in there and actually dismantle the nanny state.
And I think it has been a long time in the United States, maybe ever in modern history, that we’ve had a Conservative leader at the national level who makes it their principal objective to dismantle the nanny state in all of its forms; the entitlement state, the regulatory state, and the foreign policy in nanny state.
That was a core focus of my candidacy. One of the things that I wish, and this is on me, not anybody else, that I should have done better, was to make that more crystal clear as a focus without getting distracted by a lot of the shenanigans, let’s just say, that happened as side-shows during a presidential campaign. But call that a lesson learned, because I do think it’s what the country needs now more than ever.
So, there’s some really important cases that have come down from the Supreme Court. One is West Virginia versus the EPA. I think it’s probably the most important case of our generation.
In 2022 that came down and said that if Congress has not passed a rule into law itself through the halls of Congress, and it relates to what they call a major question, a major policy or economic question, it can’t be done by the stroke of a pen by a regulator, an unelected bureaucrat either.
That quite literally means most federal regulations today are unconstitutional. Then, this year comes down a different big one, another big one from the Supreme Court in the Loper-Bright case, which held that, historically, for the last 50 years in this country, the doctrine has been, it’s called Chevron Deference. It’s a doctrine that says that federal courts have to defer to an agency…
The SEC, among other agencies, has tribunals inside that not only do they write the rules, not only do they enforce those rules, they also have these judges inside the agency that also interpret the rules and determine and dole out punishments. That doesn’t make sense if you believe in separation of powers in the United States, so the Supreme Court put an end to that and said that that practice at the SEC is unconstitutional. Actually, as a side note, the Supreme Court has said countless practices and rules written by the SEC, the EPA, the FTC in recent years, were outright unconstitutional.
Think about what that means for a constitutional republic, that supposedly, these law enforcement agencies, the courts have now said, especially this year, the courts have now said that their own behaviors actually break the law. So the very agencies entrusted with supposedly enforcing the law are actually behaving with utter, blatant disregard for the law itself. That’s un-American, it’s not tenable in the United States of America, but thankfully, we now have a Supreme Court that recognizes that.
So whether or not we have a second Trump term, well, that’s up to the voters, but even whether or not that now takes advantage of that backdrop the Supreme Court has given us to actually gut the regulatory state, we’ll find out. I’m optimistic, I certainly think it’s the best chance that we’ve had in a generation in this country, and that’s a big part of why I’m supporting Donald Trump and why I’m going to do everything in my power to help him, but I do think it is going to take a spine of steel to see that through.
And then after we’ve taken on the regulatory state, I think that’s the next step, but I do think there’s this broader project of dismantling the nanny state in all of its forms, the entitlement state, the regulatory state, and the foreign policy in any state. Three-word answer, if I was to summarize my worldview and my presidential campaign in three words, shut it down.
And so I think that’s one of the things that I’ve admired about President Trump is he’s actually been very open about that, very humble about that, to say that there’s a million learnings from that first term that make him ambitious and more ambitious in that second term. But everything I’m talking to you about, this is what needs to happen in the country. It’s not specific to Donald Trump. It lays out what needs to be done in the country. There’s the next four years, Donald Trump is our last, best hope and chance for moving that ball forward. But I think that the vision I’m laying out here is one that hopefully goes even beyond just the next two or four years of really fixing a century’s worth of mistakes.
I think we’re going to fix a lot of them in the next four years if Donald Trump’s president. But if you have a century’s worth of mistakes that have accumulated with the overgrowth of the entitlement state in the US, I think it’s going to take probably the better part of a decade at least to actually fix them.
And I think that I’m also open about the fact that this is a long run project, but we have the next step to actually take over the next few years. That’s kind of where I land on it. I mean, you talked to him I guess a few weeks ago. I saw you had a podcast with him, right?
I don’t come from that school of thought. I don’t want to see the bureaucracy expand in a pro-conservative direction. I want to see the bureaucracy shrink in every direction. And I do think that, from my conversations with Donald Trump, I believe that he is well-aligned with this vision of shrinking bureaucracy, but that’s a longer-term project.
So in that domain, that’s mission aligned with a proper purpose for the federal government. I think we’re a nation founded on the rule of law. I say this as the kid of legal immigrants. That means your first act of entering this country cannot break the law. And in some ways, if I was to summarize a formula for saving the country over the next four years, it would be a tale of two mass deportations. The mass deportations of millions of illegals who are in this country and should not be, and then the mass deportation of millions of unelected federal bureaucrats out of Washington D.C.
Now, all else equal, could say that those are intention, but I think that the reality is anything outside of the scope of what the core function of the government is, which is protecting borders and protecting private property rights, that’s really where I think the predominant cuts need to be. And if you look at the number of people who are looking after the border, it’s not even 0.1% of the federal employee base today. So 75% isn’t 99.99%, it’s 75%. It would still be a tiny fraction of the remaining 25%, which I actually think needs to be more rather than less. So it’s a good question, but that’s where I land on when it’s a proper role of the federal government, great. Act and actually do your job. The irony is 99.9999% of those resources are going to functions other than the protection of private property rights and the protection of our national physical protection.
And I just want to make that basic observation against the backdrop of if we’re a nation founded on the rule of law, we that there are trade-offs to enforcing the law, and we’ve acknowledged that in other contexts. I don’t think that we should have a special exemption for saying that somehow we weigh the other way when it comes to the issue of the border. We’re a nation founded in the rule of law. We enforce laws, that has costs, that has trade-offs, but it’s who we are. And the easiest fact I can cite is 350,000 or so mothers who are in prison and did not take their kids to prison with them.
Is that bad? Is it undesirable for the kids to grow up without those 350,000 mothers? It is, but it’s a difficult situation created by people who violated the law and faced the consequences of it, which is also a competing and important priority in the country. So that’s in the domestic context.
As it relates to this question of mass deportations, let’s just get very practical because all that was theoretical. Very practically, there’s ways to do this. Starting with people who have already broken the law, people who have not just broken the law of entering but are committing other crimes while already here in the United States. That’s a clear case for an instant mass deportation. You have a lot of people who haven’t integrated into their communities. You think about the economic impact of this, a lot of people are in detention already. A lot of those people should be immediately returned to their country of origin, or at least what is called a safe third country.
So safe third country means even if somebody’s claiming to seek asylum from political persecution, well, move them to another country that doesn’t have to be the United States of America that they passed through, say, Mexico before actually coming here. Other countries around the world are doing this. Australia is detaining people. They don’t let them out and live a normal, joyful life because they came to the country. They detain them until their case is adjudicated. Well, the rates of fraud in Australia, of what people lie about, what their conditions are, is way lower now than in the United States because people respond to those incentives.
So I think that in some ways, people make this sound much bigger and scarier than it needs to be. I feel we’re taking a deeply pragmatic approach, and the North Star for me is I want the policy that helps the United States citizens who are already here. What’s that policy? Clearly, that’s going to be a policy that includes a large number of deportations. I think by definition, it’s going to be the largest mass deportation in American history. Sounds like a punchline at a campaign rally, but actually, it’s just a factual statement that says if we’ve had the by far largest influx of illegal immigrants in American history, it just stands to reason, it’s logic that, okay, if we’re going to fix that, we’re going to have the largest mass deportation in American history.
And we can be rational. Start with people who are breaking the law in other ways here in the United States. Start with people who are already in detention or entering detention now. That comes at no cost and strict benefit. There isn’t even a little bit of an economic trade-off. Then you get to areas where you would say, okay, the costs actually continue to outweigh the benefits, and that’s exactly the way our policy should be guided here. I want to do it in as respectful and as humane of a manner as possible.
The reality is, I think one of the things we got to remember, I’ll give you the example I gave with the Haitian case in Springfield, town that I spent a lot of time in growing up in Ohio. I live about an hour from there today. I don’t blame the individual Haitians who came here. I’m not saying that they’re bad people because in that particular case, those weren’t even people who broke the law in coming here. They came as part of a program called Temporary Protective Status. Now, the operative word there was the first one, “temporary”. There have been all kinds of lawsuits for people who, even 8, 10, 12, 14 years after the earthquake in Haiti where many of them came, when they’re going to be removed, there are allegations of racial discrimination or otherwise.
No. Temporary protective status means it’s temporary, and we’re not abandoning the rule of law when we send them back, we’re abandoning the rule of law when we let them stay. Now, if that has a true benefit to the United States of America, economically or otherwise, go through the paths that allow somebody to enter this country for economic reasons, but don’t do it through asylum-based claims or Temporary Protected Status. I think one of the features of our immigration system right now is it is built on a lie and it incentivizes lying. The reason is the arguments for keeping people in the country, if those are economic reasons but the people actually entered using claims of asylum or refugee status, those two things don’t match up.
So just be honest about what our immigration system actually is. I think we do need dramatic reforms to the legal immigration system to select purposely for the people who are going to actually improve the United States of America. I think there are many people, I know some of them. I gave a story of one guy who I met who is educated at our best universities or among our best universities. He went to Princeton. He went to Harvard Business School. He has a great job in the investment community. He was a professional tennis player. He was a concert pianist. He could do a Rubik’s cube in less than a minute. I’m not making this stuff up. These are hard facts. He can’t get a green card in the United States. He’s been here for 10 years or something like this.
He asked me for the best advice I could give him. I unfortunately could not give him the actual best advice, which would be to just take a flight to Mexico and cross the border and claim to be somebody who is seeking asylum in the United States. That would have been morally wrong advice, so I didn’t give it to them. But practically, if you were giving him advice, that would be the best advice that you actually could give somebody, which is a broken system on both sides. People who are going to make those contributions to the United States and pledge allegiance to the United States and speak our language and assimilate, we should have a path for them to be able to add value to the United States. Yet they’re not the ones who are getting in.
Our immigration system selects for people who are willing to lie. That’s what it does. Selects for people who are willing to say they’re seeking refugee status or seeking asylum when in fact, they’re not. And then we have policymakers who lie after the fact using economic justifications to keep them here. But if it was an economic justification, that should have been the criteria you used to bring them in the first place, not this illusion of asylum or refugee status. There was a case, actually, even the New York Times reported on this, believe it or not, of a woman who came from Russia fleeing Vladimir Putin’s intolerant, anti-LGBTQ regime. She was fleeing persecution by the evil man, Putin.
She came here and eventually when she was pressed on the series of lies, it came out that, and she was crying finally, when she broke down and admitted this, she was like, “I’m not even gay. I don’t even like gay people.” That’s what she said. And yet she was pretending to be some sort of LGBTQ advocate who was persecuted in Russia when in fact, it was just somebody who was seeking better economic conditions in the United States. I’m not saying you’re wrong to seek better economic conditions in the United States, but you are wrong to lie about it, and that’s what you’re seeing a lot of people, even in this industry of quote, unquote, tourism to the United States, they’re having their kids in the United States. They go back to their home country, but their kids enjoy birthright citizenship. That’s built on a lie.
You have people claiming to suffer from persecution. In fact, they’re just working in the United States and then living in these relative mansions in parts of Mexico or Central America after they’ve spent four or five years making money here. Just abandon the lie. Let’s just have an immigration system built on honesty. Just tell the truth. If the argument is that we need more people here for economically filling jobs, I’m skeptical the extent to which a lot of those arguments actually end up being true. But let’s have that debate in the open rather than having it through the back door saying that it’s refugee and asylum status when we know it’s a lie, and then we justify it after the fact by saying that that economically helps the United States.
Cut the dishonesty. And I just think that that is a policy we would do well to expand every sphere. We talk about from the military industrial complex to the rise of the managerial class, to a lot of what our government’s covered up about our own history to even this question of immigration today. Just tell the people the truth, and I think our government would be better serving our people if it did.
I want an immigration system that is built on honesty. Identify what the objective is. We could debate the objective. We might have different opinions on the objectives. Some people may say the objective is the economic growth of the United States. I air that argument in this book, and I think that that’s insufficient, personally. Personally, I think the United States is more than just an economic zone. It is a country. It is a nation bound together by civic ideals. I think we need to screen not just for immigrants, who are going to make economic contributions, but those who speak our language, those who are able to assimilate and those who share those civic ideals and know the US history even better than the average US citizen who’s here. That’s what I believe.
But even if you disagree with me and say, “No, no, the sole goal is economic production in the United States,” then at least have an immigration system that’s honest about that rather than one which claims to solve for that goal by bringing in people who are rewarded for being a refugee, we should reward the people in that model, which I don’t even think should be the whole model. But even if that were your model, reward the people who have demonstrably proven that they would make economic contributions to the United States, not the people who have demonstrated that they’re willing to lie to achieve a goal.
And right now, our immigration system, if it rewards one quality over any other, if there’s one parameter that it rewards over any other, it isn’t civic allegiance to the United States, it isn’t fluency in English, it isn’t the ability to make an economic contribution to this country. The number one human attribute that our immigration system rewards is whether or not you are willing to lie. And the people who are telling those lies about whether they’re seeking asylum or not are the ones who are most likely to get in. And the people who are most unwilling to tell those lies are the ones who are actually not getting in.
That is a hard, uncomfortable truth about our immigration system. And the reason is because the law says you only get asylum if you’re going to face bodily harm or near-term risk of bodily injury based on your religion, your ethnicity, or certain other factors. And so when you come into the country, you’re asked, “Do you fulfill that criteria or not?” And the number one way to get into this country is to check the box and say yes. So that means just systematically, imagine if you’re a university, Harvard or Yale or whatever, you’re running your admissions process, the number one attribute you’re selecting for isn’t your SAT score, it isn’t your GPA, it isn’t your athletic accomplishments. It’s whether or not you’re willing to lie on the application. You’re going to have a class populated by a bunch of charlatans and frauds.
That’s exactly what our immigration system is doing to the United States of America, is it is literally selecting for the people who are willing to lie. Let’s say you have somebody who’s a person of integrity says, “Okay, I want a better life for my family, but I want to teach my kids that I’m not going to lie or break the law to do it.” That person is infinitely less likely to get into the United States. I know it sounds provocative to frame it that way, but it is not an opinion. It is a fact that that is the number one human attribute that our current immigration system is selecting for.
I want an immigration system centered on honesty. In order to implement that, we require acknowledging what the goals of our immigration system are in the first place. And there we have competing visions on the right, okay? Amongst conservatives, there’s a rift. Some conservatives believe, I respect them for their honesty, I disagree with them, believe that the goal of the immigration system should be to, in part, protect American workers from the effects of foreign wage competition. That if we have immigrants, it’s going to bring down prices and we need to protect American workers from the effects of that downward pressure on wages. It’s a goal. It’s a coherent goal. I don’t think it’s the right goal, but many of my friends on the right believe that’s a goal, but at least it’s honest. And then we can design an honest immigration system to achieve that goal if that’s their goal. I have other friends on the right that say the sole goal is economic growth, nothing else matters. I disagree with that as well. My view is the goal should be whatever enriches the civic quality of the United States of America. That includes those who know the language, know our ideals, pledge allegiance to those ideals, and also are willing to make economic contributions to the country, which is one of our ideals as well.
But whatever it is, we can have that debate, I have a very different view. I don’t think it’s a proper role of immigration policy to make it a form of labor policy because the United States of America is founded on excellence, we should be able to compete. But that’s a policy debate we can have. But right now, we are not even able to have the policy debate because the whole immigration policy is built on not only a lie, but on rewarding those who do lie. And that’s what I want to see change.
So those are two different views. I think that there is a view on the American right right now that says that we’re not a creedal nation, that our nation’s not about a creed. It’s about a physical place and a physical homeland. I think that view fails on several accounts. Obviously, every nation has to have a geographic space that it defines its own. So obviously we are, among other things, a geographic space. But the essence of the United States of America, I think is the common creed, the ideals that hold that common nation together.
Without that, a few things happen. First of all, American exceptionalism becomes impossible. And I’ll tell you why. Every other nation is also built on the same idea. Most nations have been built on common blood and soil arguments, genetic stock. Italy or Japan would have a stronger national identity than the United States in that case, because they have a much longer standing claim on what their genetic lineage really was. The ethnicity of the people is far more pure in those contexts than in the United States. So that’s the first reason. American exceptionalism becomes impossible.
The second is there’s all kinds of contradictions that then start to emerge. Your claim on American identity is defined based on how long you’ve been here. Well, then the Native Americans would have a far greater claim of being American than somebody who came here on the Mayflower or somebody who came here afterwards. Now, maybe that blood and soil view is, no, no, it’s not quite the Native Americans. You only have to start at this point and end at this point. So on this view of blood and soil identity, it has to be okay, you couldn’t have come before a certain year, then it doesn’t count. But if you came after a certain year, it doesn’t count either. That just becomes highly uncompelling as a view of what American national identity actually is.
Versus my view that American national identity is grounded on whether or not you pledge allegiance to the ideals codified in the Declaration of Independence and actualized in the US Constitution. And it’s been said, some of my friends on the right have said things like, people will not die for a set of ideals. People won’t fight for abstractions or abstract ideals. I actually disagree with that. The American Revolution basically disproves that. The American Revolution was fought, for anything, over abstract ideals that said that, you know what? We believe in self-governance and free speech and free exercise of religion. That’s what we believe in the United States, which is different from Old World England.
So I do think that there is this brewing debate on the right, and do I disagree like hell with Ann Coulter on this? Absolutely. And did I take serious issue with some of the things she told me? Absolutely. But I also believe that she had the stones to say, if I may say it that way, the things that many on the right believe but haven’t quite articulated in the way that she has. And I think we need to have that debate in the open.
Now, personally, I think most of the conservative movement actually is with me on this, but I think it’s become a very popular counter in the other direction to say that your vision of American identity is far more physical in nature. And to me, I think it is still ideals-based in nature. And I think that that’s a good debate for the future for us to have in the conservative movement. And I think it’s going to be a defining feature of what direction the conservative movement goes in the future.
Now, that being said, that’s just a philosophy, okay? That’s a personal philosophy. You asked me to do something different, and I’m always a fan. The standard I hope that people hold me to when they read this book as well, is I try to do that in this book, is to give the best possible argument for the other side. You don’t want to give some rinky-dink argument for the other side and knock it down. You want to give the best possible argument for the other side and then offer your own view or else you don’t understand your own. So you asked me what’s the strongest case against Donald Trump? Well, I ran for US President against Donald Trump. So I’m going to give you what my perspective is. I think it’s nothing of what you hear on MSNBC or from the left attacking him to be a threat to democracy. I think all of that’s actually nonsense.
I actually think it is, if you were making that case, and he has my full support as you know, but if you were making that case, I think for many voters who are of the next generation, they’re asking a question about, “How are you going to understand the position that I’m in as a member of a new generation?” The same criticism they had of Biden, they could say, “Oh, well, are you too old? Are you from a different generation that’s too far removed from my generation’s concerns?” And I think that that’s in many ways a factor that was weighing on both Trump and Biden. But when they played the trick of swapping out Joe Biden, it left that issue much more on the table for Donald Trump.
So you’re asking me to steel man it, that’s what I would say is that when I look at what’s the number one issue that I would need to persuade Independent voters of to say that, no, no, no, this is still the right choice is even though the other side claims to offer a new generation of leadership, here’s somebody who is one of the older presidents we will have had who was elected. How do we convince those people to vote from? That’s what I would give you in that category.
Now, I think the facts of the backdrop of the 2020 election actually really do matter. I don’t think you can isolate one particular aspect of criticizing the 2020 election without looking at it holistically. On the eve of the 2020 presidential election, we saw a systematic, bureaucratically, and government-aided suppression of probably the single most important piece of information released in the eve of that election, the Hunter Biden laptop story, revealing potentially a compromised US presidential candidate, his family was compromised by foreign interests, and it was suppressed as misinformation by every major tech company.
The New York Post had its own Twitter account locked at that time, and we now know that many of the censorship decisions made in the year 2020 were actually made at behest of US bureaucratic actors in the deep state threatening those tech companies to do it or else those tech companies would face consequence. I think it might be the most undemocratic thing that’s happened in the history of our country, actually, is the way in which government actors, who were never elected to the government, used private sector actors to suppress information on the eve of an election that based on polling afterwards likely did influence the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. That was election interference of the highest order.
So I think that that’s just a hard fact that we have to contend with, and I think a lot of what you’ve heard in terms of complaints about the 2020 election, whatever those complaints, oh, have been, take place against the backdrop of large technology companies interfering in that election in a way that I think did have an impact on the outcome. I personally believe if the Hunter Biden laptop story had not been suppressed and censored, Donald Trump would’ve been unambiguous… The President of the United States right now would be Donald Trump. No doubt about it in my mind if you look at polling before and after the impact that would’ve had on the independent voter.
Now you look at… Okay, let’s talk about constructive solutions because I care about moving the country forward. What is a constructive solution to this issue of concerns about election integrity? Here’s one. Single-day voting on election day as a national holiday with paper ballots and government-issued voter ID to match the voter file. I favor that. We do it even in Puerto Rico, which is a territory of the United States. Why not do that everywhere in the United States? And I’ll make a pledge. I’ll do it right here, right? My pledge is, as a leader in our movement, I will do everything in my power to make sure we are done complaining about stolen elections if we get to that simple place of basic election security measures.
I think they’d be unifying too. Make election day a national holiday that unites us around our civic purpose one day, single-day voting on election day as a national holiday with paper ballots and government-issued voter ID to match the voter file. Let’s get there as a country, and you have my word, I will lead our movement in whatever way I can to make sure we are done complaining about stolen elections and fake ballots. And I think that fact that you see resistance to that proposal, which is otherwise very practical, very reasonable, nonpartisan proposal, I think the fact of that resistance actually provokes a lot of understandable skepticism, understandable skepticism of what else is actually going on, if not that, what exactly is going on here?
So, this Hunter Biden laptop story, we now know that it contains evidence of foreign interference in potentially the Biden administration and their family’s incentive structure. That story was systematically suppressed. So, in the United States of America, if you wanted to find that on the internet through any major social media platform or through even Google search, that story was suppressed or downplayed algorithmically that you couldn’t see it. Even on Twitter, if you tried to send it via direct message, the equivalent of email, sending a peer-to-peer message, they blocked you from even being able to send that story using private messages. That is a different level of concern. That’s not bias at that point. That’s outright interference in the election.
Let’s do a thought experiment here. Let’s suppose that Russia orchestrated that. What would the backlash be? Let’s say the Russian government orchestrated the US election. They interfered in it by saying that tech companies… They worked with them covertly to stop US citizens from being able to see information on the eve of an election. There would be a mass uproar in this country if the Russian government orchestrated that. Well, if actors in the US government bureaucracy or the US technology industry bureaucracy orchestrated the same thing, then we can’t apply a different standard to say that if Russia did it, it’s really bad and interfered in our election. But if it happened right here in the United States of America… And by the way, they blamed Russia for it, falsely, on the Russian disinformation of the Hunter Biden laptop story that was a false claim. We have to apply the same standard in both cases, and so the fact that if that were Russian interference, it would’ve been an outcry, but now it happened domestically, and we just call that, “Hey, it’s a little bit of bias ahead of an election.” I don’t think that that’s a fair characterization of how important that event was.
And I think that the reaction to systematic censorship is never good. History teaches us that it’s not good in the United States. It’s not good in other points in the history of the United States. The reaction to systematic, coordinated censorship and restraints and the freedom of a free people is never good. And if you want to really understand what happened, one really wants to get to the bottom of it rather than figuring out who to point fingers at, that really was the essence of the national malaise at the end of 2020 is, it was a year of unjust policies including COVID-19 lockdowns, systematic lies about it, lies about the election that created a level of public frustration that I think was understandable.
Now, the job of leaders is to how do you channel that in the most productive direction possible, and to your question, to the independent voter out there evaluating, as you are, do I think that Donald Trump has exhibited a lot of growth based on his experience in his first term, and what he hopes to achieve in his second term? The answer is, absolutely yes, and so, even if you don’t agree with everything that he’s said or done in the choice ahead of us in this election, I still believe he’s unambiguously the best choice to revive that sense of national pride, and also prosperity in our country, so people aren’t in the condition where they’re suffering at behest of government policies that leave them angry and channel that anger in other unproductive ways. No, the best way to do it is actually, actions do speak louder than words, implement the policies that make people’s lives better, and I do think that that’s the next step of how we best save the country.
And I do think that it is irresponsible, at least for the Democratic Party to make their core case against Donald Trump. It was Joe Biden’s entire message for years that he’s a threat to democracy and to the existence of America. Well, if you keep saying that about somebody against the backdrop conditions that we live in as a country, I don’t think that’s good for a nation. And so, do I have concerns about the future of the country? Do I think we’re skating on thin ice? Absolutely. And I think the best way around it is really through it, through it in this election, win by a landslide. I think a unifying landslide could be the best thing that happens for this country, like Reagan delivered in 1980 and then again in 1984. And in a very practical note, a landslide minus some shenanigans, is still going to be a victory. That is how we unite this country.
And so, I don’t think 50.001 margin where cable news is declaring the winner six days after the election, I don’t think that’s going to be good for the country. I think a decisive victory that unites the country, turns the page on a lot of the challenges of the last four years, and says, “Okay, this is where we’re going. This is who we are, and what we stand for.” This is a revival of our national identity and revive national pride in the United States regardless of whether you’re a Democrat or Republican. That I think is achievable in this election too, and that’s the outcome I’m rooting for.
From the Western perspective, the hard fact is Russia was the aggressor in this conflict, crossing the boundaries of a sovereign nation, and that is a violation of international norms, and it’s a violation of the recognition of international law of nations without borders are not a nation. And so, against that backdrop, what’s the actual interest of each country here? I think if we’re able to do a reasonable deal that gives Russia the assurances it needs about what they might allege as NATO expansionism violating prior commitments, but get codified commitments for Russia, that we’re not going to see willy-nilly behavior of just randomly deciding they’re going to violate the sovereignty of neighboring nations and have hard assurances and consequences for that. That’s the beginnings of a deal.
But then, I want to be ambitious for the United States. I want to weaken the Russia-China alliance, and I think that we can do a deal that requires, that gives some real gifts to Russia conditioned on Russia withdrawing itself from its military alliance with China. And this could be good for Russia too, in the long run, because right now, Vladimir Putin does not enjoy being Xi Jinping’s little brother in that relationship. But Russia’s military combined with China’s naval capacity, and Russia’s hypersonic missiles, and China’s economic might, together those countries in an alliance pose a real threat to the United States. But if as a condition for a reasonable discussion about where different territories land, given what’s occupied right now, hard requirements that Russia remove its military presence from the Western hemisphere. People forget this, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, we don’t want a Russian military presence in the Western hemisphere. That too, would be a win for the United States, no more joint military exercises with China off the coast of the Aleutian Islands.
The kinds of wins that the United States wants to protect the West’s security, get Russia out of the Western hemisphere, certainly out of the North American periphery, and then also make sure that Russia’s no longer in that military alliance with China, in return for that, able to provide Russia some things that are important to Russia. We’d have to have a reasonable discussion about what the territorial concessions would be at the end of this war to bring it to peace and resolution and what the guarantees are to make sure that NATO is going to not expand beyond the scope of what the United States has at least historically guaranteed. That I think together would be a reasonable deal that gives every party what they’re looking for, that results in immediate peace, that results in greater stability, and most importantly, weakening the Russia-China Alliance, which I think is the actual threat that we have so far, no matter who in this debate of more or less Ukraine funding has really failed to confront, that I think is the way we de-escalate the risk of World War III, and weaken the threats to the West by actually dismantling that alliance.
Actually, I was a little bit critical of Nixon earlier in this discussion for his contribution to the overgrowth of the US entitlement state and regulatory state, but I’ll give Nixon credit here on a different point, which is that he was imaginative of being able to pull red China out from the clasp of the USSR. He broke the China-Russia alliance back then, which was an important step to bring us to the near end of the Cold War. So I think there’s an opportunity for similar unconventional maneuver now of using greater reopened economic relations with Russia to pull Russia out from the hands of China today. There’s no skin off Ukraine’s back for that, and I do think that’s a big carrot for Russia in this direction. I do think that will involve some level of territorial negotiation as well, that out of any good deal, not everyone’s going to like a hundred percent of what comes out of it, but that’s part of the cost of securing peace is that not everyone’s going to be happy about every attribute.
But I could make a case that an immediate peace deal is also now in the best interest of Ukraine. Let’s just rewind the clock. We’re looking at now, let’s just say we’re early 2022, maybe June of 2022, Zelenskyy was ready to come to the table for a deal back then until Boris Johnson traveled when he had his own domestic political travails to convince Zelenskyy to continue to fight. And that goes to the point where when nations aren’t asked to pay for their own national security, they have what the problem is of moral hazard, of taking risks that really are suboptimal risks for them to take because they’re not bearing the consequences of taking those risks, not fully in the cost.
If Ukraine had done a deal back then, I think it is unambiguous that they would’ve done a better deal for themselves than they’re doing now after having spent hundreds of billions of dollars and expended tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives. So the idea that Ukraine is somehow better off because it failed to do that deal before is a lie. And if we’re not willing to learn from those mistakes of the recent past, we’re doomed to repeat them again. So, this idea that it would be painful for Ukraine, you know what’s been painful, tens and tens and tens of thousands of people continuing to die without any increased leverage in actually getting the outcome that they want.
So, I think there’s an opportunity for a win-win-win, a win for the United States and the West more broadly in weakening the Russia-China alliance, a win for Ukraine in having an agreement that is backstopped by the United States of America’s interests that provides a greater degree of long-run security to the future existence of Ukraine and its sovereignty and also stopping the bloodshed today. And I think a win for Russia which is to reopen economic relations with the West and have certain guarantees about what the mission-creep or scop-creep of NATO will be. There’s no rule that says that when one party, before full outright World War, starts at least, there’s an opportunity for there to actually be a win for everybody on the table rather than to assume that a win for us is a loss to Russia, or that anything positive that happens for Russia is a loss for the United States or Ukraine.
So I think it should be encouraging the fact that there are as many different possible levers here, almost makes certain that a reasonable practicable peace deal as possible in contrast to situation where there’s only one thing that matters for each side, then I can’t tell you that there’s a deal to be done, there’s definitely a deal to be done here, and I think that it requires real leadership in the United States playing hardball, not just with one side of this, not just with Zelenskyy or with Putin, but across the board hardball for our own interest, which are the interests of stability here, and that that will happen to well serve both Ukraine and Russia in the process.
Right now, we do, okay, so right now, we depend on China for everything from the pharmaceuticals in our medicine cabinet, 95% of ibuprofen, one of the most basic medicines used in the United States, depends on China for its supply chain. We, depend on China, ironically, for our own military-industrial base. Think about how little sense that makes actually. Our own military, which supposedly exists to protect ourselves against adversaries, depends for its own supplies, semiconductors, and otherwise, on our top adversary, that doesn’t make sense. Even if you’re a libertarian in the school of Friedrich von Hayek, who somebody I admire as well, even then, you would not argue for a foreign dependence on adversary for your military. So, that’s the next step we need to take, is at least reduce US dependence on China for the most essential inputs for the functioning of the United States of America, including our own military.
As a side note, I believe that means not just on-shoring to the United States. It does, but if we’re really serious about that, it also means expanding our relationships with allies like Japan, South Korea, India, the Philippines. And that’s an interesting debate to have because some on the right would say, “Okay, I want to decouple from China, but I also want less trade with all these other places.” You can’t have both those things at the same time. You can have one or the other. You can’t have both. And so, we have to acknowledge and be honest with ourselves that there are trade-offs to declaring independence from China. But the question is, what are the long-run benefits?
Now, you think about the other way to do this is strategic clarity. I think the way that you see World Wars often emerge is strategic ambiguity from two adversaries who don’t really know what the other side’s red line is or isn’t, and accidentally crosses those red lines. And I think we need to be much clearer with what are our hard red lines and what aren’t they. And I think that’s the single most effective way to make sure this doesn’t spiral into major world war.
And then, let’s talk about ending the Russia-Ukraine conflict on the terms that I just discussed with you before. Weakening the Russia-China Alliance not only reduces the risk that Russia becomes an aggressor, it also reduces the risk that China takes the risks that could escalate us to World War III as well. So I think that geopolitically, you got to look at these things holistically, that end of the Russia-Ukraine war in that peace deal deescalates not only the Russia-Ukraine conflict but the risk of a broader conflict that includes China as well, by also weakening China.
And understand that that may be the red line is the national recognition of Taiwan as an independent nation would be a red line that China would have. But we would have a red line to say that we do not in any circumstance tolerate the annexation by physical force and anytime in the foreseeable future when that’s against the interest of the United States of America. So those are examples, but the principle here is you asked how do we avoid major conflict with China? I think it starts with clear red lines on both sides. I think it starts with also lowering the stakes for the United States by making sure we’re not dependent on China for our modern way of life. And I think it also starts with ironically using a peaceful resolution to the Ukraine war as a way of weakening the Russia-China alliance, which in the other direction of weakening China has significant benefits to us as well.
There’s a lot of levers here, but I think that if we are both strategically clear with our allies and with our adversaries about what our red lines are, what our priorities are, reasonable deals that pull Russia out of the hands of China and vice versa, reasonable allies and relationships that cause China to question whether it can continue to have the same access to Middle Eastern oil supplies as it does today. And then clear red lines with China itself about what we definitely aren’t okay with and understand that they may have certain red lines to, that allows us, I think to still avoid what many people will call the unavoidable conflict, the Thucydides trap against the circumstance of when there’s a rising power against the backdrop of a declining power conflict always becomes inevitable. That’s a theory. It’s not a law of physics and I don’t think that, A, we have to be a declining power, and B, I don’t think that that has to necessarily result in major conflict with China here.
It’s going to require real leadership, leadership with a spine and you don’t have to judge based on international relations theory to form your view on this. Four years under Trump, we didn’t have major conflicts in the Middle East, in places like Russia, Ukraine. We were on the cusp of war with North Korea when Obama left office and Trump took over. Four years under Biden, less than four years under Biden and Harris, what do you have? Major conflicts in the Middle East. Major conflict in Russia, Ukraine, judged by the results. And I mean I would say that even if you’re somebody who disagrees with a lot of Donald Trump and you don’t like his style, if you’re single issues, you want to stay out of World War III, I think there’s a pretty clear case for why you go for Trump in this election.
And there are elements of that in Modi’s approach as well, which I respect about him, is he doesn’t apologize for the fact that India has a national identity and that the nation should be proud of it. But I’m not saying that because I’m proud of Meloni or Modi for their own countries. I’m American. I think there are lessons to learn from leaders who are proud of their own nation’s identity rather than apologizing for it. And I think it’s a big part of, it’s why I ran for president on a campaign centered on national pride. It’s also why I’m not only voting for but actively supporting Donald Trump because I do think he’s going to be the one that restores that missing national pride in the United States. And I touch on this as well in the book, there’s a chapter here, it says, “Nationalism isn’t a bad word.”
I think nationalism can be a very positive thing if it’s grounded in the actual true attributes of a nation. And in the United States that doesn’t mean no nationalism because that was not what the national identity of the United States was based on in the first place. But a civic nationalism grounded in our actual national ideals, that is who we are. And I think that that is something that we’ve gotten uncomfortable with in the countries to say that, “Oh, I’m proud of being American and I believe in American exceptionalism.” Somehow that’s looking down on others. No, I’m not looking down on anybody, but I’m proud of my own country. And I think Modi’s revived that spirit in India in a way that was missing for a long time, right? India had an inferiority complex, a psychological inferiority complex, but now to be proud of its national heritage and its national mythmaking and its national legacy and history.
And to say that every nation does have to have a kind of mythmaking about its past and to be proud of that, it’s like Malcolm X actually said this here in the United States, he said, “A nation without an appreciation for its history is like a tree without roots, it’s dead.” And I think that that’s true not just for the United States, I think it’s true for every other nation. I think leaders like Meloni in Italy, leaders like Modi in India have done a great job that I wish to bring that type of pride back in the United States. And whatever I do next, Lex, I’ll tell you this is I think reviving that sense of identity and pride, especially in the next generation is one of the most important things we can do for this country.
I think it’s all of us in some ways are hungry for purpose and meaning at a time in our history when the things that used to fill that void in our heart, they’re missing. And I think we need a president who both the right policies for the country seal the border, grow the economy, stay out of World War III, end rampant crime. Yes, we need the right policies, but we also need leaders who in a sustained way revive our national character, revive our sense of pride in this country, revive our identity as Americans, and I think that that need exists as much today as it did when I first ran for president. I don’t think it’s going to be automatically solved in just a few years. I think Donald Trump is the right person to carry that banner forward for the next four years.
But after that, we’ll see where the country is headed into 2028 and whatever I do, it’ll be whatever has a maximal positive impact on the country. I’ll also tell you that my laser focus maybe as distinct from other politicians on both sides is to take America to the next level, to move beyond our victimhood culture, to restore our culture of excellence. We got to shut down that nanny state, the entitlement state, the regulatory state, the foreign policy nanny state, shut it down and revive who we really are as Americans, and I’m as passionate about that as ever. But the next step is not running for president. The next step is what happens in the next four years, and that’s why over the next four weeks I’m focused on doing whatever I can to make sure we succeed in this election.
I think it’s interesting. I think that you have in a number of other leaders probably emerging at lower levels on the left. Not everybody’s going to necessarily come from Washington DC. In fact, the longer they’re there, the more they in some ways get polluted by it. I think the governor of Colorado, he’s an interesting guy. He’s got a more libertarian tendency. I don’t know as much about his views on it from a national perspective, but it’s intriguing to see somebody who has at least libertarian freedom-oriented tendencies within the Democratic Party. I think that there are a number of, I mean, I don’t foresee him running for president, but I had a debate last year when I was running for president with Ro Khanna who say what you will about him. He’s an highly intelligent person and is somebody who is at least willing to buck the consensus of his party when necessary.
I think he recently, I would say lambasted, he phrased it very delicately, but criticized Kamala Harris’s proposed tax on unrealized capital gains. So I like people who are willing to challenge the orthodoxies in their own party because it says they actually have convictions. And so whoever the Democrats put up, I hope it’s someone like that. And for my part I have and continue to have beliefs that will challenge Republicans, that on the face of it may not be the policies that poll on paper as the policies you’re supposed to adopt as a Republican candidate, but what a true leader does doesn’t just tell people what they want to hear. You tell people what they need to hear and you tell people what your actual convictions are. And this idea that I don’t want to create a right-wing entitlement state or a nanny state, I want to shut it down.
That challenges the precept positions of where a lot of the conservative movement is right now. I don’t think the bill to cap credit card interest rates is a good idea because that’s a price control just like Kamala Harris’s price controls and it’ll reduce access to credit. I don’t think that we want a crony capitalist estate showering private benefits on selected industries that favor us or that we want to expand the CFPB or the FTC’s remit, and somehow we’re going to trust it because it’s under our watch. No, I believe in shutting it down. That challenges a lot of the current direction of the conservative movement. I believe in certain issues that, or maybe even outside the scope of what Republicans currently care about right now.
One of the things that I oppose, for example, is this is not a top issue in American politics, but just to give you a sense for how I think and view the world, I’m against factory farming of a large scale of, you could sort of say putting the mistreatment of, it’s one thing to say that you need it for your sustenance and that’s great. But it’s another to say that you have to do it in a factory farming setting that gives special exemptions from historical laws that have existed that are the product of crony capitalism. I’m against crony capitalism in all its forms. I’m against the influence of mega money in politics. I don’t think that’s been good either for Democrats or Republicans. Some of those views I think are not necessarily the traditional Republican orthodoxy reading chapter and verse from what the Republican Party platform has been. It’s not against the Republican Party platform, but it’s asking what the future of our movement is.
I would’ve just taken that as a pause where halfway through you’ve established relevance, now make sure the country sees who you actually are in full rather than just the momentum competitive driven version of you. And I just think that taking those moments to just take stock of where you are, do some writing. I didn’t do much writing during the presidential campaign. I enjoy writing. It’s part of how I center myself. It’s part of what this book allowed me to do is, okay, I ran that whirlwind of a campaign. The first thing I started doing after I collected myself for a couple of weeks was take the pen and start writing. And I was committed to writing that book. Whether or not anybody read it, I was just writing it for myself. And actually it started in a very different form. It was very personal reflection oriented. So most of that, funny enough I’ve learned about writing the books, Lex, is-
And I think that’s one of the things that I learned from this campaign is not just all the policy lessons, but even just as a matter of personal practice, the ability to take spaces of time to not only physically challenge yourself, work out, et cetera, but to give yourself the space to reflect, to recenter yourself on the why. Had I done that, I think I would’ve been even more centered on the mission the whole time. Rather than you get attacked on the way you’re thrown off your tilt or thrown off your balance, it becomes a lot harder for someone else to do that to you if you’ve really centered yourself on your own purpose. It’s probably one of my biggest learnings.
I thrive on it, I enjoy it. Even my relationships with my closest friends are built around heated debates and deep-seated disagreements. And I just think that’s beautiful, not just about human relationships, but it’s particularly beautiful about America, right? Because it’s part of the culture of this country more so than other countries in China, India, Asian cultures even a lot of European cultures are very different where that’s considered not genteel behavior. It’s not the respectful behavior. Whereas for us, part of what makes this country great is you could disagree like hell and still get together at the dinner table at the end of it. I think we’ve lost some of that, but I’m on a bit of a mission to bring that back. And so whether it’s in politics or not, I’m committed in that next step, whatever the path is over the next four years, one of the things I’m committed to doing is making sure that I go out of my way to talk to people who actually disagree with me. And I think it’s a big part of how we’re going to save our country.
I think as long as you’re curious about that, I mean the climate change protestors that have interrupted my events, I’m as fascinated by the psychology of what’s moving them and what they might be hungry for as I am concerned about rebutting the content of what they’re saying to me. And I think that that’s certainly something I care to revive. We don’t talk about in politics that much, but reviving that sense of curiosity I think is in a certain way, one of the ways we’re going to be able to disagree, but still remain friends and fellow citizens at the end of it.
And yeah, it’s one of the things I like about you and why I was looking forward to this conversation too, is it’s cool to have intellectual interests that span sports to culture, to politics, to philosophy. And it’s not like you just have to be an expert trained in one of those things to be able to engage in it, but actually maybe, just maybe you might even be better at each of those things because you’re curious about the other, the Renaissance man, if you will. I think we’ve lost a little bit of that concept in America, but it’s certainly something that is important to me. And this year it’s been kind of cool. After leaving the campaign, I’ve been doing a wide range of things. I’ve been picking up my tennis game again. I practiced at the Ohio State-
Click link to jump approximately to that part in the transcript:
- 0:00 – Introduction
- 2:02 – Conservatism
- 5:18 – Progressivism
- 10:52 – DEI
- 15:45 – Bureaucracy
- 22:36 – Government efficiency
- 37:46 – Education
- 52:11 – Military Industrial Complex
- 1:14:29 – Illegal immigration
- 1:36:03 – Donald Trump
- 1:57:29 – War in Ukraine
- 2:08:43 – China
- 2:19:53 – Will Vivek run in 2028?
- 2:31:32 – Approach to debates
Introduction
Vivek Ramaswamy
The way I would do it, 75% headcount reduction across the board in the federal bureaucracy, send them home packing, shut down agencies that shouldn’t exist, rescind every unconstitutional regulation that Congress never passed. In a true self-governing democracy, it should be our elected representatives that make the laws and the rules, not unelected bureaucrats. Merit and equity are actually incompatible. Merit and group quotas are incompatible. You can have one or the other, you can’t have both.
The way I would do it, 75% headcount reduction across the board in the federal bureaucracy, send them home packing, shut down agencies that shouldn’t exist, rescind every unconstitutional regulation that Congress never passed. In a true self-governing democracy, it should be our elected representatives that make the laws and the rules, not unelected bureaucrats. Merit and equity are actually incompatible. Merit and group quotas are incompatible. You can have one or the other, you can’t have both.
It’s an assault and a crusade on the nanny state itself. And that nanny state presents itself in several forms. There’s the entitlement state, it’s the welfare state, presents itself in the form of the regulatory state. That’s what we’re talking about. And then there’s the foreign nanny state where effectively we are subsidizing other countries that aren’t paying their fair share of protection or other resources we provide them. If I was to summarize my ideology, in a nutshell, it is to terminate the nanny state in the United States of America in all of its forms, the entitlement state, the regulatory state and the foreign policy nanny state. Once we’ve done that, we’ve revived the republic that I think would make George Washington proud.
Lex Fridman
The following is a conversation with Vivek Ramaswamy about the future of conservatism in America. He has written many books on this topic, including his latest called Truths: The Future of America First. He ran for president this year in the Republican primary and is considered by many to represent the future of the Republican Party. Before all that, he was a successful biotech entrepreneur and investor with a degree in biology from Harvard and a law degree from Yale. As always, when the topic is politics, I will continue talking to people on both the left and the right with empathy, curiosity and backbone. This is a Lex Fridman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here’s Vivek Ramaswamy.
The following is a conversation with Vivek Ramaswamy about the future of conservatism in America. He has written many books on this topic, including his latest called Truths: The Future of America First. He ran for president this year in the Republican primary and is considered by many to represent the future of the Republican Party. Before all that, he was a successful biotech entrepreneur and investor with a degree in biology from Harvard and a law degree from Yale. As always, when the topic is politics, I will continue talking to people on both the left and the right with empathy, curiosity and backbone. This is a Lex Fridman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here’s Vivek Ramaswamy.
Conservatism
Lex Fridman
You are one of the great elucidators of conservative ideas, so you’re the perfect person to ask. What is conservatism? What’s your, let’s say, conservative vision for America?
You are one of the great elucidators of conservative ideas, so you’re the perfect person to ask. What is conservatism? What’s your, let’s say, conservative vision for America?
Vivek Ramaswamy
Well, actually this is one of my criticisms of the modern Republican Party and direction of the conservative movement is that we’ve gotten so good at describing what we’re against. There’s a list of things that we could rail against, wokeism, transgender ideology, climate ideology, COVIDism, COVID policies, the radical Biden agenda, the radical Harris agenda, the list goes on. But actually what’s missing in the conservative movement right now is what we actually stand for. What is our vision for the future of the country? And I saw that as a deficit at the time I started my presidential campaign. It was in many ways the purpose of my campaign because I do feel that that’s why we didn’t have the red wave in 2022. They tried to blame Donald Trump. They tried to blame abortion. They blamed a bunch of individual specific issues or factors. I think the real reason we didn’t have that red wave was that we got so practiced at criticizing Joe Biden that we forgot to articulate who we are and what we stand for.
Well, actually this is one of my criticisms of the modern Republican Party and direction of the conservative movement is that we’ve gotten so good at describing what we’re against. There’s a list of things that we could rail against, wokeism, transgender ideology, climate ideology, COVIDism, COVID policies, the radical Biden agenda, the radical Harris agenda, the list goes on. But actually what’s missing in the conservative movement right now is what we actually stand for. What is our vision for the future of the country? And I saw that as a deficit at the time I started my presidential campaign. It was in many ways the purpose of my campaign because I do feel that that’s why we didn’t have the red wave in 2022. They tried to blame Donald Trump. They tried to blame abortion. They blamed a bunch of individual specific issues or factors. I think the real reason we didn’t have that red wave was that we got so practiced at criticizing Joe Biden that we forgot to articulate who we are and what we stand for.
So what do we stand for as conservatives? I think we stand for the ideals that we fought the American Revolution for in 1776. Ideals like merit. That the best person gets the job without regard to their genetics. That you get ahead in this country, not on the color of your skin, but on the content of your character. Free speech, an open debate, not just as some sort of catchphrase, but the idea that any opinion, no matter how heinous, you get to express it in the United States of America. Self-governance and this is a big one right now, is that the people we elect to run the government, they’re no longer the ones who actually run the government. We, in the conservative movement, I believe, should believe in restoring self-governance where it’s not bureaucrats running the show, but actually elected representatives.
And then the other ideal that the nation was founded on that I think we need to revive and I think as a north star of the conservative movement is restoring the rule of law in this country. You think about even the abandonment of the rule of law at the southern border. It’s particularly personal to me as the kid of legal immigrants to this country. You and I actually share a couple of aspects in common in that regard. That also though means your first act of entering this country can’t break the law. So there’s some policy commitments and principles, merit, free speech, self-governance, rule of law. And then I think culturally what does it mean to be a conservative is it means we believe in the anchors of our identity, in truth, the value of the individual family, nation and God beat race, gender, sexuality and climate. If we have the courage to actually stand for our own vision. And that’s a big part of what’s been missing. And it’s a big part of not just through the campaign, but through a lot of my future advocacy, that’s the vacuum I’m aiming to fill.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, we’ll talk about each of those issues. Immigration, the growing bureaucracy of government, religion is a really interesting topic, something you’ve spoken about a lot, but you’ve also had a lot of really tense debates. So you’re a perfect person to ask to steel man the other side.
Yeah, we’ll talk about each of those issues. Immigration, the growing bureaucracy of government, religion is a really interesting topic, something you’ve spoken about a lot, but you’ve also had a lot of really tense debates. So you’re a perfect person to ask to steel man the other side.
Progressivism
Vivek Ramaswamy
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
So let me ask you about progressivism.
So let me ask you about progressivism.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Sure.
Sure.
Lex Fridman
Can you steel man the case for progressivism and left- wing ideas?
Can you steel man the case for progressivism and left- wing ideas?
Vivek Ramaswamy
Yeah, so look, I think the strongest case, particularly for left-wing ideas in the United States, so in the American context, is that the country has been imperfect in living up to its ideals. So even though our founding fathers preached the importance of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and freedom, they didn’t practice those values in terms of many of our founding fathers being slave owners, inequalities with respect to women and other disempowered such that they say that that created a power structure in this country that continues to last to this day. The vestiges of what happened even in 1860 in the course of human history isn’t that long ago and that we need to do everything in our power to correct for those imbalances in power in the United States.
Yeah, so look, I think the strongest case, particularly for left-wing ideas in the United States, so in the American context, is that the country has been imperfect in living up to its ideals. So even though our founding fathers preached the importance of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and freedom, they didn’t practice those values in terms of many of our founding fathers being slave owners, inequalities with respect to women and other disempowered such that they say that that created a power structure in this country that continues to last to this day. The vestiges of what happened even in 1860 in the course of human history isn’t that long ago and that we need to do everything in our power to correct for those imbalances in power in the United States.
That’s the core view of the modern left. I’m not criticizing it right now, I’m steel manning it, I’m trying to give you I think a good of why the left believes they have a compelling case for the government stepping into correct for historical or present inequalities. I can give you my counter rebuttal of that, but the best statement of the left, I think that it’s the fact that we’ve been imperfect in living up to those ideals. In order to fix that, we’re going to have to take steps that are severe steps if needed to correct for those historical inequalities before we actually have true equality of opportunity in this country. That’s the case for the left-wing view in modern America.
Lex Fridman
So what’s your criticism of that?
So what’s your criticism of that?
Vivek Ramaswamy
So my concern with it is even if that’s well-motivated, I think that it recreates many of the same problems that they were setting out to solve. I’ll give you a really tangible example of that in the present right now. I may be alone amongst prominent conservatives who would say something like this right now, but I think it’s true, so I’m going to say it. I’m actually even in the last year, last year and a half, seeing actually a rise in anti-black and anti-minority racism in this country, which is a little curious. When over the last 10 years we got as close to Martin Luther King’s promise land as you could envision, a place where you have every American, regardless of their skin color, able to vote without obstruction, a place where you have people able to get the highest jobs in the land without race standing in their way.
So my concern with it is even if that’s well-motivated, I think that it recreates many of the same problems that they were setting out to solve. I’ll give you a really tangible example of that in the present right now. I may be alone amongst prominent conservatives who would say something like this right now, but I think it’s true, so I’m going to say it. I’m actually even in the last year, last year and a half, seeing actually a rise in anti-black and anti-minority racism in this country, which is a little curious. When over the last 10 years we got as close to Martin Luther King’s promise land as you could envision, a place where you have every American, regardless of their skin color, able to vote without obstruction, a place where you have people able to get the highest jobs in the land without race standing in their way.
Why are we seeing that resurgence? In part, it’s because of I believe that left-wing obsession with racial equity over the course of the last 20 years in this country. And so when you take something away from someone based on their skin color, and that’s what correcting for prior injustice was supposed to do, the left-wing view is you have to correct for prior injustice by saying that whether you’re a white, straight, cis, man, you have certain privileges that you have to actually correct for. When you take something away from somebody based on their genetics, you actually foster greater animus towards other groups around you. And so the problem with that philosophy is that it creates several problems with it, but the most significant problem that I think everybody can agree we want to avoid is to actually fan the flames of the very divisions that you supposedly wanted to heal.
I see that in our context of our immigration policy as well. You think about even what’s going on in, I’m from Ohio, I was born and raised in Ohio and I live there today, the controversy in Springfield, Ohio. I personally don’t blame really any of the people who are in Springfield, either the native people born and raised in Springfield or even the Haitians who have been moved to Springfield. But it ends up becoming a divide and conquer strategy and outcome where if you put 20,000 people in a community where, 50,000 people, where the 20,000 are coming in don’t know the language, are unable to follow the traffic laws, are unable to assimilate, you know there’s going to be a reactionary backlash. And so even though that began perhaps with some type of charitable instinct, some type of sympathy for people who went through the earthquake in 2010 in Haiti and achieved temporary protective status in the United States, what began with sympathy, what began with earnest intentions actually creates the very division and reactionary response that supposedly we say we wanted to avoid. So that’s my number one criticism of that left-wing worldview.
Number two is I do believe that merit and equity are actually incompatible. Merit and group quotas are incompatible. You can have one or the other, you can’t have both. And the reason why is no two people, and I think it’s the beautiful things, true between you and I, between you, I and all of our friends or family or strangers or neighbors or colleagues, no two people have the same skillsets. We’re each endowed by different gifts. We’re each endowed with different talents. And that’s the beauty of human diversity.
And a true meritocracy is a system in which you’re able to achieve the maximum of your God-given potential without anybody standing in your way. But that means necessarily there’s going to be differences in outcomes in a wide range of parameters, not just financial, not just money, not just fame or currency or whatever it is. There’s just going to be different outcomes for different people in different spheres of lives. And that’s what meritocracy demands. It’s what it requires. And so the left’s vision of group equity necessarily comes at the cost of meritocracy. And so those would be my two reasons for opposing the view is one is it’s not meritocratic, but number two is it often even has the effect of hurting the very people they claimed to have wanted to help. And I think that’s part of what we’re seeing in modern America.
DEI
Lex Fridman
Yeah, you had a pretty intense debate with Mark Cuban, a great conversation. I think it’s on your podcast actually.
Yeah, you had a pretty intense debate with Mark Cuban, a great conversation. I think it’s on your podcast actually.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Yes. Yeah, it was great.
Yes. Yeah, it was great.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Yeah, he was a good guy to talk to.
Yeah, he was a good guy to talk to.
Lex Fridman
It was great. Okay. Well, speaking of good guys, he messages me all the time with beautifully eloquent criticism. I appreciate that, Mark. What was one of the more convincing things he said to you? You’re mostly focused on kind of DEI.
It was great. Okay. Well, speaking of good guys, he messages me all the time with beautifully eloquent criticism. I appreciate that, Mark. What was one of the more convincing things he said to you? You’re mostly focused on kind of DEI.
Vivek Ramaswamy
So let’s just take a step back and understand because people use these acronyms and then they start saying it out of muscle memory and stop asking what it actually means. DEI refers to capital D, diversity, equity and inclusion, which is a philosophy adopted by institutions principally in the private sector, companies, nonprofits and universities, to say that they need to strive for specific forms of racial, gender and sexual orientation diversity. And it’s not just the D, it’s equity in ensuring that you have equal outcomes as measured by certain group quota targets or group representation targets that they would meet in their ranks. The problem with the DEI agenda is in the name of diversity, it actually has been a vehicle for sacrificing true diversity of thought. So the way the argument goes is this, is that we have to create an environment that is receptive to minorities and minority views, but if certain opinions are themselves deemed to be hostile to those minorities, then you have to exclude those opinions in the name of the capital D diversity. But that means that you’re necessarily sacrificing actual diversity of thought.
So let’s just take a step back and understand because people use these acronyms and then they start saying it out of muscle memory and stop asking what it actually means. DEI refers to capital D, diversity, equity and inclusion, which is a philosophy adopted by institutions principally in the private sector, companies, nonprofits and universities, to say that they need to strive for specific forms of racial, gender and sexual orientation diversity. And it’s not just the D, it’s equity in ensuring that you have equal outcomes as measured by certain group quota targets or group representation targets that they would meet in their ranks. The problem with the DEI agenda is in the name of diversity, it actually has been a vehicle for sacrificing true diversity of thought. So the way the argument goes is this, is that we have to create an environment that is receptive to minorities and minority views, but if certain opinions are themselves deemed to be hostile to those minorities, then you have to exclude those opinions in the name of the capital D diversity. But that means that you’re necessarily sacrificing actual diversity of thought.
I can give you a very specific example. That might sound like, “Okay, well, is it such a bad thing if an organization doesn’t want to exclude people who are saying racist things on a given day?” We could debate that. But let’s get to the tangible world of how that actually plays out. I, for my part, have not really heard in ordinary America people uttering racial epithets if you’re going to restaurant or in the grocery store. It’s not something I’ve encountered, certainly not in the workplace. But that’s a theoretical case, let’s talk about the real world case of how this plays out. So there was an instance, it was a case that presented itself before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the EEOC, one of the government enforcers of the DEI agenda. And there was a case of a woman who wore a red sweater on Fridays in celebration of veterans and those who had served the military and invited others in the workplace to do the same thing.
And they had a kind of affinity group, you could call it that, a veteran type affinity group, appreciating those who had served. Her son had served as well. There was a minority employee at that business who said that he found that to be a microaggression. So the employer asked her to stop wearing said clothes too, the office. Well, she still felt like she wanted to celebrate, I think, it was Friday was the day of the week where they did it. She still wore the red sweater and she didn’t wear it, but she would hang it on the back of her seat, put it on the back of her seat at the office. They said, “No, you can’t do that either.” So the irony is in the name of this capital D diversity, which is creating a supposedly welcoming workplace for all kinds of Americans by focusing only on certain kinds of so-called diversity, that translates into actually not even a diversity of your genetics, which is what they claim to be solving for, but also a hostility to diversity of thought.
And I think that’s dangerous. And you’re seeing that happen in the last four years across this country. It’s been pretty rampant. I think it leaves America worse off. The beauty of America is we’re a country where we should be able to have institutions that are stronger from different points of view being expressed. But my number one criticism of the DEI agenda is not even that it’s anti-meritocratic, it is anti-meritocratic, but my number one criticism is it’s actually hostile to the free and open exchange of ideas by creating often legal liabilities for organizations that even permit certain viewpoints to be expressed. And I think that’s the biggest concern.
Lex Fridman
I think what Mark would say is that diversity allows you to look for talent in places where you haven’t looked before and therefore find really special talents, special people. I think that’s the case he made.
I think what Mark would say is that diversity allows you to look for talent in places where you haven’t looked before and therefore find really special talents, special people. I think that’s the case he made.
Vivek Ramaswamy
He did make that case and it was a great conversation. And my response to that is great, that’s a good thing. We don’t need a three-letter acronym to do that. You don’t need special programmatic DEI incentives to do it because companies are always going to seek in a truly free market, which I think we’re missing in the United States today for a lot of reasons, but in a truly free market, companies will have the incentive to hire the best and brightest or else they’re going to be less competitive versus other companies. But you don’t need ESG, DEI, CSR regimes in part enforced by the government to do it.
He did make that case and it was a great conversation. And my response to that is great, that’s a good thing. We don’t need a three-letter acronym to do that. You don’t need special programmatic DEI incentives to do it because companies are always going to seek in a truly free market, which I think we’re missing in the United States today for a lot of reasons, but in a truly free market, companies will have the incentive to hire the best and brightest or else they’re going to be less competitive versus other companies. But you don’t need ESG, DEI, CSR regimes in part enforced by the government to do it.
Today, to be a government contractor, for example, you have to adopt certain racial and gender representation targets in your workforce. That’s not the free market working. So I think you can’t have it both ways either. It’s going to be good for companies and companies are going to do what’s in their self-interest. That’s what capitalists like Mark Cuban and I believe. But if we really believe that, then we should let the market work rather than forcing it to adopt these top-down standards. That’s my issue with it.
Bureaucracy
Lex Fridman
I don’t know what it is about human psychology, but whenever you have a sort of administration, a committee that gets together to do a good thing, the committee starts to use the good thing, the ideology behind wish there’s a good ideal, to bully people and to do bad things. I don’t know what it is.
I don’t know what it is about human psychology, but whenever you have a sort of administration, a committee that gets together to do a good thing, the committee starts to use the good thing, the ideology behind wish there’s a good ideal, to bully people and to do bad things. I don’t know what it is.
Vivek Ramaswamy
This has less to do with left-wing versus right-wing ideology and more the nature of a bureaucracy is one that looks after its own existence as its top goal. So part of what you’ve seen with the so-called perpetuation of wokeness in American life is that the bureaucracy has used the appearance of virtue to actually deflect accountabilities for its own failure. So you’ve seen that in several different spheres of American life. You could even talk about in the military. You think about our entry into Iraq after 9/11 had nothing to do with the state objectives that we had. And I think by all accounts, it was a policy move we regret. Our policy ranks and our foreign policy establishment made a mistake in entering Iraq, invading a country that really by all accounts was not at all responsible for 9/11. Nonetheless, if you’re part of the US military or you’re General Mark Milley, you would rather talk about white rage or systemic racism than you would actually talk about the military’s actual substantive failures.
This has less to do with left-wing versus right-wing ideology and more the nature of a bureaucracy is one that looks after its own existence as its top goal. So part of what you’ve seen with the so-called perpetuation of wokeness in American life is that the bureaucracy has used the appearance of virtue to actually deflect accountabilities for its own failure. So you’ve seen that in several different spheres of American life. You could even talk about in the military. You think about our entry into Iraq after 9/11 had nothing to do with the state objectives that we had. And I think by all accounts, it was a policy move we regret. Our policy ranks and our foreign policy establishment made a mistake in entering Iraq, invading a country that really by all accounts was not at all responsible for 9/11. Nonetheless, if you’re part of the US military or you’re General Mark Milley, you would rather talk about white rage or systemic racism than you would actually talk about the military’s actual substantive failures.
It’s what I call the practice of blowing woke smoke to deflect accountability. You could say the same thing with respect to the educational system. It’s a lot easier to claim that, and I’m not the one making this claim, but others have made this claim, that math is racist because there are inequitable results on objective tests of mathematics based on different demographic attributes. You can claim using that then math is racist. It’s a lot easier to blow that woke smoke than it is to accept accountability for failing to teach black kids in the inner city how to actually do math and fix our public school systems and the zip code coded mechanism for trapping kids in poor communities in bad schools. So I think that in many cases, what these bureaucracies do is they use the appearance of signaling this virtue as a way of not really advancing a social cause, but of strengthening the power of the bureaucracy itself and insulating that bureaucracy from criticism.
So in many ways, bureaucracy, I think, cars the channels through which much of this woke ideology has flowed over the last several years. And that’s why part of my focus has shifted away from just combating wokeness because that’s just a symptom, I think, versus combating actual bureaucracy itself. The rise of this managerial class, the rise of the deep state. We talk about that in the government, but the deep state doesn’t just exist in the government. It exists I think in every sphere of our lives, from companies to nonprofits to universities. It’s the rise of we call the managerial class, the committee class, the people who professionally sit on committees, I think are wielding far more power today than actual creators, entrepreneurs, original ideators and ordinary citizens alike.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, you need managers, but as few as possible. It seems like when you have a giant managerial class, the actual doers don’t get to do. But like you said, bureaucracy is a phenomena of both the left and the right. This is not-
Yeah, you need managers, but as few as possible. It seems like when you have a giant managerial class, the actual doers don’t get to do. But like you said, bureaucracy is a phenomena of both the left and the right. This is not-
Vivek Ramaswamy
It’s not even a left or right, it’s just transcends that, but it’s anti-American at its core. So our founding fathers, they were anti-bureaucratic at their core actually, they were the pioneers, the explorers, the unafraid. They were the inventors, the creators. People forget this about Benjamin Franklin who signed the Declaration of Independence, one of the great inventors that we have in the United States as well. He invented the lightning rod. He invented the Franklin stove, which was actually one of the great innovations in the field of thermodynamics. He even invented a number of musical instruments that Mozart and Beethoven went on to use. That’s just Benjamin Franklin. So you think, “Oh, he’s a one-off.” Everybody say, okay, he was the one zany founder who was also a creative scientific innovator who happened to be one of the founders of the country. Wrong, it wasn’t unique to him. You have Thomas Jefferson. What are you sitting in right now? You’re sitting on a swivel chair. Okay. Who invented the swivel chair?
It’s not even a left or right, it’s just transcends that, but it’s anti-American at its core. So our founding fathers, they were anti-bureaucratic at their core actually, they were the pioneers, the explorers, the unafraid. They were the inventors, the creators. People forget this about Benjamin Franklin who signed the Declaration of Independence, one of the great inventors that we have in the United States as well. He invented the lightning rod. He invented the Franklin stove, which was actually one of the great innovations in the field of thermodynamics. He even invented a number of musical instruments that Mozart and Beethoven went on to use. That’s just Benjamin Franklin. So you think, “Oh, he’s a one-off.” Everybody say, okay, he was the one zany founder who was also a creative scientific innovator who happened to be one of the founders of the country. Wrong, it wasn’t unique to him. You have Thomas Jefferson. What are you sitting in right now? You’re sitting on a swivel chair. Okay. Who invented the swivel chair?
Lex Fridman
Thomas Jefferson?
Thomas Jefferson?
Vivek Ramaswamy
Yes, Thomas Jefferson.
Yes, Thomas Jefferson.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Funny enough, he invented the swivel chair while he was writing the Declaration of Independence, which is insane.
Funny enough, he invented the swivel chair while he was writing the Declaration of Independence, which is insane.
Lex Fridman
You’re the one that reminded me that he drafted, he wrote the Declaration of Independence when he was 33.
You’re the one that reminded me that he drafted, he wrote the Declaration of Independence when he was 33.
Vivek Ramaswamy
And he was 33 when he did it while inventing the swivel chair.
And he was 33 when he did it while inventing the swivel chair.
Lex Fridman
I like how you’re focused on the swivel chair. Can we just pause on the Declaration of Independence? It makes me feel horrible.
I like how you’re focused on the swivel chair. Can we just pause on the Declaration of Independence? It makes me feel horrible.
Vivek Ramaswamy
But the Declaration of Independence part, everybody knows. What people don’t know, he was an architect. So he worked in Virginia, but the Virginia State Capital Dome, so the building that’s in Virginia today where the state capital is, that dome was actually designed by Thomas Jefferson as well. So these people weren’t people who sat on professional committees, they weren’t bureaucrats, they hated bureaucracy. Part of Old World England is Old World England was committed to the idea of bureaucracy. Bureaucracy and monarchy go hand in hand. A monarch can’t actually administer or govern directly, it requires bureaucracy, a machine to actually technocratically govern for him. So the United States of America was founded on the idea that we reject that Old World view. The Old World vision was that we the people cannot be trusted to self-govern or make decisions for ourselves. We would burn ourselves off the planet, is the modern version of this, with existential risks like global climate change, if we just leave it to the people and their democratic will.
But the Declaration of Independence part, everybody knows. What people don’t know, he was an architect. So he worked in Virginia, but the Virginia State Capital Dome, so the building that’s in Virginia today where the state capital is, that dome was actually designed by Thomas Jefferson as well. So these people weren’t people who sat on professional committees, they weren’t bureaucrats, they hated bureaucracy. Part of Old World England is Old World England was committed to the idea of bureaucracy. Bureaucracy and monarchy go hand in hand. A monarch can’t actually administer or govern directly, it requires bureaucracy, a machine to actually technocratically govern for him. So the United States of America was founded on the idea that we reject that Old World view. The Old World vision was that we the people cannot be trusted to self-govern or make decisions for ourselves. We would burn ourselves off the planet, is the modern version of this, with existential risks like global climate change, if we just leave it to the people and their democratic will.
That’s why you need professional technocrats, educated elites, enlightened bureaucrats to be able to set limits that actually protect people from their own worst impulses. That’s the Old World view and most nations in human history have operated this way, but what made the United States of America itself, to know what made America great, we have to know what made America itself, what made America itself is we said hell no to that vision, that we the people, for better or worse, are going to self-govern without the committee class restraining what we do. And the likes of Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin and I could give you examples of John Adams or Robert Livingston, you go straight down the list of founding fathers who were inventors, creators, pioneers, explorers, who also were the very people who came together to sign the Declaration of Independence. And so yeah, this rise of bureaucracy in America in every sphere of life, I view it as anti-American actually. And I hope that conservatives and liberals alike can get behind my crusade certainly to get in there and shut most of it down.
Government efficiency
Lex Fridman
Yeah, speaking of shutting most of it down, how do you propose we do that? How do we make government more efficient? How to make it smaller? What are the different ideas of how to do that?
Yeah, speaking of shutting most of it down, how do you propose we do that? How do we make government more efficient? How to make it smaller? What are the different ideas of how to do that?
Vivek Ramaswamy
Well, the first thing I’ll say is you’re always taking a risk. Okay, there’s no free lunch here. Mostly, at least. You’re always taking a risk. One risk is that you say I want to reform it gradually, I want to have a grand master plan and get to exactly what the right end state is and then carefully cut with a chisel, like a work of art, to get there. I don’t believe that approach works. I think that’s an approach that conservatives have taken for many years. I think it hasn’t gotten us very far. And the reason is if you have an eight-headed hydra and you cut off one of the heads, it grows right back. So that’s the risk of not cutting enough. The other risk you could take is the risk of cutting too much. To say that I’m going to cut so much that I’m going to take the risk of not just cutting the fat, but also cutting some muscle along the way, but I’m going to take that risk.
Well, the first thing I’ll say is you’re always taking a risk. Okay, there’s no free lunch here. Mostly, at least. You’re always taking a risk. One risk is that you say I want to reform it gradually, I want to have a grand master plan and get to exactly what the right end state is and then carefully cut with a chisel, like a work of art, to get there. I don’t believe that approach works. I think that’s an approach that conservatives have taken for many years. I think it hasn’t gotten us very far. And the reason is if you have an eight-headed hydra and you cut off one of the heads, it grows right back. So that’s the risk of not cutting enough. The other risk you could take is the risk of cutting too much. To say that I’m going to cut so much that I’m going to take the risk of not just cutting the fat, but also cutting some muscle along the way, but I’m going to take that risk.
I can’t give you option C, which is to say that I’m going to cut exactly the right amount, I’m going to do it perfectly. Okay, you don’t know ex-ante, you don’t know beforehand that it’s exactly how it’s going to, so that’s a meaningless claim. It’s only a question of which risk you’re going to take. I believe in the moment we live in right now, the second risk is the risk we have to be willing to take. And we haven’t had a class of politician, Donald Trump in 2016 was I think the closest we’ve gotten and I think the second term will be even closer to what we need, but short of that, I don’t think we’ve really had a class of politician who has gotten very serious about cutting so much that you’re also going to cut some fat, but not only some fat, but also some muscle.
That’s the risk we have to take. So the way I would do it, 75% headcount reduction across the board in the federal bureaucracy, send them home packing, shut down agencies that shouldn’t exist, rescind every unconstitutional regulation that Congress never passed. In a true self-governing democracy, it should be our elected representatives that make the laws and the rules not unelected bureaucrats. And that is the single greatest form of economic stimulus we could have in this country, but it is also the single most effective way to restore self-governance in our country as well. And it is the blueprint for, I think, how we save this country.
Lex Fridman
That’s pretty gangster, 75%. There’s this kind of almost meme like video of Argentinian President Javier Milei, where on a whiteboard, he has all the I think 18 ministries lined up and he’s ripping, “Department of Education, gone,” and he’s just going like this. Now, the situation in Argentina is pretty dire and the situation in the United States is not, despite everybody saying the empire is falling, this is still, in my opinion, the greatest nation on earth. Still, the economy is doing very well. Still, this is the hub of culture, the hub of innovation, the hub of so many amazing things. Do you think it’s possible to do something like firing 75% of people in government when things are going relatively well?
That’s pretty gangster, 75%. There’s this kind of almost meme like video of Argentinian President Javier Milei, where on a whiteboard, he has all the I think 18 ministries lined up and he’s ripping, “Department of Education, gone,” and he’s just going like this. Now, the situation in Argentina is pretty dire and the situation in the United States is not, despite everybody saying the empire is falling, this is still, in my opinion, the greatest nation on earth. Still, the economy is doing very well. Still, this is the hub of culture, the hub of innovation, the hub of so many amazing things. Do you think it’s possible to do something like firing 75% of people in government when things are going relatively well?
Vivek Ramaswamy
Yes, in fact, I think it’s necessary and essential. I think things depends on what your level of well really is, what you’re benchmarking against. America’s not built on complacency. We’re built on the pursuit of excellence. And are we still the greatest nation on planet earth? I believe we are. I agree with you on that. But are we great as we could possibly be or even as we have been in the past, measured against our own standards of excellence? No, we’re not. I think the nation is in a trajectory of decline. That doesn’t mean it’s the end of the empire yet. But we are a nation in decline right now. I don’t think we have to be. But part of that decline is driven by the rise of this managerial class, the bureaucracy sucking the lifeblood out of the country, sucking the lifeblood out of our innovative culture, our culture of self-governance.
Yes, in fact, I think it’s necessary and essential. I think things depends on what your level of well really is, what you’re benchmarking against. America’s not built on complacency. We’re built on the pursuit of excellence. And are we still the greatest nation on planet earth? I believe we are. I agree with you on that. But are we great as we could possibly be or even as we have been in the past, measured against our own standards of excellence? No, we’re not. I think the nation is in a trajectory of decline. That doesn’t mean it’s the end of the empire yet. But we are a nation in decline right now. I don’t think we have to be. But part of that decline is driven by the rise of this managerial class, the bureaucracy sucking the lifeblood out of the country, sucking the lifeblood out of our innovative culture, our culture of self-governance.
So is it possible? Yeah, it’s really possible. I’ll tell you one easy way to do it. This is a little bit, I’m being a little bit glib here, but I think it’s not crazy, at least as a thought experiment. Get in there on day one, say that anybody in the federal bureaucracy who is not elected, elected representatives obviously were elected by the people, but the people who are not elected, if your social security number ends in an odd number, you’re out, if it ends in an even number, you’re in. There’s a 50% cut right there. Of those who remain, if your social security number starts in an even number, you’re in and if it starts with an odd number, you’re out. Boom. That’s a 75% reduction done. Literally, stochastically, okay, one of the virtues of that, it’s a thought experiment, not a policy prescription, but one of the virtues of that thought experiment is that you don’t have a bunch of lawsuits you’re dealing with about gender discrimination or racial discrimination or political viewpoint discrimination.
Actually, the reality is you’ve at mass, you didn’t bring the chisel, you brought a chainsaw, I guarantee you do that on day one and do step two on day two, on day three, not a thing will have changed for the ordinary American other than this size of their government being a lot smaller and more restrained, spending a lot less money to operate it. And most people who have run a company, especially larger companies know this, it’s 25% of the people who do 80 to 90% of the useful work, these government agencies are no different. So now imagine you could do that same thought experiment, but not just doing it at random, but do it still at large scale while having some metric of screening for those who actually had both the greatest competence as well as the greatest commitment and knowledge of the Constitution.
That I think would immediately raise not only the civic character of the United States, now we feel, okay, the people we elect to run the government, they’ve got the power back, they’re running the government again, as opposed to the unelected bureaucrats who wield the power today, it would also stimulate the economy. The regulatory state is like a wet blanket on the American economy. Most of it is unconstitutional. All we require is leadership with a spine to get in there and actually do what conservative presidents have maybe gestured towards and talked about, but have not really effectuated ever in modern history.
Lex Fridman
And by the way, that kind of thing would attract the ultra-competent that actually want to work in government.
And by the way, that kind of thing would attract the ultra-competent that actually want to work in government.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Exactly. Which you’re missing today because right now, the government would swallow them up. Most competent people feel like that bureaucratic machine will swallow them whole. You clear the decks of 75% of them, real innovators can then show up.
Exactly. Which you’re missing today because right now, the government would swallow them up. Most competent people feel like that bureaucratic machine will swallow them whole. You clear the decks of 75% of them, real innovators can then show up.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. There’s kind of this cynical view of capitals where people think that the only reason you do anything is to earn more money, but I think a lot of people would want to work in government to build something that’s helpful to a huge number of people.
Yeah. There’s kind of this cynical view of capitals where people think that the only reason you do anything is to earn more money, but I think a lot of people would want to work in government to build something that’s helpful to a huge number of people.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Yeah. Well, look, I think there’s opportunities for the very best to have large scale impact in all kinds of different institutions in our universities to K through 12 education, through entrepreneurship, I’m obviously very biased in that regard. I think there’s a lot you’re able to create that you couldn’t create through government. But I do think in the moment that we live in where our government is as broken as it is and as responsible for the declining nature of our country, yeah, I think bringing in people who are unafraid, talented and able to have an impact could make all of the difference. And I agree with you, I don’t think actually most people, even most people who say they’re motivated by money, I don’t think are actually motivated by money. I think most people are driven by a belief that they can do more than they’re being permitted to do right now with their skillsets. I’ve run a number of companies and one of the things that I used to ask when I was, I’m not day-to-day involved in them anymore, but as a CEO, I would ask when I did interviews, in the first company I started, at Roivant, for four years in, company was pretty big by that point, I would still intent on interviewing every candidate before they joined, screening for the culture of that person. I can talk a lot more about things we did to build that culture. But one of the questions I would always ask them naturally just to start a conversation, it’s a pretty basic question, is why did you leave your last job or why are you leaving your last job? I’ll tell you what I didn’t hear very often, is that I wasn’t paid enough. And maybe they’d be shy to tell you that during an interview, but there’s indirect ways to signal that. That really wasn’t at all even a top 10 reason why people were leaving their job.
Yeah. Well, look, I think there’s opportunities for the very best to have large scale impact in all kinds of different institutions in our universities to K through 12 education, through entrepreneurship, I’m obviously very biased in that regard. I think there’s a lot you’re able to create that you couldn’t create through government. But I do think in the moment that we live in where our government is as broken as it is and as responsible for the declining nature of our country, yeah, I think bringing in people who are unafraid, talented and able to have an impact could make all of the difference. And I agree with you, I don’t think actually most people, even most people who say they’re motivated by money, I don’t think are actually motivated by money. I think most people are driven by a belief that they can do more than they’re being permitted to do right now with their skillsets. I’ve run a number of companies and one of the things that I used to ask when I was, I’m not day-to-day involved in them anymore, but as a CEO, I would ask when I did interviews, in the first company I started, at Roivant, for four years in, company was pretty big by that point, I would still intent on interviewing every candidate before they joined, screening for the culture of that person. I can talk a lot more about things we did to build that culture. But one of the questions I would always ask them naturally just to start a conversation, it’s a pretty basic question, is why did you leave your last job or why are you leaving your last job? I’ll tell you what I didn’t hear very often, is that I wasn’t paid enough. And maybe they’d be shy to tell you that during an interview, but there’s indirect ways to signal that. That really wasn’t at all even a top 10 reason why people were leaving their job.
I’ll give you what the number one reason was, is that they felt like they were unable to do the true maximum of what their potential was in their prior role. That’s the number one reason people leave their job. And by the way, I would say that as I’m saying that in a self boastful way that we would attract these people. I think that’s also true for most of the people who left the company as well, Roivant. And that was true at Roivant, it’s at other companies I’ve started. I think the number one reason people join companies and number one people leave companies, whether they’ve been to join mine or to leave mine in the past, have been that they feel like they’re able to do more than they’re able to with their skillset than that environment permits them to actually achieve. And so I think that’s what people hung for.
When we think about capitalism and true free market capitalism, and we used words earlier like meritocracy, it’s about building a system, whether it’s in a nation or whether it’s even within an organization, that allows every individual to flourish and achieve the maximum of their potential. And sometimes it just doesn’t match for an organization, where let’s say the mission is here and somebody’s skillsets could be really well aligned to a different mission, then the right answer is it’s not a negative thing, it’s just that person needs to leave and find their mission somewhere else. But to bring that back to government, I think part of what’s happened right now is that the rise of that bureaucracy in so many of these government agencies has actually obfuscated the mission of these agencies. I think if you went to most federal bureaucracies and just asked them what’s the mission, I’m just making one up off the top of my head right now, the Department of Health and Human Services, what is the mission of HHS in the United States of America? I doubt somebody who works there, even the person who leads it, could give you…
Vivek Ramaswamy
I doubt somebody who works there, even the person who leads it, could give you a coherent answer to that question. I just heavily doubt it. And you could fill in the blank for any range of… Department of Commerce, and we could just go straight down the list of each of these other ones, what is the mission of this organization?
I doubt somebody who works there, even the person who leads it, could give you a coherent answer to that question. I just heavily doubt it. And you could fill in the blank for any range of… Department of Commerce, and we could just go straight down the list of each of these other ones, what is the mission of this organization?
You could even say for the US military, what’s the purpose of the US military, the Department of Defense? I can give you one. I think it is to win wars, and more importantly, through its strength, to avoid wars, that’s it.
Well, okay, if that’s the mission, then you know, okay, it’s not tinkering around and messing around in some foreign conflict where we feel like it sometimes, and other ones where we don’t. And who decides that, I don’t really know, but whoever the people are that decide that, we follow those orders.
No, our mission is to protect the United States of America, to win wars, and to avoid wars, boom, those three things. What does protecting the United States of America mean? Number one, the homeland of the United States of America and the people who reside there. Good, that’s a clear mission.
The Department of Health and Human Services, maybe, could be a reasonable mission to say that I want to make America the healthiest country on Planet Earth, and we will develop the metrics and meet those metrics, and that’s the goal of the Department of HHS, to set policies, or at least to implement policies that best achieve that goal.
And maybe that’s the right statement of mission, maybe it’s not, but one of the things that happens is, when you’re governed by the committee class, it dilutes the sense of mission out of any organization, whether it’s a company or government agency or bureaucracy.
And once you’ve done that, then you lose the ability to track the best and the brightest, because in order for somebody to achieve the maximum of their potential, they have to know what it’s towards. There has to be a mission in the first place.
Then you’re not getting the best and brightest, you get more from the committee class, and that becomes a self-perpetuating downward spiral, and that is what the blob of the federal bureaucracy really looks like today.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, you said something really profound. At the individual scale of the individual contributor, doer, creator, what happens is, you have a certain capacity to do awesome shit, and then there’s barriers that come up. We have to wait a little bit. This happens, there’s friction always. When humans together are working on something, there’s friction. And so, the goal of a great company is to minimize that friction, minimize the number of barriers. And what happens is, the managerial class, the incentive is for it to create barriers.
Yeah, you said something really profound. At the individual scale of the individual contributor, doer, creator, what happens is, you have a certain capacity to do awesome shit, and then there’s barriers that come up. We have to wait a little bit. This happens, there’s friction always. When humans together are working on something, there’s friction. And so, the goal of a great company is to minimize that friction, minimize the number of barriers. And what happens is, the managerial class, the incentive is for it to create barriers.
Vivek Ramaswamy
It’s what it does. That’s just by the nature of a bureaucracy, it creates sand in the gears to slow down whatever the other process was. Is there some room for that somewhere in certain contexts? Sure.
It’s what it does. That’s just by the nature of a bureaucracy, it creates sand in the gears to slow down whatever the other process was. Is there some room for that somewhere in certain contexts? Sure.
It’s like a defensive mechanism that’s designed to reduce dynamism. But I think when that becomes cancerous in its scope, it then actually kills the host itself, whether that’s a school, whether that’s a company, whether that’s a government.
And so, the way I think about it, Lex, is, there’s sort of a balance of distributed power. And I don’t mean power in the Foucault sense of social power, but I mean just power in the sense of the ability to affect relevant change in any organization between what you could call the founder class, the creator class, the everyday citizen, the stakeholder class, and then the managerial class.
And there’s a role for all three of them. You could have the constituents of an organization, say in a constitutional republic, that’s the citizen, you could have the equivalent of the creator class, the people who create things in that polity, and then you have the bureaucratic class that’s designed to administer and serve as a liaison between the two.
I’m not denying that there’s some role somewhere for people who are in that managerial class, but right now, in this moment in American history, and I think it’s been more or less true for the last century, but it’s grown, starting with Woodrow Wilson’s advent of the Modern Administrative State, metastasizing through FDR’s New Deal and what was required to administer it, blown over and metastasizing further through LBJ’s Great Society, and everything that’s happened since, even aided and abetted by Republican presidents along the way like Richard Nixon, has created a United States of America where that committee class, both in and outside the government and our culture, wields far too much influence and power relative to the everyday citizen stakeholder and to the creators, who are, in many ways, constrained, hamstrung, shackled in straitjacket from achieving the maximum of their own potential contributions.
And I certainly feel that myself. I probably identify as being a member of that creator class most closely. It’s just what I’ve done, I create things. And I think we live in an environment in the United States of America where we’re still probably the best country on earth where that creator has that shot, so that’s the positive side of it, but one where we are far more constrictive to the creator class than we have been when we’ve been at our best, and that’s what I want to see change.
Education
Lex Fridman
Can you steelman the perspective of somebody that looks at a particular department, Department of Education, and are saying that the amount of pain that will be caused by closing it and firing 75% of people will be too much?
Can you steelman the perspective of somebody that looks at a particular department, Department of Education, and are saying that the amount of pain that will be caused by closing it and firing 75% of people will be too much?
Vivek Ramaswamy
Yeah. So, I go back to this question of mission, right? A lot of people who make arguments for the Department of Education aren’t aware why the Department of Education was created in the first place, actually. So that might be a useful place to start, is that this thing was created, it had a purpose, presumably. What was that purpose?
Yeah. So, I go back to this question of mission, right? A lot of people who make arguments for the Department of Education aren’t aware why the Department of Education was created in the first place, actually. So that might be a useful place to start, is that this thing was created, it had a purpose, presumably. What was that purpose?
It might be at least a relevant question to ask before we decided what are we doing with it or not, what was the purpose of this thing that we created? To me, it seems to be a highly relevant question.
Yet, in this discussion about government reform, it’s interesting how eager people are to skip over that question and just to talk about, “Okay, but we’ve got the status quo, and it’s just going to be disruptive,” versus asking the question of, okay, this institution was created, it had an original purpose, is that purpose still relevant? Is this organization at all fulfilling that purpose today?
To me, those are some relevant questions to ask. So, let’s talk about that for the Department of Education. Its purpose was relevant at that time, which was to make sure that localities, and particularly states, were not siphoning taxpayer dollars away from predominantly Black school districts to predominantly White ones.
And that was not a theoretical concern at the time. It was happening, or there was at least some evidence that that was happening in certain states in the South. And so, you may say you don’t like the federal solution, you may say you like the federal solution, but like it or not, that was the original purpose of the US Department of Education, to make sure that, from a federal perspective, that states were not systematically disadvantaging Black school districts over predominantly White ones.
However noble and relevant that purpose may have been six decades ago, it’s not a relevant purpose today. There’s no evidence today of states intentionally mapping out which are the Black versus White school districts and siphoning money in one direction versus another.
To the contrary, one of the things we’ve learned is that the school districts in the inner city, many of which are predominantly Black, actually spend more money per student than other school districts for a worse result, as measured by test scores and other performance, on a per-student basis, suggesting that there are other factors than the dollar expenditures per school determining student success, and actually suggesting that even the over-funding of some of those already poorly run schools rewards them for their actual bureaucratic failures.
So, against that backdrop, the Department of Education has, instead, extrapolated that original purpose of what was a racial equality purpose, to, instead, implement a different vision of racial equity through the ideologies that they demand in the content of the curriculum that these public schools actually teach.
So, Department of Education funding, so federal funding, accounts for about, I’m giving you round numbers here, but around 10% of the funding of most public schools across the country. But that comes with strings attached.
So, in today’s Department of Education, this didn’t happen back in 1970, but it’s happening today, ironically it’s funny how these things change with the bureaucracies that fail, they blow oak smoke to cover up for their own failures, what happens with today’s Department of Education?
They effectively say you don’t get that funding unless you adopt certain goals deemed at achieving racial or gender equity goals. And in fact, they also intervene in the curriculum where there’s evidence of schools in the Midwest or in the Great Plains that have been denied funding because Department of Education funding, so long as they have certain subjects like Archery…
There was one instance of a school that had archery in its curriculum. I find that to be pretty interesting, actually. I think you have different kinds of physical education. This is one that combines mental focus with physical aptitude, but hey, maybe I’m biased, it doesn’t matter.
Whether you like archery or not, I don’t think it’s the federal government’s job to withhold funding from a school because they include something in their curriculum that the federal government deems inappropriate where that locality found that to be a relevant locus of education.
So, what you see then is an abandonment of the original purpose. That’s long past. You don’t have this problem that the Department of Education was originally formed to solve, of siphoning money from Black school districts to White school districts and laundering that, effectively, in public funds, that doesn’t exist anymore.
So, they find new purposes instead, creating a lot more damage along the way. So, you asked me to steelman, and can I say something constructive rather than just pounding down on the other side? One way to think about this is, for a lot of these agencies, were many of them formed with a positive intention at the outset? Yes. Whether that positive intention existed, I’m still a skeptic of creating bureaucracies, but if you’re going to create one, at least make it, what shall we call it, a taskforce. Make it a taskforce.
A taskforce versus an agency means, after it’s done, you celebrate, you’ve done your work, pat yourself on the back, and then move on, rather than creating a standing bureaucracy which actually finds things to do after it has already solved or addressed the first reason it was born in the first place.
And I think we don’t have enough of that in our culture. Even if you have a company that’s generated tons of cash flow, and it’s solved a problem, let’s say it’s a biopharmaceutical company that developed a cure to some disease, and the only thing people knew at that company was how to develop a cure to that disease, and they generated a boatload of cash from doing it, at a certain point you could just give it to your shareholders and close up shop.
And that’s actually a beautiful thing to do. You don’t see that happen enough in the American consciousness, in the American culture of, when an institution has achieved its purpose, celebrate it, and then move on. And I think that that culture in our government would result in a vastly restrained scope of government, rather than, today it’s a one-way ratchet.
Once you cause it to come into existence, you cause new things to come into existence, but the old one that came into existence continues to persist and exist as well, and that’s where you get this metastasis over the last century.
Lex Fridman
So, what kind of things do you think government should do that the private sector, the forces of capitalism would create drastic inequalities or create the kind of pain we don’t want to have in government?
So, what kind of things do you think government should do that the private sector, the forces of capitalism would create drastic inequalities or create the kind of pain we don’t want to have in government?
Vivek Ramaswamy
So, the question is, what should government do that the private sector cannot? I’ll give you one. Protect our border. Capitalism, it’s never going to be the job of capitalists, or never going to be the capability or inclination of capitalists to preserve a national border.
So, the question is, what should government do that the private sector cannot? I’ll give you one. Protect our border. Capitalism, it’s never going to be the job of capitalists, or never going to be the capability or inclination of capitalists to preserve a national border.
And I think a nation, it’s literally, I think, one of the chapters of this book, “A nation without borders is not a nation.” It’s almost a tautology, an open border is not a border. Capitalism is not going to solve that. What’s going to solve that is a nation.
Part of the job of the federal government is to protect the homeland of its nation, in this case, the United States of America. That’s an example of a proper function of the federal government, to provide physical security to its citizens.
Another proper role of that federal government is to look after, or in this case it could be state government, to make sure that private parties cannot externalize their costs onto somebody else without their consent. It’s a fancy way economists would use to describe it. What does that mean?
It means if you go dump your chemicals in somebody else’s river, then you’re liable for that. It’s not that, okay, I’m a capitalist and so I want to create things, and I’m going to do hell or high water, whether or not that harms people around me.
The job of a proper government is to make sure that you protect the rights of those who may be harmed by those who are pursuing their own rights through a system of capitalism.
In seeking prosperity, you’re free to do it, but if you’re hurting somebody, else without their consent, in the process, the government is there to enforce what is really just a different form of enforcing a private property right.
So, I would say that those are two central functions of government, is to preserve national boundaries in the national security of a homeland, and number two is to protect and preserve private property rights and the enforcement of those private property rights. And I think, at that point, you’ve described about 80 to 90% of the proper role of a government.
Lex Fridman
What about infrastructure?
What about infrastructure?
Vivek Ramaswamy
Look, I think that most infrastructure can be dealt with through the private sector. You can get into specifics. You could have infrastructure that’s specific to national security. No, I do think that military industrial base is essential to provide national security. That’s a form of infrastructure.
Look, I think that most infrastructure can be dealt with through the private sector. You can get into specifics. You could have infrastructure that’s specific to national security. No, I do think that military industrial base is essential to provide national security. That’s a form of infrastructure.
I don’t think you could rely exclusively on the private sector to provide the optimal level of that protection to a nation. But interstate highways, I think you could think about whether or not that’s a common good that everybody benefits from but nobody had the incentive to create. I think you could make an argument for the existence of interstate highways.
I think you could also make powerful arguments for the fact that, actually, you could have enough private sector co-ops that could cause that to come into existence as well. But I’m not dogmatic about this.
But broadly speaking, 80 to 90% of the goal of the federal government, I’m not going to say 100, 80 to 90% of the goal of the existence of a federal government, of government, period, should be to protect national boundaries and provide security for the people who live there, and to protect the private property rights of the people who reside there.
If we restore that, I think we’re well on our way to a revival of what our founding fathers envisioned, and I think many of them would give you the same answer that I just did.
Lex Fridman
So, if we get government out of education, would you be also for reducing this as a government in the states for something like education?
So, if we get government out of education, would you be also for reducing this as a government in the states for something like education?
Vivek Ramaswamy
I think if it goes closer to municipalities and the states, I’m fine with that being a locus for people determining as… For example, let’s just say school districts are taxed at the local level.
I think if it goes closer to municipalities and the states, I’m fine with that being a locus for people determining as… For example, let’s just say school districts are taxed at the local level.
For that to be a matter for municipalities and townships to actually decide, democratically, how they actually want that governed, whether it’s balance between a public school district versus making that same money available to families in the form of vouchers or other forms of ability to educational savings accounts, or whichever mechanism it is, to opt out of that, if that’s done locally, I’ll have views on that that tend to go further in the direction of true educational choice and diversity of choice.
The implementation of charter schools, the granting of state charters, or even lowering the barriers to granting one, I favor those kinds of policies. But if we’ve gotten the federal government out of it, that’s achieved 75% of what I think we need to achieve, that I’m focused on solving other problems, and leave that to the states and municipalities to cover from there.
Lex Fridman
So, given this conversation, what do you think of Elon’s proposal of the Department of Government Efficiency in the Trump Administration, or really, any administration?
So, given this conversation, what do you think of Elon’s proposal of the Department of Government Efficiency in the Trump Administration, or really, any administration?
Vivek Ramaswamy
Well, I’m, of course, biased because Elon and I had discussed that for the better part of the last year and a half, which I think it’s a great idea. It’s something that’s very consistent with the core premise of my presidential candidacy.
Well, I’m, of course, biased because Elon and I had discussed that for the better part of the last year and a half, which I think it’s a great idea. It’s something that’s very consistent with the core premise of my presidential candidacy.
I got to know him, as I was running for US president, in a couple of events that he came to, and then we built a friendship after that. So, obviously, I think it’s a great idea.
Lex Fridman
Who do you think is more hardcore on the cutting, you or Elon?
Who do you think is more hardcore on the cutting, you or Elon?
Vivek Ramaswamy
Well, I think Elon’s pretty hardcore. Because I said 75% of the federal bureaucrats, and while I was running for president, he said, “You need to put, ‘At least 75%’.” So I agree with him.
Well, I think Elon’s pretty hardcore. Because I said 75% of the federal bureaucrats, and while I was running for president, he said, “You need to put, ‘At least 75%’.” So I agree with him.
I think it would be a fun competition to see who ends up more hardcore. I don’t think there’s someone out there who’s going to be more hardcore than he or I would be. And the reason is, I think we share in common a willingness to take the risk and see what happens.
The sun will still rise in the east and set in the west. That much I guarantee you. Is there are going to be some broken glass and some damage? Yes, there is. There’s no way around that. But once you’re willing to take that risk, then it doesn’t become so scary anymore. And here’s the thing, Lex, so it’s easy to say this, let’s talk about where the rubber hits the road here. Even in a second Trump term this would be the discussion. President Trump and I have had this conversation, but I think we would continue to have this conversation, is where does it rank on our prioritization list, because there’s always going to be a trade-off.
If you have a different policy objective that you want to achieve, a good policy objective, whatever that is, you could talk about immigration policy, you could talk about economic policy, there are other policy objectives, if you’re going to trade off a little bit, in the short-run, the effectiveness of your ability to carry out that policy goal, if you’re also committed to actually thinning out the federal government by 75%…
Because there’s just going to be some clunkiness there’s just going to be frictional costs for that level of cut. So the question is, where does that rank on your prioritization list?
To pull that off, to pull off a 75% reduction in the size and scale of the federal government, the regulatory state, and the headcount, I think that only happens if that’s your top priority. You could do it at a smaller scale, but at that scale, it only happens if that’s your top priority.
Because then, as President, you’re in a position to say, “I know in the super short run, that might even make it a little bit harder for me to do this other thing that I want to do, and use the regulatory state to do it, but I’m gonna pass on that.
I’m gonna pass that up, I’m gonna bear that hardship and inconvenience because I know this other goal is more important on the scale of decades and centuries for the country.” So it’s a question of prioritization. And certainly, my own view is that, now is the moment where that needs to be a top priority for saving this country.
And if there’s one thing about my campaign, if I was to do it again, I would be even clearer about… Actually, I talked about a lot of things in the campaign, and we can cover a lot of that too. But if there’s one thing that I care about more than anything else, it’s dismantling that bureaucracy.
And moreover, it’s an assault and a crusade on the nanny state itself. And that nanny state presents itself in several forms. There’s the entitlement state, there’s the welfare state, presents itself in the form of the regulatory state, that’s what we’re talking about, and then there’s the foreign nanny state where, effectively, we are subsidizing other countries that aren’t paying their fair share of protection or other resources we provide them.
If I was to summarize my ideology in a nutshell, it is to terminate the nanny state in the United States of America in all of its forms; the entitlement state, the regulatory state, and the foreign policy nanny state. Once we’ve done that, we’ve revived the Republic that I think would make George Washington proud.
Military Industrial Complex
Lex Fridman
So, you mentioned Department of Education, but there’s also the Department of Defense.
So, you mentioned Department of Education, but there’s also the Department of Defense.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
And there’s a very large number of very powerful people that have gotten used to and a budget that’s increasing, and the number of wars and military conflicts that’s increasing. So, if we could just talk about that.
And there’s a very large number of very powerful people that have gotten used to and a budget that’s increasing, and the number of wars and military conflicts that’s increasing. So, if we could just talk about that.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Sure.
Sure.
Lex Fridman
So this is the number one priority. It’s like there’s difficulty levels here. The DOD would be, probably, the hardest, so let’s take that on. What’s your view on the Military Industrial Complex, Department of Defense, and wars in general?
So this is the number one priority. It’s like there’s difficulty levels here. The DOD would be, probably, the hardest, so let’s take that on. What’s your view on the Military Industrial Complex, Department of Defense, and wars in general?
Vivek Ramaswamy
So, I think the nanny state, I’m against it overall, I’m against the foreign policy nanny state as well. Let me just start from that as the starting-off point, and then I’ll tell you about my views on the DOD and our Defense. First of all, think that… And I think that it was easy for many people from the neocon school of thought to caricature my views with the media at their side, but actually, my own view is, if it’s in the interest of the United States of America to provide certain levels of protection to US allies, we can do that as long as those allies actually pay for it.
So, I think the nanny state, I’m against it overall, I’m against the foreign policy nanny state as well. Let me just start from that as the starting-off point, and then I’ll tell you about my views on the DOD and our Defense. First of all, think that… And I think that it was easy for many people from the neocon school of thought to caricature my views with the media at their side, but actually, my own view is, if it’s in the interest of the United States of America to provide certain levels of protection to US allies, we can do that as long as those allies actually pay for it.
And I think it’s important for two reasons. The less important reason, it’s still an important reason, the less important reason is, it’s still money for us. It’s not like we’re swimming in a cash surplus right now. We’ve got a $34 trillion national debt, and growing, and I think pretty soon the interest payments are going to be the largest line item in our own federal budget.
So, it’s not like we have money willy-nilly to just hand over for free. That’s the less important reason, though. The more important reason is that it makes sure that our allies have actual skin in the game to not have skewed incentives to actually enter conflicts where they’re not actually bearing the full cost of those conflicts. So, take NATO for example, most NATO countries, literally a majority of NATO countries today do not pay or contribute 2% of their GDP to their own National Defense, which is supposedly a requirement to be in NATO. So the majority of NATO countries are failing to meet their basic commitment to be in NATO in the first place.
Germany particularly is, I think, arbitraging the hell out of the United States of America. And I don’t think that… I’m not going to be some shrill voice here saying, “So therefore, we should not be supporting any allies or providing security blankets.” No, I’m not going in that direction. What I would say is, you’ve got to pay for it.
Pay for your fair share, A, because we’re not swimming in excess money ourselves, but B, is, it tells us that you actually have skin in the game for your own Defense, which actually then makes nations far more prudent in the risks that they take, whether or not they’re in a war, versus if somebody else is paying for it and somebody else is providing our security guarantee, yeah, I might as well take the gamble and see where I end up at the end of a war, versus the restraint that that imposes on the decision-making of those allies.
So, now, let’s bring this home to the Department of Defense. I think the top goal of the US Defense Policy establishment should be to provide for the national defense of the United States of America. And the irony is, that’s what we’re actually doing most poorly.
Other than the Coast Guard, we’re not really using the US Military to prevent crossings at our own southern border and crossings at our other borders. In fact, the United States of America, our homeland, I believe is less secure today than it has been in a very long time.
Vulnerable to threats from hypersonic missiles where China and Russia… Russia certainly has capabilities in excess of that of the United States, missiles. Hypersonic means faster than the speed of sound that could hit the United States, including those carrying nuclear warheads.
We are more vulnerable to super EMP attacks, Electromagnetic Pulse attacks, that could, without exaggeration, some of this could be from other nations, some of this could even be from solar flares, cause significant mass casualty in the United States of America.
If the electric grid’s gone, it’s not exaggeration to say, if that happened, planes would be falling out of the sky because our chips really depend on those, well, will be affected by those electromagnetic pulses. More vulnerable to cyber attacks. I know people, okay, start yawning and say, “Okay, boring stuff, super EMP, cyber,” or whatever.
No. Actually, it is pretty relevant to whether or not you actually are facing the risk of not getting your insulin because your refrigerator doesn’t work anymore or your food can’t be stored or your car or your ability to fly on an airplane is impaired. So, I think that these are risks where our own National Defense spending has been wholly inadequate.
So, I’m not one of these people that says decrease versus increase National Defense spending. We’re not spending it in the right places. The number one place we need to be spending it is actually protecting our National Defense, protecting our own physical homeland.
And I think we actually need an increase in spending on protecting our own homeland. But that is different from the agenda of foreign interventionism and foreign nanny state-ism for its own sake, where we should expect more and demand more of our allies to provide for their own national defense and then provide the relevant security guarantees to allies where that actually advances the interest of the United States of America. So, that’s what I believe.
And I think this process has been corrupted by what Dwight Eisenhower famously in his farewell address called the Military Industrial Complex in the United States. But I think it’s bigger than just the… I think it’s easy to tell the tales of the financial corruption.
It’s kind of cultural corruption and conceit that just because certain number of people in that expert class have a belief, that their belief happens to be the right one because they can scare you with what the consequence would be if you don’t follow their advice.
And one of the beauties of the United States is, at least in principle, we have civilian control of the military. The person who we elect to be the US President is the one that actually is the true Commander in Chief. I have my doubts of whether it operates that way.
I think it’s quite obvious that Joe Biden is not a functioning Commander in Chief of the United States of America, yet, on paper, supposedly we’re still are supposed to call him that. But at least in theory, we’re supposed to have civilian control of the US Military.
And I think that one of the things that that leader needs to do is to ask the question of, again, the mission. What’s the purpose of this US Military in the first place? At the top of the list should be to protect the homeland and the people who actually live here, which we’re failing to do. So, that’s where I land on that question.
Lex Fridman
Wait, okay, there’s a lot of stuff to ask. First of all, on Joe Biden, do you mean he’s functionally not in control of the US Military because of the age factor or because of the nature of the presidency?
Wait, okay, there’s a lot of stuff to ask. First of all, on Joe Biden, do you mean he’s functionally not in control of the US Military because of the age factor or because of the nature of the presidency?
Vivek Ramaswamy
It’s a good question. I would say, in his case it’s particularly accentuated because it’s both. In his case, I don’t think anybody in America, anymore, believes that Joe Biden is the functioning President of the United States of America. How could he be?
It’s a good question. I would say, in his case it’s particularly accentuated because it’s both. In his case, I don’t think anybody in America, anymore, believes that Joe Biden is the functioning President of the United States of America. How could he be?
He wasn’t even sufficiently functioning to be the candidate after a debate that was held in June. There’s no way he’s going to be in a position to make the most important decisions on a daily and demanding basis to protect the leading nation in the world.
Now, more generally, though, I think we have a deeper problem, that even when it’s not Joe Biden, in general, the people we elect to run the government haven’t really been the ones running the government, it’s been the unelected bureaucrats in the bureaucratic deep state underneath that’s really been making the decisions.
I’ve done business in a number of places. I’ve traveled to Japan. There’s an interesting corporate analogy. Sometimes, if you get outside of politics, people can, I find, listen, and pay attention a little bit more, because politics, it’s so fraught right now that if you start talking to somebody who disagrees with you about the politics of it, you’re just butting heads but not really making progress.
So, let’s just make the same point, but go outside of politics for a second. So, I was traveling Japan, I was having a late night dinner with a CEO of a Japanese pharmaceutical company.
And it takes a while to really get him to open up, culturally speaking in Japan, a couple of nights of karaoke, and whatnot, maybe late night restaurant, whatever it is. Well, we built a good enough relationship where he was very candid with me.
He said, “I’m the CEO of the company. I could go and find the Head of a research unit and tell him, ‘Okay, this is a project we’re no longer working on as a company. We don’t wanna spend money on it, we’re gonna spend money somewhere else.’ And he’ll look me in the eye and he’ll say, ‘Yes, sir, yes sir.’.
I’ll come back six months later and find that they’re spending exactly the same amount of money on those exact same projects. And I’ll tell him, ‘No, we agreed. I told you that you’re not gonna spend money on this project, and we have to stop now. We should have stopped six months ago.’ Get a slap on the wrist for it.
He says, ‘Yes, sir, I’m sorry. Yes. No, no, no, of course, that’s correct.’ I come back six months later, same person is spending the same money on the same project.” And here’s why. Historically in Japan, and I should say, in Japan, this is changing now, it’s changing now, but historically, until very recently, and even to an extent now, it’s near impossible to fire people.
So, if somebody works for you and you can’t fire them, that means they don’t actually work for you. It means in some deeper, perverse sense, you work for them because you’re responsible for what they do, without any authority to actually change it.
So, I think most people who have traveled in Japan and Japanese corporate culture through the 1990s and 2000s and 2010s, and maybe even some vestiges in the 2020s, wouldn’t really dispute what I just told you. Now, we’re bringing it back to the more contentious terrain.
I think that’s basically how things have worked in the Executive Branch of the Federal Government of the United States of America. You have these so-called Civil Service protections on the books. Now, if you really read them carefully, I think that there are areas to provide daylight for a truly constitutionally, well-trained President to act.
That’s a contrary view that I have that bucks conventional wisdom. But apart from that caveat, in general, the conventional view has been, the US president can’t fire these people. There’s 4 million federal bureaucrats, 99.9% of them can’t be touched by the person who the people who elected to run the Executive Branch can’t even fire those people.
It’s the equivalent of that Japanese CEO. And so, that culture exists every bit as much in the federal bureaucracy of the United States of America as they did in Japanese corporate culture through the 1990s.
And that’s a lot of what’s wrong with not just the way that our Department of Defense is run and our Foreign Policy establishment is run, but I think it applies to a lot of the Domestic Policy establishment as well.
And to come back to the core point, how are we going to save this republic? This is the debate in the Conservative Movement right now. So, this is maybe a little bit spicy for some Republicans to swallow right now, and my top focus is making sure that we win the election, but let’s just move the ball forward a little bit and skate to where the puck is going here, okay?
Yes, let’s say we win the election, all is well and dandy. Okay, what’s the philosophy that determines how we govern? There’s a little bit of a fork in the road amongst Conservatives where there are those who believe that the right answer now is to use that regulatory state and use those levers of power to advance our own pro-Conservative, pro-American, pro-worker goals.
And I’m sympathetic to all of those goals, but I don’t think that the right way to do it is to create a Conservative regulatory state that replaces a Liberal regulatory state. I think the right answer is actually to get in there and shut it down. I don’t want to replace the left-wing nanny state with a right-wing nanny state. I want to get in there and actually dismantle the nanny state.
And I think it has been a long time in the United States, maybe ever in modern history, that we’ve had a Conservative leader at the national level who makes it their principal objective to dismantle the nanny state in all of its forms; the entitlement state, the regulatory state, and the foreign policy in nanny state.
That was a core focus of my candidacy. One of the things that I wish, and this is on me, not anybody else, that I should have done better, was to make that more crystal clear as a focus without getting distracted by a lot of the shenanigans, let’s just say, that happened as side-shows during a presidential campaign. But call that a lesson learned, because I do think it’s what the country needs now more than ever.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, it’s a really, really powerful idea. It’s actually something that Donald Trump ran on in 2016-
Yeah, it’s a really, really powerful idea. It’s actually something that Donald Trump ran on in 2016-
Vivek Ramaswamy
Is to drain the swamp.
Is to drain the swamp.
Lex Fridman
… drain the swamp. I think by most accounts, maybe you can disagree with me, he did not successfully do so. He did fire a bunch of people, more than usual, but-
… drain the swamp. I think by most accounts, maybe you can disagree with me, he did not successfully do so. He did fire a bunch of people, more than usual, but-
Vivek Ramaswamy
Can I say a word about the conditions he was operating in, because I think that’s why I’m far more excited for this time around, is that a lot has changed in the legal landscape. So, Donald Trump did not have the Supreme Court backdrop in 2016 that he does today.
Can I say a word about the conditions he was operating in, because I think that’s why I’m far more excited for this time around, is that a lot has changed in the legal landscape. So, Donald Trump did not have the Supreme Court backdrop in 2016 that he does today.
So, there’s some really important cases that have come down from the Supreme Court. One is West Virginia versus the EPA. I think it’s probably the most important case of our generation.
In 2022 that came down and said that if Congress has not passed a rule into law itself through the halls of Congress, and it relates to what they call a major question, a major policy or economic question, it can’t be done by the stroke of a pen by a regulator, an unelected bureaucrat either.
That quite literally means most federal regulations today are unconstitutional. Then, this year comes down a different big one, another big one from the Supreme Court in the Loper-Bright case, which held that, historically, for the last 50 years in this country, the doctrine has been, it’s called Chevron Deference. It’s a doctrine that says that federal courts have to defer to an agency…
Vivek Ramaswamy
Federal courts have to defer to an agency’s interpretation of the law. They now tossed that out the window and said, “No, no, no. The federal courts no longer have to defer to an agency’s interpretation of what the law actually is.” The combination of those two cases is seismic in its impact for the regulatory state. There’s also another great case that came down, was SEC versus Jarkesy, and the SEC is one of these agencies that embodies everything we’re talking about here.
Federal courts have to defer to an agency’s interpretation of the law. They now tossed that out the window and said, “No, no, no. The federal courts no longer have to defer to an agency’s interpretation of what the law actually is.” The combination of those two cases is seismic in its impact for the regulatory state. There’s also another great case that came down, was SEC versus Jarkesy, and the SEC is one of these agencies that embodies everything we’re talking about here.
The SEC, among other agencies, has tribunals inside that not only do they write the rules, not only do they enforce those rules, they also have these judges inside the agency that also interpret the rules and determine and dole out punishments. That doesn’t make sense if you believe in separation of powers in the United States, so the Supreme Court put an end to that and said that that practice at the SEC is unconstitutional. Actually, as a side note, the Supreme Court has said countless practices and rules written by the SEC, the EPA, the FTC in recent years, were outright unconstitutional.
Think about what that means for a constitutional republic, that supposedly, these law enforcement agencies, the courts have now said, especially this year, the courts have now said that their own behaviors actually break the law. So the very agencies entrusted with supposedly enforcing the law are actually behaving with utter, blatant disregard for the law itself. That’s un-American, it’s not tenable in the United States of America, but thankfully, we now have a Supreme Court that recognizes that.
So whether or not we have a second Trump term, well, that’s up to the voters, but even whether or not that now takes advantage of that backdrop the Supreme Court has given us to actually gut the regulatory state, we’ll find out. I’m optimistic, I certainly think it’s the best chance that we’ve had in a generation in this country, and that’s a big part of why I’m supporting Donald Trump and why I’m going to do everything in my power to help him, but I do think it is going to take a spine of steel to see that through.
And then after we’ve taken on the regulatory state, I think that’s the next step, but I do think there’s this broader project of dismantling the nanny state in all of its forms, the entitlement state, the regulatory state, and the foreign policy in any state. Three-word answer, if I was to summarize my worldview and my presidential campaign in three words, shut it down.
Lex Fridman
Shut it down. Okay, so the Supreme Court cases you mentioned, there’s a lot of nuance there.
Shut it down. Okay, so the Supreme Court cases you mentioned, there’s a lot of nuance there.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
I guess it’s weakening the immune system of the different departments.
I guess it’s weakening the immune system of the different departments.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Yeah. It’s a good way of putting it.
Yeah. It’s a good way of putting it.
Lex Fridman
Okay. On the human psychology level, so you basically kind of implied that for Donald Trump or for any president, the legal situation was difficult. Is that the only thing really operating?
Okay. On the human psychology level, so you basically kind of implied that for Donald Trump or for any president, the legal situation was difficult. Is that the only thing really operating?
Vivek Ramaswamy
Probably not.
Probably not.
Lex Fridman
Isn’t it also just on a psychological level just hard to fire a very large number of people. Is that what it is? Is there a basic civility and momentum going on?
Isn’t it also just on a psychological level just hard to fire a very large number of people. Is that what it is? Is there a basic civility and momentum going on?
Vivek Ramaswamy
Well, I think there’s one other factor. So you’re right to point, the legal backdrop is a valid and understandable excuse and reason. I think there are other factors at play too. So I think there’s something to be said for never having been in government, showing up there the first time, and you’re having to understand the rules of the road as you’re operating within them, and also having to depend on people who actually aren’t aligned with your policy vision, but tell you to your face that they are.
Well, I think there’s one other factor. So you’re right to point, the legal backdrop is a valid and understandable excuse and reason. I think there are other factors at play too. So I think there’s something to be said for never having been in government, showing up there the first time, and you’re having to understand the rules of the road as you’re operating within them, and also having to depend on people who actually aren’t aligned with your policy vision, but tell you to your face that they are.
And so I think that’s one of the things that I’ve admired about President Trump is he’s actually been very open about that, very humble about that, to say that there’s a million learnings from that first term that make him ambitious and more ambitious in that second term. But everything I’m talking to you about, this is what needs to happen in the country. It’s not specific to Donald Trump. It lays out what needs to be done in the country. There’s the next four years, Donald Trump is our last, best hope and chance for moving that ball forward. But I think that the vision I’m laying out here is one that hopefully goes even beyond just the next two or four years of really fixing a century’s worth of mistakes.
I think we’re going to fix a lot of them in the next four years if Donald Trump’s president. But if you have a century’s worth of mistakes that have accumulated with the overgrowth of the entitlement state in the US, I think it’s going to take probably the better part of a decade at least to actually fix them.
Lex Fridman
I disagree with you on both the last and the best hope. Donald Trump is more likely to fire a lot of people, but is he the best person to do so?
I disagree with you on both the last and the best hope. Donald Trump is more likely to fire a lot of people, but is he the best person to do so?
Vivek Ramaswamy
We’ve got two candidates, right? People face a choice. This is a relevant election. One of my goals is to speak to people who do not agree with 100% of what Donald Trump says. And I can tell them, you know what? I don’t agree with a hundred percent of what he says. And I can tell you as somebody who ran against him for US President, that right now he is, when I say the last, best hope, I mean in this cycle, the last, best hope that we have for dismantling that bureaucratic class.
We’ve got two candidates, right? People face a choice. This is a relevant election. One of my goals is to speak to people who do not agree with 100% of what Donald Trump says. And I can tell them, you know what? I don’t agree with a hundred percent of what he says. And I can tell you as somebody who ran against him for US President, that right now he is, when I say the last, best hope, I mean in this cycle, the last, best hope that we have for dismantling that bureaucratic class.
And I think that I’m also open about the fact that this is a long run project, but we have the next step to actually take over the next few years. That’s kind of where I land on it. I mean, you talked to him I guess a few weeks ago. I saw you had a podcast with him, right?
Lex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Vivek Ramaswamy
What was your impression about his preparedness to do it?
What was your impression about his preparedness to do it?
Lex Fridman
My impression is his priority allocation was different than yours. I think he is more focused on some of the other topics that you are also focused on.
My impression is his priority allocation was different than yours. I think he is more focused on some of the other topics that you are also focused on.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Border. Laser focused on.
Border. Laser focused on.
Lex Fridman
And there is a tension there, just as you’ve clearly highlighted.
And there is a tension there, just as you’ve clearly highlighted.
Vivek Ramaswamy
We share the same priority with respect to the southern border, and those are near term fixes that we can hit out of the park in the first year. But at the same time, I think we got to think also on decade long time horizon. So my own view is I think that it is my conviction and belief that he does care about dismantling that federal bureaucracy, certainly more so than any Republican nominee we have had, certainly in my lifetime. But I do think that there are going to be competing schools of thought where some will say, “Okay, well, we want to create a right-wing entitlement state to shower federal subsidies on favored industries while keeping them away from disfavored industries and new bureaucracies to administer them.”
We share the same priority with respect to the southern border, and those are near term fixes that we can hit out of the park in the first year. But at the same time, I think we got to think also on decade long time horizon. So my own view is I think that it is my conviction and belief that he does care about dismantling that federal bureaucracy, certainly more so than any Republican nominee we have had, certainly in my lifetime. But I do think that there are going to be competing schools of thought where some will say, “Okay, well, we want to create a right-wing entitlement state to shower federal subsidies on favored industries while keeping them away from disfavored industries and new bureaucracies to administer them.”
I don’t come from that school of thought. I don’t want to see the bureaucracy expand in a pro-conservative direction. I want to see the bureaucracy shrink in every direction. And I do think that, from my conversations with Donald Trump, I believe that he is well-aligned with this vision of shrinking bureaucracy, but that’s a longer-term project.
Lex Fridman
There’s so many priorities at play here, though. You really do have to do the Elon thing of walking into Twitter headquarters-
There’s so many priorities at play here, though. You really do have to do the Elon thing of walking into Twitter headquarters-
Vivek Ramaswamy
Shut it down.
Shut it down.
Lex Fridman
… with a sink. Right? Let that sink in. That basically firing a very large number of people. And it’s not just about the firing, it’s about setting clear missions for the different departments that remain. Hiring back because you over fire. Hiring back based on meritocracy. It’s a full-time… and it’s not only full-time in terms of actual time’s, full-time psychologically, because you’re walking into a place unlike a company like Twitter, an already successful company. In government, everybody around you, all the experts and the advisors are going to tell you you’re wrong. And it’s a very difficult psychological place to operate in because you’re constantly the asshole. And the certainty you have to have about what you’re doing is nearly infinite because everybody, all the really smart people are telling you, “No, this is a terrible idea. Sir, this is a terrible idea.”
… with a sink. Right? Let that sink in. That basically firing a very large number of people. And it’s not just about the firing, it’s about setting clear missions for the different departments that remain. Hiring back because you over fire. Hiring back based on meritocracy. It’s a full-time… and it’s not only full-time in terms of actual time’s, full-time psychologically, because you’re walking into a place unlike a company like Twitter, an already successful company. In government, everybody around you, all the experts and the advisors are going to tell you you’re wrong. And it’s a very difficult psychological place to operate in because you’re constantly the asshole. And the certainty you have to have about what you’re doing is nearly infinite because everybody, all the really smart people are telling you, “No, this is a terrible idea. Sir, this is a terrible idea.”
Vivek Ramaswamy
You have to have this spine of steel to cut through what that short-term advice is you’re getting. And I’ll tell you, certainly, I intend to do whatever I can for this country, both in the next four years and beyond, but my voice on this will be crystal clear and President Trump knows that’s my view on it, and I believe he shares it deeply, is that all else equal, get in there and shut down as much of the excess bureaucracy as we can. Do it as quickly as possible. And that’s a big part of how we save our country.
You have to have this spine of steel to cut through what that short-term advice is you’re getting. And I’ll tell you, certainly, I intend to do whatever I can for this country, both in the next four years and beyond, but my voice on this will be crystal clear and President Trump knows that’s my view on it, and I believe he shares it deeply, is that all else equal, get in there and shut down as much of the excess bureaucracy as we can. Do it as quickly as possible. And that’s a big part of how we save our country.
Illegal immigration
Lex Fridman
Okay, I’ll give you an example that’s really difficult. Tension, given your priorities. Immigration, there’s an estimated 14 million illegal immigrants in the United States. You’ve spoken about mass deportation.
Okay, I’ll give you an example that’s really difficult. Tension, given your priorities. Immigration, there’s an estimated 14 million illegal immigrants in the United States. You’ve spoken about mass deportation.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
That requires a lot of effort. Money. I mean, how do you do it and how does that conflict with the shutting it down?
That requires a lot of effort. Money. I mean, how do you do it and how does that conflict with the shutting it down?
Vivek Ramaswamy
Sure. And so it goes back to that original discussion we had is what are the few proper roles of the federal government? I gave you two. Of the government, period. One is to protect the national borders and sovereignty of the United States, and two is to protect private property rights. There’s a lot else. Most of what the government’s doing today, both at the federal and state level, is something other than those two things. But in my book, those are the two things that are the proper function of government. So for everything else, the federal government should not be doing, the one thing they should be doing is to protect the homeland of the United States of America and the sovereignty and sanctity of our national borders.
Sure. And so it goes back to that original discussion we had is what are the few proper roles of the federal government? I gave you two. Of the government, period. One is to protect the national borders and sovereignty of the United States, and two is to protect private property rights. There’s a lot else. Most of what the government’s doing today, both at the federal and state level, is something other than those two things. But in my book, those are the two things that are the proper function of government. So for everything else, the federal government should not be doing, the one thing they should be doing is to protect the homeland of the United States of America and the sovereignty and sanctity of our national borders.
So in that domain, that’s mission aligned with a proper purpose for the federal government. I think we’re a nation founded on the rule of law. I say this as the kid of legal immigrants. That means your first act of entering this country cannot break the law. And in some ways, if I was to summarize a formula for saving the country over the next four years, it would be a tale of two mass deportations. The mass deportations of millions of illegals who are in this country and should not be, and then the mass deportation of millions of unelected federal bureaucrats out of Washington D.C.
Now, all else equal, could say that those are intention, but I think that the reality is anything outside of the scope of what the core function of the government is, which is protecting borders and protecting private property rights, that’s really where I think the predominant cuts need to be. And if you look at the number of people who are looking after the border, it’s not even 0.1% of the federal employee base today. So 75% isn’t 99.99%, it’s 75%. It would still be a tiny fraction of the remaining 25%, which I actually think needs to be more rather than less. So it’s a good question, but that’s where I land on when it’s a proper role of the federal government, great. Act and actually do your job. The irony is 99.9999% of those resources are going to functions other than the protection of private property rights and the protection of our national physical protection.
Lex Fridman
There is a lot of criticism of the idea of mass deportation though. So one-
There is a lot of criticism of the idea of mass deportation though. So one-
Vivek Ramaswamy
Fair enough.
Fair enough.
Lex Fridman
… it will cause a large amount of economic harm, at least in the short term. The other is there would be potentially violations of our higher ideals of how we like to treat human beings, in particular separation of families, for example, tearing families apart. And the other is just the logistical complexity of doing something like this. How do you answer some of those criticisms, I guess?
… it will cause a large amount of economic harm, at least in the short term. The other is there would be potentially violations of our higher ideals of how we like to treat human beings, in particular separation of families, for example, tearing families apart. And the other is just the logistical complexity of doing something like this. How do you answer some of those criticisms, I guess?
Vivek Ramaswamy
Fair enough. And I would call those even, not even criticisms, but just thoughtful questions. Even to somebody who’s really aligned with doing this, those are thoughtful questions to ask. So I do want to say something about this point on how we think about the breakage of the rule of law in other contexts. There are 350,000 mothers who are in prison in the United States today who committed crimes and were convicted of them. They didn’t take their kids with them to those prisons either, right? So we face difficult trade-offs in all kinds of contexts as it relates to the enforcement of law.
Fair enough. And I would call those even, not even criticisms, but just thoughtful questions. Even to somebody who’s really aligned with doing this, those are thoughtful questions to ask. So I do want to say something about this point on how we think about the breakage of the rule of law in other contexts. There are 350,000 mothers who are in prison in the United States today who committed crimes and were convicted of them. They didn’t take their kids with them to those prisons either, right? So we face difficult trade-offs in all kinds of contexts as it relates to the enforcement of law.
And I just want to make that basic observation against the backdrop of if we’re a nation founded on the rule of law, we that there are trade-offs to enforcing the law, and we’ve acknowledged that in other contexts. I don’t think that we should have a special exemption for saying that somehow we weigh the other way when it comes to the issue of the border. We’re a nation founded in the rule of law. We enforce laws, that has costs, that has trade-offs, but it’s who we are. And the easiest fact I can cite is 350,000 or so mothers who are in prison and did not take their kids to prison with them.
Is that bad? Is it undesirable for the kids to grow up without those 350,000 mothers? It is, but it’s a difficult situation created by people who violated the law and faced the consequences of it, which is also a competing and important priority in the country. So that’s in the domestic context.
As it relates to this question of mass deportations, let’s just get very practical because all that was theoretical. Very practically, there’s ways to do this. Starting with people who have already broken the law, people who have not just broken the law of entering but are committing other crimes while already here in the United States. That’s a clear case for an instant mass deportation. You have a lot of people who haven’t integrated into their communities. You think about the economic impact of this, a lot of people are in detention already. A lot of those people should be immediately returned to their country of origin, or at least what is called a safe third country.
So safe third country means even if somebody’s claiming to seek asylum from political persecution, well, move them to another country that doesn’t have to be the United States of America that they passed through, say, Mexico before actually coming here. Other countries around the world are doing this. Australia is detaining people. They don’t let them out and live a normal, joyful life because they came to the country. They detain them until their case is adjudicated. Well, the rates of fraud in Australia, of what people lie about, what their conditions are, is way lower now than in the United States because people respond to those incentives.
So I think that in some ways, people make this sound much bigger and scarier than it needs to be. I feel we’re taking a deeply pragmatic approach, and the North Star for me is I want the policy that helps the United States citizens who are already here. What’s that policy? Clearly, that’s going to be a policy that includes a large number of deportations. I think by definition, it’s going to be the largest mass deportation in American history. Sounds like a punchline at a campaign rally, but actually, it’s just a factual statement that says if we’ve had the by far largest influx of illegal immigrants in American history, it just stands to reason, it’s logic that, okay, if we’re going to fix that, we’re going to have the largest mass deportation in American history.
And we can be rational. Start with people who are breaking the law in other ways here in the United States. Start with people who are already in detention or entering detention now. That comes at no cost and strict benefit. There isn’t even a little bit of an economic trade-off. Then you get to areas where you would say, okay, the costs actually continue to outweigh the benefits, and that’s exactly the way our policy should be guided here. I want to do it in as respectful and as humane of a manner as possible.
The reality is, I think one of the things we got to remember, I’ll give you the example I gave with the Haitian case in Springfield, town that I spent a lot of time in growing up in Ohio. I live about an hour from there today. I don’t blame the individual Haitians who came here. I’m not saying that they’re bad people because in that particular case, those weren’t even people who broke the law in coming here. They came as part of a program called Temporary Protective Status. Now, the operative word there was the first one, “temporary”. There have been all kinds of lawsuits for people who, even 8, 10, 12, 14 years after the earthquake in Haiti where many of them came, when they’re going to be removed, there are allegations of racial discrimination or otherwise.
No. Temporary protective status means it’s temporary, and we’re not abandoning the rule of law when we send them back, we’re abandoning the rule of law when we let them stay. Now, if that has a true benefit to the United States of America, economically or otherwise, go through the paths that allow somebody to enter this country for economic reasons, but don’t do it through asylum-based claims or Temporary Protected Status. I think one of the features of our immigration system right now is it is built on a lie and it incentivizes lying. The reason is the arguments for keeping people in the country, if those are economic reasons but the people actually entered using claims of asylum or refugee status, those two things don’t match up.
So just be honest about what our immigration system actually is. I think we do need dramatic reforms to the legal immigration system to select purposely for the people who are going to actually improve the United States of America. I think there are many people, I know some of them. I gave a story of one guy who I met who is educated at our best universities or among our best universities. He went to Princeton. He went to Harvard Business School. He has a great job in the investment community. He was a professional tennis player. He was a concert pianist. He could do a Rubik’s cube in less than a minute. I’m not making this stuff up. These are hard facts. He can’t get a green card in the United States. He’s been here for 10 years or something like this.
He asked me for the best advice I could give him. I unfortunately could not give him the actual best advice, which would be to just take a flight to Mexico and cross the border and claim to be somebody who is seeking asylum in the United States. That would have been morally wrong advice, so I didn’t give it to them. But practically, if you were giving him advice, that would be the best advice that you actually could give somebody, which is a broken system on both sides. People who are going to make those contributions to the United States and pledge allegiance to the United States and speak our language and assimilate, we should have a path for them to be able to add value to the United States. Yet they’re not the ones who are getting in.
Our immigration system selects for people who are willing to lie. That’s what it does. Selects for people who are willing to say they’re seeking refugee status or seeking asylum when in fact, they’re not. And then we have policymakers who lie after the fact using economic justifications to keep them here. But if it was an economic justification, that should have been the criteria you used to bring them in the first place, not this illusion of asylum or refugee status. There was a case, actually, even the New York Times reported on this, believe it or not, of a woman who came from Russia fleeing Vladimir Putin’s intolerant, anti-LGBTQ regime. She was fleeing persecution by the evil man, Putin.
She came here and eventually when she was pressed on the series of lies, it came out that, and she was crying finally, when she broke down and admitted this, she was like, “I’m not even gay. I don’t even like gay people.” That’s what she said. And yet she was pretending to be some sort of LGBTQ advocate who was persecuted in Russia when in fact, it was just somebody who was seeking better economic conditions in the United States. I’m not saying you’re wrong to seek better economic conditions in the United States, but you are wrong to lie about it, and that’s what you’re seeing a lot of people, even in this industry of quote, unquote, tourism to the United States, they’re having their kids in the United States. They go back to their home country, but their kids enjoy birthright citizenship. That’s built on a lie.
You have people claiming to suffer from persecution. In fact, they’re just working in the United States and then living in these relative mansions in parts of Mexico or Central America after they’ve spent four or five years making money here. Just abandon the lie. Let’s just have an immigration system built on honesty. Just tell the truth. If the argument is that we need more people here for economically filling jobs, I’m skeptical the extent to which a lot of those arguments actually end up being true. But let’s have that debate in the open rather than having it through the back door saying that it’s refugee and asylum status when we know it’s a lie, and then we justify it after the fact by saying that that economically helps the United States.
Cut the dishonesty. And I just think that that is a policy we would do well to expand every sphere. We talk about from the military industrial complex to the rise of the managerial class, to a lot of what our government’s covered up about our own history to even this question of immigration today. Just tell the people the truth, and I think our government would be better serving our people if it did.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, in the way you describe eloquently, the immigration system is broken in that way that is built fundamentally on lies. But there’s the other side of it. Illegal immigrants are used in political campaigns for fearmongering, for example. So what I would like to understand is what is the actual harm that illegal immigrants are causing? So one of the more intense claims is of crime, and I haven’t studied this rigorously, but the surface level studies all show that legal and illegal immigrants commit less crime than US born citizens.
Yeah, in the way you describe eloquently, the immigration system is broken in that way that is built fundamentally on lies. But there’s the other side of it. Illegal immigrants are used in political campaigns for fearmongering, for example. So what I would like to understand is what is the actual harm that illegal immigrants are causing? So one of the more intense claims is of crime, and I haven’t studied this rigorously, but the surface level studies all show that legal and illegal immigrants commit less crime than US born citizens.
Vivek Ramaswamy
I think it’s true for legal immigrants. I think it’s not true for illegal immigrants.
I think it’s true for legal immigrants. I think it’s not true for illegal immigrants.
Lex Fridman
That’s not what I saw.
That’s not what I saw.
Vivek Ramaswamy
And this is part of why I wrote this book and the book is called Truths. So better darn well have well-sourced facts in here. Can’t be made up Hypotheses, hard truths. And there’s a chapter where, even in my own research on it, Lex, I know a lot about this issue from my time as a presidential candidate, but even in writing the chapter on the border here, I learned a lot from a lot of different dimensions and some of which even caused me to revise some of my premises going into it, okay. My main thesis in that chapter is forget the demonization of illegal or legal immigrants or whatever, as you put it, fearmongering. Just put all that to one side.
And this is part of why I wrote this book and the book is called Truths. So better darn well have well-sourced facts in here. Can’t be made up Hypotheses, hard truths. And there’s a chapter where, even in my own research on it, Lex, I know a lot about this issue from my time as a presidential candidate, but even in writing the chapter on the border here, I learned a lot from a lot of different dimensions and some of which even caused me to revise some of my premises going into it, okay. My main thesis in that chapter is forget the demonization of illegal or legal immigrants or whatever, as you put it, fearmongering. Just put all that to one side.
I want an immigration system that is built on honesty. Identify what the objective is. We could debate the objective. We might have different opinions on the objectives. Some people may say the objective is the economic growth of the United States. I air that argument in this book, and I think that that’s insufficient, personally. Personally, I think the United States is more than just an economic zone. It is a country. It is a nation bound together by civic ideals. I think we need to screen not just for immigrants, who are going to make economic contributions, but those who speak our language, those who are able to assimilate and those who share those civic ideals and know the US history even better than the average US citizen who’s here. That’s what I believe.
But even if you disagree with me and say, “No, no, the sole goal is economic production in the United States,” then at least have an immigration system that’s honest about that rather than one which claims to solve for that goal by bringing in people who are rewarded for being a refugee, we should reward the people in that model, which I don’t even think should be the whole model. But even if that were your model, reward the people who have demonstrably proven that they would make economic contributions to the United States, not the people who have demonstrated that they’re willing to lie to achieve a goal.
And right now, our immigration system, if it rewards one quality over any other, if there’s one parameter that it rewards over any other, it isn’t civic allegiance to the United States, it isn’t fluency in English, it isn’t the ability to make an economic contribution to this country. The number one human attribute that our immigration system rewards is whether or not you are willing to lie. And the people who are telling those lies about whether they’re seeking asylum or not are the ones who are most likely to get in. And the people who are most unwilling to tell those lies are the ones who are actually not getting in.
That is a hard, uncomfortable truth about our immigration system. And the reason is because the law says you only get asylum if you’re going to face bodily harm or near-term risk of bodily injury based on your religion, your ethnicity, or certain other factors. And so when you come into the country, you’re asked, “Do you fulfill that criteria or not?” And the number one way to get into this country is to check the box and say yes. So that means just systematically, imagine if you’re a university, Harvard or Yale or whatever, you’re running your admissions process, the number one attribute you’re selecting for isn’t your SAT score, it isn’t your GPA, it isn’t your athletic accomplishments. It’s whether or not you’re willing to lie on the application. You’re going to have a class populated by a bunch of charlatans and frauds.
That’s exactly what our immigration system is doing to the United States of America, is it is literally selecting for the people who are willing to lie. Let’s say you have somebody who’s a person of integrity says, “Okay, I want a better life for my family, but I want to teach my kids that I’m not going to lie or break the law to do it.” That person is infinitely less likely to get into the United States. I know it sounds provocative to frame it that way, but it is not an opinion. It is a fact that that is the number one human attribute that our current immigration system is selecting for.
I want an immigration system centered on honesty. In order to implement that, we require acknowledging what the goals of our immigration system are in the first place. And there we have competing visions on the right, okay? Amongst conservatives, there’s a rift. Some conservatives believe, I respect them for their honesty, I disagree with them, believe that the goal of the immigration system should be to, in part, protect American workers from the effects of foreign wage competition. That if we have immigrants, it’s going to bring down prices and we need to protect American workers from the effects of that downward pressure on wages. It’s a goal. It’s a coherent goal. I don’t think it’s the right goal, but many of my friends on the right believe that’s a goal, but at least it’s honest. And then we can design an honest immigration system to achieve that goal if that’s their goal. I have other friends on the right that say the sole goal is economic growth, nothing else matters. I disagree with that as well. My view is the goal should be whatever enriches the civic quality of the United States of America. That includes those who know the language, know our ideals, pledge allegiance to those ideals, and also are willing to make economic contributions to the country, which is one of our ideals as well.
But whatever it is, we can have that debate, I have a very different view. I don’t think it’s a proper role of immigration policy to make it a form of labor policy because the United States of America is founded on excellence, we should be able to compete. But that’s a policy debate we can have. But right now, we are not even able to have the policy debate because the whole immigration policy is built on not only a lie, but on rewarding those who do lie. And that’s what I want to see change.
Lex Fridman
Just to linger a little bit on the demonization and to bring Ann Coulter into the picture, which I recommend people should listen to your conversation with her, I haven’t listened to her much, but she had this thing where she’s clearly admires and respects you as a human being. And she’s basically saying. You’re one of the good ones. And this idea that you had this brilliant question of what does it mean to be an American? And she basically said, “Not you, Vivek.” But she said, “Well, maybe you, but not people like you.” So that whole kind of approach to immigration, I think is really anti-meritocratic fundamentally.
Just to linger a little bit on the demonization and to bring Ann Coulter into the picture, which I recommend people should listen to your conversation with her, I haven’t listened to her much, but she had this thing where she’s clearly admires and respects you as a human being. And she’s basically saying. You’re one of the good ones. And this idea that you had this brilliant question of what does it mean to be an American? And she basically said, “Not you, Vivek.” But she said, “Well, maybe you, but not people like you.” So that whole kind of approach to immigration, I think is really anti-meritocratic fundamentally.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Maybe even anti-American.
Maybe even anti-American.
Lex Fridman
Anti-American, yeah.
Anti-American, yeah.
Vivek Ramaswamy
So I want to confront this directly because it is a popular current on the American right. And the reason I’m not picking on Ann Coulter specifically is I think actually it’s a much more widely shared view, and I just give her at least credit for willing to articulate it, a view that the blood and soil is what makes for your American identity or genetic lineage. And I just reject that view, I think it’s anti-American. I think what makes for an American identity is your allegiance, your abiding allegiance to the founding ideals of this country and your willingness to pledge allegiance to those ideals.
So I want to confront this directly because it is a popular current on the American right. And the reason I’m not picking on Ann Coulter specifically is I think actually it’s a much more widely shared view, and I just give her at least credit for willing to articulate it, a view that the blood and soil is what makes for your American identity or genetic lineage. And I just reject that view, I think it’s anti-American. I think what makes for an American identity is your allegiance, your abiding allegiance to the founding ideals of this country and your willingness to pledge allegiance to those ideals.
So those are two different views. I think that there is a view on the American right right now that says that we’re not a creedal nation, that our nation’s not about a creed. It’s about a physical place and a physical homeland. I think that view fails on several accounts. Obviously, every nation has to have a geographic space that it defines its own. So obviously we are, among other things, a geographic space. But the essence of the United States of America, I think is the common creed, the ideals that hold that common nation together.
Without that, a few things happen. First of all, American exceptionalism becomes impossible. And I’ll tell you why. Every other nation is also built on the same idea. Most nations have been built on common blood and soil arguments, genetic stock. Italy or Japan would have a stronger national identity than the United States in that case, because they have a much longer standing claim on what their genetic lineage really was. The ethnicity of the people is far more pure in those contexts than in the United States. So that’s the first reason. American exceptionalism becomes impossible.
The second is there’s all kinds of contradictions that then start to emerge. Your claim on American identity is defined based on how long you’ve been here. Well, then the Native Americans would have a far greater claim of being American than somebody who came here on the Mayflower or somebody who came here afterwards. Now, maybe that blood and soil view is, no, no, it’s not quite the Native Americans. You only have to start at this point and end at this point. So on this view of blood and soil identity, it has to be okay, you couldn’t have come before a certain year, then it doesn’t count. But if you came after a certain year, it doesn’t count either. That just becomes highly uncompelling as a view of what American national identity actually is.
Versus my view that American national identity is grounded on whether or not you pledge allegiance to the ideals codified in the Declaration of Independence and actualized in the US Constitution. And it’s been said, some of my friends on the right have said things like, people will not die for a set of ideals. People won’t fight for abstractions or abstract ideals. I actually disagree with that. The American Revolution basically disproves that. The American Revolution was fought, for anything, over abstract ideals that said that, you know what? We believe in self-governance and free speech and free exercise of religion. That’s what we believe in the United States, which is different from Old World England.
So I do think that there is this brewing debate on the right, and do I disagree like hell with Ann Coulter on this? Absolutely. And did I take serious issue with some of the things she told me? Absolutely. But I also believe that she had the stones to say, if I may say it that way, the things that many on the right believe but haven’t quite articulated in the way that she has. And I think we need to have that debate in the open.
Now, personally, I think most of the conservative movement actually is with me on this, but I think it’s become a very popular counter in the other direction to say that your vision of American identity is far more physical in nature. And to me, I think it is still ideals-based in nature. And I think that that’s a good debate for the future for us to have in the conservative movement. And I think it’s going to be a defining feature of what direction the conservative movement goes in the future.
Lex Fridman
Quick pause. Bathroom break?
Quick pause. Bathroom break?
Donald Trump
Vivek Ramaswamy
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Let me ask you to, again, steel man the case for and against Trump. So my biggest criticism for him is the fake electors scheme, the 2020 election, and actually the 2020 election in the way you formulate it in the Nation of victims is just the entirety of that process, instead of focusing on winning, doing a lot of whining. I like people that win, not whine, even when the refs are biased in whatever direction.
Let me ask you to, again, steel man the case for and against Trump. So my biggest criticism for him is the fake electors scheme, the 2020 election, and actually the 2020 election in the way you formulate it in the Nation of victims is just the entirety of that process, instead of focusing on winning, doing a lot of whining. I like people that win, not whine, even when the refs are biased in whatever direction.
Vivek Ramaswamy
So look, I think the United States of America, I preach this to the left, I preach it to my kids, we got to accept it on our own side too, we’re not going to save this country by being victim, we’re going to save this country by being victorious. And I don’t care whether it’s left-wing victimhood, right-wing victimhood. I’m against victimhood culture. The number one factor that determines whether you achieve something in life is you. I believe that. It’s not the only factor that matters. There’s a lot of other factors that affect whether or not you succeed. Life is not fair, but I tell my kids the same thing. The number one factor that determines whether or not you succeed in achieving your goal is you. If I tell it to my kids and I preach it to the left, I’m going to preach that to our own side as well.
So look, I think the United States of America, I preach this to the left, I preach it to my kids, we got to accept it on our own side too, we’re not going to save this country by being victim, we’re going to save this country by being victorious. And I don’t care whether it’s left-wing victimhood, right-wing victimhood. I’m against victimhood culture. The number one factor that determines whether you achieve something in life is you. I believe that. It’s not the only factor that matters. There’s a lot of other factors that affect whether or not you succeed. Life is not fair, but I tell my kids the same thing. The number one factor that determines whether or not you succeed in achieving your goal is you. If I tell it to my kids and I preach it to the left, I’m going to preach that to our own side as well.
Now, that being said, that’s just a philosophy, okay? That’s a personal philosophy. You asked me to do something different, and I’m always a fan. The standard I hope that people hold me to when they read this book as well, is I try to do that in this book, is to give the best possible argument for the other side. You don’t want to give some rinky-dink argument for the other side and knock it down. You want to give the best possible argument for the other side and then offer your own view or else you don’t understand your own. So you asked me what’s the strongest case against Donald Trump? Well, I ran for US President against Donald Trump. So I’m going to give you what my perspective is. I think it’s nothing of what you hear on MSNBC or from the left attacking him to be a threat to democracy. I think all of that’s actually nonsense.
I actually think it is, if you were making that case, and he has my full support as you know, but if you were making that case, I think for many voters who are of the next generation, they’re asking a question about, “How are you going to understand the position that I’m in as a member of a new generation?” The same criticism they had of Biden, they could say, “Oh, well, are you too old? Are you from a different generation that’s too far removed from my generation’s concerns?” And I think that that’s in many ways a factor that was weighing on both Trump and Biden. But when they played the trick of swapping out Joe Biden, it left that issue much more on the table for Donald Trump.
So you’re asking me to steel man it, that’s what I would say is that when I look at what’s the number one issue that I would need to persuade Independent voters of to say that, no, no, no, this is still the right choice is even though the other side claims to offer a new generation of leadership, here’s somebody who is one of the older presidents we will have had who was elected. How do we convince those people to vote from? That’s what I would give you in that category.
Lex Fridman
Right. But I get it. And you share a lot of ideas with Donald Trump. So I get when you’re…
Right. But I get it. And you share a lot of ideas with Donald Trump. So I get when you’re…
Lex Fridman
And you share a lot of ideas with Donald Trump, so I get when you’re running for president that you would say that kind of thing, but there’s other criticism you could provide, and again, on the 2020 election.
And you share a lot of ideas with Donald Trump, so I get when you’re running for president that you would say that kind of thing, but there’s other criticism you could provide, and again, on the 2020 election.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Let me ask you, you spoke to Donald Trump recently, what’s your top objection to potentially voting for Donald Trump, and let me see if I can address that?
Let me ask you, you spoke to Donald Trump recently, what’s your top objection to potentially voting for Donald Trump, and let me see if I can address that?
Lex Fridman
The 2020 election, and not in the… What is it? TDS objection. It’s just I don’t think there’s clear definitive evidence that there was voter fraud.
The 2020 election, and not in the… What is it? TDS objection. It’s just I don’t think there’s clear definitive evidence that there was voter fraud.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Let me ask you about a different area.
Let me ask you about a different area.
Lex Fridman
Hold on a second. Hold on a second, hold on a second. I think there’s a lot of interesting topics about the influence of media, of tech, and so on, but I want a president that has a good, clear relationship with the truth and knows what truth is, what is true, and what is not true. And moreover, I want a person who doesn’t play victim, like you said, who focuses on winning and winning big, and if they lose, walk away with honor and win bigger next time, or channel that into growth and winning in some other direction. So, just the strength of being able to give everything you got to win and walk away with honor if you lose, and everything that happened around 2020 election, it just goes against that, to me.
Hold on a second. Hold on a second, hold on a second. I think there’s a lot of interesting topics about the influence of media, of tech, and so on, but I want a president that has a good, clear relationship with the truth and knows what truth is, what is true, and what is not true. And moreover, I want a person who doesn’t play victim, like you said, who focuses on winning and winning big, and if they lose, walk away with honor and win bigger next time, or channel that into growth and winning in some other direction. So, just the strength of being able to give everything you got to win and walk away with honor if you lose, and everything that happened around 2020 election, it just goes against that, to me.
Vivek Ramaswamy
So I’ll respond to that.
So I’ll respond to that.
Lex Fridman
Sure.
Sure.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Obviously, I’m not the candidate, but I’m going to give you my perspective nonetheless. I think we have seen some growth from Donald Trump over that first term in the experience of the 2020 election, and you hear a lot of that on the campaign trail. I heard a lot of that even in the conversation that he had with you. I think he is more ambitious for that second term than he was for that first term, so I thought that was the most interesting part of what you just said is, you’re looking for somebody who has growth from their own experiences. Say what you will, I have seen, personally I believe, some meaningful level of personal growth and ambition for what Donald Trump hopes to achieve for the country in the second term that he wasn’t able to, for one reason or another, COVID, you could put a lot of different things on it, but in that first term.
Obviously, I’m not the candidate, but I’m going to give you my perspective nonetheless. I think we have seen some growth from Donald Trump over that first term in the experience of the 2020 election, and you hear a lot of that on the campaign trail. I heard a lot of that even in the conversation that he had with you. I think he is more ambitious for that second term than he was for that first term, so I thought that was the most interesting part of what you just said is, you’re looking for somebody who has growth from their own experiences. Say what you will, I have seen, personally I believe, some meaningful level of personal growth and ambition for what Donald Trump hopes to achieve for the country in the second term that he wasn’t able to, for one reason or another, COVID, you could put a lot of different things on it, but in that first term.
Now, I think the facts of the backdrop of the 2020 election actually really do matter. I don’t think you can isolate one particular aspect of criticizing the 2020 election without looking at it holistically. On the eve of the 2020 presidential election, we saw a systematic, bureaucratically, and government-aided suppression of probably the single most important piece of information released in the eve of that election, the Hunter Biden laptop story, revealing potentially a compromised US presidential candidate, his family was compromised by foreign interests, and it was suppressed as misinformation by every major tech company.
The New York Post had its own Twitter account locked at that time, and we now know that many of the censorship decisions made in the year 2020 were actually made at behest of US bureaucratic actors in the deep state threatening those tech companies to do it or else those tech companies would face consequence. I think it might be the most undemocratic thing that’s happened in the history of our country, actually, is the way in which government actors, who were never elected to the government, used private sector actors to suppress information on the eve of an election that based on polling afterwards likely did influence the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. That was election interference of the highest order.
So I think that that’s just a hard fact that we have to contend with, and I think a lot of what you’ve heard in terms of complaints about the 2020 election, whatever those complaints, oh, have been, take place against the backdrop of large technology companies interfering in that election in a way that I think did have an impact on the outcome. I personally believe if the Hunter Biden laptop story had not been suppressed and censored, Donald Trump would’ve been unambiguous… The President of the United States right now would be Donald Trump. No doubt about it in my mind if you look at polling before and after the impact that would’ve had on the independent voter.
Now you look at… Okay, let’s talk about constructive solutions because I care about moving the country forward. What is a constructive solution to this issue of concerns about election integrity? Here’s one. Single-day voting on election day as a national holiday with paper ballots and government-issued voter ID to match the voter file. I favor that. We do it even in Puerto Rico, which is a territory of the United States. Why not do that everywhere in the United States? And I’ll make a pledge. I’ll do it right here, right? My pledge is, as a leader in our movement, I will do everything in my power to make sure we are done complaining about stolen elections if we get to that simple place of basic election security measures.
I think they’d be unifying too. Make election day a national holiday that unites us around our civic purpose one day, single-day voting on election day as a national holiday with paper ballots and government-issued voter ID to match the voter file. Let’s get there as a country, and you have my word, I will lead our movement in whatever way I can to make sure we are done complaining about stolen elections and fake ballots. And I think that fact that you see resistance to that proposal, which is otherwise very practical, very reasonable, nonpartisan proposal, I think the fact of that resistance actually provokes a lot of understandable skepticism, understandable skepticism of what else is actually going on, if not that, what exactly is going on here?
Lex Fridman
Well, I agree with a lot of things you said. Probably disagree, but it’s hard to disagree with a Hunter Biden laptop story whether that would’ve changed the results in the election.
Well, I agree with a lot of things you said. Probably disagree, but it’s hard to disagree with a Hunter Biden laptop story whether that would’ve changed the results in the election.
Vivek Ramaswamy
We can’t know obviously.
We can’t know obviously.
Lex Fridman
Right.
Right.
Vivek Ramaswamy
I looked at some post-election polling about the views that would’ve had and I can’t prove that to you, but that’s my instinct, it’s my opinion.
I looked at some post-election polling about the views that would’ve had and I can’t prove that to you, but that’s my instinct, it’s my opinion.
Lex Fridman
I think that’s just one example, maybe a sexy example of a bias in the complex of the media and there’s bias in the other direction too, but probably there’s bias. It’s hard to characterize bias as one of the problems.
I think that’s just one example, maybe a sexy example of a bias in the complex of the media and there’s bias in the other direction too, but probably there’s bias. It’s hard to characterize bias as one of the problems.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Let me ask you one question about… Bias is one thing, bias in reporting. Censorship is another. So I would be open-minded to hearing an instance, and if I did hear it, I would condemn it, of the government systematically ordering tech companies to suppress information that was favorable to Democrats, suppress that information to lift up Republicans. If there was an instance that we know of government bureaucrats that were ordering technology companies covertly to silence information that voters otherwise would’ve had to advantage Republicans at the ballot box to censor it, I would be against that, and I would condemn that with equal force as I do to the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story suppression, and censorship of the origin of COVID-19, all happened in 2020. These are hard facts. I’m not aware of one instance. If you are aware of one, let me know because I would condemn it.
Let me ask you one question about… Bias is one thing, bias in reporting. Censorship is another. So I would be open-minded to hearing an instance, and if I did hear it, I would condemn it, of the government systematically ordering tech companies to suppress information that was favorable to Democrats, suppress that information to lift up Republicans. If there was an instance that we know of government bureaucrats that were ordering technology companies covertly to silence information that voters otherwise would’ve had to advantage Republicans at the ballot box to censor it, I would be against that, and I would condemn that with equal force as I do to the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story suppression, and censorship of the origin of COVID-19, all happened in 2020. These are hard facts. I’m not aware of one instance. If you are aware of one, let me know because I would condemn it.
Lex Fridman
Most people in tech companies are privately… Their political persuasion is on the left, and most journalists, majority of journalists, are on the left, but to characterize the actual reporting and the impact of the reporting in the media and the impact of the censorship is difficult to do, but that’s a real problem, just like we talked about a real problem in immigration.
Most people in tech companies are privately… Their political persuasion is on the left, and most journalists, majority of journalists, are on the left, but to characterize the actual reporting and the impact of the reporting in the media and the impact of the censorship is difficult to do, but that’s a real problem, just like we talked about a real problem in immigration.
Vivek Ramaswamy
But there’s two different problems, I just want to sort them out, right? I have problem with both. You talked about two issues, and I think both are important, but they’re different issues. One is bias in reporting. One is censorship of information. So bias in reporting, I felt certainly, the recent presidential debate moderated by ABC was biased in the way that it was conducted, but that’s a different issue from saying that voters don’t get access to information through any source.
But there’s two different problems, I just want to sort them out, right? I have problem with both. You talked about two issues, and I think both are important, but they’re different issues. One is bias in reporting. One is censorship of information. So bias in reporting, I felt certainly, the recent presidential debate moderated by ABC was biased in the way that it was conducted, but that’s a different issue from saying that voters don’t get access to information through any source.
So, this Hunter Biden laptop story, we now know that it contains evidence of foreign interference in potentially the Biden administration and their family’s incentive structure. That story was systematically suppressed. So, in the United States of America, if you wanted to find that on the internet through any major social media platform or through even Google search, that story was suppressed or downplayed algorithmically that you couldn’t see it. Even on Twitter, if you tried to send it via direct message, the equivalent of email, sending a peer-to-peer message, they blocked you from even being able to send that story using private messages. That is a different level of concern. That’s not bias at that point. That’s outright interference in the election.
Let’s do a thought experiment here. Let’s suppose that Russia orchestrated that. What would the backlash be? Let’s say the Russian government orchestrated the US election. They interfered in it by saying that tech companies… They worked with them covertly to stop US citizens from being able to see information on the eve of an election. There would be a mass uproar in this country if the Russian government orchestrated that. Well, if actors in the US government bureaucracy or the US technology industry bureaucracy orchestrated the same thing, then we can’t apply a different standard to say that if Russia did it, it’s really bad and interfered in our election. But if it happened right here in the United States of America… And by the way, they blamed Russia for it, falsely, on the Russian disinformation of the Hunter Biden laptop story that was a false claim. We have to apply the same standard in both cases, and so the fact that if that were Russian interference, it would’ve been an outcry, but now it happened domestically, and we just call that, “Hey, it’s a little bit of bias ahead of an election.” I don’t think that that’s a fair characterization of how important that event was.
Lex Fridman
Okay, so the connection of government to platform should not exist. The government, FBI, or anybody else should not be able to pressure platforms to censor information. Yes, we could talk about Pavel Durov and the censorship there. There should not be any censorship, and there should not be media bias, and you’re right to complain if there is media bias, and we can lay it out in the open and try to fix that system. That said, the voter fraud thing, you can’t right a wrong by doing another wrong. If there’s some shitty shady stuff going on in the media and the censorship complex, you can’t just make shit up. You can’t do the fake electors scheme, and then do a lot of shady, crappy behavior during January 6th and try to shortcut your way just because your friend is cheating at Monopoly when you’re playing Monopoly. You can’t cheat. You shouldn’t cheat yourself. You should be honest and with honor and use your platform to help fix the system versus cheat your way.
Okay, so the connection of government to platform should not exist. The government, FBI, or anybody else should not be able to pressure platforms to censor information. Yes, we could talk about Pavel Durov and the censorship there. There should not be any censorship, and there should not be media bias, and you’re right to complain if there is media bias, and we can lay it out in the open and try to fix that system. That said, the voter fraud thing, you can’t right a wrong by doing another wrong. If there’s some shitty shady stuff going on in the media and the censorship complex, you can’t just make shit up. You can’t do the fake electors scheme, and then do a lot of shady, crappy behavior during January 6th and try to shortcut your way just because your friend is cheating at Monopoly when you’re playing Monopoly. You can’t cheat. You shouldn’t cheat yourself. You should be honest and with honor and use your platform to help fix the system versus cheat your way.
Vivek Ramaswamy
So, here’s my view, has any US politician ever been perfect throughout the course of American history? No, but if you want to understand the essence of what was going around in 2020, the mindset of the country? We had a year where people in this country were systematically locked down, told to shut up, sit down, do as they’re told unless they’re BLM or Antifa rioters, in which case it’s perfectly fine for them to burn cities down. We were told that we’re going to have an election, a free and fair election, and then they were denied information systematically heading into that election, which was really important, and in this case, damning information about one of the parties. And then you tell these people that they still have to continue to shut up and comply. That creates, I think, a real culture of deep frustration in the United States of America.
So, here’s my view, has any US politician ever been perfect throughout the course of American history? No, but if you want to understand the essence of what was going around in 2020, the mindset of the country? We had a year where people in this country were systematically locked down, told to shut up, sit down, do as they’re told unless they’re BLM or Antifa rioters, in which case it’s perfectly fine for them to burn cities down. We were told that we’re going to have an election, a free and fair election, and then they were denied information systematically heading into that election, which was really important, and in this case, damning information about one of the parties. And then you tell these people that they still have to continue to shut up and comply. That creates, I think, a real culture of deep frustration in the United States of America.
And I think that the reaction to systematic censorship is never good. History teaches us that it’s not good in the United States. It’s not good in other points in the history of the United States. The reaction to systematic, coordinated censorship and restraints and the freedom of a free people is never good. And if you want to really understand what happened, one really wants to get to the bottom of it rather than figuring out who to point fingers at, that really was the essence of the national malaise at the end of 2020 is, it was a year of unjust policies including COVID-19 lockdowns, systematic lies about it, lies about the election that created a level of public frustration that I think was understandable.
Now, the job of leaders is to how do you channel that in the most productive direction possible, and to your question, to the independent voter out there evaluating, as you are, do I think that Donald Trump has exhibited a lot of growth based on his experience in his first term, and what he hopes to achieve in his second term? The answer is, absolutely yes, and so, even if you don’t agree with everything that he’s said or done in the choice ahead of us in this election, I still believe he’s unambiguously the best choice to revive that sense of national pride, and also prosperity in our country, so people aren’t in the condition where they’re suffering at behest of government policies that leave them angry and channel that anger in other unproductive ways. No, the best way to do it is actually, actions do speak louder than words, implement the policies that make people’s lives better, and I do think that that’s the next step of how we best save the country.
Lex Fridman
Are you worried if in this election, it’s a close election, and Donald Trump loses by a whisker, that there’s chaos that’s unleashed, and how do we minimize the chance of that?
Are you worried if in this election, it’s a close election, and Donald Trump loses by a whisker, that there’s chaos that’s unleashed, and how do we minimize the chance of that?
Vivek Ramaswamy
I don’t think that that’s a concern to frame narrowly in the context of Donald Trump winning it or losing it by whisker, this is a man, who in the last couple of months, in span of two months, has faced two assassination attempts. We’re not talking about theoretical attempts. We’re talking about gunshots fired. That is history changing in the context of American history. We haven’t seen that in a generation, and yet now that has become normalized in the US, so do I worry we’re skating on thin ice as a country? I do. I do think it is a little bit strange to obsess over our concerns, national or media concerns, over Donald Trump when, in fact, he’s the one on the receiving end of fire from assailants who reportedly are saying exactly the things about him that you hear from the Democratic machine.
I don’t think that that’s a concern to frame narrowly in the context of Donald Trump winning it or losing it by whisker, this is a man, who in the last couple of months, in span of two months, has faced two assassination attempts. We’re not talking about theoretical attempts. We’re talking about gunshots fired. That is history changing in the context of American history. We haven’t seen that in a generation, and yet now that has become normalized in the US, so do I worry we’re skating on thin ice as a country? I do. I do think it is a little bit strange to obsess over our concerns, national or media concerns, over Donald Trump when, in fact, he’s the one on the receiving end of fire from assailants who reportedly are saying exactly the things about him that you hear from the Democratic machine.
And I do think that it is irresponsible, at least for the Democratic Party to make their core case against Donald Trump. It was Joe Biden’s entire message for years that he’s a threat to democracy and to the existence of America. Well, if you keep saying that about somebody against the backdrop conditions that we live in as a country, I don’t think that’s good for a nation. And so, do I have concerns about the future of the country? Do I think we’re skating on thin ice? Absolutely. And I think the best way around it is really through it, through it in this election, win by a landslide. I think a unifying landslide could be the best thing that happens for this country, like Reagan delivered in 1980 and then again in 1984. And in a very practical note, a landslide minus some shenanigans, is still going to be a victory. That is how we unite this country.
And so, I don’t think 50.001 margin where cable news is declaring the winner six days after the election, I don’t think that’s going to be good for the country. I think a decisive victory that unites the country, turns the page on a lot of the challenges of the last four years, and says, “Okay, this is where we’re going. This is who we are, and what we stand for.” This is a revival of our national identity and revive national pride in the United States regardless of whether you’re a Democrat or Republican. That I think is achievable in this election too, and that’s the outcome I’m rooting for.
Lex Fridman
So just to pile on, since we’re still manning the criticism against Trump, is the rhetoric… I wish there was less of, although at times it is so ridiculous, it is entertaining, I hate Taylor Swift type of tweets or truths or whatever. I don’t think that’s-
So just to pile on, since we’re still manning the criticism against Trump, is the rhetoric… I wish there was less of, although at times it is so ridiculous, it is entertaining, I hate Taylor Swift type of tweets or truths or whatever. I don’t think that’s-
Vivek Ramaswamy
He’s a funny guy. The reality is different people have different attributes. One of the attributes for Donald Trump is, he’s one of the funnier presidents we’ve had in a long time. That might not be everybody’s cup of tea. Maybe different people don’t want… That’s not a quality they value in their president. I think at a moment where you’re also able to make… I will say this much is, everybody’s got different styles. Donald Trump’s style is different from mine. But I do think that if we’re able to use levity in a moment of national division, in some ways, I think right now is probably a role where really good standup comedians could probably do a big service to the country if they’re able to laugh at everybody 360 degrees, so they can go up there and make fun of Donald Trump all they want, do it in a lighthearted manner that loves the country, do the same thing to Kamala Harris with an equal standard. I think that’s actually good for the country. But I think I’m more interested, Lex, as you know, in discussing the future direction of the country, my own views. I was a presidential candidate who ran against Donald Trump, by the way, and is supporting him now. But I just prefer engaging on the substance of what I think each candidate’s going to achieve for the country rather than picking on really the personal attributes of either one, right? I’m not criticizing Kamala Harris’s manner of laugh, or whatever one might criticize as a personal attribute of hers that you may hear elsewhere. And I just think our country’s better off if we have a focus on both the policies, but also, who’s going to be more likely to revive the country, that I think is a healthy debate headed to an election. Everybody has their personality attributes, their flaws, what makes them funny and lovable to some people, makes them irritating to others, I think that that matters less heading into an election.
He’s a funny guy. The reality is different people have different attributes. One of the attributes for Donald Trump is, he’s one of the funnier presidents we’ve had in a long time. That might not be everybody’s cup of tea. Maybe different people don’t want… That’s not a quality they value in their president. I think at a moment where you’re also able to make… I will say this much is, everybody’s got different styles. Donald Trump’s style is different from mine. But I do think that if we’re able to use levity in a moment of national division, in some ways, I think right now is probably a role where really good standup comedians could probably do a big service to the country if they’re able to laugh at everybody 360 degrees, so they can go up there and make fun of Donald Trump all they want, do it in a lighthearted manner that loves the country, do the same thing to Kamala Harris with an equal standard. I think that’s actually good for the country. But I think I’m more interested, Lex, as you know, in discussing the future direction of the country, my own views. I was a presidential candidate who ran against Donald Trump, by the way, and is supporting him now. But I just prefer engaging on the substance of what I think each candidate’s going to achieve for the country rather than picking on really the personal attributes of either one, right? I’m not criticizing Kamala Harris’s manner of laugh, or whatever one might criticize as a personal attribute of hers that you may hear elsewhere. And I just think our country’s better off if we have a focus on both the policies, but also, who’s going to be more likely to revive the country, that I think is a healthy debate headed to an election. Everybody has their personality attributes, their flaws, what makes them funny and lovable to some people, makes them irritating to others, I think that that matters less heading into an election.
Lex Fridman
I love that you do that. I love that you focus on policy and can speak for hours on policy. Let’s look at foreign policy.
I love that you do that. I love that you focus on policy and can speak for hours on policy. Let’s look at foreign policy.
War in Ukraine
Vivek Ramaswamy
Sure.
Sure.
Lex Fridman
What kind of peace deal do you think is possible, feasible, optimal in Ukraine? If you sat down, you became president. If you sat down with Zelenskyy and sat down with Putin, what do you think is possible to talk to them about? One of the hilarious things you did, which were intense and entertaining, your debates in the primary, but anyway, is how you outgrow the other candidates that didn’t know any regions. They wanted to send money and troops, and lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, and they didn’t know any of the regions in Ukraine. You had a lot of zingers in that one. But anyway, how do you think about negotiating with world leaders about what’s going on there?
What kind of peace deal do you think is possible, feasible, optimal in Ukraine? If you sat down, you became president. If you sat down with Zelenskyy and sat down with Putin, what do you think is possible to talk to them about? One of the hilarious things you did, which were intense and entertaining, your debates in the primary, but anyway, is how you outgrow the other candidates that didn’t know any regions. They wanted to send money and troops, and lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, and they didn’t know any of the regions in Ukraine. You had a lot of zingers in that one. But anyway, how do you think about negotiating with world leaders about what’s going on there?
Vivek Ramaswamy
Yeah, so look, let’s just get the self-interest of each party on the table, and to be very transparent about it. From everyone’s perspective, they think the other side is the aggressor, or whatever. Just get it on the table. Russia is concerned about NATO shifting the balance of power away from Russia to Western Europe when NATO has expanded far more than they expected to, and frankly, that Russia was told that NATO was going to expand. It’s an uncomfortable fact for some in America, but James Baker made a commitment to Mikhail Gorbachev in the early nineties, where he said NATO would expand not one inch past East Germany. Well, NATO has expanded far more after the fall of the USSR than it did during the existence of the USSR, and that is a reality we have to contend with. That’s the Russian perspective.
Yeah, so look, let’s just get the self-interest of each party on the table, and to be very transparent about it. From everyone’s perspective, they think the other side is the aggressor, or whatever. Just get it on the table. Russia is concerned about NATO shifting the balance of power away from Russia to Western Europe when NATO has expanded far more than they expected to, and frankly, that Russia was told that NATO was going to expand. It’s an uncomfortable fact for some in America, but James Baker made a commitment to Mikhail Gorbachev in the early nineties, where he said NATO would expand not one inch past East Germany. Well, NATO has expanded far more after the fall of the USSR than it did during the existence of the USSR, and that is a reality we have to contend with. That’s the Russian perspective.
From the Western perspective, the hard fact is Russia was the aggressor in this conflict, crossing the boundaries of a sovereign nation, and that is a violation of international norms, and it’s a violation of the recognition of international law of nations without borders are not a nation. And so, against that backdrop, what’s the actual interest of each country here? I think if we’re able to do a reasonable deal that gives Russia the assurances it needs about what they might allege as NATO expansionism violating prior commitments, but get codified commitments for Russia, that we’re not going to see willy-nilly behavior of just randomly deciding they’re going to violate the sovereignty of neighboring nations and have hard assurances and consequences for that. That’s the beginnings of a deal.
But then, I want to be ambitious for the United States. I want to weaken the Russia-China alliance, and I think that we can do a deal that requires, that gives some real gifts to Russia conditioned on Russia withdrawing itself from its military alliance with China. And this could be good for Russia too, in the long run, because right now, Vladimir Putin does not enjoy being Xi Jinping’s little brother in that relationship. But Russia’s military combined with China’s naval capacity, and Russia’s hypersonic missiles, and China’s economic might, together those countries in an alliance pose a real threat to the United States. But if as a condition for a reasonable discussion about where different territories land, given what’s occupied right now, hard requirements that Russia remove its military presence from the Western hemisphere. People forget this, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, we don’t want a Russian military presence in the Western hemisphere. That too, would be a win for the United States, no more joint military exercises with China off the coast of the Aleutian Islands.
The kinds of wins that the United States wants to protect the West’s security, get Russia out of the Western hemisphere, certainly out of the North American periphery, and then also make sure that Russia’s no longer in that military alliance with China, in return for that, able to provide Russia some things that are important to Russia. We’d have to have a reasonable discussion about what the territorial concessions would be at the end of this war to bring it to peace and resolution and what the guarantees are to make sure that NATO is going to not expand beyond the scope of what the United States has at least historically guaranteed. That I think together would be a reasonable deal that gives every party what they’re looking for, that results in immediate peace, that results in greater stability, and most importantly, weakening the Russia-China Alliance, which I think is the actual threat that we have so far, no matter who in this debate of more or less Ukraine funding has really failed to confront, that I think is the way we de-escalate the risk of World War III, and weaken the threats to the West by actually dismantling that alliance.
Lex Fridman
So from the American perspective, the main interest is weakening the alliance between Russia and China.
So from the American perspective, the main interest is weakening the alliance between Russia and China.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Yes, I think the military alliance between Russia and China represents the single greatest threat we face. So, do a deal that’s very reasonable across the board but one of the main things we get out of it is weakening that alliance, so no joint military exercises, no military collaborations. These are monitorable attributes. If there’s cheating on that, we’re going to immediately have consequences as a consequence of their cheating. But we can’t cheat on our own obligations that we would make in the context of that deal as well.
Yes, I think the military alliance between Russia and China represents the single greatest threat we face. So, do a deal that’s very reasonable across the board but one of the main things we get out of it is weakening that alliance, so no joint military exercises, no military collaborations. These are monitorable attributes. If there’s cheating on that, we’re going to immediately have consequences as a consequence of their cheating. But we can’t cheat on our own obligations that we would make in the context of that deal as well.
Lex Fridman
There might be some extremely painful things for Ukraine here. So Ukraine currently captured a small region in Russia, the Kursk region, but Russia has captured giant chunks, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson regions, so it seems given what you’re laying out, it’s very unlikely for Russia to give up any other regions that’s already captured.
There might be some extremely painful things for Ukraine here. So Ukraine currently captured a small region in Russia, the Kursk region, but Russia has captured giant chunks, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson regions, so it seems given what you’re laying out, it’s very unlikely for Russia to give up any other regions that’s already captured.
Vivek Ramaswamy
I actually think that that would come down to the specifics of the negotiation. But the core goals of the negotiation are peace in this war, weaken the Russia-China Alliance. And for Russia, what do they get out of it? Part of this is… Here’s something that’s not negative for Ukraine but that could be positive for Russia as part of that deal because it’s not a zero-sum game alone with Ukraine on the losing end of this. I think reopening economic relations with the West would be a big win for Russia, but also a carrot that gets them out of that military relationship with China. So I do think that the foreign policy establishment has historically been, at the very least, unimaginative about the levers that we’re able to use.
I actually think that that would come down to the specifics of the negotiation. But the core goals of the negotiation are peace in this war, weaken the Russia-China Alliance. And for Russia, what do they get out of it? Part of this is… Here’s something that’s not negative for Ukraine but that could be positive for Russia as part of that deal because it’s not a zero-sum game alone with Ukraine on the losing end of this. I think reopening economic relations with the West would be a big win for Russia, but also a carrot that gets them out of that military relationship with China. So I do think that the foreign policy establishment has historically been, at the very least, unimaginative about the levers that we’re able to use.
Actually, I was a little bit critical of Nixon earlier in this discussion for his contribution to the overgrowth of the US entitlement state and regulatory state, but I’ll give Nixon credit here on a different point, which is that he was imaginative of being able to pull red China out from the clasp of the USSR. He broke the China-Russia alliance back then, which was an important step to bring us to the near end of the Cold War. So I think there’s an opportunity for similar unconventional maneuver now of using greater reopened economic relations with Russia to pull Russia out from the hands of China today. There’s no skin off Ukraine’s back for that, and I do think that’s a big carrot for Russia in this direction. I do think that will involve some level of territorial negotiation as well, that out of any good deal, not everyone’s going to like a hundred percent of what comes out of it, but that’s part of the cost of securing peace is that not everyone’s going to be happy about every attribute.
But I could make a case that an immediate peace deal is also now in the best interest of Ukraine. Let’s just rewind the clock. We’re looking at now, let’s just say we’re early 2022, maybe June of 2022, Zelenskyy was ready to come to the table for a deal back then until Boris Johnson traveled when he had his own domestic political travails to convince Zelenskyy to continue to fight. And that goes to the point where when nations aren’t asked to pay for their own national security, they have what the problem is of moral hazard, of taking risks that really are suboptimal risks for them to take because they’re not bearing the consequences of taking those risks, not fully in the cost.
If Ukraine had done a deal back then, I think it is unambiguous that they would’ve done a better deal for themselves than they’re doing now after having spent hundreds of billions of dollars and expended tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives. So the idea that Ukraine is somehow better off because it failed to do that deal before is a lie. And if we’re not willing to learn from those mistakes of the recent past, we’re doomed to repeat them again. So, this idea that it would be painful for Ukraine, you know what’s been painful, tens and tens and tens of thousands of people continuing to die without any increased leverage in actually getting the outcome that they want.
So, I think there’s an opportunity for a win-win-win, a win for the United States and the West more broadly in weakening the Russia-China alliance, a win for Ukraine in having an agreement that is backstopped by the United States of America’s interests that provides a greater degree of long-run security to the future existence of Ukraine and its sovereignty and also stopping the bloodshed today. And I think a win for Russia which is to reopen economic relations with the West and have certain guarantees about what the mission-creep or scop-creep of NATO will be. There’s no rule that says that when one party, before full outright World War, starts at least, there’s an opportunity for there to actually be a win for everybody on the table rather than to assume that a win for us is a loss to Russia, or that anything positive that happens for Russia is a loss for the United States or Ukraine.
Lex Fridman
Just to add to the table some things that Putin won’t like, but I think are possible to negotiate, which is Ukraine joining the European Union and not NATO, so establishing some economic relationships there, and also splitting the bill, guaranteeing some amount of money from both the Russia and the United States for rebuilding Ukraine. One of the challenges in Ukraine, a war-torn country, is how do you guarantee the flourishing of this particular nation, right? So, you want to not just stop the death of people and the destruction but also provide a foundation on which you can rebuild the country and build a flourishing future country.
Just to add to the table some things that Putin won’t like, but I think are possible to negotiate, which is Ukraine joining the European Union and not NATO, so establishing some economic relationships there, and also splitting the bill, guaranteeing some amount of money from both the Russia and the United States for rebuilding Ukraine. One of the challenges in Ukraine, a war-torn country, is how do you guarantee the flourishing of this particular nation, right? So, you want to not just stop the death of people and the destruction but also provide a foundation on which you can rebuild the country and build a flourishing future country.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Out of this conversation alone, there are a number of levers on the table for negotiation in a lot of different directions, and that’s where you want to be, if there’s only one factor that matters to each of the two parties, and those are their red line factors, then there’s no room for negotiation. This is a deeply complicated, historically intricate dynamic between Ukraine and Russia, and between NATO and the United States, and the Russia-China Alliance, and economic interests that are at issue combined with the geopolitical factors. There are a lot of levers for negotiation, and the more levers there are, the more likely there is to be a win-win-win deal that gets done for everybody.
Out of this conversation alone, there are a number of levers on the table for negotiation in a lot of different directions, and that’s where you want to be, if there’s only one factor that matters to each of the two parties, and those are their red line factors, then there’s no room for negotiation. This is a deeply complicated, historically intricate dynamic between Ukraine and Russia, and between NATO and the United States, and the Russia-China Alliance, and economic interests that are at issue combined with the geopolitical factors. There are a lot of levers for negotiation, and the more levers there are, the more likely there is to be a win-win-win deal that gets done for everybody.
So I think it should be encouraging the fact that there are as many different possible levers here, almost makes certain that a reasonable practicable peace deal as possible in contrast to situation where there’s only one thing that matters for each side, then I can’t tell you that there’s a deal to be done, there’s definitely a deal to be done here, and I think that it requires real leadership in the United States playing hardball, not just with one side of this, not just with Zelenskyy or with Putin, but across the board hardball for our own interest, which are the interests of stability here, and that that will happen to well serve both Ukraine and Russia in the process.
Lex Fridman
If you were president, would you call Putin?
If you were president, would you call Putin?
Vivek Ramaswamy
Absolutely, in any negotiation, you got to manage when you’re calling somebody and when you’re not, but I do believe that open conversation and the willingness to have that as another lever in the negotiation is totally fair game.
Absolutely, in any negotiation, you got to manage when you’re calling somebody and when you’re not, but I do believe that open conversation and the willingness to have that as another lever in the negotiation is totally fair game.
China
Lex Fridman
Okay, let’s go to the China side of this. The big concern here is that the brewing cold, or God forbid, hot war between the United States and China and the 21st century. How do we avoid that?
Okay, let’s go to the China side of this. The big concern here is that the brewing cold, or God forbid, hot war between the United States and China and the 21st century. How do we avoid that?
Vivek Ramaswamy
So a few things. One is, I do think, the best way we also avoid it is by reducing the consequences to the United States in the event of that type of conflict because, at that point, what you’re setting up for, if the consequences are existential for the United States, then what you’re buying yourself in the context of what could be a small conflict is an all-out great war. So, the first thing I want to make sure we avoid is a major conflict between the United States and China, like a world-war-level conflict. And the way to do that is to bring down the existential stakes for the US. And the way we bring down the existential stakes for the US, is make sure that the United States does not depend on China for our modern way of life.
So a few things. One is, I do think, the best way we also avoid it is by reducing the consequences to the United States in the event of that type of conflict because, at that point, what you’re setting up for, if the consequences are existential for the United States, then what you’re buying yourself in the context of what could be a small conflict is an all-out great war. So, the first thing I want to make sure we avoid is a major conflict between the United States and China, like a world-war-level conflict. And the way to do that is to bring down the existential stakes for the US. And the way we bring down the existential stakes for the US, is make sure that the United States does not depend on China for our modern way of life.
Right now, we do, okay, so right now, we depend on China for everything from the pharmaceuticals in our medicine cabinet, 95% of ibuprofen, one of the most basic medicines used in the United States, depends on China for its supply chain. We, depend on China, ironically, for our own military-industrial base. Think about how little sense that makes actually. Our own military, which supposedly exists to protect ourselves against adversaries, depends for its own supplies, semiconductors, and otherwise, on our top adversary, that doesn’t make sense. Even if you’re a libertarian in the school of Friedrich von Hayek, who somebody I admire as well, even then, you would not argue for a foreign dependence on adversary for your military. So, that’s the next step we need to take, is at least reduce US dependence on China for the most essential inputs for the functioning of the United States of America, including our own military.
As a side note, I believe that means not just on-shoring to the United States. It does, but if we’re really serious about that, it also means expanding our relationships with allies like Japan, South Korea, India, the Philippines. And that’s an interesting debate to have because some on the right would say, “Okay, I want to decouple from China, but I also want less trade with all these other places.” You can’t have both those things at the same time. You can have one or the other. You can’t have both. And so, we have to acknowledge and be honest with ourselves that there are trade-offs to declaring independence from China. But the question is, what are the long-run benefits?
Now, you think about the other way to do this is strategic clarity. I think the way that you see World Wars often emerge is strategic ambiguity from two adversaries who don’t really know what the other side’s red line is or isn’t, and accidentally crosses those red lines. And I think we need to be much clearer with what are our hard red lines and what aren’t they. And I think that’s the single most effective way to make sure this doesn’t spiral into major world war.
And then, let’s talk about ending the Russia-Ukraine conflict on the terms that I just discussed with you before. Weakening the Russia-China Alliance not only reduces the risk that Russia becomes an aggressor, it also reduces the risk that China takes the risks that could escalate us to World War III as well. So I think that geopolitically, you got to look at these things holistically, that end of the Russia-Ukraine war in that peace deal deescalates not only the Russia-Ukraine conflict but the risk of a broader conflict that includes China as well, by also weakening China.
Vivek Ramaswamy
… of a broader conflict that includes China as well by also weakening China because Russia also has hypersonic missiles and missile capabilities that are ahead of that China’s. If Russia is no longer in the military alliance with China, that changes China’s calculus as well. So that’s kind of I think, more strategic vision we need in our foreign policy than we’ve had since certainly the Nixon era. I think that you need people who are going to be able to challenge the status quo, question the existing orthodoxies, the willingness to use levers to get great deals done that otherwise wouldn’t have gotten done. And that’s why I do think someone like Donald Trump in the presidency, and obviously I ran for president as an outsider and a businessman as well. I think this is an area, our foreign policy is one where we actually benefit from having business leaders in those roles rather than people who are shackled by the traditional political manner of thinking.
… of a broader conflict that includes China as well by also weakening China because Russia also has hypersonic missiles and missile capabilities that are ahead of that China’s. If Russia is no longer in the military alliance with China, that changes China’s calculus as well. So that’s kind of I think, more strategic vision we need in our foreign policy than we’ve had since certainly the Nixon era. I think that you need people who are going to be able to challenge the status quo, question the existing orthodoxies, the willingness to use levers to get great deals done that otherwise wouldn’t have gotten done. And that’s why I do think someone like Donald Trump in the presidency, and obviously I ran for president as an outsider and a businessman as well. I think this is an area, our foreign policy is one where we actually benefit from having business leaders in those roles rather than people who are shackled by the traditional political manner of thinking.
Lex Fridman
I think the thing you didn’t quite make clear, but I think implied is that we have to accept the red line that China provides of the one China policy.
I think the thing you didn’t quite make clear, but I think implied is that we have to accept the red line that China provides of the one China policy.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Both sides need to have their red lines, both sides need to have their red line. So we can get into specifics, but it’s going to vary depending on the circumstances. But the principle that I would give you is that we have to have a hard red line that’s clear. I think that that hard red line, and I was clear during my campaign on this, so I’ll say it again, is I think that we have to have a clear red line that China will not and should not for any time in the foreseeable future, annex Taiwan. I do think that for the United States, it probably is prudent right now not to suddenly upend the diplomatic policy we’ve adopted for decades of what is recognizing the one China policy in our position of quiet deference to that.
Both sides need to have their red lines, both sides need to have their red line. So we can get into specifics, but it’s going to vary depending on the circumstances. But the principle that I would give you is that we have to have a hard red line that’s clear. I think that that hard red line, and I was clear during my campaign on this, so I’ll say it again, is I think that we have to have a clear red line that China will not and should not for any time in the foreseeable future, annex Taiwan. I do think that for the United States, it probably is prudent right now not to suddenly upend the diplomatic policy we’ve adopted for decades of what is recognizing the one China policy in our position of quiet deference to that.
And understand that that may be the red line is the national recognition of Taiwan as an independent nation would be a red line that China would have. But we would have a red line to say that we do not in any circumstance tolerate the annexation by physical force and anytime in the foreseeable future when that’s against the interest of the United States of America. So those are examples, but the principle here is you asked how do we avoid major conflict with China? I think it starts with clear red lines on both sides. I think it starts with also lowering the stakes for the United States by making sure we’re not dependent on China for our modern way of life. And I think it also starts with ironically using a peaceful resolution to the Ukraine war as a way of weakening the Russia-China alliance, which in the other direction of weakening China has significant benefits to us as well.
Lex Fridman
But what are you do when china says very politely, ” We’re going to annex Taiwan whether you like it or not.”
But what are you do when china says very politely, ” We’re going to annex Taiwan whether you like it or not.”
Vivek Ramaswamy
Against the backdrop that I just laid out, that’s not going to happen. That wouldn’t happen if we actually make sure that we are crystal clear about what our red lines and priorities are. We’re also dependent on Taiwan right now for our own semiconductor supply chain. So China knows that’s going to draw us into serious conflict in that circumstance. So against the backdrop of clearly drawn red lines against the backdrop of Russia no longer automatically being in China’s camp, that’s a big lever. I think also strengthening our relationship with other allies where we have room to strengthen those relationships, like India. And I’m not just saying that because my name is Vivek Ramaswamy, right? I’m saying it because it’s strategically important to the United States to understand that God forbid, in a conflict scenario, China would perceive some risk to the Indian Ocean or the Andaman Sea no longer being reliable for getting Middle Eastern oil supplies.
Against the backdrop that I just laid out, that’s not going to happen. That wouldn’t happen if we actually make sure that we are crystal clear about what our red lines and priorities are. We’re also dependent on Taiwan right now for our own semiconductor supply chain. So China knows that’s going to draw us into serious conflict in that circumstance. So against the backdrop of clearly drawn red lines against the backdrop of Russia no longer automatically being in China’s camp, that’s a big lever. I think also strengthening our relationship with other allies where we have room to strengthen those relationships, like India. And I’m not just saying that because my name is Vivek Ramaswamy, right? I’m saying it because it’s strategically important to the United States to understand that God forbid, in a conflict scenario, China would perceive some risk to the Indian Ocean or the Andaman Sea no longer being reliable for getting Middle Eastern oil supplies.
There’s a lot of levers here, but I think that if we are both strategically clear with our allies and with our adversaries about what our red lines are, what our priorities are, reasonable deals that pull Russia out of the hands of China and vice versa, reasonable allies and relationships that cause China to question whether it can continue to have the same access to Middle Eastern oil supplies as it does today. And then clear red lines with China itself about what we definitely aren’t okay with and understand that they may have certain red lines to, that allows us, I think to still avoid what many people will call the unavoidable conflict, the Thucydides trap against the circumstance of when there’s a rising power against the backdrop of a declining power conflict always becomes inevitable. That’s a theory. It’s not a law of physics and I don’t think that, A, we have to be a declining power, and B, I don’t think that that has to necessarily result in major conflict with China here.
It’s going to require real leadership, leadership with a spine and you don’t have to judge based on international relations theory to form your view on this. Four years under Trump, we didn’t have major conflicts in the Middle East, in places like Russia, Ukraine. We were on the cusp of war with North Korea when Obama left office and Trump took over. Four years under Biden, less than four years under Biden and Harris, what do you have? Major conflicts in the Middle East. Major conflict in Russia, Ukraine, judged by the results. And I mean I would say that even if you’re somebody who disagrees with a lot of Donald Trump and you don’t like his style, if you’re single issues, you want to stay out of World War III, I think there’s a pretty clear case for why you go for Trump in this election.
Lex Fridman
So Prime Minister Modi, I think you’ve complimented him in a bunch of different directions, one of which is when you’re discussing nationalism.
So Prime Minister Modi, I think you’ve complimented him in a bunch of different directions, one of which is when you’re discussing nationalism.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Yeah, I believe that someone I’ve gotten to know actually reasonably well for example, recently is Giorgia Meloni, who’s a leader of Italy, told her the same thing. One of the things I love about her as a leader of Italy is that she does not apologize for the national identity of the country and that she stands for certain values uncompromisingly and she doesn’t give a second care about what the media has to say about it. One of the things I love last time I spoke to her when she was in the US when we sat down was she talked about she doesn’t even read the newspaper, she doesn’t read and watch the media and it allows her to make decisions that are best for the people.
Yeah, I believe that someone I’ve gotten to know actually reasonably well for example, recently is Giorgia Meloni, who’s a leader of Italy, told her the same thing. One of the things I love about her as a leader of Italy is that she does not apologize for the national identity of the country and that she stands for certain values uncompromisingly and she doesn’t give a second care about what the media has to say about it. One of the things I love last time I spoke to her when she was in the US when we sat down was she talked about she doesn’t even read the newspaper, she doesn’t read and watch the media and it allows her to make decisions that are best for the people.
And there are elements of that in Modi’s approach as well, which I respect about him, is he doesn’t apologize for the fact that India has a national identity and that the nation should be proud of it. But I’m not saying that because I’m proud of Meloni or Modi for their own countries. I’m American. I think there are lessons to learn from leaders who are proud of their own nation’s identity rather than apologizing for it. And I think it’s a big part of, it’s why I ran for president on a campaign centered on national pride. It’s also why I’m not only voting for but actively supporting Donald Trump because I do think he’s going to be the one that restores that missing national pride in the United States. And I touch on this as well in the book, there’s a chapter here, it says, “Nationalism isn’t a bad word.”
I think nationalism can be a very positive thing if it’s grounded in the actual true attributes of a nation. And in the United States that doesn’t mean no nationalism because that was not what the national identity of the United States was based on in the first place. But a civic nationalism grounded in our actual national ideals, that is who we are. And I think that that is something that we’ve gotten uncomfortable with in the countries to say that, “Oh, I’m proud of being American and I believe in American exceptionalism.” Somehow that’s looking down on others. No, I’m not looking down on anybody, but I’m proud of my own country. And I think Modi’s revived that spirit in India in a way that was missing for a long time, right? India had an inferiority complex, a psychological inferiority complex, but now to be proud of its national heritage and its national mythmaking and its national legacy and history.
And to say that every nation does have to have a kind of mythmaking about its past and to be proud of that, it’s like Malcolm X actually said this here in the United States, he said, “A nation without an appreciation for its history is like a tree without roots, it’s dead.” And I think that that’s true not just for the United States, I think it’s true for every other nation. I think leaders like Meloni in Italy, leaders like Modi in India have done a great job that I wish to bring that type of pride back in the United States. And whatever I do next, Lex, I’ll tell you this is I think reviving that sense of identity and pride, especially in the next generation is one of the most important things we can do for this country.
Will Vivek run in 2028?
Lex Fridman
Speaking of what you do next, any chance you run in 2028?
Speaking of what you do next, any chance you run in 2028?
Vivek Ramaswamy
Well, I’m not going to rule it out. I mean that’s a long time from now and I’m most focused on what I can do in the next chapter for the country. I ran for president, a million things that I learned from that experience that you can only learn by doing it. It was very much a fire first aim later when getting into the race. There was no way I could have planned and plotted this out as somebody who was coming from the outside. I was 37 years old, came from the business world, so there was a lot that only could learn by actually doing it and I did, but I care about the same things that led me into the presidential race and I don’t think the issues have been solved. I think that we have a generation that is lost in the country. It’s not just young people.
Well, I’m not going to rule it out. I mean that’s a long time from now and I’m most focused on what I can do in the next chapter for the country. I ran for president, a million things that I learned from that experience that you can only learn by doing it. It was very much a fire first aim later when getting into the race. There was no way I could have planned and plotted this out as somebody who was coming from the outside. I was 37 years old, came from the business world, so there was a lot that only could learn by actually doing it and I did, but I care about the same things that led me into the presidential race and I don’t think the issues have been solved. I think that we have a generation that is lost in the country. It’s not just young people.
I think it’s all of us in some ways are hungry for purpose and meaning at a time in our history when the things that used to fill that void in our heart, they’re missing. And I think we need a president who both the right policies for the country seal the border, grow the economy, stay out of World War III, end rampant crime. Yes, we need the right policies, but we also need leaders who in a sustained way revive our national character, revive our sense of pride in this country, revive our identity as Americans, and I think that that need exists as much today as it did when I first ran for president. I don’t think it’s going to be automatically solved in just a few years. I think Donald Trump is the right person to carry that banner forward for the next four years.
But after that, we’ll see where the country is headed into 2028 and whatever I do, it’ll be whatever has a maximal positive impact on the country. I’ll also tell you that my laser focus maybe as distinct from other politicians on both sides is to take America to the next level, to move beyond our victimhood culture, to restore our culture of excellence. We got to shut down that nanny state, the entitlement state, the regulatory state, the foreign policy nanny state, shut it down and revive who we really are as Americans, and I’m as passionate about that as ever. But the next step is not running for president. The next step is what happens in the next four years, and that’s why over the next four weeks I’m focused on doing whatever I can to make sure we succeed in this election.
Lex Fridman
Well, I hope you run because this was made clear on the stage in the primary debates. You have a unique clarity and honesty in expressing the ideas you stand for and it would be nice to see that. I would also like to see the same thing on the other side, which would make for some badass, interesting debates.
Well, I hope you run because this was made clear on the stage in the primary debates. You have a unique clarity and honesty in expressing the ideas you stand for and it would be nice to see that. I would also like to see the same thing on the other side, which would make for some badass, interesting debates.
Vivek Ramaswamy
I would love nothing more than a kick-ass set of top-tier Democrat candidates. After four years of Donald Trump, we have a primary filled with actually people who have real visions for the country on both sides, and the people of this country can choose between those competing visions without insult or injury being the way. I would love nothing more than to see that in 2028.
I would love nothing more than a kick-ass set of top-tier Democrat candidates. After four years of Donald Trump, we have a primary filled with actually people who have real visions for the country on both sides, and the people of this country can choose between those competing visions without insult or injury being the way. I would love nothing more than to see that in 2028.
Lex Fridman
Who do you think? So for me, I would love to see in some kind of future where it’s you versus somebody like Tim Walz. So to Tim Walz, maybe I’m lacking in knowledge, is first of all, a good dude, has similar to you, strongly held if not radical ideas of how to make progress in this country. So to just be on stage and debate honestly about the ideas, there’s a tension between those ideas. Is there other people? Shapiro’s interesting also.
Who do you think? So for me, I would love to see in some kind of future where it’s you versus somebody like Tim Walz. So to Tim Walz, maybe I’m lacking in knowledge, is first of all, a good dude, has similar to you, strongly held if not radical ideas of how to make progress in this country. So to just be on stage and debate honestly about the ideas, there’s a tension between those ideas. Is there other people? Shapiro’s interesting also.
Vivek Ramaswamy
I would like to take on in earnest, in civil but contested context of a debate. Who do we want to take on? You want to take on somebody who disagrees with you but still has deep ideology of their own. I think John Fetterman is pretty interesting, right? He’s demonstrated himself to be somebody who is thoughtful, able to change his mind on positions, but not in some sort of fake flip-floppity, flippity-floppity way. But in a thoughtful evolution, somebody’s been through personal struggles, somebody who I deeply disagree with on a lot of his views and most of his views. But who I can at least say he comes across at least as somebody who has been through that torturous process of really examining your beliefs and convictions and has when necessary, been able to preach to his own tribe where he thinks they’re wrong.
I would like to take on in earnest, in civil but contested context of a debate. Who do we want to take on? You want to take on somebody who disagrees with you but still has deep ideology of their own. I think John Fetterman is pretty interesting, right? He’s demonstrated himself to be somebody who is thoughtful, able to change his mind on positions, but not in some sort of fake flip-floppity, flippity-floppity way. But in a thoughtful evolution, somebody’s been through personal struggles, somebody who I deeply disagree with on a lot of his views and most of his views. But who I can at least say he comes across at least as somebody who has been through that torturous process of really examining your beliefs and convictions and has when necessary, been able to preach to his own tribe where he thinks they’re wrong.
I think it’s interesting. I think that you have in a number of other leaders probably emerging at lower levels on the left. Not everybody’s going to necessarily come from Washington DC. In fact, the longer they’re there, the more they in some ways get polluted by it. I think the governor of Colorado, he’s an interesting guy. He’s got a more libertarian tendency. I don’t know as much about his views on it from a national perspective, but it’s intriguing to see somebody who has at least libertarian freedom-oriented tendencies within the Democratic Party. I think that there are a number of, I mean, I don’t foresee him running for president, but I had a debate last year when I was running for president with Ro Khanna who say what you will about him. He’s an highly intelligent person and is somebody who is at least willing to buck the consensus of his party when necessary.
I think he recently, I would say lambasted, he phrased it very delicately, but criticized Kamala Harris’s proposed tax on unrealized capital gains. So I like people who are willing to challenge the orthodoxies in their own party because it says they actually have convictions. And so whoever the Democrats put up, I hope it’s someone like that. And for my part I have and continue to have beliefs that will challenge Republicans, that on the face of it may not be the policies that poll on paper as the policies you’re supposed to adopt as a Republican candidate, but what a true leader does doesn’t just tell people what they want to hear. You tell people what they need to hear and you tell people what your actual convictions are. And this idea that I don’t want to create a right-wing entitlement state or a nanny state, I want to shut it down.
That challenges the precept positions of where a lot of the conservative movement is right now. I don’t think the bill to cap credit card interest rates is a good idea because that’s a price control just like Kamala Harris’s price controls and it’ll reduce access to credit. I don’t think that we want a crony capitalist estate showering private benefits on selected industries that favor us or that we want to expand the CFPB or the FTC’s remit, and somehow we’re going to trust it because it’s under our watch. No, I believe in shutting it down. That challenges a lot of the current direction of the conservative movement. I believe in certain issues that, or maybe even outside the scope of what Republicans currently care about right now.
One of the things that I oppose, for example, is this is not a top issue in American politics, but just to give you a sense for how I think and view the world, I’m against factory farming of a large scale of, you could sort of say putting the mistreatment of, it’s one thing to say that you need it for your sustenance and that’s great. But it’s another to say that you have to do it in a factory farming setting that gives special exemptions from historical laws that have existed that are the product of crony capitalism. I’m against crony capitalism in all its forms. I’m against the influence of mega money in politics. I don’t think that’s been good either for Democrats or Republicans. Some of those views I think are not necessarily the traditional Republican orthodoxy reading chapter and verse from what the Republican Party platform has been. It’s not against the Republican Party platform, but it’s asking what the future of our movement is.
Lex Fridman
Some of these things are hard, like getting money out of politics.
Some of these things are hard, like getting money out of politics.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Getting mega money, getting mega money.
Getting mega money, getting mega money.
Lex Fridman
The mega money. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so long as it exists, you got to play the game. I mean, if you’re going to play to win, I think one of the things I realized is that you just can’t compete without it, but you want to win the game in order to change the game. And I think that that’s something that I keep in mind as well.
The mega money. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so long as it exists, you got to play the game. I mean, if you’re going to play to win, I think one of the things I realized is that you just can’t compete without it, but you want to win the game in order to change the game. And I think that that’s something that I keep in mind as well.
Lex Fridman
You have written a lot, you’re exceptionally productive. But even just looking book-wise written basically a book a year for the last four years. When you’re writing, when you’re thinking about how to solve the problems of the world to develop your policy, how do you think?
You have written a lot, you’re exceptionally productive. But even just looking book-wise written basically a book a year for the last four years. When you’re writing, when you’re thinking about how to solve the problems of the world to develop your policy, how do you think?
Vivek Ramaswamy
I need quiet time, extended periods of it that are separated from the rush of the day to day or the travel actually think a lot better when I’m working out and physically active. So if I’m running, playing tennis, lifting, somehow for me, that really opens up my mind and then I need a significant amount of time after that with a notebook. Usually carry around a notebook everywhere I go and write it down in there.
I need quiet time, extended periods of it that are separated from the rush of the day to day or the travel actually think a lot better when I’m working out and physically active. So if I’m running, playing tennis, lifting, somehow for me, that really opens up my mind and then I need a significant amount of time after that with a notebook. Usually carry around a notebook everywhere I go and write it down in there.
Lex Fridman
Is the notebook full of chaotic thoughts or is it structured? Does it-
Is the notebook full of chaotic thoughts or is it structured? Does it-
Vivek Ramaswamy
Sometimes it’s chaotic, sometimes it’s structured. It’s a little bit of both. Sometimes I have a thought that I know I don’t want to forget later, I’ll immediately jot it down. Other times on the flight over here, I had a much more structured layout of, I got a lot of different projects in the air, for example, and I cross pollinate, I was in the shower this morning, had a bunch of thoughts, collected those on my plane ride over here. So I think that writing is something in all of its forms that helps me. It’s one of the things actually helped me this year was actually writing this book. You’re going through a presidential campaign, you’re going at super speed. And if I was to do the presidential campaign again, the thing I would do is actually to take more structured breaks. I don’t mean breaks isn’t just like vacations, but I mean breaks to reflect on what’s actually happening. Probably the biggest mistake I made is last time around heading into the first debate, I was like in nine different states over seven days.
Sometimes it’s chaotic, sometimes it’s structured. It’s a little bit of both. Sometimes I have a thought that I know I don’t want to forget later, I’ll immediately jot it down. Other times on the flight over here, I had a much more structured layout of, I got a lot of different projects in the air, for example, and I cross pollinate, I was in the shower this morning, had a bunch of thoughts, collected those on my plane ride over here. So I think that writing is something in all of its forms that helps me. It’s one of the things actually helped me this year was actually writing this book. You’re going through a presidential campaign, you’re going at super speed. And if I was to do the presidential campaign again, the thing I would do is actually to take more structured breaks. I don’t mean breaks isn’t just like vacations, but I mean breaks to reflect on what’s actually happening. Probably the biggest mistake I made is last time around heading into the first debate, I was like in nine different states over seven days.
I would’ve just taken that as a pause where halfway through you’ve established relevance, now make sure the country sees who you actually are in full rather than just the momentum competitive driven version of you. And I just think that taking those moments to just take stock of where you are, do some writing. I didn’t do much writing during the presidential campaign. I enjoy writing. It’s part of how I center myself. It’s part of what this book allowed me to do is, okay, I ran that whirlwind of a campaign. The first thing I started doing after I collected myself for a couple of weeks was take the pen and start writing. And I was committed to writing that book. Whether or not anybody read it, I was just writing it for myself. And actually it started in a very different form. It was very personal reflection oriented. So most of that, funny enough I’ve learned about writing the books, Lex, is-
Lex Fridman
Just edit it out.
Just edit it out.
Vivek Ramaswamy
It just didn’t end up in the book because it went in a different direction than what’s interesting for a publisher to publish. And so for each of my books, the things that I started writing ended up never in the book anyway, just because the topic ended up morphing. But the journey that led me to write this book, a lot of it in this book is still in there. This is my fourth book in four years. You’re right. And I hope it’s the most important one, but it is certainly the product of an honest reflection that whatever it might do for the reader, it helped me to write it.
It just didn’t end up in the book because it went in a different direction than what’s interesting for a publisher to publish. And so for each of my books, the things that I started writing ended up never in the book anyway, just because the topic ended up morphing. But the journey that led me to write this book, a lot of it in this book is still in there. This is my fourth book in four years. You’re right. And I hope it’s the most important one, but it is certainly the product of an honest reflection that whatever it might do for the reader, it helped me to write it.
And I think that’s one of the things that I learned from this campaign is not just all the policy lessons, but even just as a matter of personal practice, the ability to take spaces of time to not only physically challenge yourself, work out, et cetera, but to give yourself the space to reflect, to recenter yourself on the why. Had I done that, I think I would’ve been even more centered on the mission the whole time. Rather than you get attacked on the way you’re thrown off your tilt or thrown off your balance, it becomes a lot harder for someone else to do that to you if you’ve really centered yourself on your own purpose. It’s probably one of my biggest learnings.
Approach to debates
Lex Fridman
So you’ve mentioned the first primary debate, so more than almost basically anybody I’ve ever seen you step into some really intense debates, And you’re on podcasts in general in all kinds of walks of life, whether it’s debates with sort of protestors or debates with people that really disagree with you, like the radical opposite of you. What’s the philosophy behind that, and what’s the psychology of being able to be calm through all of that, which you seem to be able to do.
So you’ve mentioned the first primary debate, so more than almost basically anybody I’ve ever seen you step into some really intense debates, And you’re on podcasts in general in all kinds of walks of life, whether it’s debates with sort of protestors or debates with people that really disagree with you, like the radical opposite of you. What’s the philosophy behind that, and what’s the psychology of being able to be calm through all of that, which you seem to be able to do.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Well, I enjoy debate and for me, I think just in ordinary life, forget about a formal debate setting. Whenever I’ve received criticism or a contrary view, my first impulse is always, “Are they right?” I mean it’s always a possibility, right? And most of the time what happens is you understand the other side’s argument, but you emerge with a stronger conviction in your own belief, you know your own beliefs better if you can state the best argument for the other side, but sometimes you do change your mind, and I think that that’s happened over the course of my life as well. I think no one’s a thinking human being unless that happens once in a while too. And so anyway, just the idea of the pursuit of truth through open debate and inquiry, that’s always just been part of my identity, part of who I am. I’m wired that way.
Well, I enjoy debate and for me, I think just in ordinary life, forget about a formal debate setting. Whenever I’ve received criticism or a contrary view, my first impulse is always, “Are they right?” I mean it’s always a possibility, right? And most of the time what happens is you understand the other side’s argument, but you emerge with a stronger conviction in your own belief, you know your own beliefs better if you can state the best argument for the other side, but sometimes you do change your mind, and I think that that’s happened over the course of my life as well. I think no one’s a thinking human being unless that happens once in a while too. And so anyway, just the idea of the pursuit of truth through open debate and inquiry, that’s always just been part of my identity, part of who I am. I’m wired that way.
I thrive on it, I enjoy it. Even my relationships with my closest friends are built around heated debates and deep-seated disagreements. And I just think that’s beautiful, not just about human relationships, but it’s particularly beautiful about America, right? Because it’s part of the culture of this country more so than other countries in China, India, Asian cultures even a lot of European cultures are very different where that’s considered not genteel behavior. It’s not the respectful behavior. Whereas for us, part of what makes this country great is you could disagree like hell and still get together at the dinner table at the end of it. I think we’ve lost some of that, but I’m on a bit of a mission to bring that back. And so whether it’s in politics or not, I’m committed in that next step, whatever the path is over the next four years, one of the things I’m committed to doing is making sure that I go out of my way to talk to people who actually disagree with me. And I think it’s a big part of how we’re going to save our country.
Lex Fridman
Are they right? Is a thing I actually literally see you do. So you are listening to the person.
Are they right? Is a thing I actually literally see you do. So you are listening to the person.
Vivek Ramaswamy
For my own benefit, to be honest, selfish.
For my own benefit, to be honest, selfish.
Lex Fridman
You also don’t lose your shit. So you don’t take it personally. You don’t get emotional, but you get emotional sort of in a positive way. You get passionate, but you don’t get… I’ve never seen you broken to where they get you outraged, probably because you just love the heat.
You also don’t lose your shit. So you don’t take it personally. You don’t get emotional, but you get emotional sort of in a positive way. You get passionate, but you don’t get… I’ve never seen you broken to where they get you outraged, probably because you just love the heat.
Vivek Ramaswamy
I love the heat and I’m a curious person, so I’m always curious about what’s motivating the person on the other side. That curiosity I think is actually the best antidote because if you’re just trying to stay calm in the face of somebody attacking you, that’s kind of fake. But if you’re kind of curious about them, genuinely just wondering, I think most people are good people inherently. We all maybe get misguided from time to time, but what is it that’s moving that person to go in such a different direction than you?
I love the heat and I’m a curious person, so I’m always curious about what’s motivating the person on the other side. That curiosity I think is actually the best antidote because if you’re just trying to stay calm in the face of somebody attacking you, that’s kind of fake. But if you’re kind of curious about them, genuinely just wondering, I think most people are good people inherently. We all maybe get misguided from time to time, but what is it that’s moving that person to go in such a different direction than you?
I think as long as you’re curious about that, I mean the climate change protestors that have interrupted my events, I’m as fascinated by the psychology of what’s moving them and what they might be hungry for as I am concerned about rebutting the content of what they’re saying to me. And I think that that’s certainly something I care to revive. We don’t talk about in politics that much, but reviving that sense of curiosity I think is in a certain way, one of the ways we’re going to be able to disagree, but still remain friends and fellow citizens at the end of it.
Lex Fridman
I agree with you. I think fundamentally most people are good. And one of the things I love most about humans is the very thing you said, which is curiosity. I think we should lean into that.
I agree with you. I think fundamentally most people are good. And one of the things I love most about humans is the very thing you said, which is curiosity. I think we should lean into that.
Vivek Ramaswamy
You’re a curious person. I know this podcast is basically born of your curiosity, I’m sure. And so I just think we need more of that in America that kind of… Remember when I talked about our founding fathers, we were joking about it, but they were inventors, they were writers, they were political theorists, they were founders of a nation. They kind of had that boundless curiosity too. And I think part of what’s happened culturally in the countries we’ve gotten to this place where we’ve been told that, “Stay in your lane. You don’t have an expert degree in that, therefore you can’t have an opinion about it.” I don’t know. I think it’s a little bit un-American in terms of the culture of it.
You’re a curious person. I know this podcast is basically born of your curiosity, I’m sure. And so I just think we need more of that in America that kind of… Remember when I talked about our founding fathers, we were joking about it, but they were inventors, they were writers, they were political theorists, they were founders of a nation. They kind of had that boundless curiosity too. And I think part of what’s happened culturally in the countries we’ve gotten to this place where we’ve been told that, “Stay in your lane. You don’t have an expert degree in that, therefore you can’t have an opinion about it.” I don’t know. I think it’s a little bit un-American in terms of the culture of it.
And yeah, it’s one of the things I like about you and why I was looking forward to this conversation too, is it’s cool to have intellectual interests that span sports to culture, to politics, to philosophy. And it’s not like you just have to be an expert trained in one of those things to be able to engage in it, but actually maybe, just maybe you might even be better at each of those things because you’re curious about the other, the Renaissance man, if you will. I think we’ve lost a little bit of that concept in America, but it’s certainly something that is important to me. And this year it’s been kind of cool. After leaving the campaign, I’ve been doing a wide range of things. I’ve been picking up my tennis game again. I practiced at the Ohio State-
Lex Fridman
You’re damn good at tennis. I was watching you-
You’re damn good at tennis. I was watching you-
Vivek Ramaswamy
I used to be better, but I’m picking it up again.
I used to be better, but I’m picking it up again.
Lex Fridman
Somebody online was trying to correctly, I think you shot a very particular angle of that video. I think they were criticizing your backhand was weak potentially because you’re-
Somebody online was trying to correctly, I think you shot a very particular angle of that video. I think they were criticizing your backhand was weak potentially because you’re-
Vivek Ramaswamy
That would be fair criticism. But it’s gotten better again. It’s gotten better recently. I’ve been playing, I’ve been practicing with the Ohio State team in the morning. They’re like number one in the country or close to it. Now the guys on the team play, but there’s a couple coaches who were recently on the team, one of whom used to be, a guy used to play within the juniors who invited me out. So I hit with them in the mornings alongside the team. My goal-
That would be fair criticism. But it’s gotten better again. It’s gotten better recently. I’ve been playing, I’ve been practicing with the Ohio State team in the morning. They’re like number one in the country or close to it. Now the guys on the team play, but there’s a couple coaches who were recently on the team, one of whom used to be, a guy used to play within the juniors who invited me out. So I hit with them in the mornings alongside the team. My goal-
Lex Fridman
Oh, don’t say it.
Oh, don’t say it.
Vivek Ramaswamy
I should be careful here. Oh no, my hips are telling others, so I’ve been playing so many days a week-
I should be careful here. Oh no, my hips are telling others, so I’ve been playing so many days a week-
Lex Fridman
No, no, please don’t.
No, no, please don’t.
Vivek Ramaswamy
… that I set a goal for myself to play in a particular tournament, but we’ll see if that happens or not.
… that I set a goal for myself to play in a particular tournament, but we’ll see if that happens or not.
Lex Fridman
No, no.
No, no.
Vivek Ramaswamy
But regardless if it’s been fun to get back into tennis, I was an executive producer in a movie, something I’ve never done before. It was called City of Dreams. It’s about a story of a young man who was trafficked into the United States. It’s a thriller, it’s a very cool movie to be a part of. I have actually started a couple companies, one company in particular that I think is going to be significant this year, guiding some of the other businesses that I’ve gotten off the ground in the past. So for me, I’m re-energized now where I was involved in the thick of politics for a full year there. And getting a little bit of oxygen outside of politics, doing some things in the private sector has actually given me a renewed sense of energy to get back into driving change through public service.
But regardless if it’s been fun to get back into tennis, I was an executive producer in a movie, something I’ve never done before. It was called City of Dreams. It’s about a story of a young man who was trafficked into the United States. It’s a thriller, it’s a very cool movie to be a part of. I have actually started a couple companies, one company in particular that I think is going to be significant this year, guiding some of the other businesses that I’ve gotten off the ground in the past. So for me, I’m re-energized now where I was involved in the thick of politics for a full year there. And getting a little bit of oxygen outside of politics, doing some things in the private sector has actually given me a renewed sense of energy to get back into driving change through public service.
Lex Fridman
Well, it’s been fun watching you do all these fascinating things, but I do hope that you have a future in politics as well, because it’s nice to have somebody that has rigorously developed their ideas and is honest about presenting them and is willing to debate those ideas out in public space. So I would love for you and people like you to represent the future of American politics. So Vivek, thank you so much. For every time I’m swiveling this chair, I’m thinking of Thomas Jefferson.
Well, it’s been fun watching you do all these fascinating things, but I do hope that you have a future in politics as well, because it’s nice to have somebody that has rigorously developed their ideas and is honest about presenting them and is willing to debate those ideas out in public space. So I would love for you and people like you to represent the future of American politics. So Vivek, thank you so much. For every time I’m swiveling this chair, I’m thinking of Thomas Jefferson.
Vivek Ramaswamy
It’s good. That was my goal.
It’s good. That was my goal.
Lex Fridman
So big shout out to Thomas Jefferson for the swivel chair, and thank you so much for talking today, Vivek. This was fun.
So big shout out to Thomas Jefferson for the swivel chair, and thank you so much for talking today, Vivek. This was fun.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Thank you, man. One final fact on Thomas Jefferson, whether you cut this or not.
Thank you, man. One final fact on Thomas Jefferson, whether you cut this or not.
Lex Fridman
Of course.
Of course.
Vivek Ramaswamy
He wrote 16,000 essays in his life, letters, right? So he said, “I’ve written four books in four years.” That is nothing compared to how prolific this guy was. Anyway, anyway, good stuff, man. Thanks for having me.
He wrote 16,000 essays in his life, letters, right? So he said, “I’ve written four books in four years.” That is nothing compared to how prolific this guy was. Anyway, anyway, good stuff, man. Thanks for having me.
Lex Fridman
Neither of us will ever live up to anything close to Thomas Jefferson.
Neither of us will ever live up to anything close to Thomas Jefferson.
Vivek Ramaswamy
I love your curiosity, man. Thanks for reading the book and appreciated your feedback on it as well. And hopefully we’ll do this again sometime.
I love your curiosity, man. Thanks for reading the book and appreciated your feedback on it as well. And hopefully we’ll do this again sometime.
Lex Fridman
Yep. Thank you brother.
Yep. Thank you brother.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Thanks dude.
Thanks dude.
Lex Fridman
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Vivek Ramaswamy. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from George Orwell. ” Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Vivek Ramaswamy. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from George Orwell. ” Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
Transcript for Vejas Liulevicius: Communism, Marxism, Nazism, Stalin, Mao, and Hitler | Lex Fridman Podcast #444
This is a transcript of Lex Fridman Podcast #444 with Vejas Liulevicius.
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You put very well some of the implications of this case study in how things look in the abstract versus in practice, and those phenomena were going to haunt the rest of the experience of the Soviet Union. The whole notion that up and down the chain of command, everybody is falsifying or tinkering with or purifying the statistics or their reports in order not to look bad and not to have vengeance visited upon them reaches the point where nobody, in spite of the pretense of comprehensive knowledge, there’s a state planning agency that creates five-year plans for the economy as a whole and which is supposed to have accurate statistics, all of this is founded upon a foundation of sand.
A deliberate plan to bring class conflict and bring civil war and then heighten it in the countryside does damage, and not least of that is this phenomenon of a negative selection. Those who have most enterprise, those who are most entrepreneurial, those who have most self-discipline, those who are best organized will be winnowed again and again and again, sending the message that mediocrity is comparatively much safer than talent.
Hitler and Himmler envisioned permanent war on the Eastern Front, not a peace treaty, not a settlement, not a border, but a constant moving of the border every generation hundreds of miles east in order to keep winning more and more living space and with analogy to other frontiers to always give more fighting experience and more training and aggression to generation after generation of German soldiers. In terms of nightmarish visions, this one’s right up there.
At the same time, in the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and his colleague Friedrich Engels also suggested that there was a role for special individuals who might even if history was still moving in this predetermined direction, might give it an extra push, might play a heroic role in that process. And I think that these two ideas added together, the notion that there is a science of revolution that suggests that you can move in a deliberate and meaningful, rational way towards the end of history and the resolution of all conflicts, a total liberation of the human person and that moreover that was inevitable, that that was pre-programmed and destined in the order of things, when you add to that the notion that there’s also room for heroism and the individual role, this ended up being tremendously powerful as a combination.
Earlier thinkers who were socialists had already dreamt of or projected futures where all conflict would be resolved and human life would achieve some sort of perfection. Marx added these other elements that made it far more powerful than the earlier versions that he decried as merely utopian socialism.
That said, hidden among Marx’s insistence that there are laws and structures as history moves through class conflict, modes of production towards its ultimate goal of a comprehensive final revolution that will see all exploitation overthrown and people finally being freed from necessity, smuggled in among those things are most definitely utopian elements. And there, they come especially at the end in which Marx sketches the notion of what things will look like after the revolution has resolved all problems.
There, vagueness sets in. It’s clear that it’s a blessed state that’s being talked about. People no longer exploiting one another, people no longer subject to necessity or poverty, but instead enjoying all of the productivity of industrialization that hitherto had been put to private profit now collectively owned and deployed. The notion that one will be able to work at one job in the morning and then engage in leisure activity at yet another fulfilling job in the afternoon. All of this free of any contradictions, free of necessity, free of the ordinary irritations that we experience in our the ordinary lives, that’s deeply utopian. The difference was that Marx charted a route towards that outcome that presented itself as cutting-edge science and moreover having the full credibility that science commanded so much, especially in the 19th and early 20th century.
In the case of Hegel, in this very Prussian and German context, he identified the realization of freedom also with the growth of the state because he thought that governments are the ones that are going to be able to deliver on laws and on the ideal of a state of the rule of law, in German the Rechtsstaat. That was a noble dream. At the same time, as we recognize from our perspective, state power has been put to all sorts of purposes besides guaranteeing the rule of law in our own times.
What Marx did was to take this characteristic insistence of Hegel that history is moving in a meaningful and discernible way towards the realization of an idea and flipped it on its head. Marx insisted that Hegel had so much that was right in his thinking, but what he had neglected to keep in mind was that in fact, history is based on matter. So hence, dialectical materialism, dialectical referring to things proceeding by clashes or conflict towards an ever greater realization of some essential idea.
And so Marx adapts a lot of ideas of Hegel. You can recognize entire rhetorical maneuvers that are indebted to that earlier training, but now taken in a very different direction. What remained though was the confidence of being on the right side of history. And there are few things that are as intoxicating as being convinced that your actions not only are right in the abstract, but are also destined to be successful.
And so Marx was able in this spirit that he avowed was very scientific to demarcate stages of historical transformation, primitive communism in the prehistoric period, then moving towards what was called state slavery. That’s to say the early civilizations deploying human resources and ordering them by all powerful monarchs. Then private slavery in the ancient period. And then moving to feudalism in the Middle Ages. And then here’s where Marx is able to deliver a pronouncement about his own times, seeing that the present day is the penultimate, the next to last stage of this historical development, because the feudal system of the Middle Ages and the dominance of the aristocracy has been overcome, has been displaced by the often heroic achievements, astonishing achievements in commerce and in world-building of the middle class, the bourgeoisie, who have taken the world into their own hands and are engaged in class conflict with the class below them, which is the working class or the proletariat.
And so this sort of conflict also, by the way, obtains within classes, so the bourgeoisie are going to be gravediggers Marx announces of their own supremacy because they’re also competing against one another. And members who don’t survive that competition get pressed down into the subordinate working class, which grows and grows and grows to the point where at some future moment, the inevitable explosion will come and a swift revolution will overturn this penultimate stage of human history and usher in instead the dictatorship of the working class and then the abolition of all classes because with only one class remaining, everyone is finally unified and without those internal contradictions that had marked class conflict before.
And hence, we arrive at Marx’s tantalizing promise that there will be a period where it will be necessary to have centralized control and there might have to be, as he puts it, despotic inroads against property in order to bring this revolution to pass. But then afterwards, the state, because it represents everybody rather than representing particular class interests that are in conflict with other classes, the state will eventually wither away, so there won’t be need for it.
Now, that’s not to say that pure stasis arrives or that the stabilization equals being frozen in time. It’s not as if that is what things will look like. But instead, the big issues will be settled and henceforth people will be able to enjoy lives of, as he would consider it, in authentic freedom without necessity, without poverty as a result of this blessed state that’s been arrived at.
In the way he saw this climax was that as things did not stay the same, the condition of the working class was constantly getting worse and hence their revolutionary potential was growing. And at the same time, the expropriators, the bourgeoisie, were also facing diminishing returns as they competed against one another with more and more wealth concentrated in fewer and fewer hands and more and more elements of what had been the middle class detached from the ruling class and being pressed down into the working class. For Marx, this is really a key part. I mean, it’s a key part of this whole ratchet effect that’s going to produce this final historical explosion.
And in German, the word given to that process was verehlendung, which is very evocative. Elend means misery, so it’s the growing misery. When this gets translated into English, the results are never quite as evocative or satisfactory. The words that get used are immiseration or pauperization, meaning more and more people are being turned into paupers. But for Marx, that prediction is really key.
And even in his own lifetime, there were already hints that in fact, if you looked sociologically at the really developed working classes in places like Great Britain or Germany, that process was not playing out as he had expected. In fact, although there had been enormous dislocations and tremendous suffering in the early chaotic, Wild West stages of capitalism and of industrialization, there had been reform movements as well. And there had been unions which had sought to carve out rules and agreements with employers for how the conditions under which workers labored might be ameliorated.
Moreover, the middle class rather than dwindling and dwindling, seemed to actually be strengthening and growing in numbers or the appearance of new kinds of people like white-collar workers or technical experts. So already in Marx’s own lifetime, and then especially in what follows Marx’s lifetime, this becomes a real problem because it puts a stick into the spokes of this particular historical prediction.
And so it’s a great mix of ideas, ideologies, the old and the new religious ideas, religious revivals, as well as demands for secularization. And stepping into all of this are Marx and Engels together in what has been called, I think with justice, one of the most important and influential intellectual partnerships of history.
They were very different men. They were both German by origin. Marx had trained as an academic. He had married the daughter of a baron. Because of his radical ideas, he had foreclosed or just found himself cut off from a possible academic career and went the route of radical journalism. Engels was very different. Engels was the son of an industrialist and the family owned factories in Germany and in England. So he was most definitely not a member of the proletariat that he and Marx were celebrating as so significant in their future historical role.
There were also huge differences in character between these men. Marx, when people met him, they were astonished by his energy and his dynamism. They also saw him as a man who felt determined to dominate arguments. He wanted to win arguments and was not one to settle for compromise or a middle road. He was disorderly in his personal habits. We might mention among other things, that he impregnated the family maid and didn’t accept responsibility for the child. He was also not inclined to undertake regular employment in order to support his growing family. That’s where Engels came in. Engels essentially from his family fortune and then from his journalism afterwards supported both himself and the Marx family for decades. And so in a sense, Engels made things happen.
In the mysterious way that friendships work, the very differences between these men made them formidable as a dynamic duo because they balanced off one another’s idiosyncrasies and turned what might’ve been faults into potential strengths. British historian, A.J.P. Taylor always has a lovely turn of phrase, even when he’s wrong about a historical issue. In this case, he was right. He said that Engels had charm and brilliance, Marx was the genius. And Engels saw himself as definitely the junior partner in this relationship. But here’s the paradox. Without Engels, pretty clearly Marx would not have gone on to have the sort of lasting historical impact in the world of ideas that he had.
And it’s very true, as you point out, that Germany is intended to be the place where these predictions will play out, also in Britain, also in France, also eventually in the United States. But it’s Germany by virtue of its central location and then its rapid development later than Britain or France in industrialization give it the special role in Marx’s worldview.
And so it’s a lasting irony or a central irony of this whole story that when a government establishes itself that claims to be following Marx’s prescriptions and realizing his vision, it happens in the wreckage of the Russian Empire, a place that did not match the requirements of being industrialized, developed, well on its way in this historical process. And nobody knew this better than the Bolsheviks. Lenin and his colleagues had a keen sense that what they were doing, exciting as it was, was a gamble. It was a risk because in fact, the revolution to really take hold had to seize power in Germany. And that’s why immediately after taking power, they’re not sure they’re going to last. Their hope, their promise of salvation is that a workers’ revolution will erupt in Germany, defeated Germany in order to link up with the one that has been launched in this unlikely Russian location and henceforth great things will follow that do hue to Marx’s historical vision.
The last thing to mention about this is that this predominance of Germany in the thinking of Marx had two other reflections. One was that German socialists and later communists organize in order to fulfill Marx’s vision and they produce something that leaves other Westerners in awe in the late 19th century. And that’s the building of a strong German workers movement and a Social Democratic Party. That Social Democratic Party by 1912 is the largest party in German politics by vote. And there’s the possibility they might even come to power without needing radical revolution, which again, also goes against Marx’s original vision of the necessity for a revolution. Workers around the world, or rather radical socialists look with admiration and awe at what the Germans have achieved and they see themselves as trying to do what the Germans have done.
The final point is growing up during the Cold War, one thought that, well, if you want to represent somebody as being a communist, that person has to have a Russian accent, because Russia after all, the homeland of this form of government, the Soviet Union, that must be the point of origin. Before the Bolsheviks seized power, in order to really be a serious radical socialist, you needed to read German because you needed to read Marx, and you needed to read Kautsky, and you needed to read Bernstein and other thinkers in this tradition. And it’s only after the Soviet seizure of power that this all changes. So there’s lots of Marx of that phenomenon.
So Bakunin is part of a broader movement of socialists and anarchists who were demanding change and envisioning really fundamental transformation, but his particular anarchist vision steers him into conflict with Marx, and he makes some prophetic remarks about the problems with the system that Marx is proposing. You should add to this that the very fact that Marx is a German by background and Bakunin is Russian adds a further nationalist or element of ethnic difference there. Bakunin warned that a sort of creeping German authoritarianism might insinuate its way into a movement that hewed too closely to having hierarchies in the struggle to overthrow hierarchies, and his anarchist convictions are not in question here. They led him into conflict with Marx, and Marx railed against him, denounced him, and eventually had him expelled from The International.
One of the things though that also makes Bakunin so significant is Bakunin is the first in a longer series of approaches between anarchists and communists where they try to make common cause, and you have to say that in every case, it ends badly for the anarchists, because the communist vision in particular, especially in its Leninist version, argued for discipline and a tightly organized professional revolutionary movement. The anarchists who sought to make common cause with communists, whether it was in the days of the Russian Revolution or the Russian Civil War, or whether it was then in the Spanish Civil War, the anarchists found themselves targeted by the communists precisely because of their skepticism about what turned out to be an absolutely key element in the Leninist prescription for a successful revolution.
Another key point in all of this is that anarchy means something different to different people as a term, and so when you point out quite correctly that we have an anarchic international situation, that’s the Hobbesian model of the war of all against all, where man is a wolf to man. Generally, except if you’re talking about nihilists in the Russian revolutionary tradition, anarchists see anarchy as a blessed state and one where finally, people will be freed from the distorting influence of hierarchies, traditional beliefs, subjugation, inequalities. So for them, anarchy growing out of the liberation of the human being is seen as a positive good and peaceful.
Now, that’s at odds with the prescription of someone like Bakunin for how to get there. He sees overthrow as being necessary on the route to that, but as we point out, it’s absolutely key to this entire dynamic that to be an anarchist means that your efforts are not going to be organized the way a disciplined and tightly organized revolutionary movement would be.
Reinhold Niebuhr back in the 1930s had an article in The Atlantic magazine that talked about the Soviet Union’s communism as a religion. Eric Voegelin, a German-American scholar who fled the Nazis and relocated to Louisiana State University and wrote tomes about the new phenomenon of political religions in the modern period. And he saw fascism and Nazism and Soviet communism as bearing the stamp of political religions, meaning ideologies that promised what an earlier age would’ve understood in religious terms. Voegelin called this the eschaton and said that these end times, the eschaton, was being promised in the here and now, being made imminent, and he warned against that saying the results are likely to be disastrous.
And among the things I saw, there was a museum of atheism that had been established in a church that had been ripped apart from inside and was meant to embody the official stance of atheism. And I remember being baffled by the museum on the inside because you would expect exhibits, you would expect something dramatic, something that will be compelling, and instead, there was some folk art from the countryside showing bygone beliefs, there were some lithographs or engravings of the Spanish Inquisition and its horrors, and that was pretty much it. But as a child, I remember being reproved in that museum for not wearing my windbreaker, but instead carrying it on my arm, which was a very disrespectful thing to do in an official museum of atheism.
When I was able to visit the Soviet Union later for a language course in the summer of 1989, one of the obligatory tours that we took was to file reverently past the body of Lenin outside the Kremlin in the mausoleum at Red Square, and communist mummies, like those of Lenin, earlier, Stalin had been there as well, communist mummies like Mao or Ho Chi Minh really, I think, speak to a blending of earlier religious sensibility, reverence for relics of great figures, almost saintly figures, so that even what got proclaimed as atheism turned out to be a very demanding faith as well, and I think that’s a contradiction that other scholars have pointed out as well.
And what happens instead is a tradition of radical rupture emerges, and that’s really tough, because imagine in the last stages of the Soviet Union where keen observers can tell that there are problems that are building in society. There are discontents and demands that are going to clash, especially when someone like Gorbachev is proposing reforms and things are suddenly thrown open for discussion. The very notion that you have the celebration of revolutionaries and the Bolshevik legacy at a time when the state wants to enforce stability and an order that’s been received from the prior generation, think of Brezhnev’s time, for instance. All of that is an especially volatile mix and unlikely to work out very durably in the long run.
The Communist Manifesto moreover is also something of the nature of having a delayed fuse, you could say, because when it first appears amid the revolutions of 1848 that sweep across Europe, the work is contrary to what people often believe. That pamphlet did not cause the revolutions of 1848, many of which had national or liberal demands. The voice of Marx and Engels was barely to be heard over the din of other far more prominent actors. It is, however, in the aftermath that this work takes on tremendous significance and becomes popularly read and popularly distributed.
It’s especially the episode, the bloody episode of the Paris Commune in 1871 which comes to be identified with Marx. Even though it was not purely inspired by Marx alone, nor were all of the Communards devoted Marxists, it’s the identification of this famous or infamous episode in urban upheaval that really leads to worldwide notoriety for Marx and attention to those works.
And they’re very different in form. Das Kapital is intended to be the Origin of Species of its realm of economic thought, and represents years and years of work of Marx laboring in the British Museum library, working through statistics, working on little bits and pieces of a larger answer to big historical questions that he believes that he’s arrived at. Its tone is different from that of the Communist Manifesto, which is a call to arms. It announces with great confidence what the scheme of history will be, but rather than urging that the answer might be passivity and just waiting for history to play out in its preordained way, it’s also a clarion call to make the revolution happen and is intended to be a pragmatic, practical statement of how this is to play out, and starts in part with those ringing words about a ghost or a specter haunting Europe, the specter of communism, which wasn’t true at the time, but decades later, most definitely is the case.
You sometimes hear from undergraduates that they’ve heard from their high school history teachers that Marxism was just a theoretical construct that was the idle production of a philosopher who was not connected to the world and was never meant to be tried in practice. Marx would have been furious to hear this and it’s almost heroically wrong as a historical statement, because Marx insisted that all previous philosophers have theorized about reality. What now is really necessary is to change it. So you could say that in the abstract, a Marxist economist can certainly use Marx’s theoretical framework to compare to a given economic reality, but Marx would have seen that as incomplete and as deeply unsatisfactory.
There’s a kind of a footnote to all of this, which is that even though Marxist dialectical materialism grounds itself in these economic realities and the political prescription is supposed to flow from the economic realities and be inevitably growing out of them, in the real history of communist regimes, you’ve actually seen periods where the economics becomes detached from the politics. And I’m thinking in particular of the new economic period early in the history of the Soviet Union when Lenin realizes that the economy is so far gone that you need to reintroduce or allow, in a limited way, some elements of private enterprise, just to start getting Russia back on course in order to have the accumulation of surplus that will be necessary to build the project at all. And there are many Bolsheviks who see the new economic policy as a terrible compromise and a betrayal of their ideas, but it’s seen as necessary for a short while, and then Stalin will wreck it entirely.
Or consider for that matter China today, where you have a dominant political class, the Communist Party of China, which is allowing economic development and private enterprise, as long as it retains political control. So some of these elements already represent divergences from what Marx would’ve expected, and this points to a really key problem or question for all of the history of communism. It has to do with it being a tradition in spite of itself, and that could be expressed in the following way. An original set of ideas is going to evolve, it’s going to change, because circumstances change. What elaborations of any doctrine, whether it’s communism or a religious doctrine or any political ideology, what elaborations are natural stages in the evolution of any living set of ideas, or when do you reach the point where some shift or some adaptation is so radically different that it actually breaks with the tradition, and that’s an insoluble problem. You probably have to take it on a case-by-case basis.
It speaks to issues like the question that gets raised today. Is China in a meaningful sense a communist country anymore? And there’s a diversity of opinion on this score. Or if you’re looking at the history of communism and you look at North Korea, which now is on its third installment of a dynastic leader from the same family who rules like a God king over a regime that calls itself communist, is that still a form of communism? Is it an evolution of? Is it a complete reversal of?
I tend to want to take an anthropological perspective in the history of communism and to take very seriously those people who avow that they are communists and this is the project that they have underway. And then after hearing that avowal, I think as a historian, you have to say, well, let’s look at the details. Let’s see what changes have been made, what continuities might still exist, whether there’s a larger pattern to be discerned here. So it’s a very, very complicated history that we’re talking about.
So there were horrors that followed from those invocations of science, but its prestige was enormous, and that in part had to do with the lessening grip of religious ideas on intellectual elites, more generally, processes of secularization, not total secularization but processes of secularization in Western industrial societies, and the sense that here’s the doctrine that will allow escape from wars brought on by capitalist competition, poverty and economic cycles and depressions brought on by capitalist competition, the inequalities of societies that remain hierarchical and class-based. And this claim to being cutting edge science, I think allows people like Lenin to derive immense confidence in the prescription that they have for the future. And that paradoxically, the confidence that you have in broad strokes the right set of answers for how to get to the future also allows you to take huge liberties with the tactics and the strategies that you follow, as long as your ultimate goal remains the one sketched by this master plan.
So ultimately, some of the predictions of someone like Lenin, that once society has reached that stage of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the notion that governments will essentially be able to run themselves, and that the model he had in mind, oddly enough, was Swiss post offices. Being in Swiss exile must have impressed him so much with the orderliness and the sheer discipline and rationality of a Swiss post office, and he thought, “Why can’t you organize governments like this where you don’t need political leaders, you don’t need grand visions? You have procedures, you have bureaucracy, which does its job in a way that’s not alienating, but simply produces the greatest good.”
When you think of the experiences with bureaucracy in the 20th century, one’s hair stands on end to have the comparative naiveté on display with a prediction like that, but it derives from that confidence that it’s all going to be okay because we understand. We have the key, we have the plan to how to arrive at this final configuration of humanity.
That gap, that frequent reality of not being in touch with the very classes that the communists are aiming to represent is a very frequent theme in this story. It also speaks to a crucial part of this story, which is the breaking apart or the Civil War, the war of brother against…
And what this speaks to is a fundamental tension in radical movements. Because left to their own devices, Lenin announces, workers tend to focus on their reality, their families, their workplace. Want better working conditions, unionize, and then aim to negotiate with employers or to agitate for reforms on the part of the state to improve their living conditions. And then they’re happy for the advances that they have won. And for Lenin, that’s not enough, because that’s a half measure. That’s the sort of thing that leads you into an accommodation with the system rather than the overthrow of the system. So there’s a constant tension in this regard that plays itself out over the long haul.
Ironically, given the claim of communist leaders to having the key to history, just a few months previous in exile in Switzerland Lenin had been despairing and had been convinced that he may not even live to see the advent of that day. But then when revolution does break out in the Russian Empire in February of 1917, Lenin is absolutely frantic to get back. And when he does get back as a result of a deal that is negotiated with the German high command, a step that they’ll later live very much to regret. He is able to get back and to go into action and to press for nothing less than the seizure of power that brings his Bolshevik faction, the radical wing of the socialist movement, to power and then to build the Soviet Union.
Earlier generations of Russian radicals had founded populist groups that would aim to engage in terrorism and resistance against the Tsarist regime. And this included people who call themselves nihilists. And these nihilists were materialists who saw themselves ushering in a new age by absolute rejection of earlier religious traditions and aiming for material answers to the challenges of the day. Among them was Nikolai Chernyshevsky, who wrote what’s been called the worst book ever written. It was, in fact, one of Lenin’s favorite books, in Russian it’s [foreign language 01:10:12]. In English it gets translated What is to Be Done. And it’s a utopian novel about revolutionaries and how revolutionaries should act with one another in open ways, new ways, non-traditional ways in order to help usher in the coming revolution. Lenin loved the work and said it had the great merit of showing you how to be a revolutionary. So there’s the Marxist influence, and then there’s Russian populist nihilist influence, which is also a very live current in Lenin’s thinking.
When you add these things together, you get an explosive mix. Because Lenin, as a result, and part of this family trauma of his brother, becomes a absolutely irreconcilable enemy of the Tsarist regime and sets about turning himself into what you might call a guided missile for revolution. He turns himself into a machine to produce revolutionary change. And I mean that with little hyperbole. Lenin at one point shared with friends that he loved listening to music, but he tried not to listen to beautiful music like Beethoven because it made him feel gentle. What a revolution demanded was realism, hardness, absolute steely resolve. So Lenin worries even fellow revolutionaries by the intensity of his single-minded focus to revolution. He spends his days thinking about the revolution. He probably dreamt about the revolution. So 24/7 it’s an existence where he’s paired off other human elements, quite deliberately, in order to turn himself into an effective instigator of revolution. So, when the opportunity comes in 1917, he’s primed and ready for that role.
Lenin’s insistence upon discipline and upon good organization allowed the Bolsheviks to emerge as the winners. And yet a great disappointment follows. Lenin, as we said, had expected that revolution will break out soon everywhere and all it’ll be necessary for the Bolsheviks to do, having given the lead, is to link up with others. So he considered that what would be established would be a red bridge between a communist Russia, and once Germany inevitably plunged ahead into its revolutionary transformation, a communist Germany. That doesn’t end up happening. On the contrary, what happens in Germany is a out-and-out shooting war between different kinds of socialists. When Germany establishes a democracy that later goes by the name of the Weimar Republic, the government is a government of Social Democrats, moderate Social Democrats who are fearful of what they see as Russian conditions of disorder and who are not necessarily in sympathy with the Leninist vision of tightly-organized authoritarian rule. So communists who revolt in Germany are brutally suppressed by mercenaries, hardened front fighters and nationalist radicals hired by the German socialist government. And the result is a wound that just won’t heal in the German socialist movement as a result of this fratricide. It frustrates Lenin’s ambitions. So too does the fact that Poland, rather than going Bolshevik, resists attempts by the Bolsheviks to move forward and to connect up with Germany. The Poles, yet again, play a tremendously important historical role in changing the expected course of historical events. It’s in the aftermath of these unexpected turns that Lenin and his colleagues realize that they’re in this for the long haul. It’s necessary to wait longer. They don’t lose hope or confidence, you might say, in the eventual coming of international workers revolution.
But it’s been deferred, it’s been put off. So the question then arises, what do you build within a state that’s established called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or the Soviet Union? Lenin, as a result of an assassination attempt, is deeply affected in his health and would’ve loved to continue for years longer to steer the regime. But he’s sidelined because of his declining health. And there emerges a contest. A contest between a very charismatic leader, Leo Trotsky on the one hand, who is an amazing orator, who is an intellectual, who has traveled widely in the world, who has seen much of the world, and who is a brilliant writer. A far-ranging intellect, and is seen as extremely radical because of his demand for permanent revolution, the acceleration of revolutionary processes to drive history forward, to strike while the iron is hot. And on the other hand is an extremely unlikely contender for power.
That’s a man who’s probably the antithesis of charisma if you were to meet him in person. A guy with a squeaky, somewhat high-pitched voice, not well-suited to revolutionary oratory. His face pockmarked with the scars of youthful illness and whom, moreover, doesn’t speak a fine sophisticated Russian. But speaks a Russian heavily inflected with a Georgian accent from that part of the Russian Empire from which he came. And that was Stalin. I know that you already have a marvelous interview with Stephen Kotkin, the brilliant biographer of Stalin who has so many insights on that subject. The one thing that, even after reading about Stalin, that never ceases to surprise me, even in retrospect, is that Stalin gains a reputation not as a fiery radical, but as a moderate. A man who’s a conciliator. Someone who’s calm when others are excited. Someone who is able because of his organizational skills to resolve merely theoretical disputes with practical solutions.
Now, to fully take this aboard, we have to unknow what we know from our vantage point about Stalin’s leadership, Stalin’s brutality and eliminating his opposition. The cult of personality that, against all odds, got built up around Stalin so successfully and the absolute dominant role that led him later to be described as Genghis Khan with a telephone. A brutal dictator with ancient barbarism allied to the use of modern technology. While Trotsky is delivering stirring speeches and theorizing, Stalin works behind the scenes to control personnel decisions in the Bolshevik movement and in the state. It’s a cliche because it’s true, that personnel is policy. Trotsky is increasingly sidelined and then demonized and eventually expelled from the Soviet Union and later murdered in Mexico City. For Stalin, eliminating his enemies turned out to be the solution that he was most comfortable with.
Lenin fundamentally saw himself as irreplaceable, so that doesn’t really help in a succession struggle. Stalin is able to rely on a secret police apparatus that had been built up under Lenin already. It’s very early in the foundation of the Soviet state that the Cheka or the Extraordinary Commission is established as a secret police to terrify the enemies, beat down the opponents of the regime, and to keep an eye on society more generally. The person who’s chosen for that task also is an anomaly among Bolsheviks. That is a man of Polish aristocratic background, Feliks Dzierzynski, who comes to be known by the nickname Iron Felix. Here’s a man about whom a cult of personality also is created. Dzierzynski is celebrated in the Soviet period as the model of someone who’s harsh but fair, an executioner but with a heart of gold. Somebody who loves children. Somebody who has a tender heart, but forces himself to be steely willed against the opponents of the ideological project of the Bolsheviks.
Dzierzynski is succeeded by figures who will be absolutely instrumental to Stalin’s exercise of power, and they’re not immune either. Stalin, in his purges, takes care also to purge the secret police as a way of finding others upon whom to deflect blame for earlier atrocities and to produce a situation where even committed Bolsheviks are uncertain of what’s going to happen next and feel their own position to be precarious. Incidentally, there are other influences that probably wrought to bear here as well. It gets said about Stalin that he used to spend a lot of time flipping through Machiavelli’s The Prince. It seems that Stalin’s personal copy of The Prince, nobody knows where that is, if it still exists. But historians have found annotations in works by Lenin that Stalin, who was a voracious reader, as it turns out, made in the back of one of the books. Which sounds almost like a commentary on Machiavelli’s, almost but not quite, suggestion that the ends justify the means.
Stalin’s own writing says that if someone is strong, active, and intelligent, even if they do things that other people condemn, they’re still a good person. So Stalin’s self-conception of himself is someone who along these lines and in line with Lenin’s emphasis on practical results and discipline, somebody who gets things done. That’s the crucial ethical standard. And ultimately in criticisms by later dissidents of Bolshevik morality, this question of, what is the ethical standard? What is the ethical law? We’ll bring this question into focus because by the… And this goes back to Marx as well, incidentally. The notion that any ethical system, any notion of right or wrong is purely a product of class identity. Because every class produces its distinctive ideas, its distinctive religion, its distinctive art forms, it’s distinctive styles. Means that with no one transcendent or absolute morality, it’s all up for grabs. And then it’s a question of power and the exercise of power with no limits, untrammeled by any laws whatsoever. Dictatorship in its purest form. Something that Lenin had avowed, and then Stalin comes to practice even more fully.
By contrast, industrialization, that’s progress. I mean, images that today would be deeply disturbing to an environmentalist’s sensibility. Smokestacks, belching smoke, the byproducts of industry, a landscape transformed by the factory model. That’s what Marx, and then later the Bolsheviks, have in mind. Similarly, the goal even as articulated in Marx’s writings, is to put agriculture and farming on a factory model so that you won’t need to deal with this traditional role of the independent farmer or the peasant. Instead, you’ll have people who benefit from progress, benefit from rationalization by working factory farms.
So, in approaching the question of collectivization, we have to keep in mind that for Stalin and his comrades who are bound and determined to drag Russia kicking and screaming into the modern age and not to allow it be beaten because of its backwardness, as Stalin puts it, traditional forms of agriculture are not what they have in mind. And in their rank of desired outcomes, industrialization, especially massive heavy industry is the sine qua non, that’s their envisioned future. Agriculture rates below.
So in that case, the crucial significance of collectivization is to get a handle on the food situation in order to make it predictable and not to find oneself in another crisis like during the Civil War, when the cities are starving, industry is robbed of labor and the factories are at a standstill. So, this is really the core approach to collectivization, to put the productive capacities of the farmers in a regimented way, in a state-controlled way under the control of the state.
This produces vast human suffering because for the farmers, their plot of land that they thought they had gained as a result of the revolution is now taken away. They no longer have the same incentives they had before to be successful farmers. In fact, if you’re a successful farmer and maybe have a cow as opposed to your neighbors who have no cow, you’re defamed and denounced as a kulak, a tight-fisted, exploiter, even though you might be helping to develop agriculture in the region that you’re from.
So, the result is human tragedy on a vast scale. And allied to that incidentally is Stalin’s sense that this is a chance to also target people who are opposed to the Bolshevik regime for other reasons, whether it’s because of their Ukrainian identity, whether it’s because of a desire for a different nationalist project. For Stalin, there are many motives that roll into collectivization. And the final thing to be said is you are quite right that collectivization proves to be a failure because the Soviet Union never finally gets a grasp on the problems of agricultural production.
By the end of the Soviet Union, they’re importing grain from the West in spite of having some tremendously rich farmland to be found worldwide. And the reason for that had to do in part, I think with the incentives that had been taken away. Prosperous individual farmers have a motive for working their land and maximizing production. By contrast, if you are an employee of a factory style agricultural enterprise, the incentives run in very different directions. And the joke that was common for decades in the Soviet Union and other communist countries with similar systems was, “We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.”
Even labor, which is rhetorically respected and valorized in practice is rewarded with very slim rewards. And the last point, immobility. The collectivization reduces the mobility of the peasants who are not allowed because of internal passports to move to the cities unless they have permission. They’re locked in place. And I got to say, at the time and afterwards, that looked a lot like feudalism or neo-feudalism in terms of the restrictions on workers in the countryside.
Added to that, there’s a growing quota that everybody’s supposed to deliver on that nobody can deliver on. And so now, because you can’t deliver on that quota, you’re basically exporting all your food and you can’t even feed yourself. And then you suffer more and more and more and there’s a vicious downward spiral of you can’t possibly produce that. Now there’s another human incentive where you’re going to lie. Everybody lies on the data.
The whole notion that up and down the chain of command, everybody is falsifying or tinkering with or prettifying the statistics or their reports in order not to look bad and not to have vengeance visited upon them reaches the point where nobody, in spite of the pretense of comprehensive knowledge, there’s a state planning agency that creates five-year plans for the economy as a whole, and which is supposed to have accurate statistics. All of this is founded upon a foundation of sand. That’s inadvertent. That’s not an intended side effect.
But what you described in terms of the internal dynamics of fostering conflict in a rural society was absolutely not inadvertent. That was deliberate. The doctrine was you bring civil war. Now had there been social tensions before? Of course there had. Had there been envies, had there been differentiations in wealth or status? Of course there had been, but a deliberate plan to bring class conflict and bring civil war and then heighten it in the countryside does damage, and not least of that is this phenomenon of a negative selection.
Those who have most enterprise, those who are most entrepreneurial, those who have most self-discipline, those who are best organized will be winnowed again and again and again, sending the message that mediocrity is comparatively much safer than talent. And this pattern incidentally gets transposed and in tremendously harrowing ways also to the entire group of Russian intelligentsia and intellectuals of other peoples who are in the Soviet Union. They discover similarly that to be independent, to have a voice which is not compliant, carries with it tremendous penalties, especially in Stalin’s reigns of terror.
And we have testimony to this in the case of people who later became dissidents, like Lev Kopelev, who wrote in his memoirs about how he was among those who were sent in to enact these policies, and he saw families with the last food being taken away even as signs of starvation were visible already in the present. And yet he did not go mad. He didn’t kill himself. He didn’t fall into despair because he believed, because he had been taught and believed at least then that this was justified. This was a larger historical process and a greater good would result even from these enormities. So, I think that this was quite deliberate.
What’s so horrifying is the way in which a whole society stood paralyzed in this process and how neighbors would be taken away in the middle of the night and people would be wary of talking about it. Resistance, at least in these urban centers, was entirely paralyzed by fear when, if one had somehow find a way to mobilize ,somehow a way to resist the process, the results might’ve been different. There’s an astonishing book… I mean, there are so many great books that have come out quite recently even on these topics.
Orlando Figes has a amazing book called The Whisperers that traces several families’ history in the Stalin period, and it’s a testimony to how a whole society and some of its most intelligent people got winnowed again and again and again in that process of negative selection that we talked about. The lasting dislocation and scars that this left and the way in which how people were not able to talk about these things in public because that would put you next on the list, suspected of having less than total devotion to the state.
I think one of the things that also is so terrifying about the entire process is even total devotion wasn’t enough. The process took on a life of its own, and I think that it might even have surprised Stalin in some ways. Not enough to short-circuit the process, but the notion where people were invited to denounce neighbors, coworkers, maybe even family members, meant that ever larger groups of people would be brought into the orbit of the secret police, tortured in order to produce confessions. Those confessions then would lead to more lists of suspects of people who had to be investigated and either executed or sent to the gulags. The uncertainty that this produced was enormous.
Even loyalty was not enough to save people. The stories, Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago is full of stories of dedicated communists who find themselves in the Gulag and are sure that some mistake has been made. And if only comrade Stalin would hear about this terrible thing that has happened to them, surely it would be corrected and nothing like this would… Everyone else, by contrast, accused of terrible crimes, there must be some truth behind that. So, talk about ways of disaggregating a society, ways of breaking down bonds of trust. This left lasting traces on an entire society that endured to this very day.
Russia, which compared to the rest of Europe, was less developed even before the First World War is in a dire state after all of the ravage and the millions of deaths that continue even after the war has ended in the West. That leaves precious little in the way of structural restraints or a functioning society that would say, “Let’s not do things this way.” I think that in retrospect, that special role carved out for special individuals who can move this process forward and accelerate historical development allowed for people to step into those roles and appoint themselves executors of this ideological vision. So, I think those things played a role as well.
In utopian terms about the construction of the new man and the new woman, and that out of the raw material of humanity, once you really get going, and once you’ve established a system that matches your hopes for the future, it’ll be possible to reconfigure people. And talk about ambition, to create essentially the next stage in human evolution, a new species growing out of humanity. Those don’t sound like very modest or limited approaches, and I guess we just really won’t know.
What drives the whole thing forward, though, especially in its Leninist version, but already visible with Marx and Engels is the insistence on confidence. If you have the key to the future, all of these things are possible and necessary. This leads to an ethos. I think that that’s very hard for historians to quantify or to study in a methodical way, but it’s the insistence that you hear with Lenin and then especially with Stalin, that to be a Bolshevik means to be hard, to be realistic, to be consequential, meaning you don’t shy away from doing what needs to be done. Even if your primordial ethical remainders from whatever earlier experience you have, rebel against it.
Under Stalin, there’s a constant slogan of the Bolshevik tempo. The Bolsheviks, there’s no fortresses that they can’t storm. They can do everything. And in a way, this is the assertion that its will over everything. History can be moved forward and accelerated and probably your own actions justified as a result, no matter what they were, if you are sufficiently hard and determined and have the confidence to follow through. And then that obviously raises the ultimate question, what happens when that confidence ebbs or erodes or when it’s lost?
It is the assertion that the Nazis will uniquely bring to pass unity in the people, unity in the society that leads them to give themselves this odd name of national socialist. Some leaders like Goebbels among the Nazis, accent the socialist part to begin with. Others put the accent firmly on the nationalist part. In part, the term they chose for their movement was meant to be confusing. It was meant to take slogans or words from different parts of the political spectrum, to fuse them into something unfamiliar and new, and claim that they’d overcome all earlier political divisions. The Nazis claimed that they were a movement, not a party, even though their party was called a party.
So, what did Nazism and Bolshevism and Communism share, or how were they opposed to one another? What we need to start with, by making clear, they were ideological arch enemies. In both worldviews, the opposite side represented the ultimate expression of the evil that needed to be exercised from history in order for their desired utopia to be brought about. And this leads to strange and perverted beliefs about reality. From the perspective of the Nazis. The Nazis claimed that because they saw the Jews as a demonic element in human history, the Bolsheviks didn’t really believe all of this economic dialectical materialism. They were in fact a racial conspiracy, it was alleged.
And so the Nazis used a term of Judeo-Bolshevism to argue that communism is essentially a conspiracy steered by the Jews, which was complete nonsense. For their part, the communists, and from the perspective of the Soviet Union, the Nazis were in essence a super capitalist conspiracy. If the cosmological enemy are the capitalists and the owners, the exploiters, then all of the rigamarole about race and nationalism are distractions. They’re meant to fool the poor saps who enlist in that movement. It’s essentially steered by capitalist owners who, it is claimed, are reduced to this desperate expedient of coming up with this thuggish-
It had gotten you what? It got you, first, the First World War as a total conflict leaving tens of millions dead. And then, economically, The Great Depression, showing that the end was not far away. This produced, at one in the same time, both ideological opposition and instances, a vastly cynical cooperation. In terms of the Weimar Republic, it’s obvious, with the benefit of hindsight, that German democracy had ceased to function even before Hitler comes to power. But in the process of making democracy unworkable in Germany, the extremes, the Nazi Stormtrooper Army with their brown shirts and the Communist street fighters, had cooperated in heightening an atmosphere of civil war that left people searching for desperate expedience in the last days of the Weimar Republic.
The most compelling case of their cooperation was the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Pact on August 23rd, 1939, which enables Hitler to start World War II. A Non-Aggression Pact, in official terms, it contained secret clauses whereby the Nazis and the Soviets meeting in Moscow under Stalin’s wary eye, had agreed on territorial division of Eastern Europe and making common cause as each claiming to be the winner of the future. So, in spite of their oppositions, these were regimes that were able, very cynically, to work together to dire effect. In the course of the 1950s, in particular, there arose political scientists who also crafted an explanation for ways in which these regimes, although they were opposed to one another, actually bore morphological resemblances.
They operated in ways that, in spite of ideological differences, bore similarities. And such political scientists, Hannah Arendt, chief among them, crafted a model called Totalitarianism, borrowing a term that the Fascists had liked about themselves, to define regimes, like the Nazis, like Stalin’s Soviet Union, for a new kind of dictatorship that was not a backwards-cast revival of ancient barbarism but was something new, a new form of dictatorship that laid total claims on hearts and minds, that didn’t want just passive obedience but wanted fanatical loyalty. That combined fear with compulsion in order to generate belief in a system, or at the very least, atomize the masses to the point where they would go along with the plans of the regime.
This model has often met with very strong criticism on the grounds that no regime in human history has yet achieved total control of the population under its grip. That’s true, but that’s not what Hannah Arendt was saying. Hannah Arendt was saying, “There will always be inefficiencies, there will be resistance, there will be divergences.” What was new was not the alleged achievement of total control, it was the ambition, the articulation of the ambition that it might be possible to exercise such fundamental and thoroughgoing control of entire populations. And the final frightening thought that Arendt kept before her was, “What if this is not a model that comes to us from benighted uncivilized ages? What if this is what the future is going to look like?” That’s a horrifying intuition.
In particular, this sort of argument has been tried out in different ways before. In previous decades, there had been attempts by historians who were actually well-read and well-published to argue that World War II had been, in part, a contingent event that had been brought about by accidents or miscalculations. And such explanations argued that, if you put Hitler’s ideology aside you actually could interpret him as a pretty traditional German politician in the stripe of Bismarck. Now, when I say it like that I think you can spot the problem immediately, when you put the ideology aside. To try to analyze Hitler’s acts or alleged motives, in the absence of the ideology that he himself subscribed to and described in hateful detail in Mein Kampf and other manifestos and speeches, is an enterprise that’s doomed to failure justifiably.
The notion that the mass murder of Jews, Poles, Slavs, and Gypsies was an event that simply happened as a result of unforeseen events, and that it was understood as somehow being humane, also runs contrary to the historical fact. When Poland was invaded, the Nazis unleashed a killing wave in their so-called Operation Tannenberg, which sent in specially trained and ideologically pre-prepared killers who were given the name of the units of the Einsatzgruppen in order to wipe out the Polish leadership and also to kill Jews.
This predates any of the Operation Barbarossa and the Nazi’s invasion of the Soviet Union. The Nazis, moreover, in many different expressions of their ideology, had made clear that their plans, you can read this in Mein Kampf, for Eastern Europe, were subjugation and ethnic cleansing on a vast scale, so I consider both of these claims absolutely untenable, given the facts and documents.
And one thing that emerges from this investigation is that even before the Nazis come to power in Germany there are certainly negative and dehumanizing stereotypes about Eastern Europeans, some of them activated by the experiences of German occupation in some of these regions during the First World War. But the Nazis take the very most destructive and most negative of all those stereotypes and make them the dominant ones, making no secret of their expected future of domination and annihilation in the East.
The notion of slaves for our culture was part of his longer term expectation. And then, there’s finally a fact that speaks volumes about what the Nazis planned for the east. Hitler and Himmler envisioned permanent war on the Eastern Front, not a peace treaty, not a settlement, not a border, but a constant moving of the border, every generation, hundreds of miles east in order to keep winning more and more living space. And with analogy to other frontiers, to always give more fighting experience and more training and aggression to generation after generation of German soldiers. In terms of nightmarish visions, this one’s right up there.
That’s where the prior history comes into play. The very fact that the German revolution in 1919 sees Socialists killing Socialists produces a dynamic that’s so negative that it’s nearly impossible to settle on cooperation, added to the fact that the Communists see the Social Democrats as rivals for the loyalty of the working class. In terms of just statistical likelihood, a lot of experts at the time felt surely the German army is going to step in, and the most likely outcome would have been a German general shutting down the democracy and producing a military dictatorship. It says a lot about how dreadful and bloody the record of the Nazis was, that some people in retrospect would have felt that that military dictatorship would’ve been preferable, if it had obviated the need for the ordeal under the Nazis.
We mentioned at the outset that Marx felt it was unlikely that a workers’ revolution would break out in the Russian Empire because for that you needed lots of industrial workers and they didn’t have a lot of industry. There’s a footnote to add there, and it proves his flexibility. A Russian socialist wrote to Marx asking, “Might it not be possible for Russia to escape some stages of capitalist development? I mean, do you have to rigidly follow that scheme?” And Marx’s answer was convoluted, but it wasn’t a no, and that suggests that Marx was willing to entertain all sorts of possible scenarios. I think he would certainly have been very surprised at the course of events as it unfolded because it didn’t match his expectations at the outset.
But Marx says this is an improved version. This is an adapted and truer version of Marxism for the Chinese context. In case after case in Mao’s rise to power, we see a really complicated relationship with Stalin. He works hard to gain Stalin’s support because The Common Turn, the international organization headquartered in Moscow working to encourage and help revolutionaries worldwide, is skeptical about the Chinese Communists to begin with, and believes that China still has a long way to go before it’s reached the stage where it’s ripe for Communist revolution, and in a way that’s more orthodox Marxism than what Mao is championing.
Were supposed to demonstrate mastery over nature by sheer acts of will. These included things like adopting Soviet agricultural techniques that were pioneered by a crackpot biologist by the name of Trofim Lysenko that produced more agricultural disaster that involved things like plowing to depths that were not practical for the seeds to germinate and grow but were supposed to produce super plants that would produce bumper harvests and outpace the capitalist countries and the Soviet Union. So, the context for all of this is a race to get first to the achievement of full-scale communism.
One of the themes that I think it’s so valuable to pursue and to take seriously in the history of communism is what concrete promises were made. In the case of China, Mao made promises and projections for the future that were worrying even to some of his own assistants. He exclaimed that perhaps by 1961, perhaps by 1973, China would be the winner in this competition and it would’ve achieved full communism so that which Marx had sketched as the endpoint of humanity would be achieved first by the Chinese. Later, his own comrades, when he passed from the scene, felt the need to tamper that a little bit and promised that they would achieve full communism by the year 2000. Such promises are helpful to a regime to create enthusiasm and to hold out to people, the prospect of real successes just around the corner. But what happens when the date arrives and you haven’t actually achieved that goal? That’s one ticking time bomb that played a role in the increasing erosion of confidence in the Soviet Union and the case of China must have been something similar.
And then after some of them had ventured that to come in and purge them, to punish them ruthlessly for having done what he had invited them to do. That is the most cynical variant. Some historians argue that Mao himself was not prepared for the ideas that he himself had invited into the public square and that he grew anxious and worried and angry at this without having thought this through in a cynical way to begin with. The end result is the same. The end result is once again negative selection. The decimation of those who are most venturesome, those who are most talented and intelligent are punished relentlessly for that.
And the results of this wager are where we are today. China has been transformed out of all recognition in terms of not all of the living standards of the country, but many places. Its economic growth has been dramatic and the new dispensation is such that people will ask, “Is this a communist country anymore?” And that’s probably a question that haunts China’s current leadership as well. With Chairman Xi, we’ve seen a return to earlier patterns, Xi insisting that Mao’s achievement has to be held as equal to that of the reform period. Sometimes imitations or nostalgia for the Mao period or even the sufferings of the Cultural Revolution are part of this volatile mix. But all of this is outward appearance. Statistics can also be misleading, and I think that very much in question is China’s further revolution in our own times.
But what can we say by way of hope to resist the demonization? How can we avoid cold or hot war with China, we being the West or the United States in the 21st century?
It would only be with the rise to the leadership of the Communist Party of Earl Browder, a American-born political leader with vast ambitions for creating an American communist movement that that image would start to be modified. Earl Browder had a meteoric rise and then fall over the promise he made that went by the slogan Communism is 20th Century Americanism. The notion was that communism could find roots in American political discourse and experience. Where Earl Browder fell a foul of other communists was in his expectations during World War II, that it might be possible for the Soviet Union and the United States to make their current cooperation permanent and to come to some sort of accommodation that would moderate their rivalry. As it turns out, with the dawning already of Cold War tensions that would later flower more fully, that was unacceptable. And the movement divested itself of Earl Browder.
Another point that shaped American perceptions of the communist movement in the United States involved issues of espionage. During the 1930s and the 1940s, American communists, not all of them obviously, but select members of the movement were called upon by Soviet intelligence to play a historical role by gathering information, winning sympathies… One of the most amazing books of the 20th century is the book written by Whitaker Chambers, who had served as a Soviet spy, first a committed communist, then a Soviet spy, and then later a renegade from those allegiances. His book is entitled Witness, published in 1952, and it’s one of the most compelling books you could ever read because it’s so full of both the unique character of the author in all of his idiosyncrasies and a sense of huge issues being at stake ones upon which the future of humanity turns. So, talk about the ethical element being of importance there. Through the apparatus of the state, the Soviets managed to infiltrate spies into America’s military as well as government institutions. One great irony is that when Senator McCarthy in the ’50s made vast claims about communist infiltration of the government apparatus, claims that he was unable to substantiate with details, that reality had actually been closer to the reality of the 1930s and the 1940s, than his own time. But the Association of American Communists with the foreign power of the Soviet Union and ultimately an adherence to its interests did a lot to undermine any kind of hearing for American communists. An example, of course, was the notorious Nazi-Soviet Pact in 1939.
The American Communist Movement found itself forced to turn on a dime in its propaganda. Before the Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1939, they had denounced Nazi Germany as the greatest threat to world peace. Just after the signing of the pact, they had to proclaim that this was a great win for peace and for human harmony and to completely change their earlier relationship of being mortal enemies with Nazi Germany. There were many American communists who couldn’t stomach this and who in disillusionment simply quit their party memberships or drifted away. But it’s a fascinating story of the ups and downs of a political movement with radical ambitions in American political history.
In other ex-communist countries, there was also precious little in the way of legal proceedings that would’ve established responsibility. And keep in mind, the Nuremberg trials had as one of their goals a very important one, as it turns out, not even individual verdicts for individual people found guilty, but to collect and publicize information, to create knowledge and transparency about what the reality had been in the past. In the case of the former Soviet Union, in the case of Russia today, instead of a clear-eyed recognition of the vast nature of what it all cost, Putin upon replacing Yeltsin was in a position to instead traffic in the most varied, eclectic, and often mutually contradictory historical memories or packages of memories.
So on the one hand, in Putin’s Russia, the Tsars are rehabilitated as heroes of Russian statehood. Putin sees Lenin in a negative light because Lenin by producing federalism as a model for the Soviet Union, laid a time bomb at the base of that state that eventually smashed it into many constituent parts as nations regained their independence. While Stalin, it’s acknowledged exacted a dreadful toll, but also was effective as a representative of Russian statehood.
This produced where we are today. It’s a commonplace echoed by many that Russia without Ukraine is a nation-state or could be a nation-state. Russia with Ukraine has to be an empire. Putin, who is not really seeking a revival of Stalin’s rule, but still is nostalgic about earlier forms of greatness and of the strength of Russian statehood to the exclusion of other values has undertaken a course of aggression that has produced results quite different from what he likely expected.
And I think that timing is crucial here. It’s fascinating to try to imagine, “What if this attempt to re-digest Ukraine into an expanded Russian imperial territory had taken place earlier?” I think that the arrival on the scene of a new generation of Ukrainians has produced a very different dynamic and a disinclination for any kind of nostalgia for the past, packaged however it might be, and however nostalgic it might be made to appear. And there, I think that Putin’s expectations in the invasion of 2022 were entirely overturned. His expectation was that Ukraine would be divided on this score and that some significant portion of Ukrainians would welcome-
Obviously such people are expert at being guarded and not being pinned down, but the categories in which they’re thinking a sense of what their own ethical grounding might be or their ethical code that gives hints to their behavior. It gets said, and again, it’s a cliche because it’s true, that one of the best measures of a person, especially a leader, is how they treat people from whom they don’t expect anything. Are they condescending? Are they, on the contrary, fundamentally interested in another person, even if that person can’t help them or be used in some way? Speaking of prominent world leaders to interview, there’s Napoleon.
Napoleon, psychologically, must have been a quite amazing person to make a bid for mastery of Europe and then already thinking about the mastery of the world. But contemporaries who met Napoleon said that it was very disturbing to talk with him because meeting with him one-on-one revealed that he could talk to you but look like he was looking right through you as if you were not fully real. You were more in the nature of a character on a chessboard, and for that reason, some of them called Napoleon, the master of the sightless stare. So if you’re talking with a world leader and he or she has a sightless stare, that’s probably a bad sign. But there might be other inadvertent clues or hints about the moral compass or the future expectations of a leader that emerge in one of your wonderful conversations.
There’s probably few things that are as exciting as a really keen and targeted reading recommendation. In addition, I’ve also done other courses on the history of World War I, on the diplomatic history of Europe from 1500 to the present, a course on the history of Eastern Europe, and also a course on dictatorships called Utopia and Terror, and then also a course on Explorers and a course on turning points in modern history. Every single one of those is so rewarding because you learn so much in the process and it’s really fantastic.
I’m still amazed by that. There’s also, in the spirit of recommending neglected classics, my favorite author, is now a late Canadian author by the name of Robertson Davies, who wrote novel after novel in a mode that probably would get called magical realism but is so much more. Robertson Davies was heavily influenced by Carl Jung and Jungian philosophy, but in literary form, he managed to create stories that blend the mythical, the mystical, and the brutally real to paint a picture of Canada as he knew it, Europe as he knew it, and the world as he knew it. He’s most famous probably for the Deptford Trilogy, three novels in a series that are linked and they’re just masterful if only there were more books like that.
If the result is not a renaissance and a resurgence of reading, but less reading, that will be dreadful because the experience of thinking your way into other people’s minds that sustained reading offers is so crucial to human empathy, a broadening of your own sensibilities of what’s possible, what’s in the full range of being human, and then what are the best models for what has been thought and felt and how people have acted, otherwise, we fall prey to manipulators and the ability of artificial intelligence to give us versions of realities that never existed and never will, and like.
I’ve been surprised, I’ve learned, I’ve trained my brain to be able to get the same thing from audiobooks. Also, it’s a little bit more difficult because you don’t control the pacing. Sometimes pausing is nice, but you could still get it from audiobooks. So it’s an audio version of books and that allows you to also go on a journey together and sometimes more convenient. You could take it to more places with you, but there is a magical thing. I also trying to train myself mostly to use Kindle, the digital version of books, but there is, unfortunately, still a magical thing about being there with the page.
Now, nobody, to my knowledge, has implemented a really intuitive interaction between AI and the text, unfortunately, partially because the books are protected under DRM, and so there’s a wall where the AI can’t access the thing. So if you want to play with that kind of thing, you have to break the law a little bit, which is not a good thing. But just like with music, Napster came up, people started illegally sharing music, and the answer to that was Spotify, which made the sharing of music revolutionized everything and made the sharing of music much easier. So there is some technological things that can enrich the experience of reading, but the actual painful, long process of reading is really useful. Just like boredom is useful.
Click link to jump approximately to that part in the transcript:
- 0:00 – Introduction
- 3:10 – Marxism
- 30:55 – Anarchism
- 45:52 – The Communist Manifesto
- 54:51 – Communism in the Soviet Union
- 1:14:45 – Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin
- 1:24:33 – Stalin
- 1:31:48 – Holodomor
- 1:45:38 – The Great Terror
- 1:58:39 – Totalitarianism
- 2:09:40 – Response to Darryl Cooper
- 2:24:49 – Nazis vs Communists in Germany
- 2:31:11 – Mao
- 2:36:19 – Great Leap Forward
- 2:43:20 – China after Mao
- 2:48:52 – North Korea
- 2:52:56 – Communism in US
- 3:00:26 – Russia after Soviet Union
- 3:11:57 – Advice for Lex
- 3:19:39 – Book recommendations
- 3:22:38 – Advice for young people
- 3:29:29 – Hope
Introduction
Vejas Liulevicius
And the outcome here is a horrific man-made famine, not a natural disaster, not bad harvests, but a man-made famine as a result of then the compulsion that gets used by the Soviet state to extract those resources, cordoning off the area, not allowing starving people to escape.
And the outcome here is a horrific man-made famine, not a natural disaster, not bad harvests, but a man-made famine as a result of then the compulsion that gets used by the Soviet state to extract those resources, cordoning off the area, not allowing starving people to escape.
You put very well some of the implications of this case study in how things look in the abstract versus in practice, and those phenomena were going to haunt the rest of the experience of the Soviet Union. The whole notion that up and down the chain of command, everybody is falsifying or tinkering with or purifying the statistics or their reports in order not to look bad and not to have vengeance visited upon them reaches the point where nobody, in spite of the pretense of comprehensive knowledge, there’s a state planning agency that creates five-year plans for the economy as a whole and which is supposed to have accurate statistics, all of this is founded upon a foundation of sand.
A deliberate plan to bring class conflict and bring civil war and then heighten it in the countryside does damage, and not least of that is this phenomenon of a negative selection. Those who have most enterprise, those who are most entrepreneurial, those who have most self-discipline, those who are best organized will be winnowed again and again and again, sending the message that mediocrity is comparatively much safer than talent.
Hitler and Himmler envisioned permanent war on the Eastern Front, not a peace treaty, not a settlement, not a border, but a constant moving of the border every generation hundreds of miles east in order to keep winning more and more living space and with analogy to other frontiers to always give more fighting experience and more training and aggression to generation after generation of German soldiers. In terms of nightmarish visions, this one’s right up there.
Lex Fridman
The following is a conversation with Vejas Liulevicius, a historian specializing in Germany and Eastern Europe. He has lectured extensively on the rise, the reign, and the fall of communism. Our discussion goes deep on this, the very heaviest of topics, the communist ideology that has led to over 100 million deaths in the 20th century. We also discuss Hitler, Nazi ideology, and World War II. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here’s Vejas Liulevicius.
The following is a conversation with Vejas Liulevicius, a historian specializing in Germany and Eastern Europe. He has lectured extensively on the rise, the reign, and the fall of communism. Our discussion goes deep on this, the very heaviest of topics, the communist ideology that has led to over 100 million deaths in the 20th century. We also discuss Hitler, Nazi ideology, and World War II. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here’s Vejas Liulevicius.
Marxism
Lex Fridman
Let’s start with Karl Marx. What were the central ideas of Marx that lay the foundation of communism?
Let’s start with Karl Marx. What were the central ideas of Marx that lay the foundation of communism?
Vejas Liulevicius
I think there were several key ideas that Marx deployed that were destined to have such an impact, and in some ways they were actually kind of contradictory. On the one hand, Marx insisted that history has a purpose. That history is not just random events, but that rather it’s history, we might say, with a capital H, history moving in a deliberate direction, history having a goal, a direction that it was predestined to move in.
I think there were several key ideas that Marx deployed that were destined to have such an impact, and in some ways they were actually kind of contradictory. On the one hand, Marx insisted that history has a purpose. That history is not just random events, but that rather it’s history, we might say, with a capital H, history moving in a deliberate direction, history having a goal, a direction that it was predestined to move in.
At the same time, in the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and his colleague Friedrich Engels also suggested that there was a role for special individuals who might even if history was still moving in this predetermined direction, might give it an extra push, might play a heroic role in that process. And I think that these two ideas added together, the notion that there is a science of revolution that suggests that you can move in a deliberate and meaningful, rational way towards the end of history and the resolution of all conflicts, a total liberation of the human person and that moreover that was inevitable, that that was pre-programmed and destined in the order of things, when you add to that the notion that there’s also room for heroism and the individual role, this ended up being tremendously powerful as a combination.
Earlier thinkers who were socialists had already dreamt of or projected futures where all conflict would be resolved and human life would achieve some sort of perfection. Marx added these other elements that made it far more powerful than the earlier versions that he decried as merely utopian socialism.
Lex Fridman
So there’s a million questions I could ask there. So on the utopian side. So there is a utopian component to the way he tried to conceive of his ideas.
So there’s a million questions I could ask there. So on the utopian side. So there is a utopian component to the way he tried to conceive of his ideas.
Vejas Liulevicius
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, first of all, one has to stress, Marx would’ve gotten extremely upset at this point in the conversation because to call someone a utopian was precisely to argue that you’re not scientific, you’re not rational, you are not laying out the iron laws of history. You’re merely hoping for the best. And that might be laudable, but it was fundamentally unrealistic.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, first of all, one has to stress, Marx would’ve gotten extremely upset at this point in the conversation because to call someone a utopian was precisely to argue that you’re not scientific, you’re not rational, you are not laying out the iron laws of history. You’re merely hoping for the best. And that might be laudable, but it was fundamentally unrealistic.
That said, hidden among Marx’s insistence that there are laws and structures as history moves through class conflict, modes of production towards its ultimate goal of a comprehensive final revolution that will see all exploitation overthrown and people finally being freed from necessity, smuggled in among those things are most definitely utopian elements. And there, they come especially at the end in which Marx sketches the notion of what things will look like after the revolution has resolved all problems.
There, vagueness sets in. It’s clear that it’s a blessed state that’s being talked about. People no longer exploiting one another, people no longer subject to necessity or poverty, but instead enjoying all of the productivity of industrialization that hitherto had been put to private profit now collectively owned and deployed. The notion that one will be able to work at one job in the morning and then engage in leisure activity at yet another fulfilling job in the afternoon. All of this free of any contradictions, free of necessity, free of the ordinary irritations that we experience in our the ordinary lives, that’s deeply utopian. The difference was that Marx charted a route towards that outcome that presented itself as cutting-edge science and moreover having the full credibility that science commanded so much, especially in the 19th and early 20th century.
Lex Fridman
So there is a long journey from capitalism to communism that includes a lot of problems. He thought once you resolve the problems, all the complexities of human interactions, the friction, the problems will be gone.
So there is a long journey from capitalism to communism that includes a lot of problems. He thought once you resolve the problems, all the complexities of human interactions, the friction, the problems will be gone.
Vejas Liulevicius
To the extent that they were based on inequalities and on man’s exploitation of man, the result was supposed to be a resolution of all of this. And inevitably, when you talk about the history of communism, you have to include the fact that this often tragic and dramatic history produced a lot of jokes. Jokes that were in part reactions sometimes to the ideological claims made by people like Marx. And one of the famous jokes was that what’s the difference between capitalism and communism? And the joke’s answer was capitalism is the exploitation of man by man and communism is the exact opposite.
To the extent that they were based on inequalities and on man’s exploitation of man, the result was supposed to be a resolution of all of this. And inevitably, when you talk about the history of communism, you have to include the fact that this often tragic and dramatic history produced a lot of jokes. Jokes that were in part reactions sometimes to the ideological claims made by people like Marx. And one of the famous jokes was that what’s the difference between capitalism and communism? And the joke’s answer was capitalism is the exploitation of man by man and communism is the exact opposite.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, you actually have electron humor. I love it. And you deliver in such a dry, beautiful way. Okay, there’s again, a million questions. So you outline a set of contradictions, but it’s interesting to talk about his view. For example, what was Marx’s view of history?
Yeah, you actually have electron humor. I love it. And you deliver in such a dry, beautiful way. Okay, there’s again, a million questions. So you outline a set of contradictions, but it’s interesting to talk about his view. For example, what was Marx’s view of history?
Vejas Liulevicius
Marx had been a student of Hegel. And Hegel as a German idealist philosopher had announced very definitively that history has a purpose. History is not a collection of random facts. And as an idealist, he proposed that the true movement of history, the true meaning of history, what made history, history with a capital H, something that’s transcendent and meaningful was that it was the working out of an idea through different civilizations, different stages of historical development. And that idea was the idea of human freedom. So it was not individuals or great thinkers alone making history and having an impact. It was the idea itself striving to come to fruition, striving to come to an evermore perfect realization.
Marx had been a student of Hegel. And Hegel as a German idealist philosopher had announced very definitively that history has a purpose. History is not a collection of random facts. And as an idealist, he proposed that the true movement of history, the true meaning of history, what made history, history with a capital H, something that’s transcendent and meaningful was that it was the working out of an idea through different civilizations, different stages of historical development. And that idea was the idea of human freedom. So it was not individuals or great thinkers alone making history and having an impact. It was the idea itself striving to come to fruition, striving to come to an evermore perfect realization.
In the case of Hegel, in this very Prussian and German context, he identified the realization of freedom also with the growth of the state because he thought that governments are the ones that are going to be able to deliver on laws and on the ideal of a state of the rule of law, in German the Rechtsstaat. That was a noble dream. At the same time, as we recognize from our perspective, state power has been put to all sorts of purposes besides guaranteeing the rule of law in our own times.
What Marx did was to take this characteristic insistence of Hegel that history is moving in a meaningful and discernible way towards the realization of an idea and flipped it on its head. Marx insisted that Hegel had so much that was right in his thinking, but what he had neglected to keep in mind was that in fact, history is based on matter. So hence, dialectical materialism, dialectical referring to things proceeding by clashes or conflict towards an ever greater realization of some essential idea.
And so Marx adapts a lot of ideas of Hegel. You can recognize entire rhetorical maneuvers that are indebted to that earlier training, but now taken in a very different direction. What remained though was the confidence of being on the right side of history. And there are few things that are as intoxicating as being convinced that your actions not only are right in the abstract, but are also destined to be successful.
Lex Fridman
And also that you have the rigor of science backing you in your journey towards the truth.
And also that you have the rigor of science backing you in your journey towards the truth.
Vejas Liulevicius
Absolutely. So Engels, when he gives the graveside eulogy for his beloved friend Marx, claims that Marx is essentially the Darwin of history, the Darwin of history. That he had done for the world of politics and of human history what Darwin had done with this theory of evolution, understanding the hidden mechanism, understanding the laws that are at work and that make that whole process meaningful rather than just one damn thing after another.
Absolutely. So Engels, when he gives the graveside eulogy for his beloved friend Marx, claims that Marx is essentially the Darwin of history, the Darwin of history. That he had done for the world of politics and of human history what Darwin had done with this theory of evolution, understanding the hidden mechanism, understanding the laws that are at work and that make that whole process meaningful rather than just one damn thing after another.
Lex Fridman
What about the sort of famous line that history of all existing societies is the history of class struggles? So what about this conception of history as a history of class struggle?
What about the sort of famous line that history of all existing societies is the history of class struggles? So what about this conception of history as a history of class struggle?
Vejas Liulevicius
Well, so this was the mode of force that Karl Marx and Engels saw driving the historical process forward. And it’s important to keep in mind that class conflict doesn’t just mean revolutions, revolts, peasant uprisings. It’s the totality of frictions and of clashes, conflicts of interest that appear in any society.
Well, so this was the mode of force that Karl Marx and Engels saw driving the historical process forward. And it’s important to keep in mind that class conflict doesn’t just mean revolutions, revolts, peasant uprisings. It’s the totality of frictions and of clashes, conflicts of interest that appear in any society.
And so Marx was able in this spirit that he avowed was very scientific to demarcate stages of historical transformation, primitive communism in the prehistoric period, then moving towards what was called state slavery. That’s to say the early civilizations deploying human resources and ordering them by all powerful monarchs. Then private slavery in the ancient period. And then moving to feudalism in the Middle Ages. And then here’s where Marx is able to deliver a pronouncement about his own times, seeing that the present day is the penultimate, the next to last stage of this historical development, because the feudal system of the Middle Ages and the dominance of the aristocracy has been overcome, has been displaced by the often heroic achievements, astonishing achievements in commerce and in world-building of the middle class, the bourgeoisie, who have taken the world into their own hands and are engaged in class conflict with the class below them, which is the working class or the proletariat.
And so this sort of conflict also, by the way, obtains within classes, so the bourgeoisie are going to be gravediggers Marx announces of their own supremacy because they’re also competing against one another. And members who don’t survive that competition get pressed down into the subordinate working class, which grows and grows and grows to the point where at some future moment, the inevitable explosion will come and a swift revolution will overturn this penultimate stage of human history and usher in instead the dictatorship of the working class and then the abolition of all classes because with only one class remaining, everyone is finally unified and without those internal contradictions that had marked class conflict before.
Lex Fridman
The dictatorship of the working class is an interesting term. So what is the role of revolution in history?
The dictatorship of the working class is an interesting term. So what is the role of revolution in history?
Vejas Liulevicius
So this in particular for Marx, I think is a really key moment, which is what makes that such a good question. In his vision, the epic narrative that he’s presenting to us, revolution is key. It’s not enough to have evolutionary change. It’s not a question of compromises. It’s not a case of bargaining or balancing interests. Revolution is necessary as part of the process of a subjugated class coming to awareness of its own historical role. And when we get to the proletariat, this working class in its entirety to whom Marx assigns this epic Promethean role of being the ones who are going to liberate all of humanity, a class that is universal in its interests and in the sort of role in salvation history that they’ll be playing in this secular framework, they need revolution and the experience of revolution in order to come into their own. Because without it, you’ll only have half-hearted compromise and something less than the consciousness that they then need in order to rule, to administer, and to play the historical role that they’re fated to have.
So this in particular for Marx, I think is a really key moment, which is what makes that such a good question. In his vision, the epic narrative that he’s presenting to us, revolution is key. It’s not enough to have evolutionary change. It’s not a question of compromises. It’s not a case of bargaining or balancing interests. Revolution is necessary as part of the process of a subjugated class coming to awareness of its own historical role. And when we get to the proletariat, this working class in its entirety to whom Marx assigns this epic Promethean role of being the ones who are going to liberate all of humanity, a class that is universal in its interests and in the sort of role in salvation history that they’ll be playing in this secular framework, they need revolution and the experience of revolution in order to come into their own. Because without it, you’ll only have half-hearted compromise and something less than the consciousness that they then need in order to rule, to administer, and to play the historical role that they’re fated to have.
Lex Fridman
How did he conceive of a revolution, potentially a violent revolution stabilizing itself into something where the working class was able to rule?
How did he conceive of a revolution, potentially a violent revolution stabilizing itself into something where the working class was able to rule?
Vejas Liulevicius
That’s where things become a good deal less detailed in his and Engels accounts. The answer that they proposed in part was this is for the future to determine, so all of the details will be settled later. I think there was allied to this was a tremendous confidence in some very 19 century ideas about how society could be administered and what made for orderly society in a way where if the right infrastructure was in place, you might expect society to kind of run itself without the need for micromanagement from above.
That’s where things become a good deal less detailed in his and Engels accounts. The answer that they proposed in part was this is for the future to determine, so all of the details will be settled later. I think there was allied to this was a tremendous confidence in some very 19 century ideas about how society could be administered and what made for orderly society in a way where if the right infrastructure was in place, you might expect society to kind of run itself without the need for micromanagement from above.
And hence, we arrive at Marx’s tantalizing promise that there will be a period where it will be necessary to have centralized control and there might have to be, as he puts it, despotic inroads against property in order to bring this revolution to pass. But then afterwards, the state, because it represents everybody rather than representing particular class interests that are in conflict with other classes, the state will eventually wither away, so there won’t be need for it.
Now, that’s not to say that pure stasis arrives or that the stabilization equals being frozen in time. It’s not as if that is what things will look like. But instead, the big issues will be settled and henceforth people will be able to enjoy lives of, as he would consider it, in authentic freedom without necessity, without poverty as a result of this blessed state that’s been arrived at.
Lex Fridman
Despotic inroads against property. Did he elaborate on the despotic inroads?
Despotic inroads against property. Did he elaborate on the despotic inroads?
Vejas Liulevicius
Dispossession, dispossession of the middle classes and of the bourgeoisie. In his model, humanity is never standing still, right? So he’d probably argue in this dynamic vision of how history unfolds that there’s always conflict and it’s always moving, propelling history forward towards its predestined ending.
Dispossession, dispossession of the middle classes and of the bourgeoisie. In his model, humanity is never standing still, right? So he’d probably argue in this dynamic vision of how history unfolds that there’s always conflict and it’s always moving, propelling history forward towards its predestined ending.
In the way he saw this climax was that as things did not stay the same, the condition of the working class was constantly getting worse and hence their revolutionary potential was growing. And at the same time, the expropriators, the bourgeoisie, were also facing diminishing returns as they competed against one another with more and more wealth concentrated in fewer and fewer hands and more and more elements of what had been the middle class detached from the ruling class and being pressed down into the working class. For Marx, this is really a key part. I mean, it’s a key part of this whole ratchet effect that’s going to produce this final historical explosion.
And in German, the word given to that process was verehlendung, which is very evocative. Elend means misery, so it’s the growing misery. When this gets translated into English, the results are never quite as evocative or satisfactory. The words that get used are immiseration or pauperization, meaning more and more people are being turned into paupers. But for Marx, that prediction is really key.
And even in his own lifetime, there were already hints that in fact, if you looked sociologically at the really developed working classes in places like Great Britain or Germany, that process was not playing out as he had expected. In fact, although there had been enormous dislocations and tremendous suffering in the early chaotic, Wild West stages of capitalism and of industrialization, there had been reform movements as well. And there had been unions which had sought to carve out rules and agreements with employers for how the conditions under which workers labored might be ameliorated.
Moreover, the middle class rather than dwindling and dwindling, seemed to actually be strengthening and growing in numbers or the appearance of new kinds of people like white-collar workers or technical experts. So already in Marx’s own lifetime, and then especially in what follows Marx’s lifetime, this becomes a real problem because it puts a stick into the spokes of this particular historical prediction.
Lex Fridman
Can you speak to this realm of ideas, which is fascinating, this battle of big ideas in the 19th century. What are the ideas that were swimming around here?
Can you speak to this realm of ideas, which is fascinating, this battle of big ideas in the 19th century. What are the ideas that were swimming around here?
Vejas Liulevicius
Yeah, yeah. Well, to describe the 19th century as sort of an age of ideologies is very apt because Europe is being wracked and being put through the wringer of nationalism, demands for self-expression of peoples who earlier have been in empires or under monarchical rule, demands to redraw the map. The tremendous transformations of the Industrial Revolution meant that in the course of about a generation, you would’ve seen the world around you change in ways that made it entirely unfamiliar. You’d be able to travel across the landscape at speeds that have been unthinkable when you were a child. So it’s enormous change and demands for yet more change.
Yeah, yeah. Well, to describe the 19th century as sort of an age of ideologies is very apt because Europe is being wracked and being put through the wringer of nationalism, demands for self-expression of peoples who earlier have been in empires or under monarchical rule, demands to redraw the map. The tremendous transformations of the Industrial Revolution meant that in the course of about a generation, you would’ve seen the world around you change in ways that made it entirely unfamiliar. You’d be able to travel across the landscape at speeds that have been unthinkable when you were a child. So it’s enormous change and demands for yet more change.
And so it’s a great mix of ideas, ideologies, the old and the new religious ideas, religious revivals, as well as demands for secularization. And stepping into all of this are Marx and Engels together in what has been called, I think with justice, one of the most important and influential intellectual partnerships of history.
They were very different men. They were both German by origin. Marx had trained as an academic. He had married the daughter of a baron. Because of his radical ideas, he had foreclosed or just found himself cut off from a possible academic career and went the route of radical journalism. Engels was very different. Engels was the son of an industrialist and the family owned factories in Germany and in England. So he was most definitely not a member of the proletariat that he and Marx were celebrating as so significant in their future historical role.
There were also huge differences in character between these men. Marx, when people met him, they were astonished by his energy and his dynamism. They also saw him as a man who felt determined to dominate arguments. He wanted to win arguments and was not one to settle for compromise or a middle road. He was disorderly in his personal habits. We might mention among other things, that he impregnated the family maid and didn’t accept responsibility for the child. He was also not inclined to undertake regular employment in order to support his growing family. That’s where Engels came in. Engels essentially from his family fortune and then from his journalism afterwards supported both himself and the Marx family for decades. And so in a sense, Engels made things happen.
In the mysterious way that friendships work, the very differences between these men made them formidable as a dynamic duo because they balanced off one another’s idiosyncrasies and turned what might’ve been faults into potential strengths. British historian, A.J.P. Taylor always has a lovely turn of phrase, even when he’s wrong about a historical issue. In this case, he was right. He said that Engels had charm and brilliance, Marx was the genius. And Engels saw himself as definitely the junior partner in this relationship. But here’s the paradox. Without Engels, pretty clearly Marx would not have gone on to have the sort of lasting historical impact in the world of ideas that he had.
Lex Fridman
Just to throw in the mix, there’s interesting characters swimming around. So you have Darwin. He has a… I mean, it’s difficult to characterize the level of impact he had. Even just in the religious context, it challenges our conception of who we are as humans. There’s Nietzsche who’s also, I don’t know, hanging around the area. On the Russian side, there’s Dostoevsky. So it’s interesting to ask maybe from your perspective, did these people interact in the space of ideas to where this is relevant to our discussion, or is this mostly isolated?
Just to throw in the mix, there’s interesting characters swimming around. So you have Darwin. He has a… I mean, it’s difficult to characterize the level of impact he had. Even just in the religious context, it challenges our conception of who we are as humans. There’s Nietzsche who’s also, I don’t know, hanging around the area. On the Russian side, there’s Dostoevsky. So it’s interesting to ask maybe from your perspective, did these people interact in the space of ideas to where this is relevant to our discussion, or is this mostly isolated?
Vejas Liulevicius
I think that it’s a part of a great conversation. I think that in their works, they’re reacting to one another. Dostoevsky’s thought ranges across the condition of modernity and he definitely has things to say about industrialization. I think that they react to one another in these oblique ways rather than always being at each other’s throats in direct confrontations. And that’s what makes the 19th century so compelling as a story just because of the sheer vitality of the arguments that are taking place in ways big and small.
I think that it’s a part of a great conversation. I think that in their works, they’re reacting to one another. Dostoevsky’s thought ranges across the condition of modernity and he definitely has things to say about industrialization. I think that they react to one another in these oblique ways rather than always being at each other’s throats in direct confrontations. And that’s what makes the 19th century so compelling as a story just because of the sheer vitality of the arguments that are taking place in ways big and small.
Lex Fridman
Well, we should say here, when you mentioned Karl Marx, maybe the color red comes up for people and they think the Soviet Union, maybe China, but they don’t think Germany necessarily. It’s interesting that Germany is where communism was supposed to happen.
Well, we should say here, when you mentioned Karl Marx, maybe the color red comes up for people and they think the Soviet Union, maybe China, but they don’t think Germany necessarily. It’s interesting that Germany is where communism was supposed to happen.
Vejas Liulevicius
That’s right.
That’s right.
Lex Fridman
And so can you maybe speak to that tension?
And so can you maybe speak to that tension?
Vejas Liulevicius
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is definitely a factor in the entire history that we’re referencing. Marx and Engels never really shed their identity as Germans. Many of their preconceptions, even those traces of nationalism that they had within themselves even as they were condemning nationalism as a fraud against the working class, their clearly, their entire formation had been affected by their German background.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is definitely a factor in the entire history that we’re referencing. Marx and Engels never really shed their identity as Germans. Many of their preconceptions, even those traces of nationalism that they had within themselves even as they were condemning nationalism as a fraud against the working class, their clearly, their entire formation had been affected by their German background.
And it’s very true, as you point out, that Germany is intended to be the place where these predictions will play out, also in Britain, also in France, also eventually in the United States. But it’s Germany by virtue of its central location and then its rapid development later than Britain or France in industrialization give it the special role in Marx’s worldview.
And so it’s a lasting irony or a central irony of this whole story that when a government establishes itself that claims to be following Marx’s prescriptions and realizing his vision, it happens in the wreckage of the Russian Empire, a place that did not match the requirements of being industrialized, developed, well on its way in this historical process. And nobody knew this better than the Bolsheviks. Lenin and his colleagues had a keen sense that what they were doing, exciting as it was, was a gamble. It was a risk because in fact, the revolution to really take hold had to seize power in Germany. And that’s why immediately after taking power, they’re not sure they’re going to last. Their hope, their promise of salvation is that a workers’ revolution will erupt in Germany, defeated Germany in order to link up with the one that has been launched in this unlikely Russian location and henceforth great things will follow that do hue to Marx’s historical vision.
The last thing to mention about this is that this predominance of Germany in the thinking of Marx had two other reflections. One was that German socialists and later communists organize in order to fulfill Marx’s vision and they produce something that leaves other Westerners in awe in the late 19th century. And that’s the building of a strong German workers movement and a Social Democratic Party. That Social Democratic Party by 1912 is the largest party in German politics by vote. And there’s the possibility they might even come to power without needing radical revolution, which again, also goes against Marx’s original vision of the necessity for a revolution. Workers around the world, or rather radical socialists look with admiration and awe at what the Germans have achieved and they see themselves as trying to do what the Germans have done.
The final point is growing up during the Cold War, one thought that, well, if you want to represent somebody as being a communist, that person has to have a Russian accent, because Russia after all, the homeland of this form of government, the Soviet Union, that must be the point of origin. Before the Bolsheviks seized power, in order to really be a serious radical socialist, you needed to read German because you needed to read Marx, and you needed to read Kautsky, and you needed to read Bernstein and other thinkers in this tradition. And it’s only after the Soviet seizure of power that this all changes. So there’s lots of Marx of that phenomenon.
Lex Fridman
Which is why the clash between nationalism and communism in Germany is such a fascinating aspect of history and all the different trajectories it could take. And we’ll talk about it. If we return to the 19th century, you’ve said that Marx’s chief rival was Russian anarchist…
Which is why the clash between nationalism and communism in Germany is such a fascinating aspect of history and all the different trajectories it could take. And we’ll talk about it. If we return to the 19th century, you’ve said that Marx’s chief rival was Russian anarchist…
Anarchism
Lex Fridman
Marx’s chief rival was Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, who famously said in 1942, “The passion for destruction is also a creative passion.” So what kind of future did Bakunin envision?
Marx’s chief rival was Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, who famously said in 1942, “The passion for destruction is also a creative passion.” So what kind of future did Bakunin envision?
Vejas Liulevicius
Well, Bakunin in some things agreed with Marx, and in many others, disagreed. He was an anarchist rather than hewing to the sort of scheme of history that Marx was proposing. So he did see humanity as fighting a struggle for a better way of life. He envisioned, as your quote suggests, that revolution and sheer confrontation and overthrow the existing state of things, not compromise, was going to be the way to get there, but his vision was very different. Rather than organizing conspiratorial and hierarchical political movement, Bakunin envisioned that the ties would be far looser, that both the revolutionary movement and the future state of humanity would grow out of the free association, the anarchist thinking, the free association of individuals who rejected hierarchical thinking in their relations with one another, rejected the state as a form of organized violence, and rejected traditional religious ideas that he saw as buttressing hierarchies.
Well, Bakunin in some things agreed with Marx, and in many others, disagreed. He was an anarchist rather than hewing to the sort of scheme of history that Marx was proposing. So he did see humanity as fighting a struggle for a better way of life. He envisioned, as your quote suggests, that revolution and sheer confrontation and overthrow the existing state of things, not compromise, was going to be the way to get there, but his vision was very different. Rather than organizing conspiratorial and hierarchical political movement, Bakunin envisioned that the ties would be far looser, that both the revolutionary movement and the future state of humanity would grow out of the free association, the anarchist thinking, the free association of individuals who rejected hierarchical thinking in their relations with one another, rejected the state as a form of organized violence, and rejected traditional religious ideas that he saw as buttressing hierarchies.
So Bakunin is part of a broader movement of socialists and anarchists who were demanding change and envisioning really fundamental transformation, but his particular anarchist vision steers him into conflict with Marx, and he makes some prophetic remarks about the problems with the system that Marx is proposing. You should add to this that the very fact that Marx is a German by background and Bakunin is Russian adds a further nationalist or element of ethnic difference there. Bakunin warned that a sort of creeping German authoritarianism might insinuate its way into a movement that hewed too closely to having hierarchies in the struggle to overthrow hierarchies, and his anarchist convictions are not in question here. They led him into conflict with Marx, and Marx railed against him, denounced him, and eventually had him expelled from The International.
One of the things though that also makes Bakunin so significant is Bakunin is the first in a longer series of approaches between anarchists and communists where they try to make common cause, and you have to say that in every case, it ends badly for the anarchists, because the communist vision in particular, especially in its Leninist version, argued for discipline and a tightly organized professional revolutionary movement. The anarchists who sought to make common cause with communists, whether it was in the days of the Russian Revolution or the Russian Civil War, or whether it was then in the Spanish Civil War, the anarchists found themselves targeted by the communists precisely because of their skepticism about what turned out to be an absolutely key element in the Leninist prescription for a successful revolution.
Lex Fridman
If we can take that tangent a little bit, so I guess anarchists were less organized.
If we can take that tangent a little bit, so I guess anarchists were less organized.
Vejas Liulevicius
Yeah, by definition.
Yeah, by definition.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. Why do you think anarchism hasn’t been rigorously tried in the way that communism was? If we just take a complete sort of tangent, in one sense, we are living in an anarchy today because the nations are in an anarchic state with each other, but why do you think there’s not been an anarchist revolution?
Yeah. Why do you think anarchism hasn’t been rigorously tried in the way that communism was? If we just take a complete sort of tangent, in one sense, we are living in an anarchy today because the nations are in an anarchic state with each other, but why do you think there’s not been an anarchist revolution?
Vejas Liulevicius
Well, I think that probably some anarchists would beg to differ, right? They would see communes in Spain during the Spanish Civil War as an example of trying to put anarchist ideas into place. Bakunin flitted from one area of unrest to another, hoping to be in on finally the founding of the sort of free communes that he had in mind.
Well, I think that probably some anarchists would beg to differ, right? They would see communes in Spain during the Spanish Civil War as an example of trying to put anarchist ideas into place. Bakunin flitted from one area of unrest to another, hoping to be in on finally the founding of the sort of free communes that he had in mind.
Another key point in all of this is that anarchy means something different to different people as a term, and so when you point out quite correctly that we have an anarchic international situation, that’s the Hobbesian model of the war of all against all, where man is a wolf to man. Generally, except if you’re talking about nihilists in the Russian revolutionary tradition, anarchists see anarchy as a blessed state and one where finally, people will be freed from the distorting influence of hierarchies, traditional beliefs, subjugation, inequalities. So for them, anarchy growing out of the liberation of the human being is seen as a positive good and peaceful.
Now, that’s at odds with the prescription of someone like Bakunin for how to get there. He sees overthrow as being necessary on the route to that, but as we point out, it’s absolutely key to this entire dynamic that to be an anarchist means that your efforts are not going to be organized the way a disciplined and tightly organized revolutionary movement would be.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, it’s an interesting stretch that a violent revolution will take us to a place of no violence or very little violence. It’s a leap.
Yeah, it’s an interesting stretch that a violent revolution will take us to a place of no violence or very little violence. It’s a leap.
Vejas Liulevicius
It’s a leap, and it points to a phenomenon that would’ve enraged Marx and would’ve been deeply alienating to others in the tradition who followed him, but that so many scholars have commented on, and that’s that there is a religious element. Not a vowed one, but a kind of hidden religious or secular religious element to Marx’s vision, to the tradition that follows Marx, and just think of the correspondences, right? Marx himself positioning himself as a savior figure, whether that’s a Prometheus or a Moses who will lead people to the promised land. The apocalypse or the end times is this final revolution that will usher in a blessed final state, a utopia, which is equivalent to a secular version of heaven. There’s the working class playing the role of humanity in its struggle to be redeemed, and scholar after scholar has pointed this out.
It’s a leap, and it points to a phenomenon that would’ve enraged Marx and would’ve been deeply alienating to others in the tradition who followed him, but that so many scholars have commented on, and that’s that there is a religious element. Not a vowed one, but a kind of hidden religious or secular religious element to Marx’s vision, to the tradition that follows Marx, and just think of the correspondences, right? Marx himself positioning himself as a savior figure, whether that’s a Prometheus or a Moses who will lead people to the promised land. The apocalypse or the end times is this final revolution that will usher in a blessed final state, a utopia, which is equivalent to a secular version of heaven. There’s the working class playing the role of humanity in its struggle to be redeemed, and scholar after scholar has pointed this out.
Reinhold Niebuhr back in the 1930s had an article in The Atlantic magazine that talked about the Soviet Union’s communism as a religion. Eric Voegelin, a German-American scholar who fled the Nazis and relocated to Louisiana State University and wrote tomes about the new phenomenon of political religions in the modern period. And he saw fascism and Nazism and Soviet communism as bearing the stamp of political religions, meaning ideologies that promised what an earlier age would’ve understood in religious terms. Voegelin called this the eschaton and said that these end times, the eschaton, was being promised in the here and now, being made imminent, and he warned against that saying the results are likely to be disastrous.
Lex Fridman
So that’s actually a disagreement with this idea that people sometimes say that the Soviet Union is an example of an atheistic society. So when you have atheism as the primary thing that underpins the society, this is what you get. So what you’re saying is a kind of rejection of that, saying that there’s a strong religious component to a communism.
So that’s actually a disagreement with this idea that people sometimes say that the Soviet Union is an example of an atheistic society. So when you have atheism as the primary thing that underpins the society, this is what you get. So what you’re saying is a kind of rejection of that, saying that there’s a strong religious component to a communism.
Vejas Liulevicius
A hidden component, one that’s not officially recognized. I had a chance to witness this actually. When I was a child, my family, I grew up in Chicago to a Lithuanian-American family, and my father, who was a mathematician, got a very rare invitation to travel to Soviet Lithuania, to the University of Vilnius to meet with colleagues. And at this point, journeys of more than a few days or a week were very rare to the Soviet Union for Americans, and the result was that I had unforgettable experiences visiting the Soviet Union in Brezhnev’s Day.
A hidden component, one that’s not officially recognized. I had a chance to witness this actually. When I was a child, my family, I grew up in Chicago to a Lithuanian-American family, and my father, who was a mathematician, got a very rare invitation to travel to Soviet Lithuania, to the University of Vilnius to meet with colleagues. And at this point, journeys of more than a few days or a week were very rare to the Soviet Union for Americans, and the result was that I had unforgettable experiences visiting the Soviet Union in Brezhnev’s Day.
And among the things I saw, there was a museum of atheism that had been established in a church that had been ripped apart from inside and was meant to embody the official stance of atheism. And I remember being baffled by the museum on the inside because you would expect exhibits, you would expect something dramatic, something that will be compelling, and instead, there was some folk art from the countryside showing bygone beliefs, there were some lithographs or engravings of the Spanish Inquisition and its horrors, and that was pretty much it. But as a child, I remember being reproved in that museum for not wearing my windbreaker, but instead carrying it on my arm, which was a very disrespectful thing to do in an official museum of atheism.
When I was able to visit the Soviet Union later for a language course in the summer of 1989, one of the obligatory tours that we took was to file reverently past the body of Lenin outside the Kremlin in the mausoleum at Red Square, and communist mummies, like those of Lenin, earlier, Stalin had been there as well, communist mummies like Mao or Ho Chi Minh really, I think, speak to a blending of earlier religious sensibility, reverence for relics of great figures, almost saintly figures, so that even what got proclaimed as atheism turned out to be a very demanding faith as well, and I think that’s a contradiction that other scholars have pointed out as well.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, that’s a very complicated discussion. When you remove religion as a big component of a society, whether something like a framing of political ideologies in a religious way is the natural consequence of that.
Yeah, that’s a very complicated discussion. When you remove religion as a big component of a society, whether something like a framing of political ideologies in a religious way is the natural consequence of that.
Vejas Liulevicius
We hear nature abhorring a vacuum, and I think that there are places in human character that long for transcendental explanations, that it’s not all meaningless. In fact, there’s a larger purpose, and I think it’s not a coincidence that such a significant part of resistance to communist regimes has in part come from, on the one hand, religious believers, and on the other hand, from disillusioned true believers in communism who find themselves undergoing an internal experience of revulsion, finding that their ideals have not been followed through on.
We hear nature abhorring a vacuum, and I think that there are places in human character that long for transcendental explanations, that it’s not all meaningless. In fact, there’s a larger purpose, and I think it’s not a coincidence that such a significant part of resistance to communist regimes has in part come from, on the one hand, religious believers, and on the other hand, from disillusioned true believers in communism who find themselves undergoing an internal experience of revulsion, finding that their ideals have not been followed through on.
Lex Fridman
So this topic is one of several topics that you eloquently describe as contradictions within the ideas of Marx. So religious, there is a kind of religious adherence versus also the rejection of religious dogma that he stood for. We’ve talked about some of the others, the tension between nationalism that emerged when it was implemented versus what communism is supposed to be, which is global, so globalism. Then there’s the thing that we started talking with, is the individualism. So history is supposed to be defined by the large collection of humans, but there does seem to be the singular figures, including Marx himself, that are really important. Geography of global versus restricted to certain countries, and tradition. You’re supposed to break with the past under communism, but then Marxism became one of the strongest traditions in history.
So this topic is one of several topics that you eloquently describe as contradictions within the ideas of Marx. So religious, there is a kind of religious adherence versus also the rejection of religious dogma that he stood for. We’ve talked about some of the others, the tension between nationalism that emerged when it was implemented versus what communism is supposed to be, which is global, so globalism. Then there’s the thing that we started talking with, is the individualism. So history is supposed to be defined by the large collection of humans, but there does seem to be the singular figures, including Marx himself, that are really important. Geography of global versus restricted to certain countries, and tradition. You’re supposed to break with the past under communism, but then Marxism became one of the strongest traditions in history.
Vejas Liulevicius
That’s right, that’s right. I think that that last one is especially significant because it’s deeply paradoxical. Trying to outline these contradictions by the way is like subjecting Marx to the sort of analysis that Marx subjected other people to, which is to point out internal contradictions, things that are likely to become pressure points or cracks that might open up in what’s supposed to be a completely set and durable and effective framework. The one about tradition, Marx points out that the need for revolution is in order to break with the traditions that have hemmed people in – these earlier ways of thinking, earlier social structures – and to constantly renovate.
That’s right, that’s right. I think that that last one is especially significant because it’s deeply paradoxical. Trying to outline these contradictions by the way is like subjecting Marx to the sort of analysis that Marx subjected other people to, which is to point out internal contradictions, things that are likely to become pressure points or cracks that might open up in what’s supposed to be a completely set and durable and effective framework. The one about tradition, Marx points out that the need for revolution is in order to break with the traditions that have hemmed people in – these earlier ways of thinking, earlier social structures – and to constantly renovate.
And what happens instead is a tradition of radical rupture emerges, and that’s really tough, because imagine in the last stages of the Soviet Union where keen observers can tell that there are problems that are building in society. There are discontents and demands that are going to clash, especially when someone like Gorbachev is proposing reforms and things are suddenly thrown open for discussion. The very notion that you have the celebration of revolutionaries and the Bolshevik legacy at a time when the state wants to enforce stability and an order that’s been received from the prior generation, think of Brezhnev’s time, for instance. All of that is an especially volatile mix and unlikely to work out very durably in the long run.
The Communist Manifesto
Lex Fridman
I would love to talk about the works of Marx, the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital. What can we say that’s interesting about the manifestation of his ideas on paper?
I would love to talk about the works of Marx, the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital. What can we say that’s interesting about the manifestation of his ideas on paper?
Vejas Liulevicius
Well, the first thing to note obviously is that those two works are very different. Das Kapital is an enormous multi-volume work that Marx worked at and only got the first volume out because Engels begged him to stop revising. “Please, just finally get it into press,” and then the rest, Engels had to actually reconstruct out of notes after Marx passed away. It’s a huge work. By contrast, the Communist Manifesto is a brief pamphlet that ended up affecting the lives of many millions worldwide, in spite of its comparative brevity.
Well, the first thing to note obviously is that those two works are very different. Das Kapital is an enormous multi-volume work that Marx worked at and only got the first volume out because Engels begged him to stop revising. “Please, just finally get it into press,” and then the rest, Engels had to actually reconstruct out of notes after Marx passed away. It’s a huge work. By contrast, the Communist Manifesto is a brief pamphlet that ended up affecting the lives of many millions worldwide, in spite of its comparative brevity.
The Communist Manifesto moreover is also something of the nature of having a delayed fuse, you could say, because when it first appears amid the revolutions of 1848 that sweep across Europe, the work is contrary to what people often believe. That pamphlet did not cause the revolutions of 1848, many of which had national or liberal demands. The voice of Marx and Engels was barely to be heard over the din of other far more prominent actors. It is, however, in the aftermath that this work takes on tremendous significance and becomes popularly read and popularly distributed.
It’s especially the episode, the bloody episode of the Paris Commune in 1871 which comes to be identified with Marx. Even though it was not purely inspired by Marx alone, nor were all of the Communards devoted Marxists, it’s the identification of this famous or infamous episode in urban upheaval that really leads to worldwide notoriety for Marx and attention to those works.
And they’re very different in form. Das Kapital is intended to be the Origin of Species of its realm of economic thought, and represents years and years of work of Marx laboring in the British Museum library, working through statistics, working on little bits and pieces of a larger answer to big historical questions that he believes that he’s arrived at. Its tone is different from that of the Communist Manifesto, which is a call to arms. It announces with great confidence what the scheme of history will be, but rather than urging that the answer might be passivity and just waiting for history to play out in its preordained way, it’s also a clarion call to make the revolution happen and is intended to be a pragmatic, practical statement of how this is to play out, and starts in part with those ringing words about a ghost or a specter haunting Europe, the specter of communism, which wasn’t true at the time, but decades later, most definitely is the case.
Lex Fridman
Is there something we could say about the difference between Marxian economics and Marx’s political ideology, so the political side of things and the economics side of things?
Is there something we could say about the difference between Marxian economics and Marx’s political ideology, so the political side of things and the economics side of things?
Vejas Liulevicius
So I think that Marx would probably have responded that in fact, those things are indivisible. The analysis as purely theoretical certainly can be performed on any economic reality that you care to mention, but the imperatives that grow out of that economic analysis are political. Marx and Engels emphasize the unity of theory and practice. So it’s not enough to dispassionately analyze. It’s a call to action as well, because if you’ve delivered the answer to how history evolves and changes, it obligates you, right? It demands certain action.
So I think that Marx would probably have responded that in fact, those things are indivisible. The analysis as purely theoretical certainly can be performed on any economic reality that you care to mention, but the imperatives that grow out of that economic analysis are political. Marx and Engels emphasize the unity of theory and practice. So it’s not enough to dispassionately analyze. It’s a call to action as well, because if you’ve delivered the answer to how history evolves and changes, it obligates you, right? It demands certain action.
You sometimes hear from undergraduates that they’ve heard from their high school history teachers that Marxism was just a theoretical construct that was the idle production of a philosopher who was not connected to the world and was never meant to be tried in practice. Marx would have been furious to hear this and it’s almost heroically wrong as a historical statement, because Marx insisted that all previous philosophers have theorized about reality. What now is really necessary is to change it. So you could say that in the abstract, a Marxist economist can certainly use Marx’s theoretical framework to compare to a given economic reality, but Marx would have seen that as incomplete and as deeply unsatisfactory.
There’s a kind of a footnote to all of this, which is that even though Marxist dialectical materialism grounds itself in these economic realities and the political prescription is supposed to flow from the economic realities and be inevitably growing out of them, in the real history of communist regimes, you’ve actually seen periods where the economics becomes detached from the politics. And I’m thinking in particular of the new economic period early in the history of the Soviet Union when Lenin realizes that the economy is so far gone that you need to reintroduce or allow, in a limited way, some elements of private enterprise, just to start getting Russia back on course in order to have the accumulation of surplus that will be necessary to build the project at all. And there are many Bolsheviks who see the new economic policy as a terrible compromise and a betrayal of their ideas, but it’s seen as necessary for a short while, and then Stalin will wreck it entirely.
Or consider for that matter China today, where you have a dominant political class, the Communist Party of China, which is allowing economic development and private enterprise, as long as it retains political control. So some of these elements already represent divergences from what Marx would’ve expected, and this points to a really key problem or question for all of the history of communism. It has to do with it being a tradition in spite of itself, and that could be expressed in the following way. An original set of ideas is going to evolve, it’s going to change, because circumstances change. What elaborations of any doctrine, whether it’s communism or a religious doctrine or any political ideology, what elaborations are natural stages in the evolution of any living set of ideas, or when do you reach the point where some shift or some adaptation is so radically different that it actually breaks with the tradition, and that’s an insoluble problem. You probably have to take it on a case-by-case basis.
It speaks to issues like the question that gets raised today. Is China in a meaningful sense a communist country anymore? And there’s a diversity of opinion on this score. Or if you’re looking at the history of communism and you look at North Korea, which now is on its third installment of a dynastic leader from the same family who rules like a God king over a regime that calls itself communist, is that still a form of communism? Is it an evolution of? Is it a complete reversal of?
I tend to want to take an anthropological perspective in the history of communism and to take very seriously those people who avow that they are communists and this is the project that they have underway. And then after hearing that avowal, I think as a historian, you have to say, well, let’s look at the details. Let’s see what changes have been made, what continuities might still exist, whether there’s a larger pattern to be discerned here. So it’s a very, very complicated history that we’re talking about.
Communism in the Soviet Union
Lex Fridman
Let’s step back to the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, and let’s steel man the case for communism. Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of the people there, not in this way where we could look back at what happened in the 20th century. Why was this such a compelling notion for millions of people? Can we make the case for it?
Let’s step back to the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, and let’s steel man the case for communism. Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of the people there, not in this way where we could look back at what happened in the 20th century. Why was this such a compelling notion for millions of people? Can we make the case for it?
Vejas Liulevicius
Well, clearly it was a compelling case for millions of people, and part of this story overall has to do with the faith, conviction, stories of people sacrificing themselves as well as their countrymen in a cause that they believed was not just legitimate, but demanded their total obedience. I think that throughout the early part of the 20th century, the late 19th century, early part of the 20th century, so much of the compelling case for communism came from the confidence that people in the West more generally placed in science, the notion that science is answering problems. Science is giving us solutions to how the world around us works, how the world around us can be improved. Some varieties of that, and watch the quotation marks, “science” were crazy, like phrenology, so-called scientific racism that tried to divide humanity up into discreet blocks and to manipulate them in ways that were allegedly scientific or rational.
Well, clearly it was a compelling case for millions of people, and part of this story overall has to do with the faith, conviction, stories of people sacrificing themselves as well as their countrymen in a cause that they believed was not just legitimate, but demanded their total obedience. I think that throughout the early part of the 20th century, the late 19th century, early part of the 20th century, so much of the compelling case for communism came from the confidence that people in the West more generally placed in science, the notion that science is answering problems. Science is giving us solutions to how the world around us works, how the world around us can be improved. Some varieties of that, and watch the quotation marks, “science” were crazy, like phrenology, so-called scientific racism that tried to divide humanity up into discreet blocks and to manipulate them in ways that were allegedly scientific or rational.
So there were horrors that followed from those invocations of science, but its prestige was enormous, and that in part had to do with the lessening grip of religious ideas on intellectual elites, more generally, processes of secularization, not total secularization but processes of secularization in Western industrial societies, and the sense that here’s the doctrine that will allow escape from wars brought on by capitalist competition, poverty and economic cycles and depressions brought on by capitalist competition, the inequalities of societies that remain hierarchical and class-based. And this claim to being cutting edge science, I think allows people like Lenin to derive immense confidence in the prescription that they have for the future. And that paradoxically, the confidence that you have in broad strokes the right set of answers for how to get to the future also allows you to take huge liberties with the tactics and the strategies that you follow, as long as your ultimate goal remains the one sketched by this master plan.
So ultimately, some of the predictions of someone like Lenin, that once society has reached that stage of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the notion that governments will essentially be able to run themselves, and that the model he had in mind, oddly enough, was Swiss post offices. Being in Swiss exile must have impressed him so much with the orderliness and the sheer discipline and rationality of a Swiss post office, and he thought, “Why can’t you organize governments like this where you don’t need political leaders, you don’t need grand visions? You have procedures, you have bureaucracy, which does its job in a way that’s not alienating, but simply produces the greatest good.”
When you think of the experiences with bureaucracy in the 20th century, one’s hair stands on end to have the comparative naiveté on display with a prediction like that, but it derives from that confidence that it’s all going to be okay because we understand. We have the key, we have the plan to how to arrive at this final configuration of humanity.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, the certainty of science, in quotes, and the goal of utopia gets you in trouble. But also, just on the human level, from a working class person perspective, from the industrial revolution, you see the growing inequality, wealth inequality, and there is a kind of, you see people getting wealthy, and combined with the fact that life is difficult, life in general, life is suffering for many, for most, for all if you listen to some philosophers. And there is a powerful idea in that the man is exploiting me, and that’s a populist message that a lot of people resonate with because to a degree, it’s true in every system. And so before you know how these economic and political ideas manifest themselves, it is really powerful to say, “Here, beyond the horizon, there’s a world where the rich man will not exploit my hard work anymore,” and I think that’s a really powerful idea.
Yeah, the certainty of science, in quotes, and the goal of utopia gets you in trouble. But also, just on the human level, from a working class person perspective, from the industrial revolution, you see the growing inequality, wealth inequality, and there is a kind of, you see people getting wealthy, and combined with the fact that life is difficult, life in general, life is suffering for many, for most, for all if you listen to some philosophers. And there is a powerful idea in that the man is exploiting me, and that’s a populist message that a lot of people resonate with because to a degree, it’s true in every system. And so before you know how these economic and political ideas manifest themselves, it is really powerful to say, “Here, beyond the horizon, there’s a world where the rich man will not exploit my hard work anymore,” and I think that’s a really powerful idea.
Vejas Liulevicius
It is. At the same time though, it kind of points to a further problem and that’s the identity of the revolutionaries. It turned out that many of these revolutionary movements and then the founding elites of communist countries in the aftermath of the Soviet seizure of power turn out to be something quite different from people who have spent their lives in factories experiencing the industrial revolution firsthand. There’s a special role here for intellectuals, and when Marx and Engels write into the Communist Manifesto the notion that certain exceptional individuals can rise above their class origins in a way other people can’t and transcend their earlier role, their materially determined role in order to gain a perspective on the historical process as a whole and ally themselves with the working class and its struggle for communism, this sort of special role that they carved out for themselves is enormously appealing for intellectuals, because any celebration of intellectuals as world movers is going to appeal to intellectuals.
It is. At the same time though, it kind of points to a further problem and that’s the identity of the revolutionaries. It turned out that many of these revolutionary movements and then the founding elites of communist countries in the aftermath of the Soviet seizure of power turn out to be something quite different from people who have spent their lives in factories experiencing the industrial revolution firsthand. There’s a special role here for intellectuals, and when Marx and Engels write into the Communist Manifesto the notion that certain exceptional individuals can rise above their class origins in a way other people can’t and transcend their earlier role, their materially determined role in order to gain a perspective on the historical process as a whole and ally themselves with the working class and its struggle for communism, this sort of special role that they carved out for themselves is enormously appealing for intellectuals, because any celebration of intellectuals as world movers is going to appeal to intellectuals.
That gap, that frequent reality of not being in touch with the very classes that the communists are aiming to represent is a very frequent theme in this story. It also speaks to a crucial part of this story, which is the breaking apart or the Civil War, the war of brother against…
Vejas Liulevicius
Apart or the Civil War, the War of brother against brother, the fraternal struggle that splits socialism and splits followers of Marx. And that’s in the aftermath of the First World War in particular, or during this traumatic experience. The way in which Lenin encourages the foundation of radical parties that will break with social democracy of the sort that had been elaborated, especially in places like Germany, scorning their moderation. And instead announcing a new dispensation, which was the Leninist conception of a disciplined, hardcore professional revolutionaries who will act in ways that a mere trade union movement couldn’t.
Apart or the Civil War, the War of brother against brother, the fraternal struggle that splits socialism and splits followers of Marx. And that’s in the aftermath of the First World War in particular, or during this traumatic experience. The way in which Lenin encourages the foundation of radical parties that will break with social democracy of the sort that had been elaborated, especially in places like Germany, scorning their moderation. And instead announcing a new dispensation, which was the Leninist conception of a disciplined, hardcore professional revolutionaries who will act in ways that a mere trade union movement couldn’t.
And what this speaks to is a fundamental tension in radical movements. Because left to their own devices, Lenin announces, workers tend to focus on their reality, their families, their workplace. Want better working conditions, unionize, and then aim to negotiate with employers or to agitate for reforms on the part of the state to improve their living conditions. And then they’re happy for the advances that they have won. And for Lenin, that’s not enough, because that’s a half measure. That’s the sort of thing that leads you into an accommodation with the system rather than the overthrow of the system. So there’s a constant tension in this regard that plays itself out over the long haul.
Lex Fridman
Let’s go to Lenin and the Russian Revolution. How did communism come to power in the Soviet Union?
Let’s go to Lenin and the Russian Revolution. How did communism come to power in the Soviet Union?
Vejas Liulevicius
It came to power as a result of stepping into a power vacuum. And the power vacuum was created by the First World War, and the effect that it had as a total war. Unprecedented pressure placed on a regime that, in many ways, was a traditional, almost feudal monarchy, only experiencing the beginnings of the modernization that the rest of Europe had undergone. For this reason, communism comes to power in a place that Marx probably wouldn’t have expected, in the wreckage of the Russian Empire. Lenin is absolutely vital to this equation because he’s the one who presses the process forward.
It came to power as a result of stepping into a power vacuum. And the power vacuum was created by the First World War, and the effect that it had as a total war. Unprecedented pressure placed on a regime that, in many ways, was a traditional, almost feudal monarchy, only experiencing the beginnings of the modernization that the rest of Europe had undergone. For this reason, communism comes to power in a place that Marx probably wouldn’t have expected, in the wreckage of the Russian Empire. Lenin is absolutely vital to this equation because he’s the one who presses the process forward.
Ironically, given the claim of communist leaders to having the key to history, just a few months previous in exile in Switzerland Lenin had been despairing and had been convinced that he may not even live to see the advent of that day. But then when revolution does break out in the Russian Empire in February of 1917, Lenin is absolutely frantic to get back. And when he does get back as a result of a deal that is negotiated with the German high command, a step that they’ll later live very much to regret. He is able to get back and to go into action and to press for nothing less than the seizure of power that brings his Bolshevik faction, the radical wing of the socialist movement, to power and then to build the Soviet Union.
Lex Fridman
Even he was surprised how effective and how fast the revolution happened?
Even he was surprised how effective and how fast the revolution happened?
Vejas Liulevicius
He was, although I think that he would’ve agreed that what was necessary was a cataclysm on the scale of the First World War to make this happen. The First World War shatters so many of the certainties of the 19th century that we talked about as a dynamic period with argument between ideologies. It scrambles all sorts of earlier debates. It renegotiates the status of the individual versus an all-powerful state and the claims of the state. Because to win, or even just to survive in World War I, you need to centralize, centralize, centralize, and to put everything onto an authoritarian wartime footing in country after country. So Lenin earlier had already articulated the possibility that this might happen by talking about how the entire globe already was connected. And there’s a chain of capitalist development that is connecting different countries so that the weakest link in the chain, if it breaks, if it pops open, it might actually inaugurate much bigger processes and start a chain reaction. That’s what he intended to do and has the chance to do in the course of 1917. Incidentally, just to get a sense of the sheer chaos and the human, on an individual human level, what the absence of established authority meant. There’s few works of literature that is powerful as Boris Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago for giving the whole sweep of contending forces in a power vacuum. It’s an amazing testimony to that time and place.
He was, although I think that he would’ve agreed that what was necessary was a cataclysm on the scale of the First World War to make this happen. The First World War shatters so many of the certainties of the 19th century that we talked about as a dynamic period with argument between ideologies. It scrambles all sorts of earlier debates. It renegotiates the status of the individual versus an all-powerful state and the claims of the state. Because to win, or even just to survive in World War I, you need to centralize, centralize, centralize, and to put everything onto an authoritarian wartime footing in country after country. So Lenin earlier had already articulated the possibility that this might happen by talking about how the entire globe already was connected. And there’s a chain of capitalist development that is connecting different countries so that the weakest link in the chain, if it breaks, if it pops open, it might actually inaugurate much bigger processes and start a chain reaction. That’s what he intended to do and has the chance to do in the course of 1917. Incidentally, just to get a sense of the sheer chaos and the human, on an individual human level, what the absence of established authority meant. There’s few works of literature that is powerful as Boris Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago for giving the whole sweep of contending forces in a power vacuum. It’s an amazing testimony to that time and place.
Lex Fridman
You said that Bolsheviks saw violence and terror as necessary. Can you just speak to this aspect of their… Because they took power, so this was a part of the way they saw the world.
You said that Bolsheviks saw violence and terror as necessary. Can you just speak to this aspect of their… Because they took power, so this was a part of the way they saw the world.
Vejas Liulevicius
Right. And it had antecedents. Even though Lenin and his colleagues are competing amongst each other for the title of most faithful disciple of Marx, and most true to the received theory in practice, there’s other influences, earlier influences that operate in the Russian context that were not operative, let’s say, in the German context. Here you have to step back and think about the nature of Tsarism, which had maintained, still, into the 20th century, the notion of a divine right to rule. That God had ordained the Tsarist system and its hierarchies. And that to question these was sinful and politically not advisable. The restrictive nature of Russian society at this point dominated by the Tsarist establishment, its harshness, its reactionary nature meant that people who in another context, in another country might’ve been reformers, could instead very easily be provoked into becoming revolutionaries. And Lenin is a perfect example of this. Because his older brother was executed as a result of being in a radical revolutionary movement, who was arrested and executed for association with terrorism.
Right. And it had antecedents. Even though Lenin and his colleagues are competing amongst each other for the title of most faithful disciple of Marx, and most true to the received theory in practice, there’s other influences, earlier influences that operate in the Russian context that were not operative, let’s say, in the German context. Here you have to step back and think about the nature of Tsarism, which had maintained, still, into the 20th century, the notion of a divine right to rule. That God had ordained the Tsarist system and its hierarchies. And that to question these was sinful and politically not advisable. The restrictive nature of Russian society at this point dominated by the Tsarist establishment, its harshness, its reactionary nature meant that people who in another context, in another country might’ve been reformers, could instead very easily be provoked into becoming revolutionaries. And Lenin is a perfect example of this. Because his older brother was executed as a result of being in a radical revolutionary movement, who was arrested and executed for association with terrorism.
Earlier generations of Russian radicals had founded populist groups that would aim to engage in terrorism and resistance against the Tsarist regime. And this included people who call themselves nihilists. And these nihilists were materialists who saw themselves ushering in a new age by absolute rejection of earlier religious traditions and aiming for material answers to the challenges of the day. Among them was Nikolai Chernyshevsky, who wrote what’s been called the worst book ever written. It was, in fact, one of Lenin’s favorite books, in Russian it’s [foreign language 01:10:12]. In English it gets translated What is to Be Done. And it’s a utopian novel about revolutionaries and how revolutionaries should act with one another in open ways, new ways, non-traditional ways in order to help usher in the coming revolution. Lenin loved the work and said it had the great merit of showing you how to be a revolutionary. So there’s the Marxist influence, and then there’s Russian populist nihilist influence, which is also a very live current in Lenin’s thinking.
When you add these things together, you get an explosive mix. Because Lenin, as a result, and part of this family trauma of his brother, becomes a absolutely irreconcilable enemy of the Tsarist regime and sets about turning himself into what you might call a guided missile for revolution. He turns himself into a machine to produce revolutionary change. And I mean that with little hyperbole. Lenin at one point shared with friends that he loved listening to music, but he tried not to listen to beautiful music like Beethoven because it made him feel gentle. What a revolution demanded was realism, hardness, absolute steely resolve. So Lenin worries even fellow revolutionaries by the intensity of his single-minded focus to revolution. He spends his days thinking about the revolution. He probably dreamt about the revolution. So 24/7 it’s an existence where he’s paired off other human elements, quite deliberately, in order to turn himself into an effective instigator of revolution. So, when the opportunity comes in 1917, he’s primed and ready for that role.
Lex Fridman
It’s interesting that Russian nihilism had an impact on Lenin. Traditionally nihilist philosophy rejects all sorts of traditional morality. There’s a kind of cynical dark view. Where’s the light?
It’s interesting that Russian nihilism had an impact on Lenin. Traditionally nihilist philosophy rejects all sorts of traditional morality. There’s a kind of cynical dark view. Where’s the light?
Vejas Liulevicius
The light is science. The light is science and materialism.
The light is science. The light is science and materialism.
Lex Fridman
Oh boy.
Oh boy.
Vejas Liulevicius
The nihilists, some of them did a very bad job of hiding their political beliefs because they were famous for wearing blue tinted spectacles, kind of the sunglasses of the late 19th century as a way of shielding their eyes from light. But also having a dispassionate and realistic view of reality outside. So nihilists, as the name would suggest, do reject all prior certainties, but they make an exception for science and see that as the possibility for founding an entirely new mode of existence.
The nihilists, some of them did a very bad job of hiding their political beliefs because they were famous for wearing blue tinted spectacles, kind of the sunglasses of the late 19th century as a way of shielding their eyes from light. But also having a dispassionate and realistic view of reality outside. So nihilists, as the name would suggest, do reject all prior certainties, but they make an exception for science and see that as the possibility for founding an entirely new mode of existence.
Lex Fridman
For most people, I think, nihilism is introduced in the brilliant philosophical work, I don’t know if you’re familiar with it, by the name of The Big Lebowski. Nihilists appear there, and I think they summarize the nihilist tradition quite well. But it is indeed fascinating. And also it is fascinating that Lenin, and I’m sure this influenced Stalin as well, that hardness was a necessary human characteristic to take the revolution to its end.
For most people, I think, nihilism is introduced in the brilliant philosophical work, I don’t know if you’re familiar with it, by the name of The Big Lebowski. Nihilists appear there, and I think they summarize the nihilist tradition quite well. But it is indeed fascinating. And also it is fascinating that Lenin, and I’m sure this influenced Stalin as well, that hardness was a necessary human characteristic to take the revolution to its end.
Vejas Liulevicius
That’s right. So prior generations of nihilists or populists had resembled Lenin’s single-mindedness by arguing that one needed total devotion for this. To play this role in society, it was not enough to be somewhat committed. Total commitment was necessary. And the other theme that’s at work here obviously is, if we consider Lenin affected by Marxist ideas and the homegrown Russian revolutionary tradition that predates the arrival of Marxist socialism in Russia. It’s the theme of needing to adapt to local conditions. So Marxism or communism in Vietnam, or in Cuba, or in Cambodia, or in Russia will be very different in its local adaptations and local themes and resonance than it was in Germany where Marx would’ve expected all of this to unfold.
That’s right. So prior generations of nihilists or populists had resembled Lenin’s single-mindedness by arguing that one needed total devotion for this. To play this role in society, it was not enough to be somewhat committed. Total commitment was necessary. And the other theme that’s at work here obviously is, if we consider Lenin affected by Marxist ideas and the homegrown Russian revolutionary tradition that predates the arrival of Marxist socialism in Russia. It’s the theme of needing to adapt to local conditions. So Marxism or communism in Vietnam, or in Cuba, or in Cambodia, or in Russia will be very different in its local adaptations and local themes and resonance than it was in Germany where Marx would’ve expected all of this to unfold.
Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin
Lex Fridman
Let’s talk about Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin, this little interplay that eventually led to Stalin accumulating, grabbing, and taking a hold of power. What was that process like?
Let’s talk about Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin, this little interplay that eventually led to Stalin accumulating, grabbing, and taking a hold of power. What was that process like?
Vejas Liulevicius
Lenin’s supreme confidence leads the party through some really difficult steps that involves things like signing the humiliating treaty with the Germans, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Where critics of the Bolsheviks said that no one who loved their country would’ve agreed to a so Draconian, so harsh a settlement that saw the peeling off of large territories that had belonged to the Russian Empire. Lenin is willing to undertake this because the larger prize. He even says that he’s not going to bother to read the treaty because shortly that treaty is going to be a dead letter. His expectation is revolution’s going to break out everywhere, especially after we’ve raised the standard, first of all, in the wreckage of the Russian Empire.
Lenin’s supreme confidence leads the party through some really difficult steps that involves things like signing the humiliating treaty with the Germans, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Where critics of the Bolsheviks said that no one who loved their country would’ve agreed to a so Draconian, so harsh a settlement that saw the peeling off of large territories that had belonged to the Russian Empire. Lenin is willing to undertake this because the larger prize. He even says that he’s not going to bother to read the treaty because shortly that treaty is going to be a dead letter. His expectation is revolution’s going to break out everywhere, especially after we’ve raised the standard, first of all, in the wreckage of the Russian Empire.
Lex Fridman
We should probably say that that treaty, to some small degree, maybe you can elaborate now or later, lays the groundwork for World War II, because there is… Resentment is a thing that with time can lead to just extreme levels of destruction.
We should probably say that that treaty, to some small degree, maybe you can elaborate now or later, lays the groundwork for World War II, because there is… Resentment is a thing that with time can lead to just extreme levels of destruction.
Vejas Liulevicius
Right. For German sensibilities, for German nationalists, that treaty meant that Germany had essentially won World War I. And only a turn of events that many of them couldn’t even follow or conceive of, the arrival of American troops, the tipping of the balance in the West, led to that reversal. One of the many scholars and contemporaries pointed out that Germany, between the wars, was full of people who were convinced that Germany had actually not lost the war, however that victory of theirs was defined. So most definitely that groundwork is laid. And incidentally, this is something we can talk about later, World War I and World War II have a lot of linkages like that. And as time goes by, I think historians are going to focus on those linkages even more. But Lenin also in his leadership against the odds, leads the Bolsheviks to power in the Russian Civil War where most betting people would’ve given them very slight odds of even surviving, given how many enemies they faced off against.
Right. For German sensibilities, for German nationalists, that treaty meant that Germany had essentially won World War I. And only a turn of events that many of them couldn’t even follow or conceive of, the arrival of American troops, the tipping of the balance in the West, led to that reversal. One of the many scholars and contemporaries pointed out that Germany, between the wars, was full of people who were convinced that Germany had actually not lost the war, however that victory of theirs was defined. So most definitely that groundwork is laid. And incidentally, this is something we can talk about later, World War I and World War II have a lot of linkages like that. And as time goes by, I think historians are going to focus on those linkages even more. But Lenin also in his leadership against the odds, leads the Bolsheviks to power in the Russian Civil War where most betting people would’ve given them very slight odds of even surviving, given how many enemies they faced off against.
Lenin’s insistence upon discipline and upon good organization allowed the Bolsheviks to emerge as the winners. And yet a great disappointment follows. Lenin, as we said, had expected that revolution will break out soon everywhere and all it’ll be necessary for the Bolsheviks to do, having given the lead, is to link up with others. So he considered that what would be established would be a red bridge between a communist Russia, and once Germany inevitably plunged ahead into its revolutionary transformation, a communist Germany. That doesn’t end up happening. On the contrary, what happens in Germany is a out-and-out shooting war between different kinds of socialists. When Germany establishes a democracy that later goes by the name of the Weimar Republic, the government is a government of Social Democrats, moderate Social Democrats who are fearful of what they see as Russian conditions of disorder and who are not necessarily in sympathy with the Leninist vision of tightly-organized authoritarian rule. So communists who revolt in Germany are brutally suppressed by mercenaries, hardened front fighters and nationalist radicals hired by the German socialist government. And the result is a wound that just won’t heal in the German socialist movement as a result of this fratricide. It frustrates Lenin’s ambitions. So too does the fact that Poland, rather than going Bolshevik, resists attempts by the Bolsheviks to move forward and to connect up with Germany. The Poles, yet again, play a tremendously important historical role in changing the expected course of historical events. It’s in the aftermath of these unexpected turns that Lenin and his colleagues realize that they’re in this for the long haul. It’s necessary to wait longer. They don’t lose hope or confidence, you might say, in the eventual coming of international workers revolution.
But it’s been deferred, it’s been put off. So the question then arises, what do you build within a state that’s established called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or the Soviet Union? Lenin, as a result of an assassination attempt, is deeply affected in his health and would’ve loved to continue for years longer to steer the regime. But he’s sidelined because of his declining health. And there emerges a contest. A contest between a very charismatic leader, Leo Trotsky on the one hand, who is an amazing orator, who is an intellectual, who has traveled widely in the world, who has seen much of the world, and who is a brilliant writer. A far-ranging intellect, and is seen as extremely radical because of his demand for permanent revolution, the acceleration of revolutionary processes to drive history forward, to strike while the iron is hot. And on the other hand is an extremely unlikely contender for power.
That’s a man who’s probably the antithesis of charisma if you were to meet him in person. A guy with a squeaky, somewhat high-pitched voice, not well-suited to revolutionary oratory. His face pockmarked with the scars of youthful illness and whom, moreover, doesn’t speak a fine sophisticated Russian. But speaks a Russian heavily inflected with a Georgian accent from that part of the Russian Empire from which he came. And that was Stalin. I know that you already have a marvelous interview with Stephen Kotkin, the brilliant biographer of Stalin who has so many insights on that subject. The one thing that, even after reading about Stalin, that never ceases to surprise me, even in retrospect, is that Stalin gains a reputation not as a fiery radical, but as a moderate. A man who’s a conciliator. Someone who’s calm when others are excited. Someone who is able because of his organizational skills to resolve merely theoretical disputes with practical solutions.
Now, to fully take this aboard, we have to unknow what we know from our vantage point about Stalin’s leadership, Stalin’s brutality and eliminating his opposition. The cult of personality that, against all odds, got built up around Stalin so successfully and the absolute dominant role that led him later to be described as Genghis Khan with a telephone. A brutal dictator with ancient barbarism allied to the use of modern technology. While Trotsky is delivering stirring speeches and theorizing, Stalin works behind the scenes to control personnel decisions in the Bolshevik movement and in the state. It’s a cliche because it’s true, that personnel is policy. Trotsky is increasingly sidelined and then demonized and eventually expelled from the Soviet Union and later murdered in Mexico City. For Stalin, eliminating his enemies turned out to be the solution that he was most comfortable with.
Lex Fridman
From that perspective, there’s a lot of fascinating things here. So one, is that you can have a wolf, a brutal dictator in moderate clothing. Just because somebody presents as moderate-
From that perspective, there’s a lot of fascinating things here. So one, is that you can have a wolf, a brutal dictator in moderate clothing. Just because somebody presents as moderate-
Vejas Liulevicius
That’s right.
That’s right.
Lex Fridman
… doesn’t mean they can’t be one of the most destructive, not the most destructive, humans in history. The other aspect is, using propaganda you can construct an image of a person. Even though they’re uncharismatic not attractive, their voice is no good. All of those aspects, you can still have… There’s still, to this day, a very large number of people that see him as a religious type of god-like figure. So the power of propaganda there.
… doesn’t mean they can’t be one of the most destructive, not the most destructive, humans in history. The other aspect is, using propaganda you can construct an image of a person. Even though they’re uncharismatic not attractive, their voice is no good. All of those aspects, you can still have… There’s still, to this day, a very large number of people that see him as a religious type of god-like figure. So the power of propaganda there.
Vejas Liulevicius
Today, we would call that curating the image, right?
Today, we would call that curating the image, right?
Stalin
Lex Fridman
Curating the image. But to the extent to which you can do that effectively is quite incredible. So in that way also Stalin is a study of the power of propaganda. Can we just talk about the ways that the power vacuum is filled by Stalin, how that manifests itself? Perhaps one angle we can take is how was the secret police used? How did power manifest itself under Stalin?
Curating the image. But to the extent to which you can do that effectively is quite incredible. So in that way also Stalin is a study of the power of propaganda. Can we just talk about the ways that the power vacuum is filled by Stalin, how that manifests itself? Perhaps one angle we can take is how was the secret police used? How did power manifest itself under Stalin?
Vejas Liulevicius
Well, before getting to the secret police, I would just want to add the other crucial element, which is Lenin’s patronage. Stalin doesn’t brawl his way into the Bolshevik party and dominate. He’s co-opted and promoted to positions of importance by Lenin who sees him as a somewhat rough around the edges, not very sophisticated, much less cosmopolitan than other Bolsheviks. But dependable, reliable, and committed revolutionary. One of the things that’s emerged, especially after archives opened up with the fall of the Soviet Union and we were able to read more and more the communications of Lenin, is that it’s not the case that we’re talking here about an unconnected series of careers. Rather there are connections to be made. It’s true that towards the end of his life, Lenin came to be worried by complaints about Stalin’s rudeness towards fellow Bolsheviks. And in his testament, he warned against Stalin’s testimonies.
Well, before getting to the secret police, I would just want to add the other crucial element, which is Lenin’s patronage. Stalin doesn’t brawl his way into the Bolshevik party and dominate. He’s co-opted and promoted to positions of importance by Lenin who sees him as a somewhat rough around the edges, not very sophisticated, much less cosmopolitan than other Bolsheviks. But dependable, reliable, and committed revolutionary. One of the things that’s emerged, especially after archives opened up with the fall of the Soviet Union and we were able to read more and more the communications of Lenin, is that it’s not the case that we’re talking here about an unconnected series of careers. Rather there are connections to be made. It’s true that towards the end of his life, Lenin came to be worried by complaints about Stalin’s rudeness towards fellow Bolsheviks. And in his testament, he warned against Stalin’s testimonies.
Lenin fundamentally saw himself as irreplaceable, so that doesn’t really help in a succession struggle. Stalin is able to rely on a secret police apparatus that had been built up under Lenin already. It’s very early in the foundation of the Soviet state that the Cheka or the Extraordinary Commission is established as a secret police to terrify the enemies, beat down the opponents of the regime, and to keep an eye on society more generally. The person who’s chosen for that task also is an anomaly among Bolsheviks. That is a man of Polish aristocratic background, Feliks Dzierzynski, who comes to be known by the nickname Iron Felix. Here’s a man about whom a cult of personality also is created. Dzierzynski is celebrated in the Soviet period as the model of someone who’s harsh but fair, an executioner but with a heart of gold. Somebody who loves children. Somebody who has a tender heart, but forces himself to be steely willed against the opponents of the ideological project of the Bolsheviks.
Dzierzynski is succeeded by figures who will be absolutely instrumental to Stalin’s exercise of power, and they’re not immune either. Stalin, in his purges, takes care also to purge the secret police as a way of finding others upon whom to deflect blame for earlier atrocities and to produce a situation where even committed Bolsheviks are uncertain of what’s going to happen next and feel their own position to be precarious. Incidentally, there are other influences that probably wrought to bear here as well. It gets said about Stalin that he used to spend a lot of time flipping through Machiavelli’s The Prince. It seems that Stalin’s personal copy of The Prince, nobody knows where that is, if it still exists. But historians have found annotations in works by Lenin that Stalin, who was a voracious reader, as it turns out, made in the back of one of the books. Which sounds almost like a commentary on Machiavelli’s, almost but not quite, suggestion that the ends justify the means.
Stalin’s own writing says that if someone is strong, active, and intelligent, even if they do things that other people condemn, they’re still a good person. So Stalin’s self-conception of himself is someone who along these lines and in line with Lenin’s emphasis on practical results and discipline, somebody who gets things done. That’s the crucial ethical standard. And ultimately in criticisms by later dissidents of Bolshevik morality, this question of, what is the ethical standard? What is the ethical law? We’ll bring this question into focus because by the… And this goes back to Marx as well, incidentally. The notion that any ethical system, any notion of right or wrong is purely a product of class identity. Because every class produces its distinctive ideas, its distinctive religion, its distinctive art forms, it’s distinctive styles. Means that with no one transcendent or absolute morality, it’s all up for grabs. And then it’s a question of power and the exercise of power with no limits, untrammeled by any laws whatsoever. Dictatorship in its purest form. Something that Lenin had avowed, and then Stalin comes to practice even more fully.
Lex Fridman
Not that it’s possible to look deep into a person’s heart, but if you look at Trotsky, you could say that he probably believed deeply in Marxism and communism. Probably the same with Lenin. What do you think Stalin believed? Was he a believer? Was he a pragmatist that used communism as a way to gain power and ideology as part of propaganda? Or did he, in his own private moments, deeply believe in the utopia?
Not that it’s possible to look deep into a person’s heart, but if you look at Trotsky, you could say that he probably believed deeply in Marxism and communism. Probably the same with Lenin. What do you think Stalin believed? Was he a believer? Was he a pragmatist that used communism as a way to gain power and ideology as part of propaganda? Or did he, in his own private moments, deeply believe in the utopia?
Vejas Liulevicius
That’s an excellent question. And you’re quite right, we cannot peer into the inmost recesses of somebody’s being and know for sure. My intuition, though, is that this may be a false alternative, a false dichotomy. It’s natural enough to see somebody who does monstrous things to say, “Well, this ideology is being used as a cover for it.” My suspicion is that these were actually perfectly compatible in his historical role. The notion that there’s an ideology, it gives you a master plan for how history is going to develop and your own power, the increase of that power to unprecedented proportions. Your ability to torment even your own faithful followers in order just to see them squirm, which Stalin was famous for, to keep people unsettled. To me, it seems that, for some people, those might not actually be opposed, but might even be mutually reinforcing, which is a very scary thought.
That’s an excellent question. And you’re quite right, we cannot peer into the inmost recesses of somebody’s being and know for sure. My intuition, though, is that this may be a false alternative, a false dichotomy. It’s natural enough to see somebody who does monstrous things to say, “Well, this ideology is being used as a cover for it.” My suspicion is that these were actually perfectly compatible in his historical role. The notion that there’s an ideology, it gives you a master plan for how history is going to develop and your own power, the increase of that power to unprecedented proportions. Your ability to torment even your own faithful followers in order just to see them squirm, which Stalin was famous for, to keep people unsettled. To me, it seems that, for some people, those might not actually be opposed, but might even be mutually reinforcing, which is a very scary thought.
Holodomor
Lex Fridman
It’s terrifying, but it’s really important to understand. If we look at when Stalin takes power at some of the policies. The collectivization of agriculture. Why do you think that failed so catastrophically, especially in the 1930s with Ukraine and Poland and more?
It’s terrifying, but it’s really important to understand. If we look at when Stalin takes power at some of the policies. The collectivization of agriculture. Why do you think that failed so catastrophically, especially in the 1930s with Ukraine and Poland and more?
Vejas Liulevicius
I think the short answer is that the Bolsheviks in particular, but also communists more generally have had a very conflicted relationship with agriculture. Agriculture, as a very vital, obviously, but also very traditional and old form of human activity has about it all of the smell of tradition and other problematic factors as well. In a place like Russia or the Russian Empire peasants, throughout history, for centuries, had wanted one thing, and that was to be left alone to farm their own land. That’s their utopia. And that, for someone like Marx who had a vision of historical development and transcendence-
I think the short answer is that the Bolsheviks in particular, but also communists more generally have had a very conflicted relationship with agriculture. Agriculture, as a very vital, obviously, but also very traditional and old form of human activity has about it all of the smell of tradition and other problematic factors as well. In a place like Russia or the Russian Empire peasants, throughout history, for centuries, had wanted one thing, and that was to be left alone to farm their own land. That’s their utopia. And that, for someone like Marx who had a vision of historical development and transcendence-
Vejas Liulevicius
… who had a vision of historical development and transcendence and progress as being absolutely key does not mesh at all with that vision. For that reason, when Marx comes up with this tableau, this tremendous display of historical transformation taking place over centuries and headed towards the final utopia, the role of farmers there is negligible. Peasants get called conservative and dull as sacks of potatoes in Marx’s historical vision because they’re limited in their horizon. They farm their land, their plot, and don’t have greater revolutionary goals beyond working the land and having it free and clear.
… who had a vision of historical development and transcendence and progress as being absolutely key does not mesh at all with that vision. For that reason, when Marx comes up with this tableau, this tremendous display of historical transformation taking place over centuries and headed towards the final utopia, the role of farmers there is negligible. Peasants get called conservative and dull as sacks of potatoes in Marx’s historical vision because they’re limited in their horizon. They farm their land, their plot, and don’t have greater revolutionary goals beyond working the land and having it free and clear.
By contrast, industrialization, that’s progress. I mean, images that today would be deeply disturbing to an environmentalist’s sensibility. Smokestacks, belching smoke, the byproducts of industry, a landscape transformed by the factory model. That’s what Marx, and then later the Bolsheviks, have in mind. Similarly, the goal even as articulated in Marx’s writings, is to put agriculture and farming on a factory model so that you won’t need to deal with this traditional role of the independent farmer or the peasant. Instead, you’ll have people who benefit from progress, benefit from rationalization by working factory farms.
So, in approaching the question of collectivization, we have to keep in mind that for Stalin and his comrades who are bound and determined to drag Russia kicking and screaming into the modern age and not to allow it be beaten because of its backwardness, as Stalin puts it, traditional forms of agriculture are not what they have in mind. And in their rank of desired outcomes, industrialization, especially massive heavy industry is the sine qua non, that’s their envisioned future. Agriculture rates below.
So in that case, the crucial significance of collectivization is to get a handle on the food situation in order to make it predictable and not to find oneself in another crisis like during the Civil War, when the cities are starving, industry is robbed of labor and the factories are at a standstill. So, this is really the core approach to collectivization, to put the productive capacities of the farmers in a regimented way, in a state-controlled way under the control of the state.
This produces vast human suffering because for the farmers, their plot of land that they thought they had gained as a result of the revolution is now taken away. They no longer have the same incentives they had before to be successful farmers. In fact, if you’re a successful farmer and maybe have a cow as opposed to your neighbors who have no cow, you’re defamed and denounced as a kulak, a tight-fisted, exploiter, even though you might be helping to develop agriculture in the region that you’re from.
So, the result is human tragedy on a vast scale. And allied to that incidentally is Stalin’s sense that this is a chance to also target people who are opposed to the Bolshevik regime for other reasons, whether it’s because of their Ukrainian identity, whether it’s because of a desire for a different nationalist project. For Stalin, there are many motives that roll into collectivization. And the final thing to be said is you are quite right that collectivization proves to be a failure because the Soviet Union never finally gets a grasp on the problems of agricultural production.
By the end of the Soviet Union, they’re importing grain from the West in spite of having some tremendously rich farmland to be found worldwide. And the reason for that had to do in part, I think with the incentives that had been taken away. Prosperous individual farmers have a motive for working their land and maximizing production. By contrast, if you are an employee of a factory style agricultural enterprise, the incentives run in very different directions. And the joke that was common for decades in the Soviet Union and other communist countries with similar systems was, “We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.”
Even labor, which is rhetorically respected and valorized in practice is rewarded with very slim rewards. And the last point, immobility. The collectivization reduces the mobility of the peasants who are not allowed because of internal passports to move to the cities unless they have permission. They’re locked in place. And I got to say, at the time and afterwards, that looked a lot like feudalism or neo-feudalism in terms of the restrictions on workers in the countryside.
Lex Fridman
It is a terrifying, horrific and fascinating study of how the ideal, when meeting reality, fails. The idea here is to make agriculture more efficient, so be more productive, so the industrialized model. But the implementation through collectivization had all the elements that you’ve mentioned that contended with human nature. First with the kulaks, so the successful farmers were punished. And so then the incentive is not just to be a successful farmer, but to hide.
It is a terrifying, horrific and fascinating study of how the ideal, when meeting reality, fails. The idea here is to make agriculture more efficient, so be more productive, so the industrialized model. But the implementation through collectivization had all the elements that you’ve mentioned that contended with human nature. First with the kulaks, so the successful farmers were punished. And so then the incentive is not just to be a successful farmer, but to hide.
Added to that, there’s a growing quota that everybody’s supposed to deliver on that nobody can deliver on. And so now, because you can’t deliver on that quota, you’re basically exporting all your food and you can’t even feed yourself. And then you suffer more and more and more and there’s a vicious downward spiral of you can’t possibly produce that. Now there’s another human incentive where you’re going to lie. Everybody lies on the data.
Vejas Liulevicius
That’s right.
That’s right.
Lex Fridman
And so even Stalin himself probably, as evil or incompetent as he may be, was not even getting good data about what’s even happening. Even if he wanted to stop the vicious downward cycle, which he certainly didn’t, but he wouldn’t be even able to. So, there’s all these dark consequences of what on paper seems like a good ideal. And it’s a fascinating study of things on paper-
And so even Stalin himself probably, as evil or incompetent as he may be, was not even getting good data about what’s even happening. Even if he wanted to stop the vicious downward cycle, which he certainly didn’t, but he wouldn’t be even able to. So, there’s all these dark consequences of what on paper seems like a good ideal. And it’s a fascinating study of things on paper-
Vejas Liulevicius
Yes. That’s right.
Yes. That’s right.
Lex Fridman
… when implemented, can go really, really bad.
… when implemented, can go really, really bad.
Vejas Liulevicius
That’s right. And the outcome here is a horrific manmade famine. Not a natural disaster, not bad harvest, but a manmade famine as a result of then the compulsion that gets used by the Soviet state to extract those resources, cordoning off the area, not allowing starving people to escape. You put very well some of the implications of this case study and how things look in the abstract versus in practice. And those phenomena were going to haunt the rest of the experience of the Soviet Union.
That’s right. And the outcome here is a horrific manmade famine. Not a natural disaster, not bad harvest, but a manmade famine as a result of then the compulsion that gets used by the Soviet state to extract those resources, cordoning off the area, not allowing starving people to escape. You put very well some of the implications of this case study and how things look in the abstract versus in practice. And those phenomena were going to haunt the rest of the experience of the Soviet Union.
The whole notion that up and down the chain of command, everybody is falsifying or tinkering with or prettifying the statistics or their reports in order not to look bad and not to have vengeance visited upon them reaches the point where nobody, in spite of the pretense of comprehensive knowledge, there’s a state planning agency that creates five-year plans for the economy as a whole, and which is supposed to have accurate statistics. All of this is founded upon a foundation of sand. That’s inadvertent. That’s not an intended side effect.
But what you described in terms of the internal dynamics of fostering conflict in a rural society was absolutely not inadvertent. That was deliberate. The doctrine was you bring civil war. Now had there been social tensions before? Of course there had. Had there been envies, had there been differentiations in wealth or status? Of course there had been, but a deliberate plan to bring class conflict and bring civil war and then heighten it in the countryside does damage, and not least of that is this phenomenon of a negative selection.
Those who have most enterprise, those who are most entrepreneurial, those who have most self-discipline, those who are best organized will be winnowed again and again and again, sending the message that mediocrity is comparatively much safer than talent. And this pattern incidentally gets transposed and in tremendously harrowing ways also to the entire group of Russian intelligentsia and intellectuals of other peoples who are in the Soviet Union. They discover similarly that to be independent, to have a voice which is not compliant, carries with it tremendous penalties, especially in Stalin’s reigns of terror.
Lex Fridman
Again, a difficult question about a psychology of one human being, but to what degree do you think Stalin was deliberately punishing the farmers and the Ukrainian farmers? And to what degree was he looking the other way and allowing the large-scale incompetence, the horrific incompetence of the collectivization of agriculture to happen?
Again, a difficult question about a psychology of one human being, but to what degree do you think Stalin was deliberately punishing the farmers and the Ukrainian farmers? And to what degree was he looking the other way and allowing the large-scale incompetence, the horrific incompetence of the collectivization of agriculture to happen?
Vejas Liulevicius
Well, I think it was both things, right? I mean, there were not only sins of omission, but also sins of commission. Incidentally, one should add, I don’t think for Stalin it was personal. These are people who are very remote from him. He, never coming into contact with the people who are suffering in this way. Attributed to him is the quote that, “One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic.” I think he in action certainly acted in a way that would vindicate that. But the process of collectivization was not just a bureaucratic snafu following on bureaucratic snafu. There was the mobilization of communist youth, of military, of party activists to go into the regions and to search for hidden food, to extract the food where it could be found.
Well, I think it was both things, right? I mean, there were not only sins of omission, but also sins of commission. Incidentally, one should add, I don’t think for Stalin it was personal. These are people who are very remote from him. He, never coming into contact with the people who are suffering in this way. Attributed to him is the quote that, “One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic.” I think he in action certainly acted in a way that would vindicate that. But the process of collectivization was not just a bureaucratic snafu following on bureaucratic snafu. There was the mobilization of communist youth, of military, of party activists to go into the regions and to search for hidden food, to extract the food where it could be found.
And we have testimony to this in the case of people who later became dissidents, like Lev Kopelev, who wrote in his memoirs about how he was among those who were sent in to enact these policies, and he saw families with the last food being taken away even as signs of starvation were visible already in the present. And yet he did not go mad. He didn’t kill himself. He didn’t fall into despair because he believed, because he had been taught and believed at least then that this was justified. This was a larger historical process and a greater good would result even from these enormities. So, I think that this was quite deliberate.
The Great Terror
Lex Fridman
Following this, as you’ve mentioned, there was the process of the Great Terror, where the intellectuals, where the Communist Party officials, the military officers, the bureaucrats, everybody. 750,000 people were executed, and over a million people were sent to the Gulag. What can you say by way of wisdom from this process of the Great Terror that Stalin implemented from ’36 to ’38?
Following this, as you’ve mentioned, there was the process of the Great Terror, where the intellectuals, where the Communist Party officials, the military officers, the bureaucrats, everybody. 750,000 people were executed, and over a million people were sent to the Gulag. What can you say by way of wisdom from this process of the Great Terror that Stalin implemented from ’36 to ’38?
Vejas Liulevicius
Well, the terror had a variety of victims. There were people who were true believers and who were Bolsheviks, who were especially targeted by Stalin because he aimed to revenge himself for all the sort of condescension that he’d experienced in that movement before. And also to eliminate rivals or potential rival power centers and members of their families. And then there were people who simply got caught up in a process whereby the repressive organs in the provinces were sent quotas. You have to achieve your quota and maybe even better yet, overachieve your quota, over perform. That would be the key to success and rising in the bureaucracies in the age of the terror.
Well, the terror had a variety of victims. There were people who were true believers and who were Bolsheviks, who were especially targeted by Stalin because he aimed to revenge himself for all the sort of condescension that he’d experienced in that movement before. And also to eliminate rivals or potential rival power centers and members of their families. And then there were people who simply got caught up in a process whereby the repressive organs in the provinces were sent quotas. You have to achieve your quota and maybe even better yet, overachieve your quota, over perform. That would be the key to success and rising in the bureaucracies in the age of the terror.
What’s so horrifying is the way in which a whole society stood paralyzed in this process and how neighbors would be taken away in the middle of the night and people would be wary of talking about it. Resistance, at least in these urban centers, was entirely paralyzed by fear when, if one had somehow find a way to mobilize ,somehow a way to resist the process, the results might’ve been different. There’s an astonishing book… I mean, there are so many great books that have come out quite recently even on these topics.
Orlando Figes has a amazing book called The Whisperers that traces several families’ history in the Stalin period, and it’s a testimony to how a whole society and some of its most intelligent people got winnowed again and again and again in that process of negative selection that we talked about. The lasting dislocation and scars that this left and the way in which how people were not able to talk about these things in public because that would put you next on the list, suspected of having less than total devotion to the state.
I think one of the things that also is so terrifying about the entire process is even total devotion wasn’t enough. The process took on a life of its own, and I think that it might even have surprised Stalin in some ways. Not enough to short-circuit the process, but the notion where people were invited to denounce neighbors, coworkers, maybe even family members, meant that ever larger groups of people would be brought into the orbit of the secret police, tortured in order to produce confessions. Those confessions then would lead to more lists of suspects of people who had to be investigated and either executed or sent to the gulags. The uncertainty that this produced was enormous.
Even loyalty was not enough to save people. The stories, Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago is full of stories of dedicated communists who find themselves in the Gulag and are sure that some mistake has been made. And if only comrade Stalin would hear about this terrible thing that has happened to them, surely it would be corrected and nothing like this would… Everyone else, by contrast, accused of terrible crimes, there must be some truth behind that. So, talk about ways of disaggregating a society, ways of breaking down bonds of trust. This left lasting traces on an entire society that endured to this very day.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, there again, a fascinating study of human nature, that there essentially was an emergent quota of confessions of treason. So, even though the whole society was terrified and were through terror, loyal, there still needed to be a lot of confessions of people being disloyal, so you’re just making up now. At a mass scale, stuff is being made up. And it’s also the machine of the secret police starts eating itself because you want to be confessing on your boss. It is just this weird, dark, dynamic system where human nature just it at its worst.
Yeah, there again, a fascinating study of human nature, that there essentially was an emergent quota of confessions of treason. So, even though the whole society was terrified and were through terror, loyal, there still needed to be a lot of confessions of people being disloyal, so you’re just making up now. At a mass scale, stuff is being made up. And it’s also the machine of the secret police starts eating itself because you want to be confessing on your boss. It is just this weird, dark, dynamic system where human nature just it at its worst.
Vejas Liulevicius
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Lex Fridman
Why, if we look at this deep discussion we had about Marxism, to what degree can we understand from that lens why the implementation of communism in the Soviet Union failed in such a dark way? Both in the economic system with agriculture and industrialization, and on the human way with just violation of every possible human right and the torture and the suffering and gulags and all of this?
Why, if we look at this deep discussion we had about Marxism, to what degree can we understand from that lens why the implementation of communism in the Soviet Union failed in such a dark way? Both in the economic system with agriculture and industrialization, and on the human way with just violation of every possible human right and the torture and the suffering and gulags and all of this?
Vejas Liulevicius
Well, I think some of it comes back to the ethical grounding that we mentioned earlier. The notion that ethics are entirely situational and that any ethical system is an outgrowth of a particular class reality, a particular material reality, and that leaves the door wide open. So, I think that that aspect was present from the very beginning. I think that the expectations of Marx, that the revolution would take hold and be successful in a developed country, played a role here as well.
Well, I think some of it comes back to the ethical grounding that we mentioned earlier. The notion that ethics are entirely situational and that any ethical system is an outgrowth of a particular class reality, a particular material reality, and that leaves the door wide open. So, I think that that aspect was present from the very beginning. I think that the expectations of Marx, that the revolution would take hold and be successful in a developed country, played a role here as well.
Russia, which compared to the rest of Europe, was less developed even before the First World War is in a dire state after all of the ravage and the millions of deaths that continue even after the war has ended in the West. That leaves precious little in the way of structural restraints or a functioning society that would say, “Let’s not do things this way.” I think that in retrospect, that special role carved out for special individuals who can move this process forward and accelerate historical development allowed for people to step into those roles and appoint themselves executors of this ideological vision. So, I think those things played a role as well.
Lex Fridman
Now, it’s hard to do counterfactual history, but to what degree is this basically that the communist ideals create a power vacuum and a dictator type figure steps in, and then it’s a roll of the dice of what that dictator is like? So can you imagine a world where the dictator was Trotsky. Would we see very similar type of things? Or is the hardness and the brutality of somebody like Stalin manifested itself in being able to look the other way as some of these dark things were happening more so than somebody like Trotsky who would presumably see the realizations of these policies and be shocked?
Now, it’s hard to do counterfactual history, but to what degree is this basically that the communist ideals create a power vacuum and a dictator type figure steps in, and then it’s a roll of the dice of what that dictator is like? So can you imagine a world where the dictator was Trotsky. Would we see very similar type of things? Or is the hardness and the brutality of somebody like Stalin manifested itself in being able to look the other way as some of these dark things were happening more so than somebody like Trotsky who would presumably see the realizations of these policies and be shocked?
Vejas Liulevicius
Well, counterfactuals are hard, like you said. And one very quickly gets off into really deep waters in speculation. There were contemporaries and there have been scholars since who suggest that Trotsky, by all indications might’ve been even more radical than Stalin in the tempo that he wanted to achieve. Think of the slogan of permanent revolution. Trotsky also, who dabbled in so many things in his intellectual life, also spoke in almost utopian terms that are just astonishing to read.
Well, counterfactuals are hard, like you said. And one very quickly gets off into really deep waters in speculation. There were contemporaries and there have been scholars since who suggest that Trotsky, by all indications might’ve been even more radical than Stalin in the tempo that he wanted to achieve. Think of the slogan of permanent revolution. Trotsky also, who dabbled in so many things in his intellectual life, also spoke in almost utopian terms that are just astonishing to read.
In utopian terms about the construction of the new man and the new woman, and that out of the raw material of humanity, once you really get going, and once you’ve established a system that matches your hopes for the future, it’ll be possible to reconfigure people. And talk about ambition, to create essentially the next stage in human evolution, a new species growing out of humanity. Those don’t sound like very modest or limited approaches, and I guess we just really won’t know.
Lex Fridman
Do some of the destructive characteristics of communism have to go hand in hand? So, the central planning that we talked about, the censorship with the secret police, the concentration of power in one dictatorial figure. And let’s say again with the secret police, the violent oppression.
Do some of the destructive characteristics of communism have to go hand in hand? So, the central planning that we talked about, the censorship with the secret police, the concentration of power in one dictatorial figure. And let’s say again with the secret police, the violent oppression.
Vejas Liulevicius
One should add to those factors that have a kind of interrelated logic of their own, the sheer fact that communism comes to power in most of these instances as a result of war. As a result of the destruction of what came before and a power vacuum. So, think of the Russian revolutions in the wake of the fall of Tsarism. Think of the expansion of Stalin’s puppet regimes into Eastern Europe in the wake of World War II and the Red Army moving into occupied areas in Eastern Europe, although they announced that they’re coming as liberators. Consider the foundation of communist China on the heels of World War II, and yet more Chinese civil war. Consider cases like Korea, Vietnam. It’s likely that this already is a key element in setting things up for further crisis because upon seizure of power, if your expectation is, “Well, it ought to be relatively easy to get this system rolling and put it on a basis that’s after all, we have the roadmap to the future,” there will follow frustrations and impediments and resistance. And there’s a ratchet effect then there because it’ll produce more repression, producing even more problems that follow.
One should add to those factors that have a kind of interrelated logic of their own, the sheer fact that communism comes to power in most of these instances as a result of war. As a result of the destruction of what came before and a power vacuum. So, think of the Russian revolutions in the wake of the fall of Tsarism. Think of the expansion of Stalin’s puppet regimes into Eastern Europe in the wake of World War II and the Red Army moving into occupied areas in Eastern Europe, although they announced that they’re coming as liberators. Consider the foundation of communist China on the heels of World War II, and yet more Chinese civil war. Consider cases like Korea, Vietnam. It’s likely that this already is a key element in setting things up for further crisis because upon seizure of power, if your expectation is, “Well, it ought to be relatively easy to get this system rolling and put it on a basis that’s after all, we have the roadmap to the future,” there will follow frustrations and impediments and resistance. And there’s a ratchet effect then there because it’ll produce more repression, producing even more problems that follow.
What drives the whole thing forward, though, especially in its Leninist version, but already visible with Marx and Engels is the insistence on confidence. If you have the key to the future, all of these things are possible and necessary. This leads to an ethos. I think that that’s very hard for historians to quantify or to study in a methodical way, but it’s the insistence that you hear with Lenin and then especially with Stalin, that to be a Bolshevik means to be hard, to be realistic, to be consequential, meaning you don’t shy away from doing what needs to be done. Even if your primordial ethical remainders from whatever earlier experience you have, rebel against it.
Under Stalin, there’s a constant slogan of the Bolshevik tempo. The Bolsheviks, there’s no fortresses that they can’t storm. They can do everything. And in a way, this is the assertion that its will over everything. History can be moved forward and accelerated and probably your own actions justified as a result, no matter what they were, if you are sufficiently hard and determined and have the confidence to follow through. And then that obviously raises the ultimate question, what happens when that confidence ebbs or erodes or when it’s lost?
Totalitarianism
Lex Fridman
If we go to the 1920s to the home of Karl Marx. Fascism, as implemented by the Nazi party in Germany, was called the National Socialist German Workers Party. So, what were the similarities and differences of fascism, socialism, how it was conceived of in fascism and communism? And maybe you could speak to the broader battle of ideas that was happening at the time and battle of political control that was happening at the time.
If we go to the 1920s to the home of Karl Marx. Fascism, as implemented by the Nazi party in Germany, was called the National Socialist German Workers Party. So, what were the similarities and differences of fascism, socialism, how it was conceived of in fascism and communism? And maybe you could speak to the broader battle of ideas that was happening at the time and battle of political control that was happening at the time.
Vejas Liulevicius
Well, I mean, there’s a whole bunch of terms that are in play here, right? And when we speak of fascism, fascism in its original sense is a radical movement founded in Italy, which though it had been allegedly on the winning side of World War I is disappointed with the lack of rise in national prestige and territory that commences after the end of the. So bizarrely enough, it’s a socialist by the name of Benito Mussolini, who crafts an ideological message of glorification of the state. The people at large united in a militaristic way, on the march, ready to attack, ready to expand. A complete overthrow of liberal ideas of the rights of the individual or of representative democracy, and instead, vesting power in one leader, in his case, the Duce, Mussolini, in order to replicate in peacetime the ideal of total military mobilization in wartime. Although the Nazis in Germany are inspired and borrow heavily from fascist ideology, there also are different emphases that they include, and that includes their virulent racism from the outset, which in addition to a glorification of the state, glorification of the leader and preparation for national greatness, race is absolutely core. And it’s that racial radicalism that the Nazis espouse as a central idea, along with anti-Semitism, the demonizing in particular of the Jews and this insane racialist cosmology that the Nazis avow.
Well, I mean, there’s a whole bunch of terms that are in play here, right? And when we speak of fascism, fascism in its original sense is a radical movement founded in Italy, which though it had been allegedly on the winning side of World War I is disappointed with the lack of rise in national prestige and territory that commences after the end of the. So bizarrely enough, it’s a socialist by the name of Benito Mussolini, who crafts an ideological message of glorification of the state. The people at large united in a militaristic way, on the march, ready to attack, ready to expand. A complete overthrow of liberal ideas of the rights of the individual or of representative democracy, and instead, vesting power in one leader, in his case, the Duce, Mussolini, in order to replicate in peacetime the ideal of total military mobilization in wartime. Although the Nazis in Germany are inspired and borrow heavily from fascist ideology, there also are different emphases that they include, and that includes their virulent racism from the outset, which in addition to a glorification of the state, glorification of the leader and preparation for national greatness, race is absolutely core. And it’s that racial radicalism that the Nazis espouse as a central idea, along with anti-Semitism, the demonizing in particular of the Jews and this insane racialist cosmology that the Nazis avow.
It is the assertion that the Nazis will uniquely bring to pass unity in the people, unity in the society that leads them to give themselves this odd name of national socialist. Some leaders like Goebbels among the Nazis, accent the socialist part to begin with. Others put the accent firmly on the nationalist part. In part, the term they chose for their movement was meant to be confusing. It was meant to take slogans or words from different parts of the political spectrum, to fuse them into something unfamiliar and new, and claim that they’d overcome all earlier political divisions. The Nazis claimed that they were a movement, not a party, even though their party was called a party.
So, what did Nazism and Bolshevism and Communism share, or how were they opposed to one another? What we need to start with, by making clear, they were ideological arch enemies. In both worldviews, the opposite side represented the ultimate expression of the evil that needed to be exercised from history in order for their desired utopia to be brought about. And this leads to strange and perverted beliefs about reality. From the perspective of the Nazis. The Nazis claimed that because they saw the Jews as a demonic element in human history, the Bolsheviks didn’t really believe all of this economic dialectical materialism. They were in fact a racial conspiracy, it was alleged.
And so the Nazis used a term of Judeo-Bolshevism to argue that communism is essentially a conspiracy steered by the Jews, which was complete nonsense. For their part, the communists, and from the perspective of the Soviet Union, the Nazis were in essence a super capitalist conspiracy. If the cosmological enemy are the capitalists and the owners, the exploiters, then all of the rigamarole about race and nationalism are distractions. They’re meant to fool the poor saps who enlist in that movement. It’s essentially steered by capitalist owners who, it is claimed, are reduced to this desperate expedient of coming up with this thuggish-
Vejas Liulevicius
… To this desperate expedient of coming up with this thuggish party that represents the last gasp of capitalism. So, bizarrely enough, from the Communist perspective, the rise of the Nazis can be interpreted as a good sign because it means that capitalism is almost done because this is the last undisguised, naked face of capitalism nearing its end. Beyond this ideological total opposition, in terms of their hoped-for futures, the reality is that there were aspects that were shared on either side. That included the conviction that they could agree that the age of democracy was done and that the 19th century had had its day with experiments with representative democracy, the claims of human rights, classical liberal ideas, and all of this had been revealed as bankrupt.
… To this desperate expedient of coming up with this thuggish party that represents the last gasp of capitalism. So, bizarrely enough, from the Communist perspective, the rise of the Nazis can be interpreted as a good sign because it means that capitalism is almost done because this is the last undisguised, naked face of capitalism nearing its end. Beyond this ideological total opposition, in terms of their hoped-for futures, the reality is that there were aspects that were shared on either side. That included the conviction that they could agree that the age of democracy was done and that the 19th century had had its day with experiments with representative democracy, the claims of human rights, classical liberal ideas, and all of this had been revealed as bankrupt.
It had gotten you what? It got you, first, the First World War as a total conflict leaving tens of millions dead. And then, economically, The Great Depression, showing that the end was not far away. This produced, at one in the same time, both ideological opposition and instances, a vastly cynical cooperation. In terms of the Weimar Republic, it’s obvious, with the benefit of hindsight, that German democracy had ceased to function even before Hitler comes to power. But in the process of making democracy unworkable in Germany, the extremes, the Nazi Stormtrooper Army with their brown shirts and the Communist street fighters, had cooperated in heightening an atmosphere of civil war that left people searching for desperate expedience in the last days of the Weimar Republic.
The most compelling case of their cooperation was the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Pact on August 23rd, 1939, which enables Hitler to start World War II. A Non-Aggression Pact, in official terms, it contained secret clauses whereby the Nazis and the Soviets meeting in Moscow under Stalin’s wary eye, had agreed on territorial division of Eastern Europe and making common cause as each claiming to be the winner of the future. So, in spite of their oppositions, these were regimes that were able, very cynically, to work together to dire effect. In the course of the 1950s, in particular, there arose political scientists who also crafted an explanation for ways in which these regimes, although they were opposed to one another, actually bore morphological resemblances.
They operated in ways that, in spite of ideological differences, bore similarities. And such political scientists, Hannah Arendt, chief among them, crafted a model called Totalitarianism, borrowing a term that the Fascists had liked about themselves, to define regimes, like the Nazis, like Stalin’s Soviet Union, for a new kind of dictatorship that was not a backwards-cast revival of ancient barbarism but was something new, a new form of dictatorship that laid total claims on hearts and minds, that didn’t want just passive obedience but wanted fanatical loyalty. That combined fear with compulsion in order to generate belief in a system, or at the very least, atomize the masses to the point where they would go along with the plans of the regime.
This model has often met with very strong criticism on the grounds that no regime in human history has yet achieved total control of the population under its grip. That’s true, but that’s not what Hannah Arendt was saying. Hannah Arendt was saying, “There will always be inefficiencies, there will be resistance, there will be divergences.” What was new was not the alleged achievement of total control, it was the ambition, the articulation of the ambition that it might be possible to exercise such fundamental and thoroughgoing control of entire populations. And the final frightening thought that Arendt kept before her was, “What if this is not a model that comes to us from benighted uncivilized ages? What if this is what the future is going to look like?” That’s a horrifying intuition.
Response to Darryl Cooper
Lex Fridman
So let me ask you about Darrell Cooper, who is a historian and podcaster, did a podcast with Tucker Carlson, and he made some claims there and elsewhere about World War II. There are two claims that I would love to get your perspective on. First, he stated that Churchill was “The chief villain of the Second World War.” I think Darrell argues that Churchill forced Hitler to expand the war beyond Poland into a global war. Second, the mass murder of Jews, Poles, Slavs, Gypsies, in death camps was an accident, a by product of global war. And in fact, the most humane extermination of prisoners of war possible, given the alternative, was death by starvation. So I was wondering if you can respond to each of those claims.
So let me ask you about Darrell Cooper, who is a historian and podcaster, did a podcast with Tucker Carlson, and he made some claims there and elsewhere about World War II. There are two claims that I would love to get your perspective on. First, he stated that Churchill was “The chief villain of the Second World War.” I think Darrell argues that Churchill forced Hitler to expand the war beyond Poland into a global war. Second, the mass murder of Jews, Poles, Slavs, Gypsies, in death camps was an accident, a by product of global war. And in fact, the most humane extermination of prisoners of war possible, given the alternative, was death by starvation. So I was wondering if you can respond to each of those claims.
Lex Fridman
Well, I think that this is a bunch of absurdity and it would be laughable if it wasn’t so serious in its implications. To address the points in turn, Churchill was not the chief villain of the Second World War. The notion that Churchill allegedly forced Hitler to escalate and expand a conflict that could have been limited to Poland, that assertion is based on a complete neglect of what Nazi ideology was. The Nazi worldview and racism was not a ideology that was limited in its application, it looked toward world domination. In the years since the Nazis had come to power, they sponsored programs of education called geopolitics, which urged Germans to think incontinence, think incontinence, to see themselves as one of the superpowers that would battle for the future of the world. Now in retrospect, we of course can see that Germany was not in a position to legitimate a claim like that but the Nazis aims were anything but limited.
Well, I think that this is a bunch of absurdity and it would be laughable if it wasn’t so serious in its implications. To address the points in turn, Churchill was not the chief villain of the Second World War. The notion that Churchill allegedly forced Hitler to escalate and expand a conflict that could have been limited to Poland, that assertion is based on a complete neglect of what Nazi ideology was. The Nazi worldview and racism was not a ideology that was limited in its application, it looked toward world domination. In the years since the Nazis had come to power, they sponsored programs of education called geopolitics, which urged Germans to think incontinence, think incontinence, to see themselves as one of the superpowers that would battle for the future of the world. Now in retrospect, we of course can see that Germany was not in a position to legitimate a claim like that but the Nazis aims were anything but limited.
In particular, this sort of argument has been tried out in different ways before. In previous decades, there had been attempts by historians who were actually well-read and well-published to argue that World War II had been, in part, a contingent event that had been brought about by accidents or miscalculations. And such explanations argued that, if you put Hitler’s ideology aside you actually could interpret him as a pretty traditional German politician in the stripe of Bismarck. Now, when I say it like that I think you can spot the problem immediately, when you put the ideology aside. To try to analyze Hitler’s acts or alleged motives, in the absence of the ideology that he himself subscribed to and described in hateful detail in Mein Kampf and other manifestos and speeches, is an enterprise that’s doomed to failure justifiably.
The notion that the mass murder of Jews, Poles, Slavs, and Gypsies was an event that simply happened as a result of unforeseen events, and that it was understood as somehow being humane, also runs contrary to the historical fact. When Poland was invaded, the Nazis unleashed a killing wave in their so-called Operation Tannenberg, which sent in specially trained and ideologically pre-prepared killers who were given the name of the units of the Einsatzgruppen in order to wipe out the Polish leadership and also to kill Jews.
This predates any of the Operation Barbarossa and the Nazi’s invasion of the Soviet Union. The Nazis, moreover, in many different expressions of their ideology, had made clear that their plans, you can read this in Mein Kampf, for Eastern Europe, were subjugation and ethnic cleansing on a vast scale, so I consider both of these claims absolutely untenable, given the facts and documents.
Lex Fridman
So do you think it was always the case that Nazi Germany was going to invade the Soviet Union?
So do you think it was always the case that Nazi Germany was going to invade the Soviet Union?
Vejas Liulevicius
I think, as you can read in Mein Kampf, this is what’s necessary in order to bring that racial utopia to pass. And so, while the timetable might be flexible, while obviously geopolitical constellations would play a role in determining when such a thing might be possible, it was most definitely on his list. And I would want to add, that in my own scholarship I’ve worked to explore some of these themes a little bit further. My second book, which is entitled The German Myth of the East, which appeared with Oxford University Press, examines centuries in the German encounter with Eastern Europe and how Germans have thought about Eastern Europe, whether in positive ways or in negative ways.
I think, as you can read in Mein Kampf, this is what’s necessary in order to bring that racial utopia to pass. And so, while the timetable might be flexible, while obviously geopolitical constellations would play a role in determining when such a thing might be possible, it was most definitely on his list. And I would want to add, that in my own scholarship I’ve worked to explore some of these themes a little bit further. My second book, which is entitled The German Myth of the East, which appeared with Oxford University Press, examines centuries in the German encounter with Eastern Europe and how Germans have thought about Eastern Europe, whether in positive ways or in negative ways.
And one thing that emerges from this investigation is that even before the Nazis come to power in Germany there are certainly negative and dehumanizing stereotypes about Eastern Europeans, some of them activated by the experiences of German occupation in some of these regions during the First World War. But the Nazis take the very most destructive and most negative of all those stereotypes and make them the dominant ones, making no secret of their expected future of domination and annihilation in the East.
Lex Fridman
The idea of Lebensraum, is it possible to implement that idea without Ukraine?
The idea of Lebensraum, is it possible to implement that idea without Ukraine?
Vejas Liulevicius
Hitler has Ukraine in his horizon as one of the chief prizes. And the Nazis then craft extensive plans, a master plan that they work on in draft, after draft, after draft, even as the balance of the war is turning against them on the Eastern front. This master plan is called the Generalplan Ost, meaning the general plan for the East. And it foresees things like mega highways on which the Germanic master race will travel to vacation in Crimea, or how their settlements will be scientifically distributed in the wide open spaces of Ukraine for agriculture that will feed an expanded and purified Germanic master race. So this was not peripheral to the Nazi ambitions, but central.
Hitler has Ukraine in his horizon as one of the chief prizes. And the Nazis then craft extensive plans, a master plan that they work on in draft, after draft, after draft, even as the balance of the war is turning against them on the Eastern front. This master plan is called the Generalplan Ost, meaning the general plan for the East. And it foresees things like mega highways on which the Germanic master race will travel to vacation in Crimea, or how their settlements will be scientifically distributed in the wide open spaces of Ukraine for agriculture that will feed an expanded and purified Germanic master race. So this was not peripheral to the Nazi ambitions, but central.
Lex Fridman
As I best understand, there is extensive and definitive evidence that the Nazis always wanted to invade the Soviet Union and there was always a racial component, and not just about the Jews. They wanted to enslave and exterminate the Jews, yes, but the Slavic people, the Slavs. And if he was successful at conquering the Soviet Union, I think the things that would be done to the Slavic people would make the Holocaust seem insignificant. In my understanding in terms of the numbers and the brutality and the viciousness in which he characterized the Slavic people.
As I best understand, there is extensive and definitive evidence that the Nazis always wanted to invade the Soviet Union and there was always a racial component, and not just about the Jews. They wanted to enslave and exterminate the Jews, yes, but the Slavic people, the Slavs. And if he was successful at conquering the Soviet Union, I think the things that would be done to the Slavic people would make the Holocaust seem insignificant. In my understanding in terms of the numbers and the brutality and the viciousness in which he characterized the Slavic people.
Vejas Liulevicius
In their worldview, the Jews were especially demonized. And so, the project of the domination of Eastern Europe involves this horrific program of mechanized, systematized, bureaucratically organized, and horrifyingly efficient mass murder of the Jewish populations. What the Nazis expected for the Slavs had a longer timeline. Himmler expected, the head of the SS. The SS is given a special mission to be part of the transformation of these regions ethnically, and Himmler, in his role of envisioning this German future in Eastern Europe, gives such a chilling phrase. He says that while certain Slavs will fall victim immediately, some proportion of Slavs will not be shipped out or deported or annihilated but instead they will remain as slaves for our culture. And in that one phrase, Himmler managed to defile and deface everything that the word culture had meant to generations of the best German thinkers and artists in the centuries before the Nazis.
In their worldview, the Jews were especially demonized. And so, the project of the domination of Eastern Europe involves this horrific program of mechanized, systematized, bureaucratically organized, and horrifyingly efficient mass murder of the Jewish populations. What the Nazis expected for the Slavs had a longer timeline. Himmler expected, the head of the SS. The SS is given a special mission to be part of the transformation of these regions ethnically, and Himmler, in his role of envisioning this German future in Eastern Europe, gives such a chilling phrase. He says that while certain Slavs will fall victim immediately, some proportion of Slavs will not be shipped out or deported or annihilated but instead they will remain as slaves for our culture. And in that one phrase, Himmler managed to defile and deface everything that the word culture had meant to generations of the best German thinkers and artists in the centuries before the Nazis.
The notion of slaves for our culture was part of his longer term expectation. And then, there’s finally a fact that speaks volumes about what the Nazis planned for the east. Hitler and Himmler envisioned permanent war on the Eastern Front, not a peace treaty, not a settlement, not a border, but a constant moving of the border, every generation, hundreds of miles east in order to keep winning more and more living space. And with analogy to other frontiers, to always give more fighting experience and more training and aggression to generation after generation of German soldiers. In terms of nightmarish visions, this one’s right up there.
Lex Fridman
And always repopulating the land conquered with the German, the Aryan race, so in terms of race, repopulating with race. Enslaving the Slavic people and exterminating them. Because there’s so many of them, it takes a long time to exterminate.
And always repopulating the land conquered with the German, the Aryan race, so in terms of race, repopulating with race. Enslaving the Slavic people and exterminating them. Because there’s so many of them, it takes a long time to exterminate.
Vejas Liulevicius
And even in the case of the Germans themselves, the hidden message behind even Nazi propaganda about unity and about German national identity was, the Nazis envisioned relentless purges of the German genetic stock as well. So among their victims are people with disabilities, people who are defined as not racially pure enough for the future, even though they are clearly Germans by identity. The full scale and the comprehensive ambitions of the Nazis are as breathtaking as they are horrifying.
And even in the case of the Germans themselves, the hidden message behind even Nazi propaganda about unity and about German national identity was, the Nazis envisioned relentless purges of the German genetic stock as well. So among their victims are people with disabilities, people who are defined as not racially pure enough for the future, even though they are clearly Germans by identity. The full scale and the comprehensive ambitions of the Nazis are as breathtaking as they are horrifying.
Lex Fridman
One of the other things I saw Daryl tweet was that what ended up happening in the Second World War was the worst possible thing that could have happened, and I just also wanted to comment on that. Which I can imagine a very large number of possible scenarios that could have happened that are much, much worse, including the successful conquering of the Soviet Union. As we said, the kind of things that would be done, and the total war ever ongoing for generations, which would result in hundreds of millions of deaths and torture and enslavement, not to mention the other possible trajectory of the nuclear bomb.
One of the other things I saw Daryl tweet was that what ended up happening in the Second World War was the worst possible thing that could have happened, and I just also wanted to comment on that. Which I can imagine a very large number of possible scenarios that could have happened that are much, much worse, including the successful conquering of the Soviet Union. As we said, the kind of things that would be done, and the total war ever ongoing for generations, which would result in hundreds of millions of deaths and torture and enslavement, not to mention the other possible trajectory of the nuclear bomb.
Vejas Liulevicius
That’s right, that’s right. I would think that the Nazis with atomic weapons, with no compunctions about deploying them, would rank up there as even worse than the horrors that we saw.
That’s right, that’s right. I would think that the Nazis with atomic weapons, with no compunctions about deploying them, would rank up there as even worse than the horrors that we saw.
Lex Fridman
Now, let me steel man a point that was also made as part of this, that the oversimplified narrative of sort of, to put it crudely, Hitler bad, Churchill good, has been used and abused by neocons and warmongers and the military industrial complex, in the years since, to basically say this particular leader is just like Hitler or maybe Hitler of the 1930s and we must invade now before he becomes the Hitler of the 1940s. That has been applied in the Middle East, in Eastern Europe, and God forbid, that can be also applied in the war with China in the 21st century. So yes, warmongers do sure love to use Hitler and apply that template to wage war. We should be wary of that and be careful of that, both the over application of this historical template onto the modern world and of warmongers in general.
Now, let me steel man a point that was also made as part of this, that the oversimplified narrative of sort of, to put it crudely, Hitler bad, Churchill good, has been used and abused by neocons and warmongers and the military industrial complex, in the years since, to basically say this particular leader is just like Hitler or maybe Hitler of the 1930s and we must invade now before he becomes the Hitler of the 1940s. That has been applied in the Middle East, in Eastern Europe, and God forbid, that can be also applied in the war with China in the 21st century. So yes, warmongers do sure love to use Hitler and apply that template to wage war. We should be wary of that and be careful of that, both the over application of this historical template onto the modern world and of warmongers in general.
Vejas Liulevicius
Yeah, and I think that nobody should like oversimplified narratives. We need subtle and accurate narratives.
Yeah, and I think that nobody should like oversimplified narratives. We need subtle and accurate narratives.
Lex Fridman
And also, I just would like to say that probably, as we’ve been talking about Stalin and Hitler, are singular figures. And just as we’ve been talking about the implementation of these totalitarian regimes, they are singular in human history, that we never saw anything like it and I hope, from everything it looks like, we’ll never see anything like it again.
And also, I just would like to say that probably, as we’ve been talking about Stalin and Hitler, are singular figures. And just as we’ve been talking about the implementation of these totalitarian regimes, they are singular in human history, that we never saw anything like it and I hope, from everything it looks like, we’ll never see anything like it again.
Vejas Liulevicius
I mean, there’s certainly striking and unique historical characters in the record. One of the things that’s so disturbing about Hannah Arendt’s model of totalitarianism is, the leader can be changed. The system itself demands that there be a leader who allegedly is all-powerful and all-knowing and prophetic and the like, but whether particular figures are interchangeable in that role is a key question.
I mean, there’s certainly striking and unique historical characters in the record. One of the things that’s so disturbing about Hannah Arendt’s model of totalitarianism is, the leader can be changed. The system itself demands that there be a leader who allegedly is all-powerful and all-knowing and prophetic and the like, but whether particular figures are interchangeable in that role is a key question.
Nazis vs Communists in Germany
Lex Fridman
Let me go back to the 1920s and sort of ask another counterfactual question. Given the battle between the Marxists and the Communists and National Socialists, was it possible and what would that world look like if the Communists indeed won in Germany as Karl Marx envisioned, and it made total sense given the industrialized expanse that Germany represented. Was that possible and what would it look like if it happened?
Let me go back to the 1920s and sort of ask another counterfactual question. Given the battle between the Marxists and the Communists and National Socialists, was it possible and what would that world look like if the Communists indeed won in Germany as Karl Marx envisioned, and it made total sense given the industrialized expanse that Germany represented. Was that possible and what would it look like if it happened?
Vejas Liulevicius
I would think that the reality was probably very remote, but that was certainly their ambition. German Communists get quoted as saying, “After Hitler, it’s our turn.” Their sentiment was that the arrival of Nazism on the scene was a sign of how decrepit and incompetent and doomed capitalism was. In hindsight, that’s almost impossible to believe because what happens is, the Nazis with their characteristic brutal ruthlessness, simply decapitate the party and arrest the activists who are supposed to be waiting to take over. So that’s forestalled. A further hypothetical that gets raised a lot is, couldn’t the social Democrats and the Communists have worked together to keep Hitler out of power?
I would think that the reality was probably very remote, but that was certainly their ambition. German Communists get quoted as saying, “After Hitler, it’s our turn.” Their sentiment was that the arrival of Nazism on the scene was a sign of how decrepit and incompetent and doomed capitalism was. In hindsight, that’s almost impossible to believe because what happens is, the Nazis with their characteristic brutal ruthlessness, simply decapitate the party and arrest the activists who are supposed to be waiting to take over. So that’s forestalled. A further hypothetical that gets raised a lot is, couldn’t the social Democrats and the Communists have worked together to keep Hitler out of power?
That’s where the prior history comes into play. The very fact that the German revolution in 1919 sees Socialists killing Socialists produces a dynamic that’s so negative that it’s nearly impossible to settle on cooperation, added to the fact that the Communists see the Social Democrats as rivals for the loyalty of the working class. In terms of just statistical likelihood, a lot of experts at the time felt surely the German army is going to step in, and the most likely outcome would have been a German general shutting down the democracy and producing a military dictatorship. It says a lot about how dreadful and bloody the record of the Nazis was, that some people in retrospect would have felt that that military dictatorship would’ve been preferable, if it had obviated the need for the ordeal under the Nazis.
Lex Fridman
What do you think Marx would say about the 20th century? Let’s take it before we get to Mao and China, just looking at the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
What do you think Marx would say about the 20th century? Let’s take it before we get to Mao and China, just looking at the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
Vejas Liulevicius
That’s a really good question. I think that Marx was flexible in his expectations about tactics and strategies, even as he was sure that he had actually cracked a big intellectual problem of what the future’s going to look like. So how it would play out, he was a man who had to deal with a lot of disappointments because in revolutionary uprising after revolutionary uprising, whether it was in the revolutions of 1848 across Europe, whether it was in Poland, whether it was in the Paris Commune, this is it. This is the outbreak of the real thing, and then it doesn’t end up happening. So I think that he’d probably have tried to be patient about the turn of events.
That’s a really good question. I think that Marx was flexible in his expectations about tactics and strategies, even as he was sure that he had actually cracked a big intellectual problem of what the future’s going to look like. So how it would play out, he was a man who had to deal with a lot of disappointments because in revolutionary uprising after revolutionary uprising, whether it was in the revolutions of 1848 across Europe, whether it was in Poland, whether it was in the Paris Commune, this is it. This is the outbreak of the real thing, and then it doesn’t end up happening. So I think that he’d probably have tried to be patient about the turn of events.
We mentioned at the outset that Marx felt it was unlikely that a workers’ revolution would break out in the Russian Empire because for that you needed lots of industrial workers and they didn’t have a lot of industry. There’s a footnote to add there, and it proves his flexibility. A Russian socialist wrote to Marx asking, “Might it not be possible for Russia to escape some stages of capitalist development? I mean, do you have to rigidly follow that scheme?” And Marx’s answer was convoluted, but it wasn’t a no, and that suggests that Marx was willing to entertain all sorts of possible scenarios. I think he would certainly have been very surprised at the course of events as it unfolded because it didn’t match his expectations at the outset.
Lex Fridman
Not to put this on him, but would he be okay with the price of [inaudible 02:30:02] for the utopian destination of communism? Meaning, is it okay to crack a few eggs to make an omelet?
Not to put this on him, but would he be okay with the price of [inaudible 02:30:02] for the utopian destination of communism? Meaning, is it okay to crack a few eggs to make an omelet?
Vejas Liulevicius
Well, we don’t know what Marx would say if he were posed that question deliberately, but we do know in the case of a Marxist historian, Eric Hobsbawm, who was a prolific and celebrated British historian of the 19th and 20th centuries. And he was put this question in the ’90s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and he stated forthrightly that because the Soviet Union failed such sacrifices were inordinate. But if the experiment had succeeded and a glorious future had been open for mankind as a result of the Soviet Union’s success, that would lead to a different reply. And that is one person’s perspective.
Well, we don’t know what Marx would say if he were posed that question deliberately, but we do know in the case of a Marxist historian, Eric Hobsbawm, who was a prolific and celebrated British historian of the 19th and 20th centuries. And he was put this question in the ’90s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and he stated forthrightly that because the Soviet Union failed such sacrifices were inordinate. But if the experiment had succeeded and a glorious future had been open for mankind as a result of the Soviet Union’s success, that would lead to a different reply. And that is one person’s perspective.
Mao
Lex Fridman
So that takes us to the other side of the world. The side that’s often in the West, not considered very much when we talk about human history, Chinese dynasties, empires, are fascinating, complex, and there’s just a history that’s not as deeply explored as it should be. And the same applies to the 20th century. So Chinese radicals founded the Chinese Communist Party, CCP, in July 1921. Among them, as you talk about, was Mao. What was the story of Mao’s rise to power?
So that takes us to the other side of the world. The side that’s often in the West, not considered very much when we talk about human history, Chinese dynasties, empires, are fascinating, complex, and there’s just a history that’s not as deeply explored as it should be. And the same applies to the 20th century. So Chinese radicals founded the Chinese Communist Party, CCP, in July 1921. Among them, as you talk about, was Mao. What was the story of Mao’s rise to power?
Vejas Liulevicius
So Mao takes a page from the book of Lenin by adapting or seeking to adapt Marx’s ideology to a context that would have surprised Marx significantly. And that is, not only to set the revolution in, an as yet, not industrialized country, but moreover to make the peasants, rather than being conservative sacks of potatoes, to make them into the prime movers of the success of this political venture. That’s a case of the phenomenon that we talked about earlier. When is an adaptation of an ideology or a change to an ideology a valid adjustment that you’ve made or adaptation? And when is it already so different that it’s something entirely distinct? Maoism was very clearly intended to answer this question for the Chinese context and, by implication, other non-Western parts of the world. This was, in part, Mao’s way, whose ambition was great, to put himself at the head of a successful international movement and to be the successor to Stalin, whose role he both admired and resented, from having to be the junior partner. To take an example of a masterwork and a major milestone in the history of Communism, the Polish philosopher, Leszek Kolakowski, who was at first a committed Communist and then later became disillusioned and wrote a three-volume study of Marxist thought, called Currents of Marxism. In that book, when he reaches Maoism, Kołakowski essentially throws up his hands and says, “It’s hardly you’d even know what to do with this,” because putting the peasantry in the vanguard role is something that is already at variance with the original design.
So Mao takes a page from the book of Lenin by adapting or seeking to adapt Marx’s ideology to a context that would have surprised Marx significantly. And that is, not only to set the revolution in, an as yet, not industrialized country, but moreover to make the peasants, rather than being conservative sacks of potatoes, to make them into the prime movers of the success of this political venture. That’s a case of the phenomenon that we talked about earlier. When is an adaptation of an ideology or a change to an ideology a valid adjustment that you’ve made or adaptation? And when is it already so different that it’s something entirely distinct? Maoism was very clearly intended to answer this question for the Chinese context and, by implication, other non-Western parts of the world. This was, in part, Mao’s way, whose ambition was great, to put himself at the head of a successful international movement and to be the successor to Stalin, whose role he both admired and resented, from having to be the junior partner. To take an example of a masterwork and a major milestone in the history of Communism, the Polish philosopher, Leszek Kolakowski, who was at first a committed Communist and then later became disillusioned and wrote a three-volume study of Marxist thought, called Currents of Marxism. In that book, when he reaches Maoism, Kołakowski essentially throws up his hands and says, “It’s hardly you’d even know what to do with this,” because putting the peasantry in the vanguard role is something that is already at variance with the original design.
But Marx says this is an improved version. This is an adapted and truer version of Marxism for the Chinese context. In case after case in Mao’s rise to power, we see a really complicated relationship with Stalin. He works hard to gain Stalin’s support because The Common Turn, the international organization headquartered in Moscow working to encourage and help revolutionaries worldwide, is skeptical about the Chinese Communists to begin with, and believes that China still has a long way to go before it’s reached the stage where it’s ripe for Communist revolution, and in a way that’s more orthodox Marxism than what Mao is championing.
Vejas Liulevicius
Hey, that’s more orthodox Marxism than what Mao is championing. Mao Chafes under Stalin’s acknowledged leadership of international communism as a movement. And in 1950, when Mao goes to visit Stalin in Moscow, in order to sign a treaty of cooperation, he’s left waiting for days and days and days in a snub that is meant to show him that you’re just not as important as you might think you are. And then when Stalin dies in 1953, Mao feels the moment is ready for him to step into the leadership position surpassing the Soviet Union. So many of Mao’s actions like the Great Leap Forward and the agricultural disasters that follow from that are literally attempts to outdo Stalin, to outperform Stalin, to show that what Stalin was not able to do, the Chinese Communist regime will be able to bring off. And the toll for that hubris is vast.
Hey, that’s more orthodox Marxism than what Mao is championing. Mao Chafes under Stalin’s acknowledged leadership of international communism as a movement. And in 1950, when Mao goes to visit Stalin in Moscow, in order to sign a treaty of cooperation, he’s left waiting for days and days and days in a snub that is meant to show him that you’re just not as important as you might think you are. And then when Stalin dies in 1953, Mao feels the moment is ready for him to step into the leadership position surpassing the Soviet Union. So many of Mao’s actions like the Great Leap Forward and the agricultural disasters that follow from that are literally attempts to outdo Stalin, to outperform Stalin, to show that what Stalin was not able to do, the Chinese Communist regime will be able to bring off. And the toll for that hubris is vast.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. In the darkest of ways, he did outdo Stalin.
Yeah. In the darkest of ways, he did outdo Stalin.
Vejas Liulevicius
That’s right. In the statistics.
That’s right. In the statistics.
Great Leap Forward
Lex Fridman
The Great Leap Forward ended up killing approximately 40 million people from starvation or murder. Can you describe the Great Leap Forward?
The Great Leap Forward ended up killing approximately 40 million people from starvation or murder. Can you describe the Great Leap Forward?
Vejas Liulevicius
It was modeled on the crash industrialization that Stalin had wanted to undertake in the Soviet Union and to outdo it. The notion of the Great Leap Forward was that it would be possible for the peasant masses out of their conviction in the rightness of the Chinese Communist cause to industrialize China overnight. That involved things like creating small smelting furnaces in individual farm communes. It involved folding together farming territories into vast communes of very large size that were, just because of their sheer gigantism, supposed to be by definition more efficient than small-scale farming. It ended up producing environmental disasters and campaigns to eliminate birds or insects.
It was modeled on the crash industrialization that Stalin had wanted to undertake in the Soviet Union and to outdo it. The notion of the Great Leap Forward was that it would be possible for the peasant masses out of their conviction in the rightness of the Chinese Communist cause to industrialize China overnight. That involved things like creating small smelting furnaces in individual farm communes. It involved folding together farming territories into vast communes of very large size that were, just because of their sheer gigantism, supposed to be by definition more efficient than small-scale farming. It ended up producing environmental disasters and campaigns to eliminate birds or insects.
Were supposed to demonstrate mastery over nature by sheer acts of will. These included things like adopting Soviet agricultural techniques that were pioneered by a crackpot biologist by the name of Trofim Lysenko that produced more agricultural disaster that involved things like plowing to depths that were not practical for the seeds to germinate and grow but were supposed to produce super plants that would produce bumper harvests and outpace the capitalist countries and the Soviet Union. So, the context for all of this is a race to get first to the achievement of full-scale communism.
One of the themes that I think it’s so valuable to pursue and to take seriously in the history of communism is what concrete promises were made. In the case of China, Mao made promises and projections for the future that were worrying even to some of his own assistants. He exclaimed that perhaps by 1961, perhaps by 1973, China would be the winner in this competition and it would’ve achieved full communism so that which Marx had sketched as the endpoint of humanity would be achieved first by the Chinese. Later, his own comrades, when he passed from the scene, felt the need to tamper that a little bit and promised that they would achieve full communism by the year 2000. Such promises are helpful to a regime to create enthusiasm and to hold out to people, the prospect of real successes just around the corner. But what happens when the date arrives and you haven’t actually achieved that goal? That’s one ticking time bomb that played a role in the increasing erosion of confidence in the Soviet Union and the case of China must have been something similar.
Lex Fridman
So there’s a lot of other elements that are similar to the Soviet Union. Maybe you could speak to the Hundred Flowers Campaign.
So there’s a lot of other elements that are similar to the Soviet Union. Maybe you could speak to the Hundred Flowers Campaign.
Vejas Liulevicius
The Hundred Flowers Campaign is a chance for Mao who has felt that he has lost prestige and lost standing in the party because of the disasters of the Great Leap Forward to regain some of that momentum. And the whole Hundred Flowers Campaign officially titled The Rectification Campaign to set things right is still shrouded in mystery. Historians disagree about how to interpret what Mao was actually up to. The most cynical variant is that Mao encouraged Chinese thinkers and intellectuals to share ideas and to engage in constructive criticism, to propose alternatives, and to let a full discussion happen.
The Hundred Flowers Campaign is a chance for Mao who has felt that he has lost prestige and lost standing in the party because of the disasters of the Great Leap Forward to regain some of that momentum. And the whole Hundred Flowers Campaign officially titled The Rectification Campaign to set things right is still shrouded in mystery. Historians disagree about how to interpret what Mao was actually up to. The most cynical variant is that Mao encouraged Chinese thinkers and intellectuals to share ideas and to engage in constructive criticism, to propose alternatives, and to let a full discussion happen.
And then after some of them had ventured that to come in and purge them, to punish them ruthlessly for having done what he had invited them to do. That is the most cynical variant. Some historians argue that Mao himself was not prepared for the ideas that he himself had invited into the public square and that he grew anxious and worried and angry at this without having thought this through in a cynical way to begin with. The end result is the same. The end result is once again negative selection. The decimation of those who are most venturesome, those who are most talented and intelligent are punished relentlessly for that.
Lex Fridman
And just a general culture of censorship and fear and all the same stuff we saw in the Soviet Union.
And just a general culture of censorship and fear and all the same stuff we saw in the Soviet Union.
Vejas Liulevicius
That’s right. I mean, think of the impact on officials who are loyal servants of the regime and just want to get along. The message goes out loud and clear. “Don’t be venturesome, do not propose reforms. Stick with the tried and true and that’ll be the safe route even if it ends in ultimately stagnation.”
That’s right. I mean, think of the impact on officials who are loyal servants of the regime and just want to get along. The message goes out loud and clear. “Don’t be venturesome, do not propose reforms. Stick with the tried and true and that’ll be the safe route even if it ends in ultimately stagnation.”
Lex Fridman
So, as the same question I asked about the Soviet Union, why do you think there was so much failure of policies that Mao implemented in China during his rule?
So, as the same question I asked about the Soviet Union, why do you think there was so much failure of policies that Mao implemented in China during his rule?
Vejas Liulevicius
Mao himself had a view of human beings as being, as he put it, beautiful blank pieces of paper upon which one can write new characters. And that is clearly at variance with what you and I know about the complex nature of human beings as we actually encounter them in the world. I think that in the process of hatching schemes that were one-size-fits-all for a country as big and as varied in its communities as China, inevitably, such an imposition of one model was going to lead to serious malfunctions. And so much of what other episodes in Chinese history had showed the entrepreneurial capacity, the productive capacity economically of the Chinese people was suppressed by being fitted into these rigid schemes. What we’ve seen since, after Mao passes from the scene and with the forms of Deng Xiaoping one sees just how much of those energies had been forcibly suppressed for so long and now we’re allowed to re-emerge.
Mao himself had a view of human beings as being, as he put it, beautiful blank pieces of paper upon which one can write new characters. And that is clearly at variance with what you and I know about the complex nature of human beings as we actually encounter them in the world. I think that in the process of hatching schemes that were one-size-fits-all for a country as big and as varied in its communities as China, inevitably, such an imposition of one model was going to lead to serious malfunctions. And so much of what other episodes in Chinese history had showed the entrepreneurial capacity, the productive capacity economically of the Chinese people was suppressed by being fitted into these rigid schemes. What we’ve seen since, after Mao passes from the scene and with the forms of Deng Xiaoping one sees just how much of those energies had been forcibly suppressed for so long and now we’re allowed to re-emerge.
China after Mao
Lex Fridman
Mao died in 1976. You wrote that the CCP in ’81, looking back through the lens of historical analysis, said that he was 70% correct. Seven zero, exactly, 70% correct.
Mao died in 1976. You wrote that the CCP in ’81, looking back through the lens of historical analysis, said that he was 70% correct. Seven zero, exactly, 70% correct.
Vejas Liulevicius
Yeah. Not 69, not 71.
Yeah. Not 69, not 71.
Lex Fridman
Not 71. The scientific precision, I mean we should say that again and again. The co-opting of the authority of science by the Soviet Union, by Mao, by Nazi Germany, Nazi Science is terrifying and should serve as a reminder that science is the thing that is one of the most beautiful creations of humanity but is also a thing that could be used by politicians and dictators to do horrific things. And-
Not 71. The scientific precision, I mean we should say that again and again. The co-opting of the authority of science by the Soviet Union, by Mao, by Nazi Germany, Nazi Science is terrifying and should serve as a reminder that science is the thing that is one of the most beautiful creations of humanity but is also a thing that could be used by politicians and dictators to do horrific things. And-
Vejas Liulevicius
His essence is questing, not certainty.
His essence is questing, not certainty.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Vejas Liulevicius
Constant questing.
Constant questing.
Lex Fridman
Exactly. Humility, intellectual humility. So how did China evolve after Mao’s death to today?
Exactly. Humility, intellectual humility. So how did China evolve after Mao’s death to today?
Vejas Liulevicius
Well, I think that there is… Without denouncing Mao, without repudiating Mao’s 70% correctness, the regime actually undertook a new venture. And that venture was to open up economically to gain access to world markets and to play a global role always with the proviso that the party retained political supremacy. It’s been pointed out that while Khrushchev tries in the Soviet Union in 1956, especially with a secret speech in which he denounces Stalin’s crimes, he tries to go back to the founders’ intentions of Lenin. Nothing like that, it’s argued, is possible in the Chinese case because Mao was not the equivalent of Stalin for communist China. Mao was the equivalent of Lenin. Mao was the founder. So there’s no repudiating of him. They’re stuck with that formula of 70% and acknowledging that there were some problems, but by and large, arguing that it was the correct stance of the party and its leader that was paramount.
Well, I think that there is… Without denouncing Mao, without repudiating Mao’s 70% correctness, the regime actually undertook a new venture. And that venture was to open up economically to gain access to world markets and to play a global role always with the proviso that the party retained political supremacy. It’s been pointed out that while Khrushchev tries in the Soviet Union in 1956, especially with a secret speech in which he denounces Stalin’s crimes, he tries to go back to the founders’ intentions of Lenin. Nothing like that, it’s argued, is possible in the Chinese case because Mao was not the equivalent of Stalin for communist China. Mao was the equivalent of Lenin. Mao was the founder. So there’s no repudiating of him. They’re stuck with that formula of 70% and acknowledging that there were some problems, but by and large, arguing that it was the correct stance of the party and its leader that was paramount.
And the results of this wager are where we are today. China has been transformed out of all recognition in terms of not all of the living standards of the country, but many places. Its economic growth has been dramatic and the new dispensation is such that people will ask, “Is this a communist country anymore?” And that’s probably a question that haunts China’s current leadership as well. With Chairman Xi, we’ve seen a return to earlier patterns, Xi insisting that Mao’s achievement has to be held as equal to that of the reform period. Sometimes imitations or nostalgia for the Mao period or even the sufferings of the Cultural Revolution are part of this volatile mix. But all of this is outward appearance. Statistics can also be misleading, and I think that very much in question is China’s further revolution in our own times.
Lex Fridman
In the West, China is often demonized and we’ve talked extensively today about the atrocities that results from… Atrocities both internal and external that result from communist nations.
In the West, China is often demonized and we’ve talked extensively today about the atrocities that results from… Atrocities both internal and external that result from communist nations.
But what can we say by way of hope to resist the demonization? How can we avoid cold or hot war with China, we being the West or the United States in the 21st century?
Vejas Liulevicius
Well, you mentioned in the context of the claims of science, humility as a crucial attribute. I think that humility, sobriety, realism are tremendously valuable in trying to understand another society, another form of government. And so, I think one needs to be very self-aware that projection onto others of what we think they’re about is no substitute for actual study of the sources that a society like that produces. It’s declarations of what matters most to them, the leadership’s own pronouncements about what the future holds. I think that matters a lot more than pious hopes or versions of being convinced that inevitably everyone will come to resemble us in a better future.
Well, you mentioned in the context of the claims of science, humility as a crucial attribute. I think that humility, sobriety, realism are tremendously valuable in trying to understand another society, another form of government. And so, I think one needs to be very self-aware that projection onto others of what we think they’re about is no substitute for actual study of the sources that a society like that produces. It’s declarations of what matters most to them, the leadership’s own pronouncements about what the future holds. I think that matters a lot more than pious hopes or versions of being convinced that inevitably everyone will come to resemble us in a better future.
North Korea
Lex Fridman
You mentioned this earlier, but just to take a small detour, what are we supposed to think about North Korea and their declaration they’re supposedly a communist nation? What can we say about the economic, the political system of North Korea? Or is it just a hopelessly simple answer, “This is a complete disaster of a totalitarian state?”
You mentioned this earlier, but just to take a small detour, what are we supposed to think about North Korea and their declaration they’re supposedly a communist nation? What can we say about the economic, the political system of North Korea? Or is it just a hopelessly simple answer, “This is a complete disaster of a totalitarian state?”
Vejas Liulevicius
I think the answer that our historian can give is a historical answer that we have to inquire into what has to happen in order to arrive at the past we are today. Where you have a regime that’s claiming to be communist or has an even better version of Marx’s original ideas in the form of a Korean adaptation called Juche. How does that mesh with the reality that we’re talking about a dynastic government and a monarchy in all but name, but a communist monarchy if that’s what it is? I think that examining as much as we can learn about a closed society that goes about its every day in ways that are inscrutable to us is very, very challenging. But the only answer when an example like this escapes your analytic categories, probably there’s a problem with your analytical categories rather than the example being the problem in all its messiness.
I think the answer that our historian can give is a historical answer that we have to inquire into what has to happen in order to arrive at the past we are today. Where you have a regime that’s claiming to be communist or has an even better version of Marx’s original ideas in the form of a Korean adaptation called Juche. How does that mesh with the reality that we’re talking about a dynastic government and a monarchy in all but name, but a communist monarchy if that’s what it is? I think that examining as much as we can learn about a closed society that goes about its every day in ways that are inscrutable to us is very, very challenging. But the only answer when an example like this escapes your analytic categories, probably there’s a problem with your analytical categories rather than the example being the problem in all its messiness.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. So there’s a component here and it relates to China as well to bring somebody like John Mearsheimer into the picture. There’s a military component here too, and that is ultimately how these nations interact, especially totalitarian nations interact with the rest of the world. Nations interact economically, culturally, and militarily. And the concern with countries like North Korea is the way for them to be present on the world stage in the game of geopolitics is by flexing their military might and they invest a huge amount of their GDP into the military. So I guess the question there to discuss in terms of analysis is how do we deal with this kind of system that claims to be a communist system and what lessons can we take from history and apply it to that? Or should we simply just ignore and look the other way as we’ve been hoping it doesn’t get out of hand?
Yeah. So there’s a component here and it relates to China as well to bring somebody like John Mearsheimer into the picture. There’s a military component here too, and that is ultimately how these nations interact, especially totalitarian nations interact with the rest of the world. Nations interact economically, culturally, and militarily. And the concern with countries like North Korea is the way for them to be present on the world stage in the game of geopolitics is by flexing their military might and they invest a huge amount of their GDP into the military. So I guess the question there to discuss in terms of analysis is how do we deal with this kind of system that claims to be a communist system and what lessons can we take from history and apply it to that? Or should we simply just ignore and look the other way as we’ve been hoping it doesn’t get out of hand?
Vejas Liulevicius
Yeah. There’s a realist’s see states following their own interests and prioritizing their own security, and there’s probably not much that could be done to change that. But conflict arising as a result of misunderstanding or mixed messages or misinterpretation, those are things that policymakers probably do have some control over. I think that there’s internal processes that’ll work their way out in even as opaque place as North Korea. It’s also the reality, just as we saw with the divided Germanys, that it’s a precarious kind of twinned existence when you have countries that are across the border from one another that are derived from what used to be a single unit that now are a real life social science experiment in, “What kind of regime do you get with one kind of system, what sort of regime you get with another kind of system?” And that’s a very unstable setup as it turns out.
Yeah. There’s a realist’s see states following their own interests and prioritizing their own security, and there’s probably not much that could be done to change that. But conflict arising as a result of misunderstanding or mixed messages or misinterpretation, those are things that policymakers probably do have some control over. I think that there’s internal processes that’ll work their way out in even as opaque place as North Korea. It’s also the reality, just as we saw with the divided Germanys, that it’s a precarious kind of twinned existence when you have countries that are across the border from one another that are derived from what used to be a single unit that now are a real life social science experiment in, “What kind of regime do you get with one kind of system, what sort of regime you get with another kind of system?” And that’s a very unstable setup as it turns out.
Communism in US
Lex Fridman
Now let us jump continents and in the 20th century look to North America. So you also have lectured about communism in America, the different communist movements in America. It was also founded in 1919 and evolved throughout through a couple of red scares. So what was the evolution of the Communist Party and just in general communist in America?
Now let us jump continents and in the 20th century look to North America. So you also have lectured about communism in America, the different communist movements in America. It was also founded in 1919 and evolved throughout through a couple of red scares. So what was the evolution of the Communist Party and just in general communist in America?
Vejas Liulevicius
It’s fascinating to observe this story because one longstanding commonplace had been that socialism has less purchase or radical socialism in the United States than in European countries. So, to the extent that that was true, it was an uphill battle for the communists to get established in the United States, but it makes it all the more interesting to follow the development of the movement. And there were two challenges in particular that played a role in shaping the American Communist experience. One was the fact that, to begin with, the party was often identified with immigrants. The communities that had come over across the Atlantic from Europe often had strong socialist contingents. And when this break happens within the socialist movement between radical socialists and more moderate socialists, there were fiery individuals who saw the opportunity to help shape the American Communist movement. But the result was that, for many American workers, they saw the sheer ethnic variety and difference of this movement as something that was unfamiliar.
It’s fascinating to observe this story because one longstanding commonplace had been that socialism has less purchase or radical socialism in the United States than in European countries. So, to the extent that that was true, it was an uphill battle for the communists to get established in the United States, but it makes it all the more interesting to follow the development of the movement. And there were two challenges in particular that played a role in shaping the American Communist experience. One was the fact that, to begin with, the party was often identified with immigrants. The communities that had come over across the Atlantic from Europe often had strong socialist contingents. And when this break happens within the socialist movement between radical socialists and more moderate socialists, there were fiery individuals who saw the opportunity to help shape the American Communist movement. But the result was that, for many American workers, they saw the sheer ethnic variety and difference of this movement as something that was unfamiliar.
It would only be with the rise to the leadership of the Communist Party of Earl Browder, a American-born political leader with vast ambitions for creating an American communist movement that that image would start to be modified. Earl Browder had a meteoric rise and then fall over the promise he made that went by the slogan Communism is 20th Century Americanism. The notion was that communism could find roots in American political discourse and experience. Where Earl Browder fell a foul of other communists was in his expectations during World War II, that it might be possible for the Soviet Union and the United States to make their current cooperation permanent and to come to some sort of accommodation that would moderate their rivalry. As it turns out, with the dawning already of Cold War tensions that would later flower more fully, that was unacceptable. And the movement divested itself of Earl Browder.
Another point that shaped American perceptions of the communist movement in the United States involved issues of espionage. During the 1930s and the 1940s, American communists, not all of them obviously, but select members of the movement were called upon by Soviet intelligence to play a historical role by gathering information, winning sympathies… One of the most amazing books of the 20th century is the book written by Whitaker Chambers, who had served as a Soviet spy, first a committed communist, then a Soviet spy, and then later a renegade from those allegiances. His book is entitled Witness, published in 1952, and it’s one of the most compelling books you could ever read because it’s so full of both the unique character of the author in all of his idiosyncrasies and a sense of huge issues being at stake ones upon which the future of humanity turns. So, talk about the ethical element being of importance there. Through the apparatus of the state, the Soviets managed to infiltrate spies into America’s military as well as government institutions. One great irony is that when Senator McCarthy in the ’50s made vast claims about communist infiltration of the government apparatus, claims that he was unable to substantiate with details, that reality had actually been closer to the reality of the 1930s and the 1940s, than his own time. But the Association of American Communists with the foreign power of the Soviet Union and ultimately an adherence to its interests did a lot to undermine any kind of hearing for American communists. An example, of course, was the notorious Nazi-Soviet Pact in 1939.
The American Communist Movement found itself forced to turn on a dime in its propaganda. Before the Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1939, they had denounced Nazi Germany as the greatest threat to world peace. Just after the signing of the pact, they had to proclaim that this was a great win for peace and for human harmony and to completely change their earlier relationship of being mortal enemies with Nazi Germany. There were many American communists who couldn’t stomach this and who in disillusionment simply quit their party memberships or drifted away. But it’s a fascinating story of the ups and downs of a political movement with radical ambitions in American political history.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, the Cold War and the extensive levels of espionage, combined with Hollywood created basically firmly solidified communism as the enemy of the American ideal sort of embodied. And not even the economic policies of the political policies of communism, but like the word and the color red with the hammer and sickle, Rocky IV, one of my favorite movies-
Yeah, the Cold War and the extensive levels of espionage, combined with Hollywood created basically firmly solidified communism as the enemy of the American ideal sort of embodied. And not even the economic policies of the political policies of communism, but like the word and the color red with the hammer and sickle, Rocky IV, one of my favorite movies-
Vejas Liulevicius
Well, that’s canonical, right?
Well, that’s canonical, right?
Russia after Soviet Union
Lex Fridman
Yeah. I mean, it is a bit of a meme, but meme becomes reality and then enters politics and is used by politicians to do all kinds of name-calling. You have spoken eloquently about modern Russia and modern Ukraine and modern Eastern Europe. How did Russia evolve after Stalin and after the collapse of the Soviet Union?
Yeah. I mean, it is a bit of a meme, but meme becomes reality and then enters politics and is used by politicians to do all kinds of name-calling. You have spoken eloquently about modern Russia and modern Ukraine and modern Eastern Europe. How did Russia evolve after Stalin and after the collapse of the Soviet Union?
Vejas Liulevicius
Well, I think the short answer is without a full historical reckoning that would’ve been healthy about the recent past in ways that’s not very surprising because given the economic misery of dislocations and the cumulative damage of all of those previous decades of this experiment, it left precious little patience or leisure or surplus for introspection. But after an initial period of great interest in understanding the full measure of what Russia and other parts of the Soviet Union had undergone in this first initial explosion of journalism and of reporting and investigations, historical investigations with new sources, after an initial period marked by such interest, people instead retreated into the here and now and the today. And the result is that there’s been less than would be healthy of a taking stock, a reckoning. Even in assigning of responsibility for those things that were experienced in the past, no Nuremberg trial took place in order to hold responsible those who had repressed others in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Well, I think the short answer is without a full historical reckoning that would’ve been healthy about the recent past in ways that’s not very surprising because given the economic misery of dislocations and the cumulative damage of all of those previous decades of this experiment, it left precious little patience or leisure or surplus for introspection. But after an initial period of great interest in understanding the full measure of what Russia and other parts of the Soviet Union had undergone in this first initial explosion of journalism and of reporting and investigations, historical investigations with new sources, after an initial period marked by such interest, people instead retreated into the here and now and the today. And the result is that there’s been less than would be healthy of a taking stock, a reckoning. Even in assigning of responsibility for those things that were experienced in the past, no Nuremberg trial took place in order to hold responsible those who had repressed others in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In other ex-communist countries, there was also precious little in the way of legal proceedings that would’ve established responsibility. And keep in mind, the Nuremberg trials had as one of their goals a very important one, as it turns out, not even individual verdicts for individual people found guilty, but to collect and publicize information, to create knowledge and transparency about what the reality had been in the past. In the case of the former Soviet Union, in the case of Russia today, instead of a clear-eyed recognition of the vast nature of what it all cost, Putin upon replacing Yeltsin was in a position to instead traffic in the most varied, eclectic, and often mutually contradictory historical memories or packages of memories.
So on the one hand, in Putin’s Russia, the Tsars are rehabilitated as heroes of Russian statehood. Putin sees Lenin in a negative light because Lenin by producing federalism as a model for the Soviet Union, laid a time bomb at the base of that state that eventually smashed it into many constituent parts as nations regained their independence. While Stalin, it’s acknowledged exacted a dreadful toll, but also was effective as a representative of Russian statehood.
This produced where we are today. It’s a commonplace echoed by many that Russia without Ukraine is a nation-state or could be a nation-state. Russia with Ukraine has to be an empire. Putin, who is not really seeking a revival of Stalin’s rule, but still is nostalgic about earlier forms of greatness and of the strength of Russian statehood to the exclusion of other values has undertaken a course of aggression that has produced results quite different from what he likely expected.
And I think that timing is crucial here. It’s fascinating to try to imagine, “What if this attempt to re-digest Ukraine into an expanded Russian imperial territory had taken place earlier?” I think that the arrival on the scene of a new generation of Ukrainians has produced a very different dynamic and a disinclination for any kind of nostalgia for the past, packaged however it might be, and however nostalgic it might be made to appear. And there, I think that Putin’s expectations in the invasion of 2022 were entirely overturned. His expectation was that Ukraine would be divided on this score and that some significant portion of Ukrainians would welcome-
Vejas Liulevicius
Some significant portion of Ukrainians would welcome the advance of Russian forces, and instead, there has been the most amazing and surprising heroic resistance that continues to this day.
Some significant portion of Ukrainians would welcome the advance of Russian forces, and instead, there has been the most amazing and surprising heroic resistance that continues to this day.
Lex Fridman
It’s interesting to consider timing and also individual leaders, Zelensky, you can imagine all kinds of other figures that would’ve folded much easier, and Zelensky, I think, surprised a lot of the world, this comedian, somehow becoming essentially an effective war president. So put that in the bin of singular figures that define history.
It’s interesting to consider timing and also individual leaders, Zelensky, you can imagine all kinds of other figures that would’ve folded much easier, and Zelensky, I think, surprised a lot of the world, this comedian, somehow becoming essentially an effective war president. So put that in the bin of singular figures that define history.
Vejas Liulevicius
That surprises.
That surprises.
Lex Fridman
How do you hope the war in Ukraine ends?
How do you hope the war in Ukraine ends?
Vejas Liulevicius
I’m very pessimistic on this score actually, and for the reasons we just talked about how these things escape human management or even rationality. I think that war takes on a life of its own as accumulated suffering actually eliminates possible compromises or settlements that one might talk about in the abstract. I think that it’s one thing for people far away to propose trades of territory or complicated guarantees or arrangements that sound very good in the abstract and that will just be refused by people who have actually experienced what the war has been like in person and what it has meant to them and their families and everyone they know in terms of lives destroyed. I think that peacemaking is going to face a very daunting task here, given all that’s accumulated, and I think in particular, just from the last days of the launching of missile attacks against indiscriminate or civilian targets, that’s not easy to turn the corner on.
I’m very pessimistic on this score actually, and for the reasons we just talked about how these things escape human management or even rationality. I think that war takes on a life of its own as accumulated suffering actually eliminates possible compromises or settlements that one might talk about in the abstract. I think that it’s one thing for people far away to propose trades of territory or complicated guarantees or arrangements that sound very good in the abstract and that will just be refused by people who have actually experienced what the war has been like in person and what it has meant to them and their families and everyone they know in terms of lives destroyed. I think that peacemaking is going to face a very daunting task here, given all that’s accumulated, and I think in particular, just from the last days of the launching of missile attacks against indiscriminate or civilian targets, that’s not easy to turn the corner on.
Lex Fridman
Let me ask a political question. I recently talked to Donald Trump and he said if he’s elected before he has sworn into office, he’ll have a peace deal. What would a peace deal like that look like, and is it even possible, do you think? So we should mention that Russia has captured four regions of Ukraine now. Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson. Also, Ukraine captured part of the Kursk region within Russia. So just like you mentioned, territory is on the table. NATO, European Union is on the table. Also funding and military help from the United States directly to Ukraine is on the table. Do you think it’s possible to have a fair deal that from people, like you said, far away where both people walk away, Zelensky and Putin, unhappy, but equally unhappy and peace is negotiated?
Let me ask a political question. I recently talked to Donald Trump and he said if he’s elected before he has sworn into office, he’ll have a peace deal. What would a peace deal like that look like, and is it even possible, do you think? So we should mention that Russia has captured four regions of Ukraine now. Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson. Also, Ukraine captured part of the Kursk region within Russia. So just like you mentioned, territory is on the table. NATO, European Union is on the table. Also funding and military help from the United States directly to Ukraine is on the table. Do you think it’s possible to have a fair deal that from people, like you said, far away where both people walk away, Zelensky and Putin, unhappy, but equally unhappy and peace is negotiated?
Vejas Liulevicius
Equally unhappy is a very hard balance to strike probably. I think my concern is about the part of the equation that involves people just being desperately unhappy, laying the foundations for more trouble to come. I couldn’t imagine what that looks like, but that’s, once again, these are things that escape human control in the details.
Equally unhappy is a very hard balance to strike probably. I think my concern is about the part of the equation that involves people just being desperately unhappy, laying the foundations for more trouble to come. I couldn’t imagine what that looks like, but that’s, once again, these are things that escape human control in the details.
Lex Fridman
Laying the foundation for worse things to come. So it’s possible you have a ceasefire that lays the foundation for a worse warrant and suffering in a year, in five years, in 10 years.
Laying the foundation for worse things to come. So it’s possible you have a ceasefire that lays the foundation for a worse warrant and suffering in a year, in five years, in 10 years.
Vejas Liulevicius
In a way, we may already be there because ratifying the use of force to change borders in Europe was a taboo since 1945 and now look where we are. If that is validated, then it sets up incentives for more of the same.
In a way, we may already be there because ratifying the use of force to change borders in Europe was a taboo since 1945 and now look where we are. If that is validated, then it sets up incentives for more of the same.
Lex Fridman
If you look at the 20th century is what we’ve been talking about with horrendous global wars that happened then, and you look at now, and it feels like just living in the moment, with the war in Ukraine breaking the contract of, you’re not supposed to do territorial conquest anymore in the 21st century that then the just intensity of hatred and military tension in the Middle East with the Israel, Iran, Palestine, just building and then China calmly, but with a big stick, talking about Taiwan. Do you think a big conflict may be on the way? Do you think it’s possible that another global war happens in the 21st century?
If you look at the 20th century is what we’ve been talking about with horrendous global wars that happened then, and you look at now, and it feels like just living in the moment, with the war in Ukraine breaking the contract of, you’re not supposed to do territorial conquest anymore in the 21st century that then the just intensity of hatred and military tension in the Middle East with the Israel, Iran, Palestine, just building and then China calmly, but with a big stick, talking about Taiwan. Do you think a big conflict may be on the way? Do you think it’s possible that another global war happens in the 21st century?
Vejas Liulevicius
I hope not, but I think so many predictions reach their expiration dates and get invalidated. Obviously, we’re confronting a dire situation in the present.
I hope not, but I think so many predictions reach their expiration dates and get invalidated. Obviously, we’re confronting a dire situation in the present.
Advice for Lex
Lex Fridman
As a historian, let me ask you for advice. What advice would you give on interviewing world leaders, whether it’s people who are no longer here, some of the people we’ve been talking about, Hitler, Stalin, Mao or people that are still here, Putin, Zelensky, Trump, Kamala Harris, Netanyahu, Xi Jinping. As a historian, is it possible to have an interesting conversation, maybe as a thought experiment? What kind of conversation would you like to have with Hitler in the 1930s or Stalin in the 1920s?
As a historian, let me ask you for advice. What advice would you give on interviewing world leaders, whether it’s people who are no longer here, some of the people we’ve been talking about, Hitler, Stalin, Mao or people that are still here, Putin, Zelensky, Trump, Kamala Harris, Netanyahu, Xi Jinping. As a historian, is it possible to have an interesting conversation, maybe as a thought experiment? What kind of conversation would you like to have with Hitler in the 1930s or Stalin in the 1920s?
Vejas Liulevicius
First of all, I mean the answer’s very clear. I would never presume to advise you about interviewing world leaders and prominent people because the roster that you’ve accumulated is just astonishing. But I know what I might aim for and that is, I think, in historical analysis, in trying to understand the role of a particular leader, the more one understands about their prior background and formative influences, the better a fix, I think, one gets on the question of what are their expectations? In German, there’s a beautiful word for this. Germans managed to mash together several words into one even better word, and in German, it’s Erwartungshorizont, the horizon of expectation. So in the case of figures like Churchill or Hitler, their experience of World War I shaped their actions in World War II. Their values were shaped in their childhood. Is there a way of engaging with someone you’re interviewing even obliquely that gives a view in on their sense of what the future might hold?
First of all, I mean the answer’s very clear. I would never presume to advise you about interviewing world leaders and prominent people because the roster that you’ve accumulated is just astonishing. But I know what I might aim for and that is, I think, in historical analysis, in trying to understand the role of a particular leader, the more one understands about their prior background and formative influences, the better a fix, I think, one gets on the question of what are their expectations? In German, there’s a beautiful word for this. Germans managed to mash together several words into one even better word, and in German, it’s Erwartungshorizont, the horizon of expectation. So in the case of figures like Churchill or Hitler, their experience of World War I shaped their actions in World War II. Their values were shaped in their childhood. Is there a way of engaging with someone you’re interviewing even obliquely that gives a view in on their sense of what the future might hold?
Obviously such people are expert at being guarded and not being pinned down, but the categories in which they’re thinking a sense of what their own ethical grounding might be or their ethical code that gives hints to their behavior. It gets said, and again, it’s a cliche because it’s true, that one of the best measures of a person, especially a leader, is how they treat people from whom they don’t expect anything. Are they condescending? Are they, on the contrary, fundamentally interested in another person, even if that person can’t help them or be used in some way? Speaking of prominent world leaders to interview, there’s Napoleon.
Napoleon, psychologically, must have been a quite amazing person to make a bid for mastery of Europe and then already thinking about the mastery of the world. But contemporaries who met Napoleon said that it was very disturbing to talk with him because meeting with him one-on-one revealed that he could talk to you but look like he was looking right through you as if you were not fully real. You were more in the nature of a character on a chessboard, and for that reason, some of them called Napoleon, the master of the sightless stare. So if you’re talking with a world leader and he or she has a sightless stare, that’s probably a bad sign. But there might be other inadvertent clues or hints about the moral compass or the future expectations of a leader that emerge in one of your wonderful conversations.
Lex Fridman
You put it brilliantly in several ways, but the moral compass getting sneaking up to the full nuance and complexity of the moral compass, and one of the ways of doing that is looking at the various horizons in time about their vision of the future. I imagine it’s possible to get Hitler to talk about the future of the Third Reich and to see in ways what he actually visions that as, and similar with Stalin. But of course, funny enough, I believe those leaders would be easier to talk to because there’s nothing to be afraid of in terms of political competition. Modern leaders are a little bit more guarded because they have opposition often to contend with, and constituencies. You did a lot of amazing courses including for the great courses on the topic of communism. You just finished the third, so you did a series of lectures on the rise of communism, then communism and power, and then decline and fall…
You put it brilliantly in several ways, but the moral compass getting sneaking up to the full nuance and complexity of the moral compass, and one of the ways of doing that is looking at the various horizons in time about their vision of the future. I imagine it’s possible to get Hitler to talk about the future of the Third Reich and to see in ways what he actually visions that as, and similar with Stalin. But of course, funny enough, I believe those leaders would be easier to talk to because there’s nothing to be afraid of in terms of political competition. Modern leaders are a little bit more guarded because they have opposition often to contend with, and constituencies. You did a lot of amazing courses including for the great courses on the topic of communism. You just finished the third, so you did a series of lectures on the rise of communism, then communism and power, and then decline and fall…
Vejas Liulevicius
Decline of communism.
Decline of communism.
Lex Fridman
When I was listening to these lectures, can’t possibly imagine the amount of work that went into it. Can you just speak wisely? What was that journey like of taking everything your expertise on Eastern Europe, but just bringing your lens, your wisdom, your focus onto this topic and what it takes to actually bring it to life?
When I was listening to these lectures, can’t possibly imagine the amount of work that went into it. Can you just speak wisely? What was that journey like of taking everything your expertise on Eastern Europe, but just bringing your lens, your wisdom, your focus onto this topic and what it takes to actually bring it to life?
Vejas Liulevicius
Journey is probably just the right word because it’s this week that the third of that trilogy, Decline of Communism, is being released. It felt like something that I very much wanted to do because the history that’s narrated there is one that is so compelling and often so tragic that it needs to be shared. The vast amount of material that one can include is probably dwarfed by the amount that actually ends up on the cutting room floor. One could probably do an entire lecture course on every single one of those lecture topics that got broached. One of the great satisfactions of putting together a course like this is also being able to give further suggestions for study to the listeners and in some cases, to introduce them to neglected classics or books that make you want to grab somebody by the lapels and say, “You’ve got to read this.”
Journey is probably just the right word because it’s this week that the third of that trilogy, Decline of Communism, is being released. It felt like something that I very much wanted to do because the history that’s narrated there is one that is so compelling and often so tragic that it needs to be shared. The vast amount of material that one can include is probably dwarfed by the amount that actually ends up on the cutting room floor. One could probably do an entire lecture course on every single one of those lecture topics that got broached. One of the great satisfactions of putting together a course like this is also being able to give further suggestions for study to the listeners and in some cases, to introduce them to neglected classics or books that make you want to grab somebody by the lapels and say, “You’ve got to read this.”
There’s probably few things that are as exciting as a really keen and targeted reading recommendation. In addition, I’ve also done other courses on the history of World War I, on the diplomatic history of Europe from 1500 to the present, a course on the history of Eastern Europe, and also a course on dictatorships called Utopia and Terror, and then also a course on Explorers and a course on turning points in modern history. Every single one of those is so rewarding because you learn so much in the process and it’s really fantastic.
Book recommendations
Lex Fridman
I should highly recommend that people sign up. First of all, this is the great courses where you can buy the courses individually, but I recommend people sign up for great courses plus, which I think is like a monthly membership where you get access to all these courses and they’re just incredible. I recommend people watch all of yours. Since you mentioned books, this is an impossible question and I apologize ahead of time, but is there books you can recommend just in your own life that you’ve enjoyed, whether really small or some obvious recommendations that you recommend people read? It is a bit like asking what’s your favorite band kind of thing.
I should highly recommend that people sign up. First of all, this is the great courses where you can buy the courses individually, but I recommend people sign up for great courses plus, which I think is like a monthly membership where you get access to all these courses and they’re just incredible. I recommend people watch all of yours. Since you mentioned books, this is an impossible question and I apologize ahead of time, but is there books you can recommend just in your own life that you’ve enjoyed, whether really small or some obvious recommendations that you recommend people read? It is a bit like asking what’s your favorite band kind of thing.
Vejas Liulevicius
That’s right. Would a book that got turned into a movie be acceptable as well?
That’s right. Would a book that got turned into a movie be acceptable as well?
Lex Fridman
Yes.
Yes.
Vejas Liulevicius
In that case, all of us reflect on our own childhoods and that magical moment of a reading a book or seeing a movie that really got you launched on some particular set of things that you’re going to find fascinating for the rest of your life. There’s a direct line to the topics we were talking about today from myself in the Chicagoland area as a kid, seeing the film of Dr. Zhivago and then later reading the novel on which it was based by Pasternak. Even though the film had to be filmed on location in Spain pretending to be revolutionary Russia, it was magical for the sheer sweep and tragedy and human resilience that it showed the very way in which a work of literature or a cinematography could capture so much.
In that case, all of us reflect on our own childhoods and that magical moment of a reading a book or seeing a movie that really got you launched on some particular set of things that you’re going to find fascinating for the rest of your life. There’s a direct line to the topics we were talking about today from myself in the Chicagoland area as a kid, seeing the film of Dr. Zhivago and then later reading the novel on which it was based by Pasternak. Even though the film had to be filmed on location in Spain pretending to be revolutionary Russia, it was magical for the sheer sweep and tragedy and human resilience that it showed the very way in which a work of literature or a cinematography could capture so much.
I’m still amazed by that. There’s also, in the spirit of recommending neglected classics, my favorite author, is now a late Canadian author by the name of Robertson Davies, who wrote novel after novel in a mode that probably would get called magical realism but is so much more. Robertson Davies was heavily influenced by Carl Jung and Jungian philosophy, but in literary form, he managed to create stories that blend the mythical, the mystical, and the brutally real to paint a picture of Canada as he knew it, Europe as he knew it, and the world as he knew it. He’s most famous probably for the Deptford Trilogy, three novels in a series that are linked and they’re just masterful if only there were more books like that.
Lex Fridman
The Deptford Trilogy, Fifth Business, the Manticore, World of Wonders, and you got a really nice beard.
The Deptford Trilogy, Fifth Business, the Manticore, World of Wonders, and you got a really nice beard.
Vejas Liulevicius
Yes, it was an amazing beard, very 19th century.
Yes, it was an amazing beard, very 19th century.
Advice for young people
Lex Fridman
Beautiful. What advice would you give to young people today that have just listened to us talk about the 20th century and the terrifying prospects of ideals implemented into reality? By the way, many of the revolutions are carried out by young people, and so the good and the bad and the ugly is thanks to the young people. So the young people listening today, what advice would you give them?
Beautiful. What advice would you give to young people today that have just listened to us talk about the 20th century and the terrifying prospects of ideals implemented into reality? By the way, many of the revolutions are carried out by young people, and so the good and the bad and the ugly is thanks to the young people. So the young people listening today, what advice would you give them?
Vejas Liulevicius
It comes down to one word, and that one word is read. As a college teacher, I’m concerned about what I’m seeing unfolding before us, not my classes, but classes in which students are asked to read very little or maybe in some cases not at all, or snippets that they are provided digitally. Those have their place and can be valuable, but the task of sitting down with a book and absorbing its message, not agreeing with it necessarily, but taking in the implications, learning how to think within the categories and the values of the author is going to be irreplaceable, and my anxiety is that with college bookstores now moving entirely to the paperless format, it changes how people interact with texts.
It comes down to one word, and that one word is read. As a college teacher, I’m concerned about what I’m seeing unfolding before us, not my classes, but classes in which students are asked to read very little or maybe in some cases not at all, or snippets that they are provided digitally. Those have their place and can be valuable, but the task of sitting down with a book and absorbing its message, not agreeing with it necessarily, but taking in the implications, learning how to think within the categories and the values of the author is going to be irreplaceable, and my anxiety is that with college bookstores now moving entirely to the paperless format, it changes how people interact with texts.
If the result is not a renaissance and a resurgence of reading, but less reading, that will be dreadful because the experience of thinking your way into other people’s minds that sustained reading offers is so crucial to human empathy, a broadening of your own sensibilities of what’s possible, what’s in the full range of being human, and then what are the best models for what has been thought and felt and how people have acted, otherwise, we fall prey to manipulators and the ability of artificial intelligence to give us versions of realities that never existed and never will, and like.
Lex Fridman
It’s a really interesting idea. So let me give a shout-out to Perplexity that I’m using here to summarize and take quick notes and get little snippets of stuff, which is extremely useful. But books are not just about information transfer, just as you said, it’s a journey together with a set of ideas and it’s a conversation, and getting a summary of the book is the cliche thing is it’s really getting to the destination without the journey. The journey is the thing that’s important, thinking through stuff.
It’s a really interesting idea. So let me give a shout-out to Perplexity that I’m using here to summarize and take quick notes and get little snippets of stuff, which is extremely useful. But books are not just about information transfer, just as you said, it’s a journey together with a set of ideas and it’s a conversation, and getting a summary of the book is the cliche thing is it’s really getting to the destination without the journey. The journey is the thing that’s important, thinking through stuff.
I’ve been surprised, I’ve learned, I’ve trained my brain to be able to get the same thing from audiobooks. Also, it’s a little bit more difficult because you don’t control the pacing. Sometimes pausing is nice, but you could still get it from audiobooks. So it’s an audio version of books and that allows you to also go on a journey together and sometimes more convenient. You could take it to more places with you, but there is a magical thing. I also trying to train myself mostly to use Kindle, the digital version of books, but there is, unfortunately, still a magical thing about being there with the page.
Vejas Liulevicius
Audiobooks are definitely not to be scorned because as people have pointed out, the original traditions of literature were oral. So that’s actually the 1.0 version, and combining these things is probably the key. I think one of the things I find so wonderful about the best lectures that I’ve heard is it’s a chance to hear someone thinking out loud, not laying down the law, but taking you through a series of logical moves, imaginative leaps, alternative suggestions, and that’s much more than data transfer.
Audiobooks are definitely not to be scorned because as people have pointed out, the original traditions of literature were oral. So that’s actually the 1.0 version, and combining these things is probably the key. I think one of the things I find so wonderful about the best lectures that I’ve heard is it’s a chance to hear someone thinking out loud, not laying down the law, but taking you through a series of logical moves, imaginative leaps, alternative suggestions, and that’s much more than data transfer.
Lex Fridman
The use case of AI as a companion as you read is really exciting to me. I’ve been using it recently to basically, as you read, you can have a conversation with a system that has access to a lot of things about a particular paragraph. I’ve been really surprised how my brain, when given some extra ideas, other recommendations of books, but also just a summary of other ideas from elsewhere in the universe that relates to this paragraph. It sparks your imagination and thought, and you see the actual richness in the thing you’re reading.
The use case of AI as a companion as you read is really exciting to me. I’ve been using it recently to basically, as you read, you can have a conversation with a system that has access to a lot of things about a particular paragraph. I’ve been really surprised how my brain, when given some extra ideas, other recommendations of books, but also just a summary of other ideas from elsewhere in the universe that relates to this paragraph. It sparks your imagination and thought, and you see the actual richness in the thing you’re reading.
Now, nobody, to my knowledge, has implemented a really intuitive interaction between AI and the text, unfortunately, partially because the books are protected under DRM, and so there’s a wall where the AI can’t access the thing. So if you want to play with that kind of thing, you have to break the law a little bit, which is not a good thing. But just like with music, Napster came up, people started illegally sharing music, and the answer to that was Spotify, which made the sharing of music revolutionized everything and made the sharing of music much easier. So there is some technological things that can enrich the experience of reading, but the actual painful, long process of reading is really useful. Just like boredom is useful.
Vejas Liulevicius
That’s right.
That’s right.
Lex Fridman
It’s also called just sitting there.
It’s also called just sitting there.
Vejas Liulevicius
Underrated Virtue.
Underrated Virtue.
Lex Fridman
Of course, you have to see the smartphone as an enemy, I would say, of that special time. You have to think because social media companies are maximized to get your engagement. They want to grab your attention, and they grab that attention by making you as braindead as possible and getting you to look at more and more and more things. So it’s nice and fun and it’s great. Recommend it highly. It’s good for dopamine rush, but see it as a counter force to the process of sitting with an idea for a prolonged period of time, taking a journey through an expert eloquently conveying that idea and growing by having a conversation with that idea and a book is really, really powerful. So I agree with you totally. What gives you hope about the future of humanity? We’ve talked about the dark past, what gives you hope for the light at the end of the tunnel?
Of course, you have to see the smartphone as an enemy, I would say, of that special time. You have to think because social media companies are maximized to get your engagement. They want to grab your attention, and they grab that attention by making you as braindead as possible and getting you to look at more and more and more things. So it’s nice and fun and it’s great. Recommend it highly. It’s good for dopamine rush, but see it as a counter force to the process of sitting with an idea for a prolonged period of time, taking a journey through an expert eloquently conveying that idea and growing by having a conversation with that idea and a book is really, really powerful. So I agree with you totally. What gives you hope about the future of humanity? We’ve talked about the dark past, what gives you hope for the light at the end of the tunnel?
Hope
Vejas Liulevicius
We talked indeed about a lot of latent, really damaging and negative energies that are part of human nature. But I find hope in another aspect of human nature, and that is the sheer variety of human reactions to situations. The very fact that history is full of so many stories of amazing endurance, amazing resilience, the will to build up even after the horrors have passed, this, to me, is an inexhaustible source of optimism. There are some people who condemn cultural appropriation and say that borrowing from one culture to another is to be condemned or the problem is a synonym for cultural appropriation is world history. Trade, transfer of ideas, influences. Valuing that which is unlike your own culture is also a form of appropriation, quite literally, and so that multitude of human reactions and the fact that our experiences so unlimited as history testifies, gives me great hope for the future.
We talked indeed about a lot of latent, really damaging and negative energies that are part of human nature. But I find hope in another aspect of human nature, and that is the sheer variety of human reactions to situations. The very fact that history is full of so many stories of amazing endurance, amazing resilience, the will to build up even after the horrors have passed, this, to me, is an inexhaustible source of optimism. There are some people who condemn cultural appropriation and say that borrowing from one culture to another is to be condemned or the problem is a synonym for cultural appropriation is world history. Trade, transfer of ideas, influences. Valuing that which is unlike your own culture is also a form of appropriation, quite literally, and so that multitude of human reactions and the fact that our experiences so unlimited as history testifies, gives me great hope for the future.
Lex Fridman
The willingness of humans to explore all of that with curiosity. Even when the empires fall and the dreams are broken, we rise again.
The willingness of humans to explore all of that with curiosity. Even when the empires fall and the dreams are broken, we rise again.
Vejas Liulevicius
That’s right. Unceasingly.
That’s right. Unceasingly.
Lex Fridman
Vejas, thank you so much for your incredible work, your incredible lectures, your books, and thank you for talking today.
Vejas, thank you so much for your incredible work, your incredible lectures, your books, and thank you for talking today.
Vejas Liulevicius
Thank you for this such a fun chat.
Thank you for this such a fun chat.
Lex Fridman
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Vejas Liulevicius. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. Now let me leave you with some words from Karl Marx. “History repeats itself; first as a tragedy, second as a farce.” Thank you for listening. I hope to see you next time.
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Vejas Liulevicius. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. Now let me leave you with some words from Karl Marx. “History repeats itself; first as a tragedy, second as a farce.” Thank you for listening. I hope to see you next time.
Transcript for Gregory Aldrete: The Roman Empire – Rise and Fall of Ancient Rome | Lex Fridman Podcast #443
This is a transcript of Lex Fridman Podcast #443 with Gregory Aldrete.
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Hannibal famously crosses the Alps with elephants. Dramatic stuff. Nobody expects him to do this. Nobody thinks you can do this. Shows up in Northern Italy. Romans send an army. Hannibal massacres them. He is a military genius. Rome takes a year, raises a second army. We know this story, sends it against Hannibal. Hannibal wipes them out.
Rome gets clever this time. They say, “Okay, Hannibal’s different. We’re going to take two years, raise two armies and send them both out at the same time against Hannibal.” They do this, and this is the Battle of Cannae, which is one of the most famous battles in history. Hannibal is facing this army of 80, 000 Romans about, and he comes up with strategy called double envelopment. I mean, we can go into it later if you want, but it’s this famous strategy where he basically sucks the Romans in, surrounds them on all sides. And in one afternoon at the Battle of Cannae, Hannibal kills about 60,000 Romans. Now, just to put that in perspective, that’s more Romans hacked to death in one afternoon with swords than Americans died in 20 years in Vietnam.
I mean, put yourself in the place of average inhabitant of the ancient world. If you were an ancient person, three or four of your kids probably would’ve died. You would’ve buried your children. And nowadays, we think of that as an unusual thing, and just psychologically, that’s a huge thing. You would’ve seen multiple of your siblings die. If you were a woman, for example, if you were lucky enough to make it to let’s say age 13, you probably would have to give birth four or five times in order just to keep the population from dying out. Those kind of grim mortality statistics, I think, are a huge difference psychologically between the ancient world and the modern.
I think, as a historian, the way you begin to understand an alien, a foreign culture, which is what these cultures are, is to look for those little moments of sympathy. But on the other hand, there’s ways in which ancient cultures are wildly different from us. You also look for those moments where you just think, “How the hell could these people have done that? I just don’t understand how they could have thought or acted in this way.” It’s lining up those moments of sympathy and kind of disconnection that I think is when you begin to start to understand a foreign culture or an ancient culture.
I was just writing a lecture for my next Great Courses course, and I was writing about farming in the ancient world. I was really thinking if we were to write a realistic textbook of let’s say the Roman Empire, nine out of 10 chapters should be details of what it was like to be a small-time family farmer, because that’s what 90% of the people in the ancient world did. They weren’t soldiers, they weren’t priests, they weren’t kings, they weren’t authors, they weren’t artists. They were small-town family farmers, and they lived in a little village. They never traveled 20 miles from that village. They were born there. They married somebody from there. They raised kids. They mucked around in the dirt for a couple decades and they died. They never saw a battle. They never saw a work of art. They never saw a philosopher. They never took part in any of the things we define as being history. So that’s what life should be, and that’s representative.
But Rome is a little schizophrenic in that it’s both the empire when it was ruled by emperors, which is one kind of model, and it’s the Roman Republic when it was a pseudo-democracy, which is a different model. It’s interesting how some later civilizations tend to either focus on one or the other of those. The United States, Revolutionary France, they were very obsessed with the Roman Republic as a model. But other people, Mussolini, Hitler, Napoleon, they were very obsessed with the Empire. Victorian Britain as a model.
Rome itself has different aspects. But what I think is actually another big difference between the modern world and the ancient is our relationship with the past. One of the keys to understanding all of Roman history is to understand that this was a people who were obsessed with the past and for whom the past had power, not just as something inspirational, but it actually dictated what you would do in your daily life. Today, especially in the United States, we don’t have much of a relationship with the past. We see ourselves as free agents just floating along, not tethered to what came before.
The classical story that I sometimes tell in my classes to illustrate this is Rome started out as a monarchy. They had kings. They were kind of unhappy with their kings. Around 500 BC, they held a revolution and they kicked out the kings, and one of the guys who played a key role in this was a man named Lucius Junius Brutus. 500 years later, 500 years down the road, a guy comes along, Julius Caesar, who starts to act like a king. If you have trouble with kings in Roman society, who are you going to call? Somebody named Brutus. Now as it happens, there is a guy named Brutus in Roman society at this time, who is one of Julius Caesar’s best friends, Marcus Junius Brutus. Now, before I go further with the story, and I think you probably know where it ends, I talk about how important your ancestors are in Roman culture. I mean, if you went to an aristocratic Roman’s house and opened the front door and walked in, the first thing you would see would be a big wooden cabinet. If you open that up, what you would see would be row after row of wax death masks. When a Roman aristocrat died, they literally put hot wax on his face and made an impression of his face at that moment. They hung these in a big cabinet right inside the front door. Every time you entered your house, you were literally staring at the faces of your ancestors.
Every child in that family would have obsessively memorized every accomplishment of every one of those ancestors. He would’ve known their career, what offices they held, what battles they fought in, what they did. When somebody new in the family died, there would be a big funeral and they would talk about all the things their ancestors had did. The kids in the family would literally take out those masks, tie them onto their own faces, and wear them in the funeral procession. You were wearing the face of your ancestors. So you as an individual weren’t important, you were just the latest iteration of that family, and there was enormous weight, huge weight to live up to the deeds of your ancestors. The Romans were absolutely obsessed with the past, especially with your own family. Every Roman kid who is let’s say an aristocratic family could tell you every one of his ancestors back centuries. I can’t go beyond my grandparents, I don’t even know, but that’s maybe 100 years. It’s a completely different attitude towards the past.
In the late Republic, which we’ll probably talk about later, Rome desperately needed to change certain things, but it was a society that did things the way the ancestors did it, and they didn’t make some obvious changes, which might have saved their Republic. That’s the downside is that it locks you into something and you can’t change.
But to get us back to the Brutus’s, 500 years after that first Brutus got rid of kings, Julius Caesar starts to act like a king, one of his best friends is Marcus Junius Brutus. And literally, in the middle of the night, people go to Brutus’s house and write graffiti on it that says, “Remember your ancestor?” And another one is, I think, “You’re no real Brutus.” And at that point, he really has no choice. He forms a conspiracy. On the Ides of March 44 BC, he and 23 other senators take daggers, stick them in Julius Caesar, and kill him for acting like a king. The way I always pose this to my students is, “How many of you would stick a knife in your best friend because of what your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather did?”
A lot of societies have this power of the past. Today, not so much, but some still do. About a decade ago, I was in Serbia and I was talking to some of the people there about the breakup of Yugoslavia and some of the wars that had taken place where people turned against their neighbors, basically murdered people they had lived next to for decades. When I was talking to them, some of them actually brought up things like, “Oh, well, it was justified because in this battle in 12 whatever, they did this.” And I was thinking, “Wow, you’re citing something from 800 years ago to justify your actions today.” That’s a modern person who still understands the power of the past, or maybe is crippled by it, is another way to view it.
Then there’s this revolution, they kick out the kings, they become a Republic. That lasts from 500 BC roughly to about either 31 or 27 BC, depending what date you pick as most important, but about 500 years. The Republic is when they have a Republican form of government. Some people idealize this as Rome’s greatest period, and the big thing in that period is Rome first expands to conquer all of Italy in the first 250 years of that 500 year stretch. And then, the second 250 years, they conquer all the Mediterranean basin roughly. This is this time of enormous successful Roman conquest and expansion.
And then, you have another switch up and they become ruled by emperors. Back to the idea of one guy in charge, though the Romans try to pretend it’s not like a king, it’s something else. Anyway, we can get into that. But they’re very touchy about kings, so they have emperors. Roman Empire, the first emperor is Augustus. Starts off as Octavian, switches his name to Augustus when he becomes emperor. He kind of sets the model for what happens.
And then, how long does the Roman Empire last? That’s one of those great questions. The conventional answer is usually sometime in the fifth century, so the 400s AD, so about another 500 years, let’s say. So nice kind of even division, 500 years of Republic, 500 years of empire. But you can make very good cases for lots of other dates for the end of the Roman Empire. I actually think it goes all the way through the end of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, so another 1500 years, but that’s a whole other discussion. But so that’s your three phases of Roman history,
When they conquer Greece, Greek culture just becomes one more arena of competition. Romans will start to learn Greek. They’ll start to memorize Homer. They’ll start to see who can quote more passages of Homer in Greek in their letters to one another because that increases their status. Rome absorbs Greek civilization, and then the two get fused together.
The other thing I should mention in terms of influences that’s really huge on Rome is the Etruscans, and this is one that comes along before the Greeks. The Etruscans were this kind of mysterious culture that flourished in northern Italy before the Romans, so way back 800 BC. They were much more powerful than the Romans. They were a loose confederation of states. For awhile, the Romans even seemed to have been under Etruscan control. The last of the Roman kings was really an Etruscan guy pretty clearly. But the Etruscans end up giving to Rome, or you could say Rome ends up stealing perhaps, a lot of elements of Etruscan culture. Many of the things that we today think of as distinctively Roman, our cliches of what a Roman is, actually aren’t truly Roman, they’re stuff they stole from the Etruscans. Just a couple examples, the toga. What do you think of a Roman? It’s a guy wearing a toga, and the toga is the mark of a Roman citizen. Well, that’s what Etruscan kings wore, probably.
Gladiator games. We associate those very intensely with the Romans. Well, they probably stole that from the Etruscans. A lot of Roman religion. Jupiter is a thunder God, all sorts of divination. The Romans love to chop open animals and look at their livers and predict the future, that comes from the Etruscans. Watching the flight of birds to predict the future, that comes from the Etruscans. There’s a lot of central elements of what we think of as Roman civilization, which actually are borrowings, let’s say, from these older, slightly mysterious Etruscans.
Not every empire does that. There’s a lot of nations and empires that when they conquer, they annihilate versus integrate. And so, it’s an interesting thing to be able to culturally… The form that the competitiveness takes is that you want to compete in the realm of ideas in culture versus compete strictly in the realm of military conquest.
One of the things that’s absolutely crucial early in Roman history, when they’re just one of these tiny little mud hut villages fighting dozens of other mud hut villages in Italy, why does Rome emerge as the dominant one? Well, one of the things they do is when they do finally succeed in conquering somebody else, let’s say another Italianate people, they do something very unusual because the normal procedure in the ancient world is let’s say you conquer another city, you often kill most of the men, enslave the women and children, steal all the stuff, right? The Romans, at least with the Italians, conquer the other city, and sometimes they’ll do that, but sometimes they’ll also then say, “All right, we’re going to now leave you alone and we’re going to share with you a degree of Roman citizenship.” Sometimes they’d make them full citizens, more often they’d make them something we call half citizens, which is kind of what sounds like you get some of the privileges of citizenship, but not all of them. Sometimes they would just make them allies, but they would sort of incorporate them into the Roman project.
They wouldn’t necessarily ask for money or taxes, which is weird too. But instead, the one thing they would always, always demand from the conquered cities in Italy is that they provide troops to the Roman army. The army becomes this mechanism of Romanization where you pull in foreigners, you make them like you, and then they end up fighting for you. Early on, the secret to Rome’s military success is not that they have better generals. It’s not that they have better equipment. It’s not that they have better strategy or tactics. It’s that they have limitless manpower, relatively speaking. They lose a war and they just come back and fight again, and they lose again, and they come back and they fight again, and eventually they just wear down their enemies because their key thing of their policy is we incorporate the conquered people.
The great moment that just exemplifies this is pretty late in this process. They’ve been doing this for 250 years just about, and they’ve gotten down to the toe of Italy, they’re conquering the very last cities down there. One of the last cities is actually a Greek city. It’s a Greek colony. It’s a wealthy city, and so when the Romans show up on the doorstep and are about to attack them, they do what any rich Greek colony or city does, they go out and hire the best mercenaries they can. They hire this guy who thinks of himself as the new Alexander the Great, a man named Pyrrhus of Epirus. He’s a mercenary. He is actually related to Alexander distantly. He has a terrific army, top-notch army. He’s got elephants. He’s got all the latest military technology. The Romans come and fight a battle against him, and Pyrrhus knows what he’s doing. He wipes out the Romans.
He thinks, “Okay, now we’ll have a peace treaty. We’ll negotiate something. I can go home.” But the Romans won’t even talk. They go to their Italian allies and half-citizens, they raise a second army, they send it against Pyrrhus. Pyrrhus says, ‘Okay, these guys are slow learners. Fine.” He fights them again, wipes them out, thinks, “Now we’ll have a peace treaty.” But the Romans go back to the allies, raise a third army and send it after Pyrrhus. When he sees that third army coming, he says, “I can’t afford to win another battle. I win these battles, but each time I lose some of my troops and I can’t replace them, and the Romans just keep sprouting new armies.” So he gives up and goes home.
Rome kind of loses every battle, but wins the war. Pyrrhus one of, actually, his officers has a great line as they’re going back to Greece. He says, “Fighting the Romans is like fighting a hydra,” and a hydra is this mythological monster that when you cut off one head, two more grow in its place, so you can just never win.
As early as the second century AD of the Roman Empire, so the first set of emperors, the first 100 years were all Italians, but right away at the beginning of the second century AD you have Trajan, who’s from Spain. The next guy, Hadrian’s from Spain, and then a century later, you have Septimius Severus, who’s from North Africa. You would later get guys from Syria. I mean, the actual leaders of the Roman Empire are coming from the provinces.
Again, you’re taking the most warlike and potentially dangerous of your enemies, kind of absorbing them, putting through this thing for 25 years where they learn Latin, they learn Roman customs, they maybe marry someone who’s already a Roman or a Latin woman. They have kids within the system, their kids become Roman Legionaries, and you’ve thoroughly integrated what could have been your biggest enemies, right? Your greatest threat.
Then in the second half of that period, from about 250 to let’s say 30 BC, Rome goes outside of Italy, and this is a new world because now they’re encountering people who are really fundamentally different. So, true others. They do not have the same gods. They don’t speak the same language. They have fundamentally different systems of economy, everything.
Rome first expands in the Western Mediterranean, and there their big rival is the city state of Carthage, which is another city founded almost the same time as Rome that has also been a young, vigorously expanding aggressive empire. In the Western Empire at this time, you have two sort of rival groups, and they’re very different because the Romans are these citizen soldier farmers…
Carthage is an oligarchy of merchants, so it’s a very small citizen body. They make their money through maritime trade, so they have ships that go all over the Mediterranean. They don’t have a large army of Carthaginians. Instead, they hire mercenaries mostly to fight for them, so it’s almost these two rival systems. It’s different philosophies, different economies, everything.
Rome is strong on land. Carthage is strong at sea. So there’s this dichotomy, but they’re both looking to expand and they repeatedly come into conflict as they expand. So Carthage is on the coast of North Africa, Rome’s in Central Italy. What’s right between them? The island of Sicily. So the first big war is fought purely dictated by geography. Who gets Sicily, Rome or Carthage? And Rome wins in the end, they get it, but Carthage is still strong. They’re not weakened. So Carthage is now looking to expand.
The next place to go is Spain. So they go and take Spain. Rome, meanwhile, is moving along the coast of what today’s France. Where are they going to meet up? On the border of Spain and France. And there’s a city, at this point in time called Saguntum. The second big war between Rome and Carthage is over. Who gets Saguntum?
So, I mean, you can just look at a map and see this stuff coming. Sometimes geography is inevitability, and I think in the course of the wars between Rome and Carthage called the Punic Wars, there is this geographic inevitability to them.
This guy, Hannibal Barca, he was actually the son of the Carthaginian general who fought Rome for Sicily. Hamilcar was his father, but Hannibal is this just genius, just absolute military genius. He goes to Spain. He’s the one who kind of organizes stuff there, and now he knows the second war with Rome is inevitable. And so, the question is how do you take down Rome? He’s smart. He’s seen Rome’s strength. He knows it’s the Italian allies.
So Rome always wins because even if they lose battles, they go to the Italian allies and half citizens and raise new armies. So how do you beat them? He can never raise that many troops himself. And Hannibal, I think correctly figures out the one way to maybe defeat Rome is to cut them away from their allies. Well, how do you do this?
Hannibal’s plan is, I’m not going to wait and fight the Romans in Spain or North Africa. I’m going to invade Italy. So I’m going to strike at the heart of this growing Roman Empire, and my hope is that if I can win a couple big battles against Rome in Italy, the Italians will want their freedom back and they’ll rebel from Rome and maybe even join me, because most people who have been conquered want their freedom back, so this is a reasonable plan.
So Hannibal famously crosses the Alps with elephants, dramatic stuff. Nobody expects him to do this. Nobody thinks you can do this. Shows up in Northern Italy. Romans send an army. Hannibal massacres them. He is a military genius. Rome takes a year, raises a second army. We know this story, sends it against Hannibal. Hannibal wipes them out.
Rome gets clever this time. They say, okay, Hannibal’s different. We’re going to take two years, raise two armies and send them both out at the same time against Hannibal. So they do this, and this is the Battle of Cannae, which is one of the most famous battles in history, Hannibal’s facing this army of 80,000 Romans about, and he comes up with a strategy called double envelopment. I mean, we can go into it later if you want, but it’s this famous strategy where he basically sucks the Romans in, surrounds them on all sides, and in one afternoon at the Battle of Cannae, Hannibal kills about 60,000 Romans.
Now, just to put that in perspective, that’s more Romans hacked to death in one afternoon with swords than Americans died in 20 years in Vietnam. I mean, the Battle of Gettysburg, which lasted three days and was one of the bloodiest battles of civil war, I think the actual deaths at that were maybe like 15,000. So this is a bloodshed of an almost unimaginable scale.
Rome’s going to survive, and from this point on, they’re going to be unbeatable, but this is the crisis. This is the crucible. This is the furnace that Rome passes through, that is the dividing point between when they’re one more up and coming empire and when they’re clearly the dominant power in the Mediterranean.
So what do they do about Hannibal? Well, they’re smart. We’re not going to fight Hannibal. We’re not going to give Hannibal the chance to kill more Romans. So they adopt a strategy that they’ll follow Hannibal, when they raise a couple more armies, follow Hannibal round, but whenever Hannibal turns and tries to attack them, the Romans just back off. No, thank you. We’re not going to let you give you a chance.
Meanwhile though, they’re not scared of other Carthaginians, so they raise a couple more armies and they send these to Spain, for example, and start attacking the Carthaginian holdings there. And by luck or necessity, Rome comes up with its own brilliant commander at this point, a guy named Scipio, and he wins victories in Spain, conquers Spain. Then, he crosses into North Africa and starts to conquer that and ends up threatening Carthage directly.
And poor Hannibal, undefeated in Italy, has now been walking up and down Italy or marching up and down Italy for 12 years looking for another fight, and the Romans won’t give it to them. They’ve been attacking all these other areas and chipping away at Carthaginian power.
So finally, after more than a decade in Italy, Hannibal is called back to defend the homeland, defend Carthage from Scipio. The two meet in a big battle. This should be one of the great battles of all times the Battle of Zama, but Hannibal’s guys are kind of old by this point. Scipio has all the advantages. He wins. Carthage is defeated. So that’s pretty much the end of Carthage.
The city survives, and then 50 years later, the Romans wipe it out, but that’s not much of a war. But from this moment on, from the second Punic War, which ends in 201 BC, Rome is undisputably the most powerful force nation in the Mediterranean world, and having conquered the West, they’re now going to turn to the East, which is the Greek world, and the Greek world is older. It’s richer, it’s the rich part, half of the Mediterranean, it’s culturally more sophisticated. It’s the world left by Alexander the Great, that’s ruled by the descendants of his generals.
And the Greeks kind of view themselves as superior to the Romans. I mean, to the Greeks, the Romans are these uncouth sort of savage barbarians, but they’re going to get a real shock because the Roman army now has gotten really good to beat Hannibal. And when they go East, they’re going to just defeat the Greeks relatively easily, one after the other.
And there’s a famous historian named Polybius who is a Greek whose city was captured by the Romans. He later becomes a friend to the Scipio family. He actually teaches some of the Scipio children about Greek culture. And he writes a history of Rome and his motivation for writing this is he says, at the beginning of this book, he says, “Surely there can be no one so incurious as to not want to understand how the Romans could have conquered the entire Greek world in 53 years,” because that seems unimaginable to him.
So he’s writing this entire history as a way to try and understand how did the Romans do it? We were these wonderful superior people, and they came around in 50 years, bang, that’s the end of us. So that’s his motivation.
They’re not kind of in combat formation, but they’re strung out along the edge of this lake. It’s misty. There’s not good visibility, and he ambushes them along this lakeside, so Lake Trasimene, and it’s just using the terrain, understanding this. Again, Hannibal is very much outnumbered, but he’s able to use the terrain and to take the enemy by surprise.
At Cannae, he’s working against the expectations. So the traditional thing you do in the ancient world is the two armies would line up on opposite sides of a field, you’d put your best troops in the middle, you’d put your cavalry on the sides, you’d put your lightly armed skirmishers beyond those, and then the two sides kind of smack together, and the good troops fight the good, and you see who wins.
Now, Hannibal is hugely outnumbered by this giant phalanx of heavy infantry, which is what the Romans specialized in. They’re very good at sort of heavily armed foot soldiers. So he knows I don’t want to go up against that. I don’t have that many of that troop type. My guys aren’t as good as the Romans anyway.
So he lines up some of his less good troops in the center against the big menacing Roman phalanx, and he tells them, “Okay, when the Romans come, you’re not really trying to win, just hold them up. Just delay them,” and even tells them you can give ground, so you can retreat and sort of let the line form a big kind of C-shaped crescents, let the Romans sort of advance into you, but just hold that line.
And meanwhile, he puts his cavalry and his good troops on the side, and so on the sides, those good troops defeat the Romans, and then they kind of circle in behind the Romans and attack that big menacing Roman phalanx from the rear where it’s very vulnerable. And so, Hannibal catches the Romans in this sort of giant cauldron just with people closing in from both sides, and they get pressed together. They can’t fight properly, they panic, and they’re all slaughtered.
And that strategy of double envelopment, of sort of going around both sides becomes the model for all kinds of military strategies throughout the rest of history. I mean, the Germans use this in their Blitzkrieg in World War II, a lot of it was kind of that go around the sides and envelop the enemy. On the eastern front, they had a bunch of these cauldron battles where they would go around and try to encircle huge chunks of the Soviet, the Russian army, and do the same thing.
Supposedly even in the Gulf War, it was part of the US strategy for the invasion of Iraq to do this kind double envelopment maneuver. So it’s something that for the rest of military history, has been an inspiration to other armies.
Whereas the Greeks specialized in what are called hop lights, which is a kind of infantrymen with very heavy body armor, a helmet, a spear, and a really big heavy shield. And they would get in that formation where you kind of make the shields overlap and just form this solid mass bristling with spear points and just slowly kind of march forward and grind up your enemy in front of you. And so, that’s that sort of block of heavy infantry.
The advantage is head on against other things, they tend to win. The disadvantage is it’s slow moving. It’s vulnerable from the sides and the rear, so you got to protect those, but if you can keep frontally faced, it’s pretty much invincible. And that’s taken even further by Alexander the Great who comes up with the idea, well, what if we even give them a longer spear? So Greek spears were six to eight feet long. Alexander the Great, arms his armies with the sarissa, which is this 15 foot, almost a pike, this extra long spear.
And so, when the spear is that long, you don’t even hardly need the shields anymore. So it’s just this incredibly powerful thing in frontal attack, and that’s what he uses to make himself ruler of the known world. He goes and conquers the Persian Empire and makes himself the Persian king of kings with this phalanx of troops armed with the sarissa. So that’s very powerful.
The Romans go a little bit different route. They have heavy infantry, but they focus more on fighting with short swords, so it’s get up close and kind of stab. And the other thing the Romans do is they focus on flexibility and subdividing their army. So Alexander’s phalanx was a mass of let’s say, 5,000 guys and it was one unit.
The Roman army is organized in an ever decreasing number of subunits. So you have a group of eight guys who are a contubernia, the men who share a tent, you take 10 of those and they form a century of 80 men. You take a bunch of those and you form a cohort. If you forget a bunch of those, you form a legion.
So the Romans are able to subdivide their army, and the big sticking point comes at 197 BC at the Battle of Cynoscephalae, when the Roman Legion goes up against one of the descendants of Alexander the Great, who’s using his military system. So this is the new Roman system with flexibility versus the old invincible Alexander system with the heavily armed sarissa with those long 15-foot poles.
And the key moment in the battle is where they lock together And in a head-on clash, the Macedonians are going to win, but the Romans have the flexibility to break off a little section of their army, run around to the side, and attack that formation from the side, and they win the battle. So they prove tactically superior because of their flexibility. So it’s always development and counter development in military history.
Armor develops over time to fit the tactics. So the Greek hoplites, are very heavy armor. The Roman infantrymen early in the public is lighter. Eventually they get this typical sort of chain mail shirt, helmet shield, the classic sort of Roman legionary, I would say, is the one of the first and second centuries AD, so the early Roman Empire, and this is the guy who wore bands of steel arranged in sort of bands around their body. So it looks almost like a lobster’s shell, right? And this is a thing called the lorica segmentata.
So it’s solid steel, which is very good protection, but it’s flexible because it has these individual bands that provide a lot of movement. And then, you have a helmet, you have a square shield that’s kind of curved, and you have the short sword, the Roman gladius and that’s the classic Roman legionary. Later, more things develop.
My personal relationship with armor is I got, really by accident, involved in this project to try to reconstruct this mysterious type of armor that was used, especially by the Greeks and Alexander the Great called the linothorax, which apparently was made only out of linen and glue. So this seems a little odd that that’s not the sort of material once you want metal or something, but we had clear literary references that people, including Alexander, and the most famous image of Alexander is this Alexander mosaic found at Pompeii that shows him wearing one of these funny types of armor.
The catch is none survived. It’s organic materials. So we don’t have any of them and archaeologists like to study things that survive. So we have nice typologies of Greek armor made of bronze, Roman armor made of steel or sort of proto steel, but this thing, this linothorax was a mystery. And one of my undergraduate students, a guy named Scott Bartel, had a real, well, an Alexander obsession. He really loved Alexander.
So it started with this undergraduate turned into this huge thing, but it’s what we did. We first said, “All right, what are all the sources for this armor?” And in the end, we found 65 accounts of it in ancient literature by 40 different authors. So we have literary descriptions, and then we looked at ancient art, and we were able to identify about a thousand images in ancient art, in vase paintings, pottery, bronze sculpture, tomb paintings, all these different things showing this armor.
And then, using those two things, we tried to backwards engineer a pattern to say, “Well, if this is what the end product look like, what does it have to look like when you make it?” And then we tried to reconstruct one of these things using only the glue and materials. So we had to use animal glues, rabbit glue. We had to end up sort of making our own linen, which comes from the flax plant. So we had to grow flax, harvest it, using only techniques in the ancient world, so modern flax goes through chemical processes. No, we had to do this the old-fashioned way, spin it into thread, so the thread into fabric, glue it all together.
And then, the fun part was once we made these things, we subjected them to ballistics testing. So we shot them with arrows, which again were wooden reconstruction arrows, using bronze arrowheads that were based on arrowheads found on ancient battlefields to determine how good protection would this thing have been. And of course, the kind of fun one that everyone always likes and that the documentaries always want is at one point they’re like, “Well, can you put Scott in one of these and shoot him?” And we’re like, “Okay.” I mean, at that point, we’ve done about a thousand test shots. I grew up shooting bows and arrows. I knew exactly how far that was going to go. So it’s one of these, don’t do this at home kids.
In fact, probably, this is interesting, any woman in the ancient world could have made one of these because they were the ones who spun thread and sewed it into fabric. So I can easily see in a household a mother making this for her son, a wife making it for her husband. So it’s a form of armor you could have made domestically that would’ve been maybe not the greatest armor, but pretty good, pretty comparable to bronze armor.
But in the ancient world, they did have basically the equivalent of super glues. I mean, we found, for example, a helmets that were fished out river in Germany that had metal parts glued together that after 2,000 years of immersion and water were still glued together. So they had some great glues. We just don’t know what the recipes for them were. So we went the opposite tack and said, “Well, we’re just going to make something that we know they could have made.” So it was at least this good, you know what I’m saying?
So I think if you had some spare leather, you put that in. If you wanted to make one that was just sewn together, or even quilted stuffed with stuff you do that, maybe you were good at gluing stuff, you use that. So I think there’s no one answer. We investigated one possibility because we just had limited time and money and resources, but I think all these other things existed at the same time and we’re variants of it.
I also have a sciency background, so I think I’ve used a lot of that. Even though I’m a humanist and a historian, I’ve used a lot of hard science in my work. I did a book on floods where I had to get really heavy into vectors of disease and hydraulics and engineering and all that stuff, and I think, again, having that sort of hard science combined with a humanist background, helps with those sorts of projects.
So as soon as you start to get something more like a razor edge, it’s going to go through it more easily. Also, there’s changes in the bows that are being used. You start to get eastern horse archers showing up with composite bows, which are much more powerful. And so, it just becomes outdated as frontline military equipment. What’s interesting is by the Roman period, people are still wearing it, but it’s now things like when I go hunting, if I’m hunting lions, I wear this. There’s an actual source that says, “It’s really good for hunting dangerous big cats because it catches their teeth and stops them from penetrating. One emperor wears one of these under his toga. It’s kind of like a, not bulletproof vest, but stab proof vest. So again…
But Alexander is a combination of two things, one is he really just was a skilled individual, and he was one of those guys who had it all. He was smart, he was athletic, and he was supremely charismatic. I mean, it’s obviously one of these people that would walk into a room and everyone just kind of gravitates to him. He had that magic that made him an effective leader.
And secondly, he was lucky because it wasn’t all him. He inherited a system created by his father, Philip II. So he was in the right time at the right place and had this instrument placed in his hands, and then he had the intelligence and the charisma to go use it. So it’s one of these coming together of different things, but often his father’s contribution, I think, is not recognized as much as it is.
It’s his father who reformed the Macedonian army, who came up with that system of equipping them with the sarissa, this extra long spear that made them really effective, created the mixed army. So one of the keys to Alexander’s successes, in a tactical sense, is that his army was composed of different elements: heavy cavalry, light cavalry, heavy infantry, light infantry, missile troops, and he understand that he can use these in different and flexible ways on the battlefield; whereas a lot of warfare before then had just been, you line up, two sides smashed together.
So he did clever things with this army that was a better tool than others did. And then, he was just supremely ambitious. I mean, he cared about his fame, which I guess his ego, but he clearly cared about that more than he did about things like money. He was indifferent to that, and he did have a grand vision. So he did have this vision of trying to unite the world, both politically under his control, but also culturally, and this is an interesting thing.
So he was very open, in fact, insistent of trying to meld together the best elements of all the different cultures. So he, himself, was a Macedonian, but he admired Greek culture. So he pretty much adopted Greek culture as his own. When he conquers Persia, he starts adapting elements of Persian culture. He dresses in Persian clothing. He marries a Persian woman. He sort of forces thousands of his troops to marry local women. He appoints Persians to positions of power. He integrates Persian units into his military. He really wanted to fuse all these things together. And some people see this as a very enlightened vision that, “Oh, he’s not just, I want to conquer people and now they’re my slaves,” that he was really trying to create this one culture that was sort of the best of everything. Others see it, of course, as a form of cultural imperialism. You’re destroying other cultures and trying to warp or twist them into something, but what I think is interesting is that this vision he had of uniting cultures creates very problematic tensions among his own followers because the-
So Alexander is one of these interesting personalities because every generation sees him in a new light and focuses on different things. So for some, he’s this enlightened visionary who was taught by Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, and they say, “Well, this influenced him.” Others see him as an egomaniacal warmonger, just I’m out to kill and gain glory. There was a book a couple of decades ago, it says, “Oh, he’s just an alcoholic,” which he probably was. Yeah. So you get all these competing images, and the great thing is, we don’t really know what the true Alexander was or what his motivations were. It’s a mixed message.
So his was a flash in the pan. It was, he had this spectacular conquest in 10 years. He conquered what was then most of the known world, but he had no permanent structure in place. He didn’t really deal with the issue of succession. It fell apart instantly. The Romans are much more about building a structure. I mean, as we talked about a little, they were very good about incorporating the people they conquered into the Roman project. I mean, they’re oppressive, they’re imperialistic as well. Let’s not whitewash them. I mean, they had moments when they would just wipe out entire cities. But on the whole, they were much more about trying to bring people into the Roman world. And I think that was one of their strengths, is that they were open to integration and bringing in different people to keep rejuvenating themselves.
But law codes are hugely important because you need a law code to enable people to live in groups. So they’re the transitional thing that lets human beings live together without just resorting to anarchy. And most of the early law codes are agricultural, like Hammurabi’s Code in Mesopotamia. Most of them are retaliatory, meaning eye for an eye type justice. So you do something to me, it gets done to you. But they’re this necessary precondition for civilization, I would say, and the Twelve Tables is that. It’s a crude law code. It has a lot of goofy stuff in it. It has things about if you use magic, this is the punishment, but it’s that basic agrarian society law code. Now, that’s typical in many societies. Where the Romans are different is, they keep going. They keep developing their law code. And by the late republic, the Romans just get really into legal stuff.
I don’t know why, but the Romans are very methodical organized people. So maybe this has something to do with it. But their law code just keeps getting more and more complicated and keeps expanding to different areas. And they start to get jurists who write sort of theoretical things about Roman law. And eventually, it becomes this huge body both of cases and comments on those cases and of actual laws. And in the 6th century AD, so the 500s, the Roman Emperor, Justinian, who is an emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire by this point, the Byzantine Empire, compiles all this together into something that today, we just loosely called Justinian’s Code of Roman law, and that survives. And so that becomes the basis for almost all the legal systems around the world and it’s very complicated. And Roman law, I think is really fun. Because on the one hand, it’s really dry, but it also preserves these wonderful little vignettes of daily life. So you get these great, just entertaining law cases.
One of my favorite, and this may not even be a real case, this might be a hypothetical that they would use to train Romans or law students, is one day, a man sends a slave to the barber to get a shave. And the barber shop is adjacent to an athletic field and two guys are on the athletic field throwing a ball back and forth. And one of them throws the ball badly, the other guy fails to catch it. The ball flies into the barber shop, hits the hand of the barber, cuts the slave’s throat, he dies. Who’s liable under Roman law? Is it the athlete one who threw the ball badly? Is it athlete two who failed to catch it? Is it the barber who actually cut the slave’s throat? Is it the owner of the slave for being stupid enough to send his slave to get a shave in a place adjacent to a playing field? Or is it the Roman state rezoning a barber shop next to an athletic field? What do you think?
So it’s just great. It’s fun to mess around in this, but it always contains these little nuggets about what happens. I mentioned I wrote a book on floods. And there were all these law cases about if a flood strikes the city and picks up my piece of furniture in my apartment building and carries it out the door and deposits it in another apartment building, does that guy now own my furniture because it’s now legally within his apartment? Or can I go in there and repossess it because the flood took it out of my apartment? This is the stuff law is handled and that’s how sophisticated Roman law got.
Well, adult free men who are not slaves, who are not resident foreigners, they have this great stuff. And that’s always a tiny minority of all the human beings who existed in this society. But still, the notion, the notion of citizenship is huge. And citizens, for example, early on, you had to be tried at Rome if you were accused of something. And there’s this very famous moment in Sicily where an abusive governor who’s corrupt is punishing a citizen arbitrarily. And this person cries out, “Civis Romanus Sum,” meaning, “I am a Roman citizen.” And it really was this hugely loaded statement that that gives me protections. It is wrong for you to do this to me. It’s wrong for you to beat me because I am a citizen and that gives me certain protections. So that notion of citizenship is something that I think, the Romans really emphasize and becomes a legacy to a lot of civilizations today, where citizenship means something. It’s a special status.
So Roman slavery is odd in that it doesn’t have this racial component. It’s horrible in the way all slavery is horrible, but the other thing about is it’s not a hard line. It’s a permeable membrane, and many people move back and forth across it. So you have many people in the Roman world who were born a slave who gained their freedom through one means or another. And you have many others who were born free and become slaves. And you have some who go back and forth. There’s a great Roman tombstone of this guy who says, “I was born a free man in Parthia. I was enslaved. Then I gained my freedom and I became a teacher or something, and I had a life, and now I’m a Roman citizen.” So it’s this whole back and forth across all these boundaries multiple times.
Once you were a slave though, the experience of slavery varied a lot because a lot of the slaves were agricultural slaves. So they would work like in the American South, big plantations. They might be chained. They were probably abused. That’s very similar to slavers as we think of it in let’s say, the Caribbean, South America or the United States prior to the Civil War, that kind of slavery. But a lot of Roman slaves were also some of the more skilled people. And this seems a little weird. So if you’re a rich person, you have slaves, it’s actually a good investment for you to train your slaves in a profession. So a lot of Roman doctors, scribes, accountants, sort of, all this sort of thing, barbers, were slaves. Because if you train this person, and then they produce a lot of money for you, you get that money.
And those slaves would sometimes be given an incentive to work hard where they could… And this is just sort of an agreement between the master and the slave. If they earned a certain amount of money, X amount of money, they could then buy their own freedom from the master. So this was your incentive to work harder if you were trained let’s say, as a doctor. “I work really hard, I can buy myself out of slavery.” Or a lot of masters would free their slaves in their wills.
So when they died, they would say, “I manumit this slave and that slave.” So it was a weird institution in that elements were just as horrible as what we think of as slavery and just as exploitative. And like I say, the overall notion of slavery is intensely dehumanizing, but yet, there was this wide range of types of slaves. And the odd thing is, in the city of Rome, many of the worst jobs, so if you’re just a laborer hauling crap around at the docks or things like that, you might well be a free person and a slave would hold a skilled job. And that seems a little strange or counterintuitive to us, but you see how in the Roman economy it sort of works.
So it’s a dog tag, except this is a human being. And you can see these in museums. I mean, you can go to a museum today and see this little bronze collar with a tag on it that’s talking about a human being as if they’re this kind of animal that’s run away. And this is very telling too. We’re talking about Roman law. Under Roman law, technically, when a slave runs away, the crime that he’s committing is theft because he’s stolen himself from his master. So again, it’s this very dehumanizing view of it.
So you have a lot of veterans who are now unemployed or underemployed. Many of them have sold their small family farms when they went off to join the army, and now they don’t have them. So that group’s unhappy, the veterans. You have the aristocrats who on the surface, the ones who are doing well, they’re the politicians and the generals. But as time goes on, the ones who get the plum appointments, who get the good general ships, starts coming from a smaller and smaller subset of the aristocrats. The Scipios and their friends start to dominate. So you end up where most of the aristocratic class is feeling, “Hey, I’m left out. I didn’t get what I deserved.” What about the half citizens and the allies? The Italians who have fought for Rome, who stayed loyal when Hannibal invaded, they didn’t go over to his side. Well, they feel rightfully, “We stayed loyal to Rome. We fought for them. We deserve our reward. We should be full citizens.” But the Romans are traditional. They’re conservative. They don’t like change. They don’t give them that.
What about all the slaves? Well, they’ve conquered all these foreigners. They’ve sold them. Now, many of them are working these plantations, big plantations owned by rich people that used to be little family farms. The slaves are obviously unhappy. So you end up with a society where it’s incredibly successful by about 100 BC, but almost every group that composes it feels like, “I haven’t shared in the benefits of what’s happened or I’ve been exploited by it.” So they all end up intensely unhappy. And the next 100-year period from 133 to 31 BC is called the Late Roman Republic. And it’s a time of nearly constant internal strife, ultimately culminating in multiple rounds of civil war.
So Roman society literally breaks apart, turns on itself, and goes to war with itself over not equitably sharing the benefits of conquest and of empire. So it’s a lesson about not sharing the benefits of something in a society, but concentrating it in one little group. And the other thing that happens is among the aristocrats, they start to get more and more ambitious. So in the past, there was a lot of ideology of, the state is more important than the person. If you were a little Roman kid, you would’ve been told these stories of Roman heroes. And they’re all about self-sacrifice, putting the state before you, about modesty, about these values. Well, by the late republic, you have a succession of strong men. And it is a chain. So it goes, Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Julius Caesar, where each one pushes the boundaries of the Roman Republic a little bit, pushes at the structures of the institutions of the Republic, and they’re motivated by personal gain. They’re putting themselves above the state.
So at the same time, you have lots of groups unhappy in society, and you get these strong men who are now undermining the institutions, chipping away at the things that have been shared, things holding the state together. And in the end, they just become so ambitious, they’re like, “I don’t care about the state. I’m going to try and make myself ruler of Rome.” So I mean, this is going to culminate obviously in Julius Caesar who does succeed in making himself dictator for life of the Roman Republic, which is tantamount to king, and he gets assassinated for it. But he’s the end point of this progression of people who really undermine the institutions, the republic, through their own personal greed.
Then Pompey comes along, and Pompey just breaks all kinds of things. He starts holding offices when he’s too young to do so. He raises personal armies from his own wealth. He disobeys commands. He manipulates commands. He does all kinds of stuff. But in the end, he sides with the Senate when sort of forced. And finally, Caesar comes along and Caesar’s just shamelessly, “No, it’s about me. I’m going to push it.” And he is the one who wins a civil war against the state and Pompey, takes over Rome and says, “Now, I’m going to be dictator.” And dictator is a traditional office in the Roman state, but dictators were limited to no more than six months in power. And Caesar says, “Well, I’ll be dictator for life,” which of course, is king. He gets killed for it.
So Caesar succeeded in taking over the state as one man, but he couldn’t solve the problem. How do you rule Rome as one person and not get killed for looking like a king? That’s the dilemma, the riddle that Caesar leaves behind him. He did it. He seize power as one guy, but how do you stay alive? How do you come up with something that the people will accept? And Caesar did some other things which are bad. He was arrogant. He didn’t even pretend that the Senate were his equals. He just railroaded them around. He didn’t respect them. He named a month after himself, July, Julius. He did egotistical things. So that pissed people off. They didn’t like it. And when Caesar dies, it’s this interesting moment. The Republic is sort of dead by then. You’re going to have a hard time reviving it. You’ve broken too many precedents, but there’s a power vacuum now. Caesar’s gone, what’s going to happen next?
And you have a whole group of people who want to be the next Caesar. So the most obvious is Mark Antony, who is Caesar’s right-hand man, his lieutenant. He’s a very good general. He’s very charismatic. Everybody expects Mark Antony to just become the next Caesar. But there’s also another of Caesar’s lieutenants, a guy named Lepidus, sort of like Antony, but not quite as great as him. There’s the Senate itself, which wants to reassert its power, kind of become the dominant force in Rome again. There’s the assassins who killed Caesar, led by Brutus, and another guy, Cassius, they now want to seize control. And finally, there’s a really weird dark horse candidate to fill this power vacuum. And that’s Julius Caesar’s grandnephew, who at the time, is a 17-year-old kid named Octavian. Who cares? He’s nobody. Absolutely nobody. But when Caesar’s will is opened after his death, so posthumously read in his will, Caesar posthumously… And this is a little weird, posthumously adopts Octavian as his son. Now again, who cares? Antony gets the troops. Antony gets the money. The other people get everything.
What does Octavian get? He gets to now rename himself, Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus. Who cares? Well, around the Mediterranean, there’s about 12 legions full of hardened soldiers who are just used to following a guy named Gaius Julius Caesar. And even though it’s not quite logical, this 18-year-old, he’s now an 18-year-old kid, inherits an army overnight. So he becomes a player in this game for power. And the next 30, 40 years is going to be those groups all vying with one another. There’s another candidate too, Pompey’s son. Pompey was Caesar’s great rival. He has a couple of sons. And one of them, a guy named Sextus Pompey, basically becomes a warlord who seizes control of Sicily, one of the richest provinces, has a whole Navy. He’s vying to be one of the successors too. So for the next 40 years, it’s as you said, another civil war to see which guy emerges. Is it going to be the Senate? Is it going to be the assassins? Is it going to be Antony? Is it going to be Lepidus? Is it going to be Sextus Pompey? Is it going to be Octavian?
So, the first thing is just how he lives his life. He’s very modest. He lives in an ordinary house like other aristocrats. He wears just a plain toga, nothing fancy. He’s respectful to the Senate.
He treats them with respect. He eats simple foods. I mean, he’s someone who cared about the reality of power, not the external trappings. Clearly there’s some rulers who love, “I want to dress in fancy clothes. I want to be surrounded by gold.
Everything. This is what makes me feel good.” Octavian is the opposite. He doesn’t care about any of that. He wants real power. And then, the other thing is, how is he going to rule Rome without looking like a king?
And his solution to this is brilliant. He basically pretends to resign from all his public offices and not pretends he does. So, he holds no official office. But what he does is he manipulates so that the Roman Senate votes him the powers of the key Roman offices, but not the office itself. So, the highest office in the Roman state is the consul.
Consuls have the power to command armies, do all sorts of things, run meetings of the Senate. Octavian gets voted the powers of a consul so he can command armies control meetings of the Senate, do all this. But he’s not one of the two consuls elected for every year. So, he’s just floating or drifting off to the side of the Roman government. He gets the power of a Tribune, which has all sorts of powers.
He can veto anything he wants, but he’s not one of the Tribunes elected for anyone. So, the state, the Republic appears to continue as it always has. Each year they hold the same elections, they elect the same number of people, notionally, those people are in charge. But floating off to the side, you have this guy Octavian, who has equivalent power, not just to any one magistrate official, but to all of them. So, any moment he can just pop up and say, “No, let’s not do this.
Let’s do something else.” And he also keeps the army under his personal control.
No, he can’t do that. Dictator for life. No way. Maybe I’ll call myself Romulus. That was the founder of Rome. No, no.
Romulus was a king.” And finally, a solution is he takes a bunch of titles, which are all ambiguous, and no one of them sounds that impressive, but collectively they are. So, for example, one of the titles he gets is Augustus, which is something tied to Roman religion. Something that is Augustus in Latin has two possible meanings. One is someone who is Augustus is very pious. They respect the Gods deeply. Well, that sounds nice, doesn’t it? Well, on the other hand, an alternative meaning for Augustus is something that is itself divine. So, is he just a deeply religious, pious person, or is he himself sacred? There’s that ambiguity.
He calls himself Princeps, which means first citizen. “Okay, what the hell does that mean? Am I a citizen just like everybody else? Or am I the first citizen, which means I’m superior to all the others?” So, every title he takes has this weird ambiguity.
He calls himself Imperator, which is traditionally something that soldiers shout at, a victorious general who’s won a battle. And now he takes this as a permanent title. So, it implies he’s a good general. And by the way, it’s from Imperator that we get the word emperor, an empire. So, originally it’s a military title, a spontaneous military acclamation.
So, you’re like, “Okay, fine, I don’t care. Maybe he’s killed the Republic, but at least we’re not dying in the streets anymore.” So, that’s a big thing he does.
And secondly, even though Augustus always seemed sickly his constitution, he lives forever. He rules for like 50 years, and by the time he dies, there’s no one literally almost left alive who can remember the Republic. So, at that point, by the time he dies, this is the only system we know.
And often they literally were ruled by the same dynasty because they had a habit of marrying brothers to sisters. And Cleopatra was in fact originally married to her younger brother. But despite that, she seems to have intensely identified with Egypt. In fact, she seems to have been the first one of all these Ptolemy kings who actually bothered to learn to speak Egyptian. So, she seems to really have cared about Egypt as well.
And she was clearly very smart, very clever. And so, she’s living at a time during the late Republic when Rome is having all these civil wars. And Egypt is really the last big independent kingdom left around the shores, the Mediterranean, everything else has been conquered by Rome. So, she is in this very precarious position where clearly she wants to maintain Egyptian independence, but Rome is this juggernaut that’s rolling over everything. She ends up meeting Julius Caesar when Caesar comes to Egypt chasing Pompey, his great rival, after he defeats Pompey, Pompey runs to Egypt thinking he’ll find sanctuary there, and the Egyptians kill him and chop off his head.
And when Caesar lands, they hand it to him and say, “Here have a present.” And she, of course, famously ends up having a love affair with Caesar. Was that a genuine love or was she just using this as a way to try and keep Egypt independent to give it some status? We don’t know. After she does have several kids with Caesar.
After Caesar’s assassinated, and the Roman world is having another civil war between Octavian and Mark Antony. Mark Antony is basing himself in the east. He meets Cleopatra and he has a big love affair with her. And this one seems pretty genuine. I mean, Antony and Cleopatra, there’s a lot of stories about them partying together.
They liked to cosplay and dress up as different gods. So, Cleopatra would dress up as the goddess Isis and Antony would dress up as the god Dionysus in a leopard skin, and they’d have these big parties and stuff, and they end up together fighting against Octavian. And in the end, they’re defeated by Octavian and Antony commits suicide. Cleopatra there’s differing accounts of her death. She may have also killed herself, or she may actually have been killed by Octavian to just get her out of the way.
But she’s an interesting figure because she was clearly a very smart woman who managed to keep Egypt alive as an independent state. She seemed to have actually cared about Egypt and identified with it and succeeded at a time with all these famous people in being a real mover and shaker and a force in events.
But what I’m constantly struck by is when you start, again, delving into the sources, you always hear, “Okay, well, there was this one woman who was a philosopher, and she’s an exception to the rule. And yeah, okay, she’s fine.” And then, you start looking into, “Oh, and there’s also 60 other female philosophers. Well, it’s not so much an exception anymore. Or Cleopatra is the one queen.
She’s this strong queen.” And then, you look, “Well, there was this other queen here. There was this queen here. There was this queen here who led armies, and here’s another one who led armies.” And again, it’s like, well, are they exceptions to the rule or is just the history that was written, which is written by men a little bit selective in how it portrays them, because the sources are all these male elites who have very definite ideas about women.
The conventional notion has always been that business in the Roman Empire was a male field. Well, but then there’s this woman, Eumachia in Pompeii who actually had the largest building in Pompeii, right on the forum named after her with a giant statue of her. And she was a patron to a bunch of the most important guilds in Pompeii. Okay. She’s the exception to the rule.
Oh, but then there’s these other four women we have from Pompeii who also were patrons of guilds. And then, there’s this woman, Plancia Magna in this other place, and she was the most important patron in the town and put up all these statues. So, at some point, when do you start to say, “Well, maybe women did play more of a role, but they just haven’t been recorded in the sources in the way that maybe they deserve to be.”
And this is the most humiliating thing that can happen to a Roman legion to have its eagles captured. And Augustus desperately wanted to negotiate with the Parthians to get these eagles returned. Okay? This was his big diplomatic thing. So, he was constantly sending these embassies to Parthia. On one of these embassies, he sent along as a gift to the Parthian King, a slave woman named Musa.
Musa seems to have pleased the king of Parthia because she becomes one of his concubines, and then she gives birth to a son by the king, and eventually she becomes upgraded to the level of wife. And Musa eventually murders the Parthian king, arranges it so that her son becomes the king of Parthia, and she’s really ruling the whole empire behind the scenes as his mother. So, this is a literal rags to riches story of a slave, someone who starts out a slave and becomes the queen of an empire, almost as large and powerful as Rome. Okay. But yet, how often do we hear about Musa?
And when you look in traditional histories of Roman, Parthian relations, and I went and looked at this because I was just writing this lecture, most of those histories didn’t even mention her. They just talked about her son, like he had just come out of nowhere and become the new heir to the Parthian throne when it was all her doing clearly. Now, that’s selective editing of history by historians to downplay the role that this woman played. And there’s a lot of examples like that.
So, this is what Augustus thought of as his greatest achievement. And that embassy that arranged that was the one that sent Musa to Parthia.
He was the founder of the Roman Empire, and we still live today in the world that he created. So, what on the political side of things and maybe beyond, what is the political system that he created?
And so, he’s hugely influential for Western civilization, all this. But beyond just that literal thing, which is already 500 years, 1500 years, he becomes the paradigm of the good ruler, so of an absolute ruler who is nevertheless just does good things, builds public works as popular. So, if we jump ahead, let’s say to the Middle Ages, the most significant ruler of the early Middle Ages is Charlemagne. He’s the guy who unites most of Europe. He becomes the paradigm for all medieval kings after him.
Well, what is the title that the Pope gives to Charlemagne? Because there’s this famous moment when the Pope acknowledges Charlemagne as the preeminent European king and crowns him on Christmas day of the year 800. And the title that the Pope gives to Charlemagne is Charles, that’s Charlemagne Augustus, Emperor of the Romans. He’s giving him the title of Augustus because that’s the nicest thing he can think of to say to Charlemagne is to say, “You’re the new Augustus. You’re emperor of the Romans.”
So, that image is hugely powerful, and that persists on and on. I mean, even the literal names of most rulers afterwards come from this. In Russia, the Czars are Caesars. That’s where Czar comes from. Prince comes from Princeps, first citizen, one of the titles.
Emperor comes from Imperator, one of the titles of Augustus. When Napoleon becomes Emperor, what does he call himself? First consul, which is like Princeps, and then he calls himself emperor. I mean, everybody wants to be this kind of ruler. So, he’s the paradigm of this for the rest of history.
And you can see that as both a positive and a negative legacy. It’s like Alexander. I mean, everybody wants to be the next Alexander. Now, nobody does become the next Alexander. Nobody’s as successful as him.
But a lot of people try and you can see that either as, oh, inspirational or awful, because lots of people killed lots of other people and started lots of wars trying to be the next Alexander. At least Augustus has this notion of good rulership that you’re not just a great powerful person, but you’re a good ruler somehow.
But as I mentioned off to the side, you now have this figure of Augustus who controls everything behind the scenes, and that continues. So, this political system he establishes continues. And in reality, I would say Augustus at that point is again a king. It really is one man controlling the state. Even if notionally, it’s still continuing as a republic.
They are electing magistrates, but the magistrates only do what the emperor tells them. But it’s this formal versus informal power, the formal structure as a republic, the way things really work informally is it’s a monarchy. Now, if you asked Augustus, what did he do? Did you become a king? He said, and he says this explicitly, “No, no, no.
What I did is I refounded the Roman Republic.” That’s how he phrases it.
It’d be something like, “How I conquered the world,” right? Augustus calls his, derace quae feci, which the best literal translation is stuff I did. I mean, it’s the most modest title for someone who could have given the most grandiose title. And the first line of it is at the age of 18, when the liberty of the Republic was oppressed by a faction, I defended it. Now, the way I might phrase that sense is at the age of 18, I fought a civil war against another Roman and conquered the Roman state.
But no, he defended the liberty of the republic when it was oppressed by the tyranny of a faction. That’s propaganda, and it works.
And I don’t know what the answer to that is. I will tell you that it takes 200 years before we have the first Roman source that bluntly calls Augustus a king. So, 200 years, it takes the Romans 200 years to admit to themselves. And that’s a guy who comes along 200 years later and says, “Hey, Augustus, he looks like a king. He acts like a king. Let’s just call him a king, because he had every aspect of a king except the patriae Title.”
One slave once gets him angry, and he has him tortured in particularly cruel manner. So, I mean, on the one hand, he had this clemency. On the other hand, he could be really hard-nosed and hard edged, and I think he was a very calculating person.
So, he’s seeing himself as an actor that his whole life was acting this role, which is again, all that manipulation and public image. He was brilliant at that. But who’s the real guy? What was behind that image?
Hundreds of thousands of people killed, hundreds of thousands of people enslaved to further one guy’s career. I mean, if you wanted, could call Caesar a war criminal, and I think that wouldn’t be unfair. But on the other hand, some people see him as a great hero. I mean, to talk about history and its reception, it’s quite interesting to see how Caesar has been viewed by different generations. So, at different points in time, the received wisdom on Caesar was very different.
So, back in the, let’s say the 1920s or ’30s, there were a number of scholarly things written which looked at Caesar as an admirable figure. He’s a strong man who knows what Rome needed and was going to give it to them. And of course, that’s the era when fascism was trendy and was seen as a positive thing. And then, you get Hitler and World War II and all of sudden fascism is not so favored anymore. And then, in that post-war generation, all of a sudden Caesar’s terrible.
He’s a dictator. He is destroying the Republic. So, often histories that are written tell you a lot more about the time they’re written than they do about the subject they’re written about.
Mussolini had them. Napoleon had eagle standards for his military. So, a lot of people like that imagery.
I think we have almost more words from Cicero than any other author that survived, and it’s all kinds of stuff. It’s philosophical treatises, it’s books about how to be a good public speaker. He published volume after volume of his personal letters to his friends. He published these things. So, there’s tons of stuff from him.
And secondly, he’s interesting because he lived at this incredibly important time in the late Republic when things were falling apart. But he seems to have been born with none of the natural advantages that all these other people had. So, he was a lousy general. He didn’t come from a wealthy family. He didn’t come from a famous aristocratic family.
He didn’t have a lot of these advantages, but yet he ended up being right at the center of things, rose to the highest elected office in the Roman state on the basis of one skill. And that was his ability with words, his ability to get up in front of a crowd and persuade them of what he wanted them to believe. And oratory, public speaking was absolutely central to life at Rome. There were just all these events where people had to get up and give speeches. So, in courtrooms, at funerals, in the Senate to the people of Rome, at games, I mean just constantly, there were these opportunities for giving speeches.
So, if you are good at this, that was a huge advantage in your political career. And Cicero was the best. He was arguably the best public speaker of all time.
Some people claim. And he lived right in this era, and he parlayed that skill with words into this very successful political career. He was one of the guys involved with all this stuff with Caesar and Pompey and all the other things going on, Octavian, Mark Antony.
So, many of the rhetorical tricks you wrote, such as mudslinging, exaggeration, guilt by association, ad hominem attacks, name-calling, fearmongering, us versus them, rhyme, and so on and so forth. So, I’m guessing it worked given that we still have those today.
And the key to Cicero’s whole enterprise about persuading an audience, let’s say either it is speech to the people or in the courtroom is Cicero believed that people are fundamentally ruled by emotion. So, if you can touch their emotions, all sorts of other things become less important. If you can get a jury emotionally worked up and fear, anger, or particularly powerful there, then the facts might not matter, the truth might not matter, evidence might not matter, reason might not matter. Emotion is the key to everything. So, Cicero used what I would arguably call a lot of tricks to get his audiences emotionally riled up.
And you can just go through these and they’re all the stuff you were saying, name-calling, mudslinging, us versus them arguments, ad hominem attacks, incredibly sophisticated. All this stuff that we think of today is, oh, very sophisticated techniques for propaganda and persuasion. It’s not new. People aren’t coming up with that much that’s new outside the realm of technology, human nature is the same. Cicero understood human psychology.
He knew how to play on people. He knew how to play on their emotions, and he would do just… I mean, I want to say hilarious, but they’re depressingly hilarious things. He thought it’s important to use props. So, he said, “People are visual. They will respond emotionally to visual things in a way that just words alone won’t work.”
So, he says, “An order is just like an actor and like an actor he has to prepare his stage and use props and things as visual cues to stir up the audience. So, for example, once he was defending a man in a court case who had just had a new baby born to him, and Cicero literally delivered the defense oration for this guy while cradling his newborn son in his arms, you can imagine, “Oh, cute little baby. Jury, how could you find him guilty and leave this cute baby without a father to take care of him?” Another time, he was defending a guy who had a photogenic son, a young boy, and Cicero literally propped up the kid behind him while he was giving the speech, and again said-
Another time someone didn’t have a photogenic kid, so he propped up his old parents in the courtroom and said, “Look at this nice old couple. You won’t want to take their son away.” That kind of stuff; I mean, it’s manipulative.
Cicero, by the way, I should say also had philosophical beliefs about defending the republic and such. But he wasn’t above using these things. Even though he may have had altruistic or high notions of what he was doing, he also wasn’t above using these kind of rhetorical tricks.
And the thought occurred to me, “Well, in ancient Rome, you don’t have microphones. You don’t have loudspeakers. So how does someone give a speech outdoors in a windy place, not acoustically sound, to 20,000 people?” They just can’t hear you. Part of the answer, it turns out, well, part of it’s oratorical training. You learn how project your voice. But some of it too is that the Romans actually had this system of gestures that orators like Cicero would use to accompany their speeches. And what I ended up doing is combining two types of evidence again.
So I looked at the rhetorical handbooks like Cicero’s. And also there’s this guy, Quintilian, who lived about 100 years after Cicero, who wrote this long thing called the Institutio Oratoria, which has a description of all types of oratorical stuff, including about 40 pages on gestures.
So he actually says, “When you put your fingers like this, it means such and such.” It turns out Roman orators had a system of sign language that they would use to augment their speeches. But here’s the fun part. It wasn’t like modern American Sign Language, where a gesture means the same thing as a word.
Instead; and this goes back to Cicero; a certain gesture would indicate a certain emotion that you were meant to feel when you heard the words. It’s like your body is adding an emotional gloss to your speech. You’re saying words, and then you’re indicating how you think those words should make you feel.
And even more fun, the Romans believed that, “If I make certain hand gestures, you will almost involuntarily feel certain emotion.” So if you’re skilled, you can manipulate your audience by playing on their emotions.
This might sound weird or improbable, but the metaphor that Cicero himself uses is he says, “Think about music. Everybody knows that certain musical tones will make you feel a certain way.”
Think of movies today: in a horror movie, they’re going to play strident, tense music. In a romantic scene, you’re going to have strings, and it’ll make you feel a certain way. When you hear the Jaws theme, you feel tense.
Cicero said, “The orator’s body is like a lyre.” A lyre is a musical instrument. “And you have to learn to play on your own body as a musical instrument to affect the emotions of your audience.”
For example, there’s one where you hold up your hands to the side and push like this. This is the gesture, and what that means is mild aversion. I don’t like something.
Now if I couple this with turning my face to the side, that; pushing off to one side, turning my face away, it’s a strong aversion. That’s like fear or something.
If I clench my fist and press it to my chest, that’s anger or grief. If I slap my thigh, again, that’s indication of anger. So a lot of these make sense. I mean, they’re natural gestures.
Now, some are really weird and artificial. I mean, one of my favorite of these is if you hold your hand up open, then curl the fingers in one by one, and then flip it out; this sort of thing; that, to the Romans meant “wonder,” which you sort of see.
But again, if you’ve been raised in a societal context where you’re used to the notion that this gesture means this emotion, when someone does it, you’re probably going to feel that emotion.
In fact, in the ancient world, the most famous Greek orator was a guy named Demosthenes. And once a guy came up to Demosthenes and said, “Demosthenes, tell me: what are the three most important things in giving a speech?”
And Demosthenes said, “Well, they are delivery, delivery, and delivery.” That even the most brilliant speech, if accompanied by a boring delivery, is going to be less effective than a terrible speech given in an engaging and exciting or funny way.
I want to say they’re not natural in that they’re not illustrating what he’s saying. It’s more just punctuation points. I think of his as more kind of these punctuation points for just going along with what he’s saying.
There are speakers who truly can use their hands and arms and faces creatively. You watch them and it’s really enhancing the speech. I mean, just historically, Martin Luther King: he’s famous for a lot of good speeches, content. He was a good gesticulator, too. He knew how to use his body.
On the other hand, Adolf Hitler was a phenomenal gesticulator. If you watch some of his speeches; even just turn off the sound and watch them; he’s doing all kinds of stuff. And he’s really emphasizing his points in a very creative way.
This is what’s fascinating about oratory and public speaking, is it’s this two-edged sword. You can use these techniques for good, or you can absolutely use them for evil. You know?
The question I always end up asking my students, after studying Cicero and all these techniques, I say, “Okay, this is great oratory. But do you like this? Is this good that this works on human beings?”
And he said, “Well, I want the truth of my statement, the content of my statements to speak; that I don’t want you to get deluded by me because I’m such a charismatic and eloquent speaker. The more monotone I speak, the more you’ll listen to the content of the words.”
I’ll tell you also with Cicero: one of the things that he and other people who write about Roman oratory do is to say, “And you can do this stuff badly,” in which case it backfires horribly.
So you can have people who attempt to gesticulate. Again, modern politicians, you’ll see this sometime where they feel like, “I’m supposed to be making hand gestures,” and they’re terrible at it. And it undercuts it.
Cicero and Quintilian give some very amusing examples from ancient Rome. He says, there was this one guy who when he spoke, looked like he was trying to swat away flies because there were just these awkward gestures. Or another who looked like he was trying balancing a boat in choppy seas.
And my favorite is there was one orator who supposedly was prone to making, I guess, languid supple motions. They actually named a dance after this guy, and his name was Titius. And so Romans could do the Titius, which is this dance that was imitating this orator who had these comically bad gesticulation.
So not enough gesticulation is a problem. Too much gesticulation is a problem. You have to hit the sweet spot. It has to seem natural. It has to seem varied. It has to conform to the meaning of the words, not distract from it.
I did that by comparing the literary accounts of the handbooks with, again, Roman art: looking at statues of Romans and things, and just trying to say, “Okay, what were some of the gestures they actually used here?”
I mean, it’s very, very different where you say, “There’s one God, and it’s my God,” versus, “Okay, I believe in this god, but there’s an infinite number of legitimate gods.” And nowadays, particularly in the West, we tend to view the monotheistic perspective as the norm. But for more than half of human history, it was not.
It used to be the notion in a lot of Roman history, up until about 300 AD, the idea was, “Well, there’s just a ton of gods floating around. Maybe you worship that one, and I worship these two that I like. And the guy across the street worships the oak tree in his backyard, and it’s all good.”
They’re all legitimate things, versus, “Oh, no, no, no. Now there is one God, and only one God that’s the correct answer.” And as soon as you do that, religion becomes foregrounded in your decision making much more. I mean, the Romans had religion, but it wasn’t really driving anything, if you know what I mean. It was auxiliary to things, rather than a central force. For a lot of Roman history, you had standard, I guess, pagan polytheism where there’s a bunch of gods. There’s certain gods who are associated with the Roman state. There would be prayer said to those gods on behalf of the Roman state. But you weren’t trying to execute the will of Zeus or something, or Jupiter or Mars or anybody else.
And in your private life, it was the same thing. You might ask certain gods for help, but it wasn’t as much of a dominant thing in your own existence. So I think that’s a real transition point where religion started to become so foregrounded.
And as soon as you get the monotheistic religions; Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in particular; it really shifts how people start to think about themselves in relationship to the world around them.
But of course, to Christians, this is worshiping another God. And I think there’s almost a failure of communication here, that the Romans just at least initially didn’t quite understand.
This is really problematic for these people, because they’re coming from a polytheistic perspective where, “Yeah, everybody has different gods. So what? This isn’t a religious problem. This is a political one. Then why won’t you send good wishes to the emperor? If you’re a loyal Roman, this is something you should want to do.”
And many of the early Christians, I think would’ve been fine with that. But it took the form of what they were asked to do was to basically worship another God. And that was the sticking point.
And this is where I think movies have warped some of our images of Roman history: that Hollywood loves to depict very early Christians. I’m talking, like, first 200 years here after the ministry of Christ as a group, that all the Romans were obsessed with, that they were constantly trying to persecute and all this. Honestly, I think the Romans at that point were more just indifferent or didn’t know what was going on.
And if you look at some of the primary sources of that time, I mean, there’s this very famous letter by a guy named Pliny who was a Roman governor of a province in the East. He had the habit of writing letters to the Roman emperor at the time, who was Trajan, every time he had a problem with being governor.
This is great. This is the two highest governmental officials in the Roman world hammering out policy between them, the emperor and one of his governors. This is about 100 years, 100 AD about.
And Pliny says, “Hey, Emperor, I had this issue. I had these people come before me called Christians. I don’t quite know what to do with them. What should my policy be? Here’s what I know about them.” And what he knows is almost nothing. I mean, it’s this almost comic-like garbling.
” They have this weird thing where they get together on some day of the week and they swear oaths to one another not to do bad stuff,” which is of course his garbled understanding of the 10 Commandments. “And then they have breakfast together and they eat food,” and this is communion. But he doesn’t get that that’s what’s going on. And so he’s really ignorant.
But I think that the broader point is, okay, this is one of the best-educated, best-traveled Romans who has the most experience in the empire, has been all over the empire, and what does he know about Christianity? Basically nothing.
So if one of the best-educated, most widely traveled guys really doesn’t know much about them, that suggests that not many people did at this point in time.
Now, stepping back from this in a broad way, I think you can say that Christianity really was different in some ways, and had some things that maybe the Romans should rightfully have viewed as a threat. I mean, the Romans are a people very focused on this world: citizenship, what you do.
Christianity, in essence, has a focus on the next world. So this world isn’t as important as what you’re setting yourself up for.
And even worse, from a Roman perspective, I’m kind of saying, “Okay, if I were a Roman,” Romans are all about making distinctions between people. Citizen, non-citizen, man, woman, free, slave.
Christianity comes along and says, “In God’s eyes, you’re all equal.” Now, that’s a pretty problematic idea if you’re deeply invested in Roman hierarchy. And I think it is no surprise that among the earliest converts to Christianity are women and slaves, and in particular, female slaves.
Now, who are they? They’re the people at the rock bottom of the Roman hierarchy of status, which the Romans are obsessed with status. But here’s a religion that says, “That doesn’t matter.”
And in that same letter to Pliny, Pliny says, “Okay, in this group of Christians I’ve heard about, their leaders are two female slaves they call ‘deaconesses.'” Now, this is really early. This is before the church exists, right? There’s no church structure yet. And who is leading the local congregation of Christians? Two slave women.
So that’s an interesting moment, and that’s not necessarily the image we get of early Christianity. But you can see how for people in this social structure, that would be very appealing to them. And in some ways, yeah, it is sort of a threat to the Roman system because they’re challenging it.
Now, the irony is, of course, 300 years after the life of Christ, the emperor converts to Christianity. And another 100 years later under Theodosius, it becomes the official religion of the Roman Empire. So all of a sudden you have this flip-flop, where now the state itself is not just converted to Christianity, but actively promoting it and now persecuting pagans.
And the reason the emperors do that is one of the biggest problems for emperors at that point in time is legitimacy. That there’s tons of civil wars where you have lots of different people saying, “I’m emperor.” So lots of generals declaring themselves emperor.
Now under a polytheistic religion, you’re all just fighting. It doesn’t matter. But if you say there is only one God, then if that God picks someone to be His emperor, they’re the only legitimate emperor. Right?
So there is a real advantage to emperors now becoming Christian. Because they can say, “We’re now a Christian empire and there’s only one God, and I’m the guy that God picked to be emperor, that means all these other people claiming to be emperors are illegitimate.”
So putting aside religious feeling and saying, “Okay, if I’m doing an analysis of this as a social phenomenon, what would be appealing to people?” And there is that very compelling reason for emperors to want to go to Christianity because it helps them with their biggest problem, which is legitimacy.
Now, if you’re an ordinary person, what is the appeal of Christianity? Well, we already looked at a couple of them. One of them is that it promises you a reward in the afterlife.
I mean, the Roman and Greek notions of the afterlife aren’t that appealing. Either you just turn into dust, or at best you turn into this kind of ghost thing that floats around something that looks like a Greek gymnasium, which is like a bunch of grassy fields. It’s not so hot.
So here you’re offered the idea of, “Oh, you go to paradise forever. That sounds really good.” And secondly, for a lot of people in Roman society, that notion of, “Here’s something that says I’m valuable as a human being. It doesn’t matter whether I’m free or slave. It doesn’t matter whether I’m Roman or non-Roman. It doesn’t matter if I’m man or woman. Here’s something that says I have equal value.” That’s enormously appealing.
And finally, early Christians, I mean, they honestly, a lot of them do good works. They take care of the sick, they feed the poor. I mean, if you look at Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, that’s the stuff He really hammers. If we look at the words of Jesus when He says, “What do you do to be a Christian?”
A lot of it is take care of the unfortunate, take care of people who are sick, take care of people who are starving. And a lot of the early Christians really take that seriously. They are helping people out. So that’s appealing.
Let me ask you about gladiators.
But also I think it’s that apparent contradiction. That in so many ways, Roman society seems familiar to us. In so many ways, it seems sophisticated and appealing. Law is wonderful, all this. But yet, for fun, they watched people fight to the death. So how do you reconcile these things?
Gladiators, I find very interesting because they’re an example of what historians call status dissonance. It’s someone who in society has high status in some ways, and very low or despised status in another.
So gladiators, most of them were slaves, the lowest of the low in Roman society, right? Also, they’re fighting for other people’s pleasure, and dying sometimes for other people’s pleasure.
And the Romans had a real thing about this: your body being used for others’ pleasure. Even a humble working person who hired themselves out for labor, the Romans thought that was innately demeaning, because you’re using your body for someone else’s benefit or pleasure.
They didn’t have this notion of the dignity of hard labor or something. They thought the only noble profession was farming, okay, because there you generate something and you’re producing it for yourself. But if you work for someone else, you’re demeaning yourself. And gladiator’s the worst of the worst, right? You’re performing for someone else’s pleasure. So on the one hand, they’re very low status. But on the other hand, successful gladiators get famous. People admire them, women find them attractive, they’re celebrities. This is the status dissonance. You have these people who, on the one hand, formally are very low status in society, but yet are very popular on the other hand.
Another kind of myth about gladiators is that they were just dying all the time. I mean, you watch movies, and again, they’ll always throw a bunch of gladiators and they all die. I think some scholars did a study of, like, 100 fights we know of where we know some details. And I think 10% of those ended in the death of one of the people.
So gladiators are a lot more like boxing matches, where you’re watching a display of skill between two people who are more or less evenly matched in terms of their abilities. And probably they’ll survive, though there’s a chance that one of them might get injured. In fact, one might die.
Having said all that, in the end, you really are having people fight and potentially die for the pleasure of an audience. And anthropologists and Roman historians like to speculate, “Why did the Romans do this?”
The Romans address it. I mean, there’s a famous thing where a Roman says, “We Romans, we’re a violent people. We’re a warlike people. And so it’s fitting that we should be accustomed to the sight of death and violence.” Kind of works.
There’s a more symbolic interpretation that says, “The amphitheater is an expression of Roman dominance,” a symbolic expression. Because what you have are all segments of Roman society gathered together to control the fate of others.
You have foreigners, you have wild animals, you have criminals, you have other people. And we are symbolically asserting our dominance over those groups by determining, “Do you live or do you die?” And that kind of works, too.
And the cynical one is, humans like violence. I mean, when people watch a hockey game, what gets them most excited? The fight. When people watch car racing, there’s a crash. What’s going to be shown on the news? It’s the crash. There’s something dark in human nature sometimes that likes violence. And maybe the Romans are just being more honest about it than we are.
On the other hand, to be fair, I mean there were Romans at the time who morally objected to them and said, “This is morally degenerate to take pleasure in this, and that’s wrong.” So I think in all eras, you have a diversity of opinions. There’s no unanimous take on what this is or what this means.
And the other thing about gladiators is they were highly trained professionals. The gladiator schools who trained them were spending a lot of money to train these people. And it wasn’t just, “We take some guy and throw them into the arena,” like you see in movies all the time. These were people that you’d invested a lot of money, and that’s why you don’t really want to see them killed.
But yeah, mostly they’re prisoners of war. I mean, in very rare instances you might have a free person volunteering, or even selling themselves to fight as gladiators. But much more common was that.
And what’s interesting is some people wouldn’t do it. I mean, there’s a lot of instances of gladiators refusing to fight and committing suicide, which you don’t hear. There was one German who was supposed to fight as a gladiator. Instead, he stuck his head between the spokes of a wagon that was spinning and snapped his own neck.
There were a group of 29 Germans who all said, “We’re not going to fight for the Romans’ pleasure.” And they strangled one another the night before they were supposed to fight. So I mean, you have people sort of objecting to being complicit in this kind of performance as well,
I mean, there was an enormous industry collecting wild beasts, transporting them to Rome: which is no easy matter to transport elephants and giraffes and rhinos, particularly in this era of technology. But they were draining Africa and bringing lions and all these things and sacrificing them.
Before him had been Nero, who was seen as a crazy or bad emperor. One of Nero’s indulgences is he had built this enormous palace for himself called the Golden House. It was kind of this pleasure palace with 50 dining rooms and all this stuff, and it was basically wasting a ton of money on him.
So right on the site where Nero had his Golden House, Vespasian says, “I’m going to erect a new building on top of it that’s going to be for the pleasure of the people.” So it was very much a political statement, that “My dynasty is going to be about serving Romans, not serving ourselves.” That’s why he builds the Flavian Amphitheater.
The funds he uses from it is basically from looting Jerusalem. Because the other thing he had done just before this is he had sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the temple there, in fact, he and his son Titus. And so this is what he now builds in Rome is his gift to the people of Rome.
It was amazingly sophisticated building. I mean, it had retractable awnings and elevators and ramps that things could just pop up into the arena from below. And it-
The Romans, because of their use of concrete, could build wooden frames, they could have curves, they could have domes, they could have all kinds of stuff. And it just explodes the architectural possibilities. They also made a lot of use of the vault. So if you cut rocks and arrange them so that they form a curve, you could have big vaulted spaces. And they were just brilliant with their mix of things. I mean, the Pantheon is the best preserved Roman building, and it’s another brilliant building, incredibly influential. I mean, every capitol building in the world or museum is an imitation of the Pantheon. The capitol in Washington, D.C., the Capitol in Madison, where I’m from, Wisconsin, Austin, where we are now, they’re all Pantheons. It’s a big dome with a triangular pediment and some columns on the front.
So it’s just an amazingly influential building. But it’s brilliant because the way it’s constructed is the concrete at the bottom of the dome is both thicker and has a denser formulation, so it’s heavier where it needs to bear the weight. And then as you get further up the dome, it gets narrower and narrower, and they mix in different types of rock. So at the top, you’re using pumice, that very light volcanic stone. So where you want it to be light, it’s light, and it’s here 2,000 years later. I mean, look around you. How many buildings that we’re building` now do you think are going to be here in 2,000 years? I suspect not many.
And then the next family, the Flavians, the first guy is kind of an Augustus, it’s Vespasian, the one who builds the Flavian Amphitheater, and then one of his sons takes over, Titus, who’s okay, and then the next son takes over, Domitian, who’s nuts again. So heredity just isn’t working, And Rome fights a couple civil wars, and in 98 AD, we’re 100 years now into the Empire, and they look back at this track record and say, “Okay, we’ve been picking our emperors by heredity and we’ve gotten some real duds here, some real problematic people. Is there a way to fix this?”
And this is one of the few instances where the Romans, who I keep saying are very traditional and resist change, I think actually make a change and realize we got to do something different. And so the next guy looks around and says, “Okay, forget who’s my nearest male relative, who’s the best qualified to be emperor after me? I’ll pick that person and then I’ll adopt him as my son.” So they kind of stick with heredity. Now, it’s this fake adoption, and you end up with a lot of old guys adopting middle-aged adults as their son, which is a little strange, but it works.
And so for the next 80 years, you have only five emperors, and they’re often called the Five Good Emperors, they’re not related necessarily by blood, they sort of picked the best qualified guy, and they’re all sound, competent, good emperors. And the 2nd century AD, from Nerva to Marcus Aurelius, is often regarded as the high point of the Roman Empire. And a lot of that comes from you have political stability, you have a succession of decent guys being emperor who rule relatively wisely, promote good policies. There’s other things working to Rome’s advantage, but that’s good. And then where it falls apart is where the last guy, Marcus Aurelius, looks around and says, “Who’s the best qualified guy to succeed me? What a coincidence, it’s my own dear son.”, who turns out to be a psycho. And then it all goes downhill.
I think he likes power, he wants real power, but he realizes I don’t have that kind of clever politician’s ability to be the front guy, so I’ll just serve my friend, Augustus, loyally. They were childhood friends. I’ll win the battles for Augustus and I’ll let him take all the credit, but I’ll be his number two guy, and that’s what I’m good at. And he realizes his limitations. I mean, so many people don’t. So many people are like, “Oh, I just want to keep grabbing for more and more and more when it’s not something they’re good at.” And I think Agrippa says, “I’m good to this point and I’ll play that role and no more, and that’ll give me a lot of power, but I’m not going to press it.” And yeah, he’s just very hardworking, he’s modest, he’s self-effacing, he’s highly competent.
I mean, I guess an emperor can start a war, he can maybe raise taxes, but that would be the ways that he’s affecting the whole empire. And here, we get into technology does matter. We’re dealing with a world where, let’s say you’re in Rome and you’re the emperor and you want to send a message to a province far away, let’s say Judea, that message might take one or two months to get there and one or two months to get a reply. So how much influence as emperor are you really having over that province? I mean, those people pretty much have to make their own decisions and then just say to you, “This is what we did. I hope that’s okay.” Because otherwise, nothing gets done if they’re waiting four months for a decision.
So the private businesses would bid and say, “All right, if you give us the contract to collect taxes in Sicily, we’ll give you X number of money up front and then we go out and try to collect enough to make back that money and make ourselves a profit.” And this is a terrible system, because obviously, they’re going to go and try and squeeze as much as they can out of Sicily. And these companies were called publicans, publicani. And in the Bible, there’s a phrase, publicans and sinners, and that should give you an idea how they’re viewed. So everybody hated these tax collectors, and it was a really kind of dumb system because the publicans were going out and squeezing way more than they should in an unhealthy way from the provinces. And the Roman state was doing this kind of weird thing that they should have been doing themselves.
And over time, that shifts a bit and it becomes more like your standard taxation. And a lot of the taxation ends up being in kind too. So it’s like, okay, we’re taxing you, you pay it in wheat if you’re a farmer or something, not necessarily in cash. So in many ways, the Roman economy is underdeveloped. They didn’t have a lot of the sophisticated systems that we have today, and it probably held them back in some ways. And again, they have that resistance to change. The Romans also had weird notions about just business and profit making, that at least originally, there was this notion that’s shameful, again, the only thing that’s a worthwhile profession is farming.
So rich Romans would get involved in what we would call business manufacturing, particularly long distance trade with ships, but they would often do it through sort of front companies or employees who did it on their behalf, officially, and then they funneled the profits to the guy funding it because they don’t want to be soiled with business, which is beneath them. So the Romans had a lot of weird attitudes about the economy that I think in some ways didn’t help.
And a lot of it becomes that the secret is out that what makes an emperor is who commands the most swords. And so you start to get rebellions by various Roman generals, each declaring himself emperor. So you’d always had this to a certain degree, but they had kept it in check during the 2nd century AD. But in the 3rd century, you sometimes get three or four generals in different parts of the empire, all declaring themselves emperor, and then they all rush off to Rome to fight a multi-way civil war.
And of course, while they’re doing this, the borders are undefended, so barbarians start to see opportunity and come across and start raiding, they start burning and pillaging farms, the civil wars are destroying cities and farms. So the economy is kind of tanking. Then there’s less money coming in as taxes. So when one guy finally wins, he jacks up the tax rate to try and make up for it, but now, there’s fewer people able to pay, and it’s all just a vicious cycle. The Romans start to debase the coinage, which means you take in a gold coin, you melt it down, mix it in with 10% something less valuable, and then stamp it and say it’s worth the same. Well, people aren’t stupid. They’re going to know that’s only 90% of that gold coin.
One of the things he does is he issues a new solid gold coin that he guarantees is solid gold. And he calls it a Solidus, a solid coin. He famously issues a price edict where he says, “This is the maximum it’s legal to charge for any good or service.” So it’s attempt to curb inflation. And that’s not going to work, but it helps. Kind of amusingly on Diocletian’s price edict, can you guess what the most expensive sort of item is? Hiring a lawyer. So some things never change, right?
And then as we go into the 4th century, you have the really dramatic thing where Constantine comes along and converts to Christianity. And at the time he converts, the percentage of Christians in the Empire is small, 10% at most, something like that. Who knows? But it’s quite small. And all of a sudden, you have this weird thing where now, the emperor belongs to this new religion. What does this mean? You can debate a lot how sincere Constantine’s conversion was. It’s a little bit of a weird thing where he clearly is using it as a way to fire up the troops before a crucial battle to say, “Hey, I just had this dream and this god promised us victory if we put his magic symbol on our shields.”
And this would be okay, except that he had done this a couple times before. So one time, it was Helios the Sun god, one time, it was another god. Even after he converts, he continues to mint coins and stuff with other gods on them. He continues to worship other gods. But he also kind of seems sincere in his conversion. It’s just, I think the question is how much does he understand his new religion maybe more than, is it sincere. But that’s a real turning point.
So now, as we go into the 4th century, we have this thing with Constantine, the new religion. And the other thing that happens is the empire is really just too big to govern effectively. It’s that thing we’re talking about. It’s too large, the communication is too slow and it starts to naturally fragment. And at times, they try systems where they split it into four. So under Diocletian, he tries the tetrarchy, where he splits the empire into four, and you actually have sort of four emperors working together as a team. More commonly, it just splits east, west. So from that point on, you really start to have the history of the Western Empire going in one direction, the Eastern Empire in the other. You tend to have two emperors, though there are moments occasionally where they reunite. So that’s a big development as well. And that’s a turning point.
And I mean, the Eastern Empire is legitimately the Roman Empire. If you were to go and ask them, “Who are you?” They wouldn’t say, “We’re the Byzantines, we’re the Eastern Roman Empire.” They would just say, “We’re the Romans.” And they have a completely legitimate claim to do that. So this whole game of when does the empire fall is problematic. And the other thing is all those dates about invasions that cluster around the 400s, so 410, 455, 476, you have to ask yourself, who counts as a real Roman by that point? Because for a while now, the Romans themselves are often coming from barbarians, are crossing that boundary, Roman generals. They might get raised as a Hun, then serve with the Roman army for a while, then not, or a Visigoths or not. That’s been going on for a long time. So what makes someone a real Roman? How do you tell that the guy kicked out in 476, was a, quote, “real Roman”, and the barbarian king who took his place wasn’t? That’s a very arbitrary decision.
I mean, if you look back at someone like Virgil, at the time of Augustus, he said, well, the Gods granted Rome empire without end. So it’s that open-ended thing. But even under Augustus, he seems to be pulling back and saying, “Well, I’m going to kind of stop at the Rhine. I’m going to kind of stop at the Danube. We don’t need to keep expanding forever in the way we’ve been doing.” So I mean, that’s an interesting concept of how do the Romans see their empire? Does it have a boundary? What are those boundaries? What does that mean?
And at the end of the lunch, Attila goes back and says, “Eh, I changed my mind. We’re going to go back up to France, hang around for another year. We’ll finish off the Romans later.” And Christian sources say, “Saints appeared in the sky with flaming swords and scared away Attila.” Some other sources say, “Well, the Pope gave Attila a huge bribe to go away for a while,” believe whichever you like, but then Attila ends up dying on his wedding night before he comes back under mysterious circumstances and so that never materializes. And the Huns kind of fragment after his death.
The emperors had moved to Ravenna, a little bit north, because it was surrounded by swamps, so it was more defensible. But there is something important about that old symbolic capital now just collapsing in terms of population, numbers, really no longer having importance because literally its food supply is cut off by losing those areas of the empire. And of course, the capital… Constantine had founded a new second capital at what used to be Byzantium, a Greek city on the Bosporus, which becomes Constantinople. He names it not very modestly after himself, and that now is really the dominant city for any of the Roman Empire’s eastern or western.
Some say it was a climate that the Roman Empire flourished during this moment of luck when just the climate was good, and then you get this sort of late Roman little ice age and everything goes downhill and that’s what caused it. There’s some that say things like disease. There were a whole series of waves of plague that started to hit under Marcus Aurelius and continued after him, which seemed to have caused real serious death and economic disruption. I mean, that’s a decent explanation. Another popular one is moral decline, which I don’t think really works well. You even get the people saying lead poisoning, but that’s not true because they were drinking out of the same pipes when the empire was expanding, right?
Other types of decisive battles are ones that might have more unforeseen long-term effects. You may not realize this is decisive at the time, but from a longer perspective it is. And often, those are ones that either allow some new people or idea or institution to either grow or have its growth curbed. So at various points, we have empires that were expanding and basically were stopped at some battle. And so you say, “Well, if they been stopped there, they might have gone on to dominate this whole area.” Or conversely, you could say, “Rome wasn’t…” They were one place before the second Punic War. After the second Punic War, they were its dominant force. So you could pick one of those battles and say that was decisive in setting them on this new path.
And Mesopotamia the same thing, the way their religion develops is a reaction to the particular geographic environment that those people grew up in. So that’s a very profound influence on civilization. One of my professors once said to me, “The best map of the Roman Empire isn’t any of these maps with political borders. It would be a map that shows the zone in which it’s possible to cultivate olives.” So if you simply get a map and map onto it where you could grow olives during this time, let’s say, 1st century AD, it corresponds exactly, I mean really closely, to the areas that are most heavily Romanized. Now, I’m not going to say that, but there is something to that where Roman culture spread successfully is where people grow the same crops. And that’s just one of those fundamental things.
So there’s this letter from a Greek, who was serving as an administrator in the Roman government, and he gets posted to Germany, to the far north. And he writes these pathetic letters back home to his family saying, “The inhabitants here lead the most wretched existence of all mankind for they cultivate no olives, and they grow no grapes.” So to him, that was hell, being posted to an area where they eat these terrible foreign foods.
And of course, the cliche for the Romans of what barbarians eat is red meat. They’re herders, so they’re not farmers, but they follow herds of cow around, which a totally different lifestyle. They eat dairy products, and they drink beer. And I tell my students sometimes that if you were to stick a Roman in a time machine and send them to where we live, which I teach in Wisconsin, Green Bay, Wisconsin, that Roman would step out, look around, see all the beer, the brats, and the cheese, say, “I know who you guys are. You’re barbarians.
I mean, that’s very similar in a way to our modern world wars where this was a global conflict, at least as they envisioned the world they knew of. And if we sort of, I don’t know, somehow factor for transportation time, I mean, I think you can argue that that was a bigger war than World War II. In World War II, if you hopped on a plane, you could get from the US to China in a week or something, right? In little hops. I mean, in the ancient world, if you wanted to go from Spain to Egypt, it would take you a month. So they were fighting across a larger space- time zone in terms of their technology to move, then World War II took place across.
And that goes all the way back to Alexander the Great tried to conquer that area. The Mongols tried to do it. The Huns tried to do it. The Mughals tried to do it. Victorian Britain tried to do it. The Russians tried to do it. The Americans tried to do it. And they made the very same mistakes over and over and over again. And the two mistakes are not understanding the terrain, that it’s a rocky mountainous area that people can always hide in caves. And it’s not understanding the fundamentally tribal nature of that area that that’s where the real allegiance is in these tribes. It’s not in a centralized government. And that’s the same era Alexander made, as the British made in the 19th century, as the Russians, as the Americans. And it’s so depressing as a historian who studies history to see these things being repeated over and over again and you know exactly what’s going to happen.
Well, every ancient text we have has gone through that process. So this is a real problem, and that’s just with the sources. And this is the historic era. When you move back just a little earlier to the prehistoric era or to civilizations that don’t have written sources surviving. And some of these are ancient Mediterranean ones. I mean, anything goes. I mean, one of the jokes is that museums, archaeological museums, are full of objects which are labeled cult object. It’s some religious object. And I think the honest label that should be on that thing is we have no idea what the hell this is, but I want to believe it’s something important. So I’m going to say it’s a religious object, but in reality, it’s an ancient toilet paper roll holder or something. And it’s a huge problem when you try to interpret a civilization without written texts.
And my favorite little story that kind of illustrates this is, in the 19th century, this German who had gone to school in England, one of the best educated guys of his time, goes to North Africa and is poking around in the desert. And he finds this site with these huge stone monoliths, 10 feet tall in pairs, and there’s a lintel stone across the top, so sort of two posts with a stone across the top, and there’s a big stone in front of them too. And so he looks at this stuff and he says, “Well, what does this remind me of?” It reminds me of Stonehenge, right? And there’s even a site where there’s multiple of these kind of in a square. So he goes back and talks about this and an Englishman goes and studies them, and he finds a ton of these sites and he finds some of them where there’s 17 of these pairs.
And so he goes back, and he writes a whole book about how clearly the Celtic peoples who once lived in Britain came originally from North Africa because he’s found this site and he reconstructs the religion where obviously they practice religious rituals here, and they had rites of passage. They squeezed between the things and the altar stones have this basin. So they had blood sacrifice and all this, and it seemed reasonable. And then you ask some locals, “Well, what’s that stuff out in the desert there?” And they mean, “Oh, the old Roman olive oil factory.” And those are the remains of an olive press, and we’re back to olives. I keep dwelling on olives. Olives don’t grow in England or Germany. So this is cultural bias. If all you have is physical evidence, you’re going to interpret that evidence through your own cultural biases.
So if you’re an Englishman and you see big stone uprights like this, you’re going to think Stonehenge. If you’re from the Mediterranean, you’re going to think olive press. So that’s a salutary example I think of the dangers of interpreting physical evidence when you don’t have written evidence to go along with it. And think today, if our civilization were to blow up in a nuclear war and archaeologists were to dig this up, how might they misinterpret things? I mean, if they were to dig up a college dorm like where I work, and that’s what you had for the civilization. You’d probably go in the dorm rooms, you’d find all these little rooms, and maybe in every room you’d find this mysterious plastic disc. And so everybody has these, so it must be a cult object. And it’s round. So obviously, they’re sun worshipers. And if you can decipher the inscription, you’ll see that obviously they all worship the great sun god Wham-O. It’s like, what do you find in every dorm room? A Frisbee. So that’s the level of interpretation you have to beware of. And there’s examples, where we’ve done exactly this.
I mean, it’s a mystery. It’s you’re being a detective and trying to reconstruct and to understand a society. It’s even more fun where it’s, yeah, you have to try to empathize. Empathy is a great human thing, to empathize with people who are not yourself, and we should do this all the time with just the people we encounter. But this is what we’re doing with ancient civilizations. And as I talked about earlier, sometimes you’ll feel great sympathy there. Sometimes you’ll feel incomprehension. But by being aware of both of those, you can maybe begin to get some grasp, however tentative, on the truth as you might perceive it,
Click link to jump approximately to that part in the transcript:
- 0:00 – Ancient vs modern world
- 6:28 – Romans’ relationship to the past
- 15:40 – Three phases of Roman history
- 18:30 – Rome’s expansion
- 30:10 – Punic wars
- 38:55 – Conquering Greece
- 40:34 – Scipio vs Hannibal
- 43:40 – Heavy infantry vs Cavalry
- 47:17 – Armor
- 1:00:10 – Alexander the Great
- 1:06:11 – Roman law
- 1:15:51 – Slavery
- 1:24:11 – Fall of the Roman Empire
- 1:27:56 – Julius Caesar
- 1:32:35 – Octavian’s rise
- 1:42:28 – Cleopatra
- 1:47:57 – Musa of Parthia
- 1:50:50 – Augustus’ political system
- 2:03:19 – Cicero
- 2:09:21 – Gestures
- 2:19:32 – Religion in Rome
- 2:45:08 – Emperors
- 2:49:24 – The greatest Roman
- 2:52:18 – Marcus Aurelius
- 2:59:33 – Taxes
- 3:02:41 – Division of the Roman Empire
- 3:22:37 – Decisive battles
- 3:47:08 – Hope
Ancient vs modern world
Gregory Aldrete
Rome always wins because even if they lose battles, they go to the Italian allies and half citizens and raise new armies. So how do you beat them? He can never raise that many troops himself. And Hannibal, I think correctly, figures out the one way to maybe defeat Rome is to cut them away from their allies. Well, how do you do this? Hannibal’s plan is, “I’m not going to wait and fight the Romans in Spain or North Africa. I’m going to invade Italy. I’m going to strike at the heart of this growing Roman Empire. And my hope is that if I can win a couple big battles against Rome in Italy, the Italians will want their freedom back and they’ll rebel from Rome and maybe even join me because most people who have been conquered want their freedom back, so this is a reasonable plan.”
Rome always wins because even if they lose battles, they go to the Italian allies and half citizens and raise new armies. So how do you beat them? He can never raise that many troops himself. And Hannibal, I think correctly, figures out the one way to maybe defeat Rome is to cut them away from their allies. Well, how do you do this? Hannibal’s plan is, “I’m not going to wait and fight the Romans in Spain or North Africa. I’m going to invade Italy. I’m going to strike at the heart of this growing Roman Empire. And my hope is that if I can win a couple big battles against Rome in Italy, the Italians will want their freedom back and they’ll rebel from Rome and maybe even join me because most people who have been conquered want their freedom back, so this is a reasonable plan.”
Hannibal famously crosses the Alps with elephants. Dramatic stuff. Nobody expects him to do this. Nobody thinks you can do this. Shows up in Northern Italy. Romans send an army. Hannibal massacres them. He is a military genius. Rome takes a year, raises a second army. We know this story, sends it against Hannibal. Hannibal wipes them out.
Rome gets clever this time. They say, “Okay, Hannibal’s different. We’re going to take two years, raise two armies and send them both out at the same time against Hannibal.” They do this, and this is the Battle of Cannae, which is one of the most famous battles in history. Hannibal is facing this army of 80, 000 Romans about, and he comes up with strategy called double envelopment. I mean, we can go into it later if you want, but it’s this famous strategy where he basically sucks the Romans in, surrounds them on all sides. And in one afternoon at the Battle of Cannae, Hannibal kills about 60,000 Romans. Now, just to put that in perspective, that’s more Romans hacked to death in one afternoon with swords than Americans died in 20 years in Vietnam.
Lex Fridman
The following is a conversation with Gregory Aldrete, a historian specializing in ancient Rome and military history. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our in the description. And now, dear friends, here’s Gregory Aldrete.
The following is a conversation with Gregory Aldrete, a historian specializing in ancient Rome and military history. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our in the description. And now, dear friends, here’s Gregory Aldrete.
Lex Fridman
What do you think is the big difference between the ancient world and the modern world?
What do you think is the big difference between the ancient world and the modern world?
Gregory Aldrete
Well, the easy answer, the one you often get is technology, and obviously, there’s huge differences in technology between the ancient world and today. But I think some of the more interesting stuff is a little bit more amorphous things, more structural things. I would say, first of all, childhood mortality. In the ancient world, and this is true, Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, really anybody up until about the industrial Revolution, about 30 to 40% of kids died before they hit puberty.
Well, the easy answer, the one you often get is technology, and obviously, there’s huge differences in technology between the ancient world and today. But I think some of the more interesting stuff is a little bit more amorphous things, more structural things. I would say, first of all, childhood mortality. In the ancient world, and this is true, Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, really anybody up until about the industrial Revolution, about 30 to 40% of kids died before they hit puberty.
I mean, put yourself in the place of average inhabitant of the ancient world. If you were an ancient person, three or four of your kids probably would’ve died. You would’ve buried your children. And nowadays, we think of that as an unusual thing, and just psychologically, that’s a huge thing. You would’ve seen multiple of your siblings die. If you were a woman, for example, if you were lucky enough to make it to let’s say age 13, you probably would have to give birth four or five times in order just to keep the population from dying out. Those kind of grim mortality statistics, I think, are a huge difference psychologically between the ancient world and the modern.
Lex Fridman
But fundamentally, do you think human nature changed much? Do you think the same elements of what we see today, fear, greed, love, hope, optimism and the cynicism, the underlying forces that result in war, all of that, permeates human history?
But fundamentally, do you think human nature changed much? Do you think the same elements of what we see today, fear, greed, love, hope, optimism and the cynicism, the underlying forces that result in war, all of that, permeates human history?
Gregory Aldrete
Crude answer, yes. I think human nature is roughly constant. And for me, as an ancient historian, the kind of documents that I really like dealing with are not the traditional literary sources, but they’re the things that give us those little glimpse into everyday life. Stuff like tombstones or graffiti or just something that survives on a scrap of parchment that records a financial transaction. Whenever I read some of those, I’ll have this moment of feeling, ” Oh, I know exactly how that person felt.” Here across 2000 years of time, completely different cultures, I have this spark of sympathy with someone from antiquity.
Crude answer, yes. I think human nature is roughly constant. And for me, as an ancient historian, the kind of documents that I really like dealing with are not the traditional literary sources, but they’re the things that give us those little glimpse into everyday life. Stuff like tombstones or graffiti or just something that survives on a scrap of parchment that records a financial transaction. Whenever I read some of those, I’ll have this moment of feeling, ” Oh, I know exactly how that person felt.” Here across 2000 years of time, completely different cultures, I have this spark of sympathy with someone from antiquity.
I think, as a historian, the way you begin to understand an alien, a foreign culture, which is what these cultures are, is to look for those little moments of sympathy. But on the other hand, there’s ways in which ancient cultures are wildly different from us. You also look for those moments where you just think, “How the hell could these people have done that? I just don’t understand how they could have thought or acted in this way.” It’s lining up those moments of sympathy and kind of disconnection that I think is when you begin to start to understand a foreign culture or an ancient culture.
Lex Fridman
I love the idea of assembling the big picture from the details and the little pieces, because that is the thing that makes up life. The big picture is nothing without the details.
I love the idea of assembling the big picture from the details and the little pieces, because that is the thing that makes up life. The big picture is nothing without the details.
Gregory Aldrete
Yep, yep, and those details would bring it to life. I mean, it’s not the grand sweep of things. It’s seeing those little hopes and fears. Another thing that I think is a huge difference between the modern world and the ancient is just basically everybody’s a farmer. Everybody’s a small family farmer, and we forget this.
Yep, yep, and those details would bring it to life. I mean, it’s not the grand sweep of things. It’s seeing those little hopes and fears. Another thing that I think is a huge difference between the modern world and the ancient is just basically everybody’s a farmer. Everybody’s a small family farmer, and we forget this.
I was just writing a lecture for my next Great Courses course, and I was writing about farming in the ancient world. I was really thinking if we were to write a realistic textbook of let’s say the Roman Empire, nine out of 10 chapters should be details of what it was like to be a small-time family farmer, because that’s what 90% of the people in the ancient world did. They weren’t soldiers, they weren’t priests, they weren’t kings, they weren’t authors, they weren’t artists. They were small-town family farmers, and they lived in a little village. They never traveled 20 miles from that village. They were born there. They married somebody from there. They raised kids. They mucked around in the dirt for a couple decades and they died. They never saw a battle. They never saw a work of art. They never saw a philosopher. They never took part in any of the things we define as being history. So that’s what life should be, and that’s representative.
Romans’ relationship to the past
Lex Fridman
Nevertheless, it is the emperors and the philosophers and the artists and the warriors who carve history.
Nevertheless, it is the emperors and the philosophers and the artists and the warriors who carve history.
Gregory Aldrete
And it is the important stuff. I mean, that’s true. There’s a reason we focus on that.
And it is the important stuff. I mean, that’s true. There’s a reason we focus on that.
Lex Fridman
That’s a good reminder though. If we want to truly empathize and understand what life was like, we have to represent it fully.
That’s a good reminder though. If we want to truly empathize and understand what life was like, we have to represent it fully.
Gregory Aldrete
And I would say let’s not forget them. Let’s not forget what life was like for 80, 90% of the people in the ancient world, the ones we don’t talk about, because that’s important too.
And I would say let’s not forget them. Let’s not forget what life was like for 80, 90% of the people in the ancient world, the ones we don’t talk about, because that’s important too.
Lex Fridman
The Roman Empire is widely considered to be the most powerful, influential, and impactful empire in human history. What are some reasons for that?
The Roman Empire is widely considered to be the most powerful, influential, and impactful empire in human history. What are some reasons for that?
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah. I mean, Rome has been hugely influential, I think, just because of the image. I mean, there’s all these practical ways. I mean, the words I’m using to speak with you today, 30% are direct from Latin. Another 30% are from Latin descended languages. Our law codes, I mean, our habits, our holidays, everything comes fairly directly from the ancient world. But the image of Rome, at least again in Western civilization, has really been the dominant image of a successful empire. I think that’s what gives it a lot of its fascination, this idea that, “Oh, it was this great, powerful, culturally influential empire,” and there’s a lot of other empires. I mean, we could talk about ancient China, which arguably was just as big as Rome, just as culturally sophisticated, lasted about the same amount of time. But at least in Western civilization, Rome is the paradigm.
Yeah. I mean, Rome has been hugely influential, I think, just because of the image. I mean, there’s all these practical ways. I mean, the words I’m using to speak with you today, 30% are direct from Latin. Another 30% are from Latin descended languages. Our law codes, I mean, our habits, our holidays, everything comes fairly directly from the ancient world. But the image of Rome, at least again in Western civilization, has really been the dominant image of a successful empire. I think that’s what gives it a lot of its fascination, this idea that, “Oh, it was this great, powerful, culturally influential empire,” and there’s a lot of other empires. I mean, we could talk about ancient China, which arguably was just as big as Rome, just as culturally sophisticated, lasted about the same amount of time. But at least in Western civilization, Rome is the paradigm.
But Rome is a little schizophrenic in that it’s both the empire when it was ruled by emperors, which is one kind of model, and it’s the Roman Republic when it was a pseudo-democracy, which is a different model. It’s interesting how some later civilizations tend to either focus on one or the other of those. The United States, Revolutionary France, they were very obsessed with the Roman Republic as a model. But other people, Mussolini, Hitler, Napoleon, they were very obsessed with the Empire. Victorian Britain as a model.
Rome itself has different aspects. But what I think is actually another big difference between the modern world and the ancient is our relationship with the past. One of the keys to understanding all of Roman history is to understand that this was a people who were obsessed with the past and for whom the past had power, not just as something inspirational, but it actually dictated what you would do in your daily life. Today, especially in the United States, we don’t have much of a relationship with the past. We see ourselves as free agents just floating along, not tethered to what came before.
The classical story that I sometimes tell in my classes to illustrate this is Rome started out as a monarchy. They had kings. They were kind of unhappy with their kings. Around 500 BC, they held a revolution and they kicked out the kings, and one of the guys who played a key role in this was a man named Lucius Junius Brutus. 500 years later, 500 years down the road, a guy comes along, Julius Caesar, who starts to act like a king. If you have trouble with kings in Roman society, who are you going to call? Somebody named Brutus. Now as it happens, there is a guy named Brutus in Roman society at this time, who is one of Julius Caesar’s best friends, Marcus Junius Brutus. Now, before I go further with the story, and I think you probably know where it ends, I talk about how important your ancestors are in Roman culture. I mean, if you went to an aristocratic Roman’s house and opened the front door and walked in, the first thing you would see would be a big wooden cabinet. If you open that up, what you would see would be row after row of wax death masks. When a Roman aristocrat died, they literally put hot wax on his face and made an impression of his face at that moment. They hung these in a big cabinet right inside the front door. Every time you entered your house, you were literally staring at the faces of your ancestors.
Every child in that family would have obsessively memorized every accomplishment of every one of those ancestors. He would’ve known their career, what offices they held, what battles they fought in, what they did. When somebody new in the family died, there would be a big funeral and they would talk about all the things their ancestors had did. The kids in the family would literally take out those masks, tie them onto their own faces, and wear them in the funeral procession. You were wearing the face of your ancestors. So you as an individual weren’t important, you were just the latest iteration of that family, and there was enormous weight, huge weight to live up to the deeds of your ancestors. The Romans were absolutely obsessed with the past, especially with your own family. Every Roman kid who is let’s say an aristocratic family could tell you every one of his ancestors back centuries. I can’t go beyond my grandparents, I don’t even know, but that’s maybe 100 years. It’s a completely different attitude towards the past.
Lex Fridman
And the level of celebration that we have now of the ancestors, even the ones we can name, is not as intense as it was in Roman times.
And the level of celebration that we have now of the ancestors, even the ones we can name, is not as intense as it was in Roman times.
Gregory Aldrete
No, no. I mean, it was obsessive and oppressive. It determined what you did.
No, no. I mean, it was obsessive and oppressive. It determined what you did.
Lex Fridman
Oppressive, oh.
Oppressive, oh.
Gregory Aldrete
Yes. Because there’s that weight for you to act like your ancestors did.
Yes. Because there’s that weight for you to act like your ancestors did.
Lex Fridman
Not to speak sort of philosophically, but do you think it was limiting to the way that society develops to be deeply constrained by the-
Not to speak sort of philosophically, but do you think it was limiting to the way that society develops to be deeply constrained by the-
Gregory Aldrete
Yes. Absolutely.
Yes. Absolutely.
Lex Fridman
Limiting in a good way or a bad way, you think?
Limiting in a good way or a bad way, you think?
Gregory Aldrete
Well, like everything, it’s a little of both. But the bad, on the one hand, it gives them enormous strength and it gives them this enormous connection. It gives them guidance. But the negative is what’s interesting, is it makes the Romans extremely traditional minded and extremely conservative, and I mean conservative in the sense of resistant to change.
Well, like everything, it’s a little of both. But the bad, on the one hand, it gives them enormous strength and it gives them this enormous connection. It gives them guidance. But the negative is what’s interesting, is it makes the Romans extremely traditional minded and extremely conservative, and I mean conservative in the sense of resistant to change.
In the late Republic, which we’ll probably talk about later, Rome desperately needed to change certain things, but it was a society that did things the way the ancestors did it, and they didn’t make some obvious changes, which might have saved their Republic. That’s the downside is that it locks you into something and you can’t change.
But to get us back to the Brutus’s, 500 years after that first Brutus got rid of kings, Julius Caesar starts to act like a king, one of his best friends is Marcus Junius Brutus. And literally, in the middle of the night, people go to Brutus’s house and write graffiti on it that says, “Remember your ancestor?” And another one is, I think, “You’re no real Brutus.” And at that point, he really has no choice. He forms a conspiracy. On the Ides of March 44 BC, he and 23 other senators take daggers, stick them in Julius Caesar, and kill him for acting like a king. The way I always pose this to my students is, “How many of you would stick a knife in your best friend because of what your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather did?”
Lex Fridman
That’s commitment.
That’s commitment.
Gregory Aldrete
That’s the power of the past. That’s a society where the past isn’t just influential, but it dictates what you do. And that concept, I think, is very alien to us today. We can’t imagine murdering our best friend because of what some incredibly distant ancestor did 500 years ago. But to Brutus, there is no choice. You have to do that.
That’s the power of the past. That’s a society where the past isn’t just influential, but it dictates what you do. And that concept, I think, is very alien to us today. We can’t imagine murdering our best friend because of what some incredibly distant ancestor did 500 years ago. But to Brutus, there is no choice. You have to do that.
A lot of societies have this power of the past. Today, not so much, but some still do. About a decade ago, I was in Serbia and I was talking to some of the people there about the breakup of Yugoslavia and some of the wars that had taken place where people turned against their neighbors, basically murdered people they had lived next to for decades. When I was talking to them, some of them actually brought up things like, “Oh, well, it was justified because in this battle in 12 whatever, they did this.” And I was thinking, “Wow, you’re citing something from 800 years ago to justify your actions today.” That’s a modern person who still understands the power of the past, or maybe is crippled by it, is another way to view it.
Lex Fridman
This is an interesting point and an interesting perspective to remember about the way the Romans thought, especially in the context of how power is transferred, whether it’s hereditary or not, which changes throughout Roman history. It’s interesting. It’s interesting to remember that, the value of the ancestors
This is an interesting point and an interesting perspective to remember about the way the Romans thought, especially in the context of how power is transferred, whether it’s hereditary or not, which changes throughout Roman history. It’s interesting. It’s interesting to remember that, the value of the ancestors
Gregory Aldrete
Yep, and just the weight of tradition.
Yep, and just the weight of tradition.
Lex Fridman
The weight of tradition.
The weight of tradition.
Gregory Aldrete
For the Romans, the mos maiorum is this Latin term, which means the way the ancestors did it, and it’s kind of their word for tradition. For them, tradition is what your forefathers and mothers did, and you have to follow that example, and you have to live up to that.
For the Romans, the mos maiorum is this Latin term, which means the way the ancestors did it, and it’s kind of their word for tradition. For them, tradition is what your forefathers and mothers did, and you have to follow that example, and you have to live up to that.
Lex Fridman
Does that mean that class mobility was difficult? If your ancestors were farmers, there was a major constraint on remaining a farmer, essentially.
Does that mean that class mobility was difficult? If your ancestors were farmers, there was a major constraint on remaining a farmer, essentially.
Three phases of Roman history
Gregory Aldrete
I mean, the Romans all like to think of themselves as farmers, even filthy rich Romans. It was just their national identity is the citizen soldier farmer thing. But it did, among the aristocrats, the people who kind of ran things, yeah, it was hard to break into that if you didn’t have famous ancestors. It was such a big deal that there was a specific term called a novus homo, a new man, for someone who was the first person in their family to get elected to a major office in the Roman government because that was a weird and different and new thing. You actually designated them by this special term. Yeah, you’re absolutely right.
I mean, the Romans all like to think of themselves as farmers, even filthy rich Romans. It was just their national identity is the citizen soldier farmer thing. But it did, among the aristocrats, the people who kind of ran things, yeah, it was hard to break into that if you didn’t have famous ancestors. It was such a big deal that there was a specific term called a novus homo, a new man, for someone who was the first person in their family to get elected to a major office in the Roman government because that was a weird and different and new thing. You actually designated them by this special term. Yeah, you’re absolutely right.
Lex Fridman
If we may, let us zoom out, it would help me, maybe it’ll help the audience to look at the different periods that we’ve been talking about. You mentioned the Republic. You mentioned maybe when it took a form of empire and maybe there was the age of kings. What are the different periods of this Roman, let’s call it, what? The big-
If we may, let us zoom out, it would help me, maybe it’ll help the audience to look at the different periods that we’ve been talking about. You mentioned the Republic. You mentioned maybe when it took a form of empire and maybe there was the age of kings. What are the different periods of this Roman, let’s call it, what? The big-
Gregory Aldrete
Roman history.
Roman history.
Lex Fridman
Roman history. And a lot of people just call that whole period Roman Empire loosely, right?
Roman history. And a lot of people just call that whole period Roman Empire loosely, right?
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Maybe can you speak to the different periods?
Maybe can you speak to the different periods?
Gregory Aldrete
Yes, absolutely. Conventionally, Roman history is divided into three chronological periods. The first of those is from 773 BC to 509 BC, which is called the monarchy. All the periods get their names from the form of government. This is the earliest phase of Roman history. It’s when Rome is mostly just a fairly undistinguished little collection of mud huts, honestly, just like dozens of other cities of little mud huts in Italy. That early phase, about 750 to around 500 BC is the monarchy. They’re ruled by kings.
Yes, absolutely. Conventionally, Roman history is divided into three chronological periods. The first of those is from 773 BC to 509 BC, which is called the monarchy. All the periods get their names from the form of government. This is the earliest phase of Roman history. It’s when Rome is mostly just a fairly undistinguished little collection of mud huts, honestly, just like dozens of other cities of little mud huts in Italy. That early phase, about 750 to around 500 BC is the monarchy. They’re ruled by kings.
Then there’s this revolution, they kick out the kings, they become a Republic. That lasts from 500 BC roughly to about either 31 or 27 BC, depending what date you pick as most important, but about 500 years. The Republic is when they have a Republican form of government. Some people idealize this as Rome’s greatest period, and the big thing in that period is Rome first expands to conquer all of Italy in the first 250 years of that 500 year stretch. And then, the second 250 years, they conquer all the Mediterranean basin roughly. This is this time of enormous successful Roman conquest and expansion.
And then, you have another switch up and they become ruled by emperors. Back to the idea of one guy in charge, though the Romans try to pretend it’s not like a king, it’s something else. Anyway, we can get into that. But they’re very touchy about kings, so they have emperors. Roman Empire, the first emperor is Augustus. Starts off as Octavian, switches his name to Augustus when he becomes emperor. He kind of sets the model for what happens.
Rome’s expansion
And then, how long does the Roman Empire last? That’s one of those great questions. The conventional answer is usually sometime in the fifth century, so the 400s AD, so about another 500 years, let’s say. So nice kind of even division, 500 years of Republic, 500 years of empire. But you can make very good cases for lots of other dates for the end of the Roman Empire. I actually think it goes all the way through the end of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, so another 1500 years, but that’s a whole other discussion. But so that’s your three phases of Roman history,
Lex Fridman
And in some fundamental way, it still persists today, given how much of its ideas define our modern life, especially in the western world.
And in some fundamental way, it still persists today, given how much of its ideas define our modern life, especially in the western world.
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Can you speak to the relationship between ancient Greece and Roman Empire, both in the chronological sense and in the influence sense?
Can you speak to the relationship between ancient Greece and Roman Empire, both in the chronological sense and in the influence sense?
Gregory Aldrete
Well, I mean, ancient Greece comes… The classical era of Greek civilization is around the 500s BC. That’s when you have the great achievements of Athens. It becomes the first sort of true democracy. They defeat the Persian invasions. A lot of famous stuff happens in the 400s, let’s say. So that is contemporaneous with Rome, but the Greek civilization, in a sense, is peaking earlier. And one of the things that happens is that Greece ends up being conquered by Rome in that second half of the Roman Republic between 250 and about 30 BC. And so, Greece falls under the control of Rome and Rome is very heavily influenced by Greek culture. They themselves see the Greeks as a superior civilization, culturally more sophisticated, great art, great philosophy, all this. Another thing about the Romans is they’re super competitive. One of the engines that drives Romans is this public competitiveness, especially among the upper classes. They care more about their status and standing among their peers than they do about money or even their own life, so there’s this intense competition.
Well, I mean, ancient Greece comes… The classical era of Greek civilization is around the 500s BC. That’s when you have the great achievements of Athens. It becomes the first sort of true democracy. They defeat the Persian invasions. A lot of famous stuff happens in the 400s, let’s say. So that is contemporaneous with Rome, but the Greek civilization, in a sense, is peaking earlier. And one of the things that happens is that Greece ends up being conquered by Rome in that second half of the Roman Republic between 250 and about 30 BC. And so, Greece falls under the control of Rome and Rome is very heavily influenced by Greek culture. They themselves see the Greeks as a superior civilization, culturally more sophisticated, great art, great philosophy, all this. Another thing about the Romans is they’re super competitive. One of the engines that drives Romans is this public competitiveness, especially among the upper classes. They care more about their status and standing among their peers than they do about money or even their own life, so there’s this intense competition.
When they conquer Greece, Greek culture just becomes one more arena of competition. Romans will start to learn Greek. They’ll start to memorize Homer. They’ll start to see who can quote more passages of Homer in Greek in their letters to one another because that increases their status. Rome absorbs Greek civilization, and then the two get fused together.
The other thing I should mention in terms of influences that’s really huge on Rome is the Etruscans, and this is one that comes along before the Greeks. The Etruscans were this kind of mysterious culture that flourished in northern Italy before the Romans, so way back 800 BC. They were much more powerful than the Romans. They were a loose confederation of states. For awhile, the Romans even seemed to have been under Etruscan control. The last of the Roman kings was really an Etruscan guy pretty clearly. But the Etruscans end up giving to Rome, or you could say Rome ends up stealing perhaps, a lot of elements of Etruscan culture. Many of the things that we today think of as distinctively Roman, our cliches of what a Roman is, actually aren’t truly Roman, they’re stuff they stole from the Etruscans. Just a couple examples, the toga. What do you think of a Roman? It’s a guy wearing a toga, and the toga is the mark of a Roman citizen. Well, that’s what Etruscan kings wore, probably.
Gladiator games. We associate those very intensely with the Romans. Well, they probably stole that from the Etruscans. A lot of Roman religion. Jupiter is a thunder God, all sorts of divination. The Romans love to chop open animals and look at their livers and predict the future, that comes from the Etruscans. Watching the flight of birds to predict the future, that comes from the Etruscans. There’s a lot of central elements of what we think of as Roman civilization, which actually are borrowings, let’s say, from these older, slightly mysterious Etruscans.
Lex Fridman
I mean, that’s a really powerful thing. It’s a powerful aspect of a civilization to be able to, we can call it stealing which is a negative connotation, but you can also see its integration basically. Yes, steal the best stuff from the peoples you conquer or the peoples that you interact with.
I mean, that’s a really powerful thing. It’s a powerful aspect of a civilization to be able to, we can call it stealing which is a negative connotation, but you can also see its integration basically. Yes, steal the best stuff from the peoples you conquer or the peoples that you interact with.
Not every empire does that. There’s a lot of nations and empires that when they conquer, they annihilate versus integrate. And so, it’s an interesting thing to be able to culturally… The form that the competitiveness takes is that you want to compete in the realm of ideas in culture versus compete strictly in the realm of military conquest.
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah, and I think you’ve exactly put your finger on one of the, let’s say, secrets of Rome’s success, which is that they’re very good at integrating non-Romans or non-Roman ideas and kind of absorbing them.
Yeah, and I think you’ve exactly put your finger on one of the, let’s say, secrets of Rome’s success, which is that they’re very good at integrating non-Romans or non-Roman ideas and kind of absorbing them.
One of the things that’s absolutely crucial early in Roman history, when they’re just one of these tiny little mud hut villages fighting dozens of other mud hut villages in Italy, why does Rome emerge as the dominant one? Well, one of the things they do is when they do finally succeed in conquering somebody else, let’s say another Italianate people, they do something very unusual because the normal procedure in the ancient world is let’s say you conquer another city, you often kill most of the men, enslave the women and children, steal all the stuff, right? The Romans, at least with the Italians, conquer the other city, and sometimes they’ll do that, but sometimes they’ll also then say, “All right, we’re going to now leave you alone and we’re going to share with you a degree of Roman citizenship.” Sometimes they’d make them full citizens, more often they’d make them something we call half citizens, which is kind of what sounds like you get some of the privileges of citizenship, but not all of them. Sometimes they would just make them allies, but they would sort of incorporate them into the Roman project.
They wouldn’t necessarily ask for money or taxes, which is weird too. But instead, the one thing they would always, always demand from the conquered cities in Italy is that they provide troops to the Roman army. The army becomes this mechanism of Romanization where you pull in foreigners, you make them like you, and then they end up fighting for you. Early on, the secret to Rome’s military success is not that they have better generals. It’s not that they have better equipment. It’s not that they have better strategy or tactics. It’s that they have limitless manpower, relatively speaking. They lose a war and they just come back and fight again, and they lose again, and they come back and they fight again, and eventually they just wear down their enemies because their key thing of their policy is we incorporate the conquered people.
The great moment that just exemplifies this is pretty late in this process. They’ve been doing this for 250 years just about, and they’ve gotten down to the toe of Italy, they’re conquering the very last cities down there. One of the last cities is actually a Greek city. It’s a Greek colony. It’s a wealthy city, and so when the Romans show up on the doorstep and are about to attack them, they do what any rich Greek colony or city does, they go out and hire the best mercenaries they can. They hire this guy who thinks of himself as the new Alexander the Great, a man named Pyrrhus of Epirus. He’s a mercenary. He is actually related to Alexander distantly. He has a terrific army, top-notch army. He’s got elephants. He’s got all the latest military technology. The Romans come and fight a battle against him, and Pyrrhus knows what he’s doing. He wipes out the Romans.
He thinks, “Okay, now we’ll have a peace treaty. We’ll negotiate something. I can go home.” But the Romans won’t even talk. They go to their Italian allies and half-citizens, they raise a second army, they send it against Pyrrhus. Pyrrhus says, ‘Okay, these guys are slow learners. Fine.” He fights them again, wipes them out, thinks, “Now we’ll have a peace treaty.” But the Romans go back to the allies, raise a third army and send it after Pyrrhus. When he sees that third army coming, he says, “I can’t afford to win another battle. I win these battles, but each time I lose some of my troops and I can’t replace them, and the Romans just keep sprouting new armies.” So he gives up and goes home.
Rome kind of loses every battle, but wins the war. Pyrrhus one of, actually, his officers has a great line as they’re going back to Greece. He says, “Fighting the Romans is like fighting a hydra,” and a hydra is this mythological monster that when you cut off one head, two more grow in its place, so you can just never win.
Lex Fridman
That’s fascinating.
That’s fascinating.
Gregory Aldrete
So that’s the secret to Rome’s early success.
So that’s the secret to Rome’s early success.
Lex Fridman
It’s not the military strategy. It’s not some technological asymmetry of power. It’s literally just manpower.
It’s not the military strategy. It’s not some technological asymmetry of power. It’s literally just manpower.
Gregory Aldrete
Mm-hm. Early on.
Mm-hm. Early on.
Lex Fridman
Early on.
Early on.
Gregory Aldrete
And later, the Romans get very good… We’re into the empire phase now. Once they have emperors into the AD era of kind of doing the same thing by drawing in the best and the brightest and the most ambitious and the most talented local leaders of the people they conquer. When they go someplace, let’s say they conquer tribe of what to them as barbarians, they’ll often take the sons of the barbarian chiefs, bring them to Rome and raise them as Romans.
And later, the Romans get very good… We’re into the empire phase now. Once they have emperors into the AD era of kind of doing the same thing by drawing in the best and the brightest and the most ambitious and the most talented local leaders of the people they conquer. When they go someplace, let’s say they conquer tribe of what to them as barbarians, they’ll often take the sons of the barbarian chiefs, bring them to Rome and raise them as Romans.
Lex Fridman
Damn.
Damn.
Gregory Aldrete
And so, it’s that whole way of turning your enemies into your own strength. The Romans start giving citizenship to areas they conquer. Once they move out of Italy, they aren’t as free with the citizenship, but eventually they do. They make Spain, lots of cities in Spain, they make all citizens and other places. And soon enough, the Roman emperors and the Roman senators are not Italians, they’re coming from Spain or North Africa or Germany or wherever.
And so, it’s that whole way of turning your enemies into your own strength. The Romans start giving citizenship to areas they conquer. Once they move out of Italy, they aren’t as free with the citizenship, but eventually they do. They make Spain, lots of cities in Spain, they make all citizens and other places. And soon enough, the Roman emperors and the Roman senators are not Italians, they’re coming from Spain or North Africa or Germany or wherever.
As early as the second century AD of the Roman Empire, so the first set of emperors, the first 100 years were all Italians, but right away at the beginning of the second century AD you have Trajan, who’s from Spain. The next guy, Hadrian’s from Spain, and then a century later, you have Septimius Severus, who’s from North Africa. You would later get guys from Syria. I mean, the actual leaders of the Roman Empire are coming from the provinces.
Lex Fridman
That’s brilliant.
That’s brilliant.
Gregory Aldrete
And it’s that openness to incorporating foreigners, making them work for you, making them want to be part of your empire, that I think is one of Rome’s strengths.
And it’s that openness to incorporating foreigners, making them work for you, making them want to be part of your empire, that I think is one of Rome’s strengths.
Lex Fridman
Taking the sons is a brilliant idea and bringing them to Rome, because a kind of generational integration.
Taking the sons is a brilliant idea and bringing them to Rome, because a kind of generational integration.
Gregory Aldrete
The Roman military, later in the empire, is this giant machine of half a million people that takes in foreigners and churns out Romans. The army is composed of two groups. You have the Roman Legionaries who are all citizens, but then you have another group that’s just as large, about 250,000 of each, 250,000 Legionaries, 250,000 of the second group called Auxiliaries. Auxiliaries tend to be newly conquered warlike people that the Romans enlist as Auxiliaries to fight with them. They serve side by side with the Roman legions for 25 years. At the end of that time, when they’re discharged, what do they get? They get Roman citizenship, and their kids then tend to become Roman Legionaries.
The Roman military, later in the empire, is this giant machine of half a million people that takes in foreigners and churns out Romans. The army is composed of two groups. You have the Roman Legionaries who are all citizens, but then you have another group that’s just as large, about 250,000 of each, 250,000 Legionaries, 250,000 of the second group called Auxiliaries. Auxiliaries tend to be newly conquered warlike people that the Romans enlist as Auxiliaries to fight with them. They serve side by side with the Roman legions for 25 years. At the end of that time, when they’re discharged, what do they get? They get Roman citizenship, and their kids then tend to become Roman Legionaries.
Punic wars
Again, you’re taking the most warlike and potentially dangerous of your enemies, kind of absorbing them, putting through this thing for 25 years where they learn Latin, they learn Roman customs, they maybe marry someone who’s already a Roman or a Latin woman. They have kids within the system, their kids become Roman Legionaries, and you’ve thoroughly integrated what could have been your biggest enemies, right? Your greatest threat.
Lex Fridman
That’s just brilliant, brilliant process of integration. Is that what explains the rapid expansion during the late Republic?
That’s just brilliant, brilliant process of integration. Is that what explains the rapid expansion during the late Republic?
Gregory Aldrete
No. There it’s more the indigenous Italians who are in the army at that point. They haven’t really expanded the Auxiliaries yet. That’s more something that happens in the Empire. Yeah, so back it up. We have that first 250 years of the Roman Republic, from about 500 to let’s say 250 BC. And in that period, they gradually expand throughout Italy, conquer the other Italian cities, who are pretty much like them. They’re people who already speak similar languages or the same language, have the same gods. It’s easy to integrate them. That’s the ones they make the half citizens and allies.
No. There it’s more the indigenous Italians who are in the army at that point. They haven’t really expanded the Auxiliaries yet. That’s more something that happens in the Empire. Yeah, so back it up. We have that first 250 years of the Roman Republic, from about 500 to let’s say 250 BC. And in that period, they gradually expand throughout Italy, conquer the other Italian cities, who are pretty much like them. They’re people who already speak similar languages or the same language, have the same gods. It’s easy to integrate them. That’s the ones they make the half citizens and allies.
Then in the second half of that period, from about 250 to let’s say 30 BC, Rome goes outside of Italy, and this is a new world because now they’re encountering people who are really fundamentally different. So, true others. They do not have the same gods. They don’t speak the same language. They have fundamentally different systems of economy, everything.
Rome first expands in the Western Mediterranean, and there their big rival is the city state of Carthage, which is another city founded almost the same time as Rome that has also been a young, vigorously expanding aggressive empire. In the Western Empire at this time, you have two sort of rival groups, and they’re very different because the Romans are these citizen soldier farmers…
Gregory Aldrete
Because the Romans are these citizen soldier farmers, so the Romans are all these small farmers, that’s the basis of their economy, and it’s the Romans who serve in the army. So the person who is a citizen, is also really by main profession, a farmer, and then in times of war, becomes a soldier.
Because the Romans are these citizen soldier farmers, so the Romans are all these small farmers, that’s the basis of their economy, and it’s the Romans who serve in the army. So the person who is a citizen, is also really by main profession, a farmer, and then in times of war, becomes a soldier.
Carthage is an oligarchy of merchants, so it’s a very small citizen body. They make their money through maritime trade, so they have ships that go all over the Mediterranean. They don’t have a large army of Carthaginians. Instead, they hire mercenaries mostly to fight for them, so it’s almost these two rival systems. It’s different philosophies, different economies, everything.
Rome is strong on land. Carthage is strong at sea. So there’s this dichotomy, but they’re both looking to expand and they repeatedly come into conflict as they expand. So Carthage is on the coast of North Africa, Rome’s in Central Italy. What’s right between them? The island of Sicily. So the first big war is fought purely dictated by geography. Who gets Sicily, Rome or Carthage? And Rome wins in the end, they get it, but Carthage is still strong. They’re not weakened. So Carthage is now looking to expand.
The next place to go is Spain. So they go and take Spain. Rome, meanwhile, is moving along the coast of what today’s France. Where are they going to meet up? On the border of Spain and France. And there’s a city, at this point in time called Saguntum. The second big war between Rome and Carthage is over. Who gets Saguntum?
So, I mean, you can just look at a map and see this stuff coming. Sometimes geography is inevitability, and I think in the course of the wars between Rome and Carthage called the Punic Wars, there is this geographic inevitability to them.
Lex Fridman
Can you speak to the Punic Wars? There’s so many levels on which we can talk about this, but why was Rome victorious?
Can you speak to the Punic Wars? There’s so many levels on which we can talk about this, but why was Rome victorious?
Gregory Aldrete
Well, the Punic Wars really almost always comes down to the second Punic War. There’s three. There’s three Punic Wars. The first is over Sicily, Rome wins. The second is the big one, and it’s the big one because Carthage at this point in time, just by sheer luck, coughs up one of the greatest military geniuses in all of history.
Well, the Punic Wars really almost always comes down to the second Punic War. There’s three. There’s three Punic Wars. The first is over Sicily, Rome wins. The second is the big one, and it’s the big one because Carthage at this point in time, just by sheer luck, coughs up one of the greatest military geniuses in all of history.
This guy, Hannibal Barca, he was actually the son of the Carthaginian general who fought Rome for Sicily. Hamilcar was his father, but Hannibal is this just genius, just absolute military genius. He goes to Spain. He’s the one who kind of organizes stuff there, and now he knows the second war with Rome is inevitable. And so, the question is how do you take down Rome? He’s smart. He’s seen Rome’s strength. He knows it’s the Italian allies.
So Rome always wins because even if they lose battles, they go to the Italian allies and half citizens and raise new armies. So how do you beat them? He can never raise that many troops himself. And Hannibal, I think correctly figures out the one way to maybe defeat Rome is to cut them away from their allies. Well, how do you do this?
Hannibal’s plan is, I’m not going to wait and fight the Romans in Spain or North Africa. I’m going to invade Italy. So I’m going to strike at the heart of this growing Roman Empire, and my hope is that if I can win a couple big battles against Rome in Italy, the Italians will want their freedom back and they’ll rebel from Rome and maybe even join me, because most people who have been conquered want their freedom back, so this is a reasonable plan.
So Hannibal famously crosses the Alps with elephants, dramatic stuff. Nobody expects him to do this. Nobody thinks you can do this. Shows up in Northern Italy. Romans send an army. Hannibal massacres them. He is a military genius. Rome takes a year, raises a second army. We know this story, sends it against Hannibal. Hannibal wipes them out.
Rome gets clever this time. They say, okay, Hannibal’s different. We’re going to take two years, raise two armies and send them both out at the same time against Hannibal. So they do this, and this is the Battle of Cannae, which is one of the most famous battles in history, Hannibal’s facing this army of 80,000 Romans about, and he comes up with a strategy called double envelopment. I mean, we can go into it later if you want, but it’s this famous strategy where he basically sucks the Romans in, surrounds them on all sides, and in one afternoon at the Battle of Cannae, Hannibal kills about 60,000 Romans.
Now, just to put that in perspective, that’s more Romans hacked to death in one afternoon with swords than Americans died in 20 years in Vietnam. I mean, the Battle of Gettysburg, which lasted three days and was one of the bloodiest battles of civil war, I think the actual deaths at that were maybe like 15,000. So this is a bloodshed of an almost unimaginable scale.
Lex Fridman
It’s also brutal…
It’s also brutal…
Gregory Aldrete
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
… just to slaughter.
… just to slaughter.
Gregory Aldrete
I mean, it’s just mind boggling to think of that. So now, this is Rome’s darkest hour. This is why the second Punic War is important, because there’s that Nietzsche phrase, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” this is the closest Rome comes to death in the history of the Republic. Hannibal almost kills Rome, but no, it’s not much of a spoiler.
I mean, it’s just mind boggling to think of that. So now, this is Rome’s darkest hour. This is why the second Punic War is important, because there’s that Nietzsche phrase, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” this is the closest Rome comes to death in the history of the Republic. Hannibal almost kills Rome, but no, it’s not much of a spoiler.
Rome’s going to survive, and from this point on, they’re going to be unbeatable, but this is the crisis. This is the crucible. This is the furnace that Rome passes through, that is the dividing point between when they’re one more up and coming empire and when they’re clearly the dominant power in the Mediterranean.
So what do they do about Hannibal? Well, they’re smart. We’re not going to fight Hannibal. We’re not going to give Hannibal the chance to kill more Romans. So they adopt a strategy that they’ll follow Hannibal, when they raise a couple more armies, follow Hannibal round, but whenever Hannibal turns and tries to attack them, the Romans just back off. No, thank you. We’re not going to let you give you a chance.
Meanwhile though, they’re not scared of other Carthaginians, so they raise a couple more armies and they send these to Spain, for example, and start attacking the Carthaginian holdings there. And by luck or necessity, Rome comes up with its own brilliant commander at this point, a guy named Scipio, and he wins victories in Spain, conquers Spain. Then, he crosses into North Africa and starts to conquer that and ends up threatening Carthage directly.
And poor Hannibal, undefeated in Italy, has now been walking up and down Italy or marching up and down Italy for 12 years looking for another fight, and the Romans won’t give it to them. They’ve been attacking all these other areas and chipping away at Carthaginian power.
Conquering Greece
So finally, after more than a decade in Italy, Hannibal is called back to defend the homeland, defend Carthage from Scipio. The two meet in a big battle. This should be one of the great battles of all times the Battle of Zama, but Hannibal’s guys are kind of old by this point. Scipio has all the advantages. He wins. Carthage is defeated. So that’s pretty much the end of Carthage.
The city survives, and then 50 years later, the Romans wipe it out, but that’s not much of a war. But from this moment on, from the second Punic War, which ends in 201 BC, Rome is undisputably the most powerful force nation in the Mediterranean world, and having conquered the West, they’re now going to turn to the East, which is the Greek world, and the Greek world is older. It’s richer, it’s the rich part, half of the Mediterranean, it’s culturally more sophisticated. It’s the world left by Alexander the Great, that’s ruled by the descendants of his generals.
And the Greeks kind of view themselves as superior to the Romans. I mean, to the Greeks, the Romans are these uncouth sort of savage barbarians, but they’re going to get a real shock because the Roman army now has gotten really good to beat Hannibal. And when they go East, they’re going to just defeat the Greeks relatively easily, one after the other.
And there’s a famous historian named Polybius who is a Greek whose city was captured by the Romans. He later becomes a friend to the Scipio family. He actually teaches some of the Scipio children about Greek culture. And he writes a history of Rome and his motivation for writing this is he says, at the beginning of this book, he says, “Surely there can be no one so incurious as to not want to understand how the Romans could have conquered the entire Greek world in 53 years,” because that seems unimaginable to him.
Scipio vs Hannibal
So he’s writing this entire history as a way to try and understand how did the Romans do it? We were these wonderful superior people, and they came around in 50 years, bang, that’s the end of us. So that’s his motivation.
Lex Fridman
Could you maybe speak to any interesting details of the military genius of Hannibal or Scipio? At that time, what are some interesting aspects this double envelopment idea?
Could you maybe speak to any interesting details of the military genius of Hannibal or Scipio? At that time, what are some interesting aspects this double envelopment idea?
Gregory Aldrete
I mean, Hannibal is good because he understood how to use different troop types and to play to their strengths and how to use terrain. So I mean, this is basic military stuff, but he did it really well. So one is his victories against the Romans, for example, is when the Romans are marching along the edge of a lake and their army is strung out in marching formations.
I mean, Hannibal is good because he understood how to use different troop types and to play to their strengths and how to use terrain. So I mean, this is basic military stuff, but he did it really well. So one is his victories against the Romans, for example, is when the Romans are marching along the edge of a lake and their army is strung out in marching formations.
They’re not kind of in combat formation, but they’re strung out along the edge of this lake. It’s misty. There’s not good visibility, and he ambushes them along this lakeside, so Lake Trasimene, and it’s just using the terrain, understanding this. Again, Hannibal is very much outnumbered, but he’s able to use the terrain and to take the enemy by surprise.
At Cannae, he’s working against the expectations. So the traditional thing you do in the ancient world is the two armies would line up on opposite sides of a field, you’d put your best troops in the middle, you’d put your cavalry on the sides, you’d put your lightly armed skirmishers beyond those, and then the two sides kind of smack together, and the good troops fight the good, and you see who wins.
Now, Hannibal is hugely outnumbered by this giant phalanx of heavy infantry, which is what the Romans specialized in. They’re very good at sort of heavily armed foot soldiers. So he knows I don’t want to go up against that. I don’t have that many of that troop type. My guys aren’t as good as the Romans anyway.
So he lines up some of his less good troops in the center against the big menacing Roman phalanx, and he tells them, “Okay, when the Romans come, you’re not really trying to win, just hold them up. Just delay them,” and even tells them you can give ground, so you can retreat and sort of let the line form a big kind of C-shaped crescents, let the Romans sort of advance into you, but just hold that line.
And meanwhile, he puts his cavalry and his good troops on the side, and so on the sides, those good troops defeat the Romans, and then they kind of circle in behind the Romans and attack that big menacing Roman phalanx from the rear where it’s very vulnerable. And so, Hannibal catches the Romans in this sort of giant cauldron just with people closing in from both sides, and they get pressed together. They can’t fight properly, they panic, and they’re all slaughtered.
Heavy infantry vs Cavalry
And that strategy of double envelopment, of sort of going around both sides becomes the model for all kinds of military strategies throughout the rest of history. I mean, the Germans use this in their Blitzkrieg in World War II, a lot of it was kind of that go around the sides and envelop the enemy. On the eastern front, they had a bunch of these cauldron battles where they would go around and try to encircle huge chunks of the Soviet, the Russian army, and do the same thing.
Supposedly even in the Gulf War, it was part of the US strategy for the invasion of Iraq to do this kind double envelopment maneuver. So it’s something that for the rest of military history, has been an inspiration to other armies.
Lex Fridman
Can you speak to maybe, the difference between heavy infantry and cavalry, the usefulness of it in the ancient world?
Can you speak to maybe, the difference between heavy infantry and cavalry, the usefulness of it in the ancient world?
Gregory Aldrete
The ancient world, sort of from the Greeks through the Romans, there’s this consistent line of focusing on heavy infantry. So going back to Greece when they’re fighting, let’s say Persia, which at the time, was the superpower of the ancient world and vastly richer, vastly larger than Ancient Greece, tons more men, but the Persians tended to be archers, tended to be light horsemen tended to be light infantry.
The ancient world, sort of from the Greeks through the Romans, there’s this consistent line of focusing on heavy infantry. So going back to Greece when they’re fighting, let’s say Persia, which at the time, was the superpower of the ancient world and vastly richer, vastly larger than Ancient Greece, tons more men, but the Persians tended to be archers, tended to be light horsemen tended to be light infantry.
Whereas the Greeks specialized in what are called hop lights, which is a kind of infantrymen with very heavy body armor, a helmet, a spear, and a really big heavy shield. And they would get in that formation where you kind of make the shields overlap and just form this solid mass bristling with spear points and just slowly kind of march forward and grind up your enemy in front of you. And so, that’s that sort of block of heavy infantry.
The advantage is head on against other things, they tend to win. The disadvantage is it’s slow moving. It’s vulnerable from the sides and the rear, so you got to protect those, but if you can keep frontally faced, it’s pretty much invincible. And that’s taken even further by Alexander the Great who comes up with the idea, well, what if we even give them a longer spear? So Greek spears were six to eight feet long. Alexander the Great, arms his armies with the sarissa, which is this 15 foot, almost a pike, this extra long spear.
And so, when the spear is that long, you don’t even hardly need the shields anymore. So it’s just this incredibly powerful thing in frontal attack, and that’s what he uses to make himself ruler of the known world. He goes and conquers the Persian Empire and makes himself the Persian king of kings with this phalanx of troops armed with the sarissa. So that’s very powerful.
The Romans go a little bit different route. They have heavy infantry, but they focus more on fighting with short swords, so it’s get up close and kind of stab. And the other thing the Romans do is they focus on flexibility and subdividing their army. So Alexander’s phalanx was a mass of let’s say, 5,000 guys and it was one unit.
The Roman army is organized in an ever decreasing number of subunits. So you have a group of eight guys who are a contubernia, the men who share a tent, you take 10 of those and they form a century of 80 men. You take a bunch of those and you form a cohort. If you forget a bunch of those, you form a legion.
So the Romans are able to subdivide their army, and the big sticking point comes at 197 BC at the Battle of Cynoscephalae, when the Roman Legion goes up against one of the descendants of Alexander the Great, who’s using his military system. So this is the new Roman system with flexibility versus the old invincible Alexander system with the heavily armed sarissa with those long 15-foot poles.
Armor
And the key moment in the battle is where they lock together And in a head-on clash, the Macedonians are going to win, but the Romans have the flexibility to break off a little section of their army, run around to the side, and attack that formation from the side, and they win the battle. So they prove tactically superior because of their flexibility. So it’s always development and counter development in military history.
Lex Fridman
A fascinating, brutal testing, ground of tactics and technology
A fascinating, brutal testing, ground of tactics and technology
Gregory Aldrete
Adaptation, you have to keep adapting.
Adaptation, you have to keep adapting.
Lex Fridman
That’s, I think, the key thing. One of the fascinating things about your work, you study Roman life life in the ancient world, but also the details, like we mentioned, you are an expert in armor. So what kind of, maybe you could speak to weapons and most importantly, armor that were used by the Romans or by people in the ancient world.
That’s, I think, the key thing. One of the fascinating things about your work, you study Roman life life in the ancient world, but also the details, like we mentioned, you are an expert in armor. So what kind of, maybe you could speak to weapons and most importantly, armor that were used by the Romans or by people in the ancient world.
Gregory Aldrete
I do military history. So I mean, the Romans specialized in, I mean, early on they have pretty random armor, and it’s not standardized. I mean, remember, there’s no factories in the ancient world, so nobody’s cranking out 10,000 units of exactly the same armor. Each one is handmade. Now, there can be a degree of standardization, even as early as Alexander, there was a certain amount of standardization, but each one is still handmade, and that’s important to keep in mind, each weapon, each piece of armor.
I do military history. So I mean, the Romans specialized in, I mean, early on they have pretty random armor, and it’s not standardized. I mean, remember, there’s no factories in the ancient world, so nobody’s cranking out 10,000 units of exactly the same armor. Each one is handmade. Now, there can be a degree of standardization, even as early as Alexander, there was a certain amount of standardization, but each one is still handmade, and that’s important to keep in mind, each weapon, each piece of armor.
Armor develops over time to fit the tactics. So the Greek hoplites, are very heavy armor. The Roman infantrymen early in the public is lighter. Eventually they get this typical sort of chain mail shirt, helmet shield, the classic sort of Roman legionary, I would say, is the one of the first and second centuries AD, so the early Roman Empire, and this is the guy who wore bands of steel arranged in sort of bands around their body. So it looks almost like a lobster’s shell, right? And this is a thing called the lorica segmentata.
So it’s solid steel, which is very good protection, but it’s flexible because it has these individual bands that provide a lot of movement. And then, you have a helmet, you have a square shield that’s kind of curved, and you have the short sword, the Roman gladius and that’s the classic Roman legionary. Later, more things develop.
My personal relationship with armor is I got, really by accident, involved in this project to try to reconstruct this mysterious type of armor that was used, especially by the Greeks and Alexander the Great called the linothorax, which apparently was made only out of linen and glue. So this seems a little odd that that’s not the sort of material once you want metal or something, but we had clear literary references that people, including Alexander, and the most famous image of Alexander is this Alexander mosaic found at Pompeii that shows him wearing one of these funny types of armor.
The catch is none survived. It’s organic materials. So we don’t have any of them and archaeologists like to study things that survive. So we have nice typologies of Greek armor made of bronze, Roman armor made of steel or sort of proto steel, but this thing, this linothorax was a mystery. And one of my undergraduate students, a guy named Scott Bartel, had a real, well, an Alexander obsession. He really loved Alexander.
Lex Fridman
As one should.
As one should.
Gregory Aldrete
He had Alexandros tattooed on his arm in Greek, and he was a smart student. He was really smart. And so, he, one summer, made himself an imitation of this thing of Alexander just for fun. And he said, “Can you give me some articles so I could do a better job?” So he used some scholarly articles about this armor, and with typical academic arrogance, I said, “Why, Scott, of course I will. I’ll give you some references,” and I went and looked and there weren’t any. So at that point, I was like, “Huh, tell you what, why don’t you and I look into this and try to do a reconstruction using only the materials they would’ve had in the ancient world?” And little did I know at the time, I thought, maybe I’ll get an article out of this, I mean, it ended up being a tenure project involving 150 students, a couple dozen other faculty members, and having three documentaries made out of it. And Scott and I ended up writing a scholarly book on this. So this is how, you never know where your next project’s going to come from.
He had Alexandros tattooed on his arm in Greek, and he was a smart student. He was really smart. And so, he, one summer, made himself an imitation of this thing of Alexander just for fun. And he said, “Can you give me some articles so I could do a better job?” So he used some scholarly articles about this armor, and with typical academic arrogance, I said, “Why, Scott, of course I will. I’ll give you some references,” and I went and looked and there weren’t any. So at that point, I was like, “Huh, tell you what, why don’t you and I look into this and try to do a reconstruction using only the materials they would’ve had in the ancient world?” And little did I know at the time, I thought, maybe I’ll get an article out of this, I mean, it ended up being a tenure project involving 150 students, a couple dozen other faculty members, and having three documentaries made out of it. And Scott and I ended up writing a scholarly book on this. So this is how, you never know where your next project’s going to come from.
So it started with this undergraduate turned into this huge thing, but it’s what we did. We first said, “All right, what are all the sources for this armor?” And in the end, we found 65 accounts of it in ancient literature by 40 different authors. So we have literary descriptions, and then we looked at ancient art, and we were able to identify about a thousand images in ancient art, in vase paintings, pottery, bronze sculpture, tomb paintings, all these different things showing this armor.
And then, using those two things, we tried to backwards engineer a pattern to say, “Well, if this is what the end product look like, what does it have to look like when you make it?” And then we tried to reconstruct one of these things using only the glue and materials. So we had to use animal glues, rabbit glue. We had to end up sort of making our own linen, which comes from the flax plant. So we had to grow flax, harvest it, using only techniques in the ancient world, so modern flax goes through chemical processes. No, we had to do this the old-fashioned way, spin it into thread, so the thread into fabric, glue it all together.
And then, the fun part was once we made these things, we subjected them to ballistics testing. So we shot them with arrows, which again were wooden reconstruction arrows, using bronze arrowheads that were based on arrowheads found on ancient battlefields to determine how good protection would this thing have been. And of course, the kind of fun one that everyone always likes and that the documentaries always want is at one point they’re like, “Well, can you put Scott in one of these and shoot him?” And we’re like, “Okay.” I mean, at that point, we’ve done about a thousand test shots. I grew up shooting bows and arrows. I knew exactly how far that was going to go. So it’s one of these, don’t do this at home kids.
Lex Fridman
So there’s a million questions to ask here, but in general, how well, in terms of ballistics, does it work? Can it withstand arrows or direct strikes from swords and axes and stuff like that?
So there’s a million questions to ask here, but in general, how well, in terms of ballistics, does it work? Can it withstand arrows or direct strikes from swords and axes and stuff like that?
Gregory Aldrete
Bottom line is a one centimeter thick linothorax, laminated, or even sewn. It doesn’t have to be laminated. Layer of linen is about as good protection as two millimeters of bronze, which was the thickest, comparable, body armor of bronze at the time. And we’re talking fourth century, fifth century BC here, so classical and Hellenistic Greece, and that would’ve protected you from, let’s say, random arrow strikes on the battlefield. So you could have gotten hit by arrows and they simply wouldn’t have gone through.
Bottom line is a one centimeter thick linothorax, laminated, or even sewn. It doesn’t have to be laminated. Layer of linen is about as good protection as two millimeters of bronze, which was the thickest, comparable, body armor of bronze at the time. And we’re talking fourth century, fifth century BC here, so classical and Hellenistic Greece, and that would’ve protected you from, let’s say, random arrow strikes on the battlefield. So you could have gotten hit by arrows and they simply wouldn’t have gone through.
Lex Fridman
What are the benefits? Is there a major weight difference?
What are the benefits? Is there a major weight difference?
Gregory Aldrete
Yes. So the benefits of this are, it’s much lighter than metal armor. So the linothorax is about 11 pounds. A bronze cuirass of comparable protection would’ve been about 24 to 6 pounds. The chain mail shirt would be about 28, 27 pounds. It’s cooler. I mean, the Mediterranean is a hot place with the hot sun. Even today, a linen shirt is something you wear when you want to be cool. So it’s much lighter, that gives your troops greater endurance on the battlefield. They can run farther, fight longer. It’s cheaper. You don’t need a blacksmith who’s a specialist to make it.
Yes. So the benefits of this are, it’s much lighter than metal armor. So the linothorax is about 11 pounds. A bronze cuirass of comparable protection would’ve been about 24 to 6 pounds. The chain mail shirt would be about 28, 27 pounds. It’s cooler. I mean, the Mediterranean is a hot place with the hot sun. Even today, a linen shirt is something you wear when you want to be cool. So it’s much lighter, that gives your troops greater endurance on the battlefield. They can run farther, fight longer. It’s cheaper. You don’t need a blacksmith who’s a specialist to make it.
In fact, probably, this is interesting, any woman in the ancient world could have made one of these because they were the ones who spun thread and sewed it into fabric. So I can easily see in a household a mother making this for her son, a wife making it for her husband. So it’s a form of armor you could have made domestically that would’ve been maybe not the greatest armor, but pretty good, pretty comparable to bronze armor.
Lex Fridman
And it’s amazing that you used all the materials they had at the time and none of the modern techniques, but I should probably say, maybe you can speak to that, they were probably much better at doing that than you are, right? Because again, generational, it’s a skill. It’s a skill that probably has practiced across decades, across centuries [inaudible 00:55:32].
And it’s amazing that you used all the materials they had at the time and none of the modern techniques, but I should probably say, maybe you can speak to that, they were probably much better at doing that than you are, right? Because again, generational, it’s a skill. It’s a skill that probably has practiced across decades, across centuries [inaudible 00:55:32].
Gregory Aldrete
I mean, in terms of producing the fabric, I’m sure they could do it 10 times faster than we could just, that’s a speed thing, but it’s still incredibly labor-intensive where I think there’s a big difference between our reconstruction and ancient ones is in the glue. So we ended up using a kind of least common denominator glue. We used rabbit glue because it would’ve been available anywhere and it’s cheap.
I mean, in terms of producing the fabric, I’m sure they could do it 10 times faster than we could just, that’s a speed thing, but it’s still incredibly labor-intensive where I think there’s a big difference between our reconstruction and ancient ones is in the glue. So we ended up using a kind of least common denominator glue. We used rabbit glue because it would’ve been available anywhere and it’s cheap.
But in the ancient world, they did have basically the equivalent of super glues. I mean, we found, for example, a helmets that were fished out river in Germany that had metal parts glued together that after 2,000 years of immersion and water were still glued together. So they had some great glues. We just don’t know what the recipes for them were. So we went the opposite tack and said, “Well, we’re just going to make something that we know they could have made.” So it was at least this good, you know what I’m saying?
Lex Fridman
But actually, this is a materials thing, but I think glue, aside from helping glue things together, it can also be a thing that serves as armor. So if you glue things correctly, the way it permeates the material that is gluing, can strengthen the material…
But actually, this is a materials thing, but I think glue, aside from helping glue things together, it can also be a thing that serves as armor. So if you glue things correctly, the way it permeates the material that is gluing, can strengthen the material…
Gregory Aldrete
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
… the integrity of the material. That’s an art and the size probably that they understood deeply.
… the integrity of the material. That’s an art and the size probably that they understood deeply.
Gregory Aldrete
The process of lamination did add something. So there’s actually a huge debate among scholars and actually a sort of amateur archeologist that was this linothorax thing glued together or was it simply sewn together? Was it composite, partially linen, partially leather, or other materials? And my honest answer is I think it’s all of the above, because again, every piece of armor in the ancient world was an individual creation.
The process of lamination did add something. So there’s actually a huge debate among scholars and actually a sort of amateur archeologist that was this linothorax thing glued together or was it simply sewn together? Was it composite, partially linen, partially leather, or other materials? And my honest answer is I think it’s all of the above, because again, every piece of armor in the ancient world was an individual creation.
So I think if you had some spare leather, you put that in. If you wanted to make one that was just sewn together, or even quilted stuffed with stuff you do that, maybe you were good at gluing stuff, you use that. So I think there’s no one answer. We investigated one possibility because we just had limited time and money and resources, but I think all these other things existed at the same time and we’re variants of it.
Lex Fridman
Just as a small aside, I just think this is a fascinating journey you went on. I love it. Sort of answering really important questions about, in this case, armor about military equipment and technology that archeologists can’t answer by using all the literary, so all the sources you can to understand what it looked like, what were the materials, using the materials at the time, and actually doing ballistic testing. It’s really cool. It’s really cool that you see that there’s a hole in the literature and nobody studied it, and going hard and doing it the right way to sort of uncover this. I don’t know, I think it’s an amazing mystery about the ancient world.
Just as a small aside, I just think this is a fascinating journey you went on. I love it. Sort of answering really important questions about, in this case, armor about military equipment and technology that archeologists can’t answer by using all the literary, so all the sources you can to understand what it looked like, what were the materials, using the materials at the time, and actually doing ballistic testing. It’s really cool. It’s really cool that you see that there’s a hole in the literature and nobody studied it, and going hard and doing it the right way to sort of uncover this. I don’t know, I think it’s an amazing mystery about the ancient world.
Gregory Aldrete
I mean, shifting from just sort of Roman history in general to my research that I’ve done as a scholar, the theme that runs throughout my scholarship is practical stuff. I’m interested, how did this actually work in the ancient world? So there’s people who are much more theoretical, who look at the symbolic meaning of something. I’m simpler. I just want to know how did this work? So almost all of my books that I’ve written, have started with some just how did something work, and I’m trying to just figure out that aspect of it, and that’s just, maybe it’s a personality thing.
I mean, shifting from just sort of Roman history in general to my research that I’ve done as a scholar, the theme that runs throughout my scholarship is practical stuff. I’m interested, how did this actually work in the ancient world? So there’s people who are much more theoretical, who look at the symbolic meaning of something. I’m simpler. I just want to know how did this work? So almost all of my books that I’ve written, have started with some just how did something work, and I’m trying to just figure out that aspect of it, and that’s just, maybe it’s a personality thing.
I also have a sciency background, so I think I’ve used a lot of that. Even though I’m a humanist and a historian, I’ve used a lot of hard science in my work. I did a book on floods where I had to get really heavy into vectors of disease and hydraulics and engineering and all that stuff, and I think, again, having that sort of hard science combined with a humanist background, helps with those sorts of projects.
Lex Fridman
Well, like you said, I think the details help you understand deeply the big picture of history. And I mean, Alexander the Great wore this thing.
Well, like you said, I think the details help you understand deeply the big picture of history. And I mean, Alexander the Great wore this thing.
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
This is-
This is-
Gregory Aldrete
And I should say by the way, it does drop out of use around Roman times. And I think what’s going on there is technology that with bronze, it’s hard to keep a sharp edge on things, but once you get into metals, which approximate steel, you can get sharper, and a key factor to penetrating fabric is the edge on the arrowhead.
And I should say by the way, it does drop out of use around Roman times. And I think what’s going on there is technology that with bronze, it’s hard to keep a sharp edge on things, but once you get into metals, which approximate steel, you can get sharper, and a key factor to penetrating fabric is the edge on the arrowhead.
So as soon as you start to get something more like a razor edge, it’s going to go through it more easily. Also, there’s changes in the bows that are being used. You start to get eastern horse archers showing up with composite bows, which are much more powerful. And so, it just becomes outdated as frontline military equipment. What’s interesting is by the Roman period, people are still wearing it, but it’s now things like when I go hunting, if I’m hunting lions, I wear this. There’s an actual source that says, “It’s really good for hunting dangerous big cats because it catches their teeth and stops them from penetrating. One emperor wears one of these under his toga. It’s kind of like a, not bulletproof vest, but stab proof vest. So again…
Alexander the Great
Lex Fridman
Awesome.
Awesome.
Gregory Aldrete
… it’s not to fight in the frontline of legions, but it’ll protect him from somebody trying to assassinate him. So it still has those uses where you’re not up against top line military equipment
… it’s not to fight in the frontline of legions, but it’ll protect him from somebody trying to assassinate him. So it still has those uses where you’re not up against top line military equipment
Lex Fridman
To honor aforementioned undergraduate student who loves Alexander the Great, we must absolutely talk about Alexander the Great for a little bit. Why was he successful, do you think, as a conqueror, probably one of the greatest conquerors in the history of humanity?
To honor aforementioned undergraduate student who loves Alexander the Great, we must absolutely talk about Alexander the Great for a little bit. Why was he successful, do you think, as a conqueror, probably one of the greatest conquerors in the history of humanity?
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah, and I mean, that is then he one of the greatest heroes or one of the greatest villains in humanity, too. It’s like Julius Caesar. He’s famous for conquering Gaul. Well, about a million people were killed and a million enslaved in that. So does it make him a horrible person or one of our heroes?
Yeah, and I mean, that is then he one of the greatest heroes or one of the greatest villains in humanity, too. It’s like Julius Caesar. He’s famous for conquering Gaul. Well, about a million people were killed and a million enslaved in that. So does it make him a horrible person or one of our heroes?
But Alexander is a combination of two things, one is he really just was a skilled individual, and he was one of those guys who had it all. He was smart, he was athletic, and he was supremely charismatic. I mean, it’s obviously one of these people that would walk into a room and everyone just kind of gravitates to him. He had that magic that made him an effective leader.
And secondly, he was lucky because it wasn’t all him. He inherited a system created by his father, Philip II. So he was in the right time at the right place and had this instrument placed in his hands, and then he had the intelligence and the charisma to go use it. So it’s one of these coming together of different things, but often his father’s contribution, I think, is not recognized as much as it is.
It’s his father who reformed the Macedonian army, who came up with that system of equipping them with the sarissa, this extra long spear that made them really effective, created the mixed army. So one of the keys to Alexander’s successes, in a tactical sense, is that his army was composed of different elements: heavy cavalry, light cavalry, heavy infantry, light infantry, missile troops, and he understand that he can use these in different and flexible ways on the battlefield; whereas a lot of warfare before then had just been, you line up, two sides smashed together.
So he did clever things with this army that was a better tool than others did. And then, he was just supremely ambitious. I mean, he cared about his fame, which I guess his ego, but he clearly cared about that more than he did about things like money. He was indifferent to that, and he did have a grand vision. So he did have this vision of trying to unite the world, both politically under his control, but also culturally, and this is an interesting thing.
So he was very open, in fact, insistent of trying to meld together the best elements of all the different cultures. So he, himself, was a Macedonian, but he admired Greek culture. So he pretty much adopted Greek culture as his own. When he conquers Persia, he starts adapting elements of Persian culture. He dresses in Persian clothing. He marries a Persian woman. He sort of forces thousands of his troops to marry local women. He appoints Persians to positions of power. He integrates Persian units into his military. He really wanted to fuse all these things together. And some people see this as a very enlightened vision that, “Oh, he’s not just, I want to conquer people and now they’re my slaves,” that he was really trying to create this one culture that was sort of the best of everything. Others see it, of course, as a form of cultural imperialism. You’re destroying other cultures and trying to warp or twist them into something, but what I think is interesting is that this vision he had of uniting cultures creates very problematic tensions among his own followers because the-
Gregory Aldrete
Tensions among his own followers, because the Macedonians, his original troops, did not like this on the whole. They wanted the old model where we conquer you, you’re our slaves. We don’t want to share stuff with you. We don’t want you joining us in the army. We don’t want you appointed to positions of power. We are your conquerors and that’s it. And so, Alexander had to deal with a lot of friction from his own oldest, most loyal elements at the way he was being in their eyes, too generous to the conquered.
Tensions among his own followers, because the Macedonians, his original troops, did not like this on the whole. They wanted the old model where we conquer you, you’re our slaves. We don’t want to share stuff with you. We don’t want you joining us in the army. We don’t want you appointed to positions of power. We are your conquerors and that’s it. And so, Alexander had to deal with a lot of friction from his own oldest, most loyal elements at the way he was being in their eyes, too generous to the conquered.
So Alexander is one of these interesting personalities because every generation sees him in a new light and focuses on different things. So for some, he’s this enlightened visionary who was taught by Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, and they say, “Well, this influenced him.” Others see him as an egomaniacal warmonger, just I’m out to kill and gain glory. There was a book a couple of decades ago, it says, “Oh, he’s just an alcoholic,” which he probably was. Yeah. So you get all these competing images, and the great thing is, we don’t really know what the true Alexander was or what his motivations were. It’s a mixed message.
Lex Fridman
Why do you think the Roman Empire lasted while the Greek Empire as the Alexander expanded, did not?
Why do you think the Roman Empire lasted while the Greek Empire as the Alexander expanded, did not?
Gregory Aldrete
That’s a clear answer. So Alexander’s Empire fragmented the moment he died. And so his empire was all about personal loyalty. It was his charisma holding it together, his personality. And he completely failed to create a structure so that it would continue after his death. And of course, he died young. He didn’t think he would die when he did, but still, you should put something in place.
That’s a clear answer. So Alexander’s Empire fragmented the moment he died. And so his empire was all about personal loyalty. It was his charisma holding it together, his personality. And he completely failed to create a structure so that it would continue after his death. And of course, he died young. He didn’t think he would die when he did, but still, you should put something in place.
So his was a flash in the pan. It was, he had this spectacular conquest in 10 years. He conquered what was then most of the known world, but he had no permanent structure in place. He didn’t really deal with the issue of succession. It fell apart instantly. The Romans are much more about building a structure. I mean, as we talked about a little, they were very good about incorporating the people they conquered into the Roman project. I mean, they’re oppressive, they’re imperialistic as well. Let’s not whitewash them. I mean, they had moments when they would just wipe out entire cities. But on the whole, they were much more about trying to bring people into the Roman world. And I think that was one of their strengths, is that they were open to integration and bringing in different people to keep rejuvenating themselves.
Roman law
Lex Fridman
One of the most influential developments from the Roman Republic was their legal system. And as you mentioned, it’s one of the things that still lasted to this day in many of its elements. So it started with the Twelve Tables in 451 BC. Can you just speak to this legal system and the Twelve Tables?
One of the most influential developments from the Roman Republic was their legal system. And as you mentioned, it’s one of the things that still lasted to this day in many of its elements. So it started with the Twelve Tables in 451 BC. Can you just speak to this legal system and the Twelve Tables?
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah. I mean, Roman law is one of their most significant, maybe the most significant legacy they have on the modern world. So I mean, just to start at that end of it, something like 90% of the world uses a legal system, which is either directly or indirectly derived from the Roman one. So even countries that you wouldn’t think are really using Roman law, kind of are, because all the terminology, all that comes from Roman law. And the Romans, their first law code was this thing, the Twelve Tables. So this is way back in the middle republic and it was a typical early law code. So most of the stuff it concerns are agricultural concerns. So if I have a tree and its fruit drops onto your property, who owns the fruit? If my cow wanders into your field and eats your grain, am I responsible? I mean, I love these early law codes that are all about this farmer problems.
Yeah. I mean, Roman law is one of their most significant, maybe the most significant legacy they have on the modern world. So I mean, just to start at that end of it, something like 90% of the world uses a legal system, which is either directly or indirectly derived from the Roman one. So even countries that you wouldn’t think are really using Roman law, kind of are, because all the terminology, all that comes from Roman law. And the Romans, their first law code was this thing, the Twelve Tables. So this is way back in the middle republic and it was a typical early law code. So most of the stuff it concerns are agricultural concerns. So if I have a tree and its fruit drops onto your property, who owns the fruit? If my cow wanders into your field and eats your grain, am I responsible? I mean, I love these early law codes that are all about this farmer problems.
But law codes are hugely important because you need a law code to enable people to live in groups. So they’re the transitional thing that lets human beings live together without just resorting to anarchy. And most of the early law codes are agricultural, like Hammurabi’s Code in Mesopotamia. Most of them are retaliatory, meaning eye for an eye type justice. So you do something to me, it gets done to you. But they’re this necessary precondition for civilization, I would say, and the Twelve Tables is that. It’s a crude law code. It has a lot of goofy stuff in it. It has things about if you use magic, this is the punishment, but it’s that basic agrarian society law code. Now, that’s typical in many societies. Where the Romans are different is, they keep going. They keep developing their law code. And by the late republic, the Romans just get really into legal stuff.
I don’t know why, but the Romans are very methodical organized people. So maybe this has something to do with it. But their law code just keeps getting more and more complicated and keeps expanding to different areas. And they start to get jurists who write sort of theoretical things about Roman law. And eventually, it becomes this huge body both of cases and comments on those cases and of actual laws. And in the 6th century AD, so the 500s, the Roman Emperor, Justinian, who is an emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire by this point, the Byzantine Empire, compiles all this together into something that today, we just loosely called Justinian’s Code of Roman law, and that survives. And so that becomes the basis for almost all the legal systems around the world and it’s very complicated. And Roman law, I think is really fun. Because on the one hand, it’s really dry, but it also preserves these wonderful little vignettes of daily life. So you get these great, just entertaining law cases.
One of my favorite, and this may not even be a real case, this might be a hypothetical that they would use to train Romans or law students, is one day, a man sends a slave to the barber to get a shave. And the barber shop is adjacent to an athletic field and two guys are on the athletic field throwing a ball back and forth. And one of them throws the ball badly, the other guy fails to catch it. The ball flies into the barber shop, hits the hand of the barber, cuts the slave’s throat, he dies. Who’s liable under Roman law? Is it the athlete one who threw the ball badly? Is it athlete two who failed to catch it? Is it the barber who actually cut the slave’s throat? Is it the owner of the slave for being stupid enough to send his slave to get a shave in a place adjacent to a playing field? Or is it the Roman state rezoning a barber shop next to an athletic field? What do you think?
Lex Fridman
Well, do they resolve the complexity of that with the right answer?
Well, do they resolve the complexity of that with the right answer?
Gregory Aldrete
We don’t have the answer.
We don’t have the answer.
Lex Fridman
We don’t have the answer.
We don’t have the answer.
Gregory Aldrete
It’s a case without the answer. We have various jurists commenting on this one, but we don’t have what was actually ruled. But it’s just a great little sort of vignette. And that’s how complicated Roman law got, that it was dealing with these weird, esoteric questions. There’s another one where a cow gets loose and runs into an apartment building, goes up onto the roof and crashes down three stories into a bar on the ground floor, and kicks open the taps to the wine jug and all the wine flows out. Who’s at fault? I mean, this seems to have happened, as crazy as it sounds. And Roman testamentary law is great. I mean, something like 20% of Roman law has to do with wills and what you do with the will and what makes a will valid. You have to have seven witnesses and you have to have a guy named, the liber [inaudible 01:11:31] to witness it, and the witnesses have to be adult men who can’t be blind and all this other stuff.
It’s a case without the answer. We have various jurists commenting on this one, but we don’t have what was actually ruled. But it’s just a great little sort of vignette. And that’s how complicated Roman law got, that it was dealing with these weird, esoteric questions. There’s another one where a cow gets loose and runs into an apartment building, goes up onto the roof and crashes down three stories into a bar on the ground floor, and kicks open the taps to the wine jug and all the wine flows out. Who’s at fault? I mean, this seems to have happened, as crazy as it sounds. And Roman testamentary law is great. I mean, something like 20% of Roman law has to do with wills and what you do with the will and what makes a will valid. You have to have seven witnesses and you have to have a guy named, the liber [inaudible 01:11:31] to witness it, and the witnesses have to be adult men who can’t be blind and all this other stuff.
So it’s just great. It’s fun to mess around in this, but it always contains these little nuggets about what happens. I mentioned I wrote a book on floods. And there were all these law cases about if a flood strikes the city and picks up my piece of furniture in my apartment building and carries it out the door and deposits it in another apartment building, does that guy now own my furniture because it’s now legally within his apartment? Or can I go in there and repossess it because the flood took it out of my apartment? This is the stuff law is handled and that’s how sophisticated Roman law got.
Lex Fridman
Did corrupt, unfair things seep into the law?
Did corrupt, unfair things seep into the law?
Gregory Aldrete
Oh, yeah. I mean, it’s biased in favor of the wealthy, obviously. And I mean, Roman law cases are interesting because they became linked to politics. So one of the way that politicians, up and coming politicians, aspiring politicians could sort of make their name or become famous was by either prosecuting or defending people in Roman law courts. And especially during the late Roman Republic, you get a lot of really sensational, what today we’d call celebrity law cases. So this is where some of the biggest politicians were accused of very melodramatic kinds of things. And I mean, the most famous Roman order of all time, Cicero, is a guy who made his entire career in the law courts. And that’s how he made his reputation, was able to parlay that into political power and eventually was elected to the highest office in the Roman government. But it’s purely because of his skill, his facility, using words at giving speeches in public.
Oh, yeah. I mean, it’s biased in favor of the wealthy, obviously. And I mean, Roman law cases are interesting because they became linked to politics. So one of the way that politicians, up and coming politicians, aspiring politicians could sort of make their name or become famous was by either prosecuting or defending people in Roman law courts. And especially during the late Roman Republic, you get a lot of really sensational, what today we’d call celebrity law cases. So this is where some of the biggest politicians were accused of very melodramatic kinds of things. And I mean, the most famous Roman order of all time, Cicero, is a guy who made his entire career in the law courts. And that’s how he made his reputation, was able to parlay that into political power and eventually was elected to the highest office in the Roman government. But it’s purely because of his skill, his facility, using words at giving speeches in public.
Lex Fridman
So they loved the puzzle and the game of law, the sort of untangling really complicated legal situations and coming up with new laws that help you tangle and untangle the situations.
So they loved the puzzle and the game of law, the sort of untangling really complicated legal situations and coming up with new laws that help you tangle and untangle the situations.
Gregory Aldrete
Yes. And law cases, again, especially in the late republic, also became a form of public spectacle.
Yes. And law cases, again, especially in the late republic, also became a form of public spectacle.
Lex Fridman
Right.
Right.
Gregory Aldrete
So Rome did not have law courts in a building locked away. A lot of these cases were held in the Roman Forum in the open, and audiences would just come to be entertained. And the people presenting the speeches, they were playing as much to this audience as they were to let’s say, the jury or a judge. And that became a big part of the cases. So that’s all tied up in the Roman orator too.
So Rome did not have law courts in a building locked away. A lot of these cases were held in the Roman Forum in the open, and audiences would just come to be entertained. And the people presenting the speeches, they were playing as much to this audience as they were to let’s say, the jury or a judge. And that became a big part of the cases. So that’s all tied up in the Roman orator too.
Lex Fridman
So we’re talking a bit about the details of the laws. Is there some big picture laws that are new innovations or profound things like all Roman citizens are equal before the law, founding fathers type in the United States, in the western world, these big legal ideas?
So we’re talking a bit about the details of the laws. Is there some big picture laws that are new innovations or profound things like all Roman citizens are equal before the law, founding fathers type in the United States, in the western world, these big legal ideas?
Gregory Aldrete
I think maybe one of the things that was really stressed in Roman law early on, even as early as the Twelve Tables, is the notion of Roman citizenship. So if you were a Roman citizen, it came with a set of both privileges and obligations. So the obligations where you’re supposed to fight in the Army, you were supposed to vote in elections. The privileges were, you had the protection of Roman law. And at least in theory, if not in practice, everybody was equal under that law. Now of course, keep in mind, we’re talking about men here. And even at the height of the Roman Empire, so let’s say second century AD, there were about 50 million human beings living within the boundaries of the Roman Empire, maybe 6 million were actual citizens. So we tend to go, “Oh, it’s so great. If you’re a citizen, you have all these things.”
I think maybe one of the things that was really stressed in Roman law early on, even as early as the Twelve Tables, is the notion of Roman citizenship. So if you were a Roman citizen, it came with a set of both privileges and obligations. So the obligations where you’re supposed to fight in the Army, you were supposed to vote in elections. The privileges were, you had the protection of Roman law. And at least in theory, if not in practice, everybody was equal under that law. Now of course, keep in mind, we’re talking about men here. And even at the height of the Roman Empire, so let’s say second century AD, there were about 50 million human beings living within the boundaries of the Roman Empire, maybe 6 million were actual citizens. So we tend to go, “Oh, it’s so great. If you’re a citizen, you have all these things.”
Well, adult free men who are not slaves, who are not resident foreigners, they have this great stuff. And that’s always a tiny minority of all the human beings who existed in this society. But still, the notion, the notion of citizenship is huge. And citizens, for example, early on, you had to be tried at Rome if you were accused of something. And there’s this very famous moment in Sicily where an abusive governor who’s corrupt is punishing a citizen arbitrarily. And this person cries out, “Civis Romanus Sum,” meaning, “I am a Roman citizen.” And it really was this hugely loaded statement that that gives me protections. It is wrong for you to do this to me. It’s wrong for you to beat me because I am a citizen and that gives me certain protections. So that notion of citizenship is something that I think, the Romans really emphasize and becomes a legacy to a lot of civilizations today, where citizenship means something. It’s a special status.
Slavery
Lex Fridman
So you mentioned slaves, slavery, that’s something that is common throughout human history. What do we know about their relationship with slavery?
So you mentioned slaves, slavery, that’s something that is common throughout human history. What do we know about their relationship with slavery?
Gregory Aldrete
Well, Roman slavery, a couple of just reminders at the beginning, first of all, it’s not racial slavery. So for people in the United States, you tend to think of slavery through this racial lens. So slaves in ancient Roman society could be any color, ethnicity, gender, origin, whatever. It’s an economic status. Now, having said that, slavery is fundamentally horrific to human dignity because it is defining a human being as an object. And very famously, a Roman agricultural writer who’s writing about farms, just as a kind of side says, “On your farm, you have three types of tools. You have dumb tools.” And by dummy, means can’t speak. So that’s like shovels, picks, things like this, wagons. “You have articulate tools which are animals, and you have articulate tools which are human beings, slaves.” And for him, these are all just categories of tools. It’s so intensely dehumanizing to view people in that way.
Well, Roman slavery, a couple of just reminders at the beginning, first of all, it’s not racial slavery. So for people in the United States, you tend to think of slavery through this racial lens. So slaves in ancient Roman society could be any color, ethnicity, gender, origin, whatever. It’s an economic status. Now, having said that, slavery is fundamentally horrific to human dignity because it is defining a human being as an object. And very famously, a Roman agricultural writer who’s writing about farms, just as a kind of side says, “On your farm, you have three types of tools. You have dumb tools.” And by dummy, means can’t speak. So that’s like shovels, picks, things like this, wagons. “You have articulate tools which are animals, and you have articulate tools which are human beings, slaves.” And for him, these are all just categories of tools. It’s so intensely dehumanizing to view people in that way.
So Roman slavery is odd in that it doesn’t have this racial component. It’s horrible in the way all slavery is horrible, but the other thing about is it’s not a hard line. It’s a permeable membrane, and many people move back and forth across it. So you have many people in the Roman world who were born a slave who gained their freedom through one means or another. And you have many others who were born free and become slaves. And you have some who go back and forth. There’s a great Roman tombstone of this guy who says, “I was born a free man in Parthia. I was enslaved. Then I gained my freedom and I became a teacher or something, and I had a life, and now I’m a Roman citizen.” So it’s this whole back and forth across all these boundaries multiple times.
Lex Fridman
Oh, so there’s probably a process like an economic transaction.
Oh, so there’s probably a process like an economic transaction.
Gregory Aldrete
The most common source of slaves in the Roman world was war. So wherever the Roman army went, in its wake would be literally a train of slave traders. So you’re in war, you capture an enemy city, you whack the people over the head, and you turn around if you’re a soldier and you sell them to one of these slave traders that’s following the army around, literally. So that’s probably the biggest source of slaves. Another big source is just children of slaves or slaves. And some people could literally sell either themselves or their children into slavery due to economic necessity, or privation or something. So as terrible as that sounds, a father could sell a child if he needed money.
The most common source of slaves in the Roman world was war. So wherever the Roman army went, in its wake would be literally a train of slave traders. So you’re in war, you capture an enemy city, you whack the people over the head, and you turn around if you’re a soldier and you sell them to one of these slave traders that’s following the army around, literally. So that’s probably the biggest source of slaves. Another big source is just children of slaves or slaves. And some people could literally sell either themselves or their children into slavery due to economic necessity, or privation or something. So as terrible as that sounds, a father could sell a child if he needed money.
Once you were a slave though, the experience of slavery varied a lot because a lot of the slaves were agricultural slaves. So they would work like in the American South, big plantations. They might be chained. They were probably abused. That’s very similar to slavers as we think of it in let’s say, the Caribbean, South America or the United States prior to the Civil War, that kind of slavery. But a lot of Roman slaves were also some of the more skilled people. And this seems a little weird. So if you’re a rich person, you have slaves, it’s actually a good investment for you to train your slaves in a profession. So a lot of Roman doctors, scribes, accountants, sort of, all this sort of thing, barbers, were slaves. Because if you train this person, and then they produce a lot of money for you, you get that money.
And those slaves would sometimes be given an incentive to work hard where they could… And this is just sort of an agreement between the master and the slave. If they earned a certain amount of money, X amount of money, they could then buy their own freedom from the master. So this was your incentive to work harder if you were trained let’s say, as a doctor. “I work really hard, I can buy myself out of slavery.” Or a lot of masters would free their slaves in their wills.
So when they died, they would say, “I manumit this slave and that slave.” So it was a weird institution in that elements were just as horrible as what we think of as slavery and just as exploitative. And like I say, the overall notion of slavery is intensely dehumanizing, but yet, there was this wide range of types of slaves. And the odd thing is, in the city of Rome, many of the worst jobs, so if you’re just a laborer hauling crap around at the docks or things like that, you might well be a free person and a slave would hold a skilled job. And that seems a little strange or counterintuitive to us, but you see how in the Roman economy it sort of works.
Lex Fridman
And that could be one of the things that would be surprising to us coming from the modern day to the ancient world, is just the number of slaves. So you mentioned one of the things we don’t think about is that most of the people are farmers. And then the other thing is just the number of slaves.
And that could be one of the things that would be surprising to us coming from the modern day to the ancient world, is just the number of slaves. So you mentioned one of the things we don’t think about is that most of the people are farmers. And then the other thing is just the number of slaves.
Gregory Aldrete
And there’s a big debate. How many slaves were there? What percentage of the populace, let’s say in the city of Rome, were slaves? And this is something historians like to argue about a lot. And we keep coming back to this theme of sometimes it’s the little things that illustrate stuff well. And for slaves, the one that always gets me is some slaves, and these would be sort of the more abused slaves, they would literally put little bronze collars on them with a tag that said, “Hi, my name is Felix. I’m the slave of so-and-so. I’ve run away. If you catch me, return me to the temple of so-and-so, and you’ll get a reward.”
And there’s a big debate. How many slaves were there? What percentage of the populace, let’s say in the city of Rome, were slaves? And this is something historians like to argue about a lot. And we keep coming back to this theme of sometimes it’s the little things that illustrate stuff well. And for slaves, the one that always gets me is some slaves, and these would be sort of the more abused slaves, they would literally put little bronze collars on them with a tag that said, “Hi, my name is Felix. I’m the slave of so-and-so. I’ve run away. If you catch me, return me to the temple of so-and-so, and you’ll get a reward.”
So it’s a dog tag, except this is a human being. And you can see these in museums. I mean, you can go to a museum today and see this little bronze collar with a tag on it that’s talking about a human being as if they’re this kind of animal that’s run away. And this is very telling too. We’re talking about Roman law. Under Roman law, technically, when a slave runs away, the crime that he’s committing is theft because he’s stolen himself from his master. So again, it’s this very dehumanizing view of it.
Lex Fridman
And just a reminder to people in America thinking about this, we have a certain view and picture to what slavery is, a reminder that all of human history, most of human history has had slaves of all colors, of all religions. That’s within us, to select a group of people, call them the other, use them as objects, abuse them. And I would say, as a person who believes the line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man, all of us, every person listening to this is capable of being owner of a slave if they’re put in the position, of capable of hating the other, of forming the other, of othering other people. And we should be very careful not to look ourselves in the mirror and remind ourselves that we’re human. It’s easy to think, “Okay, well, there’s these slaves and slave owners through history. And I would’ve never been one of those.” But just like as we would be farmers, we could be both. If we went back into history, we could be both slaves and slave owners, and all of those are humans.
And just a reminder to people in America thinking about this, we have a certain view and picture to what slavery is, a reminder that all of human history, most of human history has had slaves of all colors, of all religions. That’s within us, to select a group of people, call them the other, use them as objects, abuse them. And I would say, as a person who believes the line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man, all of us, every person listening to this is capable of being owner of a slave if they’re put in the position, of capable of hating the other, of forming the other, of othering other people. And we should be very careful not to look ourselves in the mirror and remind ourselves that we’re human. It’s easy to think, “Okay, well, there’s these slaves and slave owners through history. And I would’ve never been one of those.” But just like as we would be farmers, we could be both. If we went back into history, we could be both slaves and slave owners, and all of those are humans.
Gregory Aldrete
I mean, just to build on that, I’d say the othering of others is a morally corrosive thing to do.
I mean, just to build on that, I’d say the othering of others is a morally corrosive thing to do.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. So this fascinating transition between the republic to the empire, can we talk about that? How does the republic fall?
Yeah. So this fascinating transition between the republic to the empire, can we talk about that? How does the republic fall?
Fall of the Roman Empire
Gregory Aldrete
Oh, boy. Okay. So the Roman Republic on the one hand is incredibly successful. Right? In a short period of time, it’s expanded wildly. It’s conquered the Mediterranean world. It’s gained tons of wealth. The contradiction here is that Rome’s very success has made almost every group within Roman society deeply unhappy and boiling with resentment. So this is the contradiction. Enormous success on the surface, you end up with this boiling pot of resentment and unhappiness. So let’s break this down. Who’s unhappy? Well, the people fighting Rome’s wars, the common farmers who went off to fight. They joined the army. They went and fought. They’ve come back. They’ve seen Rome get wealthy. They’ve seen their generals get wealthy. They’ve conquered all these areas. All this money and stuff is flowing back to Rome. But when they’re discharged from the army, they don’t get that much. So they feel like, “I spent the best years of my life fighting for my country, I deserve a reward. I haven’t gotten it.”
Oh, boy. Okay. So the Roman Republic on the one hand is incredibly successful. Right? In a short period of time, it’s expanded wildly. It’s conquered the Mediterranean world. It’s gained tons of wealth. The contradiction here is that Rome’s very success has made almost every group within Roman society deeply unhappy and boiling with resentment. So this is the contradiction. Enormous success on the surface, you end up with this boiling pot of resentment and unhappiness. So let’s break this down. Who’s unhappy? Well, the people fighting Rome’s wars, the common farmers who went off to fight. They joined the army. They went and fought. They’ve come back. They’ve seen Rome get wealthy. They’ve seen their generals get wealthy. They’ve conquered all these areas. All this money and stuff is flowing back to Rome. But when they’re discharged from the army, they don’t get that much. So they feel like, “I spent the best years of my life fighting for my country, I deserve a reward. I haven’t gotten it.”
So you have a lot of veterans who are now unemployed or underemployed. Many of them have sold their small family farms when they went off to join the army, and now they don’t have them. So that group’s unhappy, the veterans. You have the aristocrats who on the surface, the ones who are doing well, they’re the politicians and the generals. But as time goes on, the ones who get the plum appointments, who get the good general ships, starts coming from a smaller and smaller subset of the aristocrats. The Scipios and their friends start to dominate. So you end up where most of the aristocratic class is feeling, “Hey, I’m left out. I didn’t get what I deserved.” What about the half citizens and the allies? The Italians who have fought for Rome, who stayed loyal when Hannibal invaded, they didn’t go over to his side. Well, they feel rightfully, “We stayed loyal to Rome. We fought for them. We deserve our reward. We should be full citizens.” But the Romans are traditional. They’re conservative. They don’t like change. They don’t give them that.
What about all the slaves? Well, they’ve conquered all these foreigners. They’ve sold them. Now, many of them are working these plantations, big plantations owned by rich people that used to be little family farms. The slaves are obviously unhappy. So you end up with a society where it’s incredibly successful by about 100 BC, but almost every group that composes it feels like, “I haven’t shared in the benefits of what’s happened or I’ve been exploited by it.” So they all end up intensely unhappy. And the next 100-year period from 133 to 31 BC is called the Late Roman Republic. And it’s a time of nearly constant internal strife, ultimately culminating in multiple rounds of civil war.
So Roman society literally breaks apart, turns on itself, and goes to war with itself over not equitably sharing the benefits of conquest and of empire. So it’s a lesson about not sharing the benefits of something in a society, but concentrating it in one little group. And the other thing that happens is among the aristocrats, they start to get more and more ambitious. So in the past, there was a lot of ideology of, the state is more important than the person. If you were a little Roman kid, you would’ve been told these stories of Roman heroes. And they’re all about self-sacrifice, putting the state before you, about modesty, about these values. Well, by the late republic, you have a succession of strong men. And it is a chain. So it goes, Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Julius Caesar, where each one pushes the boundaries of the Roman Republic a little bit, pushes at the structures of the institutions of the Republic, and they’re motivated by personal gain. They’re putting themselves above the state.
Julius Caesar
So at the same time, you have lots of groups unhappy in society, and you get these strong men who are now undermining the institutions, chipping away at the things that have been shared, things holding the state together. And in the end, they just become so ambitious, they’re like, “I don’t care about the state. I’m going to try and make myself ruler of Rome.” So I mean, this is going to culminate obviously in Julius Caesar who does succeed in making himself dictator for life of the Roman Republic, which is tantamount to king, and he gets assassinated for it. But he’s the end point of this progression of people who really undermine the institutions, the republic, through their own personal greed.
Lex Fridman
So the resentment boils and boils and boils, and there’s this person that puts themselves above-
So the resentment boils and boils and boils, and there’s this person that puts themselves above-
Gregory Aldrete
And they exploit it. They’re demagogues.
And they exploit it. They’re demagogues.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Gregory Aldrete
They exploit it.
They exploit it.
Lex Fridman
But Caesar puts himself above the state. And that I guess, the Roman people also hate.
But Caesar puts himself above the state. And that I guess, the Roman people also hate.
Gregory Aldrete
Well, I mean, it’s a love-hate because Caesar is very successful at playing to the Roman people. So he becomes their hero where he says, “I’ll be your champion against the state who doesn’t care about you.” So Caesar will do things where he’ll put on big shows for the people, and it’s cynical. I mean, he’s doing this to further his own political power, but he’s presenting himself as a populist in essence, even though he aspires to be a dictator. Right? But it’s a way of winning the people’s support because that’s a tool for him and his struggle with other aristocrats.
Well, I mean, it’s a love-hate because Caesar is very successful at playing to the Roman people. So he becomes their hero where he says, “I’ll be your champion against the state who doesn’t care about you.” So Caesar will do things where he’ll put on big shows for the people, and it’s cynical. I mean, he’s doing this to further his own political power, but he’s presenting himself as a populist in essence, even though he aspires to be a dictator. Right? But it’s a way of winning the people’s support because that’s a tool for him and his struggle with other aristocrats.
Lex Fridman
So a dictator in populist clothing.
So a dictator in populist clothing.
Gregory Aldrete
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
But he gets-
But he gets-
Gregory Aldrete
When convenient. Other times, he’ll play to the aristocracy.
When convenient. Other times, he’ll play to the aristocracy.
Lex Fridman
And when he gets assassinated, another civil war explodes?
And when he gets assassinated, another civil war explodes?
Gregory Aldrete
That’s an interesting moment, because all these things have been leading up to Caesar and it really is a chain of men. So it starts with this guy, Marius, who was one of the first to start making armies loyal to him, rather than to the state. That’s a step in the wrong direction. Right? The army should be loyal to the state, not to an individual general. They shouldn’t look for him to rewards. Marius breaks that, makes a precedent. One of his protegees is a guy named Sulla. Sulla comes along and he ends up marching on Rome with his army and taking it over. And he says, “Well, I’m just doing it for the good of the state.” But that’s another precedent. Now you’ve had someone attacking their own capital city, even if they say they’re doing it for the right reasons.
That’s an interesting moment, because all these things have been leading up to Caesar and it really is a chain of men. So it starts with this guy, Marius, who was one of the first to start making armies loyal to him, rather than to the state. That’s a step in the wrong direction. Right? The army should be loyal to the state, not to an individual general. They shouldn’t look for him to rewards. Marius breaks that, makes a precedent. One of his protegees is a guy named Sulla. Sulla comes along and he ends up marching on Rome with his army and taking it over. And he says, “Well, I’m just doing it for the good of the state.” But that’s another precedent. Now you’ve had someone attacking their own capital city, even if they say they’re doing it for the right reasons.
Then Pompey comes along, and Pompey just breaks all kinds of things. He starts holding offices when he’s too young to do so. He raises personal armies from his own wealth. He disobeys commands. He manipulates commands. He does all kinds of stuff. But in the end, he sides with the Senate when sort of forced. And finally, Caesar comes along and Caesar’s just shamelessly, “No, it’s about me. I’m going to push it.” And he is the one who wins a civil war against the state and Pompey, takes over Rome and says, “Now, I’m going to be dictator.” And dictator is a traditional office in the Roman state, but dictators were limited to no more than six months in power. And Caesar says, “Well, I’ll be dictator for life,” which of course, is king. He gets killed for it.
So Caesar succeeded in taking over the state as one man, but he couldn’t solve the problem. How do you rule Rome as one person and not get killed for looking like a king? That’s the dilemma, the riddle that Caesar leaves behind him. He did it. He seize power as one guy, but how do you stay alive? How do you come up with something that the people will accept? And Caesar did some other things which are bad. He was arrogant. He didn’t even pretend that the Senate were his equals. He just railroaded them around. He didn’t respect them. He named a month after himself, July, Julius. He did egotistical things. So that pissed people off. They didn’t like it. And when Caesar dies, it’s this interesting moment. The Republic is sort of dead by then. You’re going to have a hard time reviving it. You’ve broken too many precedents, but there’s a power vacuum now. Caesar’s gone, what’s going to happen next?
Octavian’s rise
And you have a whole group of people who want to be the next Caesar. So the most obvious is Mark Antony, who is Caesar’s right-hand man, his lieutenant. He’s a very good general. He’s very charismatic. Everybody expects Mark Antony to just become the next Caesar. But there’s also another of Caesar’s lieutenants, a guy named Lepidus, sort of like Antony, but not quite as great as him. There’s the Senate itself, which wants to reassert its power, kind of become the dominant force in Rome again. There’s the assassins who killed Caesar, led by Brutus, and another guy, Cassius, they now want to seize control. And finally, there’s a really weird dark horse candidate to fill this power vacuum. And that’s Julius Caesar’s grandnephew, who at the time, is a 17-year-old kid named Octavian. Who cares? He’s nobody. Absolutely nobody. But when Caesar’s will is opened after his death, so posthumously read in his will, Caesar posthumously… And this is a little weird, posthumously adopts Octavian as his son. Now again, who cares? Antony gets the troops. Antony gets the money. The other people get everything.
What does Octavian get? He gets to now rename himself, Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus. Who cares? Well, around the Mediterranean, there’s about 12 legions full of hardened soldiers who are just used to following a guy named Gaius Julius Caesar. And even though it’s not quite logical, this 18-year-old, he’s now an 18-year-old kid, inherits an army overnight. So he becomes a player in this game for power. And the next 30, 40 years is going to be those groups all vying with one another. There’s another candidate too, Pompey’s son. Pompey was Caesar’s great rival. He has a couple of sons. And one of them, a guy named Sextus Pompey, basically becomes a warlord who seizes control of Sicily, one of the richest provinces, has a whole Navy. He’s vying to be one of the successors too. So for the next 40 years, it’s as you said, another civil war to see which guy emerges. Is it going to be the Senate? Is it going to be the assassins? Is it going to be Antony? Is it going to be Lepidus? Is it going to be Sextus Pompey? Is it going to be Octavian?
Lex Fridman
So now, looking back at all that history, it just feels like history turns on so many interesting accidents. Because Octavian later renamed Augustus, turned out to be actually… It depends on how you define good, but a good king/emperor, different than Caesar in terms of humility, at least being able to play, not to piss off everybody. But it could have been so many other people. That could have been the fall of Rome. So it’s a fascinating little turn of history. Maybe Caesar saw something in this individual. It’s not an accident that he was in the will.
So now, looking back at all that history, it just feels like history turns on so many interesting accidents. Because Octavian later renamed Augustus, turned out to be actually… It depends on how you define good, but a good king/emperor, different than Caesar in terms of humility, at least being able to play, not to piss off everybody. But it could have been so many other people. That could have been the fall of Rome. So it’s a fascinating little turn of history. Maybe Caesar saw something in this individual. It’s not an accident that he was in the will.
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah. I mean, Caesar clearly did see something in him. And Octavian, I mean, to cut to the end, is the one who emerges from all that as the victor. We can talk about how he does it, but he’s the one who ends up in the same position as Caesar. It takes him 30 years, but he defeats all the foes. He’s the sole guy. He now faces Caesar’s riddle. How do you rule Rome as one guy and not get killed? And Octavian, what makes him stand out, what makes him fascinating to me, is he wasn’t a good general. In fact, he was a terrible general. He lost almost every battle he commanded. But what he is, is he’s politically savvy and he’s very good at what today we would call, manipulation of your public image and propaganda. So he basically defeats Mark Antony partially by waging a propaganda war against him.
Yeah. I mean, Caesar clearly did see something in him. And Octavian, I mean, to cut to the end, is the one who emerges from all that as the victor. We can talk about how he does it, but he’s the one who ends up in the same position as Caesar. It takes him 30 years, but he defeats all the foes. He’s the sole guy. He now faces Caesar’s riddle. How do you rule Rome as one guy and not get killed? And Octavian, what makes him stand out, what makes him fascinating to me, is he wasn’t a good general. In fact, he was a terrible general. He lost almost every battle he commanded. But what he is, is he’s politically savvy and he’s very good at what today we would call, manipulation of your public image and propaganda. So he basically defeats Mark Antony partially by waging a propaganda war against him.
Gregory Aldrete
Antony partially by waging a propaganda war against him. Antony starts out as a legitimate rival, and there are two Romans vying for power. At the end of this war, propaganda war, Octavian has managed to portray Antony as a foreign aggressor, allied with an enemy, king or queen, in this case, Cleopatra, and who is an official enemy of the Roman state, and that’s all propaganda. So, he takes what’s a civil war and makes it look like a war against a foreign enemy. And when Octavian becomes the sole ruler, he looks at what Caesar did wrong, and he very carefully avoids the same mistakes.
Antony partially by waging a propaganda war against him. Antony starts out as a legitimate rival, and there are two Romans vying for power. At the end of this war, propaganda war, Octavian has managed to portray Antony as a foreign aggressor, allied with an enemy, king or queen, in this case, Cleopatra, and who is an official enemy of the Roman state, and that’s all propaganda. So, he takes what’s a civil war and makes it look like a war against a foreign enemy. And when Octavian becomes the sole ruler, he looks at what Caesar did wrong, and he very carefully avoids the same mistakes.
So, the first thing is just how he lives his life. He’s very modest. He lives in an ordinary house like other aristocrats. He wears just a plain toga, nothing fancy. He’s respectful to the Senate.
He treats them with respect. He eats simple foods. I mean, he’s someone who cared about the reality of power, not the external trappings. Clearly there’s some rulers who love, “I want to dress in fancy clothes. I want to be surrounded by gold.
Everything. This is what makes me feel good.” Octavian is the opposite. He doesn’t care about any of that. He wants real power. And then, the other thing is, how is he going to rule Rome without looking like a king?
And his solution to this is brilliant. He basically pretends to resign from all his public offices and not pretends he does. So, he holds no official office. But what he does is he manipulates so that the Roman Senate votes him the powers of the key Roman offices, but not the office itself. So, the highest office in the Roman state is the consul.
Consuls have the power to command armies, do all sorts of things, run meetings of the Senate. Octavian gets voted the powers of a consul so he can command armies control meetings of the Senate, do all this. But he’s not one of the two consuls elected for every year. So, he’s just floating or drifting off to the side of the Roman government. He gets the power of a Tribune, which has all sorts of powers.
He can veto anything he wants, but he’s not one of the Tribunes elected for anyone. So, the state, the Republic appears to continue as it always has. Each year they hold the same elections, they elect the same number of people, notionally, those people are in charge. But floating off to the side, you have this guy Octavian, who has equivalent power, not just to any one magistrate official, but to all of them. So, any moment he can just pop up and say, “No, let’s not do this.
Let’s do something else.” And he also keeps the army under his personal control.
Lex Fridman
Isn’t this a fascinating story? What do you think is the psychology of Augustus, of Octavian?
Isn’t this a fascinating story? What do you think is the psychology of Augustus, of Octavian?
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah. And he later changed his name to Augustus when he becomes the first emperor. The other thing he does is he hides his power behind all these different names.
Yeah. And he later changed his name to Augustus when he becomes the first emperor. The other thing he does is he hides his power behind all these different names.
Lex Fridman
The greatest strategy.
The greatest strategy.
Gregory Aldrete
Caesar called himself dictator for life, right? So, everybody knew what he was. Octavian. We even have a source that talks about it. He says he wondered what to call himself. “Do I call myself king?
Caesar called himself dictator for life, right? So, everybody knew what he was. Octavian. We even have a source that talks about it. He says he wondered what to call himself. “Do I call myself king?
No, he can’t do that. Dictator for life. No way. Maybe I’ll call myself Romulus. That was the founder of Rome. No, no.
Romulus was a king.” And finally, a solution is he takes a bunch of titles, which are all ambiguous, and no one of them sounds that impressive, but collectively they are. So, for example, one of the titles he gets is Augustus, which is something tied to Roman religion. Something that is Augustus in Latin has two possible meanings. One is someone who is Augustus is very pious. They respect the Gods deeply. Well, that sounds nice, doesn’t it? Well, on the other hand, an alternative meaning for Augustus is something that is itself divine. So, is he just a deeply religious, pious person, or is he himself sacred? There’s that ambiguity.
He calls himself Princeps, which means first citizen. “Okay, what the hell does that mean? Am I a citizen just like everybody else? Or am I the first citizen, which means I’m superior to all the others?” So, every title he takes has this weird ambiguity.
He calls himself Imperator, which is traditionally something that soldiers shout at, a victorious general who’s won a battle. And now he takes this as a permanent title. So, it implies he’s a good general. And by the way, it’s from Imperator that we get the word emperor, an empire. So, originally it’s a military title, a spontaneous military acclamation.
Lex Fridman
It’s just fascinating that he figured out a way through public image, through branding to gain power, maintain power, and still pacify the boiling turmoil that led to the civil wars.
It’s just fascinating that he figured out a way through public image, through branding to gain power, maintain power, and still pacify the boiling turmoil that led to the civil wars.
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah. Well, two things I think work in his favor as well. One is he brings peace and stability. So, by this point, the Romans have experienced a hundred years almost of civil war and chaos. So, at that point, your family, maybe you’ve had family members die in these wars or been prescribed, your property has been confiscated, who knows what. And here’s a guy who brings peace and stability and doesn’t seem oppressive or cruel or whatever.
Yeah. Well, two things I think work in his favor as well. One is he brings peace and stability. So, by this point, the Romans have experienced a hundred years almost of civil war and chaos. So, at that point, your family, maybe you’ve had family members die in these wars or been prescribed, your property has been confiscated, who knows what. And here’s a guy who brings peace and stability and doesn’t seem oppressive or cruel or whatever.
So, you’re like, “Okay, fine, I don’t care. Maybe he’s killed the Republic, but at least we’re not dying in the streets anymore.” So, that’s a big thing he does.
And secondly, even though Augustus always seemed sickly his constitution, he lives forever. He rules for like 50 years, and by the time he dies, there’s no one literally almost left alive who can remember the Republic. So, at that point, by the time he dies, this is the only system we know.
Lex Fridman
That’s another just fascinating accident of history, because as we talked about with Alexander the Great, who knows if he lived for another 40 years, if over time the people that hate the new thing die off and then their sons and come into power, that could be a very different story. Maybe we’ll be talking about the [inaudible 01:42:07].
That’s another just fascinating accident of history, because as we talked about with Alexander the Great, who knows if he lived for another 40 years, if over time the people that hate the new thing die off and then their sons and come into power, that could be a very different story. Maybe we’ll be talking about the [inaudible 01:42:07].
Gregory Aldrete
That’s a fluke of fate, but it’s hugely influential on history.
That’s a fluke of fate, but it’s hugely influential on history.
Lex Fridman
You mentioned Cleopatra. If we go back to that, what role did she play? Another fascinating human being.
You mentioned Cleopatra. If we go back to that, what role did she play? Another fascinating human being.
Cleopatra
Gregory Aldrete
Cleopatra is interesting. I mean, she was a direct descendant of one of Alexander the Great’s generals Ptolemy. When Alexander’s empire had broken up Ptolemy, this general had seized control of Egypt, made it his kingdom. And she 10 generations later, is a descendant of this Macedonian general. So, Egypt had been ruled by, in essence, foreigners, these Macedonian dynasty of kings.
Cleopatra is interesting. I mean, she was a direct descendant of one of Alexander the Great’s generals Ptolemy. When Alexander’s empire had broken up Ptolemy, this general had seized control of Egypt, made it his kingdom. And she 10 generations later, is a descendant of this Macedonian general. So, Egypt had been ruled by, in essence, foreigners, these Macedonian dynasty of kings.
And often they literally were ruled by the same dynasty because they had a habit of marrying brothers to sisters. And Cleopatra was in fact originally married to her younger brother. But despite that, she seems to have intensely identified with Egypt. In fact, she seems to have been the first one of all these Ptolemy kings who actually bothered to learn to speak Egyptian. So, she seems to really have cared about Egypt as well.
And she was clearly very smart, very clever. And so, she’s living at a time during the late Republic when Rome is having all these civil wars. And Egypt is really the last big independent kingdom left around the shores, the Mediterranean, everything else has been conquered by Rome. So, she is in this very precarious position where clearly she wants to maintain Egyptian independence, but Rome is this juggernaut that’s rolling over everything. She ends up meeting Julius Caesar when Caesar comes to Egypt chasing Pompey, his great rival, after he defeats Pompey, Pompey runs to Egypt thinking he’ll find sanctuary there, and the Egyptians kill him and chop off his head.
And when Caesar lands, they hand it to him and say, “Here have a present.” And she, of course, famously ends up having a love affair with Caesar. Was that a genuine love or was she just using this as a way to try and keep Egypt independent to give it some status? We don’t know. After she does have several kids with Caesar.
After Caesar’s assassinated, and the Roman world is having another civil war between Octavian and Mark Antony. Mark Antony is basing himself in the east. He meets Cleopatra and he has a big love affair with her. And this one seems pretty genuine. I mean, Antony and Cleopatra, there’s a lot of stories about them partying together.
They liked to cosplay and dress up as different gods. So, Cleopatra would dress up as the goddess Isis and Antony would dress up as the god Dionysus in a leopard skin, and they’d have these big parties and stuff, and they end up together fighting against Octavian. And in the end, they’re defeated by Octavian and Antony commits suicide. Cleopatra there’s differing accounts of her death. She may have also killed herself, or she may actually have been killed by Octavian to just get her out of the way.
But she’s an interesting figure because she was clearly a very smart woman who managed to keep Egypt alive as an independent state. She seemed to have actually cared about Egypt and identified with it and succeeded at a time with all these famous people in being a real mover and shaker and a force in events.
Lex Fridman
I mean, she’s probably one of the most influential women in human history.
I mean, she’s probably one of the most influential women in human history.
Gregory Aldrete
She certainly… Again, she’s someone that her image is incredibly important. And I mean, one of the interesting things, the whole question of gender in the Roman world, I mean, this gets into Roman sources, but of course it’s a heavily male dominated history. And I mean, men and women did not have equality in ancient Rome. It’s a male dominated society. It’s misogynist in many ways.
She certainly… Again, she’s someone that her image is incredibly important. And I mean, one of the interesting things, the whole question of gender in the Roman world, I mean, this gets into Roman sources, but of course it’s a heavily male dominated history. And I mean, men and women did not have equality in ancient Rome. It’s a male dominated society. It’s misogynist in many ways.
But what I’m constantly struck by is when you start, again, delving into the sources, you always hear, “Okay, well, there was this one woman who was a philosopher, and she’s an exception to the rule. And yeah, okay, she’s fine.” And then, you start looking into, “Oh, and there’s also 60 other female philosophers. Well, it’s not so much an exception anymore. Or Cleopatra is the one queen.
She’s this strong queen.” And then, you look, “Well, there was this other queen here. There was this queen here. There was this queen here who led armies, and here’s another one who led armies.” And again, it’s like, well, are they exceptions to the rule or is just the history that was written, which is written by men a little bit selective in how it portrays them, because the sources are all these male elites who have very definite ideas about women.
The conventional notion has always been that business in the Roman Empire was a male field. Well, but then there’s this woman, Eumachia in Pompeii who actually had the largest building in Pompeii, right on the forum named after her with a giant statue of her. And she was a patron to a bunch of the most important guilds in Pompeii. Okay. She’s the exception to the rule.
Oh, but then there’s these other four women we have from Pompeii who also were patrons of guilds. And then, there’s this woman, Plancia Magna in this other place, and she was the most important patron in the town and put up all these statues. So, at some point, when do you start to say, “Well, maybe women did play more of a role, but they just haven’t been recorded in the sources in the way that maybe they deserve to be.”
Lex Fridman
Yeah, that’s a fascinating question. Is it the bias of society, or is it the bias of the historian?
Yeah, that’s a fascinating question. Is it the bias of society, or is it the bias of the historian?
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
The bias of the society that the historian is writing about, or the bias of the actual history.
The bias of the society that the historian is writing about, or the bias of the actual history.
Gregory Aldrete
And the bias of the historians who have written history up to this point. I was just writing a lecture, which was about this woman Musa who has a crazy story, and she ties into Augustus, actually. Augustus, his biggest diplomatic triumph that he boasted about constantly was that about 50 years before him, the Romans had sent an expedition into Parthia, this neighboring kingdom led by Crassus, and they’d gotten wiped out. So, it was this big disaster, military disaster. And the standards of the Roman legions, the eagles, that each Roman legion carried, had been captured by the Parthians.
And the bias of the historians who have written history up to this point. I was just writing a lecture, which was about this woman Musa who has a crazy story, and she ties into Augustus, actually. Augustus, his biggest diplomatic triumph that he boasted about constantly was that about 50 years before him, the Romans had sent an expedition into Parthia, this neighboring kingdom led by Crassus, and they’d gotten wiped out. So, it was this big disaster, military disaster. And the standards of the Roman legions, the eagles, that each Roman legion carried, had been captured by the Parthians.
Musa of Parthia
And this is the most humiliating thing that can happen to a Roman legion to have its eagles captured. And Augustus desperately wanted to negotiate with the Parthians to get these eagles returned. Okay? This was his big diplomatic thing. So, he was constantly sending these embassies to Parthia. On one of these embassies, he sent along as a gift to the Parthian King, a slave woman named Musa.
Musa seems to have pleased the king of Parthia because she becomes one of his concubines, and then she gives birth to a son by the king, and eventually she becomes upgraded to the level of wife. And Musa eventually murders the Parthian king, arranges it so that her son becomes the king of Parthia, and she’s really ruling the whole empire behind the scenes as his mother. So, this is a literal rags to riches story of a slave, someone who starts out a slave and becomes the queen of an empire, almost as large and powerful as Rome. Okay. But yet, how often do we hear about Musa?
And when you look in traditional histories of Roman, Parthian relations, and I went and looked at this because I was just writing this lecture, most of those histories didn’t even mention her. They just talked about her son, like he had just come out of nowhere and become the new heir to the Parthian throne when it was all her doing clearly. Now, that’s selective editing of history by historians to downplay the role that this woman played. And there’s a lot of examples like that.
Lex Fridman
That’s fascinating.
That’s fascinating.
Gregory Aldrete
She got overthrown after a few years. There was a revolution against her, and we don’t know what happened to her then, but she’s a really interesting figure. And by the way, Augustus didn’t negotiate the return of the Parthian standards and got them back, and he was so proud of this that this is what he constantly boasted about. And the most famous statue of Augustus, the Augustus from Prima Porta, which is in the Vatican today, he’s wearing a breastplate. And on the breastplate right in the middle of the stomach is a Parthian handing over a golden eagle legionary standard to a Roman.
She got overthrown after a few years. There was a revolution against her, and we don’t know what happened to her then, but she’s a really interesting figure. And by the way, Augustus didn’t negotiate the return of the Parthian standards and got them back, and he was so proud of this that this is what he constantly boasted about. And the most famous statue of Augustus, the Augustus from Prima Porta, which is in the Vatican today, he’s wearing a breastplate. And on the breastplate right in the middle of the stomach is a Parthian handing over a golden eagle legionary standard to a Roman.
So, this is what Augustus thought of as his greatest achievement. And that embassy that arranged that was the one that sent Musa to Parthia.
Lex Fridman
So, Augustus marks the start of the Roman Empire.
So, Augustus marks the start of the Roman Empire.
Augustus’ political system
Gregory Aldrete
Yep.
Yep.
Lex Fridman
You’ve written that Octavian Augustus would become Rome’s first emperor, and the political system that he created would endure for the next half a millennium. This system would become the template for countless later empires up through the present day, and he would become the model emperor against whom all subsequent ones would be measured. The culture and history of the Mediterranean Basin, the western world, and even global history itself, were all profoundly shaped and influenced by the actions and legacy of Octavian.
You’ve written that Octavian Augustus would become Rome’s first emperor, and the political system that he created would endure for the next half a millennium. This system would become the template for countless later empires up through the present day, and he would become the model emperor against whom all subsequent ones would be measured. The culture and history of the Mediterranean Basin, the western world, and even global history itself, were all profoundly shaped and influenced by the actions and legacy of Octavian.
He was the founder of the Roman Empire, and we still live today in the world that he created. So, what on the political side of things and maybe beyond, what is the political system that he created?
Gregory Aldrete
Well, I mean, I think Octavian/Augustus is the same guy, is one of the most influential people in the history because he did found the Roman Empire. So, he’s the one who oversaw this transition from Republic to Empire, and he sets the template which every future emperor follows. So, just in the most obvious way for the next either 500 or 1500 years, depending how long you think the Roman Empire lasted for, everyone is trying to be Augustus. They all take on the same titles. Every Roman emperor after him is Caesar, Augustus, Imperator, Pater patriae, all these titles he has, they take too.
Well, I mean, I think Octavian/Augustus is the same guy, is one of the most influential people in the history because he did found the Roman Empire. So, he’s the one who oversaw this transition from Republic to Empire, and he sets the template which every future emperor follows. So, just in the most obvious way for the next either 500 or 1500 years, depending how long you think the Roman Empire lasted for, everyone is trying to be Augustus. They all take on the same titles. Every Roman emperor after him is Caesar, Augustus, Imperator, Pater patriae, all these titles he has, they take too.
And so, he’s hugely influential for Western civilization, all this. But beyond just that literal thing, which is already 500 years, 1500 years, he becomes the paradigm of the good ruler, so of an absolute ruler who is nevertheless just does good things, builds public works as popular. So, if we jump ahead, let’s say to the Middle Ages, the most significant ruler of the early Middle Ages is Charlemagne. He’s the guy who unites most of Europe. He becomes the paradigm for all medieval kings after him.
Well, what is the title that the Pope gives to Charlemagne? Because there’s this famous moment when the Pope acknowledges Charlemagne as the preeminent European king and crowns him on Christmas day of the year 800. And the title that the Pope gives to Charlemagne is Charles, that’s Charlemagne Augustus, Emperor of the Romans. He’s giving him the title of Augustus because that’s the nicest thing he can think of to say to Charlemagne is to say, “You’re the new Augustus. You’re emperor of the Romans.”
So, that image is hugely powerful, and that persists on and on. I mean, even the literal names of most rulers afterwards come from this. In Russia, the Czars are Caesars. That’s where Czar comes from. Prince comes from Princeps, first citizen, one of the titles.
Emperor comes from Imperator, one of the titles of Augustus. When Napoleon becomes Emperor, what does he call himself? First consul, which is like Princeps, and then he calls himself emperor. I mean, everybody wants to be this kind of ruler. So, he’s the paradigm of this for the rest of history.
And you can see that as both a positive and a negative legacy. It’s like Alexander. I mean, everybody wants to be the next Alexander. Now, nobody does become the next Alexander. Nobody’s as successful as him.
But a lot of people try and you can see that either as, oh, inspirational or awful, because lots of people killed lots of other people and started lots of wars trying to be the next Alexander. At least Augustus has this notion of good rulership that you’re not just a great powerful person, but you’re a good ruler somehow.
Lex Fridman
Can you speak to the kind of political system he created? So, how did he consolidate power as you spoke to a bit already, and what role did the Senate now play? How were the laws? Who was the executive? How is power allocated and so on?
Can you speak to the kind of political system he created? So, how did he consolidate power as you spoke to a bit already, and what role did the Senate now play? How were the laws? Who was the executive? How is power allocated and so on?
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah, so once the empire begins, let’s say 27 BC, so in 31 BC, Octavian defeats Antony at the Battle of Actium. So, that’s the moment he becomes the sole ruler. And then, in 27 BC, a couple years later, he settles the Roman Republic is how it’s referred to, which is basically sets up his system. And in this system, on the surface, it all looks the same. You still have a Senate, each year there’s elections, all the Roman citizens vote, they elect magistrates who notionally are in charge of Rome.
Yeah, so once the empire begins, let’s say 27 BC, so in 31 BC, Octavian defeats Antony at the Battle of Actium. So, that’s the moment he becomes the sole ruler. And then, in 27 BC, a couple years later, he settles the Roman Republic is how it’s referred to, which is basically sets up his system. And in this system, on the surface, it all looks the same. You still have a Senate, each year there’s elections, all the Roman citizens vote, they elect magistrates who notionally are in charge of Rome.
But as I mentioned off to the side, you now have this figure of Augustus who controls everything behind the scenes, and that continues. So, this political system he establishes continues. And in reality, I would say Augustus at that point is again a king. It really is one man controlling the state. Even if notionally, it’s still continuing as a republic.
They are electing magistrates, but the magistrates only do what the emperor tells them. But it’s this formal versus informal power, the formal structure as a republic, the way things really work informally is it’s a monarchy. Now, if you asked Augustus, what did he do? Did you become a king? He said, and he says this explicitly, “No, no, no.
What I did is I refounded the Roman Republic.” That’s how he phrases it.
Lex Fridman
This guy is good at framing.
This guy is good at framing.
Gregory Aldrete
He’s so good at propaganda. I’ll give you one more example that I love. Augustus actually writes his own autobiography, which is very rare and survives. So, here we have the autobiography of one of the pivotal figures in history. And if you had conquered the world, let’s say starting at the age of 18, what would you call your autobiography?
He’s so good at propaganda. I’ll give you one more example that I love. Augustus actually writes his own autobiography, which is very rare and survives. So, here we have the autobiography of one of the pivotal figures in history. And if you had conquered the world, let’s say starting at the age of 18, what would you call your autobiography?
It’d be something like, “How I conquered the world,” right? Augustus calls his, derace quae feci, which the best literal translation is stuff I did. I mean, it’s the most modest title for someone who could have given the most grandiose title. And the first line of it is at the age of 18, when the liberty of the Republic was oppressed by a faction, I defended it. Now, the way I might phrase that sense is at the age of 18, I fought a civil war against another Roman and conquered the Roman state.
But no, he defended the liberty of the republic when it was oppressed by the tyranny of a faction. That’s propaganda, and it works.
Lex Fridman
It is propaganda, but is there a degree to which he also lived it? That kind of humility, establishing that humility is a standard of the way government operates. So, it’s not a literal direct balance of power, but it’s a cultural balance of power where the emperor is not supposed to be a bully and a dictator.
It is propaganda, but is there a degree to which he also lived it? That kind of humility, establishing that humility is a standard of the way government operates. So, it’s not a literal direct balance of power, but it’s a cultural balance of power where the emperor is not supposed to be a bully and a dictator.
Gregory Aldrete
I would really like to know what Romans of his time thought. If you were alive at that moment, would you honestly believe, “Oh, okay, we’ve got this guy Augustus, but he’s brought peace. He’s just keeping in charge for a while until things settle down. We’ve just had a hundred years of civil war. I think we still have a republic,” or would you say, “Nah, we have a king now.”
I would really like to know what Romans of his time thought. If you were alive at that moment, would you honestly believe, “Oh, okay, we’ve got this guy Augustus, but he’s brought peace. He’s just keeping in charge for a while until things settle down. We’ve just had a hundred years of civil war. I think we still have a republic,” or would you say, “Nah, we have a king now.”
And I don’t know what the answer to that is. I will tell you that it takes 200 years before we have the first Roman source that bluntly calls Augustus a king. So, 200 years, it takes the Romans 200 years to admit to themselves. And that’s a guy who comes along 200 years later and says, “Hey, Augustus, he looks like a king. He acts like a king. Let’s just call him a king, because he had every aspect of a king except the patriae Title.”
Lex Fridman
Maybe I’m buying his propaganda, and maybe I’m a sucker for humility, but I suspect that the Romans bought it, and I also suspect he himself believed it. I mean, there is such thing as good kings. There’s kings that understand the downside, the dark side of absolute power and can wield that power properly.
Maybe I’m buying his propaganda, and maybe I’m a sucker for humility, but I suspect that the Romans bought it, and I also suspect he himself believed it. I mean, there is such thing as good kings. There’s kings that understand the downside, the dark side of absolute power and can wield that power properly.
Gregory Aldrete
And to give both sides here, Augustus wasn’t all nice. I mean, there were moments where he was extremely cruel. So, early in his career when he’s still fighting, when he’s… for power, he goes all in on prescriptions, which is where he and Anty and other people basically post lists of their enemies and say, “It’s legal for anyone to kill these people.” And so, hundreds are massacred there, including Cicero, the Great Order is prescribed and killed. There’s moments when he’s really cruel.
And to give both sides here, Augustus wasn’t all nice. I mean, there were moments where he was extremely cruel. So, early in his career when he’s still fighting, when he’s… for power, he goes all in on prescriptions, which is where he and Anty and other people basically post lists of their enemies and say, “It’s legal for anyone to kill these people.” And so, hundreds are massacred there, including Cicero, the Great Order is prescribed and killed. There’s moments when he’s really cruel.
One slave once gets him angry, and he has him tortured in particularly cruel manner. So, I mean, on the one hand, he had this clemency. On the other hand, he could be really hard-nosed and hard edged, and I think he was a very calculating person.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. So, the thing I would love to know is what he was actually behind the mask.
Yeah. So, the thing I would love to know is what he was actually behind the mask.
Gregory Aldrete
Yes. I mean, that to me is one of those, if you could invite a historical person to dinner or whatever, I want to know what the real Augustus was, what he really thought he was doing, because he’s an enigma and he has this great moment when he dies. What’s his dying lines on his deathbed? He says, “If I’ve played my part, well dismiss me from the stage with applause.”
Yes. I mean, that to me is one of those, if you could invite a historical person to dinner or whatever, I want to know what the real Augustus was, what he really thought he was doing, because he’s an enigma and he has this great moment when he dies. What’s his dying lines on his deathbed? He says, “If I’ve played my part, well dismiss me from the stage with applause.”
So, he’s seeing himself as an actor that his whole life was acting this role, which is again, all that manipulation and public image. He was brilliant at that. But who’s the real guy? What was behind that image?
Lex Fridman
And by the way, as long as we’re talking about brutality, I think you’ve mentioned in a few places that there’s a lot of brutality going on. At the time, Caesar just killing very large numbers of people brutally.
And by the way, as long as we’re talking about brutality, I think you’ve mentioned in a few places that there’s a lot of brutality going on. At the time, Caesar just killing very large numbers of people brutally.
Gregory Aldrete
I mean, Caesar, his campaigns in Gaul are interesting because for a long time they were held up as, oh, genius general. Look at the amazing things he did. But another way to view it is he provoked and he truly provoked a war with people who were not that interested in fighting Rome and just repeatedly attacked different tribes for the sole purpose of building up his career, his prestige, his status, gaining territory, making himself wealthier. And he basically conquers all of modern France and Belgium and some of Switzerland. So, this is a big chunk of Europe gets conquered.
I mean, Caesar, his campaigns in Gaul are interesting because for a long time they were held up as, oh, genius general. Look at the amazing things he did. But another way to view it is he provoked and he truly provoked a war with people who were not that interested in fighting Rome and just repeatedly attacked different tribes for the sole purpose of building up his career, his prestige, his status, gaining territory, making himself wealthier. And he basically conquers all of modern France and Belgium and some of Switzerland. So, this is a big chunk of Europe gets conquered.
Hundreds of thousands of people killed, hundreds of thousands of people enslaved to further one guy’s career. I mean, if you wanted, could call Caesar a war criminal, and I think that wouldn’t be unfair. But on the other hand, some people see him as a great hero. I mean, to talk about history and its reception, it’s quite interesting to see how Caesar has been viewed by different generations. So, at different points in time, the received wisdom on Caesar was very different.
So, back in the, let’s say the 1920s or ’30s, there were a number of scholarly things written which looked at Caesar as an admirable figure. He’s a strong man who knows what Rome needed and was going to give it to them. And of course, that’s the era when fascism was trendy and was seen as a positive thing. And then, you get Hitler and World War II and all of sudden fascism is not so favored anymore. And then, in that post-war generation, all of a sudden Caesar’s terrible.
He’s a dictator. He is destroying the Republic. So, often histories that are written tell you a lot more about the time they’re written than they do about the subject they’re written about.
Lex Fridman
Do we know what did Hitler or Stalin think about the Roman Empire?
Do we know what did Hitler or Stalin think about the Roman Empire?
Gregory Aldrete
I mean, certainly they borrow a lot of the trappings. I mean, Nazi, Germany borrows a lot of iconography from ancient Rome. I mean, they carry it around little military standards with eagles on them, just like the Romans. But then everybody does that. I mean, the US has eagles as their standards.
I mean, certainly they borrow a lot of the trappings. I mean, Nazi, Germany borrows a lot of iconography from ancient Rome. I mean, they carry it around little military standards with eagles on them, just like the Romans. But then everybody does that. I mean, the US has eagles as their standards.
Mussolini had them. Napoleon had eagle standards for his military. So, a lot of people like that imagery.
Lex Fridman
You mentioned Cicero. He’s a fascinating figure. On the topic of Roman oratory, who was Cicero?
You mentioned Cicero. He’s a fascinating figure. On the topic of Roman oratory, who was Cicero?
Gregory Aldrete
Cicero was a new man. So, he’s someone who didn’t have famous ancestors. So, he was at a disadvantage. And I think Cicero is really interesting for a couple of reasons. One is he wrote an incredible amount.
Cicero was a new man. So, he’s someone who didn’t have famous ancestors. So, he was at a disadvantage. And I think Cicero is really interesting for a couple of reasons. One is he wrote an incredible amount.
I think we have almost more words from Cicero than any other author that survived, and it’s all kinds of stuff. It’s philosophical treatises, it’s books about how to be a good public speaker. He published volume after volume of his personal letters to his friends. He published these things. So, there’s tons of stuff from him.
Cicero
And secondly, he’s interesting because he lived at this incredibly important time in the late Republic when things were falling apart. But he seems to have been born with none of the natural advantages that all these other people had. So, he was a lousy general. He didn’t come from a wealthy family. He didn’t come from a famous aristocratic family.
He didn’t have a lot of these advantages, but yet he ended up being right at the center of things, rose to the highest elected office in the Roman state on the basis of one skill. And that was his ability with words, his ability to get up in front of a crowd and persuade them of what he wanted them to believe. And oratory, public speaking was absolutely central to life at Rome. There were just all these events where people had to get up and give speeches. So, in courtrooms, at funerals, in the Senate to the people of Rome, at games, I mean just constantly, there were these opportunities for giving speeches.
So, if you are good at this, that was a huge advantage in your political career. And Cicero was the best. He was arguably the best public speaker of all time.
Some people claim. And he lived right in this era, and he parlayed that skill with words into this very successful political career. He was one of the guys involved with all this stuff with Caesar and Pompey and all the other things going on, Octavian, Mark Antony.
Lex Fridman
And you’ve written, which is fascinating. It’s fascinating when the echoes of people from a distant past are seen today. The same stuff is seen today, not just like some of the beautiful legal stuff that we’ve been talking about, but the tricks, let’s say the shitty stuff we see in politics.
And you’ve written, which is fascinating. It’s fascinating when the echoes of people from a distant past are seen today. The same stuff is seen today, not just like some of the beautiful legal stuff that we’ve been talking about, but the tricks, let’s say the shitty stuff we see in politics.
So, many of the rhetorical tricks you wrote, such as mudslinging, exaggeration, guilt by association, ad hominem attacks, name-calling, fearmongering, us versus them, rhyme, and so on and so forth. So, I’m guessing it worked given that we still have those today.
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah, I mean, one of the things Cicero did is he wrote at least three of these handbooks about how to be a good public speaker. So, we know a lot about that. We have his own speeches that survive. And then, we have later people after Cicero who wrote about what Cicero did too. So, we know a lot about what he did.
Yeah, I mean, one of the things Cicero did is he wrote at least three of these handbooks about how to be a good public speaker. So, we know a lot about that. We have his own speeches that survive. And then, we have later people after Cicero who wrote about what Cicero did too. So, we know a lot about what he did.
And the key to Cicero’s whole enterprise about persuading an audience, let’s say either it is speech to the people or in the courtroom is Cicero believed that people are fundamentally ruled by emotion. So, if you can touch their emotions, all sorts of other things become less important. If you can get a jury emotionally worked up and fear, anger, or particularly powerful there, then the facts might not matter, the truth might not matter, evidence might not matter, reason might not matter. Emotion is the key to everything. So, Cicero used what I would arguably call a lot of tricks to get his audiences emotionally riled up.
And you can just go through these and they’re all the stuff you were saying, name-calling, mudslinging, us versus them arguments, ad hominem attacks, incredibly sophisticated. All this stuff that we think of today is, oh, very sophisticated techniques for propaganda and persuasion. It’s not new. People aren’t coming up with that much that’s new outside the realm of technology, human nature is the same. Cicero understood human psychology.
He knew how to play on people. He knew how to play on their emotions, and he would do just… I mean, I want to say hilarious, but they’re depressingly hilarious things. He thought it’s important to use props. So, he said, “People are visual. They will respond emotionally to visual things in a way that just words alone won’t work.”
So, he says, “An order is just like an actor and like an actor he has to prepare his stage and use props and things as visual cues to stir up the audience. So, for example, once he was defending a man in a court case who had just had a new baby born to him, and Cicero literally delivered the defense oration for this guy while cradling his newborn son in his arms, you can imagine, “Oh, cute little baby. Jury, how could you find him guilty and leave this cute baby without a father to take care of him?” Another time, he was defending a guy who had a photogenic son, a young boy, and Cicero literally propped up the kid behind him while he was giving the speech, and again said-
Gregory Aldrete
Literally propped up the kid behind him while he was giving the speech, and again said, “Look at his eyes brimming with tears, thinking about his father being punished. How could you leave this wonderful boy without a father to care for him?”
Literally propped up the kid behind him while he was giving the speech, and again said, “Look at his eyes brimming with tears, thinking about his father being punished. How could you leave this wonderful boy without a father to care for him?”
Another time someone didn’t have a photogenic kid, so he propped up his old parents in the courtroom and said, “Look at this nice old couple. You won’t want to take their son away.” That kind of stuff; I mean, it’s manipulative.
Cicero, by the way, I should say also had philosophical beliefs about defending the republic and such. But he wasn’t above using these things. Even though he may have had altruistic or high notions of what he was doing, he also wasn’t above using these kind of rhetorical tricks.
Lex Fridman
Also you mentioned to me that you studied the gestures they used.
Also you mentioned to me that you studied the gestures they used.
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
This is one of those on the theme of extremely interesting details of life.
This is one of those on the theme of extremely interesting details of life.
Gregory Aldrete
This was actually my dissertation, and it was my first book as well.
This was actually my dissertation, and it was my first book as well.
Lex Fridman
That’s amazing. That’s amazing.
That’s amazing. That’s amazing.
Gregory Aldrete
Again, I told you I like practical stuff. This all started with I kept reading about people like Cicero giving speeches in ancient Rome, lots of speeches. They would give a speech in the Forum with 10,000, 20,000 people.
Again, I told you I like practical stuff. This all started with I kept reading about people like Cicero giving speeches in ancient Rome, lots of speeches. They would give a speech in the Forum with 10,000, 20,000 people.
Gestures
And the thought occurred to me, “Well, in ancient Rome, you don’t have microphones. You don’t have loudspeakers. So how does someone give a speech outdoors in a windy place, not acoustically sound, to 20,000 people?” They just can’t hear you. Part of the answer, it turns out, well, part of it’s oratorical training. You learn how project your voice. But some of it too is that the Romans actually had this system of gestures that orators like Cicero would use to accompany their speeches. And what I ended up doing is combining two types of evidence again.
So I looked at the rhetorical handbooks like Cicero’s. And also there’s this guy, Quintilian, who lived about 100 years after Cicero, who wrote this long thing called the Institutio Oratoria, which has a description of all types of oratorical stuff, including about 40 pages on gestures.
So he actually says, “When you put your fingers like this, it means such and such.” It turns out Roman orators had a system of sign language that they would use to augment their speeches. But here’s the fun part. It wasn’t like modern American Sign Language, where a gesture means the same thing as a word.
Instead; and this goes back to Cicero; a certain gesture would indicate a certain emotion that you were meant to feel when you heard the words. It’s like your body is adding an emotional gloss to your speech. You’re saying words, and then you’re indicating how you think those words should make you feel.
And even more fun, the Romans believed that, “If I make certain hand gestures, you will almost involuntarily feel certain emotion.” So if you’re skilled, you can manipulate your audience by playing on their emotions.
This might sound weird or improbable, but the metaphor that Cicero himself uses is he says, “Think about music. Everybody knows that certain musical tones will make you feel a certain way.”
Think of movies today: in a horror movie, they’re going to play strident, tense music. In a romantic scene, you’re going to have strings, and it’ll make you feel a certain way. When you hear the Jaws theme, you feel tense.
Cicero said, “The orator’s body is like a lyre.” A lyre is a musical instrument. “And you have to learn to play on your own body as a musical instrument to affect the emotions of your audience.”
Lex Fridman
I think he might be onto something, especially given how central public speaking was in Roman culture.
I think he might be onto something, especially given how central public speaking was in Roman culture.
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah. And a lot of the Roman oratorical gestures: I could probably do some, and you could probably guess what emotion they’re meant to be.
Yeah. And a lot of the Roman oratorical gestures: I could probably do some, and you could probably guess what emotion they’re meant to be.
For example, there’s one where you hold up your hands to the side and push like this. This is the gesture, and what that means is mild aversion. I don’t like something.
Now if I couple this with turning my face to the side, that; pushing off to one side, turning my face away, it’s a strong aversion. That’s like fear or something.
If I clench my fist and press it to my chest, that’s anger or grief. If I slap my thigh, again, that’s indication of anger. So a lot of these make sense. I mean, they’re natural gestures.
Now, some are really weird and artificial. I mean, one of my favorite of these is if you hold your hand up open, then curl the fingers in one by one, and then flip it out; this sort of thing; that, to the Romans meant “wonder,” which you sort of see.
But again, if you’ve been raised in a societal context where you’re used to the notion that this gesture means this emotion, when someone does it, you’re probably going to feel that emotion.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. It’s like memes today: if it goes viral, [inaudible 02:12:49]
Yeah. It’s like memes today: if it goes viral, [inaudible 02:12:49]
Gregory Aldrete
You know what it’s supposed to mean.
You know what it’s supposed to mean.
Lex Fridman
It percolates through the culture.
It percolates through the culture.
Gregory Aldrete
It has that affect.
It has that affect.
Lex Fridman
It has power. I mean, and it’s actually interesting that we don’t use gestures as much in modern day.
It has power. I mean, and it’s actually interesting that we don’t use gestures as much in modern day.
Gregory Aldrete
Well, I mean for me, I just love analyzing modern political figures in terms of their body language.
Well, I mean for me, I just love analyzing modern political figures in terms of their body language.
Lex Fridman
Yes.
Yes.
Gregory Aldrete
Because how you deliver a speech is often more important than what you say.
Because how you deliver a speech is often more important than what you say.
In fact, in the ancient world, the most famous Greek orator was a guy named Demosthenes. And once a guy came up to Demosthenes and said, “Demosthenes, tell me: what are the three most important things in giving a speech?”
And Demosthenes said, “Well, they are delivery, delivery, and delivery.” That even the most brilliant speech, if accompanied by a boring delivery, is going to be less effective than a terrible speech given in an engaging and exciting or funny way.
Lex Fridman
Speaking of modern day and gestures, what do you think of Donald Trump, who has these very unique kind of gestures? I don’t know the degree to it’s true, but he uses these handshakes when he pulls people in, that kind of stuff. What do you make of that?
Speaking of modern day and gestures, what do you think of Donald Trump, who has these very unique kind of gestures? I don’t know the degree to it’s true, but he uses these handshakes when he pulls people in, that kind of stuff. What do you make of that?
Gregory Aldrete
I mean, Trump gesticulates a lot, but it’s a fairly narrow set of gestures. I mean, if you watch him for a bit, he kind of has the same small set of gestures.
I mean, Trump gesticulates a lot, but it’s a fairly narrow set of gestures. I mean, if you watch him for a bit, he kind of has the same small set of gestures.
I want to say they’re not natural in that they’re not illustrating what he’s saying. It’s more just punctuation points. I think of his as more kind of these punctuation points for just going along with what he’s saying.
There are speakers who truly can use their hands and arms and faces creatively. You watch them and it’s really enhancing the speech. I mean, just historically, Martin Luther King: he’s famous for a lot of good speeches, content. He was a good gesticulator, too. He knew how to use his body.
On the other hand, Adolf Hitler was a phenomenal gesticulator. If you watch some of his speeches; even just turn off the sound and watch them; he’s doing all kinds of stuff. And he’s really emphasizing his points in a very creative way.
This is what’s fascinating about oratory and public speaking, is it’s this two-edged sword. You can use these techniques for good, or you can absolutely use them for evil. You know?
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Gregory Aldrete
The very same techniques in the hands of MLK, you say, “This is wonderful, this is fantastic.” In the hands of Hitler, you say, “This is awful. Look, he’s persuading a nation to commit atrocities.”
The very same techniques in the hands of MLK, you say, “This is wonderful, this is fantastic.” In the hands of Hitler, you say, “This is awful. Look, he’s persuading a nation to commit atrocities.”
Lex Fridman
I encourage people to watch the speeches of Hitler. The oratory skill there, to be able to channel the resentment and the frustration of a people, and control it and direct it to any direction he wants through speaking alone.
I encourage people to watch the speeches of Hitler. The oratory skill there, to be able to channel the resentment and the frustration of a people, and control it and direct it to any direction he wants through speaking alone.
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah, it’s the visual embodiment of the words, where he’s talking about Weimar Germany being taken advantage of, supposedly, and all this stuff. You’re right, he’s channeling the resentment of the people and using that to his personal advantage and for cynical, evil really, purposes. But oratory is like that.
Yeah, it’s the visual embodiment of the words, where he’s talking about Weimar Germany being taken advantage of, supposedly, and all this stuff. You’re right, he’s channeling the resentment of the people and using that to his personal advantage and for cynical, evil really, purposes. But oratory is like that.
The question I always end up asking my students, after studying Cicero and all these techniques, I say, “Okay, this is great oratory. But do you like this? Is this good that this works on human beings?”
Lex Fridman
I remember Noam Chomsky once was asked, “Why do you speak in such a monotone way?”
I remember Noam Chomsky once was asked, “Why do you speak in such a monotone way?”
And he said, “Well, I want the truth of my statement, the content of my statements to speak; that I don’t want you to get deluded by me because I’m such a charismatic and eloquent speaker. The more monotone I speak, the more you’ll listen to the content of the words.”
Gregory Aldrete
Right. I want you just focusing on the content and not being distracted.
Right. I want you just focusing on the content and not being distracted.
I’ll tell you also with Cicero: one of the things that he and other people who write about Roman oratory do is to say, “And you can do this stuff badly,” in which case it backfires horribly.
So you can have people who attempt to gesticulate. Again, modern politicians, you’ll see this sometime where they feel like, “I’m supposed to be making hand gestures,” and they’re terrible at it. And it undercuts it.
Cicero and Quintilian give some very amusing examples from ancient Rome. He says, there was this one guy who when he spoke, looked like he was trying to swat away flies because there were just these awkward gestures. Or another who looked like he was trying balancing a boat in choppy seas.
And my favorite is there was one orator who supposedly was prone to making, I guess, languid supple motions. They actually named a dance after this guy, and his name was Titius. And so Romans could do the Titius, which is this dance that was imitating this orator who had these comically bad gesticulation.
So not enough gesticulation is a problem. Too much gesticulation is a problem. You have to hit the sweet spot. It has to seem natural. It has to seem varied. It has to conform to the meaning of the words, not distract from it.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, natural, authentic to who you are.
Yeah, natural, authentic to who you are.
Gregory Aldrete
Authentic.
Authentic.
Lex Fridman
Which is when people try to copy the gestures of another person, it usually doesn’t go well.
Which is when people try to copy the gestures of another person, it usually doesn’t go well.
Gregory Aldrete
Right.
Right.
Lex Fridman
You have to interpret, integrate into your own personality and so on.
You have to interpret, integrate into your own personality and so on.
Gregory Aldrete
But gestures is really fun.
But gestures is really fun.
Lex Fridman
It’s fascinating.
It’s fascinating.
Gregory Aldrete
I enjoyed my dissertation a lot doing that. Because what I was trying to do there was to literally reconstruct them, so to say, “What were the actual gestures?”
I enjoyed my dissertation a lot doing that. Because what I was trying to do there was to literally reconstruct them, so to say, “What were the actual gestures?”
I did that by comparing the literary accounts of the handbooks with, again, Roman art: looking at statues of Romans and things, and just trying to say, “Okay, what were some of the gestures they actually used here?”
Lex Fridman
And in that way, the people from that time come to life, in your mind, in your work, which is fascinating.
And in that way, the people from that time come to life, in your mind, in your work, which is fascinating.
Gregory Aldrete
Well again, it’s this pragmatic thing. I want to know, “Okay, how does this work?”
Well again, it’s this pragmatic thing. I want to know, “Okay, how does this work?”
Lex Fridman
Could we talk about the role of religion in the Roman Empire? What’s the story there?
Could we talk about the role of religion in the Roman Empire? What’s the story there?
Gregory Aldrete
I mean, religion’s interesting. Because in my mind, the rise to dominance in a lot of the world of monotheistic religions is one of the huge turning points, because it’s just such a different mentality.
I mean, religion’s interesting. Because in my mind, the rise to dominance in a lot of the world of monotheistic religions is one of the huge turning points, because it’s just such a different mentality.
I mean, it’s very, very different where you say, “There’s one God, and it’s my God,” versus, “Okay, I believe in this god, but there’s an infinite number of legitimate gods.” And nowadays, particularly in the West, we tend to view the monotheistic perspective as the norm. But for more than half of human history, it was not.
Religion in Rome
It used to be the notion in a lot of Roman history, up until about 300 AD, the idea was, “Well, there’s just a ton of gods floating around. Maybe you worship that one, and I worship these two that I like. And the guy across the street worships the oak tree in his backyard, and it’s all good.”
They’re all legitimate things, versus, “Oh, no, no, no. Now there is one God, and only one God that’s the correct answer.” And as soon as you do that, religion becomes foregrounded in your decision making much more. I mean, the Romans had religion, but it wasn’t really driving anything, if you know what I mean. It was auxiliary to things, rather than a central force. For a lot of Roman history, you had standard, I guess, pagan polytheism where there’s a bunch of gods. There’s certain gods who are associated with the Roman state. There would be prayer said to those gods on behalf of the Roman state. But you weren’t trying to execute the will of Zeus or something, or Jupiter or Mars or anybody else.
And in your private life, it was the same thing. You might ask certain gods for help, but it wasn’t as much of a dominant thing in your own existence. So I think that’s a real transition point where religion started to become so foregrounded.
And as soon as you get the monotheistic religions; Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in particular; it really shifts how people start to think about themselves in relationship to the world around them.
Lex Fridman
So Jesus was born during the rule of Emperor Augustus.
So Jesus was born during the rule of Emperor Augustus.
Gregory Aldrete
Yep. Which is kind of neat, that really influential people in the realm of political events and religious events co-existed. What are the odds?
Yep. Which is kind of neat, that really influential people in the realm of political events and religious events co-existed. What are the odds?
Lex Fridman
I mean, yeah, there’s certain moments in history where just a lot of interesting, powerful people come together and make history. And he was crucified under Emperor Tiberius’ rule.
I mean, yeah, there’s certain moments in history where just a lot of interesting, powerful people come together and make history. And he was crucified under Emperor Tiberius’ rule.
Gregory Aldrete
Yep.
Yep.
Lex Fridman
Why were the ideas of Jesus seen as a threat by the emperor?
Why were the ideas of Jesus seen as a threat by the emperor?
Gregory Aldrete
The thing that causes conflicts between the Romans and Christians is a little bit strange. It’s all with this where the Romans had a tradition of on the emperor’s birthday, saying a prayer basically wishing him good luck. But technically it’s in the form of sacrificing to that part of the emperor that might become divine after his death. To the Romans, this is the equivalent of a patriotism act: saying The Pledge of Allegiance or something to the country.
The thing that causes conflicts between the Romans and Christians is a little bit strange. It’s all with this where the Romans had a tradition of on the emperor’s birthday, saying a prayer basically wishing him good luck. But technically it’s in the form of sacrificing to that part of the emperor that might become divine after his death. To the Romans, this is the equivalent of a patriotism act: saying The Pledge of Allegiance or something to the country.
But of course, to Christians, this is worshiping another God. And I think there’s almost a failure of communication here, that the Romans just at least initially didn’t quite understand.
This is really problematic for these people, because they’re coming from a polytheistic perspective where, “Yeah, everybody has different gods. So what? This isn’t a religious problem. This is a political one. Then why won’t you send good wishes to the emperor? If you’re a loyal Roman, this is something you should want to do.”
And many of the early Christians, I think would’ve been fine with that. But it took the form of what they were asked to do was to basically worship another God. And that was the sticking point.
And this is where I think movies have warped some of our images of Roman history: that Hollywood loves to depict very early Christians. I’m talking, like, first 200 years here after the ministry of Christ as a group, that all the Romans were obsessed with, that they were constantly trying to persecute and all this. Honestly, I think the Romans at that point were more just indifferent or didn’t know what was going on.
And if you look at some of the primary sources of that time, I mean, there’s this very famous letter by a guy named Pliny who was a Roman governor of a province in the East. He had the habit of writing letters to the Roman emperor at the time, who was Trajan, every time he had a problem with being governor.
This is great. This is the two highest governmental officials in the Roman world hammering out policy between them, the emperor and one of his governors. This is about 100 years, 100 AD about.
And Pliny says, “Hey, Emperor, I had this issue. I had these people come before me called Christians. I don’t quite know what to do with them. What should my policy be? Here’s what I know about them.” And what he knows is almost nothing. I mean, it’s this almost comic-like garbling.
” They have this weird thing where they get together on some day of the week and they swear oaths to one another not to do bad stuff,” which is of course his garbled understanding of the 10 Commandments. “And then they have breakfast together and they eat food,” and this is communion. But he doesn’t get that that’s what’s going on. And so he’s really ignorant.
But I think that the broader point is, okay, this is one of the best-educated, best-traveled Romans who has the most experience in the empire, has been all over the empire, and what does he know about Christianity? Basically nothing.
So if one of the best-educated, most widely traveled guys really doesn’t know much about them, that suggests that not many people did at this point in time.
Lex Fridman
At this time, was a fringe movement that really did-
At this time, was a fringe movement that really did-
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah, very fringe. I mean, it was one of hundreds of little mystery religions, the Romans thought of it as. These are religions that have some sort of revealed knowledge and that make more personal appeals to people.
Yeah, very fringe. I mean, it was one of hundreds of little mystery religions, the Romans thought of it as. These are religions that have some sort of revealed knowledge and that make more personal appeals to people.
Now, stepping back from this in a broad way, I think you can say that Christianity really was different in some ways, and had some things that maybe the Romans should rightfully have viewed as a threat. I mean, the Romans are a people very focused on this world: citizenship, what you do.
Christianity, in essence, has a focus on the next world. So this world isn’t as important as what you’re setting yourself up for.
And even worse, from a Roman perspective, I’m kind of saying, “Okay, if I were a Roman,” Romans are all about making distinctions between people. Citizen, non-citizen, man, woman, free, slave.
Christianity comes along and says, “In God’s eyes, you’re all equal.” Now, that’s a pretty problematic idea if you’re deeply invested in Roman hierarchy. And I think it is no surprise that among the earliest converts to Christianity are women and slaves, and in particular, female slaves.
Now, who are they? They’re the people at the rock bottom of the Roman hierarchy of status, which the Romans are obsessed with status. But here’s a religion that says, “That doesn’t matter.”
And in that same letter to Pliny, Pliny says, “Okay, in this group of Christians I’ve heard about, their leaders are two female slaves they call ‘deaconesses.'” Now, this is really early. This is before the church exists, right? There’s no church structure yet. And who is leading the local congregation of Christians? Two slave women.
So that’s an interesting moment, and that’s not necessarily the image we get of early Christianity. But you can see how for people in this social structure, that would be very appealing to them. And in some ways, yeah, it is sort of a threat to the Roman system because they’re challenging it.
Now, the irony is, of course, 300 years after the life of Christ, the emperor converts to Christianity. And another 100 years later under Theodosius, it becomes the official religion of the Roman Empire. So all of a sudden you have this flip-flop, where now the state itself is not just converted to Christianity, but actively promoting it and now persecuting pagans.
And the reason the emperors do that is one of the biggest problems for emperors at that point in time is legitimacy. That there’s tons of civil wars where you have lots of different people saying, “I’m emperor.” So lots of generals declaring themselves emperor.
Now under a polytheistic religion, you’re all just fighting. It doesn’t matter. But if you say there is only one God, then if that God picks someone to be His emperor, they’re the only legitimate emperor. Right?
So there is a real advantage to emperors now becoming Christian. Because they can say, “We’re now a Christian empire and there’s only one God, and I’m the guy that God picked to be emperor, that means all these other people claiming to be emperors are illegitimate.”
Lex Fridman
Do you think that? Or is there other factors that explain why Christianity was able to spread?
Do you think that? Or is there other factors that explain why Christianity was able to spread?
Gregory Aldrete
Well, that’s why it’s appealing to the emperors. And we’re talking here, I mean, the religious answer is people see the light, right? It’s a faith-based thing. I’m looking at this as a historian.
Well, that’s why it’s appealing to the emperors. And we’re talking here, I mean, the religious answer is people see the light, right? It’s a faith-based thing. I’m looking at this as a historian.
So putting aside religious feeling and saying, “Okay, if I’m doing an analysis of this as a social phenomenon, what would be appealing to people?” And there is that very compelling reason for emperors to want to go to Christianity because it helps them with their biggest problem, which is legitimacy.
Now, if you’re an ordinary person, what is the appeal of Christianity? Well, we already looked at a couple of them. One of them is that it promises you a reward in the afterlife.
I mean, the Roman and Greek notions of the afterlife aren’t that appealing. Either you just turn into dust, or at best you turn into this kind of ghost thing that floats around something that looks like a Greek gymnasium, which is like a bunch of grassy fields. It’s not so hot.
So here you’re offered the idea of, “Oh, you go to paradise forever. That sounds really good.” And secondly, for a lot of people in Roman society, that notion of, “Here’s something that says I’m valuable as a human being. It doesn’t matter whether I’m free or slave. It doesn’t matter whether I’m Roman or non-Roman. It doesn’t matter if I’m man or woman. Here’s something that says I have equal value.” That’s enormously appealing.
And finally, early Christians, I mean, they honestly, a lot of them do good works. They take care of the sick, they feed the poor. I mean, if you look at Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, that’s the stuff He really hammers. If we look at the words of Jesus when He says, “What do you do to be a Christian?”
A lot of it is take care of the unfortunate, take care of people who are sick, take care of people who are starving. And a lot of the early Christians really take that seriously. They are helping people out. So that’s appealing.
Lex Fridman
They’re the good kind of populist, and populist messages spread.
They’re the good kind of populist, and populist messages spread.
Let me ask you about gladiators.
Gregory Aldrete
Switch our pace here.
Switch our pace here.
Lex Fridman
What role did they play in Roman society?
What role did they play in Roman society?
Gregory Aldrete
I mean, okay, gladiator games obviously become a popular form of entertainment. And they’re one of the ones that’s captured people’s imaginations for all sorts of reasons. I mean, it’s dramatic.
I mean, okay, gladiator games obviously become a popular form of entertainment. And they’re one of the ones that’s captured people’s imaginations for all sorts of reasons. I mean, it’s dramatic.
But also I think it’s that apparent contradiction. That in so many ways, Roman society seems familiar to us. In so many ways, it seems sophisticated and appealing. Law is wonderful, all this. But yet, for fun, they watched people fight to the death. So how do you reconcile these things?
Gladiators, I find very interesting because they’re an example of what historians call status dissonance. It’s someone who in society has high status in some ways, and very low or despised status in another.
So gladiators, most of them were slaves, the lowest of the low in Roman society, right? Also, they’re fighting for other people’s pleasure, and dying sometimes for other people’s pleasure.
And the Romans had a real thing about this: your body being used for others’ pleasure. Even a humble working person who hired themselves out for labor, the Romans thought that was innately demeaning, because you’re using your body for someone else’s benefit or pleasure.
They didn’t have this notion of the dignity of hard labor or something. They thought the only noble profession was farming, okay, because there you generate something and you’re producing it for yourself. But if you work for someone else, you’re demeaning yourself. And gladiator’s the worst of the worst, right? You’re performing for someone else’s pleasure. So on the one hand, they’re very low status. But on the other hand, successful gladiators get famous. People admire them, women find them attractive, they’re celebrities. This is the status dissonance. You have these people who, on the one hand, formally are very low status in society, but yet are very popular on the other hand.
Another kind of myth about gladiators is that they were just dying all the time. I mean, you watch movies, and again, they’ll always throw a bunch of gladiators and they all die. I think some scholars did a study of, like, 100 fights we know of where we know some details. And I think 10% of those ended in the death of one of the people.
So gladiators are a lot more like boxing matches, where you’re watching a display of skill between two people who are more or less evenly matched in terms of their abilities. And probably they’ll survive, though there’s a chance that one of them might get injured. In fact, one might die.
Having said all that, in the end, you really are having people fight and potentially die for the pleasure of an audience. And anthropologists and Roman historians like to speculate, “Why did the Romans do this?”
The Romans address it. I mean, there’s a famous thing where a Roman says, “We Romans, we’re a violent people. We’re a warlike people. And so it’s fitting that we should be accustomed to the sight of death and violence.” Kind of works.
There’s a more symbolic interpretation that says, “The amphitheater is an expression of Roman dominance,” a symbolic expression. Because what you have are all segments of Roman society gathered together to control the fate of others.
You have foreigners, you have wild animals, you have criminals, you have other people. And we are symbolically asserting our dominance over those groups by determining, “Do you live or do you die?” And that kind of works, too.
And the cynical one is, humans like violence. I mean, when people watch a hockey game, what gets them most excited? The fight. When people watch car racing, there’s a crash. What’s going to be shown on the news? It’s the crash. There’s something dark in human nature sometimes that likes violence. And maybe the Romans are just being more honest about it than we are.
Lex Fridman
I think Dan Carlin has a really great episode called Painfotainment. I think in that episode, he suggests the hypothetical: that if we did something like a gladiator games today to the death, that the whole world would tune in.
I think Dan Carlin has a really great episode called Painfotainment. I think in that episode, he suggests the hypothetical: that if we did something like a gladiator games today to the death, that the whole world would tune in.
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Especially if it was anonymous. We have a thin veil of civility, underneath which would probably still be something deep within us would be attracted to that violence.
Especially if it was anonymous. We have a thin veil of civility, underneath which would probably still be something deep within us would be attracted to that violence.
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah, I mean, yeah, is it human nature? Why do people slow down when there’s a car wreck and try and see what’s happening?
Yeah, I mean, yeah, is it human nature? Why do people slow down when there’s a car wreck and try and see what’s happening?
On the other hand, to be fair, I mean there were Romans at the time who morally objected to them and said, “This is morally degenerate to take pleasure in this, and that’s wrong.” So I think in all eras, you have a diversity of opinions. There’s no unanimous take on what this is or what this means.
Lex Fridman
Who usually were the gladiators? Was it slaves? Was it-
Who usually were the gladiators? Was it slaves? Was it-
Gregory Aldrete
Well, the most common source, again, is prisoners of war. If you conquer some people and they seem to be warlike, you might well consign some of them to fight in the arena.
Well, the most common source, again, is prisoners of war. If you conquer some people and they seem to be warlike, you might well consign some of them to fight in the arena.
And the other thing about gladiators is they were highly trained professionals. The gladiator schools who trained them were spending a lot of money to train these people. And it wasn’t just, “We take some guy and throw them into the arena,” like you see in movies all the time. These were people that you’d invested a lot of money, and that’s why you don’t really want to see them killed.
But yeah, mostly they’re prisoners of war. I mean, in very rare instances you might have a free person volunteering, or even selling themselves to fight as gladiators. But much more common was that.
And what’s interesting is some people wouldn’t do it. I mean, there’s a lot of instances of gladiators refusing to fight and committing suicide, which you don’t hear. There was one German who was supposed to fight as a gladiator. Instead, he stuck his head between the spokes of a wagon that was spinning and snapped his own neck.
There were a group of 29 Germans who all said, “We’re not going to fight for the Romans’ pleasure.” And they strangled one another the night before they were supposed to fight. So I mean, you have people sort of objecting to being complicit in this kind of performance as well,
Lex Fridman
And they also had interest in animals.
And they also had interest in animals.
Gregory Aldrete
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
Humans fought animals, exotic animals.
Humans fought animals, exotic animals.
Gregory Aldrete
And animals fought animals.
And animals fought animals.
Lex Fridman
Animals fought animals.
Animals fought animals.
Gregory Aldrete
The Romans were a little weird with their animal thing. They loved exotic animals, but mostly they liked to see exotic animals die.
The Romans were a little weird with their animal thing. They loved exotic animals, but mostly they liked to see exotic animals die.
I mean, there was an enormous industry collecting wild beasts, transporting them to Rome: which is no easy matter to transport elephants and giraffes and rhinos, particularly in this era of technology. But they were draining Africa and bringing lions and all these things and sacrificing them.
Lex Fridman
And what about the different venues? I mean, there’s the legendary Colosseum. What is the importance of this place?
And what about the different venues? I mean, there’s the legendary Colosseum. What is the importance of this place?
Gregory Aldrete
Well, the Colosseum’s real name is the Flavian Amphitheater. It’s interesting because for a long time, Rome always had a chariot racing arena, the Circus Maximus. But it didn’t have a permanent gladiatorial venue until relatively late, till about 80 AD, during the reign of the Emperor Vespasian. He built this thing. He built the Flavian Amphitheater; he was from the Flavian family of emperors. And he did it as a deliberate act of propaganda.
Well, the Colosseum’s real name is the Flavian Amphitheater. It’s interesting because for a long time, Rome always had a chariot racing arena, the Circus Maximus. But it didn’t have a permanent gladiatorial venue until relatively late, till about 80 AD, during the reign of the Emperor Vespasian. He built this thing. He built the Flavian Amphitheater; he was from the Flavian family of emperors. And he did it as a deliberate act of propaganda.
Before him had been Nero, who was seen as a crazy or bad emperor. One of Nero’s indulgences is he had built this enormous palace for himself called the Golden House. It was kind of this pleasure palace with 50 dining rooms and all this stuff, and it was basically wasting a ton of money on him.
So right on the site where Nero had his Golden House, Vespasian says, “I’m going to erect a new building on top of it that’s going to be for the pleasure of the people.” So it was very much a political statement, that “My dynasty is going to be about serving Romans, not serving ourselves.” That’s why he builds the Flavian Amphitheater.
The funds he uses from it is basically from looting Jerusalem. Because the other thing he had done just before this is he had sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the temple there, in fact, he and his son Titus. And so this is what he now builds in Rome is his gift to the people of Rome.
Lex Fridman
But it’s interesting to think about that place, to think about that relationship with violence across centuries for spectacle, watching people fight. And like you said, only 10% of the time it led to the death. But I read that still a lot of people died. A lot of gladiators were killed.
But it’s interesting to think about that place, to think about that relationship with violence across centuries for spectacle, watching people fight. And like you said, only 10% of the time it led to the death. But I read that still a lot of people died. A lot of gladiators were killed.
Gregory Aldrete
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Lex Fridman
There’s numbers there that’s crazy. I read a full 100,000 dead. This includes gladiators, slaves, convicts, prisoners, and so on. That’s a lot of people.
There’s numbers there that’s crazy. I read a full 100,000 dead. This includes gladiators, slaves, convicts, prisoners, and so on. That’s a lot of people.
Gregory Aldrete
The Flavian Amphitheater is really interesting too, just as a piece of technology, and as influence on later world. I mean, almost every sporting arena today owes something to the Flavian Amphitheater, the Colosseum, in terms of construction.
The Flavian Amphitheater is really interesting too, just as a piece of technology, and as influence on later world. I mean, almost every sporting arena today owes something to the Flavian Amphitheater, the Colosseum, in terms of construction.
It was amazingly sophisticated building. I mean, it had retractable awnings and elevators and ramps that things could just pop up into the arena from below. And it-
Gregory Aldrete
… just pop up into the arena from below. And it had very well-designed passages where everybody could file in and file out very efficiently, and they were all numbered. So I mean, it’s one of, I think, the most influential buildings in history, just because of the way that all these buildings we go to today, they’re all kind of variants on it and using some of the ideas from it.
… just pop up into the arena from below. And it had very well-designed passages where everybody could file in and file out very efficiently, and they were all numbered. So I mean, it’s one of, I think, the most influential buildings in history, just because of the way that all these buildings we go to today, they’re all kind of variants on it and using some of the ideas from it.
Lex Fridman
And the Romans took their construction seriously.
And the Romans took their construction seriously.
Gregory Aldrete
Oh, yeah. They were good at that. So they were excellent engineers. And the Romans were excellent engineers, especially when it came to what you might think of as humble stuff. I mean, today, we tend to think of, oh, a Roman building as shining white marble, right? Well, the core of that building was probably concrete, and the marble is just a superficial facade. And if you think about the Colosseum in Rome today, all the marble has been stripped off that building. And what you see is the concrete core, the structural core that’s left, and the Romans, I mean, they didn’t invent concrete, but they just used it more creatively than anyone had before. And if you look at buildings like the Greeks built, they’re all rectilinear, they’re all rectangles or squares, and they always have a lot of columns because you need to hold the roof up.
Oh, yeah. They were good at that. So they were excellent engineers. And the Romans were excellent engineers, especially when it came to what you might think of as humble stuff. I mean, today, we tend to think of, oh, a Roman building as shining white marble, right? Well, the core of that building was probably concrete, and the marble is just a superficial facade. And if you think about the Colosseum in Rome today, all the marble has been stripped off that building. And what you see is the concrete core, the structural core that’s left, and the Romans, I mean, they didn’t invent concrete, but they just used it more creatively than anyone had before. And if you look at buildings like the Greeks built, they’re all rectilinear, they’re all rectangles or squares, and they always have a lot of columns because you need to hold the roof up.
The Romans, because of their use of concrete, could build wooden frames, they could have curves, they could have domes, they could have all kinds of stuff. And it just explodes the architectural possibilities. They also made a lot of use of the vault. So if you cut rocks and arrange them so that they form a curve, you could have big vaulted spaces. And they were just brilliant with their mix of things. I mean, the Pantheon is the best preserved Roman building, and it’s another brilliant building, incredibly influential. I mean, every capitol building in the world or museum is an imitation of the Pantheon. The capitol in Washington, D.C., the Capitol in Madison, where I’m from, Wisconsin, Austin, where we are now, they’re all Pantheons. It’s a big dome with a triangular pediment and some columns on the front.
So it’s just an amazingly influential building. But it’s brilliant because the way it’s constructed is the concrete at the bottom of the dome is both thicker and has a denser formulation, so it’s heavier where it needs to bear the weight. And then as you get further up the dome, it gets narrower and narrower, and they mix in different types of rock. So at the top, you’re using pumice, that very light volcanic stone. So where you want it to be light, it’s light, and it’s here 2,000 years later. I mean, look around you. How many buildings that we’re building` now do you think are going to be here in 2,000 years? I suspect not many.
Lex Fridman
And it’s not only that they lasted, but they were beautiful, or at least in our current conception of beauty.
And it’s not only that they lasted, but they were beautiful, or at least in our current conception of beauty.
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah, I mean, Vitruvius, his principles are things should be functional and they should be aesthetically pleasing. So that’s a winning combination, I think.
Yeah, I mean, Vitruvius, his principles are things should be functional and they should be aesthetically pleasing. So that’s a winning combination, I think.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, they pulled that off pretty well. If you could talk about the long line of emperors that made up the Roman Empire, how were they selected?
Yeah, they pulled that off pretty well. If you could talk about the long line of emperors that made up the Roman Empire, how were they selected?
Gregory Aldrete
Oh, boy. We’ve been talking about Augustus’ great achievements and how clever he was with propaganda and all, this is his great failure. So his great failure is that he did not solve was the problem of succession. How do you ensure that the next person who follows you is not just the best person but is qualified? And he fails to do it. So the principle he settles on is heredity. So the nearest blood relative. And he goes through all these people, all these young kids in his family die that he keeps trying to make the heir, and he ends up making his heir Tiberius, who he never liked, it was his stepson, he didn’t like him, but he ends up inheriting it. And the next set of emperors, the Julio-Claudians, which is the family that Augustus starts, they all basically are who is the nearest male relative to the previous emperor. And that’s how we get a lot of crazy emperors like Caligula or Nero.
Oh, boy. We’ve been talking about Augustus’ great achievements and how clever he was with propaganda and all, this is his great failure. So his great failure is that he did not solve was the problem of succession. How do you ensure that the next person who follows you is not just the best person but is qualified? And he fails to do it. So the principle he settles on is heredity. So the nearest blood relative. And he goes through all these people, all these young kids in his family die that he keeps trying to make the heir, and he ends up making his heir Tiberius, who he never liked, it was his stepson, he didn’t like him, but he ends up inheriting it. And the next set of emperors, the Julio-Claudians, which is the family that Augustus starts, they all basically are who is the nearest male relative to the previous emperor. And that’s how we get a lot of crazy emperors like Caligula or Nero.
And then the next family, the Flavians, the first guy is kind of an Augustus, it’s Vespasian, the one who builds the Flavian Amphitheater, and then one of his sons takes over, Titus, who’s okay, and then the next son takes over, Domitian, who’s nuts again. So heredity just isn’t working, And Rome fights a couple civil wars, and in 98 AD, we’re 100 years now into the Empire, and they look back at this track record and say, “Okay, we’ve been picking our emperors by heredity and we’ve gotten some real duds here, some real problematic people. Is there a way to fix this?”
And this is one of the few instances where the Romans, who I keep saying are very traditional and resist change, I think actually make a change and realize we got to do something different. And so the next guy looks around and says, “Okay, forget who’s my nearest male relative, who’s the best qualified to be emperor after me? I’ll pick that person and then I’ll adopt him as my son.” So they kind of stick with heredity. Now, it’s this fake adoption, and you end up with a lot of old guys adopting middle-aged adults as their son, which is a little strange, but it works.
Emperors
And so for the next 80 years, you have only five emperors, and they’re often called the Five Good Emperors, they’re not related necessarily by blood, they sort of picked the best qualified guy, and they’re all sound, competent, good emperors. And the 2nd century AD, from Nerva to Marcus Aurelius, is often regarded as the high point of the Roman Empire. And a lot of that comes from you have political stability, you have a succession of decent guys being emperor who rule relatively wisely, promote good policies. There’s other things working to Rome’s advantage, but that’s good. And then where it falls apart is where the last guy, Marcus Aurelius, looks around and says, “Who’s the best qualified guy to succeed me? What a coincidence, it’s my own dear son.”, who turns out to be a psycho. And then it all goes downhill.
Lex Fridman
And some people place the sort of the collapse of the Roman Empire there at the end of Marcus Aurelius’ rule.
And some people place the sort of the collapse of the Roman Empire there at the end of Marcus Aurelius’ rule.
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah, so 180 AD is one common date for an early date for the end of the Roman Empire when you… Because from then on, it’s a mixed bag of good and bad emperors.
Yeah, so 180 AD is one common date for an early date for the end of the Roman Empire when you… Because from then on, it’s a mixed bag of good and bad emperors.
Lex Fridman
At the very least, this period is when the Roman Empire is at its height on all different kinds of perspectives.
At the very least, this period is when the Roman Empire is at its height on all different kinds of perspectives.
Gregory Aldrete
Certainly geographically. I mean, at this point, stretches from Britain to Mesopotamia, from Egypt up to Germany. Like I said, probably about 50 million people within its boundaries. Within those boundaries, there’s relative peace. So I mean, sometimes people talk about the Pax Romana. I mean, the Romans are fighting lots of people, but within the boundaries, you have relative peace. There’s relative economic prosperity. I mean, nothing in the ancient world is that prosperous. It’s just a different sort of economy, but it’s pretty stable. There’s no huge disasters happening yet. Some plagues start in Marcus Aurelius’ reign. But yeah, this is pretty much seen as the high point of the Roman Empire, and I think it is. I think that there’s truth to that.
Certainly geographically. I mean, at this point, stretches from Britain to Mesopotamia, from Egypt up to Germany. Like I said, probably about 50 million people within its boundaries. Within those boundaries, there’s relative peace. So I mean, sometimes people talk about the Pax Romana. I mean, the Romans are fighting lots of people, but within the boundaries, you have relative peace. There’s relative economic prosperity. I mean, nothing in the ancient world is that prosperous. It’s just a different sort of economy, but it’s pretty stable. There’s no huge disasters happening yet. Some plagues start in Marcus Aurelius’ reign. But yeah, this is pretty much seen as the high point of the Roman Empire, and I think it is. I think that there’s truth to that.
Lex Fridman
Let me ask the ridiculously oversimplified question, but who do you think is the greatest Roman emperor or maybe your top three?
Let me ask the ridiculously oversimplified question, but who do you think is the greatest Roman emperor or maybe your top three?
Gregory Aldrete
Greatest emperor? I tell you what, I’ll tell you my favorite Roman who wasn’t an emperor, and that’s Marcus Agrippa, who was Augustus’ right-hand man. So Agrippa’s this interesting guy who is extremely talented. He’s a terrific general. He’s a terrific admiral. He’s a great builder. He is kind of like the troubleshooter for Augustus. He’s the guy who wins the Battle of Actium for Augustus. So literally, Augustus would not have become the first emperor without Agrippa. When Augustus rebuilds the city of Rome, it’s Agrippa that he gives the job to. Agrippa rebuilds the campus marshes. He builds the first version of the Pantheon. He personally goes through the sewers to clean them out. And he just has this great set of qualities that he’s very self- effacing.
Greatest emperor? I tell you what, I’ll tell you my favorite Roman who wasn’t an emperor, and that’s Marcus Agrippa, who was Augustus’ right-hand man. So Agrippa’s this interesting guy who is extremely talented. He’s a terrific general. He’s a terrific admiral. He’s a great builder. He is kind of like the troubleshooter for Augustus. He’s the guy who wins the Battle of Actium for Augustus. So literally, Augustus would not have become the first emperor without Agrippa. When Augustus rebuilds the city of Rome, it’s Agrippa that he gives the job to. Agrippa rebuilds the campus marshes. He builds the first version of the Pantheon. He personally goes through the sewers to clean them out. And he just has this great set of qualities that he’s very self- effacing.
I think he likes power, he wants real power, but he realizes I don’t have that kind of clever politician’s ability to be the front guy, so I’ll just serve my friend, Augustus, loyally. They were childhood friends. I’ll win the battles for Augustus and I’ll let him take all the credit, but I’ll be his number two guy, and that’s what I’m good at. And he realizes his limitations. I mean, so many people don’t. So many people are like, “Oh, I just want to keep grabbing for more and more and more when it’s not something they’re good at.” And I think Agrippa says, “I’m good to this point and I’ll play that role and no more, and that’ll give me a lot of power, but I’m not going to press it.” And yeah, he’s just very hardworking, he’s modest, he’s self-effacing, he’s highly competent.
Lex Fridman
I wonder how many people in history that are like the drivers, the COO of the whole operation that we don’t really think about or don’t talk about enough to where they’re really the mastermind?
I wonder how many people in history that are like the drivers, the COO of the whole operation that we don’t really think about or don’t talk about enough to where they’re really the mastermind?
Gregory Aldrete
Or the ones who make something possible. I mean, even in this conversation today, you would not have Alexander the Great without his father Philip II having built that army and handed it to him on a silver platter. Octavian would never have become emperor without Agrippa. So they play central roles sometimes. But if I had to pick an emperor, I’d probably pick Augustus just because of his influence and because I admire the thing Agrippa didn’t have, his political savvy, his manipulation of image and propaganda. All that, I find very fascinating. Though I’m not sure he’s a great human being, but he’s a really interesting figure.
Or the ones who make something possible. I mean, even in this conversation today, you would not have Alexander the Great without his father Philip II having built that army and handed it to him on a silver platter. Octavian would never have become emperor without Agrippa. So they play central roles sometimes. But if I had to pick an emperor, I’d probably pick Augustus just because of his influence and because I admire the thing Agrippa didn’t have, his political savvy, his manipulation of image and propaganda. All that, I find very fascinating. Though I’m not sure he’s a great human being, but he’s a really interesting figure.
The greatest Roman
Lex Fridman
Whether he’s good or bad, he was extremely influential on defining just the entirety of human history that followed. Probably one of the most influential humans ever. Nevertheless, if you ask in public who the most famous Roman emperor is, would that be Marcus Aurelius potentially?
Whether he’s good or bad, he was extremely influential on defining just the entirety of human history that followed. Probably one of the most influential humans ever. Nevertheless, if you ask in public who the most famous Roman emperor is, would that be Marcus Aurelius potentially?
Gregory Aldrete
I don’t know.
I don’t know.
Lex Fridman
He’s up there.
He’s up there.
Gregory Aldrete
That’s a good question.
That’s a good question.
Lex Fridman
Right?
Right?
Gregory Aldrete
He’s real famous because he was a stoic philosopher and he wrote this book, the Meditations.
He’s real famous because he was a stoic philosopher and he wrote this book, the Meditations.
Lex Fridman
I mean, it’s interesting. Stoicism as a philosophical ideology had a role to play during that time. I mean, the tragic fact that… Did Nero murder Seneca?
I mean, it’s interesting. Stoicism as a philosophical ideology had a role to play during that time. I mean, the tragic fact that… Did Nero murder Seneca?
Gregory Aldrete
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
Well, he drove him to suicide, let’s say. There’s a lot of interesting questions there, but one is the role, especially when it’s hereditary, the role of the mentor, who advises who with the Aristotle and Alexander the Great, that dance of who influences and guides the person as they become and gain power is really interesting.
Well, he drove him to suicide, let’s say. There’s a lot of interesting questions there, but one is the role, especially when it’s hereditary, the role of the mentor, who advises who with the Aristotle and Alexander the Great, that dance of who influences and guides the person as they become and gain power is really interesting.
Gregory Aldrete
Well, I mean, one of the big questions with the Roman emperors, and we’ve been talking about some of them, is why did so many seem to be either crazy or just sadists? I don’t know that there’s a good answer to that. I mean, people have theories. Oh, Caligula got a brain fever and changed after that or something. But I think there’s a lot of maybe truth in the notion that the ones who seem to go craziest quite often are the ones who become emperor at a young age. And there is something about that old cliche that absolute power corrupts absolutely, especially if your own personality isn’t really fully formed yet. You know what I’m saying? I think take anybody when they’re a teenager, if you all of a sudden said, you have unlimited power, what would that do to you? How would that warp your personality? I mean, look at all the… [inaudible 02:51:40] like the Disney stars who sort of go wrong or something because they get rich and famous at this very young age.
Well, I mean, one of the big questions with the Roman emperors, and we’ve been talking about some of them, is why did so many seem to be either crazy or just sadists? I don’t know that there’s a good answer to that. I mean, people have theories. Oh, Caligula got a brain fever and changed after that or something. But I think there’s a lot of maybe truth in the notion that the ones who seem to go craziest quite often are the ones who become emperor at a young age. And there is something about that old cliche that absolute power corrupts absolutely, especially if your own personality isn’t really fully formed yet. You know what I’m saying? I think take anybody when they’re a teenager, if you all of a sudden said, you have unlimited power, what would that do to you? How would that warp your personality? I mean, look at all the… [inaudible 02:51:40] like the Disney stars who sort of go wrong or something because they get rich and famous at this very young age.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. Fame, power, and even money, if you get way too much of it at a young age, I think we’re egotistical, narcissistic, all that kind of stuff as babies. And then when we clash with the world and we figure out the morality of the world, how to interact with others, that other people suffer in all kinds of ways, understand the cruelty, the beauty of the world, the fact that other people suffer in different ways, the fact that other people are also human and have different perspectives, all of that, in order to develop that, you shouldn’t be blocked off from the world, which power and money And fame can do.
Yeah. Fame, power, and even money, if you get way too much of it at a young age, I think we’re egotistical, narcissistic, all that kind of stuff as babies. And then when we clash with the world and we figure out the morality of the world, how to interact with others, that other people suffer in all kinds of ways, understand the cruelty, the beauty of the world, the fact that other people suffer in different ways, the fact that other people are also human and have different perspectives, all of that, in order to develop that, you shouldn’t be blocked off from the world, which power and money And fame can do.
Marcus Aurelius
Gregory Aldrete
And conversely, a lot of the emperors we regard as, quote, “good emperors”, are the ones who become emperor at a middle-aged or something, where their personalities are fully formed, where they’re not going to really become different people. And so that works in that theory too. I mean, I don’t think it’s absolute. And of course, the greatest exception is Octavian Augustus, who starts as rise to power as a teenager. Somehow doesn’t seem to go nuts.
And conversely, a lot of the emperors we regard as, quote, “good emperors”, are the ones who become emperor at a middle-aged or something, where their personalities are fully formed, where they’re not going to really become different people. And so that works in that theory too. I mean, I don’t think it’s absolute. And of course, the greatest exception is Octavian Augustus, who starts as rise to power as a teenager. Somehow doesn’t seem to go nuts.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, history has a lot of-
Yeah, history has a lot of-
Gregory Aldrete
It’s not an absolute, but it doesn’t help to get that much power at a young age, I think.
It’s not an absolute, but it doesn’t help to get that much power at a young age, I think.
Lex Fridman
What does it take to be a successful emperor, would you say?
What does it take to be a successful emperor, would you say?
Gregory Aldrete
So you say, what does it take to be a good Roman emperor? If you were going to draw up a job description, seeking Roman emperor, what are the qualities and qualifications you would put on it? Obviously, you would put responsible, good understanding of military, economics, whatever, ability to delegate. But just to be fun, let’s consider how much does it matter whether the emperor is good or bad? Because in the ancient world, what does it affect really if you’re say a peasant in Spain, if the emperor is crazy Nero or good Vespasian? I mean, how does that affect your day-to-day life? How does it affect you if you’re a peasant in Italy? Which is the average inhabitant. I mean, the crazy emperors mostly affect the people within the sound of their voice. So yeah, they go crazy. They murder senators, they murder members of their own family. They do wacky stuff. But a lot of that is constrained to the immediate surroundings around them. And meanwhile, the mechanism of the Roman Empire is just grinding along as it would anyway, I mean, the governors are running their provinces, stuff’s happening.
So you say, what does it take to be a good Roman emperor? If you were going to draw up a job description, seeking Roman emperor, what are the qualities and qualifications you would put on it? Obviously, you would put responsible, good understanding of military, economics, whatever, ability to delegate. But just to be fun, let’s consider how much does it matter whether the emperor is good or bad? Because in the ancient world, what does it affect really if you’re say a peasant in Spain, if the emperor is crazy Nero or good Vespasian? I mean, how does that affect your day-to-day life? How does it affect you if you’re a peasant in Italy? Which is the average inhabitant. I mean, the crazy emperors mostly affect the people within the sound of their voice. So yeah, they go crazy. They murder senators, they murder members of their own family. They do wacky stuff. But a lot of that is constrained to the immediate surroundings around them. And meanwhile, the mechanism of the Roman Empire is just grinding along as it would anyway, I mean, the governors are running their provinces, stuff’s happening.
I mean, I guess an emperor can start a war, he can maybe raise taxes, but that would be the ways that he’s affecting the whole empire. And here, we get into technology does matter. We’re dealing with a world where, let’s say you’re in Rome and you’re the emperor and you want to send a message to a province far away, let’s say Judea, that message might take one or two months to get there and one or two months to get a reply. So how much influence as emperor are you really having over that province? I mean, those people pretty much have to make their own decisions and then just say to you, “This is what we did. I hope that’s okay.” Because otherwise, nothing gets done if they’re waiting four months for a decision.
Lex Fridman
Even in the realm of ideas, they can’t get on TV and on the radio and-
Even in the realm of ideas, they can’t get on TV and on the radio and-
Gregory Aldrete
Communication-
Communication-
Lex Fridman
… broadcasts.
… broadcasts.
Gregory Aldrete
… is so slow and so uncertain in ways that today, with the ability to instantaneously talk to people across the world, we can’t even imagine. And the Roman Empire is huge. I mean, it is months to send a message and get an answer. So here, you have the emperor in Rome, yeah, he affects who’s around him, and he can affect even common people. I mean, there’s crazy emperors who are at the games and they’re bored and they say, “We’ll take that whole section of the crowd and throw them to the lions or something.” There, you’re being affected by the emperor, but if you’re outside the range of his sight and voice, do you care who the emperor is-
… is so slow and so uncertain in ways that today, with the ability to instantaneously talk to people across the world, we can’t even imagine. And the Roman Empire is huge. I mean, it is months to send a message and get an answer. So here, you have the emperor in Rome, yeah, he affects who’s around him, and he can affect even common people. I mean, there’s crazy emperors who are at the games and they’re bored and they say, “We’ll take that whole section of the crowd and throw them to the lions or something.” There, you’re being affected by the emperor, but if you’re outside the range of his sight and voice, do you care who the emperor is-
Lex Fridman
So the big one-
So the big one-
Gregory Aldrete
… most of the time?
… most of the time?
Lex Fridman
That’s a really important idea to remember. Same with the US president, frankly, in terms of the grand arc of history, what is the actual impact? But I would say the big one is probably starting wars, major global wars or ending them in both directions. And then taxation too, as you said. What was the taxation? What was the economic system? What was the role of taxation in the Roman Empire?
That’s a really important idea to remember. Same with the US president, frankly, in terms of the grand arc of history, what is the actual impact? But I would say the big one is probably starting wars, major global wars or ending them in both directions. And then taxation too, as you said. What was the taxation? What was the economic system? What was the role of taxation in the Roman Empire?
Gregory Aldrete
Romans are really weird with this. So in the Republic, once they started to acquire overseas provinces, they had to decide, well, what are we going to do with these provinces? And they, in the end, settled on this notion of, we’ll put a Roman governor in charge. We’ll collect some sort of taxes. But they often didn’t collect the taxes directly. Instead, they would sell contracts to private businesses to collect taxes.
Romans are really weird with this. So in the Republic, once they started to acquire overseas provinces, they had to decide, well, what are we going to do with these provinces? And they, in the end, settled on this notion of, we’ll put a Roman governor in charge. We’ll collect some sort of taxes. But they often didn’t collect the taxes directly. Instead, they would sell contracts to private businesses to collect taxes.
So the private businesses would bid and say, “All right, if you give us the contract to collect taxes in Sicily, we’ll give you X number of money up front and then we go out and try to collect enough to make back that money and make ourselves a profit.” And this is a terrible system, because obviously, they’re going to go and try and squeeze as much as they can out of Sicily. And these companies were called publicans, publicani. And in the Bible, there’s a phrase, publicans and sinners, and that should give you an idea how they’re viewed. So everybody hated these tax collectors, and it was a really kind of dumb system because the publicans were going out and squeezing way more than they should in an unhealthy way from the provinces. And the Roman state was doing this kind of weird thing that they should have been doing themselves.
And over time, that shifts a bit and it becomes more like your standard taxation. And a lot of the taxation ends up being in kind too. So it’s like, okay, we’re taxing you, you pay it in wheat if you’re a farmer or something, not necessarily in cash. So in many ways, the Roman economy is underdeveloped. They didn’t have a lot of the sophisticated systems that we have today, and it probably held them back in some ways. And again, they have that resistance to change. The Romans also had weird notions about just business and profit making, that at least originally, there was this notion that’s shameful, again, the only thing that’s a worthwhile profession is farming.
So rich Romans would get involved in what we would call business manufacturing, particularly long distance trade with ships, but they would often do it through sort of front companies or employees who did it on their behalf, officially, and then they funneled the profits to the guy funding it because they don’t want to be soiled with business, which is beneath them. So the Romans had a lot of weird attitudes about the economy that I think in some ways didn’t help.
Lex Fridman
But nevertheless, they had many of the elements of the modern economic system with taxation, the record keeping.
But nevertheless, they had many of the elements of the modern economic system with taxation, the record keeping.
Gregory Aldrete
They were good at record keeping. So the Romans… I mean, the census is a Roman word. They’re the ones that came up with that.
They were good at record keeping. So the Romans… I mean, the census is a Roman word. They’re the ones that came up with that.
Lex Fridman
And obviously, the laws around everything.
And obviously, the laws around everything.
Gregory Aldrete
Yes. So in certain ways, yes, they were extremely sophisticated. And of course, the biggest thing about people in the ancient world and today is that they weren’t stupider than us. I mean, sometimes you get this assumption, oh, well, in the ancient world, they just weren’t as smart or something. No, no, no. They were fully as intelligent as we were. They didn’t have access to the same technology as we do, but that doesn’t mean they were any less smart.
Yes. So in certain ways, yes, they were extremely sophisticated. And of course, the biggest thing about people in the ancient world and today is that they weren’t stupider than us. I mean, sometimes you get this assumption, oh, well, in the ancient world, they just weren’t as smart or something. No, no, no. They were fully as intelligent as we were. They didn’t have access to the same technology as we do, but that doesn’t mean they were any less smart.
Lex Fridman
Can we talk about the Crisis of the Third century and the aforementioned Western and Eastern Roman Empires, how it’s split?
Can we talk about the Crisis of the Third century and the aforementioned Western and Eastern Roman Empires, how it’s split?
Taxes
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah. So I mean, after Rome starts to go downhill as you enter the 3rd century, so the 200s, so we’re moving out of the golden era now, I mean, a famous Roman historian, Cassius Dio, who lived right at that moment, very famously wrote of the transition of Marcus Aurelius to what follows, “Our kingdom now descends from one of gold, to one of rust and iron.” So even people who were alive at the time had a distinct sense something is going downhill here. And that’s interesting, because usually, great historical moments are retroactive. And I mean, here’s a guy who said, “Oh, something’s going wrong. Something’s really going badly now.”
Yeah. So I mean, after Rome starts to go downhill as you enter the 3rd century, so the 200s, so we’re moving out of the golden era now, I mean, a famous Roman historian, Cassius Dio, who lived right at that moment, very famously wrote of the transition of Marcus Aurelius to what follows, “Our kingdom now descends from one of gold, to one of rust and iron.” So even people who were alive at the time had a distinct sense something is going downhill here. And that’s interesting, because usually, great historical moments are retroactive. And I mean, here’s a guy who said, “Oh, something’s going wrong. Something’s really going badly now.”
And a lot of it becomes that the secret is out that what makes an emperor is who commands the most swords. And so you start to get rebellions by various Roman generals, each declaring himself emperor. So you’d always had this to a certain degree, but they had kept it in check during the 2nd century AD. But in the 3rd century, you sometimes get three or four generals in different parts of the empire, all declaring themselves emperor, and then they all rush off to Rome to fight a multi-way civil war.
And of course, while they’re doing this, the borders are undefended, so barbarians start to see opportunity and come across and start raiding, they start burning and pillaging farms, the civil wars are destroying cities and farms. So the economy is kind of tanking. Then there’s less money coming in as taxes. So when one guy finally wins, he jacks up the tax rate to try and make up for it, but now, there’s fewer people able to pay, and it’s all just a vicious cycle. The Romans start to debase the coinage, which means you take in a gold coin, you melt it down, mix it in with 10% something less valuable, and then stamp it and say it’s worth the same. Well, people aren’t stupid. They’re going to know that’s only 90% of that gold coin.
Lex Fridman
They’ve invented inflation.
They’ve invented inflation.
Gregory Aldrete
Inflation. And you get horrific inflation uncontrolled. So the economy goes downhill, barbarians are raiding, you have internal instability. In one year, you have something like eight or nine different guys go through as emperor in 238. So it’s a mess. And it looks like the Roman Empire is going to fall in around the mid-3rd century. So this is the crisis. And then the kind of shocking development is late in that 3rd century, they actually stabilize the empire. So you have a series of these kind of army emperors who are just good generals who managed to push the barbarians out, reestablish the borders. It’s actually a whole group of them, but often, they get clumped under the most successful, the last guy, who’s Diocletian, who comes in, and he tries to stabilize the economy.
Inflation. And you get horrific inflation uncontrolled. So the economy goes downhill, barbarians are raiding, you have internal instability. In one year, you have something like eight or nine different guys go through as emperor in 238. So it’s a mess. And it looks like the Roman Empire is going to fall in around the mid-3rd century. So this is the crisis. And then the kind of shocking development is late in that 3rd century, they actually stabilize the empire. So you have a series of these kind of army emperors who are just good generals who managed to push the barbarians out, reestablish the borders. It’s actually a whole group of them, but often, they get clumped under the most successful, the last guy, who’s Diocletian, who comes in, and he tries to stabilize the economy.
One of the things he does is he issues a new solid gold coin that he guarantees is solid gold. And he calls it a Solidus, a solid coin. He famously issues a price edict where he says, “This is the maximum it’s legal to charge for any good or service.” So it’s attempt to curb inflation. And that’s not going to work, but it helps. Kind of amusingly on Diocletian’s price edict, can you guess what the most expensive sort of item is? Hiring a lawyer. So some things never change, right?
Division of the Roman Empire
Lex Fridman
Oh, that’s interesting. I mean, in that system, there’s probably a huge amount of lawyers.
Oh, that’s interesting. I mean, in that system, there’s probably a huge amount of lawyers.
Gregory Aldrete
I mean, even lawyer isn’t quite the right word. Romans didn’t have true lawyers, but they had people you would hire to do legal stuff or give you legal advice. But anyway, no, the price edict is actually is really fascinating, because it’s this long list of stuff. And you can see a good pair of shoes, a bad pair of shoes, how much each costs, and you can see the relative value of things. So what was food versus clothing, what was going to the barber versus hiring a doctor, all that kind of stuff. So it’s a really fun document to just mess around with. But anyway, so Diocletian stabilizes, basically, the empire and these other guys as well and gives it a new lease on life. So it seems by the end of the 3rd century, that Rome is going to continue.
I mean, even lawyer isn’t quite the right word. Romans didn’t have true lawyers, but they had people you would hire to do legal stuff or give you legal advice. But anyway, no, the price edict is actually is really fascinating, because it’s this long list of stuff. And you can see a good pair of shoes, a bad pair of shoes, how much each costs, and you can see the relative value of things. So what was food versus clothing, what was going to the barber versus hiring a doctor, all that kind of stuff. So it’s a really fun document to just mess around with. But anyway, so Diocletian stabilizes, basically, the empire and these other guys as well and gives it a new lease on life. So it seems by the end of the 3rd century, that Rome is going to continue.
And then as we go into the 4th century, you have the really dramatic thing where Constantine comes along and converts to Christianity. And at the time he converts, the percentage of Christians in the Empire is small, 10% at most, something like that. Who knows? But it’s quite small. And all of a sudden, you have this weird thing where now, the emperor belongs to this new religion. What does this mean? You can debate a lot how sincere Constantine’s conversion was. It’s a little bit of a weird thing where he clearly is using it as a way to fire up the troops before a crucial battle to say, “Hey, I just had this dream and this god promised us victory if we put his magic symbol on our shields.”
And this would be okay, except that he had done this a couple times before. So one time, it was Helios the Sun god, one time, it was another god. Even after he converts, he continues to mint coins and stuff with other gods on them. He continues to worship other gods. But he also kind of seems sincere in his conversion. It’s just, I think the question is how much does he understand his new religion maybe more than, is it sincere. But that’s a real turning point.
So now, as we go into the 4th century, we have this thing with Constantine, the new religion. And the other thing that happens is the empire is really just too big to govern effectively. It’s that thing we’re talking about. It’s too large, the communication is too slow and it starts to naturally fragment. And at times, they try systems where they split it into four. So under Diocletian, he tries the tetrarchy, where he splits the empire into four, and you actually have sort of four emperors working together as a team. More commonly, it just splits east, west. So from that point on, you really start to have the history of the Western Empire going in one direction, the Eastern Empire in the other. You tend to have two emperors, though there are moments occasionally where they reunite. So that’s a big development as well. And that’s a turning point.
Lex Fridman
So the most common date that people say, maybe you can correct me on this, that the Roman Empire fell was 476 AD. They’re referring to the “fall”, quote, unquote, of the Western Roman Empire. So why did the Roman Empire fall?
So the most common date that people say, maybe you can correct me on this, that the Roman Empire fell was 476 AD. They’re referring to the “fall”, quote, unquote, of the Western Roman Empire. So why did the Roman Empire fall?
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah, this is a real game. Pick your favorite date for the fall of the Roman Empire. 476 is a very common one. And what happens in that year is a barbarian king comes down into Italy and deposes a guy named Romulus Augustulus, which is an amazing name. It’s combining the names of the founder of Rome, Romulus, with Augustus, the second founder of Rome. And so some people say that’s the end of the Roman Empire. Sure. But others say it’s 410, when Alaric sacks Rome for the first time. Others say it’s 455, when the Vandals come and sack Rome and do a much more thorough job of it this time. Some say it’s 180, when Marcus Aurelius picks poorly in succession. Some say it’s 31, when Octavian wins the Battle of Actium and kills the Roman Republic. Or you can go past that date and say it’s 1453 when the Eastern Roman Empire finally falls.
Yeah, this is a real game. Pick your favorite date for the fall of the Roman Empire. 476 is a very common one. And what happens in that year is a barbarian king comes down into Italy and deposes a guy named Romulus Augustulus, which is an amazing name. It’s combining the names of the founder of Rome, Romulus, with Augustus, the second founder of Rome. And so some people say that’s the end of the Roman Empire. Sure. But others say it’s 410, when Alaric sacks Rome for the first time. Others say it’s 455, when the Vandals come and sack Rome and do a much more thorough job of it this time. Some say it’s 180, when Marcus Aurelius picks poorly in succession. Some say it’s 31, when Octavian wins the Battle of Actium and kills the Roman Republic. Or you can go past that date and say it’s 1453 when the Eastern Roman Empire finally falls.
And I mean, the Eastern Empire is legitimately the Roman Empire. If you were to go and ask them, “Who are you?” They wouldn’t say, “We’re the Byzantines, we’re the Eastern Roman Empire.” They would just say, “We’re the Romans.” And they have a completely legitimate claim to do that. So this whole game of when does the empire fall is problematic. And the other thing is all those dates about invasions that cluster around the 400s, so 410, 455, 476, you have to ask yourself, who counts as a real Roman by that point? Because for a while now, the Romans themselves are often coming from barbarians, are crossing that boundary, Roman generals. They might get raised as a Hun, then serve with the Roman army for a while, then not, or a Visigoths or not. That’s been going on for a long time. So what makes someone a real Roman? How do you tell that the guy kicked out in 476, was a, quote, “real Roman”, and the barbarian king who took his place wasn’t? That’s a very arbitrary decision.
Lex Fridman
There’s so many interesting things there. So of course, you described really eloquently the decline that started after Marcus Aurelius, and there’s a lot of competing ideas there. And the tensions-
There’s so many interesting things there. So of course, you described really eloquently the decline that started after Marcus Aurelius, and there’s a lot of competing ideas there. And the tensions-
Gregory Aldrete
Just to interrupt you, I hate wishy-washy answers, which is what I kind of said. So I will give you this, I think by the end of the 5th century AD, the Western Roman Empire has transformed into something different. So I don’t know what date I can pick for that, but I can say by around 500, I don’t know that we can call whatever exists there the Roman Empire anymore.
Just to interrupt you, I hate wishy-washy answers, which is what I kind of said. So I will give you this, I think by the end of the 5th century AD, the Western Roman Empire has transformed into something different. So I don’t know what date I can pick for that, but I can say by around 500, I don’t know that we can call whatever exists there the Roman Empire anymore.
Lex Fridman
And of course, the barbarians make everything complicated because they seem to be willing to fight on every side, and they’re like fluid, which they integrate fast, and it just makes the whole thing really tricky to say, yeah, who’s a Roman, who is not? And at which point did it-
And of course, the barbarians make everything complicated because they seem to be willing to fight on every side, and they’re like fluid, which they integrate fast, and it just makes the whole thing really tricky to say, yeah, who’s a Roman, who is not? And at which point did it-
Gregory Aldrete
And barbarians have been forming large parts of the Roman army for centuries. Yeah, it’s extremely fluid and not at all just clear sides here. So it’s a mess.
And barbarians have been forming large parts of the Roman army for centuries. Yeah, it’s extremely fluid and not at all just clear sides here. So it’s a mess.
Lex Fridman
From a military perspective, perhaps, what are some things that stand out to you on the pressure from the barbarians, the conflicts, whether it’s the Hans or the Visigoths?
From a military perspective, perhaps, what are some things that stand out to you on the pressure from the barbarians, the conflicts, whether it’s the Hans or the Visigoths?
Gregory Aldrete
There was a military strategist, guy named Edward Luttwak, who wrote this book, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, which was basically about frontiers and how did the Romans define their frontier? And everybody’s jumped on this and argued about it and says it’s wrong and all, but started this debate among Roman historians about, yeah, what does frontier mean to the Romans? Did they conceive of their empires having a border or was it always expanding or what? And did they have a grand strategy? I mean, today, militaries have a strategy where we want to achieve this, we want to exert force here. We want to protect these areas. Did the Romans even visualize their empire in that sort of grand strategic way? And it’s a real debate. I mean, there’s some things that suggest, “Oh, here, they tried to rationalize the border and short it by taking or shorten it by taking this territory.” Other people see as just kind of random. So that’s an interesting take, is how do the Romans conceive of empire?
There was a military strategist, guy named Edward Luttwak, who wrote this book, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, which was basically about frontiers and how did the Romans define their frontier? And everybody’s jumped on this and argued about it and says it’s wrong and all, but started this debate among Roman historians about, yeah, what does frontier mean to the Romans? Did they conceive of their empires having a border or was it always expanding or what? And did they have a grand strategy? I mean, today, militaries have a strategy where we want to achieve this, we want to exert force here. We want to protect these areas. Did the Romans even visualize their empire in that sort of grand strategic way? And it’s a real debate. I mean, there’s some things that suggest, “Oh, here, they tried to rationalize the border and short it by taking or shorten it by taking this territory.” Other people see as just kind of random. So that’s an interesting take, is how do the Romans conceive of empire?
I mean, if you look back at someone like Virgil, at the time of Augustus, he said, well, the Gods granted Rome empire without end. So it’s that open-ended thing. But even under Augustus, he seems to be pulling back and saying, “Well, I’m going to kind of stop at the Rhine. I’m going to kind of stop at the Danube. We don’t need to keep expanding forever in the way we’ve been doing.” So I mean, that’s an interesting concept of how do the Romans see their empire? Does it have a boundary? What are those boundaries? What does that mean?
Lex Fridman
And then barbarians were very much making that boundary even more difficult to kind of define it even if you wanted to.
And then barbarians were very much making that boundary even more difficult to kind of define it even if you wanted to.
Gregory Aldrete
Right. And again, the other fun debate is were these invasions, when the Visigoths crossed the Danube come into the Roman Empire, is this an invasion as it was originally described, or is it a migration as some scholars have started calling it? Because the Visigoths were fleeing pressure from another Gothic group, and they were fleeing pressure from the Huns. And I mean, a lot of the early Gothic peoples who come into the Roman Empire are basically seeking asylum. They’re saying, “Will you give us a piece of territory to live on within the boundaries of the empire? And in return, we will fight for you against external enemies.” And the Romans make these deals with some of the Goths. In fact, they made a pretty good deal with the Goths, one group of Goths to do exactly that. You can settle within the boundaries. We’ll feed you, we’ll give you a certain amount of stuff, and you fight for us. And then the Romans treated them really badly. They kind of didn’t supply what they had promised, and so they turned against the Romans with good reason. So the Romans blundered in these things too.
Right. And again, the other fun debate is were these invasions, when the Visigoths crossed the Danube come into the Roman Empire, is this an invasion as it was originally described, or is it a migration as some scholars have started calling it? Because the Visigoths were fleeing pressure from another Gothic group, and they were fleeing pressure from the Huns. And I mean, a lot of the early Gothic peoples who come into the Roman Empire are basically seeking asylum. They’re saying, “Will you give us a piece of territory to live on within the boundaries of the empire? And in return, we will fight for you against external enemies.” And the Romans make these deals with some of the Goths. In fact, they made a pretty good deal with the Goths, one group of Goths to do exactly that. You can settle within the boundaries. We’ll feed you, we’ll give you a certain amount of stuff, and you fight for us. And then the Romans treated them really badly. They kind of didn’t supply what they had promised, and so they turned against the Romans with good reason. So the Romans blundered in these things too.
Lex Fridman
So is it correct that the Visigoths fought on the side of the Romans against Attila the Hun?
So is it correct that the Visigoths fought on the side of the Romans against Attila the Hun?
Gregory Aldrete
Some of them did. So again, there were various groups on both sides of those battles. So Attila is the famous Hun, and he comes into the Roman Empire and seems to be heading right for…
Some of them did. So again, there were various groups on both sides of those battles. So Attila is the famous Hun, and he comes into the Roman Empire and seems to be heading right for…
Gregory Aldrete
He comes into the Roman Empire and seems to be heading right for Rome to knock it off, and everybody is so scared of the Huns that this weird coalition comes together of the Romans plus various barbarian groups against Attila and league with some other barbarian groups, and they fight a huge battle and it’s more or less a stalemate. So Attila gets stopped and he says, “All right, we’re going to just rest up for a year. Next year, we’ll go finish off the Romans.” Next year comes, he heads down into Italy, he’s heading straight for Rome, and the Pope goes and meets Attila, and they have lunch together at this river.
He comes into the Roman Empire and seems to be heading right for Rome to knock it off, and everybody is so scared of the Huns that this weird coalition comes together of the Romans plus various barbarian groups against Attila and league with some other barbarian groups, and they fight a huge battle and it’s more or less a stalemate. So Attila gets stopped and he says, “All right, we’re going to just rest up for a year. Next year, we’ll go finish off the Romans.” Next year comes, he heads down into Italy, he’s heading straight for Rome, and the Pope goes and meets Attila, and they have lunch together at this river.
And at the end of the lunch, Attila goes back and says, “Eh, I changed my mind. We’re going to go back up to France, hang around for another year. We’ll finish off the Romans later.” And Christian sources say, “Saints appeared in the sky with flaming swords and scared away Attila.” Some other sources say, “Well, the Pope gave Attila a huge bribe to go away for a while,” believe whichever you like, but then Attila ends up dying on his wedding night before he comes back under mysterious circumstances and so that never materializes. And the Huns kind of fragment after his death.
Lex Fridman
So what was the definitive blow by the barbarians, by the Visigoths?
So what was the definitive blow by the barbarians, by the Visigoths?
Gregory Aldrete
The barbarians are so many different groups,. And weirdly, I think an important one that sometimes people tend to focus on the Huns and the Goths, the Vandals end up going to Spain, conquering Spain, and then crossing over into North Africa and kind of conquering North Africa as well. And Spain and North Africa were some of the main areas that food surpluses were collected from and sent to Rome to feed the City of Rome. And it’s after those Vandal invasions of the takeover of those areas that the population of Rome plummets. So I think that’s an interesting moment, where the City of Rome had always been this symbol, and already it was no longer the capital.
The barbarians are so many different groups,. And weirdly, I think an important one that sometimes people tend to focus on the Huns and the Goths, the Vandals end up going to Spain, conquering Spain, and then crossing over into North Africa and kind of conquering North Africa as well. And Spain and North Africa were some of the main areas that food surpluses were collected from and sent to Rome to feed the City of Rome. And it’s after those Vandal invasions of the takeover of those areas that the population of Rome plummets. So I think that’s an interesting moment, where the City of Rome had always been this symbol, and already it was no longer the capital.
The emperors had moved to Ravenna, a little bit north, because it was surrounded by swamps, so it was more defensible. But there is something important about that old symbolic capital now just collapsing in terms of population, numbers, really no longer having importance because literally its food supply is cut off by losing those areas of the empire. And of course, the capital… Constantine had founded a new second capital at what used to be Byzantium, a Greek city on the Bosporus, which becomes Constantinople. He names it not very modestly after himself, and that now is really the dominant city for any of the Roman Empire’s eastern or western.
Lex Fridman
So if you’re actually living in that century, the 5th century, it’s kind of like the Western Roman Empire dies with a whimper. It’s not like-
So if you’re actually living in that century, the 5th century, it’s kind of like the Western Roman Empire dies with a whimper. It’s not like-
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
It’s a bunch of strife.
It’s a bunch of strife.
Gregory Aldrete
There’s a lot of moments you can pick. There’s an earlier one in the 300s when the Romans lose a big battle to some barbarians that symbolically is important. But yeah, I don’t think there’s one clear cut moment. And again, I don’t know that it is the barbarians that cause, quote, “the fall of the Roman Empire.” I mean, this is the other game as people like to say, “When did the Roman Empire fall?” The other big question is why. Why did the Roman Empire fall? If you define it as falling. And I mean, barbarian invasions was the traditional answer. So there’s a French historian famously said, “The Roman Empire didn’t fall. It was murdered.” It was killed by barbarians, but I mean there’s other explanations. I mean, some people say it was Christianity.
There’s a lot of moments you can pick. There’s an earlier one in the 300s when the Romans lose a big battle to some barbarians that symbolically is important. But yeah, I don’t think there’s one clear cut moment. And again, I don’t know that it is the barbarians that cause, quote, “the fall of the Roman Empire.” I mean, this is the other game as people like to say, “When did the Roman Empire fall?” The other big question is why. Why did the Roman Empire fall? If you define it as falling. And I mean, barbarian invasions was the traditional answer. So there’s a French historian famously said, “The Roman Empire didn’t fall. It was murdered.” It was killed by barbarians, but I mean there’s other explanations. I mean, some people say it was Christianity.
Some say it was a climate that the Roman Empire flourished during this moment of luck when just the climate was good, and then you get this sort of late Roman little ice age and everything goes downhill and that’s what caused it. There’s some that say things like disease. There were a whole series of waves of plague that started to hit under Marcus Aurelius and continued after him, which seemed to have caused real serious death and economic disruption. I mean, that’s a decent explanation. Another popular one is moral decline, which I don’t think really works well. You even get the people saying lead poisoning, but that’s not true because they were drinking out of the same pipes when the empire was expanding, right?
Lex Fridman
Yeah, that’s fascinating. That’s fascinating. But often, we kind of agree that’s something that you’ve talked about quite a bit is the military perspective is the one that defines the rise and fall of empires. You have a really great lecture series called The Decisive Battles of World History, which is another fascinating perspective to look at world history. What makes a battle decisive?
Yeah, that’s fascinating. That’s fascinating. But often, we kind of agree that’s something that you’ve talked about quite a bit is the military perspective is the one that defines the rise and fall of empires. You have a really great lecture series called The Decisive Battles of World History, which is another fascinating perspective to look at world history. What makes a battle decisive?
Gregory Aldrete
The easiest definition is it causes an immediate change in political structure. So who’s in charge? So the classic decisive political battle is Alexander beats King Darius III at the Battle of Gaugamela. And in that moment, we switch from the ruler of the entire huge Persian empire being Darius to now being Alexander, from it being Persian to being controlled by the Macedonians. So there is a one afternoon has this dramatic switch over a enormous geographic area, so that’s a decisive battle and that you see that immediate change.
The easiest definition is it causes an immediate change in political structure. So who’s in charge? So the classic decisive political battle is Alexander beats King Darius III at the Battle of Gaugamela. And in that moment, we switch from the ruler of the entire huge Persian empire being Darius to now being Alexander, from it being Persian to being controlled by the Macedonians. So there is a one afternoon has this dramatic switch over a enormous geographic area, so that’s a decisive battle and that you see that immediate change.
Other types of decisive battles are ones that might have more unforeseen long-term effects. You may not realize this is decisive at the time, but from a longer perspective it is. And often, those are ones that either allow some new people or idea or institution to either grow or have its growth curbed. So at various points, we have empires that were expanding and basically were stopped at some battle. And so you say, “Well, if they been stopped there, they might have gone on to dominate this whole area.” Or conversely, you could say, “Rome wasn’t…” They were one place before the second Punic War. After the second Punic War, they were its dominant force. So you could pick one of those battles and say that was decisive in setting them on this new path.
Lex Fridman
It’s also an opportunity to demonstrate a new technology. And if that technology is effective, it changes history because that was either tactical or literally the technology used. So how important is technology, that technological advantage in war?
It’s also an opportunity to demonstrate a new technology. And if that technology is effective, it changes history because that was either tactical or literally the technology used. So how important is technology, that technological advantage in war?
Gregory Aldrete
Huge. I mean, the history of warfare is basically the history of technological change often. So I mean, there’s all the great moments of transition. For a long time, we fought with hand-to-hand, with metal weapons, then you start to have the gunpowder revolution, which causes all sorts of shifts there. There’s big changes. Planes, when they become a huge force. I mean, World War II is this crazy time where planes go from literally biplanes, string and wood, to jets four years later, so that’s this moment of incredibly fast technological change. Going into World War II, everybody thinks it’s all about battleships. Who’s got the biggest battleships? Four years later, battleships are just junk. Let’s just scrap them. It’s all about aircraft carriers and that’s everything war at sea. So you have these moments of, particularly in warfare, almost accelerated technological change where things happen very rapidly and the civilization or the nation or the army that adapts more quickly to the new technology will often be the one that wins, and we’ve seen that story over and over and over again in
Huge. I mean, the history of warfare is basically the history of technological change often. So I mean, there’s all the great moments of transition. For a long time, we fought with hand-to-hand, with metal weapons, then you start to have the gunpowder revolution, which causes all sorts of shifts there. There’s big changes. Planes, when they become a huge force. I mean, World War II is this crazy time where planes go from literally biplanes, string and wood, to jets four years later, so that’s this moment of incredibly fast technological change. Going into World War II, everybody thinks it’s all about battleships. Who’s got the biggest battleships? Four years later, battleships are just junk. Let’s just scrap them. It’s all about aircraft carriers and that’s everything war at sea. So you have these moments of, particularly in warfare, almost accelerated technological change where things happen very rapidly and the civilization or the nation or the army that adapts more quickly to the new technology will often be the one that wins, and we’ve seen that story over and over and over again in
Lex Fridman
It’s also interesting how much geography that you mentioned a few times affects wars, the result of wars, the rise and fall of empires, all of it. As silly as it is, it’s not the people or the technology, it’s like sometimes literally that there’s rivers.
It’s also interesting how much geography that you mentioned a few times affects wars, the result of wars, the rise and fall of empires, all of it. As silly as it is, it’s not the people or the technology, it’s like sometimes literally that there’s rivers.
Gregory Aldrete
I think there’s a real geographic determinism to civilization itself. I mean, if you look at where civilization arose, it’s in Mesopotamia and sort of a swampy land between two rivers. It’s in the Nile River Delta where the same situation, it’s in the Indus River where you have the same thing, and it’s along the Yellow Rivers and the Yangtze Rivers where it’s the same thing. So I mean, that is geographically determined where those great civilizations of Asia or Europe are going to arise. It’s very much determined by that. And often, the course of history has that strong geographical determination. I mean, you can argue that all of Ancient Egyptian society is based around the cycle of the Nile flood because it was so predictable and everything depended on it, and their whole religion actually develops around that.
I think there’s a real geographic determinism to civilization itself. I mean, if you look at where civilization arose, it’s in Mesopotamia and sort of a swampy land between two rivers. It’s in the Nile River Delta where the same situation, it’s in the Indus River where you have the same thing, and it’s along the Yellow Rivers and the Yangtze Rivers where it’s the same thing. So I mean, that is geographically determined where those great civilizations of Asia or Europe are going to arise. It’s very much determined by that. And often, the course of history has that strong geographical determination. I mean, you can argue that all of Ancient Egyptian society is based around the cycle of the Nile flood because it was so predictable and everything depended on it, and their whole religion actually develops around that.
And Mesopotamia the same thing, the way their religion develops is a reaction to the particular geographic environment that those people grew up in. So that’s a very profound influence on civilization. One of my professors once said to me, “The best map of the Roman Empire isn’t any of these maps with political borders. It would be a map that shows the zone in which it’s possible to cultivate olives.” So if you simply get a map and map onto it where you could grow olives during this time, let’s say, 1st century AD, it corresponds exactly, I mean really closely, to the areas that are most heavily Romanized. Now, I’m not going to say that, but there is something to that where Roman culture spread successfully is where people grow the same crops. And that’s just one of those fundamental things.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. I mean, you so beautifully put that the perspective can change dramatically how you see history, I mean, you could probably tell world history through what? Through olives, cinnamon and gold.
Yeah. I mean, you so beautifully put that the perspective can change dramatically how you see history, I mean, you could probably tell world history through what? Through olives, cinnamon and gold.
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah, that’s become really trendy is to look at history through objects. And I mean, for the Romans, diet is huge. I mean, probably 80% of the people in the Roman world ate basically a diet of olive oil, wine, and wheat, right? That those three crops are the basic crops that they subsisted on. And just the way you have to grow those crops, where you grow them, that dictates so much about culture, and the Romans saw it that way. One of my favorite documents from the ancient world… And they define civilization that way. So the Romans civilized people ate those crops and non-civilized people ate different food.
Yeah, that’s become really trendy is to look at history through objects. And I mean, for the Romans, diet is huge. I mean, probably 80% of the people in the Roman world ate basically a diet of olive oil, wine, and wheat, right? That those three crops are the basic crops that they subsisted on. And just the way you have to grow those crops, where you grow them, that dictates so much about culture, and the Romans saw it that way. One of my favorite documents from the ancient world… And they define civilization that way. So the Romans civilized people ate those crops and non-civilized people ate different food.
Decisive battles
So there’s this letter from a Greek, who was serving as an administrator in the Roman government, and he gets posted to Germany, to the far north. And he writes these pathetic letters back home to his family saying, “The inhabitants here lead the most wretched existence of all mankind for they cultivate no olives, and they grow no grapes.” So to him, that was hell, being posted to an area where they eat these terrible foreign foods.
And of course, the cliche for the Romans of what barbarians eat is red meat. They’re herders, so they’re not farmers, but they follow herds of cow around, which a totally different lifestyle. They eat dairy products, and they drink beer. And I tell my students sometimes that if you were to stick a Roman in a time machine and send them to where we live, which I teach in Wisconsin, Green Bay, Wisconsin, that Roman would step out, look around, see all the beer, the brats, and the cheese, say, “I know who you guys are. You’re barbarians.
Lex Fridman
Barbarians. That’s another way to draw the boundary between olive oil, wine, wheat, and meat, dairy, and beer.
Barbarians. That’s another way to draw the boundary between olive oil, wine, wheat, and meat, dairy, and beer.
Gregory Aldrete
But it’s more fundamental because it’s different forms of life because if you’re a farmer, you grow certain crops. And if you’re a farmer, you tend to stay in one place. You tend to build cities. If you’re following herds of cows around, you don’t build cities, you have a totally different lifestyle. So it’s diet, but it’s more fundamental underlying things about your entire culture.
But it’s more fundamental because it’s different forms of life because if you’re a farmer, you grow certain crops. And if you’re a farmer, you tend to stay in one place. You tend to build cities. If you’re following herds of cows around, you don’t build cities, you have a totally different lifestyle. So it’s diet, but it’s more fundamental underlying things about your entire culture.
Lex Fridman
And many of the barbarians were nomadic tribes.
And many of the barbarians were nomadic tribes.
Gregory Aldrete
Some of them are, yeah, definitely.
Some of them are, yeah, definitely.
Lex Fridman
Fascinating. I mean, this is just yet another fascinating way to-
Fascinating. I mean, this is just yet another fascinating way to-
Gregory Aldrete
It’s dietary determinism, geographic determinism. Yeah, these things are big.
It’s dietary determinism, geographic determinism. Yeah, these things are big.
Lex Fridman
On the topic of war, it may be a ridiculous span of time and scale, but how do you think the world wars of the 20th century compare to the wars that we’ve been talking about of the Roman Empire, of Greece, and so on?
On the topic of war, it may be a ridiculous span of time and scale, but how do you think the world wars of the 20th century compare to the wars that we’ve been talking about of the Roman Empire, of Greece, and so on?
Gregory Aldrete
I mean, what’s interesting about some of the Roman civil wars, particularly, is that they are world wars at the time. So let’s take the war after the assassination of Julius Caesar. We’ve talked about that one a lot. That was fought. There were battles there fought in Spain, in North Africa, in Greece, in Egypt, in Italy. I mean, truly across the entire breadth of the Mediterranean involving at least seven or eight different factions of Romans, and that was the world to them.
I mean, what’s interesting about some of the Roman civil wars, particularly, is that they are world wars at the time. So let’s take the war after the assassination of Julius Caesar. We’ve talked about that one a lot. That was fought. There were battles there fought in Spain, in North Africa, in Greece, in Egypt, in Italy. I mean, truly across the entire breadth of the Mediterranean involving at least seven or eight different factions of Romans, and that was the world to them.
I mean, that’s very similar in a way to our modern world wars where this was a global conflict, at least as they envisioned the world they knew of. And if we sort of, I don’t know, somehow factor for transportation time, I mean, I think you can argue that that was a bigger war than World War II. In World War II, if you hopped on a plane, you could get from the US to China in a week or something, right? In little hops. I mean, in the ancient world, if you wanted to go from Spain to Egypt, it would take you a month. So they were fighting across a larger space- time zone in terms of their technology to move, then World War II took place across.
Lex Fridman
So in a sense, World War II was quite contained.
So in a sense, World War II was quite contained.
Gregory Aldrete
Smaller. Yeah. I mean, if we adjust for that sort of factor, so that was a global war, I think that would be very familiar.
Smaller. Yeah. I mean, if we adjust for that sort of factor, so that was a global war, I think that would be very familiar.
Lex Fridman
How do you think the atomic bomb, nuclear weapons changed war?
How do you think the atomic bomb, nuclear weapons changed war?
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah. I mean, that’s the now we can destroy the world and truly kind of destroy civilizations wholesale, and that does seem to be a new thing. I mean, no matter what the Romans did, they didn’t have that choice, that ability to think, “I can do something that will end life as we know it at least, on the planet,” and that’s a very different perspective. And I think weird and interesting moment right now, I mean, I’m getting way beyond ancient history here, but for a long time, we had this sort of stasis with the nuclear standoff, with mutually assured destruction between the US sort of block of nations and the Soviet ones, and it worked. Now, we’re entering this kind of time when a lot more countries are going to start becoming nuclear capable. We might have a resurgence of just building new weapons, platforms with China, seems very eager to expand their nuclear arsenal in all sorts of ways. So it’s unnerving time, let’s say, right now.
Yeah. I mean, that’s the now we can destroy the world and truly kind of destroy civilizations wholesale, and that does seem to be a new thing. I mean, no matter what the Romans did, they didn’t have that choice, that ability to think, “I can do something that will end life as we know it at least, on the planet,” and that’s a very different perspective. And I think weird and interesting moment right now, I mean, I’m getting way beyond ancient history here, but for a long time, we had this sort of stasis with the nuclear standoff, with mutually assured destruction between the US sort of block of nations and the Soviet ones, and it worked. Now, we’re entering this kind of time when a lot more countries are going to start becoming nuclear capable. We might have a resurgence of just building new weapons, platforms with China, seems very eager to expand their nuclear arsenal in all sorts of ways. So it’s unnerving time, let’s say, right now.
Lex Fridman
And it’s a terrifying experiment to find out if nuclear weapons… When a lot of nations have nuclear weapons, is that going to enforce civility and peace, or is it actually going to be a destabilizing and ultimately civilization destroying?
And it’s a terrifying experiment to find out if nuclear weapons… When a lot of nations have nuclear weapons, is that going to enforce civility and peace, or is it actually going to be a destabilizing and ultimately civilization destroying?
Gregory Aldrete
Right. I mean, it was weirdly stable when it was a bipolar world where you had just sort of those two blocks. Now with a multipolar world with access to these weapons, I don’t know. I mean, we’re kind of jumping out of the ancient world, but I’ll tell you one thing that’s always fascinated me in this sort of comparison of ancient/ modern is how people don’t learn the lessons of the past in military history. And the very specific example, that in my lifetime I’ve seen play out twice, is just certain places people make the same mistakes over and over again. So a nice example is Afghanistan or roughly that sort of northern Pakistan-slash-into-what-is-Afghanistan. I mean, that is a geographic region that over and over again, the best most sophisticated armies in the world have invaded and have met horrible failure.
Right. I mean, it was weirdly stable when it was a bipolar world where you had just sort of those two blocks. Now with a multipolar world with access to these weapons, I don’t know. I mean, we’re kind of jumping out of the ancient world, but I’ll tell you one thing that’s always fascinated me in this sort of comparison of ancient/ modern is how people don’t learn the lessons of the past in military history. And the very specific example, that in my lifetime I’ve seen play out twice, is just certain places people make the same mistakes over and over again. So a nice example is Afghanistan or roughly that sort of northern Pakistan-slash-into-what-is-Afghanistan. I mean, that is a geographic region that over and over again, the best most sophisticated armies in the world have invaded and have met horrible failure.
And that goes all the way back to Alexander the Great tried to conquer that area. The Mongols tried to do it. The Huns tried to do it. The Mughals tried to do it. Victorian Britain tried to do it. The Russians tried to do it. The Americans tried to do it. And they made the very same mistakes over and over and over again. And the two mistakes are not understanding the terrain, that it’s a rocky mountainous area that people can always hide in caves. And it’s not understanding the fundamentally tribal nature of that area that that’s where the real allegiance is in these tribes. It’s not in a centralized government. And that’s the same era Alexander made, as the British made in the 19th century, as the Russians, as the Americans. And it’s so depressing as a historian who studies history to see these things being repeated over and over again and you know exactly what’s going to happen.
Lex Fridman
For leaders not to be learning lessons of history. You co-wrote a book precisely on this topic, The Long Shadow of Antiquity: What have the Greeks and Romans Done For Us? What are the some key elements of antiquity that are reflected in the modern world?
For leaders not to be learning lessons of history. You co-wrote a book precisely on this topic, The Long Shadow of Antiquity: What have the Greeks and Romans Done For Us? What are the some key elements of antiquity that are reflected in the modern world?
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah. It’s a book that my wife and I wrote together, and it is trying to make people understand how deeply rooted are current actions in almost every way. Even things that we think are just truly unique parts of our culture or things that we think are just innate to human nature or actually rooted in the past. So this is another power of the past thing, and this is just a long specific list of examples really. So I mean, we go through government and education and intellectual stuff and art and architecture and a lot of the things we’ve been talking about today, language, culture, medicine. But even things like habits, the way we celebrate things, the way we get married. Our married rituals have all sorts of things in common with Roman weddings.
Yeah. It’s a book that my wife and I wrote together, and it is trying to make people understand how deeply rooted are current actions in almost every way. Even things that we think are just truly unique parts of our culture or things that we think are just innate to human nature or actually rooted in the past. So this is another power of the past thing, and this is just a long specific list of examples really. So I mean, we go through government and education and intellectual stuff and art and architecture and a lot of the things we’ve been talking about today, language, culture, medicine. But even things like habits, the way we celebrate things, the way we get married. Our married rituals have all sorts of things in common with Roman weddings.
Lex Fridman
The calendar.
The calendar.
Gregory Aldrete
The calendar, the words, we’re using Julius Caesar’s calendar. I mean, Pope Gregory did one tiny little twist, but Caesar’s the one who basically came up with our current calendar with 365 days, 12 months, leap years, all that. So we’re living law. There’s just no way to escape the power of the past. And what I believe very ardently is that you can’t make good decisions in the present, and you can’t make good decisions about the future without understanding the past. And that’s not just true with your own life, but it’s in understanding others. So it’s not only your own past you have to understand, but you have to understand other people, what’s influencing them. So you can’t interact with others unless you understand where they’re coming from. And the answer to where they’re coming from is where they came from and what shaped them and what forces affect them. So I think it’s absolutely vital to have some understanding of the past in order to make competent decisions in the present.
The calendar, the words, we’re using Julius Caesar’s calendar. I mean, Pope Gregory did one tiny little twist, but Caesar’s the one who basically came up with our current calendar with 365 days, 12 months, leap years, all that. So we’re living law. There’s just no way to escape the power of the past. And what I believe very ardently is that you can’t make good decisions in the present, and you can’t make good decisions about the future without understanding the past. And that’s not just true with your own life, but it’s in understanding others. So it’s not only your own past you have to understand, but you have to understand other people, what’s influencing them. So you can’t interact with others unless you understand where they’re coming from. And the answer to where they’re coming from is where they came from and what shaped them and what forces affect them. So I think it’s absolutely vital to have some understanding of the past in order to make competent decisions in the present.
Lex Fridman
What are some of the problems when we try to gain lessons from history and look back? We’ve spoken about them a bit, the bias of the historian, maybe what are the problems in studying history and how do we avoid them?
What are some of the problems when we try to gain lessons from history and look back? We’ve spoken about them a bit, the bias of the historian, maybe what are the problems in studying history and how do we avoid them?
Gregory Aldrete
Probably the biggest problems are the sources themselves, the incompleteness of them, and this gets more intense the farther back we go in time.
Probably the biggest problems are the sources themselves, the incompleteness of them, and this gets more intense the farther back we go in time.
Lex Fridman
Yes.
Yes.
Gregory Aldrete
So if you say, “I want to write a book about the 19th century,” there is more material available for almost any topic you want to pick than you could possibly go through in your lifetime. If you say, “I want to write a book about the Roman world,” this is a very different thing. In my office, I have a bookshelf that’s, I don’t know, eight feet high, 10 feet wide, and it contains pretty much all the main surviving Greek and Roman literary texts, okay?
So if you say, “I want to write a book about the 19th century,” there is more material available for almost any topic you want to pick than you could possibly go through in your lifetime. If you say, “I want to write a book about the Roman world,” this is a very different thing. In my office, I have a bookshelf that’s, I don’t know, eight feet high, 10 feet wide, and it contains pretty much all the main surviving Greek and Roman literary texts, okay?
Lex Fridman
Wow.
Wow.
Gregory Aldrete
One bookshelf, it’s a big bookshelf, but that’s what we use to interpret this world. Now, there’s a lot of other types of texts. There’s papyri. There’s all sorts of things. There’re inscriptions. There’s archaeological evidence, so there’s other stuff, but honestly, 99% of things about the world I study are lost. So then you get into all the issues is what we have surviving a representative example. We know it’s not. For example, all the literary texts are written by one tiny group, elite males. So that’s a problem there. There’s the problem of bias. We know that they’re not necessarily telling us the truth. They have an agenda. They’re representing history in a certain way to achieve certain things, then there’s the problem of transmission. I mean, all those texts are copies of copies of copies of copies, and everybody knows that game, where you whisper sentence to someone and then go around the room, are you going to get that same sentence back?
One bookshelf, it’s a big bookshelf, but that’s what we use to interpret this world. Now, there’s a lot of other types of texts. There’s papyri. There’s all sorts of things. There’re inscriptions. There’s archaeological evidence, so there’s other stuff, but honestly, 99% of things about the world I study are lost. So then you get into all the issues is what we have surviving a representative example. We know it’s not. For example, all the literary texts are written by one tiny group, elite males. So that’s a problem there. There’s the problem of bias. We know that they’re not necessarily telling us the truth. They have an agenda. They’re representing history in a certain way to achieve certain things, then there’s the problem of transmission. I mean, all those texts are copies of copies of copies of copies, and everybody knows that game, where you whisper sentence to someone and then go around the room, are you going to get that same sentence back?
Well, every ancient text we have has gone through that process. So this is a real problem, and that’s just with the sources. And this is the historic era. When you move back just a little earlier to the prehistoric era or to civilizations that don’t have written sources surviving. And some of these are ancient Mediterranean ones. I mean, anything goes. I mean, one of the jokes is that museums, archaeological museums, are full of objects which are labeled cult object. It’s some religious object. And I think the honest label that should be on that thing is we have no idea what the hell this is, but I want to believe it’s something important. So I’m going to say it’s a religious object, but in reality, it’s an ancient toilet paper roll holder or something. And it’s a huge problem when you try to interpret a civilization without written texts.
And my favorite little story that kind of illustrates this is, in the 19th century, this German who had gone to school in England, one of the best educated guys of his time, goes to North Africa and is poking around in the desert. And he finds this site with these huge stone monoliths, 10 feet tall in pairs, and there’s a lintel stone across the top, so sort of two posts with a stone across the top, and there’s a big stone in front of them too. And so he looks at this stuff and he says, “Well, what does this remind me of?” It reminds me of Stonehenge, right? And there’s even a site where there’s multiple of these kind of in a square. So he goes back and talks about this and an Englishman goes and studies them, and he finds a ton of these sites and he finds some of them where there’s 17 of these pairs.
And so he goes back, and he writes a whole book about how clearly the Celtic peoples who once lived in Britain came originally from North Africa because he’s found this site and he reconstructs the religion where obviously they practice religious rituals here, and they had rites of passage. They squeezed between the things and the altar stones have this basin. So they had blood sacrifice and all this, and it seemed reasonable. And then you ask some locals, “Well, what’s that stuff out in the desert there?” And they mean, “Oh, the old Roman olive oil factory.” And those are the remains of an olive press, and we’re back to olives. I keep dwelling on olives. Olives don’t grow in England or Germany. So this is cultural bias. If all you have is physical evidence, you’re going to interpret that evidence through your own cultural biases.
So if you’re an Englishman and you see big stone uprights like this, you’re going to think Stonehenge. If you’re from the Mediterranean, you’re going to think olive press. So that’s a salutary example I think of the dangers of interpreting physical evidence when you don’t have written evidence to go along with it. And think today, if our civilization were to blow up in a nuclear war and archaeologists were to dig this up, how might they misinterpret things? I mean, if they were to dig up a college dorm like where I work, and that’s what you had for the civilization. You’d probably go in the dorm rooms, you’d find all these little rooms, and maybe in every room you’d find this mysterious plastic disc. And so everybody has these, so it must be a cult object. And it’s round. So obviously, they’re sun worshipers. And if you can decipher the inscription, you’ll see that obviously they all worship the great sun god Wham-O. It’s like, what do you find in every dorm room? A Frisbee. So that’s the level of interpretation you have to beware of. And there’s examples, where we’ve done exactly this.
Lex Fridman
So we have to have intellectual humility when we look back into the past. But hopefully, if you have that without coming up with really strong narratives, if you look at a large variety of evidence, you can start to construct a picture that somewhat rhymes with the truth.
So we have to have intellectual humility when we look back into the past. But hopefully, if you have that without coming up with really strong narratives, if you look at a large variety of evidence, you can start to construct a picture that somewhat rhymes with the truth.
Gregory Aldrete
Yes. I mean, as a professional historian, that’s what you do. You attempt to reconstruct an image of the past that is faithful to the evidence you have as filtered through what you can perceive of both the biases and the problems of the source material and your own biases. And it’s a interpretation, it’s a reconstruction, but it’s a lot like science, where you’re in a process of constantly reevaluating it, and saying, “Okay, here’s some new evidence. How do I work this into the picture? How do I now adjust it?” And that’s what’s fun.
Yes. I mean, as a professional historian, that’s what you do. You attempt to reconstruct an image of the past that is faithful to the evidence you have as filtered through what you can perceive of both the biases and the problems of the source material and your own biases. And it’s a interpretation, it’s a reconstruction, but it’s a lot like science, where you’re in a process of constantly reevaluating it, and saying, “Okay, here’s some new evidence. How do I work this into the picture? How do I now adjust it?” And that’s what’s fun.
I mean, it’s a mystery. It’s you’re being a detective and trying to reconstruct and to understand a society. It’s even more fun where it’s, yeah, you have to try to empathize. Empathy is a great human thing, to empathize with people who are not yourself, and we should do this all the time with just the people we encounter. But this is what we’re doing with ancient civilizations. And as I talked about earlier, sometimes you’ll feel great sympathy there. Sometimes you’ll feel incomprehension. But by being aware of both of those, you can maybe begin to get some grasp, however tentative, on the truth as you might perceive it,
Lex Fridman
To ask a ridiculous question. When our time, you and I, we together become ancient history, when historians, let’s say, 2, 3, 4,000 years from now, look back at our time, and you try to look at the details and reconstruct from that the big picture, what was going on, what do you think they’ll say?
To ask a ridiculous question. When our time, you and I, we together become ancient history, when historians, let’s say, 2, 3, 4,000 years from now, look back at our time, and you try to look at the details and reconstruct from that the big picture, what was going on, what do you think they’ll say?
Gregory Aldrete
I would guess it’ll be something that’s actually more of a commentary on whatever’s going on at that point than on the reality of us because that’s what we tend to do. I’ll tell you what I’d like to have them say, is to say, “In this civilization, I can detect progress,” that they have advanced in some way, whether kind of in moral terms or in self-awareness, or have learned from what’s come before. I mean, that’s all you can try and do is do a little bit better than whatever came before you to look back at what happened and try to do something. Livy, I mean, one of the great Roman historians, the beginning of his work, A History of Rome, which is this massive thing, he says, “The utility and the purpose of history is this. It provides you an infinite variety of experiences and models, noble things to imitate and shameful things to avoid.” And I think he’s right.
I would guess it’ll be something that’s actually more of a commentary on whatever’s going on at that point than on the reality of us because that’s what we tend to do. I’ll tell you what I’d like to have them say, is to say, “In this civilization, I can detect progress,” that they have advanced in some way, whether kind of in moral terms or in self-awareness, or have learned from what’s come before. I mean, that’s all you can try and do is do a little bit better than whatever came before you to look back at what happened and try to do something. Livy, I mean, one of the great Roman historians, the beginning of his work, A History of Rome, which is this massive thing, he says, “The utility and the purpose of history is this. It provides you an infinite variety of experiences and models, noble things to imitate and shameful things to avoid.” And I think he’s right.
Lex Fridman
And they would perhaps be better at highlighting which shameful things we started avoiding and which noble things we started imitating. With the perspective of history, they’ll be able to identify or maybe with the bias of the historians of the time. Well, in that grand perspective, what gives you hope about our future as a humanity, as a civilization?
And they would perhaps be better at highlighting which shameful things we started avoiding and which noble things we started imitating. With the perspective of history, they’ll be able to identify or maybe with the bias of the historians of the time. Well, in that grand perspective, what gives you hope about our future as a humanity, as a civilization?
Gregory Aldrete
We have curiosity. I think curiosity is a great thing that you want to learn something new. I think the human impulse to want to learn new stuff is one of our best characteristics. And at least up to this point, what makes us special is the ability to store up an accumulation of knowledge and to pass that knowledge on to the next generation. I mean, that’s really all we are. We’re the accumulation of the knowledge of infinite generations that’ve come before us. And everything we do is based on that. Otherwise, we’d all just be starting ground zero kind of just from the beginning. So our ability to store up knowledge and pass it on, I think is our special power as human beings. And I think our curiosity is what keeps us going forward.
We have curiosity. I think curiosity is a great thing that you want to learn something new. I think the human impulse to want to learn new stuff is one of our best characteristics. And at least up to this point, what makes us special is the ability to store up an accumulation of knowledge and to pass that knowledge on to the next generation. I mean, that’s really all we are. We’re the accumulation of the knowledge of infinite generations that’ve come before us. And everything we do is based on that. Otherwise, we’d all just be starting ground zero kind of just from the beginning. So our ability to store up knowledge and pass it on, I think is our special power as human beings. And I think our curiosity is what keeps us going forward.
Lex Fridman
I agree. And for that, I thank you for being one of the most wonderful examples of that, of you, yourself, being a curious being and emanating that throughout, and inspiring a lot of other people to be curious by being out there in the world and teaching. So thank you for that and thank you for talking today.
I agree. And for that, I thank you for being one of the most wonderful examples of that, of you, yourself, being a curious being and emanating that throughout, and inspiring a lot of other people to be curious by being out there in the world and teaching. So thank you for that and thank you for talking today.
Gregory Aldrete
No, I enjoyed it. It’s fun. I obviously like talking about this stuff.
No, I enjoyed it. It’s fun. I obviously like talking about this stuff.
Hope
Lex Fridman
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Gregory Aldrete. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from Julius Caesar, “I came, I saw, I conquered.” Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Gregory Aldrete. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from Julius Caesar, “I came, I saw, I conquered.” Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
Transcript for Donald Trump Interview | Lex Fridman Podcast #442
This is a transcript of Lex Fridman Podcast #442 with Donald Trump.
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Talent wise, sometimes you can’t tell the difference in talent. But at the end of a weekend, they seem to win and it’s very interesting. As an example, Tiger or Jack Nicklaus, he was a phenomenal winner and he does have a different way about him and Tiger has a different way about him and Michael Jordan. There’s never one, you would think that there’d be one way. Arnold Palmer was the nicest guy you’d ever meet. And then you have some champions that aren’t really nice, they’re just focused on doing their job. So there’s not one type of person. But the one thing I would say that everybody seems to have in common is they’re very driven. They’re driven beyond.
The whole plane of platform is changing a lot. It’s changed a lot in the last two, three years. But from a political standpoint, you have to find out what people are doing, what they’re watching and you have to get on. I just see that these platforms are starting to dominate, they’re getting very big numbers. I did Spaces with Elon and they got numbers like nobody’s ever heard before. So you wouldn’t do that on radio, you wouldn’t do those numbers, no matter how good a show, you wouldn’t do those numbers on radio, you wouldn’t do on television.
Now, if you talked about people in the business and politics going into business, likewise, that wouldn’t generally work out so well either. It’s different talents, it’s different. I have somebody that wants to go into politics so bad, but he’s got a little problem, he’s got stage fright. Now, he’s a total killer, but if he gets up onto a stage in front of people, he doesn’t do well, to put it mildly actually. He does badly.
They lie about the numbers. They try and keep them low. They knock down a building that’s two blocks long, these are big buildings and they say one person was mildly injured. No, no, a lot of people were killed. And there are people in those buildings and they have no chance. Once they start coming down, there’s no chance. So that’s a war that absolutely has to get done. And then you have Israel and then you have a lot of other places that are talking war. The world is a rough place right now and a lot of it’s because of the fact that America has no leadership. And I believe that she’ll be probably worse than Biden. I watched the interview the other night, it was just a softball interview.
And there’s a great possibility of World War III and we better get this thing done fast because five months with people like her and him, he’s checked out, he just goes to the beach and thinks he looks good in a bathing suit, which he doesn’t, he’s sort of checked out. Hey look, you can’t blame him. That was a coup, they took it over. They took over the presidential deal. The whole presidential thing was taken over in a coup. He had 14 million votes. He had no votes, not one. And nobody thought it was going to be her. Nobody wanted it to be her. She was a joke until six weeks ago when they said we’re going to have to, politically, they felt they had to pick her. And if they didn’t pick her, they thought there would be a problem. I don’t know if that’s right or not. I actually don’t think it’s right, but they thought it was right. And now, immediately the press comes to their aid.
But we have people coming in from other countries all over the world, not just South America, and they’re coming in from prisons and jails. They’re coming in from mental institutions and insane asylums and they’re street criminals right off the street. They take them and they’re being given to our country, drug dealers, human traffickers. We’re destroying our country. This is a sin what’s been allowed to take place over the last four years. We’re our country. And we’ll see how that all works out, but it’s not even believable. And now you see, you saw in Aurora, Colorado, a group of very tough young thugs from Venezuela taking over big areas including buildings. They’re taking over buildings. They have their big rifles, but they’re taking over buildings.
We’re not going to let this happen. We’re not going to let them destroy a country. And in those countries,, crime is way down, they’re taking them out of their prisons, which is good because good for them. I do the same thing. By the way, if I ran one of those countries, any country in the world, I would make sure that America has every one of our prisoners, every one of our criminals would be here. I can’t believe they’re going so slowly, but some are. But they all are doing it and we can’t let that happen. They’re emptying out their prisons and their mental institutions into the United States of America. We can’t let that happen.
And very sad, very sad. And we were there for a long time. I was going to get out. We were getting ready to get out. Then we got interrupted by the election, but we would’ve been out with dignity and strength. We were having very little problem with the Taliban when I was there, because they knew it was going to be tough. I dealt with Abdul. Abdul was the leader, and we got along fine. He understood, but they were shooting, they were killing a lot of our people before I came down. And when I got there, I spoke to him, I said, “You can’t do it. Don’t do it anymore.” We went 18 months before this happened, this horrible day happened. We went 18 months and nobody was shot at or killed.
And I won the election, I think because of the border. Our border is 25 times worse right now than it was in 2016. I had it fixed too. I had it the last week of the famous chart that I put up was exactly that, you know the chart. When I looked to the right, I said, “There’s the chart.” Bing. That was not a pleasant experience, but the chart that I put up said, and that was done by border patrol. That was the lowest number that we’ve ever had come into our country in recorded history and we have to get it back to that again. We will.
But one of the worst was two days ago. I went to Arlington at the request of people that lost their children. They’ll always be children to those people. You understand that. That’s not politically incorrect thing to say. The mother comes up, “I lost my child,” but the child is a soldier. And lost the child, because of Biden and because of Kamala, just as though they had the gun in their hand, because it was so badly handled. It should have been done at Bagram, which is the big air base. It shouldn’t have been done at a small little airport right in the middle of town where people stormed it. It was a true disaster and they asked me if I’d come and celebrate with them. Three years. Three years. They died three years ago.
And I said, “I’m going to try.” I got to know them, because I brought them here, actually. One night they almost all came here and they said, “I wonder if Trump will actually come and see us?” I heard they were here. I came. We stayed for four hours listening to music up on a deck, right upstairs. Beautiful. And they were great people. So they called me over the last couple of weeks and they said, “We’re going to have a reunion, our three-year reunion.”
As an example, you interview a lot of people, good people, successful people. Let’s see how you do with this interview versus them. I can tell you right now you’re going to get the highest numbers you’ve ever had by sometimes a factor of 10. But when a Gold Star Family asks me to come in and spend time with them, and then they said, sir… We did a ceremony. And then we went down to the graves, which was quite a distance away. They said, “Sir, would you come to the grave?” And then they said, when we were there… It’s very sad actually because these people shouldn’t have died. They shouldn’t have died. They died because of Biden and because of Kamala, they died because just like if they pulled the trigger. Now, I don’t know if that’s controversial to say, but I don’t think it is.
Afghanistan was the most incompetently run operation I think I’ve ever seen. Military or otherwise, they’re incompetent. But the families asked me if I’d go, I did go. Then the families said, “Could we have a picture at the tombstone of my son?” And we did. Son or daughter. There was a daughter too. And I took numerous pictures with the families. I don’t know of anybody else that was in the pictures, but they were mostly families, I guess. That was it. And then I left. I spent a lot of time with them. Then I left and I get home that night and I get a call that the Biden administration with Kamala is accusing me of using Arlington for publicity. I was in the news. Just the opposite. Just the opposite. And actually, did you see, it just came out? The families actually put out a very strong statement defending me. They said, “We asked them to be there.”
They had respect for me. They had respect for the country. I ended the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, the Russian pipeline. Nobody else could have done that. I ended it. It was done. Then Biden comes in and he approved it, so we are defending Germany in these other countries for peanuts compared to what it’s worth, and they’re paying the person we’re defending them against billions and billions of dollars for energy. I said, “How does that work?” And we had it out with them and it worked out good. And they paid hundreds of billions of dollars. Or you wouldn’t even have a NATO right now. You wouldn’t have NATO if it wasn’t for me.
They’re all hoaxes, but they have all these dishonest hoaxes just like they did in the past with, Russia, Russia, Russia. That was a hoax. The 51 different agencies or agents, that was a hoax. The whole thing was a hoax. There were so many hoaxes and scams. But I didn’t want to put her in jail, and I didn’t. And I explained it to people. They say, “Lock her up. Lock her up.” We won. I said, “We don’t want to put her in jail. We want to bring the country together. I want to bring the country together. You don’t bring the country together by putting her in jail.” But then when I got out, they went to work on me. It’s amazing. And they suffer from massive Trump derangement syndrome, TDS, and I don’t know if it’s curable from their standpoint.
And on most days, I barely feel like I know what I’m doing. But I wanted to talk a bit about how I approach these conversations. Now, each conversation is its own unique puzzle, so I can’t speak generally to how I approach these, but here it may be useful to describe how I approach conversations with world leaders, of which I hope to have many more and do a better job every time. I read a lot of history and I admire the historian perspective. As an example, I admire William Shirer, the author of many books on Hitler, including The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. He was there and lived through it and covered it objectively to the degree that one could. Academic historians, by the way, criticize him for being a poor historian because he editorialized a little too much. I think those same folks criticized Dan Carlin and his Hardcore History podcast.
I respect their criticism, but I fundamentally disagree, so in these conversations with world leaders, I try to put on my historian hat. I think in the realm of truth and public discourse, there’s a spectrum between the ephemeral and the eternal. The outraged mob and clickbait journalists are often focused on the ephemeral, the current thing, the current viral shitstormer of mockery and derision. But when the battle of the day is done, most of it will be forgotten. A few true ideas will remain, and those the historian hopes to capture. Now, this is much easier said than done. It’s not just about having the right ideals and the integrity to stick by them. It’s not even just about having the actual skill of talking, which I still think I suck at, but let’s say it’s a work in progress. You also have to make the scheduling work and set up the entirety of the environment in a way that is conducive to such a conversation.
This is hard, really hard with political and business leaders. They are usually super busy and in some cases super nervous because, well, they’ve been screwed over so many times with clickbait got you journalism, so to convince them and their team to talk for two, three, four, five hours is hard. And I do think a good conversation requires that kind of duration. And I’ve been thinking a lot about why. I don’t think it’s just about needing the actual time of three hours to cover all the content. I think the longer form with a hypothetical skilled conversationalist, relaxes things and allows people to go on tangents and to banter about the details because I-
I have reached out to Kamala Harris, but not many of the others. I probably should do a better job with that, but I’ve been doing most of this myself, all the reach out, scheduling, research prep, recording and so on. And on top of that, I very much have been suffering from imposter syndrome with a voice in my head constantly pointing out when I’m doing a shitty job. Plus a few folks graciously remind me on the internet, the very same sentiment of this aforementioned voice. All of this, while I have the option of just hiding away at MIT, programming robots and doing some cool AI research with a few grad students, or maybe joining an AI company or maybe starting my own, all these options make me truly happy. But like I said, on most days I barely know what I’m doing, so who knows what the future holds. Most importantly, I’m forever grateful for all of you for your patience and your support throughout this rollercoaster of the life I’ve been on. I love you all.
Okay, now let me go on to some of the questions that people had. I was asked by a few people to comment on Pavel Durov’s arrest and on X being banned in Brazil. Let me first briefly comment on the Durov arrest. Basic facts, Pavel Durov is CEO of Telegram, which is a messenger app that has end-to-end encryption mode. It’s not on by default, and most people don’t use the end-to-end encryption, but some do. Pavel was arrested in France on a long list of charges related to “criminal activity” carried out on the Telegram platform, and for “providing unlicensed cryptology services.” I think Telegram is indeed used for criminal activity by a small minority of its users, for example, by terrorist groups to communicate. And I think we all agree that terrorism is bad.
But here’s the problem. As the old saying goes, one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. And there are many cases in which the world unilaterally agrees who the terrorists are, but there are other cases when governments, especially authoritarian inclined governments, tend to propagandize and just call whoever’s in the opposition, whoever opposes them, terrorists. There is some room for nuance here, but, to me at this time, it seems to obviously be a power grab by government wanting to have backdoor access into every platform so they can have censorship power against the opposition. I think generally governments should stay out of censoring or even pressuring social media platforms, and I think arresting a CEO of a tech company for the things said on the platform he built is just nuts. It has a chilling effect on him, on people working at Telegram and on people working at every social media company, and also people thinking of launching a new social media company.
Same as the case of X being banned in Brazil. It’s, I think, a power grab by Alexandre de Moraes, a Supreme Court justice in Brazil. He ordered X to block certain accounts that are spreading “misinformation.” Elon and X denied the request, then de Moraes threatened to arrest X representatives in Brazil, and in response to that X pulled the representatives out of Brazil obviously to protect them. And now X, having no representatives in Brazil, apparently violates the law. Based on this de Moraes banned X in Brazil. Once again, it’s an authoritarian figure seeking censorship power over the channels of communication.
I understand that this is complicated because there are evil people in the world and part of the role of government is to protect us from those evil people. But as Benjamin Franklin said, “Those who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” It’s a trade-off, but I think in many places in the world, many governments have leaned too far away at this time from liberty.
Okay, next up I got a question on AI, which I emotionally connected with. I’ll condense it as follows. “Hello, Lex. I’m a programmer and I have a deep fear of slipping into irrelevance because I am worried that AI will soon exceed my programming skills.”
Let me first say that I relate to your fear. It’s scary to have a thing that gives you a career and gives you meaning to be taken away. For me, programming is a passion, and if not for this podcast, it would probably at least in part be my profession so I get an uncomfortable feeling every time, Claude, the LLM I use for coding at this time just writes a lot of excellent approximately correct code. I think you can make a good case that it already exceeds the skill of many programmers, at least in the same way that the collective intelligence of stack overflow exceeds the skill of many individual programmers, but in many ways it still does not. But I think eventually more and more the task, the professional programming will be one of writing natural language prompts. I think the right thing to do, and what I’m at least doing is to ride the wave of the ever improving code generating LLMs and keep transforming myself into a big picture designer versus low-level tinkerer. What I’m doing and what I recommend you do is continually switch to whatever state-of-the-art tool is for generating code. For me, currently I recently switched from VS Code to Cursor, and before that it was Emacs to VS Code switch. Cursor is this editor that’s based on VS Code that leans heavily on LLMs and integrates the co-generation really nicely into the editing process. It makes it super easy to continually use the LLMs. What I would advise and what I’m trying to do myself is to learn how to use it and to master its co-generation capabilities. I, personally, try to now allocate a significant amount of time to designing with natural language first versus writing code from scratch, so using my understanding of programming to edit the code that’s generated by the LLM versus writing it from scratch and then using the LLM to generate small parts of the code. I see it as a skill that I should develop in parallel to my programming skill.
I think this applies to many other careers too. Don’t compete with AI for your job, learn to use the AI to do that job better. But yes, it is scary in some deep human level, the threat of being replaced. But at least I think we’ll be okay.
All right, next up, I got a very nice audio message and question from a gentleman who is 27 and feeling a lot of anxiety about the future. Just recently he graduated with a bachelor’s degree and he’s thinking about going to grad school for biomedical engineering, but there is a lot of anxiety. He mentioned anxiety many times in the message. It took him an extra while to get his degree, so he mentioned he would be 32 by the time he’s done with his PhD, so it’s a big investment. But he said in his heart he feels like he’s a scientist. I think that’s the most important part of his message, of your message. By the way, I’ll figure out how to best include audio and video messages in future episodes.
Now onto the question. Thank you for telling me your story and for submitting the question. My own life story is similar to yours. I went to Drexel University for my bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate degrees, and I took a while just as you’re doing. I did a lot of non-standard things that weren’t any good for some hypothetical career I’m supposed to have. I trained and competed in Judo and Jiu Jitsu for my entire 20s, got a black belt from it. I wrote a lot, including a lot of really crappy poetry. I read a large amount of non-technical books, history, philosophy, and literature. I took courses on literature and philosophy that weren’t at all required for my computer science and electrical engineering degrees, like a course on James Joyce. I played guitar in bars around town. I took a lot of technical classes, many, for example, on theoretical computer science that were way more than were needed for the degree. I did a lot of research and I coded up a bunch of projects that didn’t directly contribute to my dissertation. It was pure curiosity and the joy of exploring.
Like you, I took the long way home, as they say, and I regret none of it. Throughout that, people around me and even people who love me wanted me to hurry up and to focus, especially because I had very little money, and so I had a sense like time was running out for me to take the needed steps towards a reasonable career. And just like you, I was filled with anxiety and I still am filled with anxiety to this day, but I think the right thing to do is not to run away from the anxiety, but to lean into it and channel it into pursuing with everything you got, the things you’re passionate about.
As you said, very importantly, in your heart you know you’re a scientist, so that’s it. You know exactly what to do. Pursue the desire to be a scientist with everything you got. Get to a good grad school, find a good advisor and do epic shit with them. And it may turn out in the end that your life will have unexpected chapters, but as long as you’re chasing dreams and goals with absolute unwavering dedication, good stuff will come of it. And also try your best to be a good person. This might be a good place to read the words If by Roger Kipling that I often return to when I feel lost and I’m looking for guidance on how to be a better man.
“If you can keep your head when all about your losing theirs and blaming it on you. If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too. If you can wait and not be tired by waiting or being lied about, don’t deal in lies or being hated, don’t give weight to hating and yet don’t look too good nor talk too wise. If you can dream and not make dreams your master. If you can think and not make thoughts your aim. If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same. If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools or watch the things you gave your life to broken and stoop and build them up with worn out tools. If you can make one heap of all your winnings and risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss and lose and start again at your beginnings and never breathe a word about your loss. If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after they’re gone and so hold on when there’s nothing in you except the will, which says to them, hold on. If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue or walk with kings nor lose the common touch. If neither foes, nor loving friends can hurt you. If all men count with you, but none too much. If you can fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of distance run, yours is the earth and everything that’s in it. And which is more, you’ll be a man, my son.”
Thank you for listening and see you next time.
Click link to jump approximately to that part in the transcript:
- 0:00 – Introduction
- 1:09 – Psychology of winning and losing
- 3:51 – Politics is a dirty game
- 5:28 – Business vs politics
- 8:04 – War in Ukraine
- 9:53 – Kamala Harris interview on CNN
- 10:36 – Trump-Harris debate
- 13:33 – China
- 15:47 – 2020 election
- 24:03 – Project 2025
- 24:52 – Marijuana
- 27:13 – Joe Rogan
- 30:54 – Division
- 38:00 – Communism and fascism
- 41:36 – Power
- 43:36 – UFOs & JFK
- 44:16 – Jeffrey Epstein
- 45:55 – Mortality and religion
- 47:25 – Lex AMA
Introduction
Lex Fridman
I don’t know if you know this, but some people call you a fascist.
I don’t know if you know this, but some people call you a fascist.
Donald Trump
Yeah, they do. So I figure it’s all right to call them a communist. Yeah, they call me a lot worse than I call them.
Yeah, they do. So I figure it’s all right to call them a communist. Yeah, they call me a lot worse than I call them.
Lex Fridman
A lot of people listening to this, myself included, that doesn’t think that Kamala is a communist.
A lot of people listening to this, myself included, that doesn’t think that Kamala is a communist.
Donald Trump
I believe you have to fight fire with fire.
I believe you have to fight fire with fire.
Lex Fridman
Politics is a dirty game.
Politics is a dirty game.
Donald Trump
It is a dirty game. That’s certainly true.
It is a dirty game. That’s certainly true.
Lex Fridman
How do you win at that game?
How do you win at that game?
Donald Trump
They suffer from massive Trump derangement syndrome, TDS, and I don’t know if it’s curable from their standpoint.
They suffer from massive Trump derangement syndrome, TDS, and I don’t know if it’s curable from their standpoint.
Lex Fridman
I think we would probably have a better world if everybody in Congress took some mushrooms perhaps?
I think we would probably have a better world if everybody in Congress took some mushrooms perhaps?
Donald Trump
First of all, medical marijuana has been amazing. I’ve had friends and I’ve had others and doctors telling me that it’s been absolutely amazing.
First of all, medical marijuana has been amazing. I’ve had friends and I’ve had others and doctors telling me that it’s been absolutely amazing.
Lex Fridman
The list of clients that went to the island has not been made public.
The list of clients that went to the island has not been made public.
Donald Trump
Yeah, it’s very interesting, isn’t it?
Yeah, it’s very interesting, isn’t it?
Lex Fridman
The following is a conversation with Donald Trump on this, the Lex Friedman Podcast.
The following is a conversation with Donald Trump on this, the Lex Friedman Podcast.
Psychology of winning and losing
Donald Trump
They’re getting smaller and smaller.
They’re getting smaller and smaller.
Lex Fridman
They’re getting smaller.
They’re getting smaller.
Donald Trump
Right?
Right?
Lex Fridman
People do respect you more when you have a big camera for some reason.
People do respect you more when you have a big camera for some reason.
Donald Trump
No, it’s cool. And about 20 guys that you pay a fortune to. Right?
No, it’s cool. And about 20 guys that you pay a fortune to. Right?
Lex Fridman
All right. Okay. You said that you love winning. And you have won a lot in life, in real estate, in business, in TV and politics. So let me start with a mindset, a psychology question. What drives you more, the love of winning or the hate of losing?
All right. Okay. You said that you love winning. And you have won a lot in life, in real estate, in business, in TV and politics. So let me start with a mindset, a psychology question. What drives you more, the love of winning or the hate of losing?
Donald Trump
Maybe equally, maybe both. I don’t like losing and I do like winning. I’ve never thought of it as to which is more of a driving force.
Maybe equally, maybe both. I don’t like losing and I do like winning. I’ve never thought of it as to which is more of a driving force.
Lex Fridman
You’ve been close with a lot of the greats in sport. You think about Tiger Woods, Muhammad Ali, you have people like Michael Jordan, who I think hate losing more than anybody. So what do you learn from those guys?
You’ve been close with a lot of the greats in sport. You think about Tiger Woods, Muhammad Ali, you have people like Michael Jordan, who I think hate losing more than anybody. So what do you learn from those guys?
Donald Trump
Well, they do have something different. The great champions have something very different, the sports champions. And you have champions in other fields, but you see it more readily in sports. You see it over a weekend or you see it during a game. And you see that certain people stand out and they keep standing out. But it’s there for you, it doesn’t take a lifetime to find out that somebody was a winner or a loser. And so the sports thing is very interesting. But I play golf with different people and there’s a different mindset among champions. There’s really a very different mindset. There’s a different thought process.
Well, they do have something different. The great champions have something very different, the sports champions. And you have champions in other fields, but you see it more readily in sports. You see it over a weekend or you see it during a game. And you see that certain people stand out and they keep standing out. But it’s there for you, it doesn’t take a lifetime to find out that somebody was a winner or a loser. And so the sports thing is very interesting. But I play golf with different people and there’s a different mindset among champions. There’s really a very different mindset. There’s a different thought process.
Talent wise, sometimes you can’t tell the difference in talent. But at the end of a weekend, they seem to win and it’s very interesting. As an example, Tiger or Jack Nicklaus, he was a phenomenal winner and he does have a different way about him and Tiger has a different way about him and Michael Jordan. There’s never one, you would think that there’d be one way. Arnold Palmer was the nicest guy you’d ever meet. And then you have some champions that aren’t really nice, they’re just focused on doing their job. So there’s not one type of person. But the one thing I would say that everybody seems to have in common is they’re very driven. They’re driven beyond.
Lex Fridman
They don’t seem to give up easily.
They don’t seem to give up easily.
Donald Trump
They don’t give up. They don’t give up, but they do seem to be, they have a passion that’s maybe more than people that don’t do as well.
They don’t give up. They don’t give up, but they do seem to be, they have a passion that’s maybe more than people that don’t do as well.
Politics is a dirty game
Lex Fridman
You’ve said that politics is a dirty game-
You’ve said that politics is a dirty game-
Donald Trump
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
… in the past.
… in the past.
Donald Trump
It is a dirty game. That’s certainly true.
It is a dirty game. That’s certainly true.
Lex Fridman
So if it is a game, how do you win at that game?
So if it is a game, how do you win at that game?
Donald Trump
Well, you win at that game by getting the word out and by using sense. You have to have a feeling where it’s going. You also have to have a feeling of what’s right. You can’t necessarily just go what’s popular, you have to do what’s good for a country if you’re talking about countries. But you have to get the word out and you have to just continuously, like for instance, you have a great show, you have a great podcast, it’s very well watched. And I’m sitting here and I do this, a lot of people see it and I do other things and a lot of people see that. And I go traditional also, you have traditional television, which is getting a little bit older and maybe less significant, could be less significant, I don’t know. But it’s changing a lot.
Well, you win at that game by getting the word out and by using sense. You have to have a feeling where it’s going. You also have to have a feeling of what’s right. You can’t necessarily just go what’s popular, you have to do what’s good for a country if you’re talking about countries. But you have to get the word out and you have to just continuously, like for instance, you have a great show, you have a great podcast, it’s very well watched. And I’m sitting here and I do this, a lot of people see it and I do other things and a lot of people see that. And I go traditional also, you have traditional television, which is getting a little bit older and maybe less significant, could be less significant, I don’t know. But it’s changing a lot.
The whole plane of platform is changing a lot. It’s changed a lot in the last two, three years. But from a political standpoint, you have to find out what people are doing, what they’re watching and you have to get on. I just see that these platforms are starting to dominate, they’re getting very big numbers. I did Spaces with Elon and they got numbers like nobody’s ever heard before. So you wouldn’t do that on radio, you wouldn’t do those numbers, no matter how good a show, you wouldn’t do those numbers on radio, you wouldn’t do on television.
Business vs politics
Lex Fridman
You’ve been successful in business, you’ve been successful in politics. What do you think is the difference between gaining success between the two different disparate worlds?
You’ve been successful in business, you’ve been successful in politics. What do you think is the difference between gaining success between the two different disparate worlds?
Donald Trump
Yeah, and they’re different, very different. I have a lot of people that are in business that are successful and they’d like to go over to politics and then you realize they can’t speak, they choke. It’s hard to make a speech in front of, let’s say you’re talking about a big audience, but I get very big audiences. And for many people it’s virtually impossible to get up and speak for an hour and a half and have nobody leave. It’s not an easy thing to do. And it’s an ability. But I have many people that are very, very successful in business, would love to do what I did. And yet, they can’t pull the trigger. And in many cases, I don’t think it would work. Almost for everybody, it’s not going to work. It’s a very tough thing to do. It’s a big transition.
Yeah, and they’re different, very different. I have a lot of people that are in business that are successful and they’d like to go over to politics and then you realize they can’t speak, they choke. It’s hard to make a speech in front of, let’s say you’re talking about a big audience, but I get very big audiences. And for many people it’s virtually impossible to get up and speak for an hour and a half and have nobody leave. It’s not an easy thing to do. And it’s an ability. But I have many people that are very, very successful in business, would love to do what I did. And yet, they can’t pull the trigger. And in many cases, I don’t think it would work. Almost for everybody, it’s not going to work. It’s a very tough thing to do. It’s a big transition.
Now, if you talked about people in the business and politics going into business, likewise, that wouldn’t generally work out so well either. It’s different talents, it’s different. I have somebody that wants to go into politics so bad, but he’s got a little problem, he’s got stage fright. Now, he’s a total killer, but if he gets up onto a stage in front of people, he doesn’t do well, to put it mildly actually. He does badly.
Lex Fridman
So you have to be able to make hard decisions like you do in business, but also be able to captivate an audience.
So you have to be able to make hard decisions like you do in business, but also be able to captivate an audience.
Donald Trump
Look, if you’re a politician, you have to be able to speak in front of large crowds. There are a lot of people who can’t do that. I’ve seen it. They can’t even think about doing it and they don’t. There are many people in business right now, I could name them, but I don’t want to embarrass anybody, they’ve been talking about running for president for 15 years. And they’re very big in business, very well known actually, but it takes guts to run. For president, I can tell you it takes guts to run. It’s also a very dangerous profession if you want to know the truth, but dangerous in a different sense too. But it takes a lot of courage to run for president. It’s not easy. But you have and you know the same people as I do, there are a lot of people that would like to run for president that are very, very successful in business, but they don’t have the guts to do it and they have to give up a lot.
Look, if you’re a politician, you have to be able to speak in front of large crowds. There are a lot of people who can’t do that. I’ve seen it. They can’t even think about doing it and they don’t. There are many people in business right now, I could name them, but I don’t want to embarrass anybody, they’ve been talking about running for president for 15 years. And they’re very big in business, very well known actually, but it takes guts to run. For president, I can tell you it takes guts to run. It’s also a very dangerous profession if you want to know the truth, but dangerous in a different sense too. But it takes a lot of courage to run for president. It’s not easy. But you have and you know the same people as I do, there are a lot of people that would like to run for president that are very, very successful in business, but they don’t have the guts to do it and they have to give up a lot.
War in Ukraine
Lex Fridman
One of the great things about people from the business world is they’re often great deal makers and you’re a great deal maker and you’ve talked about the war in Ukraine and that you would be able to find a deal that both Putin and Zelenskyy would accept. What do you think that deal looks like?
One of the great things about people from the business world is they’re often great deal makers and you’re a great deal maker and you’ve talked about the war in Ukraine and that you would be able to find a deal that both Putin and Zelenskyy would accept. What do you think that deal looks like?
Donald Trump
I think the deal and I wouldn’t talk about it too much because I think I can make a deal if I win as president-elect, I’ll have a deal made guaranteed. That’s a war that shouldn’t have happened. It’s terrible. Look, Biden is the worst president in the history of our country and she’s probably worse than him. That’s something that should have never happened, but it did happen. And now it’s a much tougher deal to make than it would’ve been before it started. Millions of people, I think the number’s going to be a lot higher when you see this all at some point to iron out, I think the numbers are going to be, the death numbers are going to be a lot higher than people think. When you take a look at the destruction and the buildings coming down all over the place in Ukraine, I think those numbers are going to be a lot higher.
I think the deal and I wouldn’t talk about it too much because I think I can make a deal if I win as president-elect, I’ll have a deal made guaranteed. That’s a war that shouldn’t have happened. It’s terrible. Look, Biden is the worst president in the history of our country and she’s probably worse than him. That’s something that should have never happened, but it did happen. And now it’s a much tougher deal to make than it would’ve been before it started. Millions of people, I think the number’s going to be a lot higher when you see this all at some point to iron out, I think the numbers are going to be, the death numbers are going to be a lot higher than people think. When you take a look at the destruction and the buildings coming down all over the place in Ukraine, I think those numbers are going to be a lot higher.
They lie about the numbers. They try and keep them low. They knock down a building that’s two blocks long, these are big buildings and they say one person was mildly injured. No, no, a lot of people were killed. And there are people in those buildings and they have no chance. Once they start coming down, there’s no chance. So that’s a war that absolutely has to get done. And then you have Israel and then you have a lot of other places that are talking war. The world is a rough place right now and a lot of it’s because of the fact that America has no leadership. And I believe that she’ll be probably worse than Biden. I watched the interview the other night, it was just a softball interview.
Kamala Harris interview on CNN
Lex Fridman
So you would like to see her do more interviews, challenged more.
So you would like to see her do more interviews, challenged more.
Donald Trump
I don’t know. I can’t believe the whole thing is happening. We had a man in there that should have never been in there. They kept him in a basement. They used COVID. They cheated, but they used COVID to cheat. Then they cheated without COVID too. But you had somebody in there and now we have a woman that is not, she couldn’t do an interview. This was a really soft interview. This is an interview where they’re giving her multiple choice questions, multiple guess, I call it multiple guess. And I don’t think she did well. I think she did very poorly.
I don’t know. I can’t believe the whole thing is happening. We had a man in there that should have never been in there. They kept him in a basement. They used COVID. They cheated, but they used COVID to cheat. Then they cheated without COVID too. But you had somebody in there and now we have a woman that is not, she couldn’t do an interview. This was a really soft interview. This is an interview where they’re giving her multiple choice questions, multiple guess, I call it multiple guess. And I don’t think she did well. I think she did very poorly.
Trump-Harris debate
Lex Fridman
How do you think you’ll do in the debate coming up, that’s in a few days?
How do you think you’ll do in the debate coming up, that’s in a few days?
Donald Trump
So I’ve done a lot of debating, only as a politician. I never debated. My first debate was the Rosie O’Donnell debate, the famous Rosie O’Donnell debate, the answer. But I’ve done well with debates. I became president. Then the second time, I got millions more votes than I got the first time. I was told if I got 63 million, which is what I got the first time, you would win, you can’t not when. And I got millions of more votes on that and lost by a whisker. And look what happened to the world with all of the wars and all of the problems. And look what happened with inflation because inflation is just eating up our country, eating it up. So it’s too bad. But there are a lot of things that could happen. We have to get those wars settled. I’ll tell you, you have to get Ukraine done. That could end up in a third world war. So could the Middle East. So could the Middle East.
So I’ve done a lot of debating, only as a politician. I never debated. My first debate was the Rosie O’Donnell debate, the famous Rosie O’Donnell debate, the answer. But I’ve done well with debates. I became president. Then the second time, I got millions more votes than I got the first time. I was told if I got 63 million, which is what I got the first time, you would win, you can’t not when. And I got millions of more votes on that and lost by a whisker. And look what happened to the world with all of the wars and all of the problems. And look what happened with inflation because inflation is just eating up our country, eating it up. So it’s too bad. But there are a lot of things that could happen. We have to get those wars settled. I’ll tell you, you have to get Ukraine done. That could end up in a third world war. So could the Middle East. So could the Middle East.
Lex Fridman
So maybe let’s talk about what it takes to negotiate with somebody like Putin or Zelenskyy. Do you think Putin would be willing to give up any of the regions that are already captured?
So maybe let’s talk about what it takes to negotiate with somebody like Putin or Zelenskyy. Do you think Putin would be willing to give up any of the regions that are already captured?
Donald Trump
I don’t know. I can tell you that all of this would’ve never happened and it would’ve been very easy because you don’t have, that question wouldn’t be asked. That’s a tougher question. Once that starts happening because he has taken over a lot of territory, now I guess they’re insurgents now too. Right? So it’s a little bit interesting that that’s happening and that it can happen. And it’s interesting that Putin has allowed that to happen. Look, that’s one that should have never started. We have to get it stopped. Ukraine is being demolished. They’re destroying a great culture that’s largely destroyed.
I don’t know. I can tell you that all of this would’ve never happened and it would’ve been very easy because you don’t have, that question wouldn’t be asked. That’s a tougher question. Once that starts happening because he has taken over a lot of territory, now I guess they’re insurgents now too. Right? So it’s a little bit interesting that that’s happening and that it can happen. And it’s interesting that Putin has allowed that to happen. Look, that’s one that should have never started. We have to get it stopped. Ukraine is being demolished. They’re destroying a great culture that’s largely destroyed.
Lex Fridman
What do you think works better in those kinds of negotiations? Leverage of let’s say friendship, the carrot or the stick, friendship or sort of the threat of using the economic and military power?
What do you think works better in those kinds of negotiations? Leverage of let’s say friendship, the carrot or the stick, friendship or sort of the threat of using the economic and military power?
Donald Trump
So it depends on who the person is. Everyone’s different. Negotiation is interesting because it depends on who the person is. And then you have to guess or know through certain knowledge, which is more important, the carrot or the stick. And with some people, it’s the stick. And with some people, it’s the carrot. I think the stick probably is generally more successful in that we’re talking about war. But the kind of destruction that we’re witnessing now, nobody’s ever seen. It’s a terrible thing. And we’re witnessing it all over. We’re witnessing it in all parts of the world and a lot of things are going to get started. Look what’s going on with China. Look at Japan, they’re starting to rearm now. They’re starting to rearm because China’s taken over certain islands and there’s a lot of danger in the war right now, in the world.
So it depends on who the person is. Everyone’s different. Negotiation is interesting because it depends on who the person is. And then you have to guess or know through certain knowledge, which is more important, the carrot or the stick. And with some people, it’s the stick. And with some people, it’s the carrot. I think the stick probably is generally more successful in that we’re talking about war. But the kind of destruction that we’re witnessing now, nobody’s ever seen. It’s a terrible thing. And we’re witnessing it all over. We’re witnessing it in all parts of the world and a lot of things are going to get started. Look what’s going on with China. Look at Japan, they’re starting to rearm now. They’re starting to rearm because China’s taken over certain islands and there’s a lot of danger in the war right now, in the world.
China
And there’s a great possibility of World War III and we better get this thing done fast because five months with people like her and him, he’s checked out, he just goes to the beach and thinks he looks good in a bathing suit, which he doesn’t, he’s sort of checked out. Hey look, you can’t blame him. That was a coup, they took it over. They took over the presidential deal. The whole presidential thing was taken over in a coup. He had 14 million votes. He had no votes, not one. And nobody thought it was going to be her. Nobody wanted it to be her. She was a joke until six weeks ago when they said we’re going to have to, politically, they felt they had to pick her. And if they didn’t pick her, they thought there would be a problem. I don’t know if that’s right or not. I actually don’t think it’s right, but they thought it was right. And now, immediately the press comes to their aid.
Lex Fridman
If we can go back to China, on negotiation, how do we avoid war with China in the 21st century?
If we can go back to China, on negotiation, how do we avoid war with China in the 21st century?
Donald Trump
Well, there are ways. Now here’s the problem. If I tell you how and I’d love to do it, but if I give you a plan, I have a very exacting plan how to stop Ukraine and Russia. And I have a certain idea, maybe not a plan, but an idea for China. Because we do, we’re in a lot of trouble. They’ll be in a lot of trouble too, but we’re in a lot of trouble. But I can’t give you those plans because if I give you those plans, I’m not going to be able to use them, they’ll be very unsuccessful. Part of it is surprise, right?
Well, there are ways. Now here’s the problem. If I tell you how and I’d love to do it, but if I give you a plan, I have a very exacting plan how to stop Ukraine and Russia. And I have a certain idea, maybe not a plan, but an idea for China. Because we do, we’re in a lot of trouble. They’ll be in a lot of trouble too, but we’re in a lot of trouble. But I can’t give you those plans because if I give you those plans, I’m not going to be able to use them, they’ll be very unsuccessful. Part of it is surprise, right?
Lex Fridman
Right.
Right.
Donald Trump
But they won’t be able to help us much.
But they won’t be able to help us much.
Lex Fridman
So you have a plan of what to say to Putin when you take office?
So you have a plan of what to say to Putin when you take office?
Donald Trump
Yeah, I know [inaudible 00:15:40]. No, I had a very good relationship with him and I had a good relationship with Zelenskyy too, but had a very good relationship with Putin.
Yeah, I know [inaudible 00:15:40]. No, I had a very good relationship with him and I had a good relationship with Zelenskyy too, but had a very good relationship with Putin.
2020 election
Lex Fridman
Tough topic, but important. You said lost by whisker. I’m an Independent, I have a lot of friends who are Independent, many of whom like your policies, like the fact that you’re a dealmaker, like the fact that you can end wars, but they are troubled by what happened in the 2020 election and statements about widespread fraud and this kind of stuff, fake election scheme. What can you say to those Independent voters to help them decide who to vote for?
Tough topic, but important. You said lost by whisker. I’m an Independent, I have a lot of friends who are Independent, many of whom like your policies, like the fact that you’re a dealmaker, like the fact that you can end wars, but they are troubled by what happened in the 2020 election and statements about widespread fraud and this kind of stuff, fake election scheme. What can you say to those Independent voters to help them decide who to vote for?
Donald Trump
Right. I think the fraud was on the other side. I think the election was a fraud. And many people felt it was that and they wanted answers. And when you can’t challenge an election, you have to be able to challenge it, otherwise it’s going to get worse, not better. And there are lots of ways to solve this problem. Go to paper ballots. Do it easy way, I mean the paper ballots and you have voter ID and you have same day voting and you have proof of citizenship, which is very important because we have people voting that are not citizens. They just came in and they’re loading up the…
Right. I think the fraud was on the other side. I think the election was a fraud. And many people felt it was that and they wanted answers. And when you can’t challenge an election, you have to be able to challenge it, otherwise it’s going to get worse, not better. And there are lots of ways to solve this problem. Go to paper ballots. Do it easy way, I mean the paper ballots and you have voter ID and you have same day voting and you have proof of citizenship, which is very important because we have people voting that are not citizens. They just came in and they’re loading up the…
Donald Trump
They just came in and they’re loading up the payrolls, they’re loading up everything. They’re putting students in schools. They don’t speak a word of English, and they’re taking the seats of people that are citizens of our country. So look, we have the worst border in the history of the world. We have coming into our country right now, millions and millions of people at levels that nobody’s ever seen. I don’t believe any country’s ever seen it. And they would use sticks and stones not to make it happen, not to let it happen. We don’t do anything. And we have a person who was the border czar, who now said she wasn’t really the border czar, but she was, she was the border czar, but she was in charge of the border. And we have her and she’s saying very strongly, “Oh, I did such a good job.” She was horrible, horrible. The harm she’s done…
They just came in and they’re loading up the payrolls, they’re loading up everything. They’re putting students in schools. They don’t speak a word of English, and they’re taking the seats of people that are citizens of our country. So look, we have the worst border in the history of the world. We have coming into our country right now, millions and millions of people at levels that nobody’s ever seen. I don’t believe any country’s ever seen it. And they would use sticks and stones not to make it happen, not to let it happen. We don’t do anything. And we have a person who was the border czar, who now said she wasn’t really the border czar, but she was, she was the border czar, but she was in charge of the border. And we have her and she’s saying very strongly, “Oh, I did such a good job.” She was horrible, horrible. The harm she’s done…
But we have people coming in from other countries all over the world, not just South America, and they’re coming in from prisons and jails. They’re coming in from mental institutions and insane asylums and they’re street criminals right off the street. They take them and they’re being given to our country, drug dealers, human traffickers. We’re destroying our country. This is a sin what’s been allowed to take place over the last four years. We’re our country. And we’ll see how that all works out, but it’s not even believable. And now you see, you saw in Aurora, Colorado, a group of very tough young thugs from Venezuela taking over big areas including buildings. They’re taking over buildings. They have their big rifles, but they’re taking over buildings.
We’re not going to let this happen. We’re not going to let them destroy a country. And in those countries,, crime is way down, they’re taking them out of their prisons, which is good because good for them. I do the same thing. By the way, if I ran one of those countries, any country in the world, I would make sure that America has every one of our prisoners, every one of our criminals would be here. I can’t believe they’re going so slowly, but some are. But they all are doing it and we can’t let that happen. They’re emptying out their prisons and their mental institutions into the United States of America. We can’t let that happen.
Lex Fridman
So a lot of people believe that there was some shady stuff that went on with the election, whether it’s media bias or big tech, but still the claim of widespread fraud is the thing that bothers people.
So a lot of people believe that there was some shady stuff that went on with the election, whether it’s media bias or big tech, but still the claim of widespread fraud is the thing that bothers people.
Donald Trump
Well, I don’t focus on the past. I focus on the future. I mean, I talk about how bad the economy is, how bad inflation is now, bad things like… Which is important. Afghanistan was, in my opinion, the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to our country. And because of that, I think Putin went in when he said how stupid we were. Putin went in, but it was the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country. I really believe that. But we left 13 dead soldiers, think of it, 13 dead soldiers, many soldiers horrifically hurt, with arms and legs and everything else gone. We left hostages behind. We left Americans behind. We left military equipment, the likes of which nobody’s ever left behind before. Billions and billions of dollars of equipment. They’re now selling the equipment. They’re one of the largest arms dealers in the world.
Well, I don’t focus on the past. I focus on the future. I mean, I talk about how bad the economy is, how bad inflation is now, bad things like… Which is important. Afghanistan was, in my opinion, the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to our country. And because of that, I think Putin went in when he said how stupid we were. Putin went in, but it was the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country. I really believe that. But we left 13 dead soldiers, think of it, 13 dead soldiers, many soldiers horrifically hurt, with arms and legs and everything else gone. We left hostages behind. We left Americans behind. We left military equipment, the likes of which nobody’s ever left behind before. Billions and billions of dollars of equipment. They’re now selling the equipment. They’re one of the largest arms dealers in the world.
And very sad, very sad. And we were there for a long time. I was going to get out. We were getting ready to get out. Then we got interrupted by the election, but we would’ve been out with dignity and strength. We were having very little problem with the Taliban when I was there, because they knew it was going to be tough. I dealt with Abdul. Abdul was the leader, and we got along fine. He understood, but they were shooting, they were killing a lot of our people before I came down. And when I got there, I spoke to him, I said, “You can’t do it. Don’t do it anymore.” We went 18 months before this happened, this horrible day happened. We went 18 months and nobody was shot at or killed.
Lex Fridman
What do you think that was? The carrot or the stick, in that case, in Afghanistan?
What do you think that was? The carrot or the stick, in that case, in Afghanistan?
Donald Trump
The stick, definitely the stick.
The stick, definitely the stick.
Lex Fridman
So the threat of military force.
So the threat of military force.
Donald Trump
That was the stick, yeah. It doesn’t have to be, but that was the stick.
That was the stick, yeah. It doesn’t have to be, but that was the stick.
Lex Fridman
Well, let me just linger on the election a little bit more. For this election, it might be a close one. What can we do to avoid the insanity and division of the previous election, whether you win or lose?
Well, let me just linger on the election a little bit more. For this election, it might be a close one. What can we do to avoid the insanity and division of the previous election, whether you win or lose?
Donald Trump
Well, I hope it’s not a close one. I mean, I don’t know how people can vote for somebody that has destroyed our country, the inflation, the bad economy. But to me, in a way, the worst is what they’ve allowed to happen at our border where they’ve allowed millions of people to come and hear from places that you don’t want to know about. And I can’t believe that there’s going to be a close election. We’re leading in the polls and it looks close, but I think in the end it’s not going to be a close election.
Well, I hope it’s not a close one. I mean, I don’t know how people can vote for somebody that has destroyed our country, the inflation, the bad economy. But to me, in a way, the worst is what they’ve allowed to happen at our border where they’ve allowed millions of people to come and hear from places that you don’t want to know about. And I can’t believe that there’s going to be a close election. We’re leading in the polls and it looks close, but I think in the end it’s not going to be a close election.
Lex Fridman
What do you think is the right way to solve the immigration crisis? Is mass deportation one of the solutions you would think about?
What do you think is the right way to solve the immigration crisis? Is mass deportation one of the solutions you would think about?
Donald Trump
Well, you’ve got to get the criminals out of here fast, right? The people from mental institutions, you got to get them back into their mental institution. No country can afford this. It’s just too much money. You look at what’s happening in New York and Chicago and LA and lots of places, and you take a look at what’s happening. There’s no country can afford this. We can’t afford it, and we’ve got to get the bad ones out immediately and the rest have to be worked on. It’s happened before. Dwight Eisenhower was sort of a moderate president, moderate type person, but he hated when he saw people pouring into the country, and they were nothing like. Now, I probably got elected in 2016, because of the border, and I told people what was happening and they understood it. And I won the election.
Well, you’ve got to get the criminals out of here fast, right? The people from mental institutions, you got to get them back into their mental institution. No country can afford this. It’s just too much money. You look at what’s happening in New York and Chicago and LA and lots of places, and you take a look at what’s happening. There’s no country can afford this. We can’t afford it, and we’ve got to get the bad ones out immediately and the rest have to be worked on. It’s happened before. Dwight Eisenhower was sort of a moderate president, moderate type person, but he hated when he saw people pouring into the country, and they were nothing like. Now, I probably got elected in 2016, because of the border, and I told people what was happening and they understood it. And I won the election.
And I won the election, I think because of the border. Our border is 25 times worse right now than it was in 2016. I had it fixed too. I had it the last week of the famous chart that I put up was exactly that, you know the chart. When I looked to the right, I said, “There’s the chart.” Bing. That was not a pleasant experience, but the chart that I put up said, and that was done by border patrol. That was the lowest number that we’ve ever had come into our country in recorded history and we have to get it back to that again. We will.
Project 2025
Lex Fridman
Let me ask you about Project 2025. So you’ve publicly said that you don’t have any direct connection to-
Let me ask you about Project 2025. So you’ve publicly said that you don’t have any direct connection to-
Donald Trump
Nothing. I know nothing about it. And they know that too. Democrats know that. And I purposely haven’t read it, because I want to say to you, I have no idea what it’s all about. It’s easier, than saying I read it and all of the things. No, I purposely haven’t read it and I’ve heard about it. I’ve heard about things that are in there that I don’t like, and there’s some things in there that everybody would like, but there are things that I don’t like at all. And I think it’s unfortunate that they put it out, but it doesn’t mean anything, because it has nothing to do with me. Project 25 has absolutely nothing to do with me.
Nothing. I know nothing about it. And they know that too. Democrats know that. And I purposely haven’t read it, because I want to say to you, I have no idea what it’s all about. It’s easier, than saying I read it and all of the things. No, I purposely haven’t read it and I’ve heard about it. I’ve heard about things that are in there that I don’t like, and there’s some things in there that everybody would like, but there are things that I don’t like at all. And I think it’s unfortunate that they put it out, but it doesn’t mean anything, because it has nothing to do with me. Project 25 has absolutely nothing to do with me.
Marijuana
Lex Fridman
You posted recently about marijuana and that you are okay with it being legalized, but it has to be done safely. Can you explain your policy there?
You posted recently about marijuana and that you are okay with it being legalized, but it has to be done safely. Can you explain your policy there?
Donald Trump
Well, I just put out a paper and first of all, medical marijuana has been amazing. I’ve had friends and I’ve had others and doctors telling me that it’s been absolutely amazing, the medical marijuana. And we put out a statement that we can live with the marijuana. It’s got to be a certain age, got to be a certain age to buy it. It’s got to be done in a very concerted, lawful way. And the way they’re doing in Florida, I think is going to be actually good. It’s going to be very good, but it’s got to be done in a good way. It’s got to be done in a clean way. You go into some of these places, like in New York, it smells all marijuana. You’ve got to have a system where there’s control. And I think the way they’ve done it in Florida is very good.
Well, I just put out a paper and first of all, medical marijuana has been amazing. I’ve had friends and I’ve had others and doctors telling me that it’s been absolutely amazing, the medical marijuana. And we put out a statement that we can live with the marijuana. It’s got to be a certain age, got to be a certain age to buy it. It’s got to be done in a very concerted, lawful way. And the way they’re doing in Florida, I think is going to be actually good. It’s going to be very good, but it’s got to be done in a good way. It’s got to be done in a clean way. You go into some of these places, like in New York, it smells all marijuana. You’ve got to have a system where there’s control. And I think the way they’ve done it in Florida is very good.
Lex Fridman
Do you know anything about psychedelics? So I’m not a drug guy, but I recently did Ayahuasca and there’s a lot of people that speak to the health benefits and the spiritual benefits of these different psychedelics. I think we would probably have a better world if everybody in Congress took some mushrooms perhaps. Now I know you don’t. You stay away from all of that stuff. I know also veterans use it for dealing with PTSD and all that kind of stuff. So it’s great. And it’s interesting that you’re thinking about being more accepting of some of these drugs, which don’t just have a recreational purpose, but a medical purpose, a treatment purpose.
Do you know anything about psychedelics? So I’m not a drug guy, but I recently did Ayahuasca and there’s a lot of people that speak to the health benefits and the spiritual benefits of these different psychedelics. I think we would probably have a better world if everybody in Congress took some mushrooms perhaps. Now I know you don’t. You stay away from all of that stuff. I know also veterans use it for dealing with PTSD and all that kind of stuff. So it’s great. And it’s interesting that you’re thinking about being more accepting of some of these drugs, which don’t just have a recreational purpose, but a medical purpose, a treatment purpose.
Donald Trump
So we put out a statement today, we’re going to put out another one probably next week, be more specific, although I think it’s pretty specific and we’ll see how that all goes. That’s a referendum coming up in some states, but it’s coming up and we’ll see how it does. I will say it’s been very hard to beat it. You take a look at the numbers, it’s been very hard to beat it. So I think it’ll generally pass, but you want to do it in a safe way.
So we put out a statement today, we’re going to put out another one probably next week, be more specific, although I think it’s pretty specific and we’ll see how that all goes. That’s a referendum coming up in some states, but it’s coming up and we’ll see how it does. I will say it’s been very hard to beat it. You take a look at the numbers, it’s been very hard to beat it. So I think it’ll generally pass, but you want to do it in a safe way.
Joe Rogan
Lex Fridman
Speaking of marijuana, let me ask you about my good friend, Joe Rogan. So you had a bit of tension with him. So when he said nice things about RFK Junior, I think you’ve said some not so nice things about Joe, and I think that was a bit unfair. And as a fan of Joe, I would love to see you do his podcast, because he is legit the greatest conversationalist in the world. So what’s the story behind the tension?
Speaking of marijuana, let me ask you about my good friend, Joe Rogan. So you had a bit of tension with him. So when he said nice things about RFK Junior, I think you’ve said some not so nice things about Joe, and I think that was a bit unfair. And as a fan of Joe, I would love to see you do his podcast, because he is legit the greatest conversationalist in the world. So what’s the story behind the tension?
Donald Trump
Well, I don’t think there was any tension. And I’ve always liked him, but I don’t know him. I only see him when I walk into the arena with Dana and I shake his hand. I see him there and I think he’s good at what he does, but I don’t know about doing his podcast. I guess I’d do it, but I haven’t been asked and I’m not asking them. I’m not asking anybody.
Well, I don’t think there was any tension. And I’ve always liked him, but I don’t know him. I only see him when I walk into the arena with Dana and I shake his hand. I see him there and I think he’s good at what he does, but I don’t know about doing his podcast. I guess I’d do it, but I haven’t been asked and I’m not asking them. I’m not asking anybody.
Lex Fridman
It sounds like a challenging negotiation situation.
It sounds like a challenging negotiation situation.
Donald Trump
No, it’s not really a negotiation. And he’s sort of a liberal guy, I guess, from what I understand. But he likes Kennedy. This was before I found this out, before Kennedy came in with us. He’s going to be great. Bobby’s going to be great. But I like that he likes Kennedy. I do too. He is a different kind of a guy, but he’s got some great things going. And I think he’s going to be beyond politics. I think he could be quite influential and taking care of some situations that you probably would agree should be taken care of.
No, it’s not really a negotiation. And he’s sort of a liberal guy, I guess, from what I understand. But he likes Kennedy. This was before I found this out, before Kennedy came in with us. He’s going to be great. Bobby’s going to be great. But I like that he likes Kennedy. I do too. He is a different kind of a guy, but he’s got some great things going. And I think he’s going to be beyond politics. I think he could be quite influential and taking care of some situations that you probably would agree should be taken care of.
Lex Fridman
The Joe Rogan post is an example. I would love to get your psychology about behind the tweets and the post on truth. Are you sometimes being intentionally provocative or are you just speaking your mind and are there times where you regret some of the truths you’ve posted?
The Joe Rogan post is an example. I would love to get your psychology about behind the tweets and the post on truth. Are you sometimes being intentionally provocative or are you just speaking your mind and are there times where you regret some of the truths you’ve posted?
Donald Trump
Yeah, I do, but not that often, honestly. I do a lot of re-posting. The ones you get in trouble with are the re-posts, because you find down deep, they’re into some group that you’re not supposed to be re-posting. You don’t even know if those groups are good, bad or indifferent. But the re-posts are the ones that really get you in trouble. When you do your own words, it’s sort of easier. But the re-posts go very, and if you’re going to check every single little symbol, and I don’t know, it’s worked out pretty well for me. I mean, I tell you, truth is very powerful, truth. And it’s my platform and it’s been very powerful, very, very powerful. Goes everywhere. I call it my typewriter. That’s actually my typewriter.
Yeah, I do, but not that often, honestly. I do a lot of re-posting. The ones you get in trouble with are the re-posts, because you find down deep, they’re into some group that you’re not supposed to be re-posting. You don’t even know if those groups are good, bad or indifferent. But the re-posts are the ones that really get you in trouble. When you do your own words, it’s sort of easier. But the re-posts go very, and if you’re going to check every single little symbol, and I don’t know, it’s worked out pretty well for me. I mean, I tell you, truth is very powerful, truth. And it’s my platform and it’s been very powerful, very, very powerful. Goes everywhere. I call it my typewriter. That’s actually my typewriter.
Lex Fridman
What are you doing usually when you’re composing a truth, are you chilling back on a couch?
What are you doing usually when you’re composing a truth, are you chilling back on a couch?
Donald Trump
Couches, beds.
Couches, beds.
Lex Fridman
Okay.
Okay.
Donald Trump
A lot of different things. I mean-
A lot of different things. I mean-
Lex Fridman
Late at night and just-
Late at night and just-
Donald Trump
I’d like to do something late at night. I’m not a huge sleeper, but whenever I do, I’m past three o’clock, they criticize you the next day. Trump was up. True thing. Okay. Trump was true thing at three o’clock in the morning and there should be no problem with that. And then when you think about time zones, how do they know that you are in a time zone, like an Eastern Zone, but every time I do it after 2:00 or three o’clock, it’s like, “Why is he doing that?” But it’s gotten… Truth has become a very successful platform, and I like doing it and it goes everywhere. As soon as I do it, it goes everywhere.
I’d like to do something late at night. I’m not a huge sleeper, but whenever I do, I’m past three o’clock, they criticize you the next day. Trump was up. True thing. Okay. Trump was true thing at three o’clock in the morning and there should be no problem with that. And then when you think about time zones, how do they know that you are in a time zone, like an Eastern Zone, but every time I do it after 2:00 or three o’clock, it’s like, “Why is he doing that?” But it’s gotten… Truth has become a very successful platform, and I like doing it and it goes everywhere. As soon as I do it, it goes everywhere.
Division
Lex Fridman
The country seems more divided than ever. What can you do to help alleviate some of that division?
The country seems more divided than ever. What can you do to help alleviate some of that division?
Donald Trump
Well, you can get rid of these two people. They’re terrible. They’re terrible. You don’t want to have them running this country. They’re not equipped to run it. Joe, just Joe, it’s a disaster. And Kamala, I think she’ll end up being worse than him. We’ll see. I think a lot’s now, the convention’s over with, and I see I’m leading and just about all the polls now. They had their little honeymoon period as they call it, and we’ll see how that all goes. Who knows?
Well, you can get rid of these two people. They’re terrible. They’re terrible. You don’t want to have them running this country. They’re not equipped to run it. Joe, just Joe, it’s a disaster. And Kamala, I think she’ll end up being worse than him. We’ll see. I think a lot’s now, the convention’s over with, and I see I’m leading and just about all the polls now. They had their little honeymoon period as they call it, and we’ll see how that all goes. Who knows?
Lex Fridman
From my personal opinion, I think you are at your best when you’re talking about a positive vision of the future versus criticizing the other side.
From my personal opinion, I think you are at your best when you’re talking about a positive vision of the future versus criticizing the other side.
Donald Trump
Yeah, I think you have to criticize though. I think they’re nasty. They came up with a story that I looked down and I called soldiers that died in World War I, suckers and losers. Okay. Now number one, who would say that? Number two, who would say it to military people? Nobody. It was a made-up story. It was just a made-up story. And they like to repeat it over again. They know it was made up. I have 26 witnesses that nothing was said. They don’t want to hear about that. She lied on McDonald’s. She said that she worked at McDonald’s. It’s not a big lie, but it’s a big lie. So they just went and they checked and unless she can show something, they don’t talk about the presses are going to follow up with it, but I’ll keep hammering it. But she never worked at McDonald’s. It was just sort of a cool thing to say, “Hey, I worked at McDonald’s.”
Yeah, I think you have to criticize though. I think they’re nasty. They came up with a story that I looked down and I called soldiers that died in World War I, suckers and losers. Okay. Now number one, who would say that? Number two, who would say it to military people? Nobody. It was a made-up story. It was just a made-up story. And they like to repeat it over again. They know it was made up. I have 26 witnesses that nothing was said. They don’t want to hear about that. She lied on McDonald’s. She said that she worked at McDonald’s. It’s not a big lie, but it’s a big lie. So they just went and they checked and unless she can show something, they don’t talk about the presses are going to follow up with it, but I’ll keep hammering it. But she never worked at McDonald’s. It was just sort of a cool thing to say, “Hey, I worked at McDonald’s.”
But one of the worst was two days ago. I went to Arlington at the request of people that lost their children. They’ll always be children to those people. You understand that. That’s not politically incorrect thing to say. The mother comes up, “I lost my child,” but the child is a soldier. And lost the child, because of Biden and because of Kamala, just as though they had the gun in their hand, because it was so badly handled. It should have been done at Bagram, which is the big air base. It shouldn’t have been done at a small little airport right in the middle of town where people stormed it. It was a true disaster and they asked me if I’d come and celebrate with them. Three years. Three years. They died three years ago.
And I said, “I’m going to try.” I got to know them, because I brought them here, actually. One night they almost all came here and they said, “I wonder if Trump will actually come and see us?” I heard they were here. I came. We stayed for four hours listening to music up on a deck, right upstairs. Beautiful. And they were great people. So they called me over the last couple of weeks and they said, “We’re going to have a reunion, our three-year reunion.”
Donald Trump
… couple of weeks and they said, “We’re going to have a reunion, our three year, would you be able to come?” And it was very hard for me to do it logistically, but I said, “I’ll get it done.” And I got there and we had a beautiful time. I didn’t run away. I didn’t just walk in, shake hands and walk out like people do. And I wasn’t looking at my watch like Joe Biden does. And it was amazing. I did it for them. I didn’t do it for me. I don’t need the publicity. I get more publicity probably than anybody. You would know that better than me, but I think maybe more than anybody, maybe more than anybody that’s ever lived, I don’t know. But I don’t think anyone could have anymore. Every time you turn on the television, there’s like nine different stories all on different topics in the world.
… couple of weeks and they said, “We’re going to have a reunion, our three year, would you be able to come?” And it was very hard for me to do it logistically, but I said, “I’ll get it done.” And I got there and we had a beautiful time. I didn’t run away. I didn’t just walk in, shake hands and walk out like people do. And I wasn’t looking at my watch like Joe Biden does. And it was amazing. I did it for them. I didn’t do it for me. I don’t need the publicity. I get more publicity probably than anybody. You would know that better than me, but I think maybe more than anybody, maybe more than anybody that’s ever lived, I don’t know. But I don’t think anyone could have anymore. Every time you turn on the television, there’s like nine different stories all on different topics in the world.
As an example, you interview a lot of people, good people, successful people. Let’s see how you do with this interview versus them. I can tell you right now you’re going to get the highest numbers you’ve ever had by sometimes a factor of 10. But when a Gold Star Family asks me to come in and spend time with them, and then they said, sir… We did a ceremony. And then we went down to the graves, which was quite a distance away. They said, “Sir, would you come to the grave?” And then they said, when we were there… It’s very sad actually because these people shouldn’t have died. They shouldn’t have died. They died because of Biden and because of Kamala, they died because just like if they pulled the trigger. Now, I don’t know if that’s controversial to say, but I don’t think it is.
Afghanistan was the most incompetently run operation I think I’ve ever seen. Military or otherwise, they’re incompetent. But the families asked me if I’d go, I did go. Then the families said, “Could we have a picture at the tombstone of my son?” And we did. Son or daughter. There was a daughter too. And I took numerous pictures with the families. I don’t know of anybody else that was in the pictures, but they were mostly families, I guess. That was it. And then I left. I spent a lot of time with them. Then I left and I get home that night and I get a call that the Biden administration with Kamala is accusing me of using Arlington for publicity. I was in the news. Just the opposite. Just the opposite. And actually, did you see, it just came out? The families actually put out a very strong statement defending me. They said, “We asked them to be there.”
Lex Fridman
Well, politicians and the media can play those games. And you’re right, your name gets a lot of views. You’re probably legit the most famous person in the world. But on the previous thing, in the spirit of unity, you used to be a Democrat. Setting the politicians aside, what do you respect most about people who lean left, who are Democrats themselves or of that persuasion, progressives liberals, and so on?
Well, politicians and the media can play those games. And you’re right, your name gets a lot of views. You’re probably legit the most famous person in the world. But on the previous thing, in the spirit of unity, you used to be a Democrat. Setting the politicians aside, what do you respect most about people who lean left, who are Democrats themselves or of that persuasion, progressives liberals, and so on?
Donald Trump
Well, look, I respect the fact that everybody’s in there, and to a certain extent, life is what you do while you’re waiting to die, so you might as well do a good job. I think in terms of what’s happening now, I think we have a chance to save the country. This country’s going down and I called it with Venezuela, I called it with a lot of different countries. And this country’s going down if we don’t win this election, the election coming up on November 5th is the most important election this country’s ever had because if we don’t win it, I don’t know that there’ll be another election and it’s going to be a communist country or close.
Well, look, I respect the fact that everybody’s in there, and to a certain extent, life is what you do while you’re waiting to die, so you might as well do a good job. I think in terms of what’s happening now, I think we have a chance to save the country. This country’s going down and I called it with Venezuela, I called it with a lot of different countries. And this country’s going down if we don’t win this election, the election coming up on November 5th is the most important election this country’s ever had because if we don’t win it, I don’t know that there’ll be another election and it’s going to be a communist country or close.
Communism and fascism
Lex Fridman
There’s a lot of people listening to this, myself included, that doesn’t think that Kamala is a communist.
There’s a lot of people listening to this, myself included, that doesn’t think that Kamala is a communist.
Donald Trump
Well, she’s a Marxist.
Well, she’s a Marxist.
Lex Fridman
Her father’s a Marxist.
Her father’s a Marxist.
Donald Trump
That’s right.
That’s right.
Lex Fridman
And she’s advocating-
And she’s advocating-
Donald Trump
That’s a little unusual.
That’s a little unusual.
Lex Fridman
She’s advocating for some policies that are towards the direction of democratic socialism, let’s say. But there’s a lot of people that know the way government works and they say, well, none of those policies are going to actually come to reality. It’s just being used during the campaign to… Groceries are too expensive. We need them cheaper, so let’s talk about price controls. And that’s never going to come to reality.
She’s advocating for some policies that are towards the direction of democratic socialism, let’s say. But there’s a lot of people that know the way government works and they say, well, none of those policies are going to actually come to reality. It’s just being used during the campaign to… Groceries are too expensive. We need them cheaper, so let’s talk about price controls. And that’s never going to come to reality.
Donald Trump
It could come to reality. Look, she came out with price control. It’s been tried like 121 different times at different places over the years, and it’s never worked once. It leads to communism, it leads to socialism, it leads to having no food on the shelves, and it leads to tremendous inflation.
It could come to reality. Look, she came out with price control. It’s been tried like 121 different times at different places over the years, and it’s never worked once. It leads to communism, it leads to socialism, it leads to having no food on the shelves, and it leads to tremendous inflation.
Lex Fridman
It’s just-
It’s just-
Donald Trump
A bad idea.
A bad idea.
Lex Fridman
… whenever we use terms like communism for her, and I don’t know if you know this, but some people call you a fascist.
… whenever we use terms like communism for her, and I don’t know if you know this, but some people call you a fascist.
Donald Trump
Yeah, they do, so I figure it’s all right to call them a communist. They call me a lot worse than I call them.
Yeah, they do, so I figure it’s all right to call them a communist. They call me a lot worse than I call them.
Lex Fridman
They do indeed. It is just sometimes-
They do indeed. It is just sometimes-
Donald Trump
It’s interesting though, they’ll call me something that’s terrible and then I’ll hit them back and they’ll say, “Isn’t it terrible what Trump said?” I said, “Well, wait a minute. They just called me…” I believe you have to fight fire with fire. I believe they’re very evil people. These are evil people. We have an enemy from the outside and we have an enemy from within. And in my opinion, the enemy from within are radical left lunatics. And I think you have to fight back.
It’s interesting though, they’ll call me something that’s terrible and then I’ll hit them back and they’ll say, “Isn’t it terrible what Trump said?” I said, “Well, wait a minute. They just called me…” I believe you have to fight fire with fire. I believe they’re very evil people. These are evil people. We have an enemy from the outside and we have an enemy from within. And in my opinion, the enemy from within are radical left lunatics. And I think you have to fight back.
Lex Fridman
Whenever there’s a lot of fighting fire with fire, it’s too easy to forget that there is a middle of America that’s moderate and sees the good in both sides and just likes one side more than the other in terms of policies. Like I said, there’s a lot of people that like your policies, that like your skill in being able to negotiate and end wars and they don’t see the impending destruction of America.
Whenever there’s a lot of fighting fire with fire, it’s too easy to forget that there is a middle of America that’s moderate and sees the good in both sides and just likes one side more than the other in terms of policies. Like I said, there’s a lot of people that like your policies, that like your skill in being able to negotiate and end wars and they don’t see the impending destruction of America.
Donald Trump
We had no wars when I was president. That’s a big thing. Not since 78 years as that happened, but we had no wars When I was president, we defeated ISIS, but that was a war that was started that we weren’t anywhere near defeating. But think of it, I had no wars and Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary said, “The world has to have Trump back because everybody was afraid of Trump.” Now that’s what he said, so I’m not using that term, but I think they respected me. But he said, “China was afraid. Russia was afraid. Everybody was afraid.” And I don’t care what word they use, it probably that’s even a better word if you want to know the truth, but let’s use the word respect.
We had no wars when I was president. That’s a big thing. Not since 78 years as that happened, but we had no wars When I was president, we defeated ISIS, but that was a war that was started that we weren’t anywhere near defeating. But think of it, I had no wars and Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary said, “The world has to have Trump back because everybody was afraid of Trump.” Now that’s what he said, so I’m not using that term, but I think they respected me. But he said, “China was afraid. Russia was afraid. Everybody was afraid.” And I don’t care what word they use, it probably that’s even a better word if you want to know the truth, but let’s use the word respect.
They had respect for me. They had respect for the country. I ended the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, the Russian pipeline. Nobody else could have done that. I ended it. It was done. Then Biden comes in and he approved it, so we are defending Germany in these other countries for peanuts compared to what it’s worth, and they’re paying the person we’re defending them against billions and billions of dollars for energy. I said, “How does that work?” And we had it out with them and it worked out good. And they paid hundreds of billions of dollars. Or you wouldn’t even have a NATO right now. You wouldn’t have NATO if it wasn’t for me.
Power
Lex Fridman
As the leader of the United States, you were the most powerful man in the world. As you mentioned, not only the most famous, but the most powerful. And if you become leader again, you’ll have unprecedented power. Just on your own personal psychology, what does that power do to you? Is there any threat of it corrupting how you see the world?
As the leader of the United States, you were the most powerful man in the world. As you mentioned, not only the most famous, but the most powerful. And if you become leader again, you’ll have unprecedented power. Just on your own personal psychology, what does that power do to you? Is there any threat of it corrupting how you see the world?
Donald Trump
No, I don’t think so. Look, I’ve been there for four years. I could have done a big number on Hillary Clinton. I thought it looked terrible to take the president’s wife and put her in prison. She’s so lucky I didn’t do anything. She’s so lucky. Hillary is a lucky woman because I had a lot of people pushing me too. They wanted to see something, but… I could have done something very bad. I thought it looked so bad. Think of it, you have the President of the United States, and you also had Secretary of State, she was, but you’re going to put the president’s wife in prison. And yet when I got out, they have all these hoaxes.
No, I don’t think so. Look, I’ve been there for four years. I could have done a big number on Hillary Clinton. I thought it looked terrible to take the president’s wife and put her in prison. She’s so lucky I didn’t do anything. She’s so lucky. Hillary is a lucky woman because I had a lot of people pushing me too. They wanted to see something, but… I could have done something very bad. I thought it looked so bad. Think of it, you have the President of the United States, and you also had Secretary of State, she was, but you’re going to put the president’s wife in prison. And yet when I got out, they have all these hoaxes.
They’re all hoaxes, but they have all these dishonest hoaxes just like they did in the past with, Russia, Russia, Russia. That was a hoax. The 51 different agencies or agents, that was a hoax. The whole thing was a hoax. There were so many hoaxes and scams. But I didn’t want to put her in jail, and I didn’t. And I explained it to people. They say, “Lock her up. Lock her up.” We won. I said, “We don’t want to put her in jail. We want to bring the country together. I want to bring the country together. You don’t bring the country together by putting her in jail.” But then when I got out, they went to work on me. It’s amazing. And they suffer from massive Trump derangement syndrome, TDS, and I don’t know if it’s curable from their standpoint.
UFOs & JFK
Lex Fridman
A lot of people are very interested in the footage of UFOs. The Pentagon has released a few videos, and there’s been anecdotal reports from fighter pilots, so a lot of people want to know, will you help push the Pentagon to release more footage, which a lot of people claim is available.
A lot of people are very interested in the footage of UFOs. The Pentagon has released a few videos, and there’s been anecdotal reports from fighter pilots, so a lot of people want to know, will you help push the Pentagon to release more footage, which a lot of people claim is available.
Donald Trump
Oh yeah, sure, I’ll do that. I would do that. I’d love to do that. I have to do that. But they also are pushing me on Kennedy, and I did release a lot, but I had people come to me and beg me not to do it. But I’ll be doing that very early on. Yeah, no. But I would do that.
Oh yeah, sure, I’ll do that. I would do that. I’d love to do that. I have to do that. But they also are pushing me on Kennedy, and I did release a lot, but I had people come to me and beg me not to do it. But I’ll be doing that very early on. Yeah, no. But I would do that.
Jeffrey Epstein
Lex Fridman
There’s a moment where you had some hesitation about Epstein releasing some of the documents on Epstein. Why the hesitation?
There’s a moment where you had some hesitation about Epstein releasing some of the documents on Epstein. Why the hesitation?
Donald Trump
I don’t think… I’m not involved. I never went to his island, fortunately, but a lot of people did.
I don’t think… I’m not involved. I never went to his island, fortunately, but a lot of people did.
Lex Fridman
Why do you think so many smart, powerful people allowed him to get so close?
Why do you think so many smart, powerful people allowed him to get so close?
Donald Trump
He was a good salesman. He was a hailing, hearty type of guy. He had some nice assets that he’d throw around like islands, but a lot of big people went to that island. But fortunately, I was not one of them.
He was a good salesman. He was a hailing, hearty type of guy. He had some nice assets that he’d throw around like islands, but a lot of big people went to that island. But fortunately, I was not one of them.
Lex Fridman
It’s just very strange for a lot of people, that the list of clients that went to the island has not been made public.
It’s just very strange for a lot of people, that the list of clients that went to the island has not been made public.
Donald Trump
It’s very interesting, isn’t it? It probably will be, by the way, probably.
It’s very interesting, isn’t it? It probably will be, by the way, probably.
Lex Fridman
If you’re able to, you’ll be-
If you’re able to, you’ll be-
Donald Trump
Yeah, I’d certainly take a look at it. Now, Kennedy’s interesting because it’s so many years ago. They do that for danger too, because it endangers certain people, et cetera, et cetera, so Kennedy is very different from the Epstein thing but I’d be inclined to do the Epstein. I’d have no problem with it.
Yeah, I’d certainly take a look at it. Now, Kennedy’s interesting because it’s so many years ago. They do that for danger too, because it endangers certain people, et cetera, et cetera, so Kennedy is very different from the Epstein thing but I’d be inclined to do the Epstein. I’d have no problem with it.
Lex Fridman
That’s great to hear. What gives you strength when you’re getting attacked? You’re one of the most attacked people in the world.
That’s great to hear. What gives you strength when you’re getting attacked? You’re one of the most attacked people in the world.
Donald Trump
I think you can’t care that much. I know people that care so much about everything, like what people are saying, you can’t care too much because you end up choking.
I think you can’t care that much. I know people that care so much about everything, like what people are saying, you can’t care too much because you end up choking.
Mortality and religion
Lex Fridman
One of the tragic things about life is that it ends. How often do you think about your death? Are you afraid of it?
One of the tragic things about life is that it ends. How often do you think about your death? Are you afraid of it?
Donald Trump
I have a friend who’s very, very successful, and he’s in his 80s, mid 80s, and he asked me that exact same question. I turned it around and I said, “Well, what about you?” He said, “I think about it every minute of every day.” And then a week later, he called me to tell me something. And he starts off the conversation by going, “Tick tock, tick tock.” This is dark person in a sense, but it is what it is. If you’re religious, you have I think a better feeling toward it. You’re supposed to go to heaven, ideally, not hell, but you’re supposed to go to heaven if you’re good. I think our country’s missing a lot of religion. I think it really was a much better place with religion. It was almost a guide. To a certain extent it was a guide. You want to be good to people. Without religion there are no guardrails. I’d love to see us get back to religion, more religion in this country.
I have a friend who’s very, very successful, and he’s in his 80s, mid 80s, and he asked me that exact same question. I turned it around and I said, “Well, what about you?” He said, “I think about it every minute of every day.” And then a week later, he called me to tell me something. And he starts off the conversation by going, “Tick tock, tick tock.” This is dark person in a sense, but it is what it is. If you’re religious, you have I think a better feeling toward it. You’re supposed to go to heaven, ideally, not hell, but you’re supposed to go to heaven if you’re good. I think our country’s missing a lot of religion. I think it really was a much better place with religion. It was almost a guide. To a certain extent it was a guide. You want to be good to people. Without religion there are no guardrails. I’d love to see us get back to religion, more religion in this country.
Lex Fridman
Well, Mr. President, thank you for putting yourself out there, and thank you for talking today.
Well, Mr. President, thank you for putting yourself out there, and thank you for talking today.
Donald Trump
Look, I love the country. I want to see the country be great, and we have a real chance at doing it, but it’s our last chance and I appreciate it very much.
Look, I love the country. I want to see the country be great, and we have a real chance at doing it, but it’s our last chance and I appreciate it very much.
Lex Fridman
Thank you.
Thank you.
Donald Trump
Thank you.
Thank you.
Lex AMA
Lex Fridman
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Donald Trump. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, as I’ve started doing here at the end of some episodes, let me make a few comments and answer a few questions. If you would like to submit questions, including in audio and video form, go to lexfridman.com/ama or get in touch with me for whatever other reason at lexfridman.com/contact. I usually do this on a T-shirt, but I figured for this episode, I’ll keep my suit and tie on, so first, this might be a good moment to look back a bit. I’ve been doing this podcast for over six years, and I first and foremost have to say thank you. I’m truly grateful for the support and the love I’ve gotten along the way. It’s been, I would say, the most unlikely journey.
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Donald Trump. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, as I’ve started doing here at the end of some episodes, let me make a few comments and answer a few questions. If you would like to submit questions, including in audio and video form, go to lexfridman.com/ama or get in touch with me for whatever other reason at lexfridman.com/contact. I usually do this on a T-shirt, but I figured for this episode, I’ll keep my suit and tie on, so first, this might be a good moment to look back a bit. I’ve been doing this podcast for over six years, and I first and foremost have to say thank you. I’m truly grateful for the support and the love I’ve gotten along the way. It’s been, I would say, the most unlikely journey.
And on most days, I barely feel like I know what I’m doing. But I wanted to talk a bit about how I approach these conversations. Now, each conversation is its own unique puzzle, so I can’t speak generally to how I approach these, but here it may be useful to describe how I approach conversations with world leaders, of which I hope to have many more and do a better job every time. I read a lot of history and I admire the historian perspective. As an example, I admire William Shirer, the author of many books on Hitler, including The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. He was there and lived through it and covered it objectively to the degree that one could. Academic historians, by the way, criticize him for being a poor historian because he editorialized a little too much. I think those same folks criticized Dan Carlin and his Hardcore History podcast.
I respect their criticism, but I fundamentally disagree, so in these conversations with world leaders, I try to put on my historian hat. I think in the realm of truth and public discourse, there’s a spectrum between the ephemeral and the eternal. The outraged mob and clickbait journalists are often focused on the ephemeral, the current thing, the current viral shitstormer of mockery and derision. But when the battle of the day is done, most of it will be forgotten. A few true ideas will remain, and those the historian hopes to capture. Now, this is much easier said than done. It’s not just about having the right ideals and the integrity to stick by them. It’s not even just about having the actual skill of talking, which I still think I suck at, but let’s say it’s a work in progress. You also have to make the scheduling work and set up the entirety of the environment in a way that is conducive to such a conversation.
This is hard, really hard with political and business leaders. They are usually super busy and in some cases super nervous because, well, they’ve been screwed over so many times with clickbait got you journalism, so to convince them and their team to talk for two, three, four, five hours is hard. And I do think a good conversation requires that kind of duration. And I’ve been thinking a lot about why. I don’t think it’s just about needing the actual time of three hours to cover all the content. I think the longer form with a hypothetical skilled conversationalist, relaxes things and allows people to go on tangents and to banter about the details because I-
Lex Fridman
… agents and to banter about the details, because I think it’s in the details that the beautiful complexity of the person is brought to light. Anyway, I look forward to talking to more world leaders and doing a better job every time as I said. I would love to do interviews with Kamala Harris and some other political figures on the left and right, including Tim Walz, AOC, Bernie, Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary. And on the right, J.D. Vance, Vivek, George W. and so on. And on the topic of politics, let me say, as an immigrant, I love this country, the United States of America. I do believe it is the greatest nation on earth, and I’m grateful for the people on the left and the right who step into the arena of politics to fight for this country that I do believe they all love as well.
… agents and to banter about the details, because I think it’s in the details that the beautiful complexity of the person is brought to light. Anyway, I look forward to talking to more world leaders and doing a better job every time as I said. I would love to do interviews with Kamala Harris and some other political figures on the left and right, including Tim Walz, AOC, Bernie, Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary. And on the right, J.D. Vance, Vivek, George W. and so on. And on the topic of politics, let me say, as an immigrant, I love this country, the United States of America. I do believe it is the greatest nation on earth, and I’m grateful for the people on the left and the right who step into the arena of politics to fight for this country that I do believe they all love as well.
I have reached out to Kamala Harris, but not many of the others. I probably should do a better job with that, but I’ve been doing most of this myself, all the reach out, scheduling, research prep, recording and so on. And on top of that, I very much have been suffering from imposter syndrome with a voice in my head constantly pointing out when I’m doing a shitty job. Plus a few folks graciously remind me on the internet, the very same sentiment of this aforementioned voice. All of this, while I have the option of just hiding away at MIT, programming robots and doing some cool AI research with a few grad students, or maybe joining an AI company or maybe starting my own, all these options make me truly happy. But like I said, on most days I barely know what I’m doing, so who knows what the future holds. Most importantly, I’m forever grateful for all of you for your patience and your support throughout this rollercoaster of the life I’ve been on. I love you all.
Okay, now let me go on to some of the questions that people had. I was asked by a few people to comment on Pavel Durov’s arrest and on X being banned in Brazil. Let me first briefly comment on the Durov arrest. Basic facts, Pavel Durov is CEO of Telegram, which is a messenger app that has end-to-end encryption mode. It’s not on by default, and most people don’t use the end-to-end encryption, but some do. Pavel was arrested in France on a long list of charges related to “criminal activity” carried out on the Telegram platform, and for “providing unlicensed cryptology services.” I think Telegram is indeed used for criminal activity by a small minority of its users, for example, by terrorist groups to communicate. And I think we all agree that terrorism is bad.
But here’s the problem. As the old saying goes, one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. And there are many cases in which the world unilaterally agrees who the terrorists are, but there are other cases when governments, especially authoritarian inclined governments, tend to propagandize and just call whoever’s in the opposition, whoever opposes them, terrorists. There is some room for nuance here, but, to me at this time, it seems to obviously be a power grab by government wanting to have backdoor access into every platform so they can have censorship power against the opposition. I think generally governments should stay out of censoring or even pressuring social media platforms, and I think arresting a CEO of a tech company for the things said on the platform he built is just nuts. It has a chilling effect on him, on people working at Telegram and on people working at every social media company, and also people thinking of launching a new social media company.
Same as the case of X being banned in Brazil. It’s, I think, a power grab by Alexandre de Moraes, a Supreme Court justice in Brazil. He ordered X to block certain accounts that are spreading “misinformation.” Elon and X denied the request, then de Moraes threatened to arrest X representatives in Brazil, and in response to that X pulled the representatives out of Brazil obviously to protect them. And now X, having no representatives in Brazil, apparently violates the law. Based on this de Moraes banned X in Brazil. Once again, it’s an authoritarian figure seeking censorship power over the channels of communication.
I understand that this is complicated because there are evil people in the world and part of the role of government is to protect us from those evil people. But as Benjamin Franklin said, “Those who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” It’s a trade-off, but I think in many places in the world, many governments have leaned too far away at this time from liberty.
Okay, next up I got a question on AI, which I emotionally connected with. I’ll condense it as follows. “Hello, Lex. I’m a programmer and I have a deep fear of slipping into irrelevance because I am worried that AI will soon exceed my programming skills.”
Let me first say that I relate to your fear. It’s scary to have a thing that gives you a career and gives you meaning to be taken away. For me, programming is a passion, and if not for this podcast, it would probably at least in part be my profession so I get an uncomfortable feeling every time, Claude, the LLM I use for coding at this time just writes a lot of excellent approximately correct code. I think you can make a good case that it already exceeds the skill of many programmers, at least in the same way that the collective intelligence of stack overflow exceeds the skill of many individual programmers, but in many ways it still does not. But I think eventually more and more the task, the professional programming will be one of writing natural language prompts. I think the right thing to do, and what I’m at least doing is to ride the wave of the ever improving code generating LLMs and keep transforming myself into a big picture designer versus low-level tinkerer. What I’m doing and what I recommend you do is continually switch to whatever state-of-the-art tool is for generating code. For me, currently I recently switched from VS Code to Cursor, and before that it was Emacs to VS Code switch. Cursor is this editor that’s based on VS Code that leans heavily on LLMs and integrates the co-generation really nicely into the editing process. It makes it super easy to continually use the LLMs. What I would advise and what I’m trying to do myself is to learn how to use it and to master its co-generation capabilities. I, personally, try to now allocate a significant amount of time to designing with natural language first versus writing code from scratch, so using my understanding of programming to edit the code that’s generated by the LLM versus writing it from scratch and then using the LLM to generate small parts of the code. I see it as a skill that I should develop in parallel to my programming skill.
I think this applies to many other careers too. Don’t compete with AI for your job, learn to use the AI to do that job better. But yes, it is scary in some deep human level, the threat of being replaced. But at least I think we’ll be okay.
All right, next up, I got a very nice audio message and question from a gentleman who is 27 and feeling a lot of anxiety about the future. Just recently he graduated with a bachelor’s degree and he’s thinking about going to grad school for biomedical engineering, but there is a lot of anxiety. He mentioned anxiety many times in the message. It took him an extra while to get his degree, so he mentioned he would be 32 by the time he’s done with his PhD, so it’s a big investment. But he said in his heart he feels like he’s a scientist. I think that’s the most important part of his message, of your message. By the way, I’ll figure out how to best include audio and video messages in future episodes.
Now onto the question. Thank you for telling me your story and for submitting the question. My own life story is similar to yours. I went to Drexel University for my bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate degrees, and I took a while just as you’re doing. I did a lot of non-standard things that weren’t any good for some hypothetical career I’m supposed to have. I trained and competed in Judo and Jiu Jitsu for my entire 20s, got a black belt from it. I wrote a lot, including a lot of really crappy poetry. I read a large amount of non-technical books, history, philosophy, and literature. I took courses on literature and philosophy that weren’t at all required for my computer science and electrical engineering degrees, like a course on James Joyce. I played guitar in bars around town. I took a lot of technical classes, many, for example, on theoretical computer science that were way more than were needed for the degree. I did a lot of research and I coded up a bunch of projects that didn’t directly contribute to my dissertation. It was pure curiosity and the joy of exploring.
Like you, I took the long way home, as they say, and I regret none of it. Throughout that, people around me and even people who love me wanted me to hurry up and to focus, especially because I had very little money, and so I had a sense like time was running out for me to take the needed steps towards a reasonable career. And just like you, I was filled with anxiety and I still am filled with anxiety to this day, but I think the right thing to do is not to run away from the anxiety, but to lean into it and channel it into pursuing with everything you got, the things you’re passionate about.
As you said, very importantly, in your heart you know you’re a scientist, so that’s it. You know exactly what to do. Pursue the desire to be a scientist with everything you got. Get to a good grad school, find a good advisor and do epic shit with them. And it may turn out in the end that your life will have unexpected chapters, but as long as you’re chasing dreams and goals with absolute unwavering dedication, good stuff will come of it. And also try your best to be a good person. This might be a good place to read the words If by Roger Kipling that I often return to when I feel lost and I’m looking for guidance on how to be a better man.
“If you can keep your head when all about your losing theirs and blaming it on you. If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too. If you can wait and not be tired by waiting or being lied about, don’t deal in lies or being hated, don’t give weight to hating and yet don’t look too good nor talk too wise. If you can dream and not make dreams your master. If you can think and not make thoughts your aim. If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same. If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools or watch the things you gave your life to broken and stoop and build them up with worn out tools. If you can make one heap of all your winnings and risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss and lose and start again at your beginnings and never breathe a word about your loss. If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after they’re gone and so hold on when there’s nothing in you except the will, which says to them, hold on. If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue or walk with kings nor lose the common touch. If neither foes, nor loving friends can hurt you. If all men count with you, but none too much. If you can fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of distance run, yours is the earth and everything that’s in it. And which is more, you’ll be a man, my son.”
Thank you for listening and see you next time.
Transcript for Cenk Uygur: Trump vs Harris, Progressive Politics, Communism & Capitalism | Lex Fridman Podcast #441
This is a transcript of Lex Fridman Podcast #441 with Cenk Uygur.
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Corporatism hates competition. It wants monopoly and oligopoly power. Whereas capitalism loves competition and wants the free markets. When mainstream media has you hooked, you got no hope because you don’t have the right information. You have propaganda, you have marketing. You don’t have real news. When you’re in the online world, it’s chaotic. And don’t get me wrong, it’s got plenty of downsides, but within that chaos, the truth begins to emerge. Trump is a massive risk because of all the things we talked about earlier, but there is a percentage chance that he’s such a wild card that he overturns the whole system, and that is why the establishment is a little scared of him.
So expand the circle of liberty. Everybody’s in favor of that, right? No, absolutely not. Certainly the King of England was not in favor of expanding the circle of liberty, and the Founding Fathers said, “We’re going to expand it.” And they expanded it to propertied white men. And then progressives have been … they’re progressives because they expanded the circle of liberty. They, then from then on, as we were perfecting the union, progressives always say, “Expand it further. Include women, include people without property, include all races.” And at every turn, conservatives fight against it. So that doesn’t mean if you’re a conservative today, you don’t want to include women or minorities, et cetera. But today you would say, for example, “Well, I don’t want to expand the circle of liberty to, for example, undocumented immigrants.” And maybe you’re right about that, and we could have that discussion in terms of a specific philosophy.
And I don’t believe that undocumented immigrants should immediately be citizens or anything along those lines. But I do believe in expanding liberty overall. And the contours of that are what’s interesting. And then you see justice for all. Everybody’s for justice. No. Right now, marijuana possession is still illegal in a lot of parts of the country. Now, a lot of right-wingers and left-wingers agree that it should be legal. But for my entire lifetime, black people have been arrested at about 3.7 times the rate of white people and the entire country has been fine with it. So is that justice? No. Black people smoke marijuana at the same rate. Black people get arrested about four times the rate. That is an injustice that an enormous percentage of the country was comfortable with. Well, progressives aren’t comfortable with it. We want justice for all.
So equality of opportunity is an interesting one because the far left will say, at least some portions of them will say, equality of results. So progressives just want a fair chance, so free college education, but afterwards you don’t get to have exact same results as either the wealthiest person or we’re not all going to be equal. We don’t have equal talent, skills, abilities, et cetera.
And that gets into a really interesting nuance because mainstream media, in my opinion, is the matrix, and its job is to delude you into thinking corporate rule is great for you and we should never change it and the status quo is wonderful. So they have created a false middle. What mainstream media calls moderate, is actually, in my opinion, extremist corporate ideology. So for example, they’ll say, Joe Manchin is a moderate. None of his positions are moderate other than potentially gun control in West Virginia. He’s not for gun control. The people of West Virginia are not for gun control, generally speaking. And he uses that, and they usually have these shiny objects where they’re like, “You see this? I’m a moderate because of guns,” or, “I’m a moderate because I’m a Democrat from West Virginia.”
But wait, let’s look at your positions. You’re against paid family leave, that polls at 84%. So you’re a radical corporatist who say that women should be forced back into work the day after they have birth. You’re against a higher minimum wage, you’re for every corporate position, and they all poll at 33% or less. So Joe Manchin is not at all a moderate, and this applies to almost every corporate Republican and every corporate Democrat. They’re all extremists in supporting what I call corporatism. So you have to get to a balance in order to get to the right answer.
So communism makes no sense at all, totally opposed to human nature. It never works. It always evolves into dictatorship because it is not built for human nature. We’re never going to act like that. It’s not in our DNA. You could try to wish it into existence than they have, and it never works. And it’s because once you have almost no rules in terms of, “Oh, we’re all equal,” even though communism eventually winds up having an enormous amount of rules, it creates a power vacuum. When you say, “Hey, there’s no structure of power here. We’re all equal. It’s a flat line,” one guy usually gets up because that’s human nature, and goes, “I don’t think so. I think if you’re going to leave a power vacuum, I’m going to take that power vacuum.”
But if you love corporations and corporate tax cuts and everything in favor of corporations, you’re magically called a moderate when you actually, according to the polling, have super extreme positions that the American people hate. And by the way, that’s part of the reason for the rise of Trump. We can come back to that. But the second shell game is taking out capitalism, putting in corporatism, but still calling it capitalism. Okay, so what is corporatism? It is when corporations slowly take over the system and create monopoly and oligopoly power. So that snuffs out equality of opportunity. So how do they do that? When people say the system is rigged, they oftentimes can’t explain it that well. And then mainstream media goes, “Oh, you sound conspiratorial. It was rigged, yeah. I wonder how.” Yeah, super easy to explain it.
Here’s one of dozens of examples: carried interest loophole. So that is for hedge funds, private equity, the top people on Wall Street, that’s part of their income. They get 2 and 20, right? So 2% is a flat fee no matter what happens to the fund. And 20% of the profits of the fund goes back to the people who invested it. It’s not their money, it’s not their investment. What they’re getting is actually just income, and should be taxed at the highest rate. But it’s because of this loophole, it’s taxed at a much lower rate, at around 20%. So do you know at what income level you go above 20% if you’re a regular Joe? It’s at $84,000 a year. So these billionaires are getting the same tax rate as people making $84,000 a year. It’s unbelievably unfair. And that’s corporatism taking over and starting to rig the rules. I’m going to pay less taxes. You are going to pay more taxes.
So again, I can give you dozens of those examples. So in mergers so that they get to oligopoly power, that’s how you rig a system. Lowering the corporate tax rates, making sure that there is no real minimum wage, making sure there’s no universal healthcare. We all become indentured servants of corporations. They take away power from the average guy, give it to the most powerful people in the world. But the most important distinction, Lex, is that corporatism hates competition. It wants monopoly and oligopoly power. Whereas capitalism loves competition and wants the free markets.
And I remember we started Young Turks back in 2002, so we’ve been around for 22 years, longest running daily show on the internet ever. And so we were pre Iraq war and the Iraq war starts, and Dick Cheney starts handing out no-bid contracts. I’m like, what part of capitalism is a no-bid contract? You can’t negotiate drug prices. That’s the most anti-free market thing I have ever heard. It’s almost like communism for corporations. They get everything and you get nothing. So it’s preposterous, it’s awful, and it kills the free markets, and it’s killing this country, and it is the main ideology and religion of the establishment.
So anyone who right now, number one donor in Washington, a lot of people make a mistake. They think it’s APAC or they think it’s the oil companies or the banks. No, it’s big pharma. And who has the most power in this country? Big pharma. So we can’t even negotiate the drug prices. I mean, look, guys, think about it this way. That’s like saying, “Okay, here’s a bottle of water.” And normally in the free market that would cost about a dollar. For Medicare, the drug companies come in and go, “No, I’m not charging a dollar for that water. I’m charging a hundred dollars. And the government has to say, “Yes, sir, thank you, sir. Of course, sir, we’ll pay $100.” That’s why it’s compared to communism, because I can’t imagine anything more diametrically opposed to the free market than you, the consumer have to pay whatever the hell a corporation charges. That’s insanity. Let alone the patents, let alone the fact that the American people pay for the research and then they make billions of dollars off of it and we get nothing but robbed by them.
So it’s about lobby power. Oil companies have huge lobby power. Defense contractors have huge lobby power. It’s not that they’re more evil, it’s just that they have figured out the game better and they have basically taken the influence they need to capture the market, capture the government, and snuff out all competition, or a lot of competition.
So for example, in the two industries you gave: automotive. So in New Jersey, about a decade or ago or so, one of the most powerful lobbies is car dealerships. So at the national level, you’ve got pharma and you’ve got defense contractors, et cetera. At the local level guys who have huge power, number one is utilities. Number two is real estate. And then car dealerships are hilariously among the top because it’s local businesses that are financing the politicians at the local level. So they passed a law saying that you have to sell through dealerships. But Tesla doesn’t sell through dealerships, and it was intended to bully, intimidate, and push out Tesla, out of the market. They then did that in a number of different states throughout the country.
So does that make any sense in a democracy? Of course not. Why do you have to sell your product through a specific vehicle or medium? You could sell it any way you like. That’s the most anti-free market thing possible. Why? It was just total utter corruption. But it’s perfectly legal. The Supreme Court legalized bribery. So then what happened in that case? So then Elon came in and gave campaign contributions and reversed it. So now we’re in a battle where it’s an open auction. Different companies are buying different politicians, and then they’re pretending to have debates about principles and ideas, etc.
So now let’s look at tech. In the beginning, Facebook was not spending any money in politics, or almost any money in politics. So what happens? They’re getting hammered, they get pulled into congressional hearings and Facebook’s got fake news and oh my God, all these trouble from Facebook. Then Facebook does the logical thing. Oh, it turns out I need to grease these sons of bitches. So then they hire a whole bunch of Republicans consultants. They go grease all the Republicans and most of the corporate Democrats, and then all of a sudden we’re no longer talking about Facebook at all and Facebook are angels. And now we’ve turned our attention to who? Facebook’s top competitor, TikTok. Funny how that works.
And by the way, then Donald Trump goes “Oh TikTok’s a big dangerous company working with China.” And then Jeff Yaz comes in on this cycle, part owner of TikTok, and he doesn’t want TikTok banished, of course. So he gives Trump a couple of million dollars. Trump turns around the next day and goes, “We love TikTok. TikTok’s a good company.”
So that’s this easy example. And so if you don’t have those cops, the bad guys are going to take over. They’re going to set the rules, rig the rules in their favor. So that’s why you need regulation. And so the Republicans on purpose made regulation a dirty word. They’re like, “Oh, all regulation is bad.” And then sometimes on the left, people fall for the trap of all regulation is good. A guy, I like has a great analogy on this, Matt Stoller, he’s one of the original, I would argue, progressives. And there’s about four of us, I’m sure there’s more, but that have stayed true to the original meaning of progressivism and populism: me, Matt Stoller, David Sirota, Ryan Grim. And it used to be in that original blogger group, there was guys like Glenn Greenwald and other interesting cats, but they went in different directions.
So Matt has a great line. He says, “If somebody comes up to you and says, how big a pipe do you want?” There is no answer for that. It depends on the job, doesn’t it? What are we doing? What are we building? I am going to tell you the size of the pipe depending on the project. So when people say, “Are you in favor of regulation or against it?” that’s an absurd question. Of course you need regulation. It just means laws. So don’t kill your neighbor is a regulation. So my idea is a simple one, and one we’re going to keep coming back to, balance. So when my dad was a small business owner in New Jersey and they inspected the elevator six times a year, that was over regulation. And I said to my dad, “So should they not inspect it at all?” I’m a young kid growing up and he said, “Oh no, you got to inspect it at least twice a year.” I said, “Why?” He said, “Because in Turkey, sometimes they don’t inspect it and then the elevator falls.” So balance of reason, correct regulation to protect the markets and to protect the American people.
It’s the people that are saying, “These are the rules of the land and you have to abide by them.” So how do you get to the best possible answer which is related to an earlier question you asked, Lex, which is the number one thing you have to do is get big money out of politics? Everything else is near impossible as long as we are drowned in money and whoever has more money wins. And by the way, when it comes to legislation, again, that’s true about 98% of the time. We predict things ahead of time. People are like, “Wow, how did you know that bill wasn’t going to pass or was going to pass?” It’s the easiest thing in the world. And we literally teach our audience on the Young Turks, “Watch, you’ll be able to see for yourself.” And now our members comment in, they do these predictions. They’re almost always right because it’s so simple. Follow the money.
So if you get big money out of politics, and I could explain how to do that in a sec, then you’re at a place where you’ve got your best shot at honest representatives that are going to try their best to get to the right answer. Are they going to get to the right answer out of the gate? Usually not. So they pass a law, there’s something wrong with the law, they then fix that part. It is a pendulum. You don’t want it to swing too wildly, but you do need a little bit of oscillation in that pendulum to get to the right balance.
But when he first started, to the point you’re making Lex, he wanted … In fact, I know because I talked to him about this, his very first bill was anti-corruption. Why? Because at that point, everything changes in 1976 to 78, the Supreme Court decisions that basically legalize bribery.
But remember Biden is ancient. So he’s coming into politics at a time when money has not yet drowned politics. And in fact, the American population is super-pissed about the fact that it’s begun. They don’t like corruption. So early Biden, because he’s reading the room, is very anti-corruption. And the first bill he proposes is to get money out of politics. But as Biden goes on for his epic 200-year career in Washington, he starts to get not more conservative, more corporate, because he’s just taken more and more money. By the middle of his career. He has a nickname, the Senator from MBNA. Okay.
You know politics really well, but the reason you didn’t hear of it is because the mainstream media wouldn’t say, “That’s outrageous of Joe Biden to be such a corporate stooge.” They’d say, “That’s outrageous of you to point out something that’s true and something we reported on earlier.” So they protected him at all costs. Now, finally, when you get to this version of Joe Biden, he can’t talk, he can’t walk, he bears no resemblance to the young guy who came in saying that money in politics was a problem. Now he’s saying money in politics is the solution. In 2020, he said, “Well, I can raise more money than Bernie. I can kiss corporate ass better than Bernie. I’m the biggest corporate kisser in the world. So, I’m going to raise a billion dollars and you need to support me.”
Now, of course, he doesn’t say it in those words, but that was the message to the establishment. Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Obama, Clyburn, everybody goes, “Oh, that’s right. Biden, Biden, Biden, Biden, not Bernie.” I don’t know that there’s anybody in the country who instinctually dislikes Bernie more than Barack Obama.
It’s an oligopoly, and they’re all multi-billion dollar corporations. They all want tax cuts. Especially about 20 years ago during the Iraq War, half of them are defense contractors. So, they’re just using the news as marketing to start wars like the Iraq War. Then GE, which owned MSNBC, makes a tremendous amount of money, so much more money from war than it does for media. That media is a good marketing spend for these corporations. Now, that’s part of it, that they themselves want the same exact thing as the rest of corporations do for corporate rule, lower tax cuts, deregulation, so they can merge, et cetera. But the second part of it is arguably even more important. So, where does all that money in politics go?
So for example, in 2022, it’s just a midterm election. No presidential should be lower spending. A ridiculous $17 billion are spent on the election cycle. Where does the $17 billion go? Almost all of it goes into corporate media, mainstream media, television, newspapers, radio. They’re buying ads like nuts. So, we have a reporter at TYT, David Schuster. He used to work at MSNBC, Fox News, et cetera. David once did a piece about money and politics at a local NBC news station, and his editor or GM spiked the story. David goes into his office and asks him, “So why? This story is true. It’s a huge part of politics. If we’re going to report on this issue, we got to tell you what’s actually happening.”
So he says, “David, come here.” He puts his arm around his shoulders, takes him to the big newsroom, and he goes, “You see all this? Money in politics paid for that.”
The reason they hide the ball is because they don’t want you to know this whole thing is based on the money that they are receiving. By the way, one more thing about that, Lex. It’s that the ads themselves actually, they work and they work pretty well, but that’s not the main reason you spend money on ads. You spend the money on ads to get friendly coverage from the content, from the free media that you’re getting from that same outlet. So, since every newspaper and every television station and network knows that the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are their top clients, they’re going to get billions of dollars from them. They never really criticized the Republican and Democratic Party. On the other hand, if you’re an outsider, they’ll rip your face off.
So, since GE is a giant defense contractor, they own MSNBC at the time of the Iraq War. They fired everyone who was against the Iraq War on air. So, Phil Donahue, Jesse Ventura, Ashleigh Banfield, but Ashleigh Banfield, they did something different with. She was a rising star at the time. She goes and gives a speech in Kansas, not really even having a policy position, but just talking about the actual cost of this Iraq War and how we should be really careful. They hate that. So, they take their rising star and they take her off-air and she goes, “Okay, good. Let me out of my contract. It’s okay, I’ll go.” Because she was such a star at that time, she could have easily gotten somewhere else. They go, “No, we’re not going to let you out of your contract.”
Why not? Were you going to pay me to do nothing? Yeah, not only that, we’re moving your office. Where are you moving it to? They literally moved it into a closet and they made sure that everybody in the building saw her getting taken off the air and moved into a closet. The closet is the memo, right? That’s the memo to the whole building, you better shut up and do as you’re told, okay? So that way, I don’t have to tell you and get myself in trouble. It’s super obvious. There are guardrails here, and you are not allowed to go beyond acceptable thought. Acceptable thought is our sponsors are great, politicians are great, the powerful are great.
Then Nixon reads the memo and goes, “That sounds like a really good idea. How about I put you on the Supreme Court?” He puts Lewis Powell, the guy who wrote the memo, on the Supreme Court where he’s the deciding vote in Bellotti and Buckley. So, those two decisions are 1976 to 1978, and what they say is, yeah, I read the Constitution and it says that money’s speech. No, it isn’t. No, it didn’t. That’s not even close to true. They just made it up. They said, “Okay, in corporations, they’re human beings.” No, they’re not. That’s preposterous. They have the same inalienable rights as human beings and citizens do. Money is speech and speech is an inalienable right. So, corporations can spend unlimited money in politics, and there goes our democracy, gone.
So, Citizens United just shot a dead horse with a Gatling gun and made it worse and put it on steroids, but it was already dead in 1978. For the rest of your life, you’ll see this. Every chart about the American economy starts to diverge in 1978. 1938 to 1978, we have golden 40 years of economic prosperity. We create the greatest middle class the world has ever seen and our productivity is sky-high, but our wages match our productivity. After 1978, productivity is still sky-high best in the world. Oh, American worker’s lazy, not remotely true. We work our ass off, but we just flatline. They’ve been flatlining for about 50 years straight. The reason is because the Supreme Court made bribery legal. So, in order to get past the Supreme Court, you only have one choice.
That’s an amendment. So, you have to get an amendment. Amendments are very difficult. So, for example, you need two-thirds of Congress to even propose the amendment. So, well, why would Congress propose an amendment that would take away their own power? Because almost everybody in Congress got there through corruption. Their main talent is I can kiss corporate ass better than you can. A person with more money in Congress wins 95% of the time, but the good news is the founding fathers were geniuses, and they put in a second outlet. They said, “Or two-thirds of the states can call for a convention where you can propose an amendment. After an amendment is proposed, then three-quarters of the states have to ratify it.”
That’s what makes it so difficult, because getting three-quarters of the states, there’s so many red states, so many blue states, getting three-quarters of the states to agree is near impossible. But there is one issue that the whole country agrees on, 93% of Americans believe that politicians serve their donors and not their voters. So, this is the one thing we can unite on. If we unite on this, we push our states to call for a convention. We all go to the convention together, we bring democracy alive, and we propose amendments to the Constitution. The best amendment gets three-quarters of the states to ratify. You go above the Supreme Court and you solve the whole thing.
For example, when Bernie does the wrong thing, we call him out. Bernie is not my Goddamn uncle. I don’t like him for some personality reason. It’s not a cult of personality. You do the right thing, I love you for it. You do the wrong thing, I’m going to kick your ass for it. But Donald Trump does this massive ridiculous corruption over and over again. MAGA is like, “I’m here for it. Love it. As long as you’re doing the corruption, I’m okay with it.”
So, I predicted on ABC right after the DNC and Hillary Clinton was up 10, 12 points, whatever she was, and I said, “Trump would win.” The whole panel laughed out loud. They’re like, “Get a load of this crazy guy.” I said, “He’s a populist who seems to hate the establishment in a populist time. Drain the swamp is a great slogan. I knew he would win when he was in a Republican debate and he said, ‘I paid all these guys. Before I paid them, and they did whatever I wanted.'” I was like, “That’s so true.” People will love that, and especially Republican voters will love that. I actually have a lot of respect for Republican voters because they actually genuinely hate corruption.
Number one, a lot of people will have different opinions on what it should say, and that’s what you sort out in a convention. So, for example, one of the things that conservatives can propose, which makes sense, is term limits. Because the reason why these super old politicians are in charge is because they provide a return on investment. So, if you give to Biden, Pelosi, or McConnell, they’re going to deliver for you. They love that return on investment. They don’t want to risk it on a new guy. The new guy might have principles, ew, or might want to actually do a little bit for his voters, boo. Every corrupt system has these old guys hanging around that help maintain power, et cetera. So, my particular proposal in the amendments would be a couple of things.
One is end private financing of elections. Look, if you’re a businessperson, you’re a capitalist, you know this with absolute certainty. If somebody signs your check, that’s the person you work for. So, if private interests are funding politicians, the politicians will serve private interests. Then you’re going to get into a fight like Elon did in New Jersey where the car dealerships and Tesla are getting into an auction. Can I hear $100,000, $1 million, $2 million, $3 million? Now you got to go bribe the government official. That’s called a campaign contribution. This is a terrible system. End the private financing, go to complete public financing of elections.
That’s when conservatives, because they’ve been propagandized by corporate media. Yes, mainstream media got into your head too. Right-wing media got into your head too, and right-wing media also financed by a lot of this corrupt interest. So, they tell you, “Oh, you don’t want to publicly finance. Oh, my God. You’d be spending like $1 billion on politicians.” Brother, they’re spending trillions of dollars of your money because they’re financed by the guys that they’re giving all of your money to.
One is some folks have a principled position against it, and they say, “Well, I mean the Sierra Club is technically a corporation. ACLU is technically a corporation. So, if you end corporate personhood, then that could endanger their existence.” No, it doesn’t endanger their existence at all. So, it doesn’t endanger GM or GE’s existence. It doesn’t endanger anybody’s existence. Corporations exist. We’re not trying to take them away. I would never do that, right? That’s not smart, that’s not workable, et cetera. We’re just saying they don’t have constitutional rights. So, they have the rights that we give them. By the way, read the founding fathers. This is also in my book. They hated corporations. The American Revolution was partly against the British East India Company.
So, the Tea Party in Boston was against that corporation. They threw their tea overboard. It was not against the British monarchy. All the founding fathers warned us over and over again, watch out for corporations, because once they form, they will amass money and power and look to kill off democracy. They were totally right. That’s exactly what happened. So, it’s not that you don’t have them. It’s that through democratic capitalism, you limit their power. You can give them a bunch of rights. You say, “Hey, you have a right to exist. You have a right to do this, this, and this, but you do not have constitutional rights of a citizen.” So you don’t have the right to speak to a politician by giving them a billion dollars.
The elites say, “Well, we’re so smart and educated, so we’re going to know better what’s good for you.” No, brother. You’re going to know what’s better for you. So, here’s something that a lot of people get wrong on the populist left and right. They think, “Oh, those guys are evil.” They’re not evil. I’ve met them. I worked at MSNBC, I worked on cable, I went to Wharton, Columbia Law, et cetera. I know a lot of those guys. So, they’re not at all evil. They don’t even know that they’re mainly serving their own interests. They just naturally do it.
So, they think the carried interest loophole makes a lot of sense. They think corporate tax cuts makes a lot of sense. You not getting higher wages, you not having healthcare, it makes a lot of sense. It doesn’t make any goddamn sense, but they get themselves to believe it. That’s another portion of the invisible hand of the market.
Well, then you would be opposed to change at all times. So, if you do that, it actually reminds me of the Biden fight. So, I’m like, “Guys, he has almost no chance of winning. He stands for the establishment. He can’t talk.” But then the number one pushback I’d get from Democrats was, yeah, but what if we change? It’s so scary. We don’t know about Kamala Harris. What if it’s not Kamala Harris? It’s so scary, don’t change. Yeah, but if you say change might be worse, it also might be better. You’re at zero. Anything is better, right? Right now, in terms of corruption in America, we’re at 98% corruption. So, we’ve got 2% decency left. Brother, this is when you want change.
Lex, if you actually have wisdom of the crowd, just like in supply and demand and how it works in economics, it works the same way in a functioning democracy. You go too far, you come back in. So, for example, when Reagan came into office, me and my dad and my family, we were Republicans. Why? At that point, the highest marginal tax rate was at 70%. 70% is too high. Then he brought it all the way down to 28%. That’s too low. That’s how the system modulates itself. Already we were headed towards corruption because it’s the 80s now. We’re past 78, magic 78 marker.
Even Carter was way more conservative economically than people realize because we’re already getting past it by the time it’s in his administration. But the bottom line is, yes, whenever you have real wisdom of the crowd, whether it’s in business or in politics, you’re going to have fluctuation. You’re going to have that pendulum swinging back and forth. You don’t want wild swings, communism, corporatism, right? You want to get to hey, where’s the right balance here between capitalism and what people think is socialism?
So the right idea isn’t shut down drug companies. The right idea is don’t let them buy the government, right? And I know we get back into our instinctual shells, so on the left they’ll be, oh, we should get rid of all billionaires. Why? How does that fix the system? Tell me how it fixes the system, and I’m all ears. My solution is end private financing. Then you can be a billionaire all you like. You can’t buy the government. That’s a more logical way to go about it. I’ve never worn an Eat the Rich shirt, and it drives me crazy. I’m like, “You would’ve eaten FDR.” Right? And FDR is the best president, the most populous president in my opinion. And so no, there’s wonderful rich people. Of course, of course there’s a range of humanity. But you don’t want to get rid of the rich. You don’t want to get rid of companies, but you also don’t want to let them control everything.
Here, I’ll give you an example that’s really, and that informs a lot of how I think about things, which is my dad. So my dad was a farmer in southeastern Turkey, near the Syrian border. No money. In fact, his dad died when he was six months old. And so they were saddled with debt and no electricity in his house. As poor as poor gets. And he wound up living the American dream. And so how did he do that? What made the difference? Well, what made the difference is opportunity. So I’m a populist because my dad was in the masses, and the elites say the masses are no good. We’re smart, you’re not. We’re educated, you are not. At meritocracy, we talk about that. We have earned merit. And if you’re poor or middle-class, you have not earned merit. Okay? You’re useless and worthless. And I hate that.
So what did Turkey do back in the 1960s that liberated my dad? They provided free college education. You had to test into it, but the top 15% got a free college education at the best colleges in Turkey. And my uncle saved all of our lives when he came to my dad and said, “Do you like working on this farm?” And my dad’s like, “Fuck no.” It’s super hot. It’s super hard. They got to get up at four in the morning. If they’re lucky, they have a family next door gives them a mule. If they’re not, they got to carry the shit themselves. So my uncle told him, work just as hard in school and you’ll be able to get a house, a car, pretty girls, et cetera. My dad works his ass off, gets into the school, and he comes out of a mechanical engineer and starts his own company.
He creates a company in Turkey, hires hundreds of people. He then moves to America, creates a company here, hires tons of people. Do I hate companies? No. My dad set up two companies and I saw how much it benefited people. I saw how much employees would come up to my dad 20, 30 years later in the street and hug him. And they’d tell me, as a young kid, your dad’s the most fair boss we ever had. And we love him for it. That’s how you run a company. And he taught me the value of hard work.
But the reason I brought it up here is because he taught me, look, skill and ability is a genetic lottery. So you’re not going to just get the rich to win all the genetic lottery. No. There’s going to be tons of poor kids and middle-class kids who are just as good if not better. You have to provide them the opportunity, the fair chance to succeed. You have to believe in them. So this isn’t about disempowering anyone. It’s about empowering all of those kids who are doing the right thing, who are smart and want to work hard so they could build their own companies and add to the economy.
All the longshoremen jobs in New York, LA, wherever you have it, are all going to white guys because that’s how the system was. Yes, also in the north. So we now are in a civil rights era. We decide we’re going to go towards equality. Minorities, in that case, mainly black Americans, had to find a way to break in. If you’re a longshoreman and it’s a good job, you naturally pass it on to your son. I get your instinct, I don’t hate you for it. But we got to let black kids also have a shot at it. So you need it in the beginning, but at a certain point you have to phase it out.
So when I was growing up, it’s now in the late ’80s, early ’90s, I hated affirmative action and I’ve been principled on it from day one. And to this day, I’m not in favor of affirmative action. I say it on the show all the time. Why? I’m a minority. Being a Turk. I grew up Muslim, I’m an atheist now, but generally speaking, a Muslim is certainly a minority in America and pretty much a hated one overall. But I didn’t check off Muslim or Turkish or any ethnicity when I applied to college because I believe in a meritocracy as we were talking about. But we don’t really have a meritocracy now, so I can come back to that, so I didn’t check it off because I didn’t want an unfair advantage, because I want to earn it. I want to earn it. So now I’m in law school and I’m hanging out with right-wingers because at that point I’m a Republican, and one of the guys says to me about a black student going to Columbia, he says, oh, I wonder how he got in here.
God, that is the problem with affirmative action. It devalues the accomplishments of every minority in the country. You have to transition away from it. If you don’t, it sets up a caste system. And that caste system is lethal to democracy. So does DEI go too far? In some instances, yes. But is it a boogeyman that’s going to take all the white jobs and make them black as Trump would say, black jobs, and give minorities too much power, et cetera? No. The idea isn’t to rob you and to give all the opportunity to minorities. The idea is to make it equal. But as the pendulum swings, did it swing too far in some directions? Yes. The left can’t acknowledge that and the right can’t acknowledge that, of course, at some point you got to give a chance for others to break in so they have a fair chance.
So for example, on trans issues, we’ve protected trans people for over 20 years in The Young Turks. We fought for equality for trans people and for all LGBTQ people for two decades. We did it way before anyone else did. When Biden came out in favor of gay marriage in 2013, we’re like, this is comically late. So we were all supposed to congratulate him in the year 2013 that he thinks gay people should have the same rights as straight people? And that he had to push Obama to get there? So on the other hand, I’m like, guys, if you allow trans women to go into professional sports, not at the high school level, but professional sports, but let’s say they go into MMA or boxing and a trans woman, I mean, it happens in boxing, it happens in MMA, punches a biological woman so hard that she kills her. So you’re going to set back trans rights 50 years. I’m not trying to hurt you, I’m trying to help you. You have to do bounds of reason.
So when I say simple things like that, and I say, you can give LeBron James every hormone blocker on planet earth, he’s still going to dominate the WNBA. Okay? It would be comical. He might score a hundred points a night. And they’ll say, that’s outrageous. And some have called me Nazi for saying that trans women or that professional leagues should make their own decisions on whether they allow trans women in or not. So why do they say that? Because they’re so besieged, they think we cannot give an inch. We cannot give any ground. If you give any ground, you’re a Nazi. Okay? So we’ve got to get out of that mindset. You can’t function in a democracy and be in an extreme position and expect the rest of the country to go towards your extreme position.
And so if we get to a meritocracy one day, I’ll be the happiest person in America. But right now it’s… Look here I’ll give you an example that I put in the book, and it’s not us, this other folks at this YouTube video. I can’t even quite find who they were, but it was a brilliant video, and they said, we’re going to do a hundred yard race. But hold on before we start, anyone who has two parents take two steps forward. Anyone who went to college, take another two steps forward. Anyone who doesn’t have bills to pay for education anymore, take two steps forward. They do all these things. And then at the end, before they start, somebody’s 20 yards from the finish line, and a lot of people are still at the starting line, and then they go, okay, now we’re going to run a race. And the guy who was right next to the finish line wins and they go, meritocracy. Okay?
So there’s a lot that I like about right-wing voters. But you guys get tricked on social issues so easily. So how many people are involved in trans high school sports and a girl who should have finished first in that track race in the middle of Indiana finished second. First of all, this is the big crime? And how many people are involved about 7? 13? Out of a country of 330 million people? And you can’t see that that’s a distraction? And everything they did that is bait that the right wing media puts out there, they run after. I mean, Tucker Carlson doing insane segments about Eminem should be sexier. Mr. Potato Head has gender issues. Guys, get out of there. Get out of there. It’s a trap. Okay?
And what happened to $15 minimum wage? And I remember talking to one of those Congress people, I leave out the name, and saying, hey, you know they’re not going to do $15 minimum wage. And he is like, “Oh, Cenk, you’re out of the loop. Nancy Pelosi assured us that they are going to do $15 minimum wage.” I’m like, “I love you, but you’re totally wrong. Moneyed interests are not going to do $15 minimum wage. You have to start fighting now.” And they didn’t get it. So they lost on almost all those issues. It’s all about incentives and disincentives and rules. If you don’t fix the rules, you’re going to constantly run into the same brick wall.
Now, the second issue that we were talking about is in the culture wars. The rest of us are stuck between the two extreme two-percenter on both sides. So the two two-percenter on the left goes, if you’re a white woman, you need to shut up and listen now, okay? That’s ridiculous. No, you don’t. If you’re a white woman, you have every right to speak out. You have every right that every other human being has. And so would I love for all of us to listen to one another, to have empathy for one another and go, hey, I wonder how a right-winger thinks about this. I wonder how a left-Winger thinks about this. I wonder why they think that way, right? I love that and I want that. So I want you to listen, but I don’t want you to shut up. So that 2% gets extreme and I don’t like it.
But on the right wing, you got your 2% who think that that’s all that’s happening on the left, and that’s all that’s happening in American politics, and they think the entire left believes that tiny 2%, and so they hate the left, and they’re like, oh, I’m not going to shut up. Oh, I’m not going to wear a mask. I’m not going to do any of these things and I’m not going to do anything. That’s a freedom. And then a Republican comes along and goes, oh yeah, that thing you call freedom, that’s deregulation for corporations because you shouldn’t really have freedom. Companies should have freedom. And then the guy goes, “Yeah, freedom for ExxonMobil.” No brother, they tricked you.
Well, you’re telling on yourself brothers and sisters, when you say that that means A, I don’t know what communism means, and B, I don’t have any idea what’s going on in American politics. Kamala Harris is a corporatist. That’s her problem. Not that she’s a communist, she’s on the other end of the spectrum. The idea that Kamala Harris would come into office and say, that’s it. There’s no more private property. We’re going to take all of your homes and it’s now government property, then all your cars, et cetera. She was not going to get within a billion miles of that. Her donors would never allow her to get within a billion miles of that. That is so preposterous that when you say something like that, it’s disqualifying. I can’t debate someone who thinks that Democrats are communists when they’re actually largely corporatists. You see what I’m saying?
Why? Because it says, hey, when you have a baby, you should get 12 weeks off. Bond with your baby. Right now, in a lot of states that don’t have paid family leave, you have to go back to work the very next day, or you have to use all of your sick days, all your vacation days, just have one or two weeks with your baby. So conservatives love paid family leave, liberals love paid family leave. That’s why it polls so high. So why isn’t she proposing it? It’s not in her economic plan. Tim Walz already passed it in Minnesota. He showed how easy it was. If you want votes, and then you know what’s going to happen if you propose paid family leave, the Republicans are going to go, no, our beloved corporations don’t want to spend another dollar on moms, and they fall for that trap, and then you are in an infinitely better shape.
So why doesn’t she do it? She doesn’t do it because her corporate donors don’t want her to do it. $15 minimum wage, layup. Over two thirds of the country wants it because it not only gives you higher wages for minimum wage folks, but it pushes wages up for others. And what do the elites say? Oh, that’s going to drive up inflation. No, you shouldn’t get paid anymore. Wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on. So you’re saying all the other prices should go up, but the only thing that shouldn’t go up is our wages? No, our wages should go up. So these are all easy ones.
Here’s another one. Anti-corruption. Why isn’t she running on getting money out of politics? It polls at over 90%. Why isn’t Trump running on it anymore? He won when he ran on it in 2016, he didn’t mean a word of it, but he ran on it. It was smart. They don’t do it because their corporate donors take their heads off if they do it.
And on top of that, eventually they’re going to cut your Social Security and Medicare because they’re going to say, oh, we don’t have any options left anymore. You don’t have any options left any more because you kept giving trillions of dollars in tax cuts to corporations, so we’re going to have to pay for that.
So then Biden says, oh my God, I’m going to bring corporate taxes back up to 28%. I’m like, wait, hold on. They were at 35. You already did a sleight of hand and said 28. Okay? Then he gets into office and Manchin says, no, 25, that’s the highest I’ll go. And he goes, okay, fine. 25. And then while you’re not looking, they just dump it. They don’t even do 25. It’s still at 21. So hear me now, quote me later. I do predictions on the show all the time because you should hold me accountable. You should hold all your pundits accountable. If you held all your pundits accountable, we’d be the last man standing. And that’s what happened. Okay? So I guarantee you she will not increase corporate taxes.
So that’s what she’s proposing. That’s all political because the price gouging has already passed. They did it in ’21 and ’22, and so now the grocery stores are actually a low-margin business. She says grocery stores, that’s how I know she doesn’t mean it because the grocery stores weren’t the problem. Consumer goods were the problem.
Those companies-
Then when you gaslight and you go, “Oh no, 1,200 people in Israel being killed is awful,” which it is, but 40,000 people being killed in Gaza, it’s no big deal. We should keep giving them money, keep killing, keep killing, and that’s normal. No, it’s not normal. I’m not going to let you say it’s normal. That’s nuts. We were against the Iraq War. There was only two shows that were on the air nationally that were against the Iraq War, us and Democracy Now with Amy Goodman. At the time, I used to yell all the time because mainstream media would gaslight the fuck out of us. We’re going to be greeted as liberators, me and Ben Mankiewicz on the air. Ben doesn’t yell as much. He’s now the host of Turner Classic Movies, but he’s saying it in a calm way. I’m saying it in a screaming way.
We’re not going to be greeted as liberators. When you drop a bomb on someone’s head, they don’t greet you as a liberator. Stop saying insane things. Seven out of 10 Americans thought that Saddam Hussein had personally attacked us on 9/11. We got lied into that war by corporate media, okay? Now, there’s a couple of good things that Trump has done. One is get people to realize corporate media is the matrix and get them to an anti-war position. He himself doesn’t have an anti-war position, but his voters do and that’s a positive. We can come back to that.
But these days, the reason why the Charlie Kirk conversations are going great, and Rudy Giuliani and Mike Lindell, and historically though, go back again 10 years, 20 years, we’ve always been respectful when someone comes on our show and we have a debate. As long as they’re not yelling, I match the tenor of the host, right? You and I are having a reasonable conversation. I’m not raising my voice. I’m not yelling at you for no reason. So, now when Charlie’s not going to battle anymore for talking points, I’m shutting off my mind, all I’m doing is yelling at you, then I’m going to yell back at him. But now he’s saying, “Okay, let’s have a reasonable conversation.” Great. I love it. I love reasonable conversations.
So, there’s no way corporate Republicans and Democrats, which are about 98% of politicians, are going to limit private equity. So, when do we ever get a little bit of change? When Democrats are in charge, they do 5 to 15% of their agenda. That’s not because they’re warm-hearted. It’s a release valve, right? Oh, see, under Obama, we got about 5% change. What was that? That was Obamacare. That was most of the change that we got. What’s the greatest part of Obamacare? Now, a lot of right-wing also agree, almost all of right-wing agree about this portion, which is they got rid of the bias against pre-existing conditions. Why did they do that particularly? Because the country was about to get in a fucking rage. We all have pre-existing conditions.
If you deny me when I’m sick, what the fuck is the point of insurance? The anger had gotten to a nuclear level. So, release valve, get rid of pre-existing conditions. Let’s go back to just milking them regularly. Oh, by the way, put in a mandate so that they have to buy it from us, right? Do you know who originally came up with Obamacare? The Heritage Foundation. It was their proposal. Romney did it in Massachusetts. It was called Romneycare. So, I think this is a super important election, but I’ve earned the credibility to be able to say that, because in 2012, I said, “This is a largely unimportant election.” Mitt Romney and Barack Obama’s policies on economic issues are near identical. Obamacare was literally Romneycare.
Right now, the left says, “Oh, the Heritage Foundation, it’s so dangerous, Project 2025.” Well, brother, they’re the ones who wrote Obamacare, and you say, that’s the greatest change in the world, right? So that’s why the Democrats, yeah, I’ll take the 10% change overall. I think Biden did about 15%. Obama did 5%, but they’ll also march you backwards by deregulating like Clinton did and Obama did, the bank bailouts like Obama did. But 10% is better than 0%, but it’s not to help you. It’s the release valve, so the system keeps going.
So, I’m partly joking, but not really. He has never demonstrated any empathy that I have ever seen for any other human being. I’m going to trigger some right-wingers because they think every terrible thing he said is out of context or joking or not real or fake news. But his chief of staff didn’t make it up. He called people who went into the military suckers and losers. Why? Why did he say that? Just hang with me for a second. Don’t have your head explode. Okay? I’m not saying to Lex. I’m saying to the right-wingers out there.
So, the reason is because if you’re like Trump and you literally don’t feel the empathy, you’d think, “Why the hell would I go in the military, get killed for someone else? What a sucker. No, I’m going to stay out of the military. I’m going to stay alive. I’m going to make a ton of money and I’m going to look out for myself.” He assumes because everybody does this, you assume that everyone thinks like you do, but they don’t. So, Trump assumes everybody’s as much of a dirt bag as he is, because he doesn’t feel it. He doesn’t feel the empathy. So, he’s like, “Yeah, you’d be an idiot, a sucker and a loser to go into the military and have sacrifice for other people.” So you see the spectrum.
Even if you think Trump’s not on that end and you think I’m wrong about that, you get that there are people on that end. So, you have a spectrum of integrity, empathy, et cetera. That’s what I would call your hardware. You layer on top of that your software, and the software is cultural influences, your parents, media, your friends. All these are cultural influences. So, now when you’re in certain industries, they value more integrity. So, religious leaders, if you’re doing it right, which is also very rare, but if you’re doing it right, you’re supposed to have empathy for the poor, the needy, the whole flock. So, that profession is incentivizing you towards empathy and integrity.
Even then, a giant amount of people abuse it, but okay, good. In politics, it creates incentives for the opposite, no integrity. That software, to your point, over time gets stronger and stronger and stronger until it takes over. Now, you might have someone with a lot of integrity like Tom Massie, the Republican from Kentucky. Whether I agree with him or disagree with him on policy, I get that the brother is actually doing it based on principles. There isn’t any amount of money you can give Tom Massie for him to change his principles. Why? He’s on the principled end of the spectrum as a human being, so is Bernie. They’re on the same part of that spectrum.
But for most people, the great majority of the spectrum, if you overload them with software that incentivizes them to not have integrity, they will succumb. Now let’s switch to politicians in particular. Why do I think that they’re on average far more likely to be on the sociopathic part of the spectrum? Because of the incentives and disincentives. So, this changes every congressional cycle. When just Democrats were winning a lot, it got all the way down to 87.5%. But on average for congressional elections, the person with more money wins 95% of the time.
It doesn’t matter if they’re a liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat or any ideology they have, 95%. So, now let’s say you got the 5% that went in that are not hooked on the money. Well, they’re going to get a primary challenge, then they’re going to get a general election challenge. 95% of the time, the one with more money wins. So, eventually, this system cycles through until almost only the corrupt are left.
So, some of the papers are principled. They might say, “Oh, no,” but overall, they’re not calling you a radical. They’re not calling you anything and you’re buying those races. But when you get to the presidential race, that’s much harder, because presidential race, you have earned media, free media that overwhelms paid media. Perfect examples is 2016. Hillary Clinton outraces Trump by about two to one, but she loses anyway. Why? Because Trump got almost twice as much earned media as she did. The earned media is better. It’s inside the content. It is definitely better. So, in a presidential election, as long as you got past the primary, you could actually win with not that much money.
That’s part of the reason why I have hope, Lex, because all you got to do is get past a Republican or democratic primary. Now that’s very, very, very difficult, but Trump did it, right? Now, he took it in the wrong direction, but he did leave a blueprint for how to do it. So, once you get to the general election, you’re off to the race. You could do any goddamn thing you like. Okay, you could be super popular. You don’t have to give a shit about the donors. You can get into office. You could bully your own party and the other party into doing what you want, and you can get everything done. You could even get money out of politics. So, don’t lose hope. I mean, we even started Operation Hope at TYT and our first project was to knock Biden out.
Everybody said, “You guys are nuts. That’s totally impossible.” We knocked Biden out. Did we do it alone? Of course not. We were a small part of it, but we laid the groundwork for hope and we laid the groundwork for when he flopped in the debate. People had already been told, remember, he’s bad, he’s old, he’s not right. The debate proved it. If we hadn’t done that groundwork, and not just Young Turks obviously, but Axelrod and Carville and Nate Silver and Ezra Klein, et cetera, Charlamagne tha God, Jon Stewart, all these people helped a lot. So, that when the debate happened, it confirmed the idea that out there that he was too old and couldn’t do it. So, my point is if you lose hope, you’re done for. Then they’re definitely going to win, right?
Hope is the most dangerous thing in the world for the elites. So, whether you’re right-wing or left-wing, I need you to have hope and I need you to understand it’s not misplaced. We just got to get past the primary, and we’re going to turn this whole thing around.
Because if you can’t certify the election, they wanted general confusion and chaos so that the Republicans in Congress could say, “Well, we don’t know who won, so we’re going to have to kick it back to the states.” The states, they had the fake electors ready. Remember, the fake electors are not Trump’s electors. Both candidates have a slate of electors, Biden’s electors and Trump’s electors. They go to the Trump electors first in this plan, and half the Trump electors go, ” No, I’m not going to pretend Trump won the election when he didn’t win the election.” So they’re like, “Shit, now we’ve got to come up with fake electors.” So they enlist these Republicans who go, “Yeah, I’ll pretend Trump won,” right?
So they sign a piece of paper. That’s fraud, and that’s why a lot of them are now being prosecuted in the different states. So, the idea is the Republican legislators then go, “We’re sending these new electors in and we think Trump won Arizona and Georgia and Wisconsin.” That was the idea. That was the plan. Then you come back to the House. At that point when there are two different sets of electors, the constitutional rule is the House decides, but the House decides not on a majority because the Democrats had the majority at the time, they decide on a majority of the states. They vote by state, and the Republicans had the majority of the states. So, in that way, you steal the election. Even though Trump didn’t win, you install him back in as president.
That is a frontal assault on democracy, and I loathe it. Then Trump on top just blabbers out, “Well, sometimes if there’s massive fraud in an election,” in other words, I think I won. I don’t even think that. I’m just saying that I won. He says, “You can terminate any rule, regulation, or article even in the Constitution.” No, brother, you cannot terminate the Constitution because you’d like to do a fake electors scheme and do a coup against America. Fuck you. Okay? So I’m never going to allow this want-to-be tyrant to go back into the White House and endanger our system. So, you want to endanger the corrupt system. I’m the guy. Okay, let’s go get that corrupt system and tear it down.
If you want to endanger the real system, democracy, capitalism, the Constitution, then I’m your biggest enemy. So, I’m never going to take that risk. You see it every time he goes to talk to a dictator. Look, guys, I’m asking you to be principled, right? I asked the left of that, and we drive away some of our audience when we do that. So, we got the balls to do that to our own side. So, for the right wing, be honest, if it was Joe Biden or Barack Obama or Kamala Harris that went and wrote “love letters” to a communist dictator who runs concentration camps, you would say, “Communist! We knew it. Look at that.” Trump literally says about Kim Jong Un, “We wrote love letters to one another. We fell in love.”
If a Democrat said that, they’d be politically decapitated, their career would be instantly over. But Trump, whenever it’s Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, don’t get into Russia, Russia, Russia, but it’s just that he’s a strong man, right? Kim Jong Un or Viktor Orbán, Duterte in the Philippines, anytime it’s a strong man that says, “Screw our Constitution, screw our rules. I want total loyalty to one person,” Trump loves them. He loves them. He said once, he’s like, “Oh, it’s great. You go to North Korea or China. When the leader walks in, everybody applauds and everybody listens to what he says. That’s how it should be here.” No, brother, that’s not how it should be here. You hate democracy. You want to be the sole guy in charge. As a populist, you should loathe Donald Trump.
Not remotely true. Heritage Foundation does a study. They want to prove it so badly. It turns out, no matter how they moved the numbers, the final number they got was it happens 0.0000006% of the time. It almost never happens. They found like 31 instances over a decade or two decades.
There is actually a process for that. It happened in North Carolina because Republicans did voter fraud in this one district. It wasn’t the candidate himself. It was this campaign person, and they did ballot harvesting, but ballot harvesting, again, it depends on what you mean. If you’re just collecting ballots, that’s okay. He changed the ballots. That’s not okay. So, they had to redo that election. So, now the real place where it gets rigged is before elections. There’s two main ways that things get rigged. One is almost exclusively… No, that’s not fair. I was going to say Republicans, but Democrats do it too in a different way. So, Republicans would come in. Brian Kemp is the king of this in Georgia. So, he was against Trump doing it ex post facto.
He’s like, “No, you idiot. We don’t cheat after the election. We cheat before the election.” Okay? So they’ll go, “Well, I mean, you got to clear out the voter rolls every once in a while.” That’s true because people die. People move and you got to clean out the voter rolls. So, then they come in and they go, “We will clean them out mainly in Black areas.” Okay? Oh, look at that. There goes a couple of million Black voters. Well, some of those, I suppose, are real voters, but they’ll have to re-register and then they’ll find that out on election day. Oh, well, sorry, you couldn’t vote this time. Remember to re-register next time. So, do they go, “Hey, we’re going to take Black people off the voter rolls.” No.
What they do is we’re having more issues in these districts. Here’s another way they do it. How many voting booths do you have in the area? So primarily Republican areas will get tons of voting booths. So, you don’t have to wait in line. You go in, you vote, you go to work, no problem. You’re in a Black area, run in a Republican state. All of a sudden, hey, look that city. Well, we sent you four voting booths. Oh, you got a million people there. Well, what are you going to do? I guess you got to wait in line the whole day. You can’t go to work, et cetera. So, that’s the way of-
So, that’s the number one way to rig an election. Now, finally, the last part of it, maybe the most important, maybe even more important than gerrymandering, and that’s the media. So, it just happened to RFK Junior. It happened to Bernie in 2015. It happens to any outsider, right or left. The media if you’re an outsider will say, “Well, radical…” Number one, they don’t platform you, right? So they’re not going to have you on to begin with. Nobody’s even going to find out about you. If nobody finds out about you, you’re done for, right? So Bernie broke through that because-
There was massive segregation in the south, but a lot in the north as well. And at that point in mainstream media says, “Well, I mean they are citizens, they should have equal rights.” And the right-wing goes, “Bias.” Okay, yeah, I mean, you’re kind of right, it is a bias. It is a bias towards equality in that case. But that is perceived as on the left. Now, fast-forward to today, you don’t have that on the racial issues as obviously as much as you had it back then. But on gay marriage that existed for a long time, where the media is like, “Well, they kind of should have the same rights as straight people.” And the right-wing went, “Bias.” So okay, you’re kind of right about that. But at the same time, I would argue their position is correct. But can they go too far? Of course they can go too far.
Okay. Now, but that’s not the main deal, guys. That’s to distract you. The main deal is economic issues. And again, we say it ahead of time, and you can see if we’re right or wrong. So we will tell folks when we get to an economic bill, you’ll see all of a sudden the guys who theoretically disagree, Fox News and MSNBC close ranks. And you just saw it happen with price gouging, that issue of price gouging. All of a sudden there’s a lot of MSNBC hosts, CNN hosts, Washington Post writes an op-ed against it. And everybody panics is like, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You can’t control anything a corporation does. This is wrong. This is wrong.” Oh, what happened? I thought you guys hated each other. All of a sudden, you totally agree. Fascinating.
Okay. Same thing happened on increasing wages. When they were talking about increasing the minimum wage, Stephanie Ruhle, giant [inaudible 02:12:20] against it on MSNBC. All of a sudden Fox News and MSNBC agree. Do not touch beloved corporations. So now that gets us to our real bias. It’s not left or right. It’s pro-corporate, for all the reasons we talked about before, corporate media, corporate politicians. So if you don’t believe me today, whether you’re on the right or the left, watch. Next time an economic issue, where do they fall, how do they react? When anytime it’s a corporate issue, where does the media go? So that’s the real bias of the media. And so since the real bias of the media is pro-corporations, that is not a left-wing position. That is considered more of a right-wing position. I even think that’s a misnomer, because to be fair to right-wing voters, they’re not pro-big business. They’re not pro-corruption, but the Republican politicians are. So it gets framed as a right-wing issue.
So if you think that the corporate media is too populist, you just don’t get it. They aren’t, they hate populism. So now when you turn to tech. So tech’s a complicated one, because yeah, people write the code. If they’re left-wingers, they’re going to have certain assumptions, and they might write that into the codes or the rules. But they’re also, generally speaking, wealthy. They’re usually white. They’re usually male. And those biases also go in, and there’s a lot of people on the left who object to that bias, right? But that’s a fair and interesting conversation, and one we have to be careful of, and one we could hopefully find a middle ground on, but that’s not the major problem. The major reason why Big Tech gets attacked is because they are competitors of who? Social media competes with mainstream media.
So mainstream media has been attacking Big Tech from day one, pretending that they’re really concerned. Yeah, they’re really concerned, because that’s their competition, and they’re getting their ass handed to them. So I did a story on The Young Turks about CNN article, about all the dangers of social media. I’m like, “Guys, this is written by their advertising department.” Okay. And in fact, they go to the advertisers and they find a rando video on YouTube or Facebook out of billions of videos, and they’re like, “Look, your ad is on this video. Do you denounce and reject every Big Tech company and every member of social media?” And the advertisers is like, “Shit. Yeah, I do.” Meanwhile, they’re doing MILF Island on TV. Okay.
I go in the middle of Ohio, I can’t see a Hillary Clinton sign for hundreds of miles. It is Trump paraphernalia everywhere. So that’s not end all, be all. You could say it’s anecdotal, but you begin to collect data points. But then the real data points are in polling. Okay. So now I’m looking at Biden polling, he’s in the thirties. No incumbent in the thirties has ever come back to win. I’m like, it’s already over. Then all of a sudden, oh my God, Trump takes the lead with Latinos. It’s double over. By later in the process, Trump took the lead with young voters. I’m like, “This is the most over election in history.” A Democrat cannot win if they’re not winning young voters. That’s impossible. Trump’s cutting into his lead with black voters. This thing is over. And I go tell people, and they’re like, “You are crazy.” Why do they think I’m crazy? Because MSNBC is lying to them 24/7, telling them that Joe Biden created sliced bread, and the wheel, and fire. And my favorite talking point was, he’s a dynamo behind the scenes.
So number one, I don’t co-sign on a bullshit. I don’t care which side you’re on. Number two, as you heard earlier, I can’t have Trump winning. It endangers the country. It endangers our constitution, et cetera. So I’m going to do something about it. And so I start something called Operation Hope on The Young Turks. And we ask the audience, “What should we do?” So there’s different projects in Operation Hope. But the first project that pops up is knock Biden out of the race. And so then I ask our paying members on TYT, I say, “Guys, you’re going to vote, and then I’m going to do what you tell me to do. If you say no, I like Biden, or I think Biden’s the best candidate, or even if he isn’t, we’re not going to be able to win on this, so don’t do it.” Should I enter the primary against Biden?
Okay. 76, 24, go, enter. I’m a populist. You tell me to go. You’re my paying members, you’re my boss. I’m going to go. Okay. So I enter the primary. Now, I’m not born in the country, so people are going to freak out about that. I’m a talk show host. The establishment media despises me, so I’m not going to get any airtime. In fact, we consider hiring the top booking agent in New York. We talked to him, and he says, “Well, I’m actually in New York this week.” And he says, “I’m going to go talk to those guys, and I’ll come back to you.” And he was really decent, because normally he charges a lot. Just take the money, right? And go, “Oh, yeah, yeah, I’ll get you out.” But he was a wonderful guy. He said, “I talked to them, you’re banned. So don’t do it. You’re banned at CNN. You’re banned at MSNBC, and I think you’re banned on Fox News, but I’m not sure.”
Okay. So long odds, why do you do it? Because if you think we’re going to crash into the iceberg, you might as well bum rush the captain’s course. I’m lunging at the wheel. So what difference can I make? Well, I can make a difference by going on every show on planet Earth and going, “He’s too old. He’s in the thirties. He has no chance of winning, no chance of winning.” I go on Charlemagne Show, Breakfast Club, right? Charlemagne agrees. All of a sudden we’re having Buzz. And then people go, “Oh, Charlemagne said he has no chance of winning.” Then Charlemagne’s on the Daily Show, talks to Jon Stewart. Jon Stewart does a segment. This is not necessarily causal, but Buzz is building. So then Jon Stewart does a segment, if you remember, and people got super pissed at him, too old, can’t win. And all that buzz is building.
Meanwhile, unrelated to us, David Axelrod and James Carville, and I’m like, “Guys, figure it out. Who does Axelrod speak for?” The top advisor for Barack Obama. Who is James Carville, the top advisor for? The Clintons. This is the Clintons and the Obama sending their emissaries to say, “We can read a poll. He’s going to lose. Change direction.” So when the debate happens, we laid the groundwork. If we hadn’t laid the groundwork, debate would’ve been the first time that Blue MAGA would’ve thought, “Oh, maybe Biden can’t win.” But since all of us said it, and strange bedfellows, I loathe Nancy Pelosi, but she was on our side. I got a lot of issues with Bill Maher. He was on our side. I got a lot of issues with Axelrod and Carville, and they were on our side. So the people who believed in objective reality kind of independently made a plan. Let’s show people objective reality. And we did. And we drove him out, and it made all the difference.
But you can’t argue that it isn’t his source of power. And you can’t argue it anymore, even if you were going to argue it earlier, because once the donors said, “We’re not giving you any more money.” He didn’t have any options. He couldn’t go on. But was he forced out at knife point or something? No. So was it voluntary? Yeah. Ultimately, if Biden decided to stay in, there was nothing we could do about it. And so he had to voluntarily make that decision. But he voluntarily made it, because he had no choice left.
But the Democrats would’ve said he beat Trump and protected democracy in 2020, and he steps down graciously now to make sure we beat Trump again in 2024, and he lets go of power voluntarily. He’s going to be a hero, an absolute hero. But if he doesn’t, you’re going to force all of us to kick the living crap out of him, and tell everybody he’s an egomaniac, which he is. And he’s doing this so that he could be… If you don’t know Washington in that bubble, if you’re a one-term president, you’re a loser. If you’re a two-term president, you have a legacy, and you’re historic. He’s running for one reason, and one reason only. My legacy. I will be a two-term president. I will be considered historic. I’m like, brother, now you’re going to be considered a villain, the villain of the story. You’re handing it right back to Trump. You’re not going to win.
And you know, look at the numbers. Any political professional knows you’re not going to win. So you have hero or villain, and you get to choose. But if you think you’re going to be a hero and beat Trump, that is not a choice you have. That is not going to happen. And they didn’t believe us. But by then they did.
Okay. So that didn’t happen because of Biden. It is what it is. So now when Biden drops out, at least do a vestige of democracy. Go to the convention and do what it’s designed to do, which is pick a candidate. Ezra Klein made a great case for this in the New York Times podcast that he did. That made a huge difference, and he was great for doing that. So I believe in an open convention. But I know Democrats that love to anoint, because they don’t trust the people. So they think the elites are geniuses, don’t worry, we’ll pick the right candidate. Yeah, I remember when you picked Hillary Clinton, how’d that work out? And I remember when you said Joe Biden was the right candidate in 2024. How’d that work out? Do not anoint.
But in the end, they didn’t. So what happened was, Biden does the first announcement, he either forgot or on purpose didn’t put Kamala Harris in there. So there’s all this kumbaya now. Nah, they don’t like each other. And Biden’s been screwing her over the entire time she’s been vice president. So he doesn’t put her in the original statement. And I’m like, “Whoa.” I do a live video of media. I’m like, “Kamala. Harris is not in the statement.” In the middle of my video, they put out a second one going, okay, okay, fine, Kamala Harris, because that’s too much for the president not to endorse his Vice president.
So I didn’t want Biden to endorse anyone. But I’m shocked that they didn’t all endorse her. Because normally what happens is they all endorse. So bottom line Lex is, did she earn it in a perfect system, not even close, right? But did she earn it enough in this imperfect way where at least she showed some degree of competence that assuaged my concerns? Yes. So because a normal Democrat would bungle that. Like Hillary Clinton wouldn’t have talked to the delegates. She would assume that she’s the queen, and that they would all bow their heads. So the fact that she did elementary politics correct, for Democrats that’s like a big win.
`But of all those, Lex, so you can give a good speech, and the Obamas give a mean speech. But I saw Obama as president. He didn’t deliver on that. But the one guy that stood out is Walz. And the reason is because he’s a real person.
You said something about Trump that I disagree with, where I’m defending Trump. Okay. You don’t like what he did to the public discourse. No, I don’t mind it. And I’ll tell you why. Because at least he got a little bit past the fakeness. He’s a con man and he’s a fraud overall, and he does everything for his own interest, but at least he doesn’t speak like a bullshitting politician. And he’s not wrong that you have to bully your own party to amass enough power to get things done. And he showed that that’s possible. So the problem with the Democrats is civility. So my whole life, they’re like, “Oh, no, no, no, don’t say anything. Let’s lose with civility.” So for example, in debates, whether it’s on TV, online, or whatever, Democrats or people on the left are always saying, “I’m offended.” I never get offended. No, after I’m done, you’re going to be offended. Okay, fight back, fighting back wins.
And we couldn’t get Bernie to fight back. In 2020 he was one state away. He won the first three states. He crushed in Nevada. All we needed was South Carolina. But in order to get South Carolina, we all knew, everybody on his campaign. Everyone who’s in progressive media, we all knew you’ve got to attack Biden. If you don’t, they’re just going to tsunami you. The corporate medias and the corporate politicians are going to run roughshod over you. You have to make the case against them. And so two times Bernie flinched. One in 2016, in the Brooklyn debate, they asked, “Did the money that Hillary Clinton taken from the banks affect her votes?” And he said, “No.” Of course it affected our votes. Of course it did. You have to say yes, and you have to show it and prove it.
The bankruptcy bill. When she was First Lady, she was totally in favor of the American people and against the bankruptcy bill, because it has the banks, you can’t discharge any debts, credit card debt and bank debt, et cetera. It’s an awful bill. It’s one of the most corporatist bills. She was on the right side as a First Lady. She becomes a senator, takes banker money, and all of a sudden she flips over to the banker side. Say it Bernie, for God’s sake, say it. Then in one of the debates in 2020, his team prepares attacks against Biden. They’re not personal, they’re not like… You can sense by now, if I’m in a political race, my objective is rip the other guy’s face off.
And to be fair to Bernie, like I said earlier, Obama got only 5% of his agenda passed. And Biden got 15%. Okay. So you’re right, Bernie, you got three times more than under Obama. But you’re wrong, that is not fundamental change. And without fundamental change, we’re screwed.
Makes sense. I would too, of course. It’s not because it’s The Young Turks, any media outlet. And most media outlets, almost all the media outlets reject them. We cover AOC more than all the other press combined, and she wins for a number of reasons. That’s one of the reasons. But there’s many others, and she did a terrific job herself. She then takes Saikat and Corbin who were the… Saikat was the head of Just Democrats and Corbin was Communications Director for Just Democrats. Then Saikat made one of the most brilliant political decisions arguably in American history, he called me and he said, “Cenk, I’m going to go from head of Just Democrats to running AOCs campaign.” And I’m like, “Well, the other candidates are going to get pissed, and you’re staking the entire enterprise on one candidate.” And I’m like, “Saikat, I’m not in it. I’m doing the media arm. You’re in the trenches. You’re the guy making the decisions, so I’m going to trust whatever you say. You sure?” And he said, “I’m sure.”
Him and Corbin go over to AOCs campaign. AOC then wins, that miraculous win. Then she hires Saikat to be her Chief of Staff, and she hires Corbin to be her Communications Director. Within six months, they’re gone. And once they’re gone, AOC then goes on an establishment path. Because why were they gone? Oh, they insulted one of her colleagues. Yeah, that colleague who’s a total corporatist and was selling out one of her policy proposals. If you don’t call out your own side, you’re never going to get anything done. But if you call out your own side, you become persona non grata, and it is super uncomfortable. And we couldn’t get them to do things that were uncomfortable. Now, she’s going to find that outrageous, and she’s going to be very offended by that, and she’s going to point to a bunch of things she did that were uncomfortable.
And to be fair to her, she has. Until that speech, she was pretty good on Palestine when we desperately needed it. She was pretty good on a bunch of issues. Cori Bush did that campaign on evictions, et cetera, on the capital steps. That was great. AOCs original spit-in in Pelosi’s office. At that point we’re all still on the same team. It’s a spectacular success. Me, Corbin and Saikat are saying, “Do it again. Do it again.” Not don’t abuse it, don’t be a clown and do it every other day. But when it matters, you need to be able to challenge Pelosi. And in my opinion, she just got to a point where she got exhausted being uncomfortable. It’s really hard, the media hates you and they keep pounding away and calling you a radical and you’re destroying the Democratic Party, you’re destroying unity. Whereas if you go along, all of a sudden you’re a queen. And now all of a sudden the mainstream media is saying, oh, AOC, she could be the [inaudible 02:43:46].
I love Medicare for All. We have to get Medicare for All. But if that’s the first one you put up without gaining any leverage, you’re going to get slaughtered. Put up something easy, force a vote on $15 minimum wage, or pick another one that’s easy, paid family leave. These are all polling great. Because if you force a vote on that, you can actually win. And if you win, you gain leverage, and then you do the next one and the next one. And then you do Medicare for All. Not bullshit gradualism that the corporate Democrats do, but actually strategically, practically building up power and leverage and using it at the right times.
If I thought that’s what AOC was doing, I would love it. I don’t need her to force a vote on Medicare for All, I don’t need her to go on some wild tangents that don’t make any sense and is only going to diminish her power. But when they eviscerated all the progressive proposals in Build Back Better, how did that happen? Manchin and Sinema used every ounce of leverage they had. They said, “I’m just not going to vote for it. I don’t care. The status quo was always perfect for my donors, so I don’t need you. I vote no. Now, take out everything I want,” and Biden did.
Progressives had to push back and say, “Here is two to three proposals. Not everything, not everything. Two to three proposals. They all poll over 70%. They’re all no-brainers, and they’re all things that Joe Biden promised. We want those in the bill, otherwise we’re voting no.” At that point, what would’ve happened is the media would’ve exploded and they would’ve said, AOC and the rest are the scum of the earth, they’re ruining the Democratic Party. We’re not going to get the bill. They’re the worst. You have to withstand that. If you cannot withstand a nuclear blast from mainstream media, you’re not the person. You have to run that obstacle course to get to change. If they had stood their ground, they definitely would’ve won on one to two of those issues. Instead, they went with a strategy that was called, it was literally called, Trust Biden.
There’s three phases of Kamala Harris’s career. She’s not necessarily any different in terms of policy. You can frame it in a bad way, you could frame it in a good way. You could say, oh, she’s just seeing which way the wind is blowing. And then, oh, she’s a tough cop prosecutor, and then she’s doing justice reform when people want justice reform. Oh, she’s a waffler.
Or you could paint it as she’s pretty balanced. She prosecuted serious criminals very harshly, but then on marijuana possession got them into rehab. And you know what? That’s actually what you should do. I’m not talking about policy so there you could have one of those views about Kamala Harris, and I get it. I’m talking about stylistically. Kamala Harris until the second debate in the primaries in 2020 is a very competent politician who’s in line to be the next Obama. She’s killing it. District attorney, attorney general, senator. And then the first debate, if you remember, she won. She had that great line about, “There was a little girl on that bus that was integrating the schools, and that girl was me.” And Biden being the knucklehead that he is, he’s caught on tape going… Don’t have that reaction, brother, because she’s criticizing his segregation policy on buses back in the ’70.
Anyways, so she’s doing terrific. And then after that debate until Biden drops out is a disaster area for Kamala Harris’s career. In the primary she starts falling apart. She can’t strategize right, she’s for Medicare for All. No, she’s not, she’s for Medicare for some. What’s Medicare for some? I don’t know. And she goes to the next debate and Tulsi Gabbard kicks her ass. And then goes to the third debate, gets her kicked again, and she’s starting to drift away. Then at this point, and this is funny, I have more votes for president than Kamala Harris does, because Kamala Harris dropped out before Iowa because that’s how much of a disaster her campaign turned into when she was leading. She was leading.
Then she becomes vice president and Biden, probably because of that bus line, Jill Biden caught tremendous feelings over that line. Biden’s like, here, have this albatross around your neck. It’s called immigration. Good luck. I’m not going to do anything about it. I’m not going to change policy, but I’m putting you in charge of it to get your ass handed to you. And she does, so that’s a disaster. And then she starts doing interviews where she’s like, “We have to become the change, the being, but not the thing we were and the unbecoming.” And you’re, what is going on? Why can neither one of them speak?
But then the third act shocks me. Biden steps down, she goes and grabs all those delegates in a super competent way that we talked about earlier. And then she goes out and gives a speech. I’m, oh, that speech is good. Okay, and another one, another one. I’m, wait a minute, these are good speeches. No more word salads. Then she picks Tim Walz and shocks the world. I’m like, that’s the correct VP pick. That is a miracle. And then she goes and does the economically populist plan, all those proposals about housing that people care about, grocery prices that people care about. Real or not real, that is correct political strategy. This Kamala Harris is back to the original Kamala Harris, who was a very competent, skilled politician.
If Kamala Harris had picked Mark Kelly, that’s the Tim Kaine equivalent. Oh, he’s an astronaut. I don’t give a shit that he’s an astronaut. What is he saying? Is he a good politician? Does he have good policies? Is he exciting on the campaign trail? Is he going to add to your momentum? Mark Kelly, he might be a good guy, but number one, he’s a very corporate Democrat. And number two, it’s like watching grass grow. He’s terrible at speaking if you ask me. I thought, for sure she’s going to pick Mark Kelly, because that’s what a normal Democrat does. Or if they want to go wild and crazy, they’ll go to Beshear. I was, please let it be Shapiro, because he’s at least not bad. He’s done some populous things and he’s strategic, he’s really smart. I need smart candidates. Dumb candidates don’t help. They don’t have a mind of their own. They can’t take risks. They’re not independent thinkers. They’re going to lose. She picks the smartest, most populous candidate. Boom, boom, we got a winner. That’s a good campaign.
And so, no, Trump’s a disaster in a debate. He’s a one man wrecking crew of his own campaign. Any competent debater would eviscerate Donald Trump. On any given topic, when he says something… Here, let’s take one lunatic conspiracy theory that he just had recently. And by the way, if you’re a right-winger and you keep getting hurt every time I say he’s a lunatic, or I insult Donald Trump, you sound like a left-winger. I’m offended. I’m offended, I’m offended. Get over it. Get over it. We have disagreements, hear what the other side is saying. And by the way, I say the same thing to the left. I say, you think everybody on the right’s evil, you’re crazy. No, they just have a different way of looking at the world. Which by the way, is an interesting conversation, we should talk about that in a minute too. I do it to both sides.
But Trump says, “Oh, I don’t think there’s anyone at Kamala Harris’s rallies, all the pictures are AI.” Let’s say he says that in a debate because he’s liable to say anything. You just say, okay, so you think every reporter that was there, every photographer that was there, every human being that was there, they’re all lying. They have a conspiracy of thousands of people, but none of them were actually there. Do you understand how insane you sound?
But after the assassination, Iran doesn’t want to get into it even though they’re in a rage and they do a small bombing. You could tell if it’s a small or a big one. That’s them saying, we don’t really want war, but for our domestic crowd we have to bomb you back. And that’s when the military industrial complex comes to Trump and says, “No, you have to show them who’s tough and bomb this area.” And Trump says, “No, they did a small bombing, not a large bombing. I don’t want the war. I’m not going to do that bombing.” That was his shining moment.
The second win is they’re depleting Russia. And Russia has gotten themselves into a quagmire, like we did in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they’re bleeding out. The military-industrial complex wants Russia to bleed out for as long as humanly possible. They actually care more about their own interest, of course, than they do about Ukrainian interests. In fact, there’s a good argument to be made that Ukraine could have gotten a peace deal earlier and we prevented it. But the bottom line now is probably how a deal gets done is they let go of three more areas in Ukraine. They already lost Crimea. They’d have to let go of three more regions. And that is tough because at that point Russia’s a little bit encouraged. Every time they do an invasion, they get more land. They might not get all the land they wanted, but they get a lot of land. It’s a very difficult issue.
That means you have to at least bluff that, and you have to get them to believe that he’s a madman. That’s the madman theory of Nixon. And Rudy said that too. He was very clear about it. But the problem is, if you get your bluff called. And so if you actually attack Russia, you’re going to start World War Three. That’s why, yeah, if you could just get away with bluffing, maybe. But he’s playing a very dangerous game, and he massively increased drone strikes. On the other hand, he didn’t bomb Iran further, and on the other hand, he started the process of withdrawal from Afghanistan. Not black and white, complicated record.
And one thing, I’ll give him another piece of credit here. I think I’m taking this steel manning too far, but the credit was that he changed the rhetoric of the right wing. They went from the party of Dick Cheney, War is great, and all Muslims are evil. And so he hates Muslims too, but that’s a different thing. But, oh, we have to attack the enemy. We have to start wars, et cetera. To now the Republican voters are generally anti-war and hate Dick Cheney. Oh, I’ll take it. I’ll take it. That’s a great thing that Trump did, even if he didn’t mean it. Even if he does these provocative things that could lead to a much worse war. Even if I’m worried that he’ll be so reckless he’ll start a bigger war. At least he did that, right, and so I’m happy to have our right wing brothers and sisters join us in the anti-war movement. And I’m not being a jerk about it. I love it.
And so this is another thing the left does wrong from time to time, which is if you agree with a right-winger 2%, they’ll be, “Oh, welcome in. Come on, vote for Trump. Come on in. Yeah, woohoo. Water’s warm.” If you disagree with the left 2%, they’re, “That’s it. You’re banished and you’re a Nazi.” ” Well, brother, how are we going to win an election if you’re banishing everybody there is. Hold up. These Republican voters are coming at your anti-war position. Take the win. “No, they’re [inaudible 03:08:14] and I won’t deal with them.” “Even when they agree with you? That doesn’t make any sense. That doesn’t make any sense. Take the win.” When Charlie Kirk says yes to paid family leave, when Patrick Bette-David on his program roughly says yes to paid family leave, take the win.
On the personal front, I have a friend that’s very similar to him. In fact, he’s one of my best friends. And I know why. This is my theory on why Bobby and my friend led a wild life. Both of their dads died young. When my friend’s dad died, he was 18, and his dad died in his arms. And he has a motto, “What is lived cannot be unlived.” If I had a great time and I thought it was hilarious to dump a dead bear in Central Park, then I lived it and I had a great time and nothing you could do about it. And sometimes that’ll get you in trouble, and sometimes you’ll have a fantastic time. And obviously, Bobby’s dad was killed when he was young, and maybe that got into his head of, you better live strong and live an interesting life. And so I don’t begrudge him that. Even if I begrudge some of the things that he did in that life, I get why he did it. I don’t hate him like other people hate him for some of those personal stuff.
And I like him for all the things that he did positive. Holding fossil fuel companies accountable, protecting communities that had poison dumped into the rivers, et cetera. The thing that affects everybody is when he gets… Corporate media smeared the hell out of him, and they didn’t allow him to speak. And then they did the needle in a haystack trick. Whenever it’s an insider, they find the best parts of their lives and then they amplify it. Joe Biden is average Joe from Scranton. Mother fucker’s been in DC for the last 52 years, you think we don’t have eyes and ears? Average Joe from Scranton, who are you kidding?
There’s a guy named Fred Thompson who’s an actor, and he was a senator from Tennessee later. And he had this great little trick that he would do. There’s a red pickup truck that he would campaign with so he looks like a regular Joe. But he’s a millionaire actor. But here’s the funny part. He would drive to the red pickup truck in a limo, and he would drive back from the campaign event in a limo. But the press never reported the limo, they only reported him in the red pickup truck.
The other thing you should know about Bobby is that he once said in a divorce deposition that he had a brain worm that, by the way, it turns out that affects millions of people and is not that big a deal, right? But look, he is a radical. Ah, he is. This defines him completely. The spectacular case of that actually happened to me. So I ran for Congress in 2020 and The New York Times, LA Times CNN, they all butchered me with needles. Okay? So they said, “He has a long history of making anti-Muslim jokes.” Well, first of all, they didn’t even say jokes. They said anti-Muslim rhetoric. I’m like, I am Muslim. I mean, I’m an atheist, but I grew up Muslim. My family’s Muslim, my background’s Muslim. You don’t think that’s relevant in the story? And they did it based on one joke I told about, and they said, oh, also, of course they say that I’m anti-Semitic, that’s like, you start with that.
That’s just baked in for everyone, right? So they said, I had made a joke about how Orthodox Jews and Muslims, they think that getting into heaven is a little bit of a fashion contest. So the Orthodox Jews go in there with the Russian coats from the 1800s and the giant Russian hat, the Muslims going with their robe and the skull cap and stuff. And God’s looking around going, “No, no, no. Ooh, nice outfit. Come on in.” Right? Do you really think the creator of the universe gives a damn to what you wear? Okay? So New York Times took that and said, “Long history of being anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim.”
Terrible things have happened in that time period. Some of the worst things that have ever happened in history. But overall life expectancy is higher, incomes are higher, health is better, et cetera. So hope is not misplaced. It’s real. It’s empirical. So now we talked about how you could get money out of politics, and that’s a legitimate hope, but media is another place where we have huge hope. So of all the corporate robots, the most important robot is media. So when mainstream media has you hooked in at the back of your neck, you’re going to believe all these fairy tales about how politicians are nice people and they’re trying to do the right thing, and donor money doesn’t have any influence on them. So once you unplug from the matrix, well then you begin to see, oh yeah, hey, look, he took the donor money, did what the donors wanted, he took the donor money, did what the donors want, 98% of the time.
So then you see clearly. So now what’s happening at large, mainstream media is losing their power. And now online media, swarming, swarming, swarming, swarming. And so this goes back to why I started the Young Turks. So let me touch on that here and then we can come back to it if you want. So in 1998, I write an email to my friends and I say, “Online video is going to be television.” And unsurprisingly, and they say, “You’re nuts. That’s never going to happen.” At that point, we’re still doing AOL dial-ups, like… Online video barely exists and television’s mammoth. I say, “Guys, it’s just a matter of logic.” For me, there’s so many ironies, I’m known for yelling online sometimes, but in reality, I’m obsessed with logic. So when you have gatekeepers, gatekeepers pick based on what they want, what the powerful want, in that case, advertisers, politicians, et cetera, they’re never going to design programming as good as wisdom of the crowd.
When people start doing online video, I’m like, boom, there’s no gatekeepers. This is democratized. Wisdom of the crowd’s going to win. So if you start with no money… And let’s pick a different example, not the Young Turks. Let’s say Phil DeFranco. He’s been around forever and he also does news. And so Phil starts doing a show and he doesn’t have any money, he’s just like us. And so what does he have to do to get an audience? He has to do a show that is really popular. He’s got to figure out a way, how do I get their attention? How do I keep their attention? And he starts doing a great show. And so every year it’s us and Phil for best news show for like a decade.
And meanwhile, I’m back over at CNN, Wolf Blitzer still droning on from a teleprompter. You put Wolf Blitzer online without the force of CNN with him, he gets negative seven views. No one’s interested in what Wolf Blitzer has to say. It’s not personal. I don’t know the brother. I’m just saying institutionally, logically, et cetera. So I’m like, these guys are going to win. So when YouTube starts, we go on YouTube right away. We’re the first YouTube partner. So I am literally the original YouTuber, okay?
It’s not an accident that we’ve been attacked dozens of times. One, we’re independent thinkers. So anyone, if we don’t match their ideology, they’re going to attack us. But number two, they get in our algorithm loop. It’s too hard to resist. So all of a sudden they think that we’re being funded by Nancy Pelosi or the CIA, and oh, we’re off to the races. There’s another fight. But our competition is a graveyard. And so we’ve won almost all of those fights. Why? Because we try really hard to stick with the truth, with logic, and we don’t do audience capture. Even if our audience is going in one direction, we don’t think it’s right. Anna and I will come out and go, “No, sorry guys. Love you, but rent control is not a good idea,” et cetera. So in that world, the people, it’s going to take a while, guys, but people who are telling the truth are eventually going to rise up.
And when they do, now we’re free. Now, the second part is even more devastating for mainstream media, because I’m a businessman, I keep looking at the revenue for CNN cetera, and they have a massive problem, and people don’t realize how big the problem is. That thing’s going to capsize. I don’t talk about it often because I don’t want more competition. I also have a company in the online world, et cetera, but I’m too honest, I got to say it. I got to say it. So they have two revenue streams. One is ads. That’s why they serve advertisers and politicians are huge advertisers as we mentioned. The second revenue stream, depending on the company, is arguably more important, which is subscribers. So now what happens in a business normally is, so they started out low and then they got high, and now they got a ton of subscribers.
At its peak cable has a hundred million households. So they’re raking in unbelievable money from subscriber fees, and they got advertising on top. So when you’re all the way up here, your costs start to rise. Why do they rise? Because then the on-air talent has leverage. And as an example, there’s many others. And so the on-air talent, like Sean Hannity says, “I do a program that brings in X amount of maybe a hundred million, maybe 200 million, so give me 40 million a year.” And they do. Sean is making 40 million a year last I checked, okay? So I don’t know if he’s still getting that kind of money, and I’m just spacing out on reporting, but that’s a monster. So they have all these giant costs, but the minute you go from a hundred million, now I think around 70 million, you just lost a giant chunk of your revenue. Now when your costs are higher than your revenue, nighty night, it’s been nice knowing you.
Now, he was saying the left is a bunch of wussies, right? So I wrote a blog saying, “Hey, Michael, I would rather debate you. So if you want to debate about how we’re wussies, let’s do it. Let’s find them. But you are mentioning physicality and how you guys are tougher. So if you prefer only in a prescribed setting, and we’re not going to go do it in the streets like idiots, but if you want, we’ll have a boxing match or whatever you want, and we’ll see who’s tougher.”
And he panicked and he cried to mommy, which was Ariana Huffington, and said, “Oh, Cenk’s intimidating me.” Okay, all right, well who’s the wussy now, bitch? So that is not to actually get into a fight with poor Michael Smerconish, right? It’s to prove, hey, don’t use rhetoric like that. That’s dumb. And this is me proving that it’s dumb. Okay? So now Joe had said, I forget what he said at the time, and he said something similar. And I’m up to hear with Joe at that point. I don’t know if we’ll ever talk yet, right?
And so you tell any religious person what’s wrong with the other religions, they’re like, “Oh, yeah, yeah, that’s totally true.” You get to their religion, tribe takes over, “No, how dare you. I’m offended.” So I grew up with Turkish propaganda. So I’ll tell you a couple of funny instances of it. When we were kids, we’d go to Turkish American Day Parade. I’m like 10 or 12 years old, it’s in the middle of New York because I grew up in Jersey. That’s why I got in all those fights.
And we would chant in Turkish, Turkey is the biggest country. There’s no other country that’s even big. And I was like, this is crazy. I’m like, “Dad, isn’t this crazy? America’s big, China’s big. Why are we chanting this nonsensical chant?” So that’s the beginning of beginning to realize your indoctrination. I’m in college and I read about some battle that the Ottoman Empire lost, and I’m like, that can’t be right. The Turks have only lost one war, World War I, right? And I was like, oh my God, I’m an idiot. I got taught that in third grade in Turkey. Of course, that’s not true. That’s ridiculously untrue. All those thoughts are in your head, you don’t even realize it. And so on the Armenian Genocide, I read the Turkish version, and the Turkish version has all of these as evidence. So it’s real in that it exists.
But here, I’ll give you a great example of it. I think it was Colonel Chesters, some random American military guy after World War I and he says about the Armenians after the mass march, the forced marches, he says, “They returned to the area fat and entirely unmassacred.” Okay? I’m like, Hey, that’s an American Colonel that’s saying that. So that’s obviously true. You see that it didn’t happen, or at least in the way that the Armenians say. Now as a grownup, I look at it and I go, are you kidding me? That guy’s obviously trying to get a contract with the Turkish government, right? Nobody returns from a forced march fat and entirely unmassacred, right? So that’s propaganda. And that one was so indoctrinated that it was tough to let go. So in at Penn, I write that op ed, et cetera, and then over the course of time… And so Anna and I disagree on things from time to time, and we’ve been co-hosting now for… She’s been at the Young Turks for 18 years and co-hosting for almost 18.
And so she’s Armenian. And by the way, I love America. Look, we came to America because we love this country, land of hope and opportunity. That’s part of why I fight so hard for the average American, for the American idea. So here’s a Turk and an Armenian doing a show together, and it becomes the number one online news show. That’s the beauty of America. So she’s telling me things and we’re having some on-air discussions about it, et cetera. And then it just dawned on me like, no, this too was obviously propaganda. So at that point, once you realize that, it becomes easier. That’s why I’m trying to unplug people from the matrix, because once you realize it’s propaganda, oh my God, it gets infinitely easier to start telling what’s true or not true.
But it’s also for mainstream media, and that’s where I get the biggest pushback. Because my tribe is what the kids call PMC, professional management class, okay? Their careers, you go up the ladder, you have this route, that route, et cetera. And so for that class, the status quo is pretty good. So when Biden gives you 15% change, you’re like, what else do y’all want? That’s amazing. He just course corrected a little bit, now it’s perfect. But for the average guy who needs a hundred percent change, not 15, they look at it and they go, what the fuck? He only did 15% and everybody’s declaring him a hero. So those are the hardest guys to get through on. And those are the guys who get most mad at me, not the right-wingers, the establishment. That’s why I’m nails on a chalkboard for them because I’m on the left, but I call out their crap and their marketing and propaganda.
And that’s why I mentioned earlier, he might not even consciously know it, but no one dislikes Bernie more than Obama because if Bernie got into office, he’d embarrass Obama by doing a lot more change. And Obama told us the change wasn’t possible. He could only get 5%. And so if Bernie does 50%, then Obama’s humiliated and his record and his legacy is ruined. So I don’t think he makes that conscious decision, but his subconscious, it’s a way of thinking. So if you’re watching Morning Joe, test them, he says something that Biden is for $15 minimum wage. When Biden takes it out of the bill, know that Morning Joe was lying to you. He says that Biden said he was for the public option, but he never even proposed it. When Morning Joe still defends him and you see an objective reality, Biden didn’t actually propose that bill, you know that they’re lying to. Test it against objective reality. Did it actually happen or didn’t it?
So, conspiracy theories. If you say, “Are they all right or are they all wrong? Are any of the questions wrong?” It depends what is the conspiracy theory. If it’s some of the absurd ones we’ve mentioned here, God, it’s easily disproven. On the other hand, there’s a conspiracy theory about JFK’s assassination. Which one is the conspiracy theory? That Lee Harvey Oswald, from 12 miles away, shot a magic bullet that went like this and hit 13 people, and came out Kennedy’s brain? Or that the government might have wanted to cover up an assassination of the President for whatever reason? Come on.
Now, I’m of course doing hyperbole. The JFK enthusiasts will be like, “No, it didn’t. The bullet actually go like this. It didn’t actually hit 13 people.” I’m kidding, guys. But in terms of is that conspiracy theory real, that JFK was not just killed by Lee Harvey Oswald? Almost certainly. If you read real books, with tons of information, the most likely culprit is Allen Dulles, the head of the CIA that he hired. Back when there was a deep state, there actually was a deep state. They did coups against other countries’ leaders all the time. But they tell us, “Oh, they wouldn’t do it to our own leader.” But remember, it’s not the CIA. He’d left the CIA already.
I don’t know if it was ex-CIA guys, I don’t know if the Mob was involved. I don’t know any of those details. But I know some things that are obvious. That bullet didn’t magically hit him from over there. Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald. Jack Ruby was a mobster who, on the record, had said that he hated Kennedy. All of a sudden, he became patriotic overnight and shot the assailant, who was unguarded. Maybe. Less likely.
Okay, so let’s speed up though. My point is, yeah, some conspiracy theories could be true. It depends on objective reality. You get to Epstein. Again, I always do it ahead of time because I want you to test me and see does it match objective reality. I said the minute that it happened, you’ll have your answer based on whether the video in the hallway worked or not. If the video in the hallway works, they’ll be just as many conspiracy theories, but it’ll actually show actually who went in and didn’t go in. But if the video in the hallway doesn’t work, they definitely killed him.
A couple of days later, “Oh, the video in that particular hallway happened to not be working. The guards both happened to be on break at the same time. And the most notorious pedophile criminal in the country happened to be unguarded. That is the one time he decided to hang himself.” Listen, man. The only way you believe that is you got mainstream media to get you to believe that the minute the phrase conspiracy theory is mentioned, you have to shut off your mind. And you have to believe whatever the media tells you.
“Allen, get rid of these guys.” And Allen would. And sometimes, they would go extra judicial, like potentially with the JFK assassination. By the way, if you pissed off J. Edgar Hoover, he was just going to put a bullet in your head and we were done with you. Fred Hampton, among others.
But nowadays, that’s not how the world works. A small number of families cannot control a country and an economy this size. New people pop up. Well, Mark Zuckerberg wasn’t part of those families. Elon Musk wasn’t part of those families. Neither was Bezos. For you to believe those conspiracy theories, you have to think that Bezos and Musk, et cetera, were like, “Oh, you guys are still running the country? No problem. Go ahead.” They’re not going to do that.
Now we’ve gotten into a system where it’s the invisible hand of the market that runs the country. But unfortunately, it’s only for the powerful. It’s more of a machine. This is super interesting and ties to what we were talking about earlier, Lex. Which is that they don’t do political assassinations anymore. They do character assassinations. That’s the needle in the haystack thing.
If you do an assassination of someone, you build up their status. They become a martyr and you build up their cause. But if you do a character assassination, you smear the cause with the person. The cause goes down, not up. The market found a better way of getting rid of agitating outsiders.
What is the best way to achieve stability and peace in Israel and Palestine in the current situation and in the next five, 10 years?
It’s pretty straightforward. Israel gets out of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but they keep X percentage. It used to be 4%, then it went up to 6%. It’s probably a higher number now. The Palestinians keep losing leverage as we go.
You remember how hard it was to get a deal on Ukraine, I thought. That’s a very complicated one. Israel is much more straightforward. You get the hell out of the occupied territories, keep some of the … Those settlements are the worst thing. They’re a cancer. But anyway, I don’t know. But there is an answer to the settlements, and it’s probably that Israel keeps them, even though that drives me crazy. No right of return for Palestinians. There will be symbolic right of return for a couple of families. Palestinians go, “Oh, no way.” Guys, you have no leverage. Take the deal. Take the deal. You’re not going to get a right of return. Israel is not going to allow millions of Palestinians to go and vote in Israel. It would end the Jewish State. You have to get to a practical solution. Honestly, the number one person blocking it now is Netanyahu. That’s obvious. That doesn’t take a lot of courage to say that. He says publicly, “I don’t want a Palestinian State. I’m against a two-state solution.” He’s been monstrous. He’s one of the worst terrorists of my lifetime. That’s easy.
The right wing of Israel has lot its mind. The Smotrich, and the Ben-Gvirs openly talking about ethnic cleansing, and driving them into other Arab countries. It’s the definition of ethnic cleansing. I know that the Arabs are going to take the deal. Saudi Arabia cannot wait to take the deal because they just want to get business going.
We hear so much propaganda in American media. It’s maddening. This idea that you don’t deal with Hamas is so dumb. The reason it’s dumb is you don’t negotiate with your friends, you negotiate with your enemies. “Well, I don’t want to negotiate with them. I don’t like them.” Well then, you’re not going to get to peace. But still, there is a path that doesn’t include Hamas. Make a deal with Fatah, that runs the West Bank. Right now, Fatah went into Gaza Strip, they wouldn’t be able to manage it because they don’t have enough credibility. They’re mainly seen as in cahoots with occupiers, whereas Hamas is hardcore and fighting against the occupiers. But if Fatah delivers not only a peace deal, but a Palestinian state, then they come in as heroes. You make the deal with them, you let them run the Gaza Strip, and you empower them to drive out Hamas. That way, they do your dirty work for you, in a sense.
But good, because Hamas is a terrorist organization. They’re not helpful. Especially if the Palestinians get a state, the violence has to stop immediately. That’s the whole point. The trade is you get a state, Israel gets safety and peace.
By the way, can it work? It already has worked. Israel already did it with Egypt. Egypt was 100 times Hamas. Egypt gathered all the Arab armies and actually physically invaded Israel when Israel could lose. They did it several times.
Lex, at the time, not just the right, the war hawks, but most people thought, “There’s no way Egypt will keep that peace deal. Oh, they’re suckers. We’re giving them the Sinai Peninsula back. Then they’re just going to keep bombing and attacking us.” There hasn’t been a single bomb from Egypt since the peace deal. Peace deals work. War gets you more war. Peace deals get you peace.
This is true of all of life. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If you’re saying, “Well, I’m not positive that a peace deal is going to be perfect. 12 more rockets might be fired.” Well, brother, what do we have now? We have endless rockets now. If Israel is supposed to be a safe haven for Jews, and I get it, and I want it. Then become a safe haven. The way that you’re a safe haven is stop the occupation. It’s not complicated.
Let’s be honest. The reason the right wing government of Israel is not stopping the occupation is because they want to take more and more land. They have, throughout time, taken way more of the West Bank than they had originally. Now Netanyahu is saying, “I want a corridor in the middle of Gaza. I want a corridor at the border of Egypt.” Now we’re back to occupying Gaza physically, let alone through power, et cetera.
Don’t ask for land in Gaza. Get the hell out of Gaza. You ceasefire. That’s the easy part. The hard part is the occupation, ending the occupation. Even that, I can get it to you in two months, as long as Israel actually wants a deal. Go to an election, get rid of Netanyahu. Put in Benny Gantz. Is Benny Gantz an angel? No. He’s the one that ordered all the bombings of Gaza to begin with.
Look, Benny Gantz has got massive war crimes on his record, so don’t worry, he’s not a softie. But he’s not my favorite guy in the world, to say the least. But Benny Gantz can do a peace deal if he wants to.
Look, only one group of people can actually settle this. Well, there’s actually two groups of people. One is the Israeli population. You vote in someone who wants to do a peace deal, you’ll get a peace deal. Number two is the American President. If I’m the American President … I’m saying in a hypothetical. Or any American President that actually wants to get a peace deal done. You just say, “I’m going to cut the funding.” Israel will do the deal immediately. They don’t say they want to cut the funding, because APAC gives them $100 million. It’s not complicated. Not 1% complicated.
Trump is a massive risk. He’s an enormous amount of risk. If you were running a company and not a country, would you hire Trump as your CEO? Everyone watching just screamed inside their heads, “No!” You would never take that kind of risk with your company. You got an 80% chance the guy’s going to blow up the company. No way, no way. You know it, too. Especially if you’re a business man, you know you’re not going to hire that loose cannon to run your company. It’s unacceptable risk.
But you’re not wrong, we talked about it earlier. But as part of that risk, there’s a sliver in there that he could accidentally do the right thing.
Usually, the same third goes, “No change.” Another two-thirds go, “Well, some change.” Because if you don’t do any change, you’re never going to get to the right answer. For the wisdom of the crowd to work, for free markets to work, for everything to work, you have to keep changing because the times change, and the culture changes, and the situation changes. That why there’s amendments in the Constitution, because you need to be able to change the document from time to time. Be careful with it. But you need to allow for an avenue for change.
Now why does the one-third keep winning in so many different places? Because they have more money and power. By the way, if you’re more selfish, you’re more likely to get more money and power. I wish that weren’t the case, but it is. These are not blanket rules, they’re on average. That third winds up winning in so many circumstances.
But the bottom line is, we are a species that requires consent. I’m a stone-cold atheist. I don’t think we’re kind of like apes, I think we are apes. All the scientists out there are going, “Well, of course we are.” Everyone else is going, “That’s crazy.” When you look at it as a species, different species react in different ways. Snakes have no empathy because it’s not in their DNA. That’s why we have a sense of what a snake does. The good news is, for higher level apes like us, bonobos, chimpanzees, and humans, we all roughly want consent.
A chimpanzee, for example, who has a violent reputation and they are violent, and unfortunately we’re pretty close to them. But what people don’t know is a leader doesn’t win through violence, especially for bonobos. They win by picking lice off of other chimpanzees, by going and doing favors. Going to do a hunt, getting food, and giving it to someone else. Because what they’re gathering is the consent of the governed. That’s how you become the alpha. You don’t do it through physical dominance, you do it through consent. That’s how we’re hardwired, that’s in our DNA.
That two-thirds, in the long run, will win. We will have empathy, we will have change. That’s the hope that we’re all looking for.
But having said that, they’re assigned to losing throughout history because they’re fighting on losing ground. A conservative says, “No change, but the world is constantly changing so they’re destined to lose. That’s why the Founding Fathers went against the British Monarchy. That’s why the Civil Rights movement won. They didn’t win overnight. It took them 100 years to get equal rights, let alone past slavery. We won on women’s rights, we won on gay rights. We keep winning. But every snapshot in time makes it feel like we’re losing. There’s a bad guy in charge. We are living under corporate rule, et cetera. But in the long tide of history, change always wins.
The empathetic, generally speaking left wing … But again, don’t worry about the titles. People get obsessed with the labels. The two-thirds that’s empathetic, that includes a lot of right wingers. You win at the end in history every single time. We fight forward. We’re tough when we need to be. We need that willpower to win any fight. But we’re civil and respectful to the other side because they are us.
Progressives, all the time, we say, “Look …” This was the ending of my book. Which is for conservatives, you have a lot of empathy for inside the wagons. Conservatives are great to their family, generally speaking. To their community, to their church, to anyone that’s inside the wagons. But they set up electric fences and barbed wire around their wagons. If you’re on the outside, you’re the others and you’re going to get electrified. It’s constantly. I like to think the left wing has wider wagons. We view the world as more us and not you.
The good news of that is, if we win, we’re not going to do Medicare for only the left. We’re going to Medicare for all. You’re all going to get universal healthcare. We’re going to do higher wages for all. The right wing is not going to be left out. Lex, I’m going to tell you a fun story. It’s about my family. I’m sure that parts of it are apocryphal, because it’s from 500 years ago. But it gives you a sense of the old Mark Twain quote, if it’s really Mark Twain’s. Of, “Change happens really gradually, and then all of a sudden.” My mom’s last name in Turkish is Yavaşça, it means slowly. It’s a weird name, even in Turkish.
One day, we’re walking past a mosque in Istanbul when I’m a kid. It says on the mosque, “Yavaşça.” We’re like, “What is this?” It’s a small, little mosque. We go inside. My dad starts the Imam questions. He says, “Why is the mosque named that?” He said, “You don’t know?” Because my dad said, “My wife’s last name is Yavaşça.” He’s like, “Oh my God.” He’s like, “Your ancestor was the Admiral of the Ottoman Navy when they conquered Constantinople.”
Grandpa, from 5, 600 years ago, came up with the idea. You can’t ever conquer Constantinople because there’s a giant chain underneath the Bosphorus. All the ships get stuck on the chain, there’s cannons on both sides. Half the ancient navies in the world are at the bottom of the Bosphorus. It hasn’t been conquered in over 1000 years, nobody thinks it can be conquered. Grandpa comes up with the idea of, “Why don’t we build giant wooden planks over land and grease them? And pass our fleet over land, onto the other side.” Everybody goes, because whenever anybody proposed a new idea, no matter how logical it is, they go, “Oh, that’s impossible. No way it’s going to work. Oh, you’re crazy. This is an unconquerable city. What are you guys even doing?”
Every day, Mehmed the Conqueror comes up to Grandpa and says, “All right. How’s your plan to do this project going?” Grandpa says, “Slowly.” He names him Commander Slowly.
Now let me leave you with some words from Hannah Arendt. “Totalitarianism is never content to rule by external means. Namely, through the state and a machinery of violence. Thanks to its peculiar ideology and the role assigned to it in the apparatus of coercion, totalitarianism has discovered a means of dominating and terrorizing human beings from within.”
Thank you for listening. I hope to see you next time.
Click link to jump approximately to that part in the transcript:
- 0:00 – Introduction
- 2:03 – Progressivism
- 8:12 – Communism
- 23:00 – Capitalism
- 29:03 – Corruption
- 33:49 – Money in politics
- 50:36 – Fixing politics
- 1:09:47 – Meritocracy & DEI
- 1:20:45 – Far-left vs far-right
- 1:55:19 – Donald Trump
- 2:15:36 – Joe Biden
- 2:34:03 – Bernie Sanders
- 2:47:32 – Kamala Harris
- 2:55:00 – Harris vs Trump presidential debate
- 3:08:31 – RFK Jr
- 3:18:12 – The Young Turks
- 3:26:25 – Joe Rogan
- 3:36:05 – Propaganda
- 3:43:22 – Conspiracy theories
- 3:51:09 – Israel-Palestine
- 4:00:56 – Hope
Introduction
Cenk Uygur
Communism makes no sense at all, totally opposed to human nature. It never works. It always evolves into dictatorship. It creates a power vacuum. When you say, “Hey, there’s no structure of power here. We’re all equal. It’s a flat line,” one guy usually gets up, because that’s human nature, and goes, “I don’t think so. I think if you’re going to leave a power vacuum, I’m going to take that power vacuum.”
Communism makes no sense at all, totally opposed to human nature. It never works. It always evolves into dictatorship. It creates a power vacuum. When you say, “Hey, there’s no structure of power here. We’re all equal. It’s a flat line,” one guy usually gets up, because that’s human nature, and goes, “I don’t think so. I think if you’re going to leave a power vacuum, I’m going to take that power vacuum.”
Corporatism hates competition. It wants monopoly and oligopoly power. Whereas capitalism loves competition and wants the free markets. When mainstream media has you hooked, you got no hope because you don’t have the right information. You have propaganda, you have marketing. You don’t have real news. When you’re in the online world, it’s chaotic. And don’t get me wrong, it’s got plenty of downsides, but within that chaos, the truth begins to emerge. Trump is a massive risk because of all the things we talked about earlier, but there is a percentage chance that he’s such a wild card that he overturns the whole system, and that is why the establishment is a little scared of him.
Lex Fridman
The following is a conversation with Cenk Uygur, a progressive political commentator and host of The Young Turks. As I’ve said before, I will speak with everyone, including on the left and the right of the political spectrum, always in good faith, with empathy, rigor, and backbone. Sometimes I fail. Sometimes I say stupid, inaccurate, ineloquent things, and I frequently change my mind as I’m learning and thinking about the world. For all this, I often get attacked, sometimes fairly, sometimes not. But just know that I’m aware when I fall short and I will keep trying to do better. I love you all. This is the Lex Fridman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here’s Cenk Uygur.
The following is a conversation with Cenk Uygur, a progressive political commentator and host of The Young Turks. As I’ve said before, I will speak with everyone, including on the left and the right of the political spectrum, always in good faith, with empathy, rigor, and backbone. Sometimes I fail. Sometimes I say stupid, inaccurate, ineloquent things, and I frequently change my mind as I’m learning and thinking about the world. For all this, I often get attacked, sometimes fairly, sometimes not. But just know that I’m aware when I fall short and I will keep trying to do better. I love you all. This is the Lex Fridman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here’s Cenk Uygur.
Progressivism
Lex Fridman
You wrote a book.
You wrote a book.
Cenk Uygur
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
A manifesto that outlines the progressive vision for America. So the big question, what are some defining ideas of progressivism?
A manifesto that outlines the progressive vision for America. So the big question, what are some defining ideas of progressivism?
Cenk Uygur
Yes. So in order to do that, Lex, we got to talk about where we are in the political spectrum. And in fact, there’s two different spectrums now. People often think of left, right, and that’s true, that exists, but layered on top of that is now populist versus establishment. So I’m center-left on the left, right spectrum, but I’m all the way on that populist end of the second spectrum. So where does progressivism lie within that? Well, I would argue that it’s exactly in those places. It’s populist and it’s on the left, but it is not far left. So far left is a different animal, and we could talk about that in a little bit. So in terms of what makes a progressive, so expand the circle of liberty and justice for all, and equality of opportunity. Now people will say, well, that seems pretty broad and all American, but is it? Think about it.
Yes. So in order to do that, Lex, we got to talk about where we are in the political spectrum. And in fact, there’s two different spectrums now. People often think of left, right, and that’s true, that exists, but layered on top of that is now populist versus establishment. So I’m center-left on the left, right spectrum, but I’m all the way on that populist end of the second spectrum. So where does progressivism lie within that? Well, I would argue that it’s exactly in those places. It’s populist and it’s on the left, but it is not far left. So far left is a different animal, and we could talk about that in a little bit. So in terms of what makes a progressive, so expand the circle of liberty and justice for all, and equality of opportunity. Now people will say, well, that seems pretty broad and all American, but is it? Think about it.
So expand the circle of liberty. Everybody’s in favor of that, right? No, absolutely not. Certainly the King of England was not in favor of expanding the circle of liberty, and the Founding Fathers said, “We’re going to expand it.” And they expanded it to propertied white men. And then progressives have been … they’re progressives because they expanded the circle of liberty. They, then from then on, as we were perfecting the union, progressives always say, “Expand it further. Include women, include people without property, include all races.” And at every turn, conservatives fight against it. So that doesn’t mean if you’re a conservative today, you don’t want to include women or minorities, et cetera. But today you would say, for example, “Well, I don’t want to expand the circle of liberty to, for example, undocumented immigrants.” And maybe you’re right about that, and we could have that discussion in terms of a specific philosophy.
And I don’t believe that undocumented immigrants should immediately be citizens or anything along those lines. But I do believe in expanding liberty overall. And the contours of that are what’s interesting. And then you see justice for all. Everybody’s for justice. No. Right now, marijuana possession is still illegal in a lot of parts of the country. Now, a lot of right-wingers and left-wingers agree that it should be legal. But for my entire lifetime, black people have been arrested at about 3.7 times the rate of white people and the entire country has been fine with it. So is that justice? No. Black people smoke marijuana at the same rate. Black people get arrested about four times the rate. That is an injustice that an enormous percentage of the country was comfortable with. Well, progressives aren’t comfortable with it. We want justice for all.
So equality of opportunity is an interesting one because the far left will say, at least some portions of them will say, equality of results. So progressives just want a fair chance, so free college education, but afterwards you don’t get to have exact same results as either the wealthiest person or we’re not all going to be equal. We don’t have equal talent, skills, abilities, et cetera.
Lex Fridman
There’s a lot of questions I can ask there. So on the circle of liberty, yes, so expanding the number of people whose freedoms are protected. But what about the magnitude of freedom for each individual person? So expanding the freedom of the individual and protecting the freedoms of an individual. It seems like progressives are more willing to expand the size of government where government can do all kinds of regulation, all kinds of controls in the individual.
There’s a lot of questions I can ask there. So on the circle of liberty, yes, so expanding the number of people whose freedoms are protected. But what about the magnitude of freedom for each individual person? So expanding the freedom of the individual and protecting the freedoms of an individual. It seems like progressives are more willing to expand the size of government where government can do all kinds of regulation, all kinds of controls in the individual.
Cenk Uygur
So Lex, what we’re probably going to talk about a lot today is balance. And so a lot of people think, “Oh, I am on the right, I’m on left.” And that comes with a certain preset ideology. So the right is always correct. The left is always correct. So there’s two problems with that. Number one, how could you possibly believe in a preset ideology if you’re an independent thinker? It’s literally, by definition, not possible. If you say, “I lent my brain to an ideology that was created 80 years ago or eight years ago or 800 years ago, and I’m not going to change it,” you’re saying, “I don’t think for myself I bought into a culture.” And by the way, there’s a lot of different forms of culture you could buy into: religion, politics, sometimes racial, et cetera. So that’s why you need, actually, balance. The second reason you need balance, other than independent thought, is because the answer is almost never black and white.
So Lex, what we’re probably going to talk about a lot today is balance. And so a lot of people think, “Oh, I am on the right, I’m on left.” And that comes with a certain preset ideology. So the right is always correct. The left is always correct. So there’s two problems with that. Number one, how could you possibly believe in a preset ideology if you’re an independent thinker? It’s literally, by definition, not possible. If you say, “I lent my brain to an ideology that was created 80 years ago or eight years ago or 800 years ago, and I’m not going to change it,” you’re saying, “I don’t think for myself I bought into a culture.” And by the way, there’s a lot of different forms of culture you could buy into: religion, politics, sometimes racial, et cetera. So that’s why you need, actually, balance. The second reason you need balance, other than independent thought, is because the answer is almost never black and white.
And that gets into a really interesting nuance because mainstream media, in my opinion, is the matrix, and its job is to delude you into thinking corporate rule is great for you and we should never change it and the status quo is wonderful. So they have created a false middle. What mainstream media calls moderate, is actually, in my opinion, extremist corporate ideology. So for example, they’ll say, Joe Manchin is a moderate. None of his positions are moderate other than potentially gun control in West Virginia. He’s not for gun control. The people of West Virginia are not for gun control, generally speaking. And he uses that, and they usually have these shiny objects where they’re like, “You see this? I’m a moderate because of guns,” or, “I’m a moderate because I’m a Democrat from West Virginia.”
But wait, let’s look at your positions. You’re against paid family leave, that polls at 84%. So you’re a radical corporatist who say that women should be forced back into work the day after they have birth. You’re against a higher minimum wage, you’re for every corporate position, and they all poll at 33% or less. So Joe Manchin is not at all a moderate, and this applies to almost every corporate Republican and every corporate Democrat. They’re all extremists in supporting what I call corporatism. So you have to get to a balance in order to get to the right answer.
Communism
Lex Fridman
So that’s an interesting distinction here. So you’re actually, as far as I understand, pro-capitalism, which is an interesting place to be. That’s the thing that probably makes you center-left and then still populist. You’re full of beautiful contradictions, let’s say this, which will be great to untangle. But what’s the difference between corporatism and capitalism? Is there a difference?
So that’s an interesting distinction here. So you’re actually, as far as I understand, pro-capitalism, which is an interesting place to be. That’s the thing that probably makes you center-left and then still populist. You’re full of beautiful contradictions, let’s say this, which will be great to untangle. But what’s the difference between corporatism and capitalism? Is there a difference?
Cenk Uygur
Yeah, so I really believe in capitalism. I don’t think that there’s really a second choice. Where it gets super interesting is the distinction between capitalism and socialism, because that’s not at all as clear as people think it is. And people often say socialism and communism as synonyms when they’re not synonyms. And so I view it as there’s basically four distinct areas. It’s obviously a spectrum. Everything is a spectrum. On one end, you have communism on the left and on the other end you have corporatism on the right. And I would argue that capitalism is in the middle. And so communism, we know, state owns all property. You’re not allowed to have private property. So I will piss off a lot of people in this show. So I’m asking for their patience. Please hear me out and because, don’t worry, I’m going to piss off the other side too.
Yeah, so I really believe in capitalism. I don’t think that there’s really a second choice. Where it gets super interesting is the distinction between capitalism and socialism, because that’s not at all as clear as people think it is. And people often say socialism and communism as synonyms when they’re not synonyms. And so I view it as there’s basically four distinct areas. It’s obviously a spectrum. Everything is a spectrum. On one end, you have communism on the left and on the other end you have corporatism on the right. And I would argue that capitalism is in the middle. And so communism, we know, state owns all property. You’re not allowed to have private property. So I will piss off a lot of people in this show. So I’m asking for their patience. Please hear me out and because, don’t worry, I’m going to piss off the other side too.
So communism makes no sense at all, totally opposed to human nature. It never works. It always evolves into dictatorship because it is not built for human nature. We’re never going to act like that. It’s not in our DNA. You could try to wish it into existence than they have, and it never works. And it’s because once you have almost no rules in terms of, “Oh, we’re all equal,” even though communism eventually winds up having an enormous amount of rules, it creates a power vacuum. When you say, “Hey, there’s no structure of power here. We’re all equal. It’s a flat line,” one guy usually gets up because that’s human nature, and goes, “I don’t think so. I think if you’re going to leave a power vacuum, I’m going to take that power vacuum.”
Lex Fridman
That’s actually a really interesting way to put it, because when everyone is equal, nobody is in power, and human nature is such that there’s everybody [inaudible 00:10:33] that there’s a will to power. So when you create a power vacuum, somebody’s going to fill it. So the alternative is to have people in power, but there’s a balance of power, and then there’s a democratic system that elects the people in power and keeps churning and rotating who’s involved.
That’s actually a really interesting way to put it, because when everyone is equal, nobody is in power, and human nature is such that there’s everybody [inaudible 00:10:33] that there’s a will to power. So when you create a power vacuum, somebody’s going to fill it. So the alternative is to have people in power, but there’s a balance of power, and then there’s a democratic system that elects the people in power and keeps churning and rotating who’s involved.
Cenk Uygur
That is exactly it, Lex. You got it exactly right, in my opinion. Okay, so that’s why communism never works and can never work. So it’s an idea of we’re all going to work as hard as we possibly can and take only what we need. Where? When has that ever happened in the history of humanity? We’re just not built that way. So we can get into that debate with my friends on the left, et cetera. Now, corporatism is just as extreme and just as dangerous, and that is basically what we have in America now. What we have in America now, and this is another giant trick that the Matrix played on everybody, that they did a shell game, and all of a sudden extreme corporatists like Manchin, and almost every Republican in the Senate, are moderates. Oh my God, Mitch McConnell, all of a sudden, is a moderate and et cetera, as long as you’re not a populist, populists are never moderate.
That is exactly it, Lex. You got it exactly right, in my opinion. Okay, so that’s why communism never works and can never work. So it’s an idea of we’re all going to work as hard as we possibly can and take only what we need. Where? When has that ever happened in the history of humanity? We’re just not built that way. So we can get into that debate with my friends on the left, et cetera. Now, corporatism is just as extreme and just as dangerous, and that is basically what we have in America now. What we have in America now, and this is another giant trick that the Matrix played on everybody, that they did a shell game, and all of a sudden extreme corporatists like Manchin, and almost every Republican in the Senate, are moderates. Oh my God, Mitch McConnell, all of a sudden, is a moderate and et cetera, as long as you’re not a populist, populists are never moderate.
But if you love corporations and corporate tax cuts and everything in favor of corporations, you’re magically called a moderate when you actually, according to the polling, have super extreme positions that the American people hate. And by the way, that’s part of the reason for the rise of Trump. We can come back to that. But the second shell game is taking out capitalism, putting in corporatism, but still calling it capitalism. Okay, so what is corporatism? It is when corporations slowly take over the system and create monopoly and oligopoly power. So that snuffs out equality of opportunity. So how do they do that? When people say the system is rigged, they oftentimes can’t explain it that well. And then mainstream media goes, “Oh, you sound conspiratorial. It was rigged, yeah. I wonder how.” Yeah, super easy to explain it.
Here’s one of dozens of examples: carried interest loophole. So that is for hedge funds, private equity, the top people on Wall Street, that’s part of their income. They get 2 and 20, right? So 2% is a flat fee no matter what happens to the fund. And 20% of the profits of the fund goes back to the people who invested it. It’s not their money, it’s not their investment. What they’re getting is actually just income, and should be taxed at the highest rate. But it’s because of this loophole, it’s taxed at a much lower rate, at around 20%. So do you know at what income level you go above 20% if you’re a regular Joe? It’s at $84,000 a year. So these billionaires are getting the same tax rate as people making $84,000 a year. It’s unbelievably unfair. And that’s corporatism taking over and starting to rig the rules. I’m going to pay less taxes. You are going to pay more taxes.
So again, I can give you dozens of those examples. So in mergers so that they get to oligopoly power, that’s how you rig a system. Lowering the corporate tax rates, making sure that there is no real minimum wage, making sure there’s no universal healthcare. We all become indentured servants of corporations. They take away power from the average guy, give it to the most powerful people in the world. But the most important distinction, Lex, is that corporatism hates competition. It wants monopoly and oligopoly power. Whereas capitalism loves competition and wants the free markets.
And I remember we started Young Turks back in 2002, so we’ve been around for 22 years, longest running daily show on the internet ever. And so we were pre Iraq war and the Iraq war starts, and Dick Cheney starts handing out no-bid contracts. I’m like, what part of capitalism is a no-bid contract? You can’t negotiate drug prices. That’s the most anti-free market thing I have ever heard. It’s almost like communism for corporations. They get everything and you get nothing. So it’s preposterous, it’s awful, and it kills the free markets, and it’s killing this country, and it is the main ideology and religion of the establishment.
Lex Fridman
Are all companies built the same here? So when you say corporatism, it seems like just looking here at the list by industry lobbyists, it seems like there are certain industries that are worse offenders than others, like pharmaceuticals, like insurance, oil and gas. So it seems to me it feels wrong to just throw all companies into the same bucket of they’re all guilty.
Are all companies built the same here? So when you say corporatism, it seems like just looking here at the list by industry lobbyists, it seems like there are certain industries that are worse offenders than others, like pharmaceuticals, like insurance, oil and gas. So it seems to me it feels wrong to just throw all companies into the same bucket of they’re all guilty.
Cenk Uygur
No, they’re not all guilty. So let’s make a bunch of distinctions here. So first of all, first of all, are they “guilty?” No. They’re doing something that is logical and natural. So if you’re a company, do you want to pay higher taxes or lower taxes? Of course you want to pay lower taxes. Do you want to have higher employee costs or lower employee costs? Of course you want lower employee costs. But the government needs to understand that and protect us from that power that they are going to exercise to get to those results. And if you think free markets is there is no government, you read it wrong. Go back and reread Adam Smith. He says, you must protect against monopoly power. If you do not protect against monopoly power, you’ll have no free markets. And he’s absolutely right. So second distinction is between small business and big business. That’s why Republicans will always be like, “Oh, we’re doing this for small business. That’s why we got the biggest oil companies in the world, 30 billion in subsidies.” What happened to small business? So I run a small business. And so if people were to say like, “Hey, maybe there should be exemptions for some of the regulations if your company has less than five employees, 10 employees, 50 employees, et cetera,” there’s some logic in that. Because businesses have different stages of growth and they have different interests and different needs in those stages of growth. And we want to facilitate small business growth because that’s great for the economy, that’s great for markets freedom, et cetera. But the bigger corporations, even there, there’s a third distinction. It isn’t that there are certain industries that are worse, there’s just that there are industries that are better at lobbying.
No, they’re not all guilty. So let’s make a bunch of distinctions here. So first of all, first of all, are they “guilty?” No. They’re doing something that is logical and natural. So if you’re a company, do you want to pay higher taxes or lower taxes? Of course you want to pay lower taxes. Do you want to have higher employee costs or lower employee costs? Of course you want lower employee costs. But the government needs to understand that and protect us from that power that they are going to exercise to get to those results. And if you think free markets is there is no government, you read it wrong. Go back and reread Adam Smith. He says, you must protect against monopoly power. If you do not protect against monopoly power, you’ll have no free markets. And he’s absolutely right. So second distinction is between small business and big business. That’s why Republicans will always be like, “Oh, we’re doing this for small business. That’s why we got the biggest oil companies in the world, 30 billion in subsidies.” What happened to small business? So I run a small business. And so if people were to say like, “Hey, maybe there should be exemptions for some of the regulations if your company has less than five employees, 10 employees, 50 employees, et cetera,” there’s some logic in that. Because businesses have different stages of growth and they have different interests and different needs in those stages of growth. And we want to facilitate small business growth because that’s great for the economy, that’s great for markets freedom, et cetera. But the bigger corporations, even there, there’s a third distinction. It isn’t that there are certain industries that are worse, there’s just that there are industries that are better at lobbying.
So anyone who right now, number one donor in Washington, a lot of people make a mistake. They think it’s APAC or they think it’s the oil companies or the banks. No, it’s big pharma. And who has the most power in this country? Big pharma. So we can’t even negotiate the drug prices. I mean, look, guys, think about it this way. That’s like saying, “Okay, here’s a bottle of water.” And normally in the free market that would cost about a dollar. For Medicare, the drug companies come in and go, “No, I’m not charging a dollar for that water. I’m charging a hundred dollars. And the government has to say, “Yes, sir, thank you, sir. Of course, sir, we’ll pay $100.” That’s why it’s compared to communism, because I can’t imagine anything more diametrically opposed to the free market than you, the consumer have to pay whatever the hell a corporation charges. That’s insanity. Let alone the patents, let alone the fact that the American people pay for the research and then they make billions of dollars off of it and we get nothing but robbed by them.
So it’s about lobby power. Oil companies have huge lobby power. Defense contractors have huge lobby power. It’s not that they’re more evil, it’s just that they have figured out the game better and they have basically taken the influence they need to capture the market, capture the government, and snuff out all competition, or a lot of competition.
Lex Fridman
Well, figured out the game better. So I think a lot of companies are good at winning the right way by building better products, by making people happier with the work they’re doing and the winning at the game of capitalism. And then there’s other companies that win at the game of lobbying, and I just want to draw that distinction because I think it’s a small subset of companies that are playing the game of lobbying. It’s like big pharma.
Well, figured out the game better. So I think a lot of companies are good at winning the right way by building better products, by making people happier with the work they’re doing and the winning at the game of capitalism. And then there’s other companies that win at the game of lobbying, and I just want to draw that distinction because I think it’s a small subset of companies that are playing the game of lobbying. It’s like big pharma.
Cenk Uygur
So Lex, first of all, you have to set rules for what makes sense, not, “Oh, I don’t like this industry,” or “I don’t like this company,” or, “Hey, this company is not doing that much lobbying at this point. They will later when they realize what’s going on.” So for example, in my opinion, APAC has totally bought almost all of Congress. And so now other countries are going to wake up and go, “Wait, you could just buy the American government?” So APAC is going to spend about $100 million dollars in this cycle, and then they’re getting 26 billion back. So every country in the world is soon going to realize, oh, take American citizens that live there, get them a tremendous amount of money and just buy the U.S. government. But for corporations, they’ve already realized that on a massive scale.
So Lex, first of all, you have to set rules for what makes sense, not, “Oh, I don’t like this industry,” or “I don’t like this company,” or, “Hey, this company is not doing that much lobbying at this point. They will later when they realize what’s going on.” So for example, in my opinion, APAC has totally bought almost all of Congress. And so now other countries are going to wake up and go, “Wait, you could just buy the American government?” So APAC is going to spend about $100 million dollars in this cycle, and then they’re getting 26 billion back. So every country in the world is soon going to realize, oh, take American citizens that live there, get them a tremendous amount of money and just buy the U.S. government. But for corporations, they’ve already realized that on a massive scale.
So for example, in the two industries you gave: automotive. So in New Jersey, about a decade or ago or so, one of the most powerful lobbies is car dealerships. So at the national level, you’ve got pharma and you’ve got defense contractors, et cetera. At the local level guys who have huge power, number one is utilities. Number two is real estate. And then car dealerships are hilariously among the top because it’s local businesses that are financing the politicians at the local level. So they passed a law saying that you have to sell through dealerships. But Tesla doesn’t sell through dealerships, and it was intended to bully, intimidate, and push out Tesla, out of the market. They then did that in a number of different states throughout the country.
So does that make any sense in a democracy? Of course not. Why do you have to sell your product through a specific vehicle or medium? You could sell it any way you like. That’s the most anti-free market thing possible. Why? It was just total utter corruption. But it’s perfectly legal. The Supreme Court legalized bribery. So then what happened in that case? So then Elon came in and gave campaign contributions and reversed it. So now we’re in a battle where it’s an open auction. Different companies are buying different politicians, and then they’re pretending to have debates about principles and ideas, etc.
So now let’s look at tech. In the beginning, Facebook was not spending any money in politics, or almost any money in politics. So what happens? They’re getting hammered, they get pulled into congressional hearings and Facebook’s got fake news and oh my God, all these trouble from Facebook. Then Facebook does the logical thing. Oh, it turns out I need to grease these sons of bitches. So then they hire a whole bunch of Republicans consultants. They go grease all the Republicans and most of the corporate Democrats, and then all of a sudden we’re no longer talking about Facebook at all and Facebook are angels. And now we’ve turned our attention to who? Facebook’s top competitor, TikTok. Funny how that works.
And by the way, then Donald Trump goes “Oh TikTok’s a big dangerous company working with China.” And then Jeff Yaz comes in on this cycle, part owner of TikTok, and he doesn’t want TikTok banished, of course. So he gives Trump a couple of million dollars. Trump turns around the next day and goes, “We love TikTok. TikTok’s a good company.”
Lex Fridman
So that’s a big contributor to influencing what politicians say and what they think. But it’s not the entire thing, right?
So that’s a big contributor to influencing what politicians say and what they think. But it’s not the entire thing, right?
Cenk Uygur
No, it is. It’s 98%. I’ll go on mainstream media and they’ll be like, “Oh, I see what you’re saying. I can see how that influences politicians about 10%.” I’m like, “No, no, it’s 98%.” And even a lot of good people think it’s 50/50. They have principles and they have money. No, they have money and this smidge of principles. That’s why I wanted to clarify 98 too.
No, it is. It’s 98%. I’ll go on mainstream media and they’ll be like, “Oh, I see what you’re saying. I can see how that influences politicians about 10%.” I’m like, “No, no, it’s 98%.” And even a lot of good people think it’s 50/50. They have principles and they have money. No, they have money and this smidge of principles. That’s why I wanted to clarify 98 too.
Capitalism
Lex Fridman
Okay, so how do we fix it? So it’s really interesting and nice that you have pro-capitalism and anti-corporatism. So how do we create a system where the free market can rule. Where capitalism can rule, we can have these vibrant flourishing of all these companies competing against each other and creating awesome stuff.
Okay, so how do we fix it? So it’s really interesting and nice that you have pro-capitalism and anti-corporatism. So how do we create a system where the free market can rule. Where capitalism can rule, we can have these vibrant flourishing of all these companies competing against each other and creating awesome stuff.
Cenk Uygur
So in the book, I call it democratic capitalism as opposed to Bernie’s democratic socialism. We can get into that distinction in a minute. But so as Adam Smith said, and anyone who studies capitalism knows, you need the government to protect the market as well as the people. Why do we have cops? Because if we don’t have cops, somebody’s going to go, “Well, I like Lex’s equipment. Why don’t I just go into his house and take it?” So you need the cops to protect you, and that’s the government. So people say, “Oh, I hate big government.” Do you? It depends, right? If your house is getting robbed, all of a sudden you like the government. But you also need cops on Wall Street because if you allow insider trading, the powerful are going to rob you blind and the little guy’s going to get screwed.
So in the book, I call it democratic capitalism as opposed to Bernie’s democratic socialism. We can get into that distinction in a minute. But so as Adam Smith said, and anyone who studies capitalism knows, you need the government to protect the market as well as the people. Why do we have cops? Because if we don’t have cops, somebody’s going to go, “Well, I like Lex’s equipment. Why don’t I just go into his house and take it?” So you need the cops to protect you, and that’s the government. So people say, “Oh, I hate big government.” Do you? It depends, right? If your house is getting robbed, all of a sudden you like the government. But you also need cops on Wall Street because if you allow insider trading, the powerful are going to rob you blind and the little guy’s going to get screwed.
So that’s this easy example. And so if you don’t have those cops, the bad guys are going to take over. They’re going to set the rules, rig the rules in their favor. So that’s why you need regulation. And so the Republicans on purpose made regulation a dirty word. They’re like, “Oh, all regulation is bad.” And then sometimes on the left, people fall for the trap of all regulation is good. A guy, I like has a great analogy on this, Matt Stoller, he’s one of the original, I would argue, progressives. And there’s about four of us, I’m sure there’s more, but that have stayed true to the original meaning of progressivism and populism: me, Matt Stoller, David Sirota, Ryan Grim. And it used to be in that original blogger group, there was guys like Glenn Greenwald and other interesting cats, but they went in different directions.
So Matt has a great line. He says, “If somebody comes up to you and says, how big a pipe do you want?” There is no answer for that. It depends on the job, doesn’t it? What are we doing? What are we building? I am going to tell you the size of the pipe depending on the project. So when people say, “Are you in favor of regulation or against it?” that’s an absurd question. Of course you need regulation. It just means laws. So don’t kill your neighbor is a regulation. So my idea is a simple one, and one we’re going to keep coming back to, balance. So when my dad was a small business owner in New Jersey and they inspected the elevator six times a year, that was over regulation. And I said to my dad, “So should they not inspect it at all?” I’m a young kid growing up and he said, “Oh no, you got to inspect it at least twice a year.” I said, “Why?” He said, “Because in Turkey, sometimes they don’t inspect it and then the elevator falls.” So balance of reason, correct regulation to protect the markets and to protect the American people.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, but finding the right level of regulation, especially in, for example, in tech, something I’m much more familiar with, is very difficult because people in Congress are living in the 20th century before the internet was invented. So how are they supposed to come up with regulations?
Yeah, but finding the right level of regulation, especially in, for example, in tech, something I’m much more familiar with, is very difficult because people in Congress are living in the 20th century before the internet was invented. So how are they supposed to come up with regulations?
Cenk Uygur
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
That’s the idea of the free market, is you should be able to compete. The market regulates, and then the government can step in and protect the market from forming monopolies, for example, which is easier to do.
That’s the idea of the free market, is you should be able to compete. The market regulates, and then the government can step in and protect the market from forming monopolies, for example, which is easier to do.
Cenk Uygur
But that’s a form of regulation.
But that’s a form of regulation.
Lex Fridman
But then there’s more checking the elevator twice a year. That’s a more sort of specific watching, micromanaging.
But then there’s more checking the elevator twice a year. That’s a more sort of specific watching, micromanaging.
Cenk Uygur
So Lex, here’s the deal. There’s no way around the laws are made by politicians. So you can’t give up then and go, “Oh, it’s a bunch of schmucks.” I think most politicians are just servants for the donor class. The media makes it sound like they’re the best of us. “Oh, they deserve a lot of honor and respect,” and they kiss their ass et cetera. I think generally speaking, they’re usually the worst of us, especially in this corporatist structure. Because they’re the guys who their number one talent is, “Yes sir. No sir. What would you like me to do with your donor money, sir? Absolutely, I’ll serve you completely. Or 98%.” So in this structure, the politicians are the worst of us. But at some point you need somebody elected to be your representative, to do democratic capitalism, so that you have capitalism, but it’s checked by the government on behalf of the people.
So Lex, here’s the deal. There’s no way around the laws are made by politicians. So you can’t give up then and go, “Oh, it’s a bunch of schmucks.” I think most politicians are just servants for the donor class. The media makes it sound like they’re the best of us. “Oh, they deserve a lot of honor and respect,” and they kiss their ass et cetera. I think generally speaking, they’re usually the worst of us, especially in this corporatist structure. Because they’re the guys who their number one talent is, “Yes sir. No sir. What would you like me to do with your donor money, sir? Absolutely, I’ll serve you completely. Or 98%.” So in this structure, the politicians are the worst of us. But at some point you need somebody elected to be your representative, to do democratic capitalism, so that you have capitalism, but it’s checked by the government on behalf of the people.
It’s the people that are saying, “These are the rules of the land and you have to abide by them.” So how do you get to the best possible answer which is related to an earlier question you asked, Lex, which is the number one thing you have to do is get big money out of politics? Everything else is near impossible as long as we are drowned in money and whoever has more money wins. And by the way, when it comes to legislation, again, that’s true about 98% of the time. We predict things ahead of time. People are like, “Wow, how did you know that bill wasn’t going to pass or was going to pass?” It’s the easiest thing in the world. And we literally teach our audience on the Young Turks, “Watch, you’ll be able to see for yourself.” And now our members comment in, they do these predictions. They’re almost always right because it’s so simple. Follow the money.
So if you get big money out of politics, and I could explain how to do that in a sec, then you’re at a place where you’ve got your best shot at honest representatives that are going to try their best to get to the right answer. Are they going to get to the right answer out of the gate? Usually not. So they pass a law, there’s something wrong with the law, they then fix that part. It is a pendulum. You don’t want it to swing too wildly, but you do need a little bit of oscillation in that pendulum to get to the right balance.
Corruption
Lex Fridman
By the way, I was listening to Joe Biden from when he was like 30 years old, the speeches, he was eloquent as hell. It’s fun to listen to actually. And he has a speech he gives or just maybe a conversation in Congress, I’m not sure where, where he talks about how corrupt the whole system is, and he’s really honest and fun. And that Joe Biden was great, by the way, that guy. I mean, age sucks. People get older. But he was talking quite honestly about having to suck up to all these rich people and that he couldn’t really suck up to the really rich people. They said, “Come back to us 10 years later when you’re more integrated into the system.” But he was really honest about it, and he’s saying, “That’s how it is. That’s what we have to do. And that really sucks that that’s what we have to do.”
By the way, I was listening to Joe Biden from when he was like 30 years old, the speeches, he was eloquent as hell. It’s fun to listen to actually. And he has a speech he gives or just maybe a conversation in Congress, I’m not sure where, where he talks about how corrupt the whole system is, and he’s really honest and fun. And that Joe Biden was great, by the way, that guy. I mean, age sucks. People get older. But he was talking quite honestly about having to suck up to all these rich people and that he couldn’t really suck up to the really rich people. They said, “Come back to us 10 years later when you’re more integrated into the system.” But he was really honest about it, and he’s saying, “That’s how it is. That’s what we have to do. And that really sucks that that’s what we have to do.”
Cenk Uygur
So we did a video on our TikTok channel, then and now, of Joe Biden. This is when I was trying to push Biden out.
So we did a video on our TikTok channel, then and now, of Joe Biden. This is when I was trying to push Biden out.
Lex Fridman
We should say you were one of the people early on, saying Biden needs to step down.
We should say you were one of the people early on, saying Biden needs to step down.
Cenk Uygur
Yeah, I started about a year ago because I was positive that Biden had a 0% chance of winning. And it turned out, by the way, two days before he dropped out, his inside advisors inside the White House said, “Yeah, near 0% chance of winning.” So we were right all along.
Yeah, I started about a year ago because I was positive that Biden had a 0% chance of winning. And it turned out, by the way, two days before he dropped out, his inside advisors inside the White House said, “Yeah, near 0% chance of winning.” So we were right all along.
Lex Fridman
You got a lot of criticism for that, by the way. But yeah.
You got a lot of criticism for that, by the way. But yeah.
Cenk Uygur
We can come back to that. Yes, I did. And which makes it Tuesday for me. I get a lot of criticism for everything. And by the way, Democratic Party, you’re welcome. But Biden’s a really interesting example. I’m really glad you brought it up. So the video on TikTok was just showing Biden then, Biden now. And you’re right, Biden was so dynamic. When you see how dynamic he was, we did side-by-side, and then you see him now going “I can barely finish.” Anyways, you’re like, “Oh, that’s not the same guy. I get it.” And that got 5 million views because it resonates. They’re like, “Yeah, yeah, of course”.
We can come back to that. Yes, I did. And which makes it Tuesday for me. I get a lot of criticism for everything. And by the way, Democratic Party, you’re welcome. But Biden’s a really interesting example. I’m really glad you brought it up. So the video on TikTok was just showing Biden then, Biden now. And you’re right, Biden was so dynamic. When you see how dynamic he was, we did side-by-side, and then you see him now going “I can barely finish.” Anyways, you’re like, “Oh, that’s not the same guy. I get it.” And that got 5 million views because it resonates. They’re like, “Yeah, yeah, of course”.
But when he first started, to the point you’re making Lex, he wanted … In fact, I know because I talked to him about this, his very first bill was anti-corruption. Why? Because at that point, everything changes in 1976 to 78, the Supreme Court decisions that basically legalize bribery.
But remember Biden is ancient. So he’s coming into politics at a time when money has not yet drowned politics. And in fact, the American population is super-pissed about the fact that it’s begun. They don’t like corruption. So early Biden, because he’s reading the room, is very anti-corruption. And the first bill he proposes is to get money out of politics. But as Biden goes on for his epic 200-year career in Washington, he starts to get not more conservative, more corporate, because he’s just taken more and more money. By the middle of his career. He has a nickname, the Senator from MBNA. Okay.
Cenk Uygur
Nickname, the Senator from MBNA. Okay. MBNA was a credit card company based in Delaware, and the reason he had that nickname is because there isn’t anything Joe Biden wouldn’t have done for credit card companies and corporations based in Delaware, which are almost all corporations, okay? So he became the most corporate senator in the country, and hence the most beloved by corporate media. Corporate media has protected him his entire career until about a month ago. So, for example, in the primaries, both in 2020 and 2024, if you said the Senator from MBNA, I guarantee you almost no one in the audience has heard of it. If you heard of it, good job.
Nickname, the Senator from MBNA. Okay. MBNA was a credit card company based in Delaware, and the reason he had that nickname is because there isn’t anything Joe Biden wouldn’t have done for credit card companies and corporations based in Delaware, which are almost all corporations, okay? So he became the most corporate senator in the country, and hence the most beloved by corporate media. Corporate media has protected him his entire career until about a month ago. So, for example, in the primaries, both in 2020 and 2024, if you said the Senator from MBNA, I guarantee you almost no one in the audience has heard of it. If you heard of it, good job.
You know politics really well, but the reason you didn’t hear of it is because the mainstream media wouldn’t say, “That’s outrageous of Joe Biden to be such a corporate stooge.” They’d say, “That’s outrageous of you to point out something that’s true and something we reported on earlier.” So they protected him at all costs. Now, finally, when you get to this version of Joe Biden, he can’t talk, he can’t walk, he bears no resemblance to the young guy who came in saying that money in politics was a problem. Now he’s saying money in politics is the solution. In 2020, he said, “Well, I can raise more money than Bernie. I can kiss corporate ass better than Bernie. I’m the biggest corporate kisser in the world. So, I’m going to raise a billion dollars and you need to support me.”
Now, of course, he doesn’t say it in those words, but that was the message to the establishment. Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Obama, Clyburn, everybody goes, “Oh, that’s right. Biden, Biden, Biden, Biden, not Bernie.” I don’t know that there’s anybody in the country who instinctually dislikes Bernie more than Barack Obama.
Money in politics
Lex Fridman
That’s an interesting… I’m not taking that tangent at this moment. You mentioned mainstream media. What’s the motivation for mainstream media to be corporatist also?
That’s an interesting… I’m not taking that tangent at this moment. You mentioned mainstream media. What’s the motivation for mainstream media to be corporatist also?
Cenk Uygur
So first of all, they’re giant corporations. So, they’re all multi-billion dollar corporations. In the old days, we had incredible number of media outlets. So, you go to San Francisco, there’d be at least two papers and there’d be a paperboy. I’m going all the way back, paperboy on each corner, and they’re competing with one another. Literally, they’d be catty corner and one guy’s going, “Oh, here are all this details.” They’re trying to get an audience. They’re trying to get people interested. So, they’re populist, they’re interesting, they’re mark breakers, they’re challenging the government. Fast forward to now, or not now, but about a decade ago, five years ago, in that ballpark, now there’s only six giant media corporations left.
So first of all, they’re giant corporations. So, they’re all multi-billion dollar corporations. In the old days, we had incredible number of media outlets. So, you go to San Francisco, there’d be at least two papers and there’d be a paperboy. I’m going all the way back, paperboy on each corner, and they’re competing with one another. Literally, they’d be catty corner and one guy’s going, “Oh, here are all this details.” They’re trying to get an audience. They’re trying to get people interested. So, they’re populist, they’re interesting, they’re mark breakers, they’re challenging the government. Fast forward to now, or not now, but about a decade ago, five years ago, in that ballpark, now there’s only six giant media corporations left.
It’s an oligopoly, and they’re all multi-billion dollar corporations. They all want tax cuts. Especially about 20 years ago during the Iraq War, half of them are defense contractors. So, they’re just using the news as marketing to start wars like the Iraq War. Then GE, which owned MSNBC, makes a tremendous amount of money, so much more money from war than it does for media. That media is a good marketing spend for these corporations. Now, that’s part of it, that they themselves want the same exact thing as the rest of corporations do for corporate rule, lower tax cuts, deregulation, so they can merge, et cetera. But the second part of it is arguably even more important. So, where does all that money in politics go?
So for example, in 2022, it’s just a midterm election. No presidential should be lower spending. A ridiculous $17 billion are spent on the election cycle. Where does the $17 billion go? Almost all of it goes into corporate media, mainstream media, television, newspapers, radio. They’re buying ads like nuts. So, we have a reporter at TYT, David Schuster. He used to work at MSNBC, Fox News, et cetera. David once did a piece about money and politics at a local NBC news station, and his editor or GM spiked the story. David goes into his office and asks him, “So why? This story is true. It’s a huge part of politics. If we’re going to report on this issue, we got to tell you what’s actually happening.”
So he says, “David, come here.” He puts his arm around his shoulders, takes him to the big newsroom, and he goes, “You see all this? Money in politics paid for that.”
Lex Fridman
That’s really fascinating. So, big corporations, they’re giving money to politicians through different channels, and then the politicians are spending that money on mainstream media. So, there’s a vicious cycle where it’s in the interest of the mainstream media not to criticize the very corporations that are feeding that cycle. It’s not actually direct, it’s not like corporations are… Because I was thinking one of the ways is direct advertisement. Pharmaceuticals obviously advertise a lot on mainstream media, but there’s also indirect, which is giving the politicians money or super PACs and the super PACs and the spend money on…
That’s really fascinating. So, big corporations, they’re giving money to politicians through different channels, and then the politicians are spending that money on mainstream media. So, there’s a vicious cycle where it’s in the interest of the mainstream media not to criticize the very corporations that are feeding that cycle. It’s not actually direct, it’s not like corporations are… Because I was thinking one of the ways is direct advertisement. Pharmaceuticals obviously advertise a lot on mainstream media, but there’s also indirect, which is giving the politicians money or super PACs and the super PACs and the spend money on…
Cenk Uygur
That’s why mainstream media never talks about the number one factor in politics, which is money. We all know. I mean, now as we talked about earlier, we see it with our own eyes, open auction. Any country, any company, anybody that has money, the politicians will now literally say, “I am now working for this guy,” as Trump says, “because he gave me a strong endorsement,” which means a lot of money. The press never covers it, almost never, right? So you’re telling me you’re doing an article on the infrastructure build or build back better, et cetera. You are not going to mention the enormous amount of money that every lobbyist spent on that bill. That’s absurd. That’s absurd. That’s 98% of the ballgame.
That’s why mainstream media never talks about the number one factor in politics, which is money. We all know. I mean, now as we talked about earlier, we see it with our own eyes, open auction. Any country, any company, anybody that has money, the politicians will now literally say, “I am now working for this guy,” as Trump says, “because he gave me a strong endorsement,” which means a lot of money. The press never covers it, almost never, right? So you’re telling me you’re doing an article on the infrastructure build or build back better, et cetera. You are not going to mention the enormous amount of money that every lobbyist spent on that bill. That’s absurd. That’s absurd. That’s 98% of the ballgame.
The reason they hide the ball is because they don’t want you to know this whole thing is based on the money that they are receiving. By the way, one more thing about that, Lex. It’s that the ads themselves actually, they work and they work pretty well, but that’s not the main reason you spend money on ads. You spend the money on ads to get friendly coverage from the content, from the free media that you’re getting from that same outlet. So, since every newspaper and every television station and network knows that the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are their top clients, they’re going to get billions of dollars from them. They never really criticized the Republican and Democratic Party. On the other hand, if you’re an outsider, they’ll rip your face off.
Lex Fridman
That’s also really interesting. So, if you’re an advertiser, if you’re big pharma and you’re advertising, it’s not that the advertisement works. It’s that the hosts are too afraid, not explicitly, just even implicitly. They’re self-censoring. They’re not going to have any guests that are controversial, anti-big pharma, or they’re not going to make any jokes about big pharma. That continues and expands. That’s really interesting.
That’s also really interesting. So, if you’re an advertiser, if you’re big pharma and you’re advertising, it’s not that the advertisement works. It’s that the hosts are too afraid, not explicitly, just even implicitly. They’re self-censoring. They’re not going to have any guests that are controversial, anti-big pharma, or they’re not going to make any jokes about big pharma. That continues and expands. That’s really interesting.
Cenk Uygur
Sometimes it’s super direct. When I was a host on MSNBC, I had a company that I was criticizing in my script and management looked at it. By the way, I used to go off prompter a lot and it drove him crazy, not because I wasn’t good at it. I think my ratings went up whenever I went off prompter, but because they couldn’t pre-approve the script. What do they want to pre-approve? Hey, are you going to criticize one of our sponsors, one of our advertisers, et cetera? So we had a giant fight over it, and the compromise was I moved them lower in the script but kept them in the story. So, sometimes it’s super direct like that, but way more often it’s implicit. It’s indirect. You don’t have to say it. So, I give you a spectacular example of it, so that you get a sense of how it works implicitly.
Sometimes it’s super direct. When I was a host on MSNBC, I had a company that I was criticizing in my script and management looked at it. By the way, I used to go off prompter a lot and it drove him crazy, not because I wasn’t good at it. I think my ratings went up whenever I went off prompter, but because they couldn’t pre-approve the script. What do they want to pre-approve? Hey, are you going to criticize one of our sponsors, one of our advertisers, et cetera? So we had a giant fight over it, and the compromise was I moved them lower in the script but kept them in the story. So, sometimes it’s super direct like that, but way more often it’s implicit. It’s indirect. You don’t have to say it. So, I give you a spectacular example of it, so that you get a sense of how it works implicitly.
So, since GE is a giant defense contractor, they own MSNBC at the time of the Iraq War. They fired everyone who was against the Iraq War on air. So, Phil Donahue, Jesse Ventura, Ashleigh Banfield, but Ashleigh Banfield, they did something different with. She was a rising star at the time. She goes and gives a speech in Kansas, not really even having a policy position, but just talking about the actual cost of this Iraq War and how we should be really careful. They hate that. So, they take their rising star and they take her off-air and she goes, “Okay, good. Let me out of my contract. It’s okay, I’ll go.” Because she was such a star at that time, she could have easily gotten somewhere else. They go, “No, we’re not going to let you out of your contract.”
Why not? Were you going to pay me to do nothing? Yeah, not only that, we’re moving your office. Where are you moving it to? They literally moved it into a closet and they made sure that everybody in the building saw her getting taken off the air and moved into a closet. The closet is the memo, right? That’s the memo to the whole building, you better shut up and do as you’re told, okay? So that way, I don’t have to tell you and get myself in trouble. It’s super obvious. There are guardrails here, and you are not allowed to go beyond acceptable thought. Acceptable thought is our sponsors are great, politicians are great, the powerful are great.
Lex Fridman
So how do we begin to fix that, and what exactly are we fixing? Is it the influence of the lobbyists? It feels like companies have found different ways to achieve influence. So, how do we get money out of politics?
So how do we begin to fix that, and what exactly are we fixing? Is it the influence of the lobbyists? It feels like companies have found different ways to achieve influence. So, how do we get money out of politics?
Cenk Uygur
So it’s very difficult but doable and we will do it, but in order to do it, the populist left and the populist right have to unite. By the way, that is why we have the culture wars.
So it’s very difficult but doable and we will do it, but in order to do it, the populist left and the populist right have to unite. By the way, that is why we have the culture wars.
Lex Fridman
That’s why you’re voting for Trump.
That’s why you’re voting for Trump.
Cenk Uygur
No chance. So, we can get into that in a minute. So, the culture wars are meant to divide us. If we get united, we have enough leverage and power to be able to do it, but you can’t do it through a normal bill. Because if you do it on a bill, the whole point of capturing the Supreme Court was to make sure that they kill any piece of legislation that would protect the American people.
No chance. So, we can get into that in a minute. So, the culture wars are meant to divide us. If we get united, we have enough leverage and power to be able to do it, but you can’t do it through a normal bill. Because if you do it on a bill, the whole point of capturing the Supreme Court was to make sure that they kill any piece of legislation that would protect the American people.
Lex Fridman
You’re saying the Supreme Court is also captured by this?
You’re saying the Supreme Court is also captured by this?
Cenk Uygur
Oh, 100%. Okay. So, let me explain. Again, people for the uninitiated, they think, “Oh, that sounds conspiratorial.” Well, in this case, that’s actually somewhat true because people now know about this. It’s the Powell memo, the most infamous political memo in history. Lewis Powell writes a memo for the Chamber of Commerce in 1971. That’s basically a blueprint for how the Chamber of Commerce can take over the government. Lewis Powell explains, one of the most important things you have to do is take over the media, but even more important than that is taking over the Supreme Court, because the Supreme Court is the ultimate arbiter of what is allowed and not allowed. He says, “We need ‘activist judges’ to help business interests on the court.”
Oh, 100%. Okay. So, let me explain. Again, people for the uninitiated, they think, “Oh, that sounds conspiratorial.” Well, in this case, that’s actually somewhat true because people now know about this. It’s the Powell memo, the most infamous political memo in history. Lewis Powell writes a memo for the Chamber of Commerce in 1971. That’s basically a blueprint for how the Chamber of Commerce can take over the government. Lewis Powell explains, one of the most important things you have to do is take over the media, but even more important than that is taking over the Supreme Court, because the Supreme Court is the ultimate arbiter of what is allowed and not allowed. He says, “We need ‘activist judges’ to help business interests on the court.”
Then Nixon reads the memo and goes, “That sounds like a really good idea. How about I put you on the Supreme Court?” He puts Lewis Powell, the guy who wrote the memo, on the Supreme Court where he’s the deciding vote in Bellotti and Buckley. So, those two decisions are 1976 to 1978, and what they say is, yeah, I read the Constitution and it says that money’s speech. No, it isn’t. No, it didn’t. That’s not even close to true. They just made it up. They said, “Okay, in corporations, they’re human beings.” No, they’re not. That’s preposterous. They have the same inalienable rights as human beings and citizens do. Money is speech and speech is an inalienable right. So, corporations can spend unlimited money in politics, and there goes our democracy, gone.
So, Citizens United just shot a dead horse with a Gatling gun and made it worse and put it on steroids, but it was already dead in 1978. For the rest of your life, you’ll see this. Every chart about the American economy starts to diverge in 1978. 1938 to 1978, we have golden 40 years of economic prosperity. We create the greatest middle class the world has ever seen and our productivity is sky-high, but our wages match our productivity. After 1978, productivity is still sky-high best in the world. Oh, American worker’s lazy, not remotely true. We work our ass off, but we just flatline. They’ve been flatlining for about 50 years straight. The reason is because the Supreme Court made bribery legal. So, in order to get past the Supreme Court, you only have one choice.
That’s an amendment. So, you have to get an amendment. Amendments are very difficult. So, for example, you need two-thirds of Congress to even propose the amendment. So, well, why would Congress propose an amendment that would take away their own power? Because almost everybody in Congress got there through corruption. Their main talent is I can kiss corporate ass better than you can. A person with more money in Congress wins 95% of the time, but the good news is the founding fathers were geniuses, and they put in a second outlet. They said, “Or two-thirds of the states can call for a convention where you can propose an amendment. After an amendment is proposed, then three-quarters of the states have to ratify it.”
That’s what makes it so difficult, because getting three-quarters of the states, there’s so many red states, so many blue states, getting three-quarters of the states to agree is near impossible. But there is one issue that the whole country agrees on, 93% of Americans believe that politicians serve their donors and not their voters. So, this is the one thing we can unite on. If we unite on this, we push our states to call for a convention. We all go to the convention together, we bring democracy alive, and we propose amendments to the Constitution. The best amendment gets three-quarters of the states to ratify. You go above the Supreme Court and you solve the whole thing.
Lex Fridman
So if 93% of people want this, why hasn’t it happened yet? I mean, the obvious answer is there’s corporate control of the media and the politicians, but it seems like our current system and the megaphone that a president has should be able to unite the populace left and right. So, it shouldn’t be that difficult to do. Why hasn’t a person like Trump who’s a billionaire or on the left, a rich businessman run just on this and win?
So if 93% of people want this, why hasn’t it happened yet? I mean, the obvious answer is there’s corporate control of the media and the politicians, but it seems like our current system and the megaphone that a president has should be able to unite the populace left and right. So, it shouldn’t be that difficult to do. Why hasn’t a person like Trump who’s a billionaire or on the left, a rich businessman run just on this and win?
Cenk Uygur
Well, eventually they will. So, that’s why I actually have a lot of hope, even though things seem super dark right now. That’s why I was for Bernie, so I can come back to that, but why hasn’t Trump done it? It’s easy. He’s like, “What am I, a sucker? The guy gives me money. I do what the guy wants. Why would I get rid of that? That’s how I got into power. So, that’s how I’m doing it now.” I go to [inaudible 00:47:29] and say, “Give me $100 million and I’ll let Israel annex the West Bank. So, I’ll go to the oil companies and give me $1 billion and I’ll give you tax subsidies. I’ll let you drill. I’ll take away regulation. Why would I stop that?”
Well, eventually they will. So, that’s why I actually have a lot of hope, even though things seem super dark right now. That’s why I was for Bernie, so I can come back to that, but why hasn’t Trump done it? It’s easy. He’s like, “What am I, a sucker? The guy gives me money. I do what the guy wants. Why would I get rid of that? That’s how I got into power. So, that’s how I’m doing it now.” I go to [inaudible 00:47:29] and say, “Give me $100 million and I’ll let Israel annex the West Bank. So, I’ll go to the oil companies and give me $1 billion and I’ll give you tax subsidies. I’ll let you drill. I’ll take away regulation. Why would I stop that?”
Lex Fridman
You think he likes money more than he likes being popular? Because there’s a big part of him that’s a populist in the sense that he loves being admired by large masses of people.
You think he likes money more than he likes being popular? Because there’s a big part of him that’s a populist in the sense that he loves being admired by large masses of people.
Cenk Uygur
You’re absolutely right, but that is the fault of MAGA. So, MAGA, you’re screwing populists in a way that is infuriating and smart libertarians like Dave Smith have figured this out. That’s why he’s just as mad at Trump as I am. It’s because he took a populist movement and he redirected it for his own personal gain. MAGA, figure it out. Come on. So, if you say, “Oh, you think Democrats have figured out that these politics…” No, they largely haven’t figured it out either. I think there’s Blue MAGA, and I could talk about that as well. But for those of us on the populist left, yeah, we’re not enamored by politicians.
You’re absolutely right, but that is the fault of MAGA. So, MAGA, you’re screwing populists in a way that is infuriating and smart libertarians like Dave Smith have figured this out. That’s why he’s just as mad at Trump as I am. It’s because he took a populist movement and he redirected it for his own personal gain. MAGA, figure it out. Come on. So, if you say, “Oh, you think Democrats have figured out that these politics…” No, they largely haven’t figured it out either. I think there’s Blue MAGA, and I could talk about that as well. But for those of us on the populist left, yeah, we’re not enamored by politicians.
For example, when Bernie does the wrong thing, we call him out. Bernie is not my Goddamn uncle. I don’t like him for some personality reason. It’s not a cult of personality. You do the right thing, I love you for it. You do the wrong thing, I’m going to kick your ass for it. But Donald Trump does this massive ridiculous corruption over and over again. MAGA is like, “I’m here for it. Love it. As long as you’re doing the corruption, I’m okay with it.”
Lex Fridman
What does Trump say about getting money out of politics?
What does Trump say about getting money out of politics?
Cenk Uygur
He says nothing about it. MAGA, why haven’t you held him to account? So when Bernie helped Biden take out $15 minimum wage from the Senate bill on the first bill that was introduced in the Biden administration, we went nuts. We did a petition. We sent in videos to Bernie, our audience going, “Don’t kill it, Bernie. Don’t kill it.” So Bernie then reintroduced it as an amendment. It got voted down, but he did the right thing. That is us holding our top leader accountable and saying, “You better get back on track because we’re not here for you and your personal self-aggrandizement. We’re here for policy.” If MAGA was actually here for policy, they would’ve absolutely leveled Trump on the fact that he… I mean, remember what he ran on drain the swamp. That’s why he won in 2016.
He says nothing about it. MAGA, why haven’t you held him to account? So when Bernie helped Biden take out $15 minimum wage from the Senate bill on the first bill that was introduced in the Biden administration, we went nuts. We did a petition. We sent in videos to Bernie, our audience going, “Don’t kill it, Bernie. Don’t kill it.” So Bernie then reintroduced it as an amendment. It got voted down, but he did the right thing. That is us holding our top leader accountable and saying, “You better get back on track because we’re not here for you and your personal self-aggrandizement. We’re here for policy.” If MAGA was actually here for policy, they would’ve absolutely leveled Trump on the fact that he… I mean, remember what he ran on drain the swamp. That’s why he won in 2016.
So, I predicted on ABC right after the DNC and Hillary Clinton was up 10, 12 points, whatever she was, and I said, “Trump would win.” The whole panel laughed out loud. They’re like, “Get a load of this crazy guy.” I said, “He’s a populist who seems to hate the establishment in a populist time. Drain the swamp is a great slogan. I knew he would win when he was in a Republican debate and he said, ‘I paid all these guys. Before I paid them, and they did whatever I wanted.'” I was like, “That’s so true.” People will love that, and especially Republican voters will love that. I actually have a lot of respect for Republican voters because they actually genuinely hate corruption.
Fixing politics
Lex Fridman
So what would an amendment look like that helps prevent money being an influence in politics?
So what would an amendment look like that helps prevent money being an influence in politics?
Cenk Uygur
So I started a group called Wolf-PAC.
So I started a group called Wolf-PAC.
Lex Fridman
Nice name.
Nice name.
Cenk Uygur
Thank you, wold-pac.com. The reason why I named it Wolf-PAC is because everyone in Washington I knew would hate that name. It’s a populist name. Everybody in Washington snickers, “Now you’re supposed to name it Americans for America and just trick people,” et cetera. No, no, no. Wolf-PAC means we’re coming for you, okay? We’re not coming for you in a weirdo physical or violent way. We’re coming for you in a democratic way, okay? So we’re going to go to those state houses. We’re going to get them to propose a convention and we did it in five states, but then the Democratic Party started beating us back. We’ll get to that. So, we are going to overturn your apple cart and we’re going to put the American people back in charge. So, what does the amendment say?
Thank you, wold-pac.com. The reason why I named it Wolf-PAC is because everyone in Washington I knew would hate that name. It’s a populist name. Everybody in Washington snickers, “Now you’re supposed to name it Americans for America and just trick people,” et cetera. No, no, no. Wolf-PAC means we’re coming for you, okay? We’re not coming for you in a weirdo physical or violent way. We’re coming for you in a democratic way, okay? So we’re going to go to those state houses. We’re going to get them to propose a convention and we did it in five states, but then the Democratic Party started beating us back. We’ll get to that. So, we are going to overturn your apple cart and we’re going to put the American people back in charge. So, what does the amendment say?
Number one, a lot of people will have different opinions on what it should say, and that’s what you sort out in a convention. So, for example, one of the things that conservatives can propose, which makes sense, is term limits. Because the reason why these super old politicians are in charge is because they provide a return on investment. So, if you give to Biden, Pelosi, or McConnell, they’re going to deliver for you. They love that return on investment. They don’t want to risk it on a new guy. The new guy might have principles, ew, or might want to actually do a little bit for his voters, boo. Every corrupt system has these old guys hanging around that help maintain power, et cetera. So, my particular proposal in the amendments would be a couple of things.
One is end private financing of elections. Look, if you’re a businessperson, you’re a capitalist, you know this with absolute certainty. If somebody signs your check, that’s the person you work for. So, if private interests are funding politicians, the politicians will serve private interests. Then you’re going to get into a fight like Elon did in New Jersey where the car dealerships and Tesla are getting into an auction. Can I hear $100,000, $1 million, $2 million, $3 million? Now you got to go bribe the government official. That’s called a campaign contribution. This is a terrible system. End the private financing, go to complete public financing of elections.
That’s when conservatives, because they’ve been propagandized by corporate media. Yes, mainstream media got into your head too. Right-wing media got into your head too, and right-wing media also financed by a lot of this corrupt interest. So, they tell you, “Oh, you don’t want to publicly finance. Oh, my God. You’d be spending like $1 billion on politicians.” Brother, they’re spending trillions of dollars of your money because they’re financed by the guys that they’re giving all of your money to.
Lex Fridman
So can you educate me? Does that prevent something like Citizen United? So super PACs are all gone in this case. So, indirect funding is also-
So can you educate me? Does that prevent something like Citizen United? So super PACs are all gone in this case. So, indirect funding is also-
Cenk Uygur
Indirect funding’s gone, direct funding’s gone. You have to set up some thresholds. Not everybody can just get money to run. You have to prove that you have some popular support. So, signature gathering, you would still allow for small money donations like up to $100, something along those lines.
Indirect funding’s gone, direct funding’s gone. You have to set up some thresholds. Not everybody can just get money to run. You have to prove that you have some popular support. So, signature gathering, you would still allow for small money donations like up to $100, something along those lines.
Lex Fridman
Not 5,000 or whatever it is now.
Not 5,000 or whatever it is now.
Cenk Uygur
Yeah, I think 5,000 is too high, but those are fine debates. But you basically want to create an incentive. Everything is about incentives and disincentives. Again, capitalists realize this better than anyone else. So, you want to set up an incentive to serve your voters, not your donors. So, if you take away private donors, well, there goes that incentive and that’s gigantic. Then if you set up small grassroots funding as a way to get past the threshold to get the funding to run an election, well, then good, because then you’re serving small donors, which are generally voters. So, that’s what you want. Ending private financing is critical, but the second thing is ending corporate personhood. This is where you get into a lot of fights because you have two reasons.
Yeah, I think 5,000 is too high, but those are fine debates. But you basically want to create an incentive. Everything is about incentives and disincentives. Again, capitalists realize this better than anyone else. So, you want to set up an incentive to serve your voters, not your donors. So, if you take away private donors, well, there goes that incentive and that’s gigantic. Then if you set up small grassroots funding as a way to get past the threshold to get the funding to run an election, well, then good, because then you’re serving small donors, which are generally voters. So, that’s what you want. Ending private financing is critical, but the second thing is ending corporate personhood. This is where you get into a lot of fights because you have two reasons.
One is some folks have a principled position against it, and they say, “Well, I mean the Sierra Club is technically a corporation. ACLU is technically a corporation. So, if you end corporate personhood, then that could endanger their existence.” No, it doesn’t endanger their existence at all. So, it doesn’t endanger GM or GE’s existence. It doesn’t endanger anybody’s existence. Corporations exist. We’re not trying to take them away. I would never do that, right? That’s not smart, that’s not workable, et cetera. We’re just saying they don’t have constitutional rights. So, they have the rights that we give them. By the way, read the founding fathers. This is also in my book. They hated corporations. The American Revolution was partly against the British East India Company.
So, the Tea Party in Boston was against that corporation. They threw their tea overboard. It was not against the British monarchy. All the founding fathers warned us over and over again, watch out for corporations, because once they form, they will amass money and power and look to kill off democracy. They were totally right. That’s exactly what happened. So, it’s not that you don’t have them. It’s that through democratic capitalism, you limit their power. You can give them a bunch of rights. You say, “Hey, you have a right to exist. You have a right to do this, this, and this, but you do not have constitutional rights of a citizen.” So you don’t have the right to speak to a politician by giving them a billion dollars.
Lex Fridman
You believe that the people will be able to find the right policies to regulate and tax the corporations such that capitalism can flourish still?
You believe that the people will be able to find the right policies to regulate and tax the corporations such that capitalism can flourish still?
Cenk Uygur
Yes. You know why? Because I’m a real populist, and I believe in the people. So, I drive the establishment crazy because they don’t believe in the people. They think, “Oh, have you seen MAGA? Have you seen these guys? Have you seen the radicals on the left? We’re so much smarter. You know how many Ivy League degrees we have? We know what we’re doing.” No, you don’t. No, everybody to some degree looks out for their own interests. Why I like capitalism and why I love democracy is because it’s the wisdom of the crowd. So, in the long run, the crowd is right. Oftentimes in the short term, we’re wrong. But the wisdom of the crowd in the long run is much, much better than the elites that run things.
Yes. You know why? Because I’m a real populist, and I believe in the people. So, I drive the establishment crazy because they don’t believe in the people. They think, “Oh, have you seen MAGA? Have you seen these guys? Have you seen the radicals on the left? We’re so much smarter. You know how many Ivy League degrees we have? We know what we’re doing.” No, you don’t. No, everybody to some degree looks out for their own interests. Why I like capitalism and why I love democracy is because it’s the wisdom of the crowd. So, in the long run, the crowd is right. Oftentimes in the short term, we’re wrong. But the wisdom of the crowd in the long run is much, much better than the elites that run things.
The elites say, “Well, we’re so smart and educated, so we’re going to know better what’s good for you.” No, brother. You’re going to know what’s better for you. So, here’s something that a lot of people get wrong on the populist left and right. They think, “Oh, those guys are evil.” They’re not evil. I’ve met them. I worked at MSNBC, I worked on cable, I went to Wharton, Columbia Law, et cetera. I know a lot of those guys. So, they’re not at all evil. They don’t even know that they’re mainly serving their own interests. They just naturally do it.
So, they think the carried interest loophole makes a lot of sense. They think corporate tax cuts makes a lot of sense. You not getting higher wages, you not having healthcare, it makes a lot of sense. It doesn’t make any goddamn sense, but they get themselves to believe it. That’s another portion of the invisible hand of the market.
Lex Fridman
So there’s problems with every path. So, the elite, like you mentioned, can be corrupted by greed, by power, and so on. But the crowd, I agree with you, by the way, about the wisdom of the crowd versus the wisdom of the elite, but the crowd can be captured by a charismatic leader. I’m probably a populist myself. The problem with populism is that it can’t be and has been throughout history captured by bad people.
So there’s problems with every path. So, the elite, like you mentioned, can be corrupted by greed, by power, and so on. But the crowd, I agree with you, by the way, about the wisdom of the crowd versus the wisdom of the elite, but the crowd can be captured by a charismatic leader. I’m probably a populist myself. The problem with populism is that it can’t be and has been throughout history captured by bad people.
Cenk Uygur
But if you say to me, trust the elites or trust the people, I’m going to trust the people every single time.
But if you say to me, trust the elites or trust the people, I’m going to trust the people every single time.
Lex Fridman
Well, that’s why you’re such an interesting… I don’t want to say contradiction, but there’s a tension that creates the balance. So, to me, in the way you’re speaking might result in hurting capitalism. So, it is easy in fighting corporatism to hurt companies, to go too far the other way.
Well, that’s why you’re such an interesting… I don’t want to say contradiction, but there’s a tension that creates the balance. So, to me, in the way you’re speaking might result in hurting capitalism. So, it is easy in fighting corporatism to hurt companies, to go too far the other way.
Cenk Uygur
Yeah, of course.
Yeah, of course.
Lex Fridman
So when you talk about corporate tax, so what’s the magic number for the corporate tax? If it’s too high, companies leave.
So when you talk about corporate tax, so what’s the magic number for the corporate tax? If it’s too high, companies leave.
Cenk Uygur
Companies have so much power right now. This pendulum has swung so far. Guys, we’re almost out of time. The window’s closing. The minute private equity buys all of our homes, the residential real estate market, we’re screwed. We’re indentured servants forever. There goes wealth creation for the average American. So, you’re right, Lex, that it’s not a contradiction. It’s a tension that is inevitable to get to balance. The reason why people can’t figure me out, they’re like, “Well, you’re on the left, but you’re a capitalist, et cetera.” That’s not a contradiction. That’s getting to the right balance. In order to do that, if you say, “Well, if we change the system, I’m afraid of change because what if the pendulum swings too far in the other direction?”
Companies have so much power right now. This pendulum has swung so far. Guys, we’re almost out of time. The window’s closing. The minute private equity buys all of our homes, the residential real estate market, we’re screwed. We’re indentured servants forever. There goes wealth creation for the average American. So, you’re right, Lex, that it’s not a contradiction. It’s a tension that is inevitable to get to balance. The reason why people can’t figure me out, they’re like, “Well, you’re on the left, but you’re a capitalist, et cetera.” That’s not a contradiction. That’s getting to the right balance. In order to do that, if you say, “Well, if we change the system, I’m afraid of change because what if the pendulum swings too far in the other direction?”
Well, then you would be opposed to change at all times. So, if you do that, it actually reminds me of the Biden fight. So, I’m like, “Guys, he has almost no chance of winning. He stands for the establishment. He can’t talk.” But then the number one pushback I’d get from Democrats was, yeah, but what if we change? It’s so scary. We don’t know about Kamala Harris. What if it’s not Kamala Harris? It’s so scary, don’t change. Yeah, but if you say change might be worse, it also might be better. You’re at zero. Anything is better, right? Right now, in terms of corruption in America, we’re at 98% corruption. So, we’ve got 2% decency left. Brother, this is when you want change.
Lex, if you actually have wisdom of the crowd, just like in supply and demand and how it works in economics, it works the same way in a functioning democracy. You go too far, you come back in. So, for example, when Reagan came into office, me and my dad and my family, we were Republicans. Why? At that point, the highest marginal tax rate was at 70%. 70% is too high. Then he brought it all the way down to 28%. That’s too low. That’s how the system modulates itself. Already we were headed towards corruption because it’s the 80s now. We’re past 78, magic 78 marker.
Even Carter was way more conservative economically than people realize because we’re already getting past it by the time it’s in his administration. But the bottom line is, yes, whenever you have real wisdom of the crowd, whether it’s in business or in politics, you’re going to have fluctuation. You’re going to have that pendulum swinging back and forth. You don’t want wild swings, communism, corporatism, right? You want to get to hey, where’s the right balance here between capitalism and what people think is socialism?
Lex Fridman
Yeah. So, I guess I agree with most of the things you said about the corruption. I just wish there would be more celebration of the fact that capitalism and some incredible companies in the history of the 20th century has created so much wealth, so much innovation that has increased the quality of life on average. They’ve also increased the wealth inequality and exploitation of the workers and this stuff, but you want to not forget to celebrate the awesomeness that companies have also brought outside the political sphere just in creating awesome stuff.
Yeah. So, I guess I agree with most of the things you said about the corruption. I just wish there would be more celebration of the fact that capitalism and some incredible companies in the history of the 20th century has created so much wealth, so much innovation that has increased the quality of life on average. They’ve also increased the wealth inequality and exploitation of the workers and this stuff, but you want to not forget to celebrate the awesomeness that companies have also brought outside the political sphere just in creating awesome stuff.
Cenk Uygur
Look, I run a company. So, I don’t want companies to go away, and I don’t want you to hate all companies. I think Young Turks is a wonderful company. We provide great healthcare, we take care of our employees, we care about the community, et cetera. We’re building a whole nation online on those principles and the right way to run a company. But guys, we’re at the wrong part of the pendulum. The companies have overwhelming power and they’re crushing us. We’re like that scene in Star Wars with the trash compactor is closing in on them. The walls are closing in. We’re almost out of time because they’ve captured the government almost entirely. They’re only serving corporate interests. We’ve got to get back into balance before it’s too late. That’s why I care so much about structural issues. So, I form Justice Democrats, so that’s AOC, et cetera, right? People know it as the squad. They know it as just Democrats, et cetera. I’m one of the co-founders of that, and my number one rule was no corporate PAC money. So, you’re not allowed to take corporate PAC money. By the way, now, Matt-
Look, I run a company. So, I don’t want companies to go away, and I don’t want you to hate all companies. I think Young Turks is a wonderful company. We provide great healthcare, we take care of our employees, we care about the community, et cetera. We’re building a whole nation online on those principles and the right way to run a company. But guys, we’re at the wrong part of the pendulum. The companies have overwhelming power and they’re crushing us. We’re like that scene in Star Wars with the trash compactor is closing in on them. The walls are closing in. We’re almost out of time because they’ve captured the government almost entirely. They’re only serving corporate interests. We’ve got to get back into balance before it’s too late. That’s why I care so much about structural issues. So, I form Justice Democrats, so that’s AOC, et cetera, right? People know it as the squad. They know it as just Democrats, et cetera. I’m one of the co-founders of that, and my number one rule was no corporate PAC money. So, you’re not allowed to take corporate PAC money. By the way, now, Matt-
Cenk Uygur
Okay, so you’re not allowed to take corporate PAC money. By the way. Now Matt Gaetz and Josh Hawley have stopped taking corporate PAC money and they’ve become, to some degree on economic issues genuine populists. It’s amazing. It happens overnight. All of a sudden they’re talking about holding corporations accountable, et cetera. Now just Democrats wind up having other problems. They got too deep into social issues, not economic issues.
Okay, so you’re not allowed to take corporate PAC money. By the way. Now Matt Gaetz and Josh Hawley have stopped taking corporate PAC money and they’ve become, to some degree on economic issues genuine populists. It’s amazing. It happens overnight. All of a sudden they’re talking about holding corporations accountable, et cetera. Now just Democrats wind up having other problems. They got too deep into social issues, not economic issues.
Lex Fridman
There’s a general criticism of billionaires, right? This idea. Now you could say that billionaires are avoiding taxes and they’re not getting taxed enough. But I think under that flag of criticizing billionaires is criticizing all companies that do epic shit. That build stuff.
There’s a general criticism of billionaires, right? This idea. Now you could say that billionaires are avoiding taxes and they’re not getting taxed enough. But I think under that flag of criticizing billionaires is criticizing all companies that do epic shit. That build stuff.
Cenk Uygur
Oh, okay. So-
Oh, okay. So-
Lex Fridman
That create stuff. That’s what I’m worried about. I don’t hear enough genuine… I like celebrating people. I like celebrating ideas. I just don’t hear enough genuine celebration of companies when they do cool things.
That create stuff. That’s what I’m worried about. I don’t hear enough genuine… I like celebrating people. I like celebrating ideas. I just don’t hear enough genuine celebration of companies when they do cool things.
Cenk Uygur
So are you, right, not about companies, but about capitalism? Yes. Because you look at life expectancy 200 years ago, and you look at it now and you go, wow, holy shit, we did amazing things. And what happened in the last 200 years? We went from dictatorships more towards democracy, wisdom of the crowd. We went from serfs and indentured servants and a nobility that holds the land to more towards capitalism. And boom, the crowd is right. Things go really well. The advances in medicine are amazing, and medicine is a great example. And on our show, I point all those things out and I say, look, we hate the drug companies because of how they’ve captured the government, right? But we don’t hate the drug companies for creating great drugs. Those drugs save lives. They just saved my life. They saved countless millions upon millions of lives.
So are you, right, not about companies, but about capitalism? Yes. Because you look at life expectancy 200 years ago, and you look at it now and you go, wow, holy shit, we did amazing things. And what happened in the last 200 years? We went from dictatorships more towards democracy, wisdom of the crowd. We went from serfs and indentured servants and a nobility that holds the land to more towards capitalism. And boom, the crowd is right. Things go really well. The advances in medicine are amazing, and medicine is a great example. And on our show, I point all those things out and I say, look, we hate the drug companies because of how they’ve captured the government, right? But we don’t hate the drug companies for creating great drugs. Those drugs save lives. They just saved my life. They saved countless millions upon millions of lives.
So the right idea isn’t shut down drug companies. The right idea is don’t let them buy the government, right? And I know we get back into our instinctual shells, so on the left they’ll be, oh, we should get rid of all billionaires. Why? How does that fix the system? Tell me how it fixes the system, and I’m all ears. My solution is end private financing. Then you can be a billionaire all you like. You can’t buy the government. That’s a more logical way to go about it. I’ve never worn an Eat the Rich shirt, and it drives me crazy. I’m like, “You would’ve eaten FDR.” Right? And FDR is the best president, the most populous president in my opinion. And so no, there’s wonderful rich people. Of course, of course there’s a range of humanity. But you don’t want to get rid of the rich. You don’t want to get rid of companies, but you also don’t want to let them control everything.
Here, I’ll give you an example that’s really, and that informs a lot of how I think about things, which is my dad. So my dad was a farmer in southeastern Turkey, near the Syrian border. No money. In fact, his dad died when he was six months old. And so they were saddled with debt and no electricity in his house. As poor as poor gets. And he wound up living the American dream. And so how did he do that? What made the difference? Well, what made the difference is opportunity. So I’m a populist because my dad was in the masses, and the elites say the masses are no good. We’re smart, you’re not. We’re educated, you are not. At meritocracy, we talk about that. We have earned merit. And if you’re poor or middle-class, you have not earned merit. Okay? You’re useless and worthless. And I hate that.
So what did Turkey do back in the 1960s that liberated my dad? They provided free college education. You had to test into it, but the top 15% got a free college education at the best colleges in Turkey. And my uncle saved all of our lives when he came to my dad and said, “Do you like working on this farm?” And my dad’s like, “Fuck no.” It’s super hot. It’s super hard. They got to get up at four in the morning. If they’re lucky, they have a family next door gives them a mule. If they’re not, they got to carry the shit themselves. So my uncle told him, work just as hard in school and you’ll be able to get a house, a car, pretty girls, et cetera. My dad works his ass off, gets into the school, and he comes out of a mechanical engineer and starts his own company.
He creates a company in Turkey, hires hundreds of people. He then moves to America, creates a company here, hires tons of people. Do I hate companies? No. My dad set up two companies and I saw how much it benefited people. I saw how much employees would come up to my dad 20, 30 years later in the street and hug him. And they’d tell me, as a young kid, your dad’s the most fair boss we ever had. And we love him for it. That’s how you run a company. And he taught me the value of hard work.
But the reason I brought it up here is because he taught me, look, skill and ability is a genetic lottery. So you’re not going to just get the rich to win all the genetic lottery. No. There’s going to be tons of poor kids and middle-class kids who are just as good if not better. You have to provide them the opportunity, the fair chance to succeed. You have to believe in them. So this isn’t about disempowering anyone. It’s about empowering all of those kids who are doing the right thing, who are smart and want to work hard so they could build their own companies and add to the economy.
Meritocracy & DEI
Lex Fridman
What in general is your view on meritocracy?
What in general is your view on meritocracy?
Cenk Uygur
So I love meritocracy. I wish that we lived in a meritocracy and I want to drive towards living in a meritocracy. So that’s why I don’t like equality of results. So now people that are on the left will get super mad at that and go, what do you mean? Well, okay, brother, let’s say you’re at work and you got one guy who’s working his ass off. Another guy, that’s going, I don’t care. I’m not going to do it. Well, the guy who works super hard has to pick up the slack. Now he’s working twice as hard and now you want the same results? You want the same salary as that guy? No brother. No. He’s working twice, four times, 10 times harder than you. That’s not fair. Fairness matters. We were in the suburbs of Jersey, but we wound up in Freehold eventually, and we lived across a farm, which is… In central Jersey, it happens. And it was called Fair Chance Farm. I was like, how did I get, this is amazing, right? And I love that. That’s the essence of America, and that’s what I want to go back to. So we’ve got to create that opportunity, not just because it’s the moral thing to do, but because it’s also the economically smart thing to do. If you enable all those great people that are in lower income classes and middle income classes, you’re going to get a much better economy, a much stronger democracy. So that’s the direction we go.
So I love meritocracy. I wish that we lived in a meritocracy and I want to drive towards living in a meritocracy. So that’s why I don’t like equality of results. So now people that are on the left will get super mad at that and go, what do you mean? Well, okay, brother, let’s say you’re at work and you got one guy who’s working his ass off. Another guy, that’s going, I don’t care. I’m not going to do it. Well, the guy who works super hard has to pick up the slack. Now he’s working twice as hard and now you want the same results? You want the same salary as that guy? No brother. No. He’s working twice, four times, 10 times harder than you. That’s not fair. Fairness matters. We were in the suburbs of Jersey, but we wound up in Freehold eventually, and we lived across a farm, which is… In central Jersey, it happens. And it was called Fair Chance Farm. I was like, how did I get, this is amazing, right? And I love that. That’s the essence of America, and that’s what I want to go back to. So we’ve got to create that opportunity, not just because it’s the moral thing to do, but because it’s also the economically smart thing to do. If you enable all those great people that are in lower income classes and middle income classes, you’re going to get a much better economy, a much stronger democracy. So that’s the direction we go.
Lex Fridman
So again, it’s about balance, but what do you think about DEI policies say in academia and companies? So the movement as it has evolved, where’s that on the balance? How far is it pushing towards equality of outcome versus equality of opportunity?
So again, it’s about balance, but what do you think about DEI policies say in academia and companies? So the movement as it has evolved, where’s that on the balance? How far is it pushing towards equality of outcome versus equality of opportunity?
Cenk Uygur
So now we’re getting into social issues. So this is where we all rip each other apart, and then the people at the top laugh their off at us and go, we got them fighting over trans issues. They’re killing each other. It is hilarious. And they’re so busy, they don’t realize we’re running the place. Right? Okay, but let’s engage. Some people will look at DEI and go, well, that just gives me an opportunity just like anyone else. I love DEI. And other person will look at it and go, no, that says that you should be picked above me. And I hate DEI. So the reality of DEI is a little bit more complicated, but you got to go back. So first, did we need affirmative action in the 1960s? Definitely. Why? All the firefighter jobs in South Carolina, as an example, are going to white guys.
So now we’re getting into social issues. So this is where we all rip each other apart, and then the people at the top laugh their off at us and go, we got them fighting over trans issues. They’re killing each other. It is hilarious. And they’re so busy, they don’t realize we’re running the place. Right? Okay, but let’s engage. Some people will look at DEI and go, well, that just gives me an opportunity just like anyone else. I love DEI. And other person will look at it and go, no, that says that you should be picked above me. And I hate DEI. So the reality of DEI is a little bit more complicated, but you got to go back. So first, did we need affirmative action in the 1960s? Definitely. Why? All the firefighter jobs in South Carolina, as an example, are going to white guys.
All the longshoremen jobs in New York, LA, wherever you have it, are all going to white guys because that’s how the system was. Yes, also in the north. So we now are in a civil rights era. We decide we’re going to go towards equality. Minorities, in that case, mainly black Americans, had to find a way to break in. If you’re a longshoreman and it’s a good job, you naturally pass it on to your son. I get your instinct, I don’t hate you for it. But we got to let black kids also have a shot at it. So you need it in the beginning, but at a certain point you have to phase it out.
So when I was growing up, it’s now in the late ’80s, early ’90s, I hated affirmative action and I’ve been principled on it from day one. And to this day, I’m not in favor of affirmative action. I say it on the show all the time. Why? I’m a minority. Being a Turk. I grew up Muslim, I’m an atheist now, but generally speaking, a Muslim is certainly a minority in America and pretty much a hated one overall. But I didn’t check off Muslim or Turkish or any ethnicity when I applied to college because I believe in a meritocracy as we were talking about. But we don’t really have a meritocracy now, so I can come back to that, so I didn’t check it off because I didn’t want an unfair advantage, because I want to earn it. I want to earn it. So now I’m in law school and I’m hanging out with right-wingers because at that point I’m a Republican, and one of the guys says to me about a black student going to Columbia, he says, oh, I wonder how he got in here.
God, that is the problem with affirmative action. It devalues the accomplishments of every minority in the country. You have to transition away from it. If you don’t, it sets up a caste system. And that caste system is lethal to democracy. So does DEI go too far? In some instances, yes. But is it a boogeyman that’s going to take all the white jobs and make them black as Trump would say, black jobs, and give minorities too much power, et cetera? No. The idea isn’t to rob you and to give all the opportunity to minorities. The idea is to make it equal. But as the pendulum swings, did it swing too far in some directions? Yes. The left can’t acknowledge that and the right can’t acknowledge that, of course, at some point you got to give a chance for others to break in so they have a fair chance.
Lex Fridman
By the way, Michelle Obama had a good line about the black jobs in the DNC speech-
By the way, Michelle Obama had a good line about the black jobs in the DNC speech-
Cenk Uygur
Great line. I loved that.
Great line. I loved that.
Lex Fridman
Where somebody should tell Trump that the presidency might be just one of those black jobs. Anyway, but why do you think the left doesn’t acknowledge when DEI gets ridiculous? Which it, in certain places and in certain places at a large scale has gotten ridiculous.
Where somebody should tell Trump that the presidency might be just one of those black jobs. Anyway, but why do you think the left doesn’t acknowledge when DEI gets ridiculous? Which it, in certain places and in certain places at a large scale has gotten ridiculous.
Cenk Uygur
Because people are taught to just be in the tribe they’re in. And to believe it a hundred percent. I’ve gotten kicked out of every… I might be the most attacked man in internet history, partly because we’ve been around forever. And partly because I disagree with every part of the political spectrum, because I believe in independent thought. And the minute you vary a little bit, people go nuts. And so the far left tribe is going to go with their preset ideology, just like the far right tribe is.
Because people are taught to just be in the tribe they’re in. And to believe it a hundred percent. I’ve gotten kicked out of every… I might be the most attacked man in internet history, partly because we’ve been around forever. And partly because I disagree with every part of the political spectrum, because I believe in independent thought. And the minute you vary a little bit, people go nuts. And so the far left tribe is going to go with their preset ideology, just like the far right tribe is.
So for example, on trans issues, we’ve protected trans people for over 20 years in The Young Turks. We fought for equality for trans people and for all LGBTQ people for two decades. We did it way before anyone else did. When Biden came out in favor of gay marriage in 2013, we’re like, this is comically late. So we were all supposed to congratulate him in the year 2013 that he thinks gay people should have the same rights as straight people? And that he had to push Obama to get there? So on the other hand, I’m like, guys, if you allow trans women to go into professional sports, not at the high school level, but professional sports, but let’s say they go into MMA or boxing and a trans woman, I mean, it happens in boxing, it happens in MMA, punches a biological woman so hard that she kills her. So you’re going to set back trans rights 50 years. I’m not trying to hurt you, I’m trying to help you. You have to do bounds of reason.
So when I say simple things like that, and I say, you can give LeBron James every hormone blocker on planet earth, he’s still going to dominate the WNBA. Okay? It would be comical. He might score a hundred points a night. And they’ll say, that’s outrageous. And some have called me Nazi for saying that trans women or that professional leagues should make their own decisions on whether they allow trans women in or not. So why do they say that? Because they’re so besieged, they think we cannot give an inch. We cannot give any ground. If you give any ground, you’re a Nazi. Okay? So we’ve got to get out of that mindset. You can’t function in a democracy and be in an extreme position and expect the rest of the country to go towards your extreme position.
Lex Fridman
So why do you think we are not in a meritocracy?
So why do you think we are not in a meritocracy?
Cenk Uygur
Because of the corruption. So for example, but there’s also, remember, corporate media is the matrix and they plug you into cable in the old days. Now, it’s a little bit different because of online media, but especially 10 years ago, and remember we started 22 years ago. So I’ve been losing my mind over how obvious corporate media corruption has been for decades now, but no one acknowledged it until online media got stronger. But one of the myths that corporate media creates is the myth of meritocracy. Not that meritocracy can’t exist or shouldn’t exist, but they pretend it exists today. So the problem with that myth, Lex, is that it gets people thinking, well, if they’re already rich, they must have merited it by definition. So all the rich have merit. And the reverse of that, if you’re poor or middle class, well, you must not have merited wealth. So you’re no good. We don’t have to listen to you. And that’s a really dangerous, awful idea.
Because of the corruption. So for example, but there’s also, remember, corporate media is the matrix and they plug you into cable in the old days. Now, it’s a little bit different because of online media, but especially 10 years ago, and remember we started 22 years ago. So I’ve been losing my mind over how obvious corporate media corruption has been for decades now, but no one acknowledged it until online media got stronger. But one of the myths that corporate media creates is the myth of meritocracy. Not that meritocracy can’t exist or shouldn’t exist, but they pretend it exists today. So the problem with that myth, Lex, is that it gets people thinking, well, if they’re already rich, they must have merited it by definition. So all the rich have merit. And the reverse of that, if you’re poor or middle class, well, you must not have merited wealth. So you’re no good. We don’t have to listen to you. And that’s a really dangerous, awful idea.
And so if we get to a meritocracy one day, I’ll be the happiest person in America. But right now it’s… Look here I’ll give you an example that I put in the book, and it’s not us, this other folks at this YouTube video. I can’t even quite find who they were, but it was a brilliant video, and they said, we’re going to do a hundred yard race. But hold on before we start, anyone who has two parents take two steps forward. Anyone who went to college, take another two steps forward. Anyone who doesn’t have bills to pay for education anymore, take two steps forward. They do all these things. And then at the end, before they start, somebody’s 20 yards from the finish line, and a lot of people are still at the starting line, and then they go, okay, now we’re going to run a race. And the guy who was right next to the finish line wins and they go, meritocracy. Okay?
Lex Fridman
So the challenge there is to know which disparities when you just freeze the system and observe are actually a result of some kind of discrimination or a flaw in the system versus the result of meritocracy, of the better runner being ahead.
So the challenge there is to know which disparities when you just freeze the system and observe are actually a result of some kind of discrimination or a flaw in the system versus the result of meritocracy, of the better runner being ahead.
Cenk Uygur
That’s right. There are some parts that are easy to solve, Lex. So if you donated to a politician and he gave you a billion dollar subsidy, that’s not meritocracy.
That’s right. There are some parts that are easy to solve, Lex. So if you donated to a politician and he gave you a billion dollar subsidy, that’s not meritocracy.
Lex Fridman
So if you follow on the money, you can see the flaws in the system.
So if you follow on the money, you can see the flaws in the system.
Cenk Uygur
Exactly. And again, nothing’s ever perfect. At any snapshot of history or of the moment, you’re going to be at some point in the pendulum swing. But if you trust the people and you let the pendulum swing but not wildly, then you’re going to get to the right answers in the long run.
Exactly. And again, nothing’s ever perfect. At any snapshot of history or of the moment, you’re going to be at some point in the pendulum swing. But if you trust the people and you let the pendulum swing but not wildly, then you’re going to get to the right answers in the long run.
Far-left vs far-right
Lex Fridman
So you think this woke mind virus that the right refers to is a problem, but not a big problem?
So you think this woke mind virus that the right refers to is a problem, but not a big problem?
Cenk Uygur
No. So the right wing drives me crazy. So look, guys, your instincts of populism is correct. Your instincts of anti-corruption is correct, right? And I love you for it. And so in a lot of ways, the right-wing voters figured out the whole system’s screwed before left-wing voters did. I shouldn’t say left-wing voters, because progressives and left-wing have been saying it for not only decades, but maybe centuries. But democratic voters. A lot of democratic voters, some of them actually like this current system, a lot of them have been tricked into liking this current system. And the left should be fighting against corruption harder than the right. But right now, unfortunately that’s not the case.
No. So the right wing drives me crazy. So look, guys, your instincts of populism is correct. Your instincts of anti-corruption is correct, right? And I love you for it. And so in a lot of ways, the right-wing voters figured out the whole system’s screwed before left-wing voters did. I shouldn’t say left-wing voters, because progressives and left-wing have been saying it for not only decades, but maybe centuries. But democratic voters. A lot of democratic voters, some of them actually like this current system, a lot of them have been tricked into liking this current system. And the left should be fighting against corruption harder than the right. But right now, unfortunately that’s not the case.
So there’s a lot that I like about right-wing voters. But you guys get tricked on social issues so easily. So how many people are involved in trans high school sports and a girl who should have finished first in that track race in the middle of Indiana finished second. First of all, this is the big crime? And how many people are involved about 7? 13? Out of a country of 330 million people? And you can’t see that that’s a distraction? And everything they did that is bait that the right wing media puts out there, they run after. I mean, Tucker Carlson doing insane segments about Eminem should be sexier. Mr. Potato Head has gender issues. Guys, get out of there. Get out of there. It’s a trap. Okay?
Lex Fridman
Yeah, that doesn’t mean that there’s… Absolutely. It doesn’t mean that there’s larger scale issues with things like DEI that aren’t so fun to talk about or viral to talk about on an anecdotal scale. DEI does create a culture of fear with cancel culture, and it does create a culture that limits the freedom of expression, and it does limit the meritocracy in another way. So you’re basically saying, forget all these other problems. Money is the biggest problem.
Yeah, that doesn’t mean that there’s… Absolutely. It doesn’t mean that there’s larger scale issues with things like DEI that aren’t so fun to talk about or viral to talk about on an anecdotal scale. DEI does create a culture of fear with cancel culture, and it does create a culture that limits the freedom of expression, and it does limit the meritocracy in another way. So you’re basically saying, forget all these other problems. Money is the biggest problem.
Cenk Uygur
So first of all, on AOC, as an example, and I don’t mean to pick on her, but she won through the great work of her and Saikat Chakrabarti and Corbyn Trent and others who were leaders of the Justice Democrats that went and helped her campaign. They were critical help. And we all told her the same thing. So it’s not about me, me, me. And so we all said, you’ve got to challenge the establishment and you’ve got to work on money in politics first, because if you don’t work on money in politics and you don’t fix that, you’re going to lose on almost all other issues. But she didn’t believe us because it’s uncomfortable. And all the progressives that went into Congress, they drive me crazy. They think, oh, no, no, you’re exaggerating. And the minute they get in, all of a sudden, my colleagues. Your colleagues hate you and they’re going to drive you out. You’re a sucker. And Jamaal Bowman, Corey Bush, what did they do? They drove them out. Marie Newman drove them out. And because they’re not on your side, they’re not your colleagues.
So first of all, on AOC, as an example, and I don’t mean to pick on her, but she won through the great work of her and Saikat Chakrabarti and Corbyn Trent and others who were leaders of the Justice Democrats that went and helped her campaign. They were critical help. And we all told her the same thing. So it’s not about me, me, me. And so we all said, you’ve got to challenge the establishment and you’ve got to work on money in politics first, because if you don’t work on money in politics and you don’t fix that, you’re going to lose on almost all other issues. But she didn’t believe us because it’s uncomfortable. And all the progressives that went into Congress, they drive me crazy. They think, oh, no, no, you’re exaggerating. And the minute they get in, all of a sudden, my colleagues. Your colleagues hate you and they’re going to drive you out. You’re a sucker. And Jamaal Bowman, Corey Bush, what did they do? They drove them out. Marie Newman drove them out. And because they’re not on your side, they’re not your colleagues.
And what happened to $15 minimum wage? And I remember talking to one of those Congress people, I leave out the name, and saying, hey, you know they’re not going to do $15 minimum wage. And he is like, “Oh, Cenk, you’re out of the loop. Nancy Pelosi assured us that they are going to do $15 minimum wage.” I’m like, “I love you, but you’re totally wrong. Moneyed interests are not going to do $15 minimum wage. You have to start fighting now.” And they didn’t get it. So they lost on almost all those issues. It’s all about incentives and disincentives and rules. If you don’t fix the rules, you’re going to constantly run into the same brick wall.
Now, the second issue that we were talking about is in the culture wars. The rest of us are stuck between the two extreme two-percenter on both sides. So the two two-percenter on the left goes, if you’re a white woman, you need to shut up and listen now, okay? That’s ridiculous. No, you don’t. If you’re a white woman, you have every right to speak out. You have every right that every other human being has. And so would I love for all of us to listen to one another, to have empathy for one another and go, hey, I wonder how a right-winger thinks about this. I wonder how a left-Winger thinks about this. I wonder why they think that way, right? I love that and I want that. So I want you to listen, but I don’t want you to shut up. So that 2% gets extreme and I don’t like it.
But on the right wing, you got your 2% who think that that’s all that’s happening on the left, and that’s all that’s happening in American politics, and they think the entire left believes that tiny 2%, and so they hate the left, and they’re like, oh, I’m not going to shut up. Oh, I’m not going to wear a mask. I’m not going to do any of these things and I’m not going to do anything. That’s a freedom. And then a Republican comes along and goes, oh yeah, that thing you call freedom, that’s deregulation for corporations because you shouldn’t really have freedom. Companies should have freedom. And then the guy goes, “Yeah, freedom for ExxonMobil.” No brother, they tricked you.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, the 2% on each side is a useful distraction for for the corruption of the politicians via money still. I’m talking about the 96% that remains in the middle and the impact that DEI policies has on them.
Yeah, the 2% on each side is a useful distraction for for the corruption of the politicians via money still. I’m talking about the 96% that remains in the middle and the impact that DEI policies has on them.
Cenk Uygur
So here’s where it gets absurd. I’ll give you a good example of absurdity. So in a school, I believe in California, they noticed that Latino students were not doing as well in AP and honors classes. So they canceled AP and honors classes. Oh, come on. What are you doing? That’s nuts. No, your job is to help them get better grades, get better opportunity, et cetera. That’s the harder thing to do, and the right thing to do. Your job isn’t, I’m going to make everything equal by taking away the opportunity for higher achievement for other students. If that’s what you’re doing and you think you’re on the left, you’re not really on the left. I actually think that’s like an authoritarian position that no progressive in their right mind would be in favor of. But it’s all definitional. So here’s another example of definitional. Communism. They say, oh my god, Kamala Harris is a communist.
So here’s where it gets absurd. I’ll give you a good example of absurdity. So in a school, I believe in California, they noticed that Latino students were not doing as well in AP and honors classes. So they canceled AP and honors classes. Oh, come on. What are you doing? That’s nuts. No, your job is to help them get better grades, get better opportunity, et cetera. That’s the harder thing to do, and the right thing to do. Your job isn’t, I’m going to make everything equal by taking away the opportunity for higher achievement for other students. If that’s what you’re doing and you think you’re on the left, you’re not really on the left. I actually think that’s like an authoritarian position that no progressive in their right mind would be in favor of. But it’s all definitional. So here’s another example of definitional. Communism. They say, oh my god, Kamala Harris is a communist.
Well, you’re telling on yourself brothers and sisters, when you say that that means A, I don’t know what communism means, and B, I don’t have any idea what’s going on in American politics. Kamala Harris is a corporatist. That’s her problem. Not that she’s a communist, she’s on the other end of the spectrum. The idea that Kamala Harris would come into office and say, that’s it. There’s no more private property. We’re going to take all of your homes and it’s now government property, then all your cars, et cetera. She was not going to get within a billion miles of that. Her donors would never allow her to get within a billion miles of that. That is so preposterous that when you say something like that, it’s disqualifying. I can’t debate someone who thinks that Democrats are communists when they’re actually largely corporatists. You see what I’m saying?
Lex Fridman
Yeah. So let’s go there. So when people call her a communist, they’re usually referring to certain kinds of policies. So do you think, I mean, it’s a ridiculous label to assign to Kamala Harris, especially given the history of communism in the 20th century and what those economic and political policies have led to, the scale of suffering that led to, and it just degrades the meaning of the word, but to take that seriously, why is she not a communist? So you said she’s not a communist because she’s a corporatist. That can’t be… Okay. Everybody in politics is a corporatist-
Yeah. So let’s go there. So when people call her a communist, they’re usually referring to certain kinds of policies. So do you think, I mean, it’s a ridiculous label to assign to Kamala Harris, especially given the history of communism in the 20th century and what those economic and political policies have led to, the scale of suffering that led to, and it just degrades the meaning of the word, but to take that seriously, why is she not a communist? So you said she’s not a communist because she’s a corporatist. That can’t be… Okay. Everybody in politics is a corporatist-
Cenk Uygur
Almost.
Almost.
Lex Fridman
Almost everybody in politics is a corporatist, but that doesn’t mean that corporations have completely bought their mind. They have an influence in their mind on issues that matter to those corporations-
Almost everybody in politics is a corporatist, but that doesn’t mean that corporations have completely bought their mind. They have an influence in their mind on issues that matter to those corporations-
Cenk Uygur
Yep.
Yep.
Lex Fridman
Right?
Right?
Cenk Uygur
Yep.
Yep.
Lex Fridman
Outside of that, they’re still thinking for the voters because they still have to win the votes.
Outside of that, they’re still thinking for the voters because they still have to win the votes.
Cenk Uygur
Barely.
Barely.
Lex Fridman
Okay.
Okay.
Cenk Uygur
So here, let me give you examples so you see what I’m saying. So if you just wanted votes, you would do a lot of what Tim Walz did. And by the way, a lot of what Bernie did, that’s why Bernie who had no media coverage went from 2% in 2015 to by the end about 48% because he’s just doing things that were popular and that American people wanted, et cetera, because he’s not controlled by corporations. By the way, neither is Tom Massie on the right wing side, on the Republican side. So it’s not all, that’s why I always say almost all. Right? So if you’re doing things that are popular, people love it. So today, what would Kamala Harris do if she actually just wanted to win? So number one, she was trying to pass paid family leave right now. Why? It polls at 84% and even 74% of Republicans want it.
So here, let me give you examples so you see what I’m saying. So if you just wanted votes, you would do a lot of what Tim Walz did. And by the way, a lot of what Bernie did, that’s why Bernie who had no media coverage went from 2% in 2015 to by the end about 48% because he’s just doing things that were popular and that American people wanted, et cetera, because he’s not controlled by corporations. By the way, neither is Tom Massie on the right wing side, on the Republican side. So it’s not all, that’s why I always say almost all. Right? So if you’re doing things that are popular, people love it. So today, what would Kamala Harris do if she actually just wanted to win? So number one, she was trying to pass paid family leave right now. Why? It polls at 84% and even 74% of Republicans want it.
Why? Because it says, hey, when you have a baby, you should get 12 weeks off. Bond with your baby. Right now, in a lot of states that don’t have paid family leave, you have to go back to work the very next day, or you have to use all of your sick days, all your vacation days, just have one or two weeks with your baby. So conservatives love paid family leave, liberals love paid family leave. That’s why it polls so high. So why isn’t she proposing it? It’s not in her economic plan. Tim Walz already passed it in Minnesota. He showed how easy it was. If you want votes, and then you know what’s going to happen if you propose paid family leave, the Republicans are going to go, no, our beloved corporations don’t want to spend another dollar on moms, and they fall for that trap, and then you are in an infinitely better shape.
So why doesn’t she do it? She doesn’t do it because her corporate donors don’t want her to do it. $15 minimum wage, layup. Over two thirds of the country wants it because it not only gives you higher wages for minimum wage folks, but it pushes wages up for others. And what do the elites say? Oh, that’s going to drive up inflation. No, you shouldn’t get paid anymore. Wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on. So you’re saying all the other prices should go up, but the only thing that shouldn’t go up is our wages? No, our wages should go up. So these are all easy ones.
Here’s another one. Anti-corruption. Why isn’t she running on getting money out of politics? It polls at over 90%. Why isn’t Trump running on it anymore? He won when he ran on it in 2016, he didn’t mean a word of it, but he ran on it. It was smart. They don’t do it because their corporate donors take their heads off if they do it.
Lex Fridman
So in contradiction to that, why did she propose to raise the corporate tax rate from, whatever, 21% to 28%?
So in contradiction to that, why did she propose to raise the corporate tax rate from, whatever, 21% to 28%?
Cenk Uygur
Because that’s easy, because that is something that’s super popular and she’s not going to do it. That’s why. So guys, this is where I break the hearts of Blue MAGA. Blue MAGA thinks, oh my God, these Democrats, they’re angels, and the right wing is, and the Republicans are evil, and they work for big business, but not Kamala Harris, not Joe Biden. Right? Okay. Well, Donald Trump took the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%. So that’s trillions of dollars that got transferred because guys, you got to understand if the corporations don’t pay it, we have to pay it because we’re running up these giant deficits and eventually either they’re going to, not eventually, they keep raising our taxes in different ways that you’re not noticing. They keep increasing fees and fines and different ways for the government to collect money. So we’re paying for it.
Because that’s easy, because that is something that’s super popular and she’s not going to do it. That’s why. So guys, this is where I break the hearts of Blue MAGA. Blue MAGA thinks, oh my God, these Democrats, they’re angels, and the right wing is, and the Republicans are evil, and they work for big business, but not Kamala Harris, not Joe Biden. Right? Okay. Well, Donald Trump took the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%. So that’s trillions of dollars that got transferred because guys, you got to understand if the corporations don’t pay it, we have to pay it because we’re running up these giant deficits and eventually either they’re going to, not eventually, they keep raising our taxes in different ways that you’re not noticing. They keep increasing fees and fines and different ways for the government to collect money. So we’re paying for it.
And on top of that, eventually they’re going to cut your Social Security and Medicare because they’re going to say, oh, we don’t have any options left anymore. You don’t have any options left any more because you kept giving trillions of dollars in tax cuts to corporations, so we’re going to have to pay for that.
So then Biden says, oh my God, I’m going to bring corporate taxes back up to 28%. I’m like, wait, hold on. They were at 35. You already did a sleight of hand and said 28. Okay? Then he gets into office and Manchin says, no, 25, that’s the highest I’ll go. And he goes, okay, fine. 25. And then while you’re not looking, they just dump it. They don’t even do 25. It’s still at 21. So hear me now, quote me later. I do predictions on the show all the time because you should hold me accountable. You should hold all your pundits accountable. If you held all your pundits accountable, we’d be the last man standing. And that’s what happened. Okay? So I guarantee you she will not increase corporate taxes.
Lex Fridman
So would the same be the case for price controls or the anti-price gouging that she’s proposing?
So would the same be the case for price controls or the anti-price gouging that she’s proposing?
Cenk Uygur
So it’s not price controls, it’s anti-price gouging?
So it’s not price controls, it’s anti-price gouging?
Lex Fridman
It is price controls, but I mean minimum wage is price controls also.
It is price controls, but I mean minimum wage is price controls also.
Cenk Uygur
Now we’re going to get into a lot of minutiae, but I’ll try to keep it broad. So price controls are a disaster. They never work. If you say, oh, here’s a banana. It has to stay at a dollar a pound, make up a number. Well supply and demand’s going to move. And so the minute it moves to $2 or where the price should be, then you’re going to run into shortages. And we all know this, it’s a bad idea. But are there laws against price gouging? There already are, and they’re a good idea. So, why? You have a natural disaster? All of a sudden, the water that was a dollar, now they’re charging a hundred dollars. The government has to come in, democratic capitalism, they come in and go, no, I’m going to protect the people. So you’re not allowed to price gouge, maybe charge $2, et cetera, but you’re not going to charge a hundred. But it is temporary. We get that done, we end the problem there, and then we bring it back to a normal supply and demand. Okay?
Now we’re going to get into a lot of minutiae, but I’ll try to keep it broad. So price controls are a disaster. They never work. If you say, oh, here’s a banana. It has to stay at a dollar a pound, make up a number. Well supply and demand’s going to move. And so the minute it moves to $2 or where the price should be, then you’re going to run into shortages. And we all know this, it’s a bad idea. But are there laws against price gouging? There already are, and they’re a good idea. So, why? You have a natural disaster? All of a sudden, the water that was a dollar, now they’re charging a hundred dollars. The government has to come in, democratic capitalism, they come in and go, no, I’m going to protect the people. So you’re not allowed to price gouge, maybe charge $2, et cetera, but you’re not going to charge a hundred. But it is temporary. We get that done, we end the problem there, and then we bring it back to a normal supply and demand. Okay?
So that’s what she’s proposing. That’s all political because the price gouging has already passed. They did it in ’21 and ’22, and so now the grocery stores are actually a low-margin business. She says grocery stores, that’s how I know she doesn’t mean it because the grocery stores weren’t the problem. Consumer goods were the problem.
Those companies-
Lex Fridman
She’s following the polls where most people will say that the groceries are too expensive. So she’s just basically address… Saying the most popular thing. Yeah.
She’s following the polls where most people will say that the groceries are too expensive. So she’s just basically address… Saying the most popular thing. Yeah.
Cenk Uygur
A hundred percent. And you could tell in which proposals she means it and which proposals she doesn’t because of the framing, right? So this is a mediocre example, but in housing, she said, we have to stop private equity from buying houses in bulk. I’m like, huh, curious that they put the word in bulk there. Why does it have to be in bulk? Why don’t we just stop them from buying any residential home? You could set up normal boundaries, right? For example, Charlie Kirk was on The Young Turks this week-
A hundred percent. And you could tell in which proposals she means it and which proposals she doesn’t because of the framing, right? So this is a mediocre example, but in housing, she said, we have to stop private equity from buying houses in bulk. I’m like, huh, curious that they put the word in bulk there. Why does it have to be in bulk? Why don’t we just stop them from buying any residential home? You could set up normal boundaries, right? For example, Charlie Kirk was on The Young Turks this week-
Lex Fridman
By the way. Sorry to take that tangent. I really enjoyed that conversation. I really enjoyed that you talked to… That was civil. You guys disagreed pretty intensely, but there was a lot of respect. I really enjoyed that.
By the way. Sorry to take that tangent. I really enjoyed that conversation. I really enjoyed that you talked to… That was civil. You guys disagreed pretty intensely, but there was a lot of respect. I really enjoyed that.
Cenk Uygur
Thank you brother.
Thank you brother.
Lex Fridman
That was beautiful. You and Charlie Kirk and I think-
That was beautiful. You and Charlie Kirk and I think-
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Cenk Uygur
Thank you, brother.
Thank you, brother.
Lex Fridman
That was beautiful. You and Charlie Kirk, and I think Anna was there.
That was beautiful. You and Charlie Kirk, and I think Anna was there.
Cenk Uygur
Yeah, that’s right.
Yeah, that’s right.
Lex Fridman
That’s nice.
That’s nice.
Cenk Uygur
Yeah. Quick tangent, look, I’ve done a lot of yelling online, okay? I yell when, A, there’s an issue that you should be passionate about, 40,000 people, 25,000 women and children slaughtered in Gaza. If you’re not emotionally upset by that and you think it’s no big deal, I think that’s a problem. But when you add gaslighting on top, that’s what drives me crazy. Then when you add filibustering on top, then that sets me off. So, for all my life, right wing has gone on cable and filibustered. They take up so much more time than the left wing guests. The left wing guests always like go, “Okay. Well, I’m offended, he’s taking up too much time.” No, brother, go over the top. Go over the top. You’re not going to talk over me. I’m going to talk over you, okay?
Yeah. Quick tangent, look, I’ve done a lot of yelling online, okay? I yell when, A, there’s an issue that you should be passionate about, 40,000 people, 25,000 women and children slaughtered in Gaza. If you’re not emotionally upset by that and you think it’s no big deal, I think that’s a problem. But when you add gaslighting on top, that’s what drives me crazy. Then when you add filibustering on top, then that sets me off. So, for all my life, right wing has gone on cable and filibustered. They take up so much more time than the left wing guests. The left wing guests always like go, “Okay. Well, I’m offended, he’s taking up too much time.” No, brother, go over the top. Go over the top. You’re not going to talk over me. I’m going to talk over you, okay?
Then when you gaslight and you go, “Oh no, 1,200 people in Israel being killed is awful,” which it is, but 40,000 people being killed in Gaza, it’s no big deal. We should keep giving them money, keep killing, keep killing, and that’s normal. No, it’s not normal. I’m not going to let you say it’s normal. That’s nuts. We were against the Iraq War. There was only two shows that were on the air nationally that were against the Iraq War, us and Democracy Now with Amy Goodman. At the time, I used to yell all the time because mainstream media would gaslight the fuck out of us. We’re going to be greeted as liberators, me and Ben Mankiewicz on the air. Ben doesn’t yell as much. He’s now the host of Turner Classic Movies, but he’s saying it in a calm way. I’m saying it in a screaming way.
We’re not going to be greeted as liberators. When you drop a bomb on someone’s head, they don’t greet you as a liberator. Stop saying insane things. Seven out of 10 Americans thought that Saddam Hussein had personally attacked us on 9/11. We got lied into that war by corporate media, okay? Now, there’s a couple of good things that Trump has done. One is get people to realize corporate media is the matrix and get them to an anti-war position. He himself doesn’t have an anti-war position, but his voters do and that’s a positive. We can come back to that.
But these days, the reason why the Charlie Kirk conversations are going great, and Rudy Giuliani and Mike Lindell, and historically though, go back again 10 years, 20 years, we’ve always been respectful when someone comes on our show and we have a debate. As long as they’re not yelling, I match the tenor of the host, right? You and I are having a reasonable conversation. I’m not raising my voice. I’m not yelling at you for no reason. So, now when Charlie’s not going to battle anymore for talking points, I’m shutting off my mind, all I’m doing is yelling at you, then I’m going to yell back at him. But now he’s saying, “Okay, let’s have a reasonable conversation.” Great. I love it. I love reasonable conversations.
Lex Fridman
It was great. It was refreshing. What were we talking about, you buying up housing?
It was great. It was refreshing. What were we talking about, you buying up housing?
Cenk Uygur
Yes. So, Charlie, when he was on, said, “Hey, listen, I think that there should be a cap though.” I forget if he said 10 billion or 100 billion in assets. If you have less than that, you should still be able to do real estate as an investment, even if it’s residential. But above that, it gets to… Okay, that’s good. No problem. We can have a debate about that and we can figure out, “Is the right number 10, 100, 20, 5?” No problem. You could put in reasonable limitations, but we got to get them to stop buying the homes. So, when Kamala Harris says, “Oh, we’ll stop them from buying homes in bulk,” I’m like, “Okay, there’s the loophole.” So they’re going to use that loophole. Besides which, it’s not going to pass. Wall Street owns the government.
Yes. So, Charlie, when he was on, said, “Hey, listen, I think that there should be a cap though.” I forget if he said 10 billion or 100 billion in assets. If you have less than that, you should still be able to do real estate as an investment, even if it’s residential. But above that, it gets to… Okay, that’s good. No problem. We can have a debate about that and we can figure out, “Is the right number 10, 100, 20, 5?” No problem. You could put in reasonable limitations, but we got to get them to stop buying the homes. So, when Kamala Harris says, “Oh, we’ll stop them from buying homes in bulk,” I’m like, “Okay, there’s the loophole.” So they’re going to use that loophole. Besides which, it’s not going to pass. Wall Street owns the government.
So, there’s no way corporate Republicans and Democrats, which are about 98% of politicians, are going to limit private equity. So, when do we ever get a little bit of change? When Democrats are in charge, they do 5 to 15% of their agenda. That’s not because they’re warm-hearted. It’s a release valve, right? Oh, see, under Obama, we got about 5% change. What was that? That was Obamacare. That was most of the change that we got. What’s the greatest part of Obamacare? Now, a lot of right-wing also agree, almost all of right-wing agree about this portion, which is they got rid of the bias against pre-existing conditions. Why did they do that particularly? Because the country was about to get in a fucking rage. We all have pre-existing conditions.
If you deny me when I’m sick, what the fuck is the point of insurance? The anger had gotten to a nuclear level. So, release valve, get rid of pre-existing conditions. Let’s go back to just milking them regularly. Oh, by the way, put in a mandate so that they have to buy it from us, right? Do you know who originally came up with Obamacare? The Heritage Foundation. It was their proposal. Romney did it in Massachusetts. It was called Romneycare. So, I think this is a super important election, but I’ve earned the credibility to be able to say that, because in 2012, I said, “This is a largely unimportant election.” Mitt Romney and Barack Obama’s policies on economic issues are near identical. Obamacare was literally Romneycare.
Right now, the left says, “Oh, the Heritage Foundation, it’s so dangerous, Project 2025.” Well, brother, they’re the ones who wrote Obamacare, and you say, that’s the greatest change in the world, right? So that’s why the Democrats, yeah, I’ll take the 10% change overall. I think Biden did about 15%. Obama did 5%, but they’ll also march you backwards by deregulating like Clinton did and Obama did, the bank bailouts like Obama did. But 10% is better than 0%, but it’s not to help you. It’s the release valve, so the system keeps going.
Lex Fridman
Is it possible to steelman the case that not all politicians are corporatists or maybe how would you approach that? For example, this podcast has a bunch of sponsors. I give zero fucks about what they think about what I’m saying. They have zero control over me. Maybe you could say that’s because it’s not a lot of money, or maybe I’m a unique person or something like this. I would like to believe a lot of politicians are this way, that they have ideas. While they take money, they see it as a game that you accept the money, go to certain parties, hug people and so on, but it doesn’t actually fundamentally compromise your integrity on issues you actually care about.
Is it possible to steelman the case that not all politicians are corporatists or maybe how would you approach that? For example, this podcast has a bunch of sponsors. I give zero fucks about what they think about what I’m saying. They have zero control over me. Maybe you could say that’s because it’s not a lot of money, or maybe I’m a unique person or something like this. I would like to believe a lot of politicians are this way, that they have ideas. While they take money, they see it as a game that you accept the money, go to certain parties, hug people and so on, but it doesn’t actually fundamentally compromise your integrity on issues you actually care about.
Cenk Uygur
I could steelman almost anything. I could steelman Trump. I could steelman conservatives easily, right? Corporate politician is a hard one. So, first, it’s not all politicians. We could start out nice and easy. Tom Massie, now, Hawley and Gates not taking corporate PAC money. Bernie, the squad, they don’t take corporate PAC money. You could disagree on either end of those folks on social issues, but generally they are 1,000 times less corrupt. They’re more honest. Part of the reason you might hate this squad is because they’re so honest. They tell you their real opinion on social issues that you really disagree with. A lot of the corporate politicians won’t do that because they’re trying to get as many votes as possible, so they can fillet their donors when they get into office and do all their favors for them. But you see, I’m already falling apart on the steelmanning of corporate politicians.
I could steelman almost anything. I could steelman Trump. I could steelman conservatives easily, right? Corporate politician is a hard one. So, first, it’s not all politicians. We could start out nice and easy. Tom Massie, now, Hawley and Gates not taking corporate PAC money. Bernie, the squad, they don’t take corporate PAC money. You could disagree on either end of those folks on social issues, but generally they are 1,000 times less corrupt. They’re more honest. Part of the reason you might hate this squad is because they’re so honest. They tell you their real opinion on social issues that you really disagree with. A lot of the corporate politicians won’t do that because they’re trying to get as many votes as possible, so they can fillet their donors when they get into office and do all their favors for them. But you see, I’m already falling apart on the steelmanning of corporate politicians.
Lex Fridman
Let’s zoom in on that. So, if you take corporate PAC money, that’s it. You’re corrupted. Say you’re a politician, you’re a president, you’re a human being. You’re a person with integrity. You’re a person who thinks about the world. You’re saying, “If I was a corporate PAC and I gave you a billion dollars, I could tell you anything.”
Let’s zoom in on that. So, if you take corporate PAC money, that’s it. You’re corrupted. Say you’re a politician, you’re a president, you’re a human being. You’re a person with integrity. You’re a person who thinks about the world. You’re saying, “If I was a corporate PAC and I gave you a billion dollars, I could tell you anything.”
Cenk Uygur
So everything is a spectrum. Humanity is a spectrum. So, can you find outliers who could take corporate PAC money and still be principled enough to resist this lure? Yeah, I would hope that I would be a person like that, but I wouldn’t take corporate PAC money. But if you force me to, I think I would still stay principled and do it. Could you find 10, 20 other people in the country? Yeah, but on average, that is not what will happen. What will happen is they will take the money and do exactly as they are told.
So everything is a spectrum. Humanity is a spectrum. So, can you find outliers who could take corporate PAC money and still be principled enough to resist this lure? Yeah, I would hope that I would be a person like that, but I wouldn’t take corporate PAC money. But if you force me to, I think I would still stay principled and do it. Could you find 10, 20 other people in the country? Yeah, but on average, that is not what will happen. What will happen is they will take the money and do exactly as they are told.
Lex Fridman
See, I think most people have integrity. Okay, hold on. So, what I’m more worried about is when you take corporate-backed money, it’s not that you are immediately sold. It is over time.
See, I think most people have integrity. Okay, hold on. So, what I’m more worried about is when you take corporate-backed money, it’s not that you are immediately sold. It is over time.
Cenk Uygur
Over time. That’s true.
Over time. That’s true.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, I get it. But I wonder if the integrity that I think most people have can withstand the gradual slippery slope of the effect of corporate money, which if what I’m saying is true that most people have integrity, one of the ways to solve the effect of corporate money is term limits, because it takes time to corrupt people. You can’t buy them immediately, and then the term limits can be issued. Cenk is shaking his head.
Yeah, I get it. But I wonder if the integrity that I think most people have can withstand the gradual slippery slope of the effect of corporate money, which if what I’m saying is true that most people have integrity, one of the ways to solve the effect of corporate money is term limits, because it takes time to corrupt people. You can’t buy them immediately, and then the term limits can be issued. Cenk is shaking his head.
Cenk Uygur
Yeah, no. So, look, you’re right that over time it gets way worse. As we talked about earlier, Biden’s a great example of that comes in anti-corruption, winds up being totally pro-corruption by the end, but he was also here for almost all of it as we started in a world that was not run by money in politics and is now completely run by money in politics. Does it get worse over time? Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona is a great example of that, comes in as a progressive, doesn’t want to take PAC money, cares about the average person, et cetera. Over time, she becomes the biggest corporatist in the Senate and a total disaster. But if you say that the majority of politicians have… I don’t know if this is what you’re saying, majority of politicians have integrity.
Yeah, no. So, look, you’re right that over time it gets way worse. As we talked about earlier, Biden’s a great example of that comes in anti-corruption, winds up being totally pro-corruption by the end, but he was also here for almost all of it as we started in a world that was not run by money in politics and is now completely run by money in politics. Does it get worse over time? Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona is a great example of that, comes in as a progressive, doesn’t want to take PAC money, cares about the average person, et cetera. Over time, she becomes the biggest corporatist in the Senate and a total disaster. But if you say that the majority of politicians have… I don’t know if this is what you’re saying, majority of politicians have integrity.
Lex Fridman
No, let’s start at the majority of human beings. I think that politicians are not a special group of sociopaths.
No, let’s start at the majority of human beings. I think that politicians are not a special group of sociopaths.
Cenk Uygur
I think they are.
I think they are.
Lex Fridman
They lean a little bit towards that direction, but they’re not only sociopaths going to politics. It’s like you have to have some sociopathic qualities, I think, to go into politics, but they’re not complete sociopaths. I think they do have integrity because sometimes for very selfish reasons, it’s not all about money, even for a selfish person, for a narcissist. It’s also about being recognized for having had positive impact on the world.
They lean a little bit towards that direction, but they’re not only sociopaths going to politics. It’s like you have to have some sociopathic qualities, I think, to go into politics, but they’re not complete sociopaths. I think they do have integrity because sometimes for very selfish reasons, it’s not all about money, even for a selfish person, for a narcissist. It’s also about being recognized for having had positive impact on the world.
Cenk Uygur
Yeah, I get it. All right, so let’s break it down. So, first, human beings, then we’ll get to politicians. Do human beings have integrity? Well, it’s a spectrum. So, some people have enormous integrity, some people have no integrity. So, there is not one type or character. So, some people have a ton of empathy for other human beings, and they literally feel it. I feel the pain of someone else, and I’m not alone. Most people feel the pain of someone else. If you see it on video, a baby being hurt, overwhelming majority of human beings will go, “No!” Right? You have empathy. That’s a natural feeling that you have. Some people have no empathy because they’re on the extreme end of the spectrum, serial killers and Donald Trump.
Yeah, I get it. All right, so let’s break it down. So, first, human beings, then we’ll get to politicians. Do human beings have integrity? Well, it’s a spectrum. So, some people have enormous integrity, some people have no integrity. So, there is not one type or character. So, some people have a ton of empathy for other human beings, and they literally feel it. I feel the pain of someone else, and I’m not alone. Most people feel the pain of someone else. If you see it on video, a baby being hurt, overwhelming majority of human beings will go, “No!” Right? You have empathy. That’s a natural feeling that you have. Some people have no empathy because they’re on the extreme end of the spectrum, serial killers and Donald Trump.
So, I’m partly joking, but not really. He has never demonstrated any empathy that I have ever seen for any other human being. I’m going to trigger some right-wingers because they think every terrible thing he said is out of context or joking or not real or fake news. But his chief of staff didn’t make it up. He called people who went into the military suckers and losers. Why? Why did he say that? Just hang with me for a second. Don’t have your head explode. Okay? I’m not saying to Lex. I’m saying to the right-wingers out there.
So, the reason is because if you’re like Trump and you literally don’t feel the empathy, you’d think, “Why the hell would I go in the military, get killed for someone else? What a sucker. No, I’m going to stay out of the military. I’m going to stay alive. I’m going to make a ton of money and I’m going to look out for myself.” He assumes because everybody does this, you assume that everyone thinks like you do, but they don’t. So, Trump assumes everybody’s as much of a dirt bag as he is, because he doesn’t feel it. He doesn’t feel the empathy. So, he’s like, “Yeah, you’d be an idiot, a sucker and a loser to go into the military and have sacrifice for other people.” So you see the spectrum.
Even if you think Trump’s not on that end and you think I’m wrong about that, you get that there are people on that end. So, you have a spectrum of integrity, empathy, et cetera. That’s what I would call your hardware. You layer on top of that your software, and the software is cultural influences, your parents, media, your friends. All these are cultural influences. So, now when you’re in certain industries, they value more integrity. So, religious leaders, if you’re doing it right, which is also very rare, but if you’re doing it right, you’re supposed to have empathy for the poor, the needy, the whole flock. So, that profession is incentivizing you towards empathy and integrity.
Even then, a giant amount of people abuse it, but okay, good. In politics, it creates incentives for the opposite, no integrity. That software, to your point, over time gets stronger and stronger and stronger until it takes over. Now, you might have someone with a lot of integrity like Tom Massie, the Republican from Kentucky. Whether I agree with him or disagree with him on policy, I get that the brother is actually doing it based on principles. There isn’t any amount of money you can give Tom Massie for him to change his principles. Why? He’s on the principled end of the spectrum as a human being, so is Bernie. They’re on the same part of that spectrum.
But for most people, the great majority of the spectrum, if you overload them with software that incentivizes them to not have integrity, they will succumb. Now let’s switch to politicians in particular. Why do I think that they’re on average far more likely to be on the sociopathic part of the spectrum? Because of the incentives and disincentives. So, this changes every congressional cycle. When just Democrats were winning a lot, it got all the way down to 87.5%. But on average for congressional elections, the person with more money wins 95% of the time.
It doesn’t matter if they’re a liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat or any ideology they have, 95%. So, now let’s say you got the 5% that went in that are not hooked on the money. Well, they’re going to get a primary challenge, then they’re going to get a general election challenge. 95% of the time, the one with more money wins. So, eventually, this system cycles through until almost only the corrupt are left.
Lex Fridman
One second. Is that real, 95%? So if you have more money, 95% of the time you win, huh?
One second. Is that real, 95%? So if you have more money, 95% of the time you win, huh?
Cenk Uygur
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
I like to believe that’s less the case, for example, for higher you get.
I like to believe that’s less the case, for example, for higher you get.
Cenk Uygur
Yes, that’s true. You’re right. So, you know why? So the presidential race is ironically in some ways the least corrupt. So, let’s dive into why. If you’re running a local race anywhere in the country, you’re going to get almost no press coverage, meaning a congressional race, right? If you’re running a Senate race in the middle of Montana, you’re going to get almost no media coverage. So, that’s where your money in politics has the most effect, because then you could just buy the airwaves. You outspend the other guy, you get all the ads, plus you get the friendly media coverage because you just bought a couple of million dollars of ads in the middle of Montana. So, the local news loves you, the TV stations, the radio stations, the papers.
Yes, that’s true. You’re right. So, you know why? So the presidential race is ironically in some ways the least corrupt. So, let’s dive into why. If you’re running a local race anywhere in the country, you’re going to get almost no press coverage, meaning a congressional race, right? If you’re running a Senate race in the middle of Montana, you’re going to get almost no media coverage. So, that’s where your money in politics has the most effect, because then you could just buy the airwaves. You outspend the other guy, you get all the ads, plus you get the friendly media coverage because you just bought a couple of million dollars of ads in the middle of Montana. So, the local news loves you, the TV stations, the radio stations, the papers.
So, some of the papers are principled. They might say, “Oh, no,” but overall, they’re not calling you a radical. They’re not calling you anything and you’re buying those races. But when you get to the presidential race, that’s much harder, because presidential race, you have earned media, free media that overwhelms paid media. Perfect examples is 2016. Hillary Clinton outraces Trump by about two to one, but she loses anyway. Why? Because Trump got almost twice as much earned media as she did. The earned media is better. It’s inside the content. It is definitely better. So, in a presidential election, as long as you got past the primary, you could actually win with not that much money.
That’s part of the reason why I have hope, Lex, because all you got to do is get past a Republican or democratic primary. Now that’s very, very, very difficult, but Trump did it, right? Now, he took it in the wrong direction, but he did leave a blueprint for how to do it. So, once you get to the general election, you’re off to the race. You could do any goddamn thing you like. Okay, you could be super popular. You don’t have to give a shit about the donors. You can get into office. You could bully your own party and the other party into doing what you want, and you can get everything done. You could even get money out of politics. So, don’t lose hope. I mean, we even started Operation Hope at TYT and our first project was to knock Biden out.
Everybody said, “You guys are nuts. That’s totally impossible.” We knocked Biden out. Did we do it alone? Of course not. We were a small part of it, but we laid the groundwork for hope and we laid the groundwork for when he flopped in the debate. People had already been told, remember, he’s bad, he’s old, he’s not right. The debate proved it. If we hadn’t done that groundwork, and not just Young Turks obviously, but Axelrod and Carville and Nate Silver and Ezra Klein, et cetera, Charlamagne tha God, Jon Stewart, all these people helped a lot. So, that when the debate happened, it confirmed the idea that out there that he was too old and couldn’t do it. So, my point is if you lose hope, you’re done for. Then they’re definitely going to win, right?
Hope is the most dangerous thing in the world for the elites. So, whether you’re right-wing or left-wing, I need you to have hope and I need you to understand it’s not misplaced. We just got to get past the primary, and we’re going to turn this whole thing around.
Donald Trump
Lex Fridman
Basically, a presidential candidate who’s a populist, who in part runs on getting money out of politics. Okay. Well, then let’s talk about Donald Trump. So, to me, the two biggest criticisms of Trump is the fake election scheme. Out of that whole 2020 election, the fake election scheme is the thing that really bothers me. Then the second thing across a larger timescale is the counterproductive division that he’s created in let’s say our public discourse. What are your top five criticisms of Trump?
Basically, a presidential candidate who’s a populist, who in part runs on getting money out of politics. Okay. Well, then let’s talk about Donald Trump. So, to me, the two biggest criticisms of Trump is the fake election scheme. Out of that whole 2020 election, the fake election scheme is the thing that really bothers me. Then the second thing across a larger timescale is the counterproductive division that he’s created in let’s say our public discourse. What are your top five criticisms of Trump?
Cenk Uygur
Okay, so number one, I have the same exact thing as you. The fake electors scheme is unacceptable, totally disqualifying. So, the fake electors scheme was a literal coup attempt. So, he doesn’t win the election. For folks who don’t know, I need to explain why it’s a coup attempt because you just throw out words and then people get triggered by the words and then they go into their separate corners. So, the January 6th rioters, they were not going to keep the building. That was not a coup attempt. It’s not like, “Oh, the MAGA guys have the building. I guess they win, right?” No, that was never going to happen. So, what was the point of the January 6th riot? It was to delay the proceedings. Why did it matter that they were going to delay the proceedings?
Okay, so number one, I have the same exact thing as you. The fake electors scheme is unacceptable, totally disqualifying. So, the fake electors scheme was a literal coup attempt. So, he doesn’t win the election. For folks who don’t know, I need to explain why it’s a coup attempt because you just throw out words and then people get triggered by the words and then they go into their separate corners. So, the January 6th rioters, they were not going to keep the building. That was not a coup attempt. It’s not like, “Oh, the MAGA guys have the building. I guess they win, right?” No, that was never going to happen. So, what was the point of the January 6th riot? It was to delay the proceedings. Why did it matter that they were going to delay the proceedings?
Because if you can’t certify the election, they wanted general confusion and chaos so that the Republicans in Congress could say, “Well, we don’t know who won, so we’re going to have to kick it back to the states.” The states, they had the fake electors ready. Remember, the fake electors are not Trump’s electors. Both candidates have a slate of electors, Biden’s electors and Trump’s electors. They go to the Trump electors first in this plan, and half the Trump electors go, ” No, I’m not going to pretend Trump won the election when he didn’t win the election.” So they’re like, “Shit, now we’ve got to come up with fake electors.” So they enlist these Republicans who go, “Yeah, I’ll pretend Trump won,” right?
So they sign a piece of paper. That’s fraud, and that’s why a lot of them are now being prosecuted in the different states. So, the idea is the Republican legislators then go, “We’re sending these new electors in and we think Trump won Arizona and Georgia and Wisconsin.” That was the idea. That was the plan. Then you come back to the House. At that point when there are two different sets of electors, the constitutional rule is the House decides, but the House decides not on a majority because the Democrats had the majority at the time, they decide on a majority of the states. They vote by state, and the Republicans had the majority of the states. So, in that way, you steal the election. Even though Trump didn’t win, you install him back in as president.
That is a frontal assault on democracy, and I loathe it. Then Trump on top just blabbers out, “Well, sometimes if there’s massive fraud in an election,” in other words, I think I won. I don’t even think that. I’m just saying that I won. He says, “You can terminate any rule, regulation, or article even in the Constitution.” No, brother, you cannot terminate the Constitution because you’d like to do a fake electors scheme and do a coup against America. Fuck you. Okay? So I’m never going to allow this want-to-be tyrant to go back into the White House and endanger our system. So, you want to endanger the corrupt system. I’m the guy. Okay, let’s go get that corrupt system and tear it down.
If you want to endanger the real system, democracy, capitalism, the Constitution, then I’m your biggest enemy. So, I’m never going to take that risk. You see it every time he goes to talk to a dictator. Look, guys, I’m asking you to be principled, right? I asked the left of that, and we drive away some of our audience when we do that. So, we got the balls to do that to our own side. So, for the right wing, be honest, if it was Joe Biden or Barack Obama or Kamala Harris that went and wrote “love letters” to a communist dictator who runs concentration camps, you would say, “Communist! We knew it. Look at that.” Trump literally says about Kim Jong Un, “We wrote love letters to one another. We fell in love.”
If a Democrat said that, they’d be politically decapitated, their career would be instantly over. But Trump, whenever it’s Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, don’t get into Russia, Russia, Russia, but it’s just that he’s a strong man, right? Kim Jong Un or Viktor Orbán, Duterte in the Philippines, anytime it’s a strong man that says, “Screw our Constitution, screw our rules. I want total loyalty to one person,” Trump loves them. He loves them. He said once, he’s like, “Oh, it’s great. You go to North Korea or China. When the leader walks in, everybody applauds and everybody listens to what he says. That’s how it should be here.” No, brother, that’s not how it should be here. You hate democracy. You want to be the sole guy in charge. As a populist, you should loathe Donald Trump.
Lex Fridman
I agree on the fake electors scheme. Can you steelman and maybe educate me on… There’s a book Rigged that I started reading. Is there any degree to which the election was rigged or elections in general are rigged? So I think the book Rigged, the main case they make is not that there’s some shady fake ballots. It’s more the impact of mainstream media and the impact of big tech.
I agree on the fake electors scheme. Can you steelman and maybe educate me on… There’s a book Rigged that I started reading. Is there any degree to which the election was rigged or elections in general are rigged? So I think the book Rigged, the main case they make is not that there’s some shady fake ballots. It’s more the impact of mainstream media and the impact of big tech.
Cenk Uygur
So rigged is another one of those words that triggers people and is ill-defined, right? So let’s begin to define it. So, the worst case of rigged is we actually changed the votes. So, a lot of Trump people think that that’s what happened. Nonsense, that didn’t happen at all. Okay? By the way, some on the left thought the votes were changed in the 2016 primary, and it was literally rigged against Bernie. No, that did not happen. That is a massive crime and is very risky and is relatively easy to get caught. People who are in power are not interested in getting caught. They’re not interested in going to jail, et cetera. It is a very extreme thing. Could it happen? Yes, it could happen. Have I seen any evidence of it happening in my lifetime? Not really.
So rigged is another one of those words that triggers people and is ill-defined, right? So let’s begin to define it. So, the worst case of rigged is we actually changed the votes. So, a lot of Trump people think that that’s what happened. Nonsense, that didn’t happen at all. Okay? By the way, some on the left thought the votes were changed in the 2016 primary, and it was literally rigged against Bernie. No, that did not happen. That is a massive crime and is very risky and is relatively easy to get caught. People who are in power are not interested in getting caught. They’re not interested in going to jail, et cetera. It is a very extreme thing. Could it happen? Yes, it could happen. Have I seen any evidence of it happening in my lifetime? Not really.
Lex Fridman
Given how much people hate this, you probably just need to find evidence of one time, one vote being changed, where you can trace them saying something in some room somewhere. That would just explode. That evidence just doesn’t seem to be there.
Given how much people hate this, you probably just need to find evidence of one time, one vote being changed, where you can trace them saying something in some room somewhere. That would just explode. That evidence just doesn’t seem to be there.
Cenk Uygur
By the way, for the right-wing who say, “Verify the vote,” goddamn right, verify the vote, right? So you want to have different proposals like paper ballots, recounts, hand recounts, which by the way, you had not the paper ballots, but the three recounts and a hand recount in Georgia. In so many of these swing states, he lost, he lost, he lost. There was no significant voter fraud. Now, second thing in terms of rigging is voter fraud. The right-wing believes, “Oh, my God, there’s voter fraud everywhere.”
By the way, for the right-wing who say, “Verify the vote,” goddamn right, verify the vote, right? So you want to have different proposals like paper ballots, recounts, hand recounts, which by the way, you had not the paper ballots, but the three recounts and a hand recount in Georgia. In so many of these swing states, he lost, he lost, he lost. There was no significant voter fraud. Now, second thing in terms of rigging is voter fraud. The right-wing believes, “Oh, my God, there’s voter fraud everywhere.”
Not remotely true. Heritage Foundation does a study. They want to prove it so badly. It turns out, no matter how they moved the numbers, the final number they got was it happens 0.0000006% of the time. It almost never happens. They found like 31 instances over a decade or two decades.
Lex Fridman
What counts as voter fraud?
What counts as voter fraud?
Cenk Uygur
A lot of times these days, it’ll be Republicans who do it because it’ll be… It’s not nefarious. It’s a knucklehead who goes in, goes, “Oh, I heard they’re having the illegals vote. So, I voted for me and my mom, even though she’s dead. But that’s fair. They’re doing it.” No, brother, that’s not fair. That’s not how it works. You’re under arrest.
A lot of times these days, it’ll be Republicans who do it because it’ll be… It’s not nefarious. It’s a knucklehead who goes in, goes, “Oh, I heard they’re having the illegals vote. So, I voted for me and my mom, even though she’s dead. But that’s fair. They’re doing it.” No, brother, that’s not fair. That’s not how it works. You’re under arrest.
Lex Fridman
So what about non-citizens voting?
So what about non-citizens voting?
Cenk Uygur
It’s preposterous. Of course, non-citizens shouldn’t vote and they don’t vote.
It’s preposterous. Of course, non-citizens shouldn’t vote and they don’t vote.
Lex Fridman
But you don’t have to prove citizenship when you’re voting, right?
But you don’t have to prove citizenship when you’re voting, right?
Cenk Uygur
No, you do. I mean, so it depends on what you mean by prove and when you vote, right? So you are not allowed to vote as an undocumented immigrant. So, that happens up front. Again, it’s a hall of mirrors. There’s so many different ways to create mirages. So, the Republicans will say, “Well, when you go to the voting booth, they don’t make your show a passport.” Yeah, that’s true. But you showed it earlier when you registered, and we can get into voter ID laws. There’s all sorts of things. We will speed up the spectrum, right? So these things almost never happen. Voter fraud happens super rarely and not enough to swing elections. By the way, sometimes if there is an issue, they’ll redo an election.
No, you do. I mean, so it depends on what you mean by prove and when you vote, right? So you are not allowed to vote as an undocumented immigrant. So, that happens up front. Again, it’s a hall of mirrors. There’s so many different ways to create mirages. So, the Republicans will say, “Well, when you go to the voting booth, they don’t make your show a passport.” Yeah, that’s true. But you showed it earlier when you registered, and we can get into voter ID laws. There’s all sorts of things. We will speed up the spectrum, right? So these things almost never happen. Voter fraud happens super rarely and not enough to swing elections. By the way, sometimes if there is an issue, they’ll redo an election.
There is actually a process for that. It happened in North Carolina because Republicans did voter fraud in this one district. It wasn’t the candidate himself. It was this campaign person, and they did ballot harvesting, but ballot harvesting, again, it depends on what you mean. If you’re just collecting ballots, that’s okay. He changed the ballots. That’s not okay. So, they had to redo that election. So, now the real place where it gets rigged is before elections. There’s two main ways that things get rigged. One is almost exclusively… No, that’s not fair. I was going to say Republicans, but Democrats do it too in a different way. So, Republicans would come in. Brian Kemp is the king of this in Georgia. So, he was against Trump doing it ex post facto.
He’s like, “No, you idiot. We don’t cheat after the election. We cheat before the election.” Okay? So they’ll go, “Well, I mean, you got to clear out the voter rolls every once in a while.” That’s true because people die. People move and you got to clean out the voter rolls. So, then they come in and they go, “We will clean them out mainly in Black areas.” Okay? Oh, look at that. There goes a couple of million Black voters. Well, some of those, I suppose, are real voters, but they’ll have to re-register and then they’ll find that out on election day. Oh, well, sorry, you couldn’t vote this time. Remember to re-register next time. So, do they go, “Hey, we’re going to take Black people off the voter rolls.” No.
What they do is we’re having more issues in these districts. Here’s another way they do it. How many voting booths do you have in the area? So primarily Republican areas will get tons of voting booths. So, you don’t have to wait in line. You go in, you vote, you go to work, no problem. You’re in a Black area, run in a Republican state. All of a sudden, hey, look that city. Well, we sent you four voting booths. Oh, you got a million people there. Well, what are you going to do? I guess you got to wait in line the whole day. You can’t go to work, et cetera. So, that’s the way of-
Lex Fridman
I refuse to believe it’s only the Republicans that do that, I would say.
I refuse to believe it’s only the Republicans that do that, I would say.
Cenk Uygur
So that’s why I paused.
So that’s why I paused.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, that just seems too obvious to do by both sides.
Yeah, that just seems too obvious to do by both sides.
Cenk Uygur
No, the Democrats are so weak, Lex. They mainly don’t do that. But they do do the third thing, which is gerrymandering. So, both Republicans and Democrats.
No, the Democrats are so weak, Lex. They mainly don’t do that. But they do do the third thing, which is gerrymandering. So, both Republicans and Democrats.
Lex Fridman
Also, they have favorite flavors of messing with the vote. Okay.
Also, they have favorite flavors of messing with the vote. Okay.
Cenk Uygur
Yeah. So, gerrymandering is the best way to rig an election. That way the politicians pick their voters, instead of the voters picking their politicians. So, all these districts are so heavily gerrymandered that the incumbent almost can’t lose. They’ll push most of the voters into one district, most of the voters in another district, because they don’t want competition. So, then you’re screwed. The vote isn’t rigged, but the district is rigged, so that the incumbent wins almost no matter what, right? So that’s why we’ve gotten so polarized, because the gerrymandering creates like 90% of seats that are safe. So, they don’t have to compromise. They don’t have to get to a middle. They could just be extreme on either side because they already locked it up. Okay.
Yeah. So, gerrymandering is the best way to rig an election. That way the politicians pick their voters, instead of the voters picking their politicians. So, all these districts are so heavily gerrymandered that the incumbent almost can’t lose. They’ll push most of the voters into one district, most of the voters in another district, because they don’t want competition. So, then you’re screwed. The vote isn’t rigged, but the district is rigged, so that the incumbent wins almost no matter what, right? So that’s why we’ve gotten so polarized, because the gerrymandering creates like 90% of seats that are safe. So, they don’t have to compromise. They don’t have to get to a middle. They could just be extreme on either side because they already locked it up. Okay.
So, that’s the number one way to rig an election. Now, finally, the last part of it, maybe the most important, maybe even more important than gerrymandering, and that’s the media. So, it just happened to RFK Junior. It happened to Bernie in 2015. It happens to any outsider, right or left. The media if you’re an outsider will say, “Well, radical…” Number one, they don’t platform you, right? So they’re not going to have you on to begin with. Nobody’s even going to find out about you. If nobody finds out about you, you’re done for, right? So Bernie broke through that because-
Cenk Uygur
… about you’re done for, right? So Bernie broke through that, because he was so popular, and the rallies were so huge that local news couldn’t help but cover him. Jesus Christ, what are all these people doing in the middle of the city? And he slowly broke through that. But do you know that in 2015, as he’s doing this miraculous run against Hillary Clinton, nobody thinks he has a chance. And here comes Bernie, and he’s almost at 48%. He had seven seconds of coverage on ABC that year. They just will not put you on. That is the number one way they rig an election. Bobby Kennedy, Jr. sitting at 20% in a primary, no town hall. 20% is a giant number. And you’re not going to do a town hall. You’re not going to do a debate. 12% in the general election. A giant number in a general election. No town hall, no debate. If no one finds out about you, they don’t know to vote for you, if they don’t find out your policies. Corporate media rigs elections more than anything else in the world.
… about you’re done for, right? So Bernie broke through that, because he was so popular, and the rallies were so huge that local news couldn’t help but cover him. Jesus Christ, what are all these people doing in the middle of the city? And he slowly broke through that. But do you know that in 2015, as he’s doing this miraculous run against Hillary Clinton, nobody thinks he has a chance. And here comes Bernie, and he’s almost at 48%. He had seven seconds of coverage on ABC that year. They just will not put you on. That is the number one way they rig an election. Bobby Kennedy, Jr. sitting at 20% in a primary, no town hall. 20% is a giant number. And you’re not going to do a town hall. You’re not going to do a debate. 12% in the general election. A giant number in a general election. No town hall, no debate. If no one finds out about you, they don’t know to vote for you, if they don’t find out your policies. Corporate media rigs elections more than anything else in the world.
Lex Fridman
Now, this is something you’ve been a bit controversial about. But the general sort of standard belief is that there’s a left-leaning bias in the mainstream media, because as I think studies show a large majority of journalists are left-leaning. And then that there’s a bias in Big Tech. Employees of Big Tech companies from search engines to social media are left-leaning. And there that’s a huge majority is left-leaning. So the conventional wisdom is that there is a bias that was the left.
Now, this is something you’ve been a bit controversial about. But the general sort of standard belief is that there’s a left-leaning bias in the mainstream media, because as I think studies show a large majority of journalists are left-leaning. And then that there’s a bias in Big Tech. Employees of Big Tech companies from search engines to social media are left-leaning. And there that’s a huge majority is left-leaning. So the conventional wisdom is that there is a bias that was the left.
Cenk Uygur
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
So first of all, I think you’ve argued that that’s not true, that there’s a bias in the other direction. But whether there’s a bias or not, do you think that, how big of an impact that has on the result of the election?
So first of all, I think you’ve argued that that’s not true, that there’s a bias in the other direction. But whether there’s a bias or not, do you think that, how big of an impact that has on the result of the election?
Cenk Uygur
Okay, so let’s break that down. Tech and media are totally different. So let’s do media first, then we’ll do tech. So on mainstream media, or corporate media, and I actually think that right-wing media like Fox News is part of corporate media. They just play good cop, bad cop. And so in that realm, the bias is not right or left, except on social issues. And that’s where that image comes from. On social issues, yes, the media is generally on the left. And right-wing, sorry, but this started in the 1960s, and the right-wing got super mad at mainstream media saying that black people were equal to white people. That’s not the case anymore. Okay. Right-wing calm down. I’m not calling you all racist. But in the 1960s was there racism? Of course. Of course, they wouldn’t even let black kids into the schools, right?
Okay, so let’s break that down. Tech and media are totally different. So let’s do media first, then we’ll do tech. So on mainstream media, or corporate media, and I actually think that right-wing media like Fox News is part of corporate media. They just play good cop, bad cop. And so in that realm, the bias is not right or left, except on social issues. And that’s where that image comes from. On social issues, yes, the media is generally on the left. And right-wing, sorry, but this started in the 1960s, and the right-wing got super mad at mainstream media saying that black people were equal to white people. That’s not the case anymore. Okay. Right-wing calm down. I’m not calling you all racist. But in the 1960s was there racism? Of course. Of course, they wouldn’t even let black kids into the schools, right?
There was massive segregation in the south, but a lot in the north as well. And at that point in mainstream media says, “Well, I mean they are citizens, they should have equal rights.” And the right-wing goes, “Bias.” Okay, yeah, I mean, you’re kind of right, it is a bias. It is a bias towards equality in that case. But that is perceived as on the left. Now, fast-forward to today, you don’t have that on the racial issues as obviously as much as you had it back then. But on gay marriage that existed for a long time, where the media is like, “Well, they kind of should have the same rights as straight people.” And the right-wing went, “Bias.” So okay, you’re kind of right about that. But at the same time, I would argue their position is correct. But can they go too far? Of course they can go too far.
Okay. Now, but that’s not the main deal, guys. That’s to distract you. The main deal is economic issues. And again, we say it ahead of time, and you can see if we’re right or wrong. So we will tell folks when we get to an economic bill, you’ll see all of a sudden the guys who theoretically disagree, Fox News and MSNBC close ranks. And you just saw it happen with price gouging, that issue of price gouging. All of a sudden there’s a lot of MSNBC hosts, CNN hosts, Washington Post writes an op-ed against it. And everybody panics is like, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You can’t control anything a corporation does. This is wrong. This is wrong.” Oh, what happened? I thought you guys hated each other. All of a sudden, you totally agree. Fascinating.
Okay. Same thing happened on increasing wages. When they were talking about increasing the minimum wage, Stephanie Ruhle, giant [inaudible 02:12:20] against it on MSNBC. All of a sudden Fox News and MSNBC agree. Do not touch beloved corporations. So now that gets us to our real bias. It’s not left or right. It’s pro-corporate, for all the reasons we talked about before, corporate media, corporate politicians. So if you don’t believe me today, whether you’re on the right or the left, watch. Next time an economic issue, where do they fall, how do they react? When anytime it’s a corporate issue, where does the media go? So that’s the real bias of the media. And so since the real bias of the media is pro-corporations, that is not a left-wing position. That is considered more of a right-wing position. I even think that’s a misnomer, because to be fair to right-wing voters, they’re not pro-big business. They’re not pro-corruption, but the Republican politicians are. So it gets framed as a right-wing issue.
So if you think that the corporate media is too populist, you just don’t get it. They aren’t, they hate populism. So now when you turn to tech. So tech’s a complicated one, because yeah, people write the code. If they’re left-wingers, they’re going to have certain assumptions, and they might write that into the codes or the rules. But they’re also, generally speaking, wealthy. They’re usually white. They’re usually male. And those biases also go in, and there’s a lot of people on the left who object to that bias, right? But that’s a fair and interesting conversation, and one we have to be careful of, and one we could hopefully find a middle ground on, but that’s not the major problem. The major reason why Big Tech gets attacked is because they are competitors of who? Social media competes with mainstream media.
So mainstream media has been attacking Big Tech from day one, pretending that they’re really concerned. Yeah, they’re really concerned, because that’s their competition, and they’re getting their ass handed to them. So I did a story on The Young Turks about CNN article, about all the dangers of social media. I’m like, “Guys, this is written by their advertising department.” Okay. And in fact, they go to the advertisers and they find a rando video on YouTube or Facebook out of billions of videos, and they’re like, “Look, your ad is on this video. Do you denounce and reject every Big Tech company and every member of social media?” And the advertisers is like, “Shit. Yeah, I do.” Meanwhile, they’re doing MILF Island on TV. Okay.
Lex Fridman
I didn’t know that. I need to check it out.
I didn’t know that. I need to check it out.
Cenk Uygur
There’s literally a show that came out recently, where it’s moms and their sons. And they fuck each other.
There’s literally a show that came out recently, where it’s moms and their sons. And they fuck each other.
Lex Fridman
Oh wow.
Oh wow.
Cenk Uygur
Okay. They don’t have sex with their mom. They have sex with a different mom.
Okay. They don’t have sex with their mom. They have sex with a different mom.
Lex Fridman
Got it.
Got it.
Cenk Uygur
Or they date. But then the show is, oh, then they go off into a corner, et cetera, right? I’m like, you’re doing this kind of the worst degrading, ridiculous, immoral programming, and then you found a video on YouTube that has a problem. Get the fuck out of here. You’re just trying to kneecap your competition.
Or they date. But then the show is, oh, then they go off into a corner, et cetera, right? I’m like, you’re doing this kind of the worst degrading, ridiculous, immoral programming, and then you found a video on YouTube that has a problem. Get the fuck out of here. You’re just trying to kneecap your competition.
Joe Biden
Lex Fridman
Let’s talk about the saga of Joe Biden. So over the past year, over the past few months. Can you just rewind. Maybe tell the story of Joe Biden as you see from the election perspective?
Let’s talk about the saga of Joe Biden. So over the past year, over the past few months. Can you just rewind. Maybe tell the story of Joe Biden as you see from the election perspective?
Cenk Uygur
Yeah. So about a year ago, I am looking at the polling. And first of all, I have eyes and ears. So whenever I see Biden, I’m like, this is a disaster. And then I go and talk to real people. And when I say real people, I mean not in politics. That’s not their job. Because people involved in politics or media have a certain perspective, and it’s colored by all of the exchanges in mainstream media, social media, et cetera. Real people aren’t on Twitter having political fights. They’re not watching CNN religiously, et cetera. Whenever I was at a barbecue, ” You guys all Democrats?” In some barbecues. “Yeah.” What do you guys think of Joe Biden? Almost in unison, “Too old.” Every real person said too old. So I look at what real people are saying. That’s why I thought Trump was going to win in 2016.
Yeah. So about a year ago, I am looking at the polling. And first of all, I have eyes and ears. So whenever I see Biden, I’m like, this is a disaster. And then I go and talk to real people. And when I say real people, I mean not in politics. That’s not their job. Because people involved in politics or media have a certain perspective, and it’s colored by all of the exchanges in mainstream media, social media, et cetera. Real people aren’t on Twitter having political fights. They’re not watching CNN religiously, et cetera. Whenever I was at a barbecue, ” You guys all Democrats?” In some barbecues. “Yeah.” What do you guys think of Joe Biden? Almost in unison, “Too old.” Every real person said too old. So I look at what real people are saying. That’s why I thought Trump was going to win in 2016.
I go in the middle of Ohio, I can’t see a Hillary Clinton sign for hundreds of miles. It is Trump paraphernalia everywhere. So that’s not end all, be all. You could say it’s anecdotal, but you begin to collect data points. But then the real data points are in polling. Okay. So now I’m looking at Biden polling, he’s in the thirties. No incumbent in the thirties has ever come back to win. I’m like, it’s already over. Then all of a sudden, oh my God, Trump takes the lead with Latinos. It’s double over. By later in the process, Trump took the lead with young voters. I’m like, “This is the most over election in history.” A Democrat cannot win if they’re not winning young voters. That’s impossible. Trump’s cutting into his lead with black voters. This thing is over. And I go tell people, and they’re like, “You are crazy.” Why do they think I’m crazy? Because MSNBC is lying to them 24/7, telling them that Joe Biden created sliced bread, and the wheel, and fire. And my favorite talking point was, he’s a dynamo behind the scenes.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Cenk Uygur
I’m like, “Okay, let me get this right.” It’s like an SNL skit, right? I’m like so behind the scenes, he’s like, all right, Sally, get me the memo on that and we’re okay, we’re going to do this, and I’m in command of the material. Then he goes in front of the cameras.” Anyways.” Why would any politician do that? Why would they be terrible in front of the camera and great off camera? It doesn’t make any sense. But once you get people enough propaganda, and MSNBC created blue MAGA, they’ll believe anything. So they believe that Biden was dynamic and young, and that he was the best possible candidate to beat Donald Trump. When in reality, he was about the only Democrat who couldn’t beat Donald Trump.
I’m like, “Okay, let me get this right.” It’s like an SNL skit, right? I’m like so behind the scenes, he’s like, all right, Sally, get me the memo on that and we’re okay, we’re going to do this, and I’m in command of the material. Then he goes in front of the cameras.” Anyways.” Why would any politician do that? Why would they be terrible in front of the camera and great off camera? It doesn’t make any sense. But once you get people enough propaganda, and MSNBC created blue MAGA, they’ll believe anything. So they believe that Biden was dynamic and young, and that he was the best possible candidate to beat Donald Trump. When in reality, he was about the only Democrat who couldn’t beat Donald Trump.
So number one, I don’t co-sign on a bullshit. I don’t care which side you’re on. Number two, as you heard earlier, I can’t have Trump winning. It endangers the country. It endangers our constitution, et cetera. So I’m going to do something about it. And so I start something called Operation Hope on The Young Turks. And we ask the audience, “What should we do?” So there’s different projects in Operation Hope. But the first project that pops up is knock Biden out of the race. And so then I ask our paying members on TYT, I say, “Guys, you’re going to vote, and then I’m going to do what you tell me to do. If you say no, I like Biden, or I think Biden’s the best candidate, or even if he isn’t, we’re not going to be able to win on this, so don’t do it.” Should I enter the primary against Biden?
Okay. 76, 24, go, enter. I’m a populist. You tell me to go. You’re my paying members, you’re my boss. I’m going to go. Okay. So I enter the primary. Now, I’m not born in the country, so people are going to freak out about that. I’m a talk show host. The establishment media despises me, so I’m not going to get any airtime. In fact, we consider hiring the top booking agent in New York. We talked to him, and he says, “Well, I’m actually in New York this week.” And he says, “I’m going to go talk to those guys, and I’ll come back to you.” And he was really decent, because normally he charges a lot. Just take the money, right? And go, “Oh, yeah, yeah, I’ll get you out.” But he was a wonderful guy. He said, “I talked to them, you’re banned. So don’t do it. You’re banned at CNN. You’re banned at MSNBC, and I think you’re banned on Fox News, but I’m not sure.”
Okay. So long odds, why do you do it? Because if you think we’re going to crash into the iceberg, you might as well bum rush the captain’s course. I’m lunging at the wheel. So what difference can I make? Well, I can make a difference by going on every show on planet Earth and going, “He’s too old. He’s in the thirties. He has no chance of winning, no chance of winning.” I go on Charlemagne Show, Breakfast Club, right? Charlemagne agrees. All of a sudden we’re having Buzz. And then people go, “Oh, Charlemagne said he has no chance of winning.” Then Charlemagne’s on the Daily Show, talks to Jon Stewart. Jon Stewart does a segment. This is not necessarily causal, but Buzz is building. So then Jon Stewart does a segment, if you remember, and people got super pissed at him, too old, can’t win. And all that buzz is building.
Meanwhile, unrelated to us, David Axelrod and James Carville, and I’m like, “Guys, figure it out. Who does Axelrod speak for?” The top advisor for Barack Obama. Who is James Carville, the top advisor for? The Clintons. This is the Clintons and the Obama sending their emissaries to say, “We can read a poll. He’s going to lose. Change direction.” So when the debate happens, we laid the groundwork. If we hadn’t laid the groundwork, debate would’ve been the first time that Blue MAGA would’ve thought, “Oh, maybe Biden can’t win.” But since all of us said it, and strange bedfellows, I loathe Nancy Pelosi, but she was on our side. I got a lot of issues with Bill Maher. He was on our side. I got a lot of issues with Axelrod and Carville, and they were on our side. So the people who believed in objective reality kind of independently made a plan. Let’s show people objective reality. And we did. And we drove him out, and it made all the difference.
Lex Fridman
So you think he stepped down voluntarily, or was he forced out?
So you think he stepped down voluntarily, or was he forced out?
Cenk Uygur
Both. So again, it depends on what you mean. So was he forced out? Of course he was forced out. You think he just woke up and he is like, “Oh, yeah, you know what? Screw my legacy. I don’t want to be a two term president. I’ll just drop out for no reason.” No, we forced them out. Of course we did. And when I say we, I had a tiny, tiny, tiny role. The people who had the major roles, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama and all those folks. But even they were not the main driving force. The number one driving force were the donors. What is the source of power of Bernie or Massey? The people. What is the source of power for Biden? The donors. The donors made Biden. He is the donors’ candidate. And that’s why he told the donors, nothing will fundamentally change. If you say Lex, “No Cenk, I think you’re too extreme that Biden works for the donors 98%. I think he only works for them 80% or 55%.” Fine. We could have that debate.
Both. So again, it depends on what you mean. So was he forced out? Of course he was forced out. You think he just woke up and he is like, “Oh, yeah, you know what? Screw my legacy. I don’t want to be a two term president. I’ll just drop out for no reason.” No, we forced them out. Of course we did. And when I say we, I had a tiny, tiny, tiny role. The people who had the major roles, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama and all those folks. But even they were not the main driving force. The number one driving force were the donors. What is the source of power of Bernie or Massey? The people. What is the source of power for Biden? The donors. The donors made Biden. He is the donors’ candidate. And that’s why he told the donors, nothing will fundamentally change. If you say Lex, “No Cenk, I think you’re too extreme that Biden works for the donors 98%. I think he only works for them 80% or 55%.” Fine. We could have that debate.
But you can’t argue that it isn’t his source of power. And you can’t argue it anymore, even if you were going to argue it earlier, because once the donors said, “We’re not giving you any more money.” He didn’t have any options. He couldn’t go on. But was he forced out at knife point or something? No. So was it voluntary? Yeah. Ultimately, if Biden decided to stay in, there was nothing we could do about it. And so he had to voluntarily make that decision. But he voluntarily made it, because he had no choice left.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. I wish he stepped down voluntarily from a place of strength. So I think presidents, I think politicians in general, especially at the highest levels, want legacy. And to me at least, one of the greatest things you could do is to walk away at the top. I mean, George Washington, to walk away from power is I think universally respected, especially if you got a good speech to go with it and you do it really well, not in some kind of cynical or calculated or some kind of transactional way, but just as a great leader. And maybe be a little bit even more dramatic than you need to be in doing it. Yeah, I thought that would be a beautiful moment. And then launch some kind of democratic process for electing a different option.
Yeah. I wish he stepped down voluntarily from a place of strength. So I think presidents, I think politicians in general, especially at the highest levels, want legacy. And to me at least, one of the greatest things you could do is to walk away at the top. I mean, George Washington, to walk away from power is I think universally respected, especially if you got a good speech to go with it and you do it really well, not in some kind of cynical or calculated or some kind of transactional way, but just as a great leader. And maybe be a little bit even more dramatic than you need to be in doing it. Yeah, I thought that would be a beautiful moment. And then launch some kind of democratic process for electing a different option.
Cenk Uygur
Not only did I agree with you 100%, I reached one of his top advisors, one of the guys you see in the press all the time, as in his inner circle. I never said that before, because we were in the middle of it. And I’m never going to betray anyone’s confidence. And I’ll never say who it was. Okay. But he was gracious enough to meet with me as I was about to enter the primary. And look, it is smart too, because get information, intelligence, et cetera. Is this guy going to be trouble, or not trouble? But at least he took the meeting. And the case I made is exactly the one you just said, Lex. This about 10 months ago. I said, “If he drops out now, they build statues of him, the Democrats.” If you are right-wing or you hate him, I get it.
Not only did I agree with you 100%, I reached one of his top advisors, one of the guys you see in the press all the time, as in his inner circle. I never said that before, because we were in the middle of it. And I’m never going to betray anyone’s confidence. And I’ll never say who it was. Okay. But he was gracious enough to meet with me as I was about to enter the primary. And look, it is smart too, because get information, intelligence, et cetera. Is this guy going to be trouble, or not trouble? But at least he took the meeting. And the case I made is exactly the one you just said, Lex. This about 10 months ago. I said, “If he drops out now, they build statues of him, the Democrats.” If you are right-wing or you hate him, I get it.
But the Democrats would’ve said he beat Trump and protected democracy in 2020, and he steps down graciously now to make sure we beat Trump again in 2024, and he lets go of power voluntarily. He’s going to be a hero, an absolute hero. But if he doesn’t, you’re going to force all of us to kick the living crap out of him, and tell everybody he’s an egomaniac, which he is. And he’s doing this so that he could be… If you don’t know Washington in that bubble, if you’re a one-term president, you’re a loser. If you’re a two-term president, you have a legacy, and you’re historic. He’s running for one reason, and one reason only. My legacy. I will be a two-term president. I will be considered historic. I’m like, brother, now you’re going to be considered a villain, the villain of the story. You’re handing it right back to Trump. You’re not going to win.
And you know, look at the numbers. Any political professional knows you’re not going to win. So you have hero or villain, and you get to choose. But if you think you’re going to be a hero and beat Trump, that is not a choice you have. That is not going to happen. And they didn’t believe us. But by then they did.
Lex Fridman
Were you troubled by how Kamala Harris was selected after he stepped down?
Were you troubled by how Kamala Harris was selected after he stepped down?
Cenk Uygur
Yes and no. So I argued for an open convention. And so if Biden had stepped down when we were trying to get people into the primary, knock him out, then that would’ve been a perfect solution. Then all the governors could go in, Walz, Beshear, Whitmer, Kamala Harris goes in, obviously they have a real primary at that point. Me, at later Dean Phillips came in. Me, Dean, and I mean, Maryanne wouldn’t drop out. Me and Dean would definitely drop out. Because our whole point was get other people in the race, make sure we win. Okay. Then you would’ve had a great primary, it would’ve been the right way to do it, both morally, constitutionally, et cetera. But also as a matter of politics, because you would’ve gotten a lot of coverage for your young, exciting candidates, and you would’ve legitimized the idea of that you’re protecting democracy.
Yes and no. So I argued for an open convention. And so if Biden had stepped down when we were trying to get people into the primary, knock him out, then that would’ve been a perfect solution. Then all the governors could go in, Walz, Beshear, Whitmer, Kamala Harris goes in, obviously they have a real primary at that point. Me, at later Dean Phillips came in. Me, Dean, and I mean, Maryanne wouldn’t drop out. Me and Dean would definitely drop out. Because our whole point was get other people in the race, make sure we win. Okay. Then you would’ve had a great primary, it would’ve been the right way to do it, both morally, constitutionally, et cetera. But also as a matter of politics, because you would’ve gotten a lot of coverage for your young, exciting candidates, and you would’ve legitimized the idea of that you’re protecting democracy.
Okay. So that didn’t happen because of Biden. It is what it is. So now when Biden drops out, at least do a vestige of democracy. Go to the convention and do what it’s designed to do, which is pick a candidate. Ezra Klein made a great case for this in the New York Times podcast that he did. That made a huge difference, and he was great for doing that. So I believe in an open convention. But I know Democrats that love to anoint, because they don’t trust the people. So they think the elites are geniuses, don’t worry, we’ll pick the right candidate. Yeah, I remember when you picked Hillary Clinton, how’d that work out? And I remember when you said Joe Biden was the right candidate in 2024. How’d that work out? Do not anoint.
But in the end, they didn’t. So what happened was, Biden does the first announcement, he either forgot or on purpose didn’t put Kamala Harris in there. So there’s all this kumbaya now. Nah, they don’t like each other. And Biden’s been screwing her over the entire time she’s been vice president. So he doesn’t put her in the original statement. And I’m like, “Whoa.” I do a live video of media. I’m like, “Kamala. Harris is not in the statement.” In the middle of my video, they put out a second one going, okay, okay, fine, Kamala Harris, because that’s too much for the president not to endorse his Vice president.
Lex Fridman
I think it was really somebody stormed into the room and said, “You absolutely must.”
I think it was really somebody stormed into the room and said, “You absolutely must.”
Cenk Uygur
I don’t know, I wasn’t there, but probably. Or they planned, I don’t know. But the bottom line is it was glaring that he didn’t put her in the first letter. Okay. So he had to put her in the second one. Fine, no problem. But Obama, Pelosi and Schumer did not endorse Kamala Harris. That’s huge. Normally the Democrats would all endorse her, and would all say she’s anointed, shut up everybody. And then MSNBC would scream, “Shut up. Shut up. She’s anointed.” But they didn’t do that. So then Kamala Harris had to win over the delegates. And I thought she would win them over in the convention. But she locked them up in two days. And I know, because I delegates, because I ran. And the delegates are calling me saying, “She’s getting on a zoom right now with us.” She went to all the states and worked her ass off, and locked up enough delegates to get the nomination in two days.
I don’t know, I wasn’t there, but probably. Or they planned, I don’t know. But the bottom line is it was glaring that he didn’t put her in the first letter. Okay. So he had to put her in the second one. Fine, no problem. But Obama, Pelosi and Schumer did not endorse Kamala Harris. That’s huge. Normally the Democrats would all endorse her, and would all say she’s anointed, shut up everybody. And then MSNBC would scream, “Shut up. Shut up. She’s anointed.” But they didn’t do that. So then Kamala Harris had to win over the delegates. And I thought she would win them over in the convention. But she locked them up in two days. And I know, because I delegates, because I ran. And the delegates are calling me saying, “She’s getting on a zoom right now with us.” She went to all the states and worked her ass off, and locked up enough delegates to get the nomination in two days.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. But come on, its Biden endorsed.
Yeah. But come on, its Biden endorsed.
Cenk Uygur
Of course.
Of course.
Lex Fridman
But why is that an of course? Why not say sort of layout Walz and Shapiro and Kamala Harris, and the options to say, lets at least the facade of democracy, of a democratic process.
But why is that an of course? Why not say sort of layout Walz and Shapiro and Kamala Harris, and the options to say, lets at least the facade of democracy, of a democratic process.
Cenk Uygur
There’s what should happen and what is likely to happen. So should Biden not have endorsed? Yeah, of course. I think Biden should have done the same thing as Obama and Pelosi and not endorse, and say, “Hey, we’d love to have a process where we figure out who the right nominee is.” And at that point, I’m really worried about Kamala Harris, because she’s doing word salads nonstop. So I’m like, “Don’t make the same mistake we did before, and just pick someone out of a hat. Test them. Test them. You get stronger candidates when you test them.” The authoritarian nature of the DNC drives me crazy. They don’t believe in testing candidates. They don’t believe in letting their own voters decide. And look, when we were in the primary, they canceled the Florida election. And they took me, Dean and Marianne off the ballot in North Carolina and Tennessee. I’m like, “Guys, if you’re going to make a case for democracy in the general election and you cancel elections in the primaries, do you not get how ridiculous you look, how hypocritical you look?”
There’s what should happen and what is likely to happen. So should Biden not have endorsed? Yeah, of course. I think Biden should have done the same thing as Obama and Pelosi and not endorse, and say, “Hey, we’d love to have a process where we figure out who the right nominee is.” And at that point, I’m really worried about Kamala Harris, because she’s doing word salads nonstop. So I’m like, “Don’t make the same mistake we did before, and just pick someone out of a hat. Test them. Test them. You get stronger candidates when you test them.” The authoritarian nature of the DNC drives me crazy. They don’t believe in testing candidates. They don’t believe in letting their own voters decide. And look, when we were in the primary, they canceled the Florida election. And they took me, Dean and Marianne off the ballot in North Carolina and Tennessee. I’m like, “Guys, if you’re going to make a case for democracy in the general election and you cancel elections in the primaries, do you not get how ridiculous you look, how hypocritical you look?”
So I didn’t want Biden to endorse anyone. But I’m shocked that they didn’t all endorse her. Because normally what happens is they all endorse. So bottom line Lex is, did she earn it in a perfect system, not even close, right? But did she earn it enough in this imperfect way where at least she showed some degree of competence that assuaged my concerns? Yes. So because a normal Democrat would bungle that. Like Hillary Clinton wouldn’t have talked to the delegates. She would assume that she’s the queen, and that they would all bow their heads. So the fact that she did elementary politics correct, for Democrats that’s like a big win.
Lex Fridman
It just really frustrated me, because it smelled of the same thing of fucking over Bernie in 2015, 2016, and RFK, and just the anointing aspect. Now, they seem to have gotten lucky in this situation that it’s very possible that Kamala Harris would’ve been selected through a democratic process. But I have to say, listening to the speeches at the DNC, Walz was amazing. Shapiro was really strong. And Kamala actually was much better as compared to her as a candidate previously.
It just really frustrated me, because it smelled of the same thing of fucking over Bernie in 2015, 2016, and RFK, and just the anointing aspect. Now, they seem to have gotten lucky in this situation that it’s very possible that Kamala Harris would’ve been selected through a democratic process. But I have to say, listening to the speeches at the DNC, Walz was amazing. Shapiro was really strong. And Kamala actually was much better as compared to her as a candidate previously.
Cenk Uygur
Yep.
Yep.
Lex Fridman
But personally don’t think she would’ve been the result of a democratic process.
But personally don’t think she would’ve been the result of a democratic process.
Cenk Uygur
So you don’t often give your opinions. But when you give the opinions, I actually agree a huge percentage of the time, in this conversation. So I fought for Shapiro in the primary. And when she was trying to pick for a VP, because I thought there’s no way she’s going to pick Walz. He’s way too, not just progressive, but more importantly populist, right? So I didn’t think she’d go in that direction. And Shapiro actually did a bunch of populist things in Pennsylvania. That’s part of the reason why he’s so popular in Pennsylvania. He looks like a smooth talking politician, but his actions are pretty good. And so Shapiro was great, Walz was great. The Obamas are legendary. Even Clinton at his advanced age makes terrific points in a speech, where you go, “Well, that one’s hard to argue with.” And so I’m shocked at the competence of the DNC, shocked at it.
So you don’t often give your opinions. But when you give the opinions, I actually agree a huge percentage of the time, in this conversation. So I fought for Shapiro in the primary. And when she was trying to pick for a VP, because I thought there’s no way she’s going to pick Walz. He’s way too, not just progressive, but more importantly populist, right? So I didn’t think she’d go in that direction. And Shapiro actually did a bunch of populist things in Pennsylvania. That’s part of the reason why he’s so popular in Pennsylvania. He looks like a smooth talking politician, but his actions are pretty good. And so Shapiro was great, Walz was great. The Obamas are legendary. Even Clinton at his advanced age makes terrific points in a speech, where you go, “Well, that one’s hard to argue with.” And so I’m shocked at the competence of the DNC, shocked at it.
`But of all those, Lex, so you can give a good speech, and the Obamas give a mean speech. But I saw Obama as president. He didn’t deliver on that. But the one guy that stood out is Walz. And the reason is because he’s a real person.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, real person, populist.
Yeah, real person, populist.
Cenk Uygur
We all got to work towards picking the most genuine candidates. So here on the right-wing side, for example, I would prefer a Marjorie Taylor Greene to a Mitch McConnell any day. Marjorie Taylor Greene is genuine. She might be genuinely not, so I don’t agree with her. She might be even more right-wing than others, but I believe that she means it. And I’ll take that any day over a fraud corporatist like Mitch McConnell, who’s just going to do what his donor’s command of him, et cetera.
We all got to work towards picking the most genuine candidates. So here on the right-wing side, for example, I would prefer a Marjorie Taylor Greene to a Mitch McConnell any day. Marjorie Taylor Greene is genuine. She might be genuinely not, so I don’t agree with her. She might be even more right-wing than others, but I believe that she means it. And I’ll take that any day over a fraud corporatist like Mitch McConnell, who’s just going to do what his donor’s command of him, et cetera.
Bernie Sanders
Lex Fridman
I got to ask you, because I also love Bernie, still got it. I love Bernie. I always have. I think he might still do it, but I enjoyed his conversations with Tom Hartman. He’s a genuine one, like Bernie. Even if you disagree with him, that’s a genuine human being.
I got to ask you, because I also love Bernie, still got it. I love Bernie. I always have. I think he might still do it, but I enjoyed his conversations with Tom Hartman. He’s a genuine one, like Bernie. Even if you disagree with him, that’s a genuine human being.
Cenk Uygur
Yep.
Yep.
Lex Fridman
So just talk about that. Does it trouble you that he’s been fucked over in 2015, 2016, and again, 2020. And why does it keep forgiving people?
So just talk about that. Does it trouble you that he’s been fucked over in 2015, 2016, and again, 2020. And why does it keep forgiving people?
Cenk Uygur
Yeah. So I love Bernie for the same reason you were saying. Because he’s a real person. He’s a populist. He means it. And that is so rare in politics. I feel like I’m Diogenes, and I went looking for the one honest man and found it in Bernie. And so I did a video in 2013 saying, Bernie Sanders can beat Hillary Clinton in a primary. In 2013, that video exists. Because why did I think that? I didn’t say it of any of the corporate politicians and the guys who were supposed to challenge her and stuff. Because populist and honest. And the country’s dying for an honest populist, dying for it. So love the brother. Now, that doesn’t mean that he’s right on strategy. And he drives me crazy on strategy. So two elements of that. Number one, in 2016 and in 2020, for God’s sake attack your opponent.
Yeah. So I love Bernie for the same reason you were saying. Because he’s a real person. He’s a populist. He means it. And that is so rare in politics. I feel like I’m Diogenes, and I went looking for the one honest man and found it in Bernie. And so I did a video in 2013 saying, Bernie Sanders can beat Hillary Clinton in a primary. In 2013, that video exists. Because why did I think that? I didn’t say it of any of the corporate politicians and the guys who were supposed to challenge her and stuff. Because populist and honest. And the country’s dying for an honest populist, dying for it. So love the brother. Now, that doesn’t mean that he’s right on strategy. And he drives me crazy on strategy. So two elements of that. Number one, in 2016 and in 2020, for God’s sake attack your opponent.
You said something about Trump that I disagree with, where I’m defending Trump. Okay. You don’t like what he did to the public discourse. No, I don’t mind it. And I’ll tell you why. Because at least he got a little bit past the fakeness. He’s a con man and he’s a fraud overall, and he does everything for his own interest, but at least he doesn’t speak like a bullshitting politician. And he’s not wrong that you have to bully your own party to amass enough power to get things done. And he showed that that’s possible. So the problem with the Democrats is civility. So my whole life, they’re like, “Oh, no, no, no, don’t say anything. Let’s lose with civility.” So for example, in debates, whether it’s on TV, online, or whatever, Democrats or people on the left are always saying, “I’m offended.” I never get offended. No, after I’m done, you’re going to be offended. Okay, fight back, fighting back wins.
And we couldn’t get Bernie to fight back. In 2020 he was one state away. He won the first three states. He crushed in Nevada. All we needed was South Carolina. But in order to get South Carolina, we all knew, everybody on his campaign. Everyone who’s in progressive media, we all knew you’ve got to attack Biden. If you don’t, they’re just going to tsunami you. The corporate medias and the corporate politicians are going to run roughshod over you. You have to make the case against them. And so two times Bernie flinched. One in 2016, in the Brooklyn debate, they asked, “Did the money that Hillary Clinton taken from the banks affect her votes?” And he said, “No.” Of course it affected our votes. Of course it did. You have to say yes, and you have to show it and prove it.
The bankruptcy bill. When she was First Lady, she was totally in favor of the American people and against the bankruptcy bill, because it has the banks, you can’t discharge any debts, credit card debt and bank debt, et cetera. It’s an awful bill. It’s one of the most corporatist bills. She was on the right side as a First Lady. She becomes a senator, takes banker money, and all of a sudden she flips over to the banker side. Say it Bernie, for God’s sake, say it. Then in one of the debates in 2020, his team prepares attacks against Biden. They’re not personal, they’re not like… You can sense by now, if I’m in a political race, my objective is rip the other guy’s face off.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Cenk Uygur
Politically, rhetorically, never physically.
Politically, rhetorically, never physically.
Lex Fridman
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Cenk Uygur
But I would get it to a point where they’d think, I don’t know if I’m going to vote for Cenk, but I know I’m not voting for the other guy. Okay, so you got to do that if you want to win. So they prepare this. He says, “I’m going to do it.” He goes out in the podium and doesn’t do it. Because he can’t. He’s too damn nice. He just can’t attack the other guy. Now that’s problem number one in strategy. Problem number two is something you alluded to. So Biden gets into office. Bernie thinks they’re friends. They’re not friends. Biden’s just using him. So he used them to get the credibility. And then he eviscerates 85% of the progressive proposals that Bernie put forward. Biden throws away $15 minimum wage. That was Bernie’s signature issue. Doesn’t even propose the public option. Dumps paid family for no reason. I can go on and on. And Bernie co-signs on it, because he thinks he’s in an alliance. He thinks Biden’s on his side, and he thinks we’re going to get things done.
But I would get it to a point where they’d think, I don’t know if I’m going to vote for Cenk, but I know I’m not voting for the other guy. Okay, so you got to do that if you want to win. So they prepare this. He says, “I’m going to do it.” He goes out in the podium and doesn’t do it. Because he can’t. He’s too damn nice. He just can’t attack the other guy. Now that’s problem number one in strategy. Problem number two is something you alluded to. So Biden gets into office. Bernie thinks they’re friends. They’re not friends. Biden’s just using him. So he used them to get the credibility. And then he eviscerates 85% of the progressive proposals that Bernie put forward. Biden throws away $15 minimum wage. That was Bernie’s signature issue. Doesn’t even propose the public option. Dumps paid family for no reason. I can go on and on. And Bernie co-signs on it, because he thinks he’s in an alliance. He thinks Biden’s on his side, and he thinks we’re going to get things done.
And to be fair to Bernie, like I said earlier, Obama got only 5% of his agenda passed. And Biden got 15%. Okay. So you’re right, Bernie, you got three times more than under Obama. But you’re wrong, that is not fundamental change. And without fundamental change, we’re screwed.
Lex Fridman
Let me ask you about another impressive speech, AOC. Is it possible that she’s the future of the party, future president?
Let me ask you about another impressive speech, AOC. Is it possible that she’s the future of the party, future president?
Cenk Uygur
No. So AOC, in my opinion, lost her way. And so-
No. So AOC, in my opinion, lost her way. And so-
Lex Fridman
In which way?
In which way?
Cenk Uygur
So it’s tough talking about these things, because people take it so personally. And that’s why you’ll see very few politicians on our shows. Because we give super tough interviews, and the words out in the street, don’t go on The Young Turks, they’ll ask you super hard questions. So only a couple do it. Like Ro Khanna does it, he’s brave-
So it’s tough talking about these things, because people take it so personally. And that’s why you’ll see very few politicians on our shows. Because we give super tough interviews, and the words out in the street, don’t go on The Young Turks, they’ll ask you super hard questions. So only a couple do it. Like Ro Khanna does it, he’s brave-
Cenk Uygur
Right. Only a couple do it like Ro Khanna does it. He’s brave, and we’ll get into shouting matches sometimes in the middle of bills and stuff, but at least he’s there to defend his position. I respect him for that. Tim Ryan, a little bit more of a conservative Democrat when he was in the house. He would take on any debate, et cetera. There’s a couple of good guys that do it, but generally they don’t. This relates to AOC because when AOC is running we do 34 videos on her. We get her millions of views. We founded Just Democrats and now launched it on the show. Our audience, Ryan Grim documents in one of his books, our audience raises $2.5 million for those progressive candidates overall. And at that point, AOC and all those Rashida Tlaib, et cetera, they’re all dying to come onto Young Turks.
Right. Only a couple do it like Ro Khanna does it. He’s brave, and we’ll get into shouting matches sometimes in the middle of bills and stuff, but at least he’s there to defend his position. I respect him for that. Tim Ryan, a little bit more of a conservative Democrat when he was in the house. He would take on any debate, et cetera. There’s a couple of good guys that do it, but generally they don’t. This relates to AOC because when AOC is running we do 34 videos on her. We get her millions of views. We founded Just Democrats and now launched it on the show. Our audience, Ryan Grim documents in one of his books, our audience raises $2.5 million for those progressive candidates overall. And at that point, AOC and all those Rashida Tlaib, et cetera, they’re all dying to come onto Young Turks.
Makes sense. I would too, of course. It’s not because it’s The Young Turks, any media outlet. And most media outlets, almost all the media outlets reject them. We cover AOC more than all the other press combined, and she wins for a number of reasons. That’s one of the reasons. But there’s many others, and she did a terrific job herself. She then takes Saikat and Corbin who were the… Saikat was the head of Just Democrats and Corbin was Communications Director for Just Democrats. Then Saikat made one of the most brilliant political decisions arguably in American history, he called me and he said, “Cenk, I’m going to go from head of Just Democrats to running AOCs campaign.” And I’m like, “Well, the other candidates are going to get pissed, and you’re staking the entire enterprise on one candidate.” And I’m like, “Saikat, I’m not in it. I’m doing the media arm. You’re in the trenches. You’re the guy making the decisions, so I’m going to trust whatever you say. You sure?” And he said, “I’m sure.”
Him and Corbin go over to AOCs campaign. AOC then wins, that miraculous win. Then she hires Saikat to be her Chief of Staff, and she hires Corbin to be her Communications Director. Within six months, they’re gone. And once they’re gone, AOC then goes on an establishment path. Because why were they gone? Oh, they insulted one of her colleagues. Yeah, that colleague who’s a total corporatist and was selling out one of her policy proposals. If you don’t call out your own side, you’re never going to get anything done. But if you call out your own side, you become persona non grata, and it is super uncomfortable. And we couldn’t get them to do things that were uncomfortable. Now, she’s going to find that outrageous, and she’s going to be very offended by that, and she’s going to point to a bunch of things she did that were uncomfortable.
And to be fair to her, she has. Until that speech, she was pretty good on Palestine when we desperately needed it. She was pretty good on a bunch of issues. Cori Bush did that campaign on evictions, et cetera, on the capital steps. That was great. AOCs original spit-in in Pelosi’s office. At that point we’re all still on the same team. It’s a spectacular success. Me, Corbin and Saikat are saying, “Do it again. Do it again.” Not don’t abuse it, don’t be a clown and do it every other day. But when it matters, you need to be able to challenge Pelosi. And in my opinion, she just got to a point where she got exhausted being uncomfortable. It’s really hard, the media hates you and they keep pounding away and calling you a radical and you’re destroying the Democratic Party, you’re destroying unity. Whereas if you go along, all of a sudden you’re a queen. And now all of a sudden the mainstream media is saying, oh, AOC, she could be the [inaudible 02:43:46].
Lex Fridman
There’s some degree to which you want to sometimes bide your time and just rest a bit. And I think from my perspective, maybe you can educate me, she seems like a legit, progressive, legit even populist, charismatic, young, a lot of time to develop the game of politics, how to play it well enough to avoid the bullshit. I guess she doesn’t take corporate PAC money?
There’s some degree to which you want to sometimes bide your time and just rest a bit. And I think from my perspective, maybe you can educate me, she seems like a legit, progressive, legit even populist, charismatic, young, a lot of time to develop the game of politics, how to play it well enough to avoid the bullshit. I guess she doesn’t take corporate PAC money?
Cenk Uygur
That’s right. No, she’s still true on that.
That’s right. No, she’s still true on that.
Lex Fridman
As far as just looking over the next few elections, who’s going to be running? Who’s going to be a real player? To me she seems like an obvious person that’s going to be in the race.
As far as just looking over the next few elections, who’s going to be running? Who’s going to be a real player? To me she seems like an obvious person that’s going to be in the race.
Cenk Uygur
While I fight for the ideal, I’m very practical. For example, she wins, and then one cycle later after 2020, there’s these guys who want to “force” the vote, and it was on the speakership of Nancy Pelosi, and they wanted to use it to get Medicare for All. I’m like, “Guys, forcing a vote is a terrific idea. On the speakership, okay, who’s your alternative?” “Oh, we don’t have an alternative.” Already giant red flag. “What’s the issue you’re looking to have them vote on?” “Medicare for All.” “Oh, you don’t know politics.”
While I fight for the ideal, I’m very practical. For example, she wins, and then one cycle later after 2020, there’s these guys who want to “force” the vote, and it was on the speakership of Nancy Pelosi, and they wanted to use it to get Medicare for All. I’m like, “Guys, forcing a vote is a terrific idea. On the speakership, okay, who’s your alternative?” “Oh, we don’t have an alternative.” Already giant red flag. “What’s the issue you’re looking to have them vote on?” “Medicare for All.” “Oh, you don’t know politics.”
I love Medicare for All. We have to get Medicare for All. But if that’s the first one you put up without gaining any leverage, you’re going to get slaughtered. Put up something easy, force a vote on $15 minimum wage, or pick another one that’s easy, paid family leave. These are all polling great. Because if you force a vote on that, you can actually win. And if you win, you gain leverage, and then you do the next one and the next one. And then you do Medicare for All. Not bullshit gradualism that the corporate Democrats do, but actually strategically, practically building up power and leverage and using it at the right times.
If I thought that’s what AOC was doing, I would love it. I don’t need her to force a vote on Medicare for All, I don’t need her to go on some wild tangents that don’t make any sense and is only going to diminish her power. But when they eviscerated all the progressive proposals in Build Back Better, how did that happen? Manchin and Sinema used every ounce of leverage they had. They said, “I’m just not going to vote for it. I don’t care. The status quo was always perfect for my donors, so I don’t need you. I vote no. Now, take out everything I want,” and Biden did.
Progressives had to push back and say, “Here is two to three proposals. Not everything, not everything. Two to three proposals. They all poll over 70%. They’re all no-brainers, and they’re all things that Joe Biden promised. We want those in the bill, otherwise we’re voting no.” At that point, what would’ve happened is the media would’ve exploded and they would’ve said, AOC and the rest are the scum of the earth, they’re ruining the Democratic Party. We’re not going to get the bill. They’re the worst. You have to withstand that. If you cannot withstand a nuclear blast from mainstream media, you’re not the person. You have to run that obstacle course to get to change. If they had stood their ground, they definitely would’ve won on one to two of those issues. Instead, they went with a strategy that was called, it was literally called, Trust Biden.
Kamala Harris
Lex Fridman
All right, so big question. Who wins this election, Kamala or Trump? And what’s Kamala’s path to victory? And if you can steel, man, what’s Trump’s path to victory?
All right, so big question. Who wins this election, Kamala or Trump? And what’s Kamala’s path to victory? And if you can steel, man, what’s Trump’s path to victory?
Cenk Uygur
There’s not enough information yet. Since I make a lot of predictions on air and then brag about it unbearably, people are always, they’ll stop me in the streets and they’ll be like, “Predict this. Predict my marriage.” “Brother, I don’t know anything about your marriage. How can I possibly predict something without having any information?” In the case of this campaign, right now I got Kamala Harris at 55% chance of winning, which is not bad. Doesn’t mean she’s going to win by 55 because then that would be a 10 point margin. That’s not going to happen. But I say around 51 to 55, but it’s nowhere near over because of a lot of things. One, the Democrats are still seen as more establishment and people hate the establishment. Two, if war breaks out in the Middle East, which is now unfortunately bordering on likely, if that war breaks out, all bets are off.
There’s not enough information yet. Since I make a lot of predictions on air and then brag about it unbearably, people are always, they’ll stop me in the streets and they’ll be like, “Predict this. Predict my marriage.” “Brother, I don’t know anything about your marriage. How can I possibly predict something without having any information?” In the case of this campaign, right now I got Kamala Harris at 55% chance of winning, which is not bad. Doesn’t mean she’s going to win by 55 because then that would be a 10 point margin. That’s not going to happen. But I say around 51 to 55, but it’s nowhere near over because of a lot of things. One, the Democrats are still seen as more establishment and people hate the establishment. Two, if war breaks out in the Middle East, which is now unfortunately bordering on likely, if that war breaks out, all bets are off.
Lex Fridman
Do you mean a regional war?
Do you mean a regional war?
Cenk Uygur
Yeah, like Iran, Israel gets to be a real thing, not just a pinprick and a little bombing here and an assassination there. No, we’re going to war. If that happens, then all bets are off and no one has any idea who’s going to win. And if they’re pretending that they know, that’s ridiculous because it’s so unpredictable. And then the third bogey for her is if she goes back to word salads.
Yeah, like Iran, Israel gets to be a real thing, not just a pinprick and a little bombing here and an assassination there. No, we’re going to war. If that happens, then all bets are off and no one has any idea who’s going to win. And if they’re pretending that they know, that’s ridiculous because it’s so unpredictable. And then the third bogey for her is if she goes back to word salads.
There’s three phases of Kamala Harris’s career. She’s not necessarily any different in terms of policy. You can frame it in a bad way, you could frame it in a good way. You could say, oh, she’s just seeing which way the wind is blowing. And then, oh, she’s a tough cop prosecutor, and then she’s doing justice reform when people want justice reform. Oh, she’s a waffler.
Or you could paint it as she’s pretty balanced. She prosecuted serious criminals very harshly, but then on marijuana possession got them into rehab. And you know what? That’s actually what you should do. I’m not talking about policy so there you could have one of those views about Kamala Harris, and I get it. I’m talking about stylistically. Kamala Harris until the second debate in the primaries in 2020 is a very competent politician who’s in line to be the next Obama. She’s killing it. District attorney, attorney general, senator. And then the first debate, if you remember, she won. She had that great line about, “There was a little girl on that bus that was integrating the schools, and that girl was me.” And Biden being the knucklehead that he is, he’s caught on tape going… Don’t have that reaction, brother, because she’s criticizing his segregation policy on buses back in the ’70.
Anyways, so she’s doing terrific. And then after that debate until Biden drops out is a disaster area for Kamala Harris’s career. In the primary she starts falling apart. She can’t strategize right, she’s for Medicare for All. No, she’s not, she’s for Medicare for some. What’s Medicare for some? I don’t know. And she goes to the next debate and Tulsi Gabbard kicks her ass. And then goes to the third debate, gets her kicked again, and she’s starting to drift away. Then at this point, and this is funny, I have more votes for president than Kamala Harris does, because Kamala Harris dropped out before Iowa because that’s how much of a disaster her campaign turned into when she was leading. She was leading.
Then she becomes vice president and Biden, probably because of that bus line, Jill Biden caught tremendous feelings over that line. Biden’s like, here, have this albatross around your neck. It’s called immigration. Good luck. I’m not going to do anything about it. I’m not going to change policy, but I’m putting you in charge of it to get your ass handed to you. And she does, so that’s a disaster. And then she starts doing interviews where she’s like, “We have to become the change, the being, but not the thing we were and the unbecoming.” And you’re, what is going on? Why can neither one of them speak?
But then the third act shocks me. Biden steps down, she goes and grabs all those delegates in a super competent way that we talked about earlier. And then she goes out and gives a speech. I’m, oh, that speech is good. Okay, and another one, another one. I’m, wait a minute, these are good speeches. No more word salads. Then she picks Tim Walz and shocks the world. I’m like, that’s the correct VP pick. That is a miracle. And then she goes and does the economically populist plan, all those proposals about housing that people care about, grocery prices that people care about. Real or not real, that is correct political strategy. This Kamala Harris is back to the original Kamala Harris, who was a very competent, skilled politician.
Lex Fridman
And as I was telling you offline, whoever’s doing her TikTok is blowing up and they’re doing risky, edgy stuff.
And as I was telling you offline, whoever’s doing her TikTok is blowing up and they’re doing risky, edgy stuff.
Cenk Uygur
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
I did not expect that from somebody that comes from the Biden camp of just be safe, be boring, all this stuff.
I did not expect that from somebody that comes from the Biden camp of just be safe, be boring, all this stuff.
Cenk Uygur
You have to give Kamala Harris ultimate credit, because she’s the leader of the campaign and she makes the final decisions. But there’s apparently a couple of people inside that campaign that are ass kickers, and they have convinced her to take risk, which Democrats never take. And it is correct to take risks. You cannot get to victory without risk. The vice president pick is the bellwether. When Hillary Clinton picked Tim Kaine, I said, “That’s it, she’s going to lose.” Because Tim Kaine is playing prevent defense. He’s wallpaper. He’d be lucky to be wallpaper, he’s just a white wall. And when he speaks it’s white noise. He never says anything interesting, he’s the most boring pick of all time. That saying, we already won. Ha, ha.
You have to give Kamala Harris ultimate credit, because she’s the leader of the campaign and she makes the final decisions. But there’s apparently a couple of people inside that campaign that are ass kickers, and they have convinced her to take risk, which Democrats never take. And it is correct to take risks. You cannot get to victory without risk. The vice president pick is the bellwether. When Hillary Clinton picked Tim Kaine, I said, “That’s it, she’s going to lose.” Because Tim Kaine is playing prevent defense. He’s wallpaper. He’d be lucky to be wallpaper, he’s just a white wall. And when he speaks it’s white noise. He never says anything interesting, he’s the most boring pick of all time. That saying, we already won. Ha, ha.
If Kamala Harris had picked Mark Kelly, that’s the Tim Kaine equivalent. Oh, he’s an astronaut. I don’t give a shit that he’s an astronaut. What is he saying? Is he a good politician? Does he have good policies? Is he exciting on the campaign trail? Is he going to add to your momentum? Mark Kelly, he might be a good guy, but number one, he’s a very corporate Democrat. And number two, it’s like watching grass grow. He’s terrible at speaking if you ask me. I thought, for sure she’s going to pick Mark Kelly, because that’s what a normal Democrat does. Or if they want to go wild and crazy, they’ll go to Beshear. I was, please let it be Shapiro, because he’s at least not bad. He’s done some populous things and he’s strategic, he’s really smart. I need smart candidates. Dumb candidates don’t help. They don’t have a mind of their own. They can’t take risks. They’re not independent thinkers. They’re going to lose. She picks the smartest, most populous candidate. Boom, boom, we got a winner. That’s a good campaign.
Harris vs Trump presidential debate
Lex Fridman
Speaking of risks, when they debate, when Kamala and Trump debate, what do you think that’s going to look like? Who do you think is going to win?
Speaking of risks, when they debate, when Kamala and Trump debate, what do you think that’s going to look like? Who do you think is going to win?
Cenk Uygur
Oh, that’s not close. Kamala Harris will win unless she falls apart. Unless she goes back to the bad era. That’s risk number three.
Oh, that’s not close. Kamala Harris will win unless she falls apart. Unless she goes back to the bad era. That’s risk number three.
Lex Fridman
Well, hold on a second. Oh, I guess in a debate, you can have pre-written. It seems like when she’s going off the top of her head is when the word salad sometimes comes out. Sometimes.
Well, hold on a second. Oh, I guess in a debate, you can have pre-written. It seems like when she’s going off the top of her head is when the word salad sometimes comes out. Sometimes.
Cenk Uygur
Well, we’ll have to see because she hasn’t done any tough interviews, she hasn’t really been challenged. I hope to God that doesn’t happen.
Well, we’ll have to see because she hasn’t done any tough interviews, she hasn’t really been challenged. I hope to God that doesn’t happen.
Lex Fridman
That she doesn’t fall apart, you mean?
That she doesn’t fall apart, you mean?
Cenk Uygur
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
I hope she does a bunch of interviews, right?
I hope she does a bunch of interviews, right?
Cenk Uygur
Oh, definitely, definitely. This is going to sound really funny. I’m too honest, but I am in the context of Kamala Harris probably shouldn’t come on The Young Turks. We do a really tough interview and it would hurt her.
Oh, definitely, definitely. This is going to sound really funny. I’m too honest, but I am in the context of Kamala Harris probably shouldn’t come on The Young Turks. We do a really tough interview and it would hurt her.
Lex Fridman
Do you though? It’s tough, but you’re pretty respectful. Maybe I’m okay with a little bit of tension. You’re pretty respectful. Even when you’re yelling, there’s respect. You don’t do a got you type thing. There’s certain things you could do. You said this in the past, you can say a lot in from the past that’s out of context. It forces the other person to have to define the context, just debate type tactics over and over. You don’t seem to do that. You just ask them questions generally and then you argue the point, and then you also hear what they say. The only thing I’ve seen you do sometimes tough, that you sometimes interrupt. You speak over the person if they are trying to do the same.
Do you though? It’s tough, but you’re pretty respectful. Maybe I’m okay with a little bit of tension. You’re pretty respectful. Even when you’re yelling, there’s respect. You don’t do a got you type thing. There’s certain things you could do. You said this in the past, you can say a lot in from the past that’s out of context. It forces the other person to have to define the context, just debate type tactics over and over. You don’t seem to do that. You just ask them questions generally and then you argue the point, and then you also hear what they say. The only thing I’ve seen you do sometimes tough, that you sometimes interrupt. You speak over the person if they are trying to do the same.
Cenk Uygur
Right. Only if they’re filibustering.
Right. Only if they’re filibustering.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, if they’re filibustering. But that’s a tricky one. That’s a tricky one.
Yeah, if they’re filibustering. But that’s a tricky one. That’s a tricky one.
Cenk Uygur
Right. No, but Lex, the problem for her coming on our show isn’t that we would be unfair to her, it’s that we would be fair. We would ask questions she is going to have trouble answering.
Right. No, but Lex, the problem for her coming on our show isn’t that we would be unfair to her, it’s that we would be fair. We would ask questions she is going to have trouble answering.
Lex Fridman
All the corporate stuff.
All the corporate stuff.
Cenk Uygur
Right. Biden said he was going to take the corporate tax rate to 28%, and he barely tried. You say you’re going to take it to 28%, why should we trust you? You guys said $15 minimum wage, and then you took it out of the bill. Why should we trust you? Those are very tough questions. She’s never going to get that in mainstream media. Mainstream media is going to have faux toughness, but in reality they’re going to be softballs. And so the debates, you’re right Lex, is a little bit easier because Sarah Palin proved that you could just memorize scripted talking points. And she admitted it later, she was super nervous, she memorized the talking points. And no matter what they asked, she just gave the talking point. Which by the way, people barely noticed because that’s what all politicians do, she just admitted it.
Right. Biden said he was going to take the corporate tax rate to 28%, and he barely tried. You say you’re going to take it to 28%, why should we trust you? You guys said $15 minimum wage, and then you took it out of the bill. Why should we trust you? Those are very tough questions. She’s never going to get that in mainstream media. Mainstream media is going to have faux toughness, but in reality they’re going to be softballs. And so the debates, you’re right Lex, is a little bit easier because Sarah Palin proved that you could just memorize scripted talking points. And she admitted it later, she was super nervous, she memorized the talking points. And no matter what they asked, she just gave the talking point. Which by the way, people barely noticed because that’s what all politicians do, she just admitted it.
And so, no, Trump’s a disaster in a debate. He’s a one man wrecking crew of his own campaign. Any competent debater would eviscerate Donald Trump. On any given topic, when he says something… Here, let’s take one lunatic conspiracy theory that he just had recently. And by the way, if you’re a right-winger and you keep getting hurt every time I say he’s a lunatic, or I insult Donald Trump, you sound like a left-winger. I’m offended. I’m offended, I’m offended. Get over it. Get over it. We have disagreements, hear what the other side is saying. And by the way, I say the same thing to the left. I say, you think everybody on the right’s evil, you’re crazy. No, they just have a different way of looking at the world. Which by the way, is an interesting conversation, we should talk about that in a minute too. I do it to both sides.
But Trump says, “Oh, I don’t think there’s anyone at Kamala Harris’s rallies, all the pictures are AI.” Let’s say he says that in a debate because he’s liable to say anything. You just say, okay, so you think every reporter that was there, every photographer that was there, every human being that was there, they’re all lying. They have a conspiracy of thousands of people, but none of them were actually there. Do you understand how insane you sound?
Lex Fridman
This is a good place to, can you steel man the case for Trump?
This is a good place to, can you steel man the case for Trump?
Cenk Uygur
Trump is a massive risk because of all the things we talked about earlier, but there is a percentage chance that he’s such a wild card that he overturns the whole system. And that is why the establishment is a little scared of him. If he’s in office… Here, I’ll give you a case of Donald Trump doing something right. Something wrong first and then something right. He bombs Soleimani , the top general of Iran, and kills him. That risks World War Three, that risks a giant war with Iran that devolves. Iran is four times the size of Iraq. If you’re anti-war, you should have hated that he assassinated Soleimani.
Trump is a massive risk because of all the things we talked about earlier, but there is a percentage chance that he’s such a wild card that he overturns the whole system. And that is why the establishment is a little scared of him. If he’s in office… Here, I’ll give you a case of Donald Trump doing something right. Something wrong first and then something right. He bombs Soleimani , the top general of Iran, and kills him. That risks World War Three, that risks a giant war with Iran that devolves. Iran is four times the size of Iraq. If you’re anti-war, you should have hated that he assassinated Soleimani.
But after the assassination, Iran doesn’t want to get into it even though they’re in a rage and they do a small bombing. You could tell if it’s a small or a big one. That’s them saying, we don’t really want war, but for our domestic crowd we have to bomb you back. And that’s when the military industrial complex comes to Trump and says, “No, you have to show them who’s tough and bomb this area.” And Trump says, “No, they did a small bombing, not a large bombing. I don’t want the war. I’m not going to do that bombing.” That was his shining moment.
Lex Fridman
For me one of the biggest steel man for Trump is that he has both the skill and the predisposition to not be a warmonger. He, I think better than the other candidates I’ve seen, is able to end wars and end them, now, you might disagree with it, but in a way where there’s legitimately effective negotiation that happens. I just don’t see any other candidate currently being able to sit down with Zelensky and Putin and to negotiate a peace treaty that both are equally unhappy with.
For me one of the biggest steel man for Trump is that he has both the skill and the predisposition to not be a warmonger. He, I think better than the other candidates I’ve seen, is able to end wars and end them, now, you might disagree with it, but in a way where there’s legitimately effective negotiation that happens. I just don’t see any other candidate currently being able to sit down with Zelensky and Putin and to negotiate a peace treaty that both are equally unhappy with.
Cenk Uygur
On the one hand, almost all other politicians are going be controlled by the military-industrial complex, and that complex wants to bleed Russia dry, and that’s what the Ukraine War is doing. It’s a double win for the defense contractors. Number one, every dollar we send to Ukraine is actually not going to Ukraine, it’s going to US defense contractors, and then they are sending old weapons to Ukraine. The money is to build new weapons for us. A lot of people don’t know that. The defense contractors want that war to go on forever, and they’re an enormous influence in Washington.
On the one hand, almost all other politicians are going be controlled by the military-industrial complex, and that complex wants to bleed Russia dry, and that’s what the Ukraine War is doing. It’s a double win for the defense contractors. Number one, every dollar we send to Ukraine is actually not going to Ukraine, it’s going to US defense contractors, and then they are sending old weapons to Ukraine. The money is to build new weapons for us. A lot of people don’t know that. The defense contractors want that war to go on forever, and they’re an enormous influence in Washington.
The second win is they’re depleting Russia. And Russia has gotten themselves into a quagmire, like we did in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they’re bleeding out. The military-industrial complex wants Russia to bleed out for as long as humanly possible. They actually care more about their own interest, of course, than they do about Ukrainian interests. In fact, there’s a good argument to be made that Ukraine could have gotten a peace deal earlier and we prevented it. But the bottom line now is probably how a deal gets done is they let go of three more areas in Ukraine. They already lost Crimea. They’d have to let go of three more regions. And that is tough because at that point Russia’s a little bit encouraged. Every time they do an invasion, they get more land. They might not get all the land they wanted, but they get a lot of land. It’s a very difficult issue.
Lex Fridman
But literally, which person, if they become president, will end the war?
But literally, which person, if they become president, will end the war?
Cenk Uygur
Trump will end that war because Trump will go in and he loves Russia and Putin anyway.
Trump will end that war because Trump will go in and he loves Russia and Putin anyway.
Lex Fridman
I just disagree with, he loves Russia, the implication of that. Meaning he’ll do whatever Putin tells him. I think…
I just disagree with, he loves Russia, the implication of that. Meaning he’ll do whatever Putin tells him. I think…
Cenk Uygur
He’ll do 90% of what Putin tells him.
He’ll do 90% of what Putin tells him.
Lex Fridman
I just disagree with that. I think he wants to be the person that says, fuck you to Putin while patting him-
I just disagree with that. I think he wants to be the person that says, fuck you to Putin while patting him-
Cenk Uygur
No way.
No way.
Lex Fridman
… on the back, but out negotiating Putin.
… on the back, but out negotiating Putin.
Cenk Uygur
I don’t like talking about Russia because there’s so much emotions that go into that topic. The right wing, the minute you mention Russia, they’re like, oh, it’s a hoax and all this baggage that comes with it, et cetera. To me, Russia’s not any different than Saudi Arabia or Israel for Trump. You give me money, I like you. You buy my apartments, I like you. If you don’t give me money, I don’t like you. It’s not that complicated. Okay, don’t worry about the Russia part of it. The bottom line is Trump thinks, what do I care about those three regions of Ukraine? I want to get this thing done. He’ll go and he’ll say, “Ukraine, we’re going to withdraw all help unless you agree to a peace deal with Russia, and Russia wants those three regions, that’s the peace deal. That’s it.” Ukraine will lose a part of their country and we get to a peace deal.
I don’t like talking about Russia because there’s so much emotions that go into that topic. The right wing, the minute you mention Russia, they’re like, oh, it’s a hoax and all this baggage that comes with it, et cetera. To me, Russia’s not any different than Saudi Arabia or Israel for Trump. You give me money, I like you. You buy my apartments, I like you. If you don’t give me money, I don’t like you. It’s not that complicated. Okay, don’t worry about the Russia part of it. The bottom line is Trump thinks, what do I care about those three regions of Ukraine? I want to get this thing done. He’ll go and he’ll say, “Ukraine, we’re going to withdraw all help unless you agree to a peace deal with Russia, and Russia wants those three regions, that’s the peace deal. That’s it.” Ukraine will lose a part of their country and we get to a peace deal.
Lex Fridman
See, I hope not. I hope not. I think Trump sees themselves and wants to be a great negotiator, and I personally want the death of people to end. And I think Trump would bring that much faster. And I disagree with you, at least my hope is that he would negotiate something that would be fair.
See, I hope not. I hope not. I think Trump sees themselves and wants to be a great negotiator, and I personally want the death of people to end. And I think Trump would bring that much faster. And I disagree with you, at least my hope is that he would negotiate something that would be fair.
Cenk Uygur
His anti-war record is so complicated because moving the embassy in Israel and killing the top Iranian general were super provocative, and they could have easily triggered a giant war there. And then you know what’s going to happen if you get into any kind of real war? Trump’s going to want to prove his buttons larger. Then he’s going to do massive, ridiculous bombings. I worry about nukes. And so we had Giuliani on the show, on the RNC, and I asked him this question. I said, “He keeps saying, ‘Oh, they wouldn’t do it if I was in charge.'” I’m like, “What does that mean? Because it sounds like what it means is they wouldn’t do it because they know if they did it, I would do something insane like attack Russia or use nukes.” And Rudy said, “Yeah, that’s what it means.”
His anti-war record is so complicated because moving the embassy in Israel and killing the top Iranian general were super provocative, and they could have easily triggered a giant war there. And then you know what’s going to happen if you get into any kind of real war? Trump’s going to want to prove his buttons larger. Then he’s going to do massive, ridiculous bombings. I worry about nukes. And so we had Giuliani on the show, on the RNC, and I asked him this question. I said, “He keeps saying, ‘Oh, they wouldn’t do it if I was in charge.'” I’m like, “What does that mean? Because it sounds like what it means is they wouldn’t do it because they know if they did it, I would do something insane like attack Russia or use nukes.” And Rudy said, “Yeah, that’s what it means.”
That means you have to at least bluff that, and you have to get them to believe that he’s a madman. That’s the madman theory of Nixon. And Rudy said that too. He was very clear about it. But the problem is, if you get your bluff called. And so if you actually attack Russia, you’re going to start World War Three. That’s why, yeah, if you could just get away with bluffing, maybe. But he’s playing a very dangerous game, and he massively increased drone strikes. On the other hand, he didn’t bomb Iran further, and on the other hand, he started the process of withdrawal from Afghanistan. Not black and white, complicated record.
And one thing, I’ll give him another piece of credit here. I think I’m taking this steel manning too far, but the credit was that he changed the rhetoric of the right wing. They went from the party of Dick Cheney, War is great, and all Muslims are evil. And so he hates Muslims too, but that’s a different thing. But, oh, we have to attack the enemy. We have to start wars, et cetera. To now the Republican voters are generally anti-war and hate Dick Cheney. Oh, I’ll take it. I’ll take it. That’s a great thing that Trump did, even if he didn’t mean it. Even if he does these provocative things that could lead to a much worse war. Even if I’m worried that he’ll be so reckless he’ll start a bigger war. At least he did that, right, and so I’m happy to have our right wing brothers and sisters join us in the anti-war movement. And I’m not being a jerk about it. I love it.
And so this is another thing the left does wrong from time to time, which is if you agree with a right-winger 2%, they’ll be, “Oh, welcome in. Come on, vote for Trump. Come on in. Yeah, woohoo. Water’s warm.” If you disagree with the left 2%, they’re, “That’s it. You’re banished and you’re a Nazi.” ” Well, brother, how are we going to win an election if you’re banishing everybody there is. Hold up. These Republican voters are coming at your anti-war position. Take the win. “No, they’re [inaudible 03:08:14] and I won’t deal with them.” “Even when they agree with you? That doesn’t make any sense. That doesn’t make any sense. Take the win.” When Charlie Kirk says yes to paid family leave, when Patrick Bette-David on his program roughly says yes to paid family leave, take the win.
RFK Jr
Lex Fridman
RFK Jr. You said some positive things for a while about RFK Jr. and I think you said you would even consider voting for him given the slate of people. This was at the time when Biden was still in. What do you think about him? What do you think about RFK Jr. as a candidate, as a person? He’s been on the show, right? Yeah.
RFK Jr. You said some positive things for a while about RFK Jr. and I think you said you would even consider voting for him given the slate of people. This was at the time when Biden was still in. What do you think about him? What do you think about RFK Jr. as a candidate, as a person? He’s been on the show, right? Yeah.
Cenk Uygur
Yeah, so he was on our show. People loved that interview, you could check it out anytime.
Yeah, so he was on our show. People loved that interview, you could check it out anytime.
Lex Fridman
That’s great.
That’s great.
Cenk Uygur
And why do people love it whether they’re right or left? Because we’re fair. We actually asked him about his policy position, he explained them. I challenge him, and then he explains, and we give him a fair hearing. But I knew Bobby a little bit before he ran when he was an environmental lawyer. And his legal work is excellent, and he’s been on the right side of most of the issues for most of his life. A, I like him on that. Two, on his wildlife, the dead bear and the worms and all that stuff. There’s two important lessons you should get out that. Well, one’s just about Bobby, but the other one’s a general one that’s really important for you to know no matter what you think of Bobby Kennedy.
And why do people love it whether they’re right or left? Because we’re fair. We actually asked him about his policy position, he explained them. I challenge him, and then he explains, and we give him a fair hearing. But I knew Bobby a little bit before he ran when he was an environmental lawyer. And his legal work is excellent, and he’s been on the right side of most of the issues for most of his life. A, I like him on that. Two, on his wildlife, the dead bear and the worms and all that stuff. There’s two important lessons you should get out that. Well, one’s just about Bobby, but the other one’s a general one that’s really important for you to know no matter what you think of Bobby Kennedy.
On the personal front, I have a friend that’s very similar to him. In fact, he’s one of my best friends. And I know why. This is my theory on why Bobby and my friend led a wild life. Both of their dads died young. When my friend’s dad died, he was 18, and his dad died in his arms. And he has a motto, “What is lived cannot be unlived.” If I had a great time and I thought it was hilarious to dump a dead bear in Central Park, then I lived it and I had a great time and nothing you could do about it. And sometimes that’ll get you in trouble, and sometimes you’ll have a fantastic time. And obviously, Bobby’s dad was killed when he was young, and maybe that got into his head of, you better live strong and live an interesting life. And so I don’t begrudge him that. Even if I begrudge some of the things that he did in that life, I get why he did it. I don’t hate him like other people hate him for some of those personal stuff.
And I like him for all the things that he did positive. Holding fossil fuel companies accountable, protecting communities that had poison dumped into the rivers, et cetera. The thing that affects everybody is when he gets… Corporate media smeared the hell out of him, and they didn’t allow him to speak. And then they did the needle in a haystack trick. Whenever it’s an insider, they find the best parts of their lives and then they amplify it. Joe Biden is average Joe from Scranton. Mother fucker’s been in DC for the last 52 years, you think we don’t have eyes and ears? Average Joe from Scranton, who are you kidding?
There’s a guy named Fred Thompson who’s an actor, and he was a senator from Tennessee later. And he had this great little trick that he would do. There’s a red pickup truck that he would campaign with so he looks like a regular Joe. But he’s a millionaire actor. But here’s the funny part. He would drive to the red pickup truck in a limo, and he would drive back from the campaign event in a limo. But the press never reported the limo, they only reported him in the red pickup truck.
Cenk Uygur
Never reported the limo. They only reported him in the red pickup truck, as if that’s what he drives. See, that’s the theater of politics. Why? Because Fred Thompson was a corporate Republican, so they loved him. So they go, “Yeah, sure, yeah, red pickup truck. Oh, good old Fred Thompson, right?” But if you’re an outsider and they don’t like you, then they’re going to look at the haystack of your life and they’re going to try to find needles. So they’ve done this to Trump, they’ve done this to Bernie, they’ve done this to Bobby Kennedy Jr. And with Bobby, they’re like, ooh, there’s some juicy needles in here. So they find those and they go, you see this? The only thing you should know about Bobby, Kennedy Jr. is that he found a dead bear and put it in Central Park. Oh, wait, wait, wait. I found another one.
Never reported the limo. They only reported him in the red pickup truck, as if that’s what he drives. See, that’s the theater of politics. Why? Because Fred Thompson was a corporate Republican, so they loved him. So they go, “Yeah, sure, yeah, red pickup truck. Oh, good old Fred Thompson, right?” But if you’re an outsider and they don’t like you, then they’re going to look at the haystack of your life and they’re going to try to find needles. So they’ve done this to Trump, they’ve done this to Bernie, they’ve done this to Bobby Kennedy Jr. And with Bobby, they’re like, ooh, there’s some juicy needles in here. So they find those and they go, you see this? The only thing you should know about Bobby, Kennedy Jr. is that he found a dead bear and put it in Central Park. Oh, wait, wait, wait. I found another one.
The other thing you should know about Bobby is that he once said in a divorce deposition that he had a brain worm that, by the way, it turns out that affects millions of people and is not that big a deal, right? But look, he is a radical. Ah, he is. This defines him completely. The spectacular case of that actually happened to me. So I ran for Congress in 2020 and The New York Times, LA Times CNN, they all butchered me with needles. Okay? So they said, “He has a long history of making anti-Muslim jokes.” Well, first of all, they didn’t even say jokes. They said anti-Muslim rhetoric. I’m like, I am Muslim. I mean, I’m an atheist, but I grew up Muslim. My family’s Muslim, my background’s Muslim. You don’t think that’s relevant in the story? And they did it based on one joke I told about, and they said, oh, also, of course they say that I’m anti-Semitic, that’s like, you start with that.
That’s just baked in for everyone, right? So they said, I had made a joke about how Orthodox Jews and Muslims, they think that getting into heaven is a little bit of a fashion contest. So the Orthodox Jews go in there with the Russian coats from the 1800s and the giant Russian hat, the Muslims going with their robe and the skull cap and stuff. And God’s looking around going, “No, no, no. Ooh, nice outfit. Come on in.” Right? Do you really think the creator of the universe gives a damn to what you wear? Okay? So New York Times took that and said, “Long history of being anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim.”
Lex Fridman
Right.
Right.
Cenk Uygur
Okay, so there’s this, oh, this is a famous one, relatively. I did a joke about bestiality like a dozen years ago…
Okay, so there’s this, oh, this is a famous one, relatively. I did a joke about bestiality like a dozen years ago…
Lex Fridman
Very nice.
Very nice.
Cenk Uygur
So I started out to joke nice and dry, and I go, “Look, is the horse going to object if he’s the one getting pleasure?” Now, Anna is my co-host. She’s younger at that time, and she’s like, “That seems like a bad idea, Cenk.” I’m like, “Of course it’s a bad idea,” but I’m being dry. But some people are laughing in the studio and stuff. And then I say, “If I was emperor of the world, I would make that legal.” And they cut the tape. If you watch the rest of the tape, I say, “Now, would the horse object? Nah.” But they cut the tape. Originally, a right-winger did that. And then a establishment troll in that primary started putting out those tapes to everyone. Jake Tapper retweeted it, didn’t look to see if it’s edited or not edited. The New York Times implied that bestiality was part of my agenda. Jesus Christ.
So I started out to joke nice and dry, and I go, “Look, is the horse going to object if he’s the one getting pleasure?” Now, Anna is my co-host. She’s younger at that time, and she’s like, “That seems like a bad idea, Cenk.” I’m like, “Of course it’s a bad idea,” but I’m being dry. But some people are laughing in the studio and stuff. And then I say, “If I was emperor of the world, I would make that legal.” And they cut the tape. If you watch the rest of the tape, I say, “Now, would the horse object? Nah.” But they cut the tape. Originally, a right-winger did that. And then a establishment troll in that primary started putting out those tapes to everyone. Jake Tapper retweeted it, didn’t look to see if it’s edited or not edited. The New York Times implied that bestiality was part of my agenda. Jesus Christ.
Lex Fridman
Please tell me that’s part of your Wikipedia. The bestiality thing is part of your…
Please tell me that’s part of your Wikipedia. The bestiality thing is part of your…
Cenk Uygur
I don’t know. I don’t know. But guys, so in those stories, I’m not important. And even Bobby Kennedy Jr. is not important. What it reveals about the media is what’s important. So they’re going to find those needles, whether it’s… And even if they don’t have the needles, you know what? We’ll cut the tape before your joke’s punchline. So we’ll just run it and we’ll lie about you. Who cares, right? And so, oh, they also said that I had David Duke on to share his anti-Semitic point of view. If you watch the interview, I told David Duke, “You’re an anti-Semite. You’re a racist, you’re a bigot. You’re an idiot.” It was the toughest interview he’s probably ever had in his life. And other journalists got mad at that part, and they were like, “No, guys, you’re just flat out lying. I watched the interview. Did any of you watch the interview? He takes the guy’s head off.” And so The New York Times issued a correction on that one. So they’re like, okay, fine. He was being sarcastic when he said, “Sure, you’re not racist, Dave.”
I don’t know. I don’t know. But guys, so in those stories, I’m not important. And even Bobby Kennedy Jr. is not important. What it reveals about the media is what’s important. So they’re going to find those needles, whether it’s… And even if they don’t have the needles, you know what? We’ll cut the tape before your joke’s punchline. So we’ll just run it and we’ll lie about you. Who cares, right? And so, oh, they also said that I had David Duke on to share his anti-Semitic point of view. If you watch the interview, I told David Duke, “You’re an anti-Semite. You’re a racist, you’re a bigot. You’re an idiot.” It was the toughest interview he’s probably ever had in his life. And other journalists got mad at that part, and they were like, “No, guys, you’re just flat out lying. I watched the interview. Did any of you watch the interview? He takes the guy’s head off.” And so The New York Times issued a correction on that one. So they’re like, okay, fine. He was being sarcastic when he said, “Sure, you’re not racist, Dave.”
Lex Fridman
One of the sources of hope to all this is there’s a lot of independent media now, but mainstream media has a lot of power still and carries a lot of power. You think they’re going to die eventually?
One of the sources of hope to all this is there’s a lot of independent media now, but mainstream media has a lot of power still and carries a lot of power. You think they’re going to die eventually?
Cenk Uygur
Yeah, definitely. So two things about that that are super important. First of all, this is why I tell people to have hope. I don’t believe in false hope. So if you think Kamala Harris is your knight in shining armor, and she’s going to come in, she’s going to get money out of politics, she’s going to ignore the donors, that’s false hope. It’s crazy talk, right? So why am I in favor of Kamala Harris? I’m going to live to fight another day. I’m worried that Trump’s going to end the whole thing, and then we’re not going to have an opportunity to actually get a populist to win. And I’m encouraged by some of the things she’s doing, and maybe she does even 25% of her agenda, but I’m not going to give you false hope that she’s your savior. But I believe massively in hope. And number one, it’s true to the point that we were talking about earlier, Lex and how last 200 years have been choppy but overall fantastic.
Yeah, definitely. So two things about that that are super important. First of all, this is why I tell people to have hope. I don’t believe in false hope. So if you think Kamala Harris is your knight in shining armor, and she’s going to come in, she’s going to get money out of politics, she’s going to ignore the donors, that’s false hope. It’s crazy talk, right? So why am I in favor of Kamala Harris? I’m going to live to fight another day. I’m worried that Trump’s going to end the whole thing, and then we’re not going to have an opportunity to actually get a populist to win. And I’m encouraged by some of the things she’s doing, and maybe she does even 25% of her agenda, but I’m not going to give you false hope that she’s your savior. But I believe massively in hope. And number one, it’s true to the point that we were talking about earlier, Lex and how last 200 years have been choppy but overall fantastic.
The Young Turks
Terrible things have happened in that time period. Some of the worst things that have ever happened in history. But overall life expectancy is higher, incomes are higher, health is better, et cetera. So hope is not misplaced. It’s real. It’s empirical. So now we talked about how you could get money out of politics, and that’s a legitimate hope, but media is another place where we have huge hope. So of all the corporate robots, the most important robot is media. So when mainstream media has you hooked in at the back of your neck, you’re going to believe all these fairy tales about how politicians are nice people and they’re trying to do the right thing, and donor money doesn’t have any influence on them. So once you unplug from the matrix, well then you begin to see, oh yeah, hey, look, he took the donor money, did what the donors wanted, he took the donor money, did what the donors want, 98% of the time.
So then you see clearly. So now what’s happening at large, mainstream media is losing their power. And now online media, swarming, swarming, swarming, swarming. And so this goes back to why I started the Young Turks. So let me touch on that here and then we can come back to it if you want. So in 1998, I write an email to my friends and I say, “Online video is going to be television.” And unsurprisingly, and they say, “You’re nuts. That’s never going to happen.” At that point, we’re still doing AOL dial-ups, like… Online video barely exists and television’s mammoth. I say, “Guys, it’s just a matter of logic.” For me, there’s so many ironies, I’m known for yelling online sometimes, but in reality, I’m obsessed with logic. So when you have gatekeepers, gatekeepers pick based on what they want, what the powerful want, in that case, advertisers, politicians, et cetera, they’re never going to design programming as good as wisdom of the crowd.
When people start doing online video, I’m like, boom, there’s no gatekeepers. This is democratized. Wisdom of the crowd’s going to win. So if you start with no money… And let’s pick a different example, not the Young Turks. Let’s say Phil DeFranco. He’s been around forever and he also does news. And so Phil starts doing a show and he doesn’t have any money, he’s just like us. And so what does he have to do to get an audience? He has to do a show that is really popular. He’s got to figure out a way, how do I get their attention? How do I keep their attention? And he starts doing a great show. And so every year it’s us and Phil for best news show for like a decade.
And meanwhile, I’m back over at CNN, Wolf Blitzer still droning on from a teleprompter. You put Wolf Blitzer online without the force of CNN with him, he gets negative seven views. No one’s interested in what Wolf Blitzer has to say. It’s not personal. I don’t know the brother. I’m just saying institutionally, logically, et cetera. So I’m like, these guys are going to win. So when YouTube starts, we go on YouTube right away. We’re the first YouTube partner. So I am literally the original YouTuber, okay?
Lex Fridman
Nice.
Nice.
Cenk Uygur
Susan Wojcicki, the former CEO, the late Susan Wojcicki, a wonderful woman. And if that triggers you again on the right, you’re wrong. She was a terrific person. And when she started her own YouTube channel, I was the first interview ’cause we were the first YouTube partner. So I love that. But let me connect it back to the hope. When mainstream media has you hooked, you got no hope because you don’t have the right information. You have propaganda, you have marketing, you don’t have real news. When you’re in the online world, it’s chaotic. And don’t get me wrong, it’s got plenty of downsides. But within that chaos, the truth begins to emerge. And so for example, Young Turks has had dozens of fights with different creators throughout history. Why? When you’re number one in news online, the algorithm rewards anyone attacking you because then you get into their algorithmic loop.
Susan Wojcicki, the former CEO, the late Susan Wojcicki, a wonderful woman. And if that triggers you again on the right, you’re wrong. She was a terrific person. And when she started her own YouTube channel, I was the first interview ’cause we were the first YouTube partner. So I love that. But let me connect it back to the hope. When mainstream media has you hooked, you got no hope because you don’t have the right information. You have propaganda, you have marketing, you don’t have real news. When you’re in the online world, it’s chaotic. And don’t get me wrong, it’s got plenty of downsides. But within that chaos, the truth begins to emerge. And so for example, Young Turks has had dozens of fights with different creators throughout history. Why? When you’re number one in news online, the algorithm rewards anyone attacking you because then you get into their algorithmic loop.
It’s not an accident that we’ve been attacked dozens of times. One, we’re independent thinkers. So anyone, if we don’t match their ideology, they’re going to attack us. But number two, they get in our algorithm loop. It’s too hard to resist. So all of a sudden they think that we’re being funded by Nancy Pelosi or the CIA, and oh, we’re off to the races. There’s another fight. But our competition is a graveyard. And so we’ve won almost all of those fights. Why? Because we try really hard to stick with the truth, with logic, and we don’t do audience capture. Even if our audience is going in one direction, we don’t think it’s right. Anna and I will come out and go, “No, sorry guys. Love you, but rent control is not a good idea,” et cetera. So in that world, the people, it’s going to take a while, guys, but people who are telling the truth are eventually going to rise up.
And when they do, now we’re free. Now, the second part is even more devastating for mainstream media, because I’m a businessman, I keep looking at the revenue for CNN cetera, and they have a massive problem, and people don’t realize how big the problem is. That thing’s going to capsize. I don’t talk about it often because I don’t want more competition. I also have a company in the online world, et cetera, but I’m too honest, I got to say it. I got to say it. So they have two revenue streams. One is ads. That’s why they serve advertisers and politicians are huge advertisers as we mentioned. The second revenue stream, depending on the company, is arguably more important, which is subscribers. So now what happens in a business normally is, so they started out low and then they got high, and now they got a ton of subscribers.
At its peak cable has a hundred million households. So they’re raking in unbelievable money from subscriber fees, and they got advertising on top. So when you’re all the way up here, your costs start to rise. Why do they rise? Because then the on-air talent has leverage. And as an example, there’s many others. And so the on-air talent, like Sean Hannity says, “I do a program that brings in X amount of maybe a hundred million, maybe 200 million, so give me 40 million a year.” And they do. Sean is making 40 million a year last I checked, okay? So I don’t know if he’s still getting that kind of money, and I’m just spacing out on reporting, but that’s a monster. So they have all these giant costs, but the minute you go from a hundred million, now I think around 70 million, you just lost a giant chunk of your revenue. Now when your costs are higher than your revenue, nighty night, it’s been nice knowing you.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, it’s going to collapse and it’s going to be painful.
Yeah, it’s going to collapse and it’s going to be painful.
Cenk Uygur
But what we need guys is, sorry, last thing on that is, we need the print guys like AP, Reuters, Intercept, The Lever, [inaudible 03:25:13] Runs whatever Ryan’s working on now, [inaudible 03:25:15] Ryan Grim said it. We need those badly. We need someone to collect actual information and do the best they can in presenting it in an objective way. We all got to support that. So you can’t lose text, that’s so important. The TV guys are just actors. You can lose them overnight and it won’t hurt you. It’ll help you.
But what we need guys is, sorry, last thing on that is, we need the print guys like AP, Reuters, Intercept, The Lever, [inaudible 03:25:13] Runs whatever Ryan’s working on now, [inaudible 03:25:15] Ryan Grim said it. We need those badly. We need someone to collect actual information and do the best they can in presenting it in an objective way. We all got to support that. So you can’t lose text, that’s so important. The TV guys are just actors. You can lose them overnight and it won’t hurt you. It’ll help you.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, it’s going to be a messy battle for truth, because the reality is there’s a lot of money to be made and a lot of attention to be gained from drama farming. So just constantly creating drama. And sometimes drama helps find the truth like we were mentioning, but most of the time it’s just drama and it doesn’t care about the truth. It just cares about drama. And then the same as conspiracy theories. Now, some conspiracy theories have value and depth, and they allow us to question the institutions, but the bottom line is conspiracy theories get clicks. And so you can just keep coming up random conspiracy theories, many of them don’t have to be grounded in the truth at all. And so that’s the sea we’re operating in. And so it’s a tricky space too.
Yeah, it’s going to be a messy battle for truth, because the reality is there’s a lot of money to be made and a lot of attention to be gained from drama farming. So just constantly creating drama. And sometimes drama helps find the truth like we were mentioning, but most of the time it’s just drama and it doesn’t care about the truth. It just cares about drama. And then the same as conspiracy theories. Now, some conspiracy theories have value and depth, and they allow us to question the institutions, but the bottom line is conspiracy theories get clicks. And so you can just keep coming up random conspiracy theories, many of them don’t have to be grounded in the truth at all. And so that’s the sea we’re operating in. And so it’s a tricky space too.
Joe Rogan
Cenk Uygur
But Lex, look at all the people who are the biggest now, because we’ve now had a couple of decades at this, and I mean as an industry. So I would argue you’re huge and you don’t do that. You don’t do the conspiracy theories. You don’t do the drama at all. Rogan is huge. Yeah, maybe there’s drama, but he’s genuine. I got a lot of issues with some of his policies. I’ve mixed opinions on Joe in a lot of different ways, but I don’t doubt that he’s genuine and people can sense that. And he’s huge. We’re genuine, we’re huge. So this is the market beginning to work.
But Lex, look at all the people who are the biggest now, because we’ve now had a couple of decades at this, and I mean as an industry. So I would argue you’re huge and you don’t do that. You don’t do the conspiracy theories. You don’t do the drama at all. Rogan is huge. Yeah, maybe there’s drama, but he’s genuine. I got a lot of issues with some of his policies. I’ve mixed opinions on Joe in a lot of different ways, but I don’t doubt that he’s genuine and people can sense that. And he’s huge. We’re genuine, we’re huge. So this is the market beginning to work.
Lex Fridman
So speaking of Joe, let me ask you about this.
So speaking of Joe, let me ask you about this.
Cenk Uygur
Here we go.
Here we go.
Lex Fridman
I didn’t actually know this, but when I was prepping for this conversation, I saw that you actually said at some point in the past that you can beat up Rogan in a fight.
I didn’t actually know this, but when I was prepping for this conversation, I saw that you actually said at some point in the past that you can beat up Rogan in a fight.
Cenk Uygur
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
No, you said that you have a shot. It’s a non-zero probability.
No, you said that you have a shot. It’s a non-zero probability.
Cenk Uygur
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
Do you still believe this?
Do you still believe this?
Cenk Uygur
Yes. But the probability is dropping. It’s dropping every day.
Yes. But the probability is dropping. It’s dropping every day.
Lex Fridman
I think it’s probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard you say. I wrestled and did Jiu-Jitsu and judo and all the kinds of fighting sports my whole life. And I just observed a lot of really confident, large guys roll into gyms. He’s ripped, he could deadlift, he could talk all kinds of shit. And he beliefs he’s going to be the next world champion and he just gets his ass kicked.
I think it’s probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard you say. I wrestled and did Jiu-Jitsu and judo and all the kinds of fighting sports my whole life. And I just observed a lot of really confident, large guys roll into gyms. He’s ripped, he could deadlift, he could talk all kinds of shit. And he beliefs he’s going to be the next world champion and he just gets his ass kicked.
Cenk Uygur
Yeah, of course. Okay. And I saw this Israeli MMA fighter take on an anti-Semite who was huge and thought that… He believed in Nick Fuentes conspiracy theories or something. And the MMA fighter dismantled him, and I loved it. And then we tweeted back and forth, et cetera. So guys, first, let me just assure you, I get it. So now let me tell you why I said it and then why I think it’s a non-zero chance. So Michael Smerconish had written this blog, I don’t know, 10, 15 years ago on Huffington Post. We were both bloggers at that point and about the wussification of America.
Yeah, of course. Okay. And I saw this Israeli MMA fighter take on an anti-Semite who was huge and thought that… He believed in Nick Fuentes conspiracy theories or something. And the MMA fighter dismantled him, and I loved it. And then we tweeted back and forth, et cetera. So guys, first, let me just assure you, I get it. So now let me tell you why I said it and then why I think it’s a non-zero chance. So Michael Smerconish had written this blog, I don’t know, 10, 15 years ago on Huffington Post. We were both bloggers at that point and about the wussification of America.
Now, he was saying the left is a bunch of wussies, right? So I wrote a blog saying, “Hey, Michael, I would rather debate you. So if you want to debate about how we’re wussies, let’s do it. Let’s find them. But you are mentioning physicality and how you guys are tougher. So if you prefer only in a prescribed setting, and we’re not going to go do it in the streets like idiots, but if you want, we’ll have a boxing match or whatever you want, and we’ll see who’s tougher.”
And he panicked and he cried to mommy, which was Ariana Huffington, and said, “Oh, Cenk’s intimidating me.” Okay, all right, well who’s the wussy now, bitch? So that is not to actually get into a fight with poor Michael Smerconish, right? It’s to prove, hey, don’t use rhetoric like that. That’s dumb. And this is me proving that it’s dumb. Okay? So now Joe had said, I forget what he said at the time, and he said something similar. And I’m up to hear with Joe at that point. I don’t know if we’ll ever talk yet, right?
Lex Fridman
But you’ve been in a show and that was a good conversation.
But you’ve been in a show and that was a good conversation.
Cenk Uygur
It was a great conversation.
It was a great conversation.
Lex Fridman
That was a while back. Yeah.
That was a while back. Yeah.
Cenk Uygur
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
I hope he has you on again.
I hope he has you on again.
Cenk Uygur
Yeah. So I get it.
Yeah. So I get it.
Lex Fridman
I bet you I don’t like this take you have, a lot. I bet you he hates it because him as an MMA commentator, he gets to hear so many bros.
I bet you I don’t like this take you have, a lot. I bet you he hates it because him as an MMA commentator, he gets to hear so many bros.
Cenk Uygur
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Lex Fridman
It’s all about the mindset, bro. Now, to [inaudible 03:30:06], the point you’re making, which I do think it’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said, but the actual intent, which is whether you’re left or right, there’s strong people on the left, mentally strong, physically strong. I think the whole point is not that you can beat them, but you are willing to fight if you need to.
It’s all about the mindset, bro. Now, to [inaudible 03:30:06], the point you’re making, which I do think it’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said, but the actual intent, which is whether you’re left or right, there’s strong people on the left, mentally strong, physically strong. I think the whole point is not that you can beat them, but you are willing to fight if you need to.
Cenk Uygur
A hundred percent.
A hundred percent.
Lex Fridman
So it’s not like I believe I could beat him, it’s like all this calling the people on the left wussies or whatever. I’m willing to step in the fight, even if I’m on train, even if I’m a out of shape, I’m willing to fight. Yeah, I get it. I understand that. But it’s just pick a different person. That’s why I wrote down my genuine curiosity is if you can beat up Alex, Alex Jones versus Cenk, the legitimate is I would pay for that. Because you’re both untrained. You both got I would say, the spirit.
So it’s not like I believe I could beat him, it’s like all this calling the people on the left wussies or whatever. I’m willing to step in the fight, even if I’m on train, even if I’m a out of shape, I’m willing to fight. Yeah, I get it. I understand that. But it’s just pick a different person. That’s why I wrote down my genuine curiosity is if you can beat up Alex, Alex Jones versus Cenk, the legitimate is I would pay for that. Because you’re both untrained. You both got I would say, the spirit.
Cenk Uygur
No, no. Look, I’ll give the same fairness. I think I got an 8% chance of being beating Rogan.
No, no. Look, I’ll give the same fairness. I think I got an 8% chance of being beating Rogan.
Lex Fridman
You’re [inaudible 03:31:12].
You’re [inaudible 03:31:12].
Cenk Uygur
I know, I got it. Hold on.
I know, I got it. Hold on.
Lex Fridman
All right.
All right.
Cenk Uygur
And I think to be fair, Alex has an 8% chance of beating me.
And I think to be fair, Alex has an 8% chance of beating me.
Lex Fridman
Oh, wow. Okay.
Oh, wow. Okay.
Cenk Uygur
Yeah. Because you never know. He catches you on a lucky punch. I got punched in the ear once and you lose your balance and then you’re in a lot of trouble. So I can get lucky. Alex Jones can get lucky. It’s me against Rogan is harder. If you said to me you don’t have 8% chance, but Alex does. Okay, I’m not going to… It’s fine. So why does Alex stand almost no chance, if you ask me. So first of all, it’s not just because I’m big and he’s big. One, I wrestled.
Yeah. Because you never know. He catches you on a lucky punch. I got punched in the ear once and you lose your balance and then you’re in a lot of trouble. So I can get lucky. Alex Jones can get lucky. It’s me against Rogan is harder. If you said to me you don’t have 8% chance, but Alex does. Okay, I’m not going to… It’s fine. So why does Alex stand almost no chance, if you ask me. So first of all, it’s not just because I’m big and he’s big. One, I wrestled.
Lex Fridman
Oh, you wrestled?
Oh, you wrestled?
Cenk Uygur
Yeah, if you wrestle then… I watched this show with my kids, Physical 100, it’s like a Korean show where they try to find out who’s the best athlete. They have one thing where they have to wrestle away the ball and keep it, this big giant ball. I’m like, every wrestler is going to win. Every MMA fighter is going to win. And every time they win and they’re like, “Dad, how’d you know that?” Because we get trained, we’re not going to lose to a non-wrestler in a wrestling contest. It’s not going to happen. So you can get lucky, but it’s unlikely. So one, wrestling, now, that was from a long time ago, but at least the mechanics, right? Number two, I’ve gotten into about 30 actual street fights in my life. And you can say street fights not the same as MMA, of course, that’s true. Obviously true, right? But it’s not no experience, it’s some experience. And the most important part of a street fight is being able to take a punch to the face.
Yeah, if you wrestle then… I watched this show with my kids, Physical 100, it’s like a Korean show where they try to find out who’s the best athlete. They have one thing where they have to wrestle away the ball and keep it, this big giant ball. I’m like, every wrestler is going to win. Every MMA fighter is going to win. And every time they win and they’re like, “Dad, how’d you know that?” Because we get trained, we’re not going to lose to a non-wrestler in a wrestling contest. It’s not going to happen. So you can get lucky, but it’s unlikely. So one, wrestling, now, that was from a long time ago, but at least the mechanics, right? Number two, I’ve gotten into about 30 actual street fights in my life. And you can say street fights not the same as MMA, of course, that’s true. Obviously true, right? But it’s not no experience, it’s some experience. And the most important part of a street fight is being able to take a punch to the face.
Lex Fridman
Knowing what it feels like to get punched in the face, yeah.
Knowing what it feels like to get punched in the face, yeah.
Cenk Uygur
So I’ve been punched in the face, I don’t know, dozens of times in my life. I used to start fights by saying, “I’ll let you take the first punch.” So I didn’t start the fights, they just started ’cause they punched me in the face. And then for Alex, the main thing, and also true for Rogan, is it’s about willpower. So if Joe has a 92% chance, in my opinion, of knocking me out or beating me, because he has the skill and he’s trained and he knows what he’s doing. So all the willpower in the world isn’t going to help you if you get kicked upside the head, right? But in the unlikely circumstances that I’ve worn him down, then I’m a little bit more in the ball game ’cause I got willpower. For Alex, he doesn’t have the willpower I have, okay? Because to me, the idea of losing to Alex Jones is unthinkable. I would do anything not to lose, anything.
So I’ve been punched in the face, I don’t know, dozens of times in my life. I used to start fights by saying, “I’ll let you take the first punch.” So I didn’t start the fights, they just started ’cause they punched me in the face. And then for Alex, the main thing, and also true for Rogan, is it’s about willpower. So if Joe has a 92% chance, in my opinion, of knocking me out or beating me, because he has the skill and he’s trained and he knows what he’s doing. So all the willpower in the world isn’t going to help you if you get kicked upside the head, right? But in the unlikely circumstances that I’ve worn him down, then I’m a little bit more in the ball game ’cause I got willpower. For Alex, he doesn’t have the willpower I have, okay? Because to me, the idea of losing to Alex Jones is unthinkable. I would do anything not to lose, anything.
Lex Fridman
Let me just say, so that’s beautiful. I love this. I would pay a lot of money to watch the two of you just even wrestle. But with Joe, I think I have to say, it’s like it 0.0001% chance, you have a chance before you even get to the mentality. And the other thing is, on the mentality side, one of the fascinating things about Joe is he’s actually a sweetheart in person, like this. But there’s something that takes over him when he competes.
Let me just say, so that’s beautiful. I love this. I would pay a lot of money to watch the two of you just even wrestle. But with Joe, I think I have to say, it’s like it 0.0001% chance, you have a chance before you even get to the mentality. And the other thing is, on the mentality side, one of the fascinating things about Joe is he’s actually a sweetheart in person, like this. But there’s something that takes over him when he competes.
Cenk Uygur
Brother, we’ve been around 22 years in the toughest industry in the world.
Brother, we’ve been around 22 years in the toughest industry in the world.
Lex Fridman
I understand, yeah.
I understand, yeah.
Cenk Uygur
If you have any idea how hard it’s to run a 75 person company and make money online and survive after all the guys who took billions of dollars went down.
If you have any idea how hard it’s to run a 75 person company and make money online and survive after all the guys who took billions of dollars went down.
Lex Fridman
I hear you.
I hear you.
Cenk Uygur
Tremendous willpower. But overall, this is not the hill I’m dying on. Okay? Joe would win, I get it.
Tremendous willpower. But overall, this is not the hill I’m dying on. Okay? Joe would win, I get it.
Lex Fridman
I think we’re all allowed one kind of blind spot, I suppose.
I think we’re all allowed one kind of blind spot, I suppose.
Cenk Uygur
So you don’t think a big guy that still is in good shape, that was a wrestler that’s been on a lot of street fights, you still think 0.0001?
So you don’t think a big guy that still is in good shape, that was a wrestler that’s been on a lot of street fights, you still think 0.0001?
Lex Fridman
It depends on the street fights. But yeah, 0.001. I just see technique-
It depends on the street fights. But yeah, 0.001. I just see technique-
Cenk Uygur
Okay, yeah. And it’s such a minute disagreement because, so take me out of it. So you take out the willpower part of blah, blah, blah. I think it’s one to 2%. Yeah, he could catch the guy on about and get lucky.
Okay, yeah. And it’s such a minute disagreement because, so take me out of it. So you take out the willpower part of blah, blah, blah. I think it’s one to 2%. Yeah, he could catch the guy on about and get lucky.
Lex Fridman
I think it’s because I’ve talked to… So I trained with a coach named John Donaher, and we talk about this a lot. And I think technique is the thing that also feeds the willpower. It actually builds up your confidence in the way that nothing else does in the more actionable way, because you won’t need that much willpower.
I think it’s because I’ve talked to… So I trained with a coach named John Donaher, and we talk about this a lot. And I think technique is the thing that also feeds the willpower. It actually builds up your confidence in the way that nothing else does in the more actionable way, because you won’t need that much willpower.
Cenk Uygur
No.
No.
Lex Fridman
If the technique is backed, you don’t have to be a tough guy to win debates if you’re just fucking good at debates. So I think people just don’t understand the value in sport and especially in combat of technique.
If the technique is backed, you don’t have to be a tough guy to win debates if you’re just fucking good at debates. So I think people just don’t understand the value in sport and especially in combat of technique.
Cenk Uygur
Now, a great irony is I actually totally agree with that. That’s why made a mention of the Physical 100. Technique’s going to win almost every time. We’re having a debate about whether it’s eight or one or 0.01, it’s either way, technique wins. We agree.
Now, a great irony is I actually totally agree with that. That’s why made a mention of the Physical 100. Technique’s going to win almost every time. We’re having a debate about whether it’s eight or one or 0.01, it’s either way, technique wins. We agree.
Propaganda
Lex Fridman
Okay, beautiful. One of the controversial things you’ve done, in the nineties as a student at UPenn, you publicly denied the Armenian Genocide, which is the mass murder of over a million Armenians in 1915 and ’16 in the Ottoman Empire. You have since then publicly and clearly changed your mind on this. Tell me the process you went through to change your mind.
Okay, beautiful. One of the controversial things you’ve done, in the nineties as a student at UPenn, you publicly denied the Armenian Genocide, which is the mass murder of over a million Armenians in 1915 and ’16 in the Ottoman Empire. You have since then publicly and clearly changed your mind on this. Tell me the process you went through to change your mind.
Cenk Uygur
So when you’re a kid, you’re taught a whole bunch of things. That’s the software that we talked about earlier. So cultural software is media, family, friends, social media, et cetera. And so growing up in any tribe, whether it’s a religious tribe or an ethnic tribe, you are going to get indoctrinated into that tribe’s way of thinking. So you take a Turkish person who’s super progressive, loves Bernie, believes with all their heart and peace, and you tell them something about Kurds and they’ll say, “Oh no, not those guys. They’re terrible and evil and we have to do what we do to them.” You see, that’s the tribe taking over.
So when you’re a kid, you’re taught a whole bunch of things. That’s the software that we talked about earlier. So cultural software is media, family, friends, social media, et cetera. And so growing up in any tribe, whether it’s a religious tribe or an ethnic tribe, you are going to get indoctrinated into that tribe’s way of thinking. So you take a Turkish person who’s super progressive, loves Bernie, believes with all their heart and peace, and you tell them something about Kurds and they’ll say, “Oh no, not those guys. They’re terrible and evil and we have to do what we do to them.” You see, that’s the tribe taking over.
And so you tell any religious person what’s wrong with the other religions, they’re like, “Oh, yeah, yeah, that’s totally true.” You get to their religion, tribe takes over, “No, how dare you. I’m offended.” So I grew up with Turkish propaganda. So I’ll tell you a couple of funny instances of it. When we were kids, we’d go to Turkish American Day Parade. I’m like 10 or 12 years old, it’s in the middle of New York because I grew up in Jersey. That’s why I got in all those fights.
And we would chant in Turkish, Turkey is the biggest country. There’s no other country that’s even big. And I was like, this is crazy. I’m like, “Dad, isn’t this crazy? America’s big, China’s big. Why are we chanting this nonsensical chant?” So that’s the beginning of beginning to realize your indoctrination. I’m in college and I read about some battle that the Ottoman Empire lost, and I’m like, that can’t be right. The Turks have only lost one war, World War I, right? And I was like, oh my God, I’m an idiot. I got taught that in third grade in Turkey. Of course, that’s not true. That’s ridiculously untrue. All those thoughts are in your head, you don’t even realize it. And so on the Armenian Genocide, I read the Turkish version, and the Turkish version has all of these as evidence. So it’s real in that it exists.
But here, I’ll give you a great example of it. I think it was Colonel Chesters, some random American military guy after World War I and he says about the Armenians after the mass march, the forced marches, he says, “They returned to the area fat and entirely unmassacred.” Okay? I’m like, Hey, that’s an American Colonel that’s saying that. So that’s obviously true. You see that it didn’t happen, or at least in the way that the Armenians say. Now as a grownup, I look at it and I go, are you kidding me? That guy’s obviously trying to get a contract with the Turkish government, right? Nobody returns from a forced march fat and entirely unmassacred, right? So that’s propaganda. And that one was so indoctrinated that it was tough to let go. So in at Penn, I write that op ed, et cetera, and then over the course of time… And so Anna and I disagree on things from time to time, and we’ve been co-hosting now for… She’s been at the Young Turks for 18 years and co-hosting for almost 18.
And so she’s Armenian. And by the way, I love America. Look, we came to America because we love this country, land of hope and opportunity. That’s part of why I fight so hard for the average American, for the American idea. So here’s a Turk and an Armenian doing a show together, and it becomes the number one online news show. That’s the beauty of America. So she’s telling me things and we’re having some on-air discussions about it, et cetera. And then it just dawned on me like, no, this too was obviously propaganda. So at that point, once you realize that, it becomes easier. That’s why I’m trying to unplug people from the matrix, because once you realize it’s propaganda, oh my God, it gets infinitely easier to start telling what’s true or not true.
Lex Fridman
So maybe by way of advice, how do you know when you’re deluded by propaganda? How do you know when you’re not plugged into the matrix, when you’re plugged into the matrix?
So maybe by way of advice, how do you know when you’re deluded by propaganda? How do you know when you’re not plugged into the matrix, when you’re plugged into the matrix?
Cenk Uygur
You have to keep testing it against objective reality. They said something, did it happen or did it not happen? So here, here’s an easy one. Alex Jones for a long time, especially under Obama, kept saying. “They’re going to put us on FEMA camps. I tell you, they’re going to stuff us all in the FEMA camps, and they’re going to put us there, they’re going to let us out. I know it. I know for sure.” Nobody’s been in a FEMA camp. Obama left, there was no FEMA camps. So when I asked for the right wing conspiracy guys, “Guys, has any of their things ever come true? They always say all these crazy things that never, ever happened. So the third time it doesn’t happen, can you please start to wonder, maybe I’m on the wrong side.” But that’s not just for right-wingers, that’s easy, right?
You have to keep testing it against objective reality. They said something, did it happen or did it not happen? So here, here’s an easy one. Alex Jones for a long time, especially under Obama, kept saying. “They’re going to put us on FEMA camps. I tell you, they’re going to stuff us all in the FEMA camps, and they’re going to put us there, they’re going to let us out. I know it. I know for sure.” Nobody’s been in a FEMA camp. Obama left, there was no FEMA camps. So when I asked for the right wing conspiracy guys, “Guys, has any of their things ever come true? They always say all these crazy things that never, ever happened. So the third time it doesn’t happen, can you please start to wonder, maybe I’m on the wrong side.” But that’s not just for right-wingers, that’s easy, right?
But it’s also for mainstream media, and that’s where I get the biggest pushback. Because my tribe is what the kids call PMC, professional management class, okay? Their careers, you go up the ladder, you have this route, that route, et cetera. And so for that class, the status quo is pretty good. So when Biden gives you 15% change, you’re like, what else do y’all want? That’s amazing. He just course corrected a little bit, now it’s perfect. But for the average guy who needs a hundred percent change, not 15, they look at it and they go, what the fuck? He only did 15% and everybody’s declaring him a hero. So those are the hardest guys to get through on. And those are the guys who get most mad at me, not the right-wingers, the establishment. That’s why I’m nails on a chalkboard for them because I’m on the left, but I call out their crap and their marketing and propaganda.
And that’s why I mentioned earlier, he might not even consciously know it, but no one dislikes Bernie more than Obama because if Bernie got into office, he’d embarrass Obama by doing a lot more change. And Obama told us the change wasn’t possible. He could only get 5%. And so if Bernie does 50%, then Obama’s humiliated and his record and his legacy is ruined. So I don’t think he makes that conscious decision, but his subconscious, it’s a way of thinking. So if you’re watching Morning Joe, test them, he says something that Biden is for $15 minimum wage. When Biden takes it out of the bill, know that Morning Joe was lying to you. He says that Biden said he was for the public option, but he never even proposed it. When Morning Joe still defends him and you see an objective reality, Biden didn’t actually propose that bill, you know that they’re lying to. Test it against objective reality. Did it actually happen or didn’t it?
Conspiracy theories
Lex Fridman
I mean, there’s some of that [inaudible 03:43:23], some of the conspiracy theories. Do you think there’s some value to the conspiracy theories that come from the right, but actually more so come from the anti-establishment? For me, there’s a lot that raise a bit of a question. A lot of them could probably be explained by corporatism and the military industrial complex. But there’s also a lot of them could be explained by creepiness and shadiness in human nature. Epstein is an example of that. There’s a lot of ways to explain Epstein, including the basic creepiness of human nature.
I mean, there’s some of that [inaudible 03:43:23], some of the conspiracy theories. Do you think there’s some value to the conspiracy theories that come from the right, but actually more so come from the anti-establishment? For me, there’s a lot that raise a bit of a question. A lot of them could probably be explained by corporatism and the military industrial complex. But there’s also a lot of them could be explained by creepiness and shadiness in human nature. Epstein is an example of that. There’s a lot of ways to explain Epstein, including the basic creepiness of human nature.
Lex Fridman
… including the basic creepiness of human nature. But there could be bigger explanations underlying it.
… including the basic creepiness of human nature. But there could be bigger explanations underlying it.
Cenk Uygur
Sometimes when we have long, thoughtful conversations like this, I’ll say it depends a lot.
Sometimes when we have long, thoughtful conversations like this, I’ll say it depends a lot.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Cenk Uygur
And then people get frustrated by that. But then, you’re frustrated by the world because it depends.
And then people get frustrated by that. But then, you’re frustrated by the world because it depends.
So, conspiracy theories. If you say, “Are they all right or are they all wrong? Are any of the questions wrong?” It depends what is the conspiracy theory. If it’s some of the absurd ones we’ve mentioned here, God, it’s easily disproven. On the other hand, there’s a conspiracy theory about JFK’s assassination. Which one is the conspiracy theory? That Lee Harvey Oswald, from 12 miles away, shot a magic bullet that went like this and hit 13 people, and came out Kennedy’s brain? Or that the government might have wanted to cover up an assassination of the President for whatever reason? Come on.
Now, I’m of course doing hyperbole. The JFK enthusiasts will be like, “No, it didn’t. The bullet actually go like this. It didn’t actually hit 13 people.” I’m kidding, guys. But in terms of is that conspiracy theory real, that JFK was not just killed by Lee Harvey Oswald? Almost certainly. If you read real books, with tons of information, the most likely culprit is Allen Dulles, the head of the CIA that he hired. Back when there was a deep state, there actually was a deep state. They did coups against other countries’ leaders all the time. But they tell us, “Oh, they wouldn’t do it to our own leader.” But remember, it’s not the CIA. He’d left the CIA already.
I don’t know if it was ex-CIA guys, I don’t know if the Mob was involved. I don’t know any of those details. But I know some things that are obvious. That bullet didn’t magically hit him from over there. Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald. Jack Ruby was a mobster who, on the record, had said that he hated Kennedy. All of a sudden, he became patriotic overnight and shot the assailant, who was unguarded. Maybe. Less likely.
Okay, so let’s speed up though. My point is, yeah, some conspiracy theories could be true. It depends on objective reality. You get to Epstein. Again, I always do it ahead of time because I want you to test me and see does it match objective reality. I said the minute that it happened, you’ll have your answer based on whether the video in the hallway worked or not. If the video in the hallway works, they’ll be just as many conspiracy theories, but it’ll actually show actually who went in and didn’t go in. But if the video in the hallway doesn’t work, they definitely killed him.
A couple of days later, “Oh, the video in that particular hallway happened to not be working. The guards both happened to be on break at the same time. And the most notorious pedophile criminal in the country happened to be unguarded. That is the one time he decided to hang himself.” Listen, man. The only way you believe that is you got mainstream media to get you to believe that the minute the phrase conspiracy theory is mentioned, you have to shut off your mind. And you have to believe whatever the media tells you.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. Well, it’s interesting, you just mentioned. Do you think the CIA has not grown in power?
Yeah. Well, it’s interesting, you just mentioned. Do you think the CIA has not grown in power?
Cenk Uygur
No, no. They’ve greatly waned in power.
No, no. They’ve greatly waned in power.
Lex Fridman
Interesting.
Interesting.
Cenk Uygur
In the old days, the CIA has an actual deep state, because the country was run by a bunch of families. You go to Yale, the Skull and Bones thing was real. You go to Harvard. Look at the Dulles family. Half of them go into government, the other half go into banking. Why are the Central American countries called the Banana Republics? Because we, America, did a coup against one of those countries because a banana company wanted it. Because they’re like, “How dare you charge whatever you want for your natural resource? We American corporations have the right to all of your natural resources at the lowest possible rate.”
In the old days, the CIA has an actual deep state, because the country was run by a bunch of families. You go to Yale, the Skull and Bones thing was real. You go to Harvard. Look at the Dulles family. Half of them go into government, the other half go into banking. Why are the Central American countries called the Banana Republics? Because we, America, did a coup against one of those countries because a banana company wanted it. Because they’re like, “How dare you charge whatever you want for your natural resource? We American corporations have the right to all of your natural resources at the lowest possible rate.”
“Allen, get rid of these guys.” And Allen would. And sometimes, they would go extra judicial, like potentially with the JFK assassination. By the way, if you pissed off J. Edgar Hoover, he was just going to put a bullet in your head and we were done with you. Fred Hampton, among others.
But nowadays, that’s not how the world works. A small number of families cannot control a country and an economy this size. New people pop up. Well, Mark Zuckerberg wasn’t part of those families. Elon Musk wasn’t part of those families. Neither was Bezos. For you to believe those conspiracy theories, you have to think that Bezos and Musk, et cetera, were like, “Oh, you guys are still running the country? No problem. Go ahead.” They’re not going to do that.
Now we’ve gotten into a system where it’s the invisible hand of the market that runs the country. But unfortunately, it’s only for the powerful. It’s more of a machine. This is super interesting and ties to what we were talking about earlier, Lex. Which is that they don’t do political assassinations anymore. They do character assassinations. That’s the needle in the haystack thing.
If you do an assassination of someone, you build up their status. They become a martyr and you build up their cause. But if you do a character assassination, you smear the cause with the person. The cause goes down, not up. The market found a better way of getting rid of agitating outsiders.
Lex Fridman
Well, that’s one of the conspiracy theories with Epstein, is that he’s a front for, I guess CIA, and they’re getting data on people, like creepy pedophile kind of data. They can use to then threaten character assassination, to in this way, put the people in their pockets.
Well, that’s one of the conspiracy theories with Epstein, is that he’s a front for, I guess CIA, and they’re getting data on people, like creepy pedophile kind of data. They can use to then threaten character assassination, to in this way, put the people in their pockets.
Cenk Uygur
Look, we’re not in on it so there’s no way we can know. But I just always go back to logic. He has dirt on a lot of powerful people. He dies in a way that is an obvious murder and not a suicide. Then you begin to think, “Who would have enough power to be able to get away with that crime?” That is a very limited number of either people or governments.
Look, we’re not in on it so there’s no way we can know. But I just always go back to logic. He has dirt on a lot of powerful people. He dies in a way that is an obvious murder and not a suicide. Then you begin to think, “Who would have enough power to be able to get away with that crime?” That is a very limited number of either people or governments.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Cenk Uygur
That’s probably your answer without knowing anything that’s internal.
That’s probably your answer without knowing anything that’s internal.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. It’s crazy we don’t have the list of clients.
Yeah. It’s crazy we don’t have the list of clients.
Israel-Palestine
What is the best way to achieve stability and peace in Israel and Palestine in the current situation and in the next five, 10 years?
Cenk Uygur
If people wanted to get to peace, it’s relatively straightforward. There’s already a deal that was negotiated. The Saudis agreed to it, and they’re an important player in this game. The Palestinians and the Israelis have initially agreed to it. Even Hamas has kind of agreed to it. That deal exists and is just waiting on the shelf to get done.
If people wanted to get to peace, it’s relatively straightforward. There’s already a deal that was negotiated. The Saudis agreed to it, and they’re an important player in this game. The Palestinians and the Israelis have initially agreed to it. Even Hamas has kind of agreed to it. That deal exists and is just waiting on the shelf to get done.
It’s pretty straightforward. Israel gets out of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but they keep X percentage. It used to be 4%, then it went up to 6%. It’s probably a higher number now. The Palestinians keep losing leverage as we go.
You remember how hard it was to get a deal on Ukraine, I thought. That’s a very complicated one. Israel is much more straightforward. You get the hell out of the occupied territories, keep some of the … Those settlements are the worst thing. They’re a cancer. But anyway, I don’t know. But there is an answer to the settlements, and it’s probably that Israel keeps them, even though that drives me crazy. No right of return for Palestinians. There will be symbolic right of return for a couple of families. Palestinians go, “Oh, no way.” Guys, you have no leverage. Take the deal. Take the deal. You’re not going to get a right of return. Israel is not going to allow millions of Palestinians to go and vote in Israel. It would end the Jewish State. You have to get to a practical solution. Honestly, the number one person blocking it now is Netanyahu. That’s obvious. That doesn’t take a lot of courage to say that. He says publicly, “I don’t want a Palestinian State. I’m against a two-state solution.” He’s been monstrous. He’s one of the worst terrorists of my lifetime. That’s easy.
The right wing of Israel has lot its mind. The Smotrich, and the Ben-Gvirs openly talking about ethnic cleansing, and driving them into other Arab countries. It’s the definition of ethnic cleansing. I know that the Arabs are going to take the deal. Saudi Arabia cannot wait to take the deal because they just want to get business going.
Lex Fridman
Do you think Hamas takes the deal?
Do you think Hamas takes the deal?
Cenk Uygur
I have a solution where you don’t need Hamas. But yes, Hamas would definitely take the deal. Hamas already publicly said that they would even get rid of that Israel doesn’t have a right to exist.
I have a solution where you don’t need Hamas. But yes, Hamas would definitely take the deal. Hamas already publicly said that they would even get rid of that Israel doesn’t have a right to exist.
We hear so much propaganda in American media. It’s maddening. This idea that you don’t deal with Hamas is so dumb. The reason it’s dumb is you don’t negotiate with your friends, you negotiate with your enemies. “Well, I don’t want to negotiate with them. I don’t like them.” Well then, you’re not going to get to peace. But still, there is a path that doesn’t include Hamas. Make a deal with Fatah, that runs the West Bank. Right now, Fatah went into Gaza Strip, they wouldn’t be able to manage it because they don’t have enough credibility. They’re mainly seen as in cahoots with occupiers, whereas Hamas is hardcore and fighting against the occupiers. But if Fatah delivers not only a peace deal, but a Palestinian state, then they come in as heroes. You make the deal with them, you let them run the Gaza Strip, and you empower them to drive out Hamas. That way, they do your dirty work for you, in a sense.
But good, because Hamas is a terrorist organization. They’re not helpful. Especially if the Palestinians get a state, the violence has to stop immediately. That’s the whole point. The trade is you get a state, Israel gets safety and peace.
Lex Fridman
So no more rockets at Israel?
So no more rockets at Israel?
Cenk Uygur
No more rockets. If you do any other rockets, and Israel does the barbaric thing they just did, even I would say, “Hey, brother, we had a peace deal.” If you violate a peace deal and you do a bomb, they’re going to do a bomb and they’re bomb is much larger.
No more rockets. If you do any other rockets, and Israel does the barbaric thing they just did, even I would say, “Hey, brother, we had a peace deal.” If you violate a peace deal and you do a bomb, they’re going to do a bomb and they’re bomb is much larger.
By the way, can it work? It already has worked. Israel already did it with Egypt. Egypt was 100 times Hamas. Egypt gathered all the Arab armies and actually physically invaded Israel when Israel could lose. They did it several times.
Lex, at the time, not just the right, the war hawks, but most people thought, “There’s no way Egypt will keep that peace deal. Oh, they’re suckers. We’re giving them the Sinai Peninsula back. Then they’re just going to keep bombing and attacking us.” There hasn’t been a single bomb from Egypt since the peace deal. Peace deals work. War gets you more war. Peace deals get you peace.
This is true of all of life. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If you’re saying, “Well, I’m not positive that a peace deal is going to be perfect. 12 more rockets might be fired.” Well, brother, what do we have now? We have endless rockets now. If Israel is supposed to be a safe haven for Jews, and I get it, and I want it. Then become a safe haven. The way that you’re a safe haven is stop the occupation. It’s not complicated.
Let’s be honest. The reason the right wing government of Israel is not stopping the occupation is because they want to take more and more land. They have, throughout time, taken way more of the West Bank than they had originally. Now Netanyahu is saying, “I want a corridor in the middle of Gaza. I want a corridor at the border of Egypt.” Now we’re back to occupying Gaza physically, let alone through power, et cetera.
Lex Fridman
Bibi has to go.
Bibi has to go.
Cenk Uygur
Definitely.
Definitely.
Lex Fridman
What’s the role of US in making a peace deal like that happen?
What’s the role of US in making a peace deal like that happen?
Cenk Uygur
It’s going to sound outlandish, but I can get you a ceasefire almost overnight if Bibi’s gone. Because the Israeli negotiators have said publicly … Not publicly, it got leaked and it was in the Israeli press. “You have to give us a little bit of wiggle room. If you don’t give us a little bit of wiggle room, obviously they’re not going to do the deal.” He’s like, “I know.” That’s why he’s not giving them the wiggle room.
It’s going to sound outlandish, but I can get you a ceasefire almost overnight if Bibi’s gone. Because the Israeli negotiators have said publicly … Not publicly, it got leaked and it was in the Israeli press. “You have to give us a little bit of wiggle room. If you don’t give us a little bit of wiggle room, obviously they’re not going to do the deal.” He’s like, “I know.” That’s why he’s not giving them the wiggle room.
Don’t ask for land in Gaza. Get the hell out of Gaza. You ceasefire. That’s the easy part. The hard part is the occupation, ending the occupation. Even that, I can get it to you in two months, as long as Israel actually wants a deal. Go to an election, get rid of Netanyahu. Put in Benny Gantz. Is Benny Gantz an angel? No. He’s the one that ordered all the bombings of Gaza to begin with.
Look, Benny Gantz has got massive war crimes on his record, so don’t worry, he’s not a softie. But he’s not my favorite guy in the world, to say the least. But Benny Gantz can do a peace deal if he wants to.
Look, only one group of people can actually settle this. Well, there’s actually two groups of people. One is the Israeli population. You vote in someone who wants to do a peace deal, you’ll get a peace deal. Number two is the American President. If I’m the American President … I’m saying in a hypothetical. Or any American President that actually wants to get a peace deal done. You just say, “I’m going to cut the funding.” Israel will do the deal immediately. They don’t say they want to cut the funding, because APAC gives them $100 million. It’s not complicated. Not 1% complicated.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Cenk Uygur
Lex, tell me this. If the US President said, “I’m going to cut the funding,” do you think that it might have a giant problem for Netanyahu, might it hurt his government, might they have to go to an election? Would the Israeli politicians, let alone the population, begin to really, really worry that they’re going to lose an enormous source of funding and weapons?
Lex, tell me this. If the US President said, “I’m going to cut the funding,” do you think that it might have a giant problem for Netanyahu, might it hurt his government, might they have to go to an election? Would the Israeli politicians, let alone the population, begin to really, really worry that they’re going to lose an enormous source of funding and weapons?
Lex Fridman
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Cenk Uygur
Why wouldn’t we use our leverage? It’s crazy not to use our leverage.
Why wouldn’t we use our leverage? It’s crazy not to use our leverage.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. This is where we go back to this deal man of Trump. It feels like he’s the only one crazy enough to use that leverage.
Yeah. This is where we go back to this deal man of Trump. It feels like he’s the only one crazy enough to use that leverage.
Cenk Uygur
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
By crazy, I mean in the good kind of sense. Bold enough, not giving a shit about convention, not giving a shit about pressures, and money, and influence, and all that kind of stuff.
By crazy, I mean in the good kind of sense. Bold enough, not giving a shit about convention, not giving a shit about pressures, and money, and influence, and all that kind of stuff.
Cenk Uygur
Yes, but with the biggest asterisk in the history of the world. Which is 12% chance he does that, and that’s great. But a huge chance he does the opposite and he goes … Let’s call it 80 again. 80%, “Oh, yeah, Miriam wanted me to give the West Bank to Israel, so you have it, guys, now. You can just occupy the whole thing forever.” A giant war. “Oh, yeah, I’m going to prove how tough I am. I going to nuke Iran.” Oh, no! What are you doing? What are you doing?
Yes, but with the biggest asterisk in the history of the world. Which is 12% chance he does that, and that’s great. But a huge chance he does the opposite and he goes … Let’s call it 80 again. 80%, “Oh, yeah, Miriam wanted me to give the West Bank to Israel, so you have it, guys, now. You can just occupy the whole thing forever.” A giant war. “Oh, yeah, I’m going to prove how tough I am. I going to nuke Iran.” Oh, no! What are you doing? What are you doing?
Trump is a massive risk. He’s an enormous amount of risk. If you were running a company and not a country, would you hire Trump as your CEO? Everyone watching just screamed inside their heads, “No!” You would never take that kind of risk with your company. You got an 80% chance the guy’s going to blow up the company. No way, no way. You know it, too. Especially if you’re a business man, you know you’re not going to hire that loose cannon to run your company. It’s unacceptable risk.
But you’re not wrong, we talked about it earlier. But as part of that risk, there’s a sliver in there that he could accidentally do the right thing.
Hope
Lex Fridman
We talked a lot about hope in this conversation. Zooming out, what gives you hope about the future of this whole thing? Of humanity, not just the United States. Of us humans on Earth.
We talked a lot about hope in this conversation. Zooming out, what gives you hope about the future of this whole thing? Of humanity, not just the United States. Of us humans on Earth.
Cenk Uygur
Why am I center left and not center right? It gets to that question. You look at the polling, not just here in America, but in almost any country, and it almost always breaks out to two-thirds to one-third. Two-thirds of the people say, “Let’s be empathetic. Let’s share. Let’s do equality, justice. Let’s be fair.” One-third goes, “No. Me, me, me, me, me, me, me.” That’s just the nature of humanity.
Why am I center left and not center right? It gets to that question. You look at the polling, not just here in America, but in almost any country, and it almost always breaks out to two-thirds to one-third. Two-thirds of the people say, “Let’s be empathetic. Let’s share. Let’s do equality, justice. Let’s be fair.” One-third goes, “No. Me, me, me, me, me, me, me.” That’s just the nature of humanity.
Usually, the same third goes, “No change.” Another two-thirds go, “Well, some change.” Because if you don’t do any change, you’re never going to get to the right answer. For the wisdom of the crowd to work, for free markets to work, for everything to work, you have to keep changing because the times change, and the culture changes, and the situation changes. That why there’s amendments in the Constitution, because you need to be able to change the document from time to time. Be careful with it. But you need to allow for an avenue for change.
Now why does the one-third keep winning in so many different places? Because they have more money and power. By the way, if you’re more selfish, you’re more likely to get more money and power. I wish that weren’t the case, but it is. These are not blanket rules, they’re on average. That third winds up winning in so many circumstances.
But the bottom line is, we are a species that requires consent. I’m a stone-cold atheist. I don’t think we’re kind of like apes, I think we are apes. All the scientists out there are going, “Well, of course we are.” Everyone else is going, “That’s crazy.” When you look at it as a species, different species react in different ways. Snakes have no empathy because it’s not in their DNA. That’s why we have a sense of what a snake does. The good news is, for higher level apes like us, bonobos, chimpanzees, and humans, we all roughly want consent.
A chimpanzee, for example, who has a violent reputation and they are violent, and unfortunately we’re pretty close to them. But what people don’t know is a leader doesn’t win through violence, especially for bonobos. They win by picking lice off of other chimpanzees, by going and doing favors. Going to do a hunt, getting food, and giving it to someone else. Because what they’re gathering is the consent of the governed. That’s how you become the alpha. You don’t do it through physical dominance, you do it through consent. That’s how we’re hardwired, that’s in our DNA.
That two-thirds, in the long run, will win. We will have empathy, we will have change. That’s the hope that we’re all looking for.
Lex Fridman
Hope has got the numbers, it seems like.
Hope has got the numbers, it seems like.
Cenk Uygur
Yeah. In fact, one more thing, Lex.
Yeah. In fact, one more thing, Lex.
Lex Fridman
Yes.
Yes.
Cenk Uygur
Look at history. Hope and change always win. Again, conservatives don’t catch feelings. There is a need conservatives, because you have to balance things out. If you just had even that wonderful two- thirds, that still wouldn’t be the ideal system. You need a Winston Churchill if you’re in the middle of World War II. You need someone to say regulating six inspections of the elevators is too many. You need that balance, and conservatives have a role, and it’s a really important role.
Look at history. Hope and change always win. Again, conservatives don’t catch feelings. There is a need conservatives, because you have to balance things out. If you just had even that wonderful two- thirds, that still wouldn’t be the ideal system. You need a Winston Churchill if you’re in the middle of World War II. You need someone to say regulating six inspections of the elevators is too many. You need that balance, and conservatives have a role, and it’s a really important role.
But having said that, they’re assigned to losing throughout history because they’re fighting on losing ground. A conservative says, “No change, but the world is constantly changing so they’re destined to lose. That’s why the Founding Fathers went against the British Monarchy. That’s why the Civil Rights movement won. They didn’t win overnight. It took them 100 years to get equal rights, let alone past slavery. We won on women’s rights, we won on gay rights. We keep winning. But every snapshot in time makes it feel like we’re losing. There’s a bad guy in charge. We are living under corporate rule, et cetera. But in the long tide of history, change always wins.
The empathetic, generally speaking left wing … But again, don’t worry about the titles. People get obsessed with the labels. The two-thirds that’s empathetic, that includes a lot of right wingers. You win at the end in history every single time. We fight forward. We’re tough when we need to be. We need that willpower to win any fight. But we’re civil and respectful to the other side because they are us.
Progressives, all the time, we say, “Look …” This was the ending of my book. Which is for conservatives, you have a lot of empathy for inside the wagons. Conservatives are great to their family, generally speaking. To their community, to their church, to anyone that’s inside the wagons. But they set up electric fences and barbed wire around their wagons. If you’re on the outside, you’re the others and you’re going to get electrified. It’s constantly. I like to think the left wing has wider wagons. We view the world as more us and not you.
The good news of that is, if we win, we’re not going to do Medicare for only the left. We’re going to Medicare for all. You’re all going to get universal healthcare. We’re going to do higher wages for all. The right wing is not going to be left out. Lex, I’m going to tell you a fun story. It’s about my family. I’m sure that parts of it are apocryphal, because it’s from 500 years ago. But it gives you a sense of the old Mark Twain quote, if it’s really Mark Twain’s. Of, “Change happens really gradually, and then all of a sudden.” My mom’s last name in Turkish is Yavaşça, it means slowly. It’s a weird name, even in Turkish.
One day, we’re walking past a mosque in Istanbul when I’m a kid. It says on the mosque, “Yavaşça.” We’re like, “What is this?” It’s a small, little mosque. We go inside. My dad starts the Imam questions. He says, “Why is the mosque named that?” He said, “You don’t know?” Because my dad said, “My wife’s last name is Yavaşça.” He’s like, “Oh my God.” He’s like, “Your ancestor was the Admiral of the Ottoman Navy when they conquered Constantinople.”
Grandpa, from 5, 600 years ago, came up with the idea. You can’t ever conquer Constantinople because there’s a giant chain underneath the Bosphorus. All the ships get stuck on the chain, there’s cannons on both sides. Half the ancient navies in the world are at the bottom of the Bosphorus. It hasn’t been conquered in over 1000 years, nobody thinks it can be conquered. Grandpa comes up with the idea of, “Why don’t we build giant wooden planks over land and grease them? And pass our fleet over land, onto the other side.” Everybody goes, because whenever anybody proposed a new idea, no matter how logical it is, they go, “Oh, that’s impossible. No way it’s going to work. Oh, you’re crazy. This is an unconquerable city. What are you guys even doing?”
Every day, Mehmed the Conqueror comes up to Grandpa and says, “All right. How’s your plan to do this project going?” Grandpa says, “Slowly.” He names him Commander Slowly.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Cenk Uygur
One night, after the whole thing’s done. They had passed the entire Ottoman fleet over the land. Wind up in the middle of the Bosphorus, and the Holy Roman Empire concedes. They surrender. Because change happens really gradually, and then all of a sudden.
One night, after the whole thing’s done. They had passed the entire Ottoman fleet over the land. Wind up in the middle of the Bosphorus, and the Holy Roman Empire concedes. They surrender. Because change happens really gradually, and then all of a sudden.
Lex Fridman
Good story. Well, Cenk, thank you for fighting for that change for many years now. For over two decades now. Thank you for talking today.
Good story. Well, Cenk, thank you for fighting for that change for many years now. For over two decades now. Thank you for talking today.
Cenk Uygur
Appreciate it, Lex. Thank you for having the conversation.
Appreciate it, Lex. Thank you for having the conversation.
Lex Fridman
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Cenk Uyhgur. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Cenk Uyhgur. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.
Now let me leave you with some words from Hannah Arendt. “Totalitarianism is never content to rule by external means. Namely, through the state and a machinery of violence. Thanks to its peculiar ideology and the role assigned to it in the apparatus of coercion, totalitarianism has discovered a means of dominating and terrorizing human beings from within.”
Thank you for listening. I hope to see you next time.
Transcript for Pieter Levels: Programming, Viral AI Startups, and Digital Nomad Life | Lex Fridman Podcast #440
This is a transcript of Lex Fridman Podcast #440 with Pieter Levels.
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Pieter is an inspiration to a huge number of developers and entrepreneurs who love creating cool things in the world that are hopefully useful for people. This was an honor and a pleasure for me. This is the Lex Friedman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here’s Pieter Levels.
My money was shrinking, I wasn’t making money anymore, a lot. I was making $500 a month or something. And I was looking at the ceiling thinking, “Now I’m 27, I’m a loser.” And that’s the moment when I started building startups. And it was because my dad said, “If you’re depressed, you need to get sand, get a shovel, start shoveling, doing something. You can’t just sit still.” Which is an interesting way to deal with depression. It’s not, “Oh, let’s talk about it,” it’s more, “Let’s go do something.” And I started doing a project called 12 Startups in 12 months where every month I would make something like a project and I would launch it with Stripe so people could pay for it.
So money, Stripe, build a product, build a landing page. You need to think about, “How are people going to find this?” So are you going to put it on Reddit or something? How are you going to put it on Reddit without being looked at as a spammer? If you say, “Hey, it is my new startup, you should use it,” no, nobody … It gets deleted. Maybe if you find a problem that a lot of people on Reddit already have, on a subreddit and you solve that problem, say, “What’s up, people. I made this thing that might solve your problem,” and maybe, “It’s free for now.” That could work. But you need to be very … Narrow it down, what you’re building.
And also I think I started getting anxiety and I think I started going a little bit crazy where I think travel can make you insane. And I know this because I know that there’s digital nomads that … they kill themselves. And I haven’t checked the comparison with baseline people suicide rate, but I have a hunch, especially in the beginning when it was a very new thing 10 years ago, that it can be very psychologically taxing, and you’re alone a lot. Back then when you travel alone, there was no other digital moments back then, a lot. So you’re in a strange culture, you look different than everybody. I was in Asia, everybody’s really nice in Thailand, but you’re not part of the culture. You’re traveling around, you’re hopping from city to city. You don’t have a home anymore. You feel disrooted.
And it looked like a very adventurous life. You travel around, you build your business, there’s no pressure from your home society. You’re American, so you get pressure from American society telling you what to do, “You need to buy a house,” or “You need to do this stuff.” I had this in Holland too. And you can get away from this pressure, and you can feel like you’re free. There’s nobody telling you what to do. But that’s also why you start feeling like you go crazy, because you are free, you’re disattached from anything and anybody. You’re disattached from your culture, you’re disattached from the culture you’re probably in because you’re staying very short.
You can go back to your country and build that same app for your country for example. So, you start seeing problems, you start seeing solutions that other people already did in the rest of the world, and also traveling in general just gives you more problems, because travel is uncomfortable. Airports are horrible, airplanes are not comfortable either. There’s a lot of problems you start seeing, just getting out of your house.
It kind of destroys the information out there about learning to code, because they pay YouTubers, they pay developer influencers a big thing to… And same thing what happens with nutrition and fitness or something, same thing happens in developing. They pay this influencer to promote this stuff, use it, make stuff with it, make demo products with it, and then a lot of people are like, “Wow, use this.” And I started noticing this, because when I would ship my stuff, people would ask me, “What are you using?” I would say, “Just PHP, jQuery. Why does it matter?”
And people would start attacking me like, “Why are you not using this new technology, this new framework, this new thing?” And I say, “I don’t know, because this PHP thing works, and I don’t really optimizing for anything. It just works.” And I never understood why… I understand there’s new technologies that are better and it should be improvement, but I’m very suspicious of money, just like lobbying. There’s money in this developer framework scene. There’s hundreds of millions that goes to ads or influencer or whatever. It can’t all go to developers. You don’t need so many developers for a framework, and it’s open source to make a lot of more money on these startups.
So, essentially you write a prompt, and then it generates a photo of that or image of that in any style. They would use artist names to make like a Picasso kind of style and stuff, and I was trying to see, what is it good at? Is it good at people? No, it’s really bad at people, but it was good at houses, so architecture for example, I would generate architecture houses. So, I made a website called thishousedoesnotexist.org, and it generated… They called like house porn at that one. Houseporn is like a subreddit, and this was Stable Diffusion, like the first version. So it looks really… You can click for another photo. So, it generates all these non-existing houses.
And fine-tuning is where you have this existing AI model and you fine tune it on the specific goal you wanted to do. So, I would find really beautiful interior design, make a gallery, and train a new model that was very good at interior design, and it worked, and I used that as well. And then for fun, I uploaded photos of myself, and here’s where it happened, and to train myself. And this would never work, obviously, and it worked, and actually it started understanding me as a concept. So, my face worked and you could do different styles, like me as a… Very cheesy, medieval warrior, all this stuff. So I was like, “This is another startup.” So, now I did avatarai.me. I couldn’t get the dot com, and this was [inaudible 00:52:01]-
I wanted to go for, what’s a real problem we can solve? This is going to be a hype, this going to be… And it was a hype, these avatars. It’s like, “Let’s do real photography. How can you make people look really photorealistic?” And it was difficult, and that’s why these avatars worked, because they were all in a cheesy Picasso style, and art is easy, because you interpret… All the problems that AI has with your face are artistic if you call it Picasso, but if you make a real photo, all the problems of your face, you look wrong. So, I started making Photo AI, which was a pivot of it where it was like a photo studio where you could take photos without actually needing a photographer, needing a studio. You just type it, and I’ve been working on it for the last year.
Then, I added a Typeform link. So, Typeform is a site where you can create your own input form, like Google Forms. So, they would get an email with a link to the Typeform or actually just a link after the checkout, and they could upload their photos, so enter their email, upload the photos, and I launched it, and I was like… Here, first still, so it’s October 2022, and I think within the first 24 hours was like… I’m not sure, it was like 1,000 customers or something, but the problem was I didn’t have code to automate this, so I had to do it manually. So the first few hundred, I just literally took their photos, trained them, and then I would generate the photos with the prompts, and I had this text file with the prompt, and I would do everything manually, and it quickly became way too much, but that’s another constraint. I was forced to code something up that would do that, and that was essentially making it into a real website.
So, figuring out what technology you can use, that you already know. So, if you cannot code, you can use spreadsheet. If you cannot use a spreadsheet, whatever, you can always use, for example, a website generator like Wix or something, or Squarespace, right? You don’t need to code to build a startup. All you need is an idea for a product, build something like a landing page or something, put a Stripe button on there, and then make it. And if you can code, use the language that you already know and start coding with that and see how far you can get. And you can always rewrite the code later. The tech stack it’s not the most important of a business when you’re starting out a business. The important thing is that you validate that there’s a market, that there’s a product that people want to pay for. So, use whatever you can use. And if you cannot code, use spreadsheets, landing page generators, whatever.
That’s where I would live and where I would go. And I thought this could be an app where you can have a Google Maps and you put colors over it. You have areas that are like color-coded, like red is tourist, green is rich, green money, yellow is hipster. And you can figure out where you need to go in the city when you travel. ‘Cause I was traveling a lot, I wanted to go to the cool spots.
And you would draw on the map and then it would send the pixel data to the server. It would put it in the database. And then I would have a robot running like a cron job, which every week would calculate, or every day would calculate like, “Okay, so Amsterdam Center, there’s like six people say it’s tourists, this part of the center, but two people say it’s like hipster. Okay, so the tourist part wins, right?” It’s just an array. So, find the most common value in a little pixel area on a map. So, if most people say it’s tourists, it’s tourists, and it becomes red. And I would do that for all the GPS corners in the world.
So I switched to Map Box and then had Map Box for years and then it went viral and I had a bill of $20,000. It was last year. So they helped me with the bill. They said you can pay less. And then I now switched to an open source kind of map platform. So it’s a very expensive product and never made any dollar money, but it’s very fun but it’s very expensive.
Thailand weirdly had quite fast internet, but I wanted to find other cities where I could go to work on my laptop, whatever and travel. But we needed fast internet, so I was like, “Let’s crowdsource this information with a spreadsheet.” And I also needed to know the cost of living because I didn’t have a lot of money. I had $500 a month. So I to find a place where the rent was $200 per month or something where I had some money that I could actually rent something and there was Nomad List and it still runs. I think it’s now almost 10 years.
So you started getting discrepancies in the data between where people were from and stuff. So I started switching to data sets and now it’s mostly data sets, but one thing that’s still crowdsourced is people add where they are, they add their travels to their profile and I use that data to see which places are upcoming and which places are popular now. So about half the ranking you see here is based on actual digital nomads who are there. You can click on a city, you can click on people and you can see the people, the users that are actually there. And it’s like 30,000, 40,000 members. So these people are in Austin now and…
And literally they would like to improve the stuff, but the bureaucracy of the place, plus all the bosses, all the high up people are not technical people probably. They don’t know much about web development. They don’t know much about programming, so they just don’t give any respect. You have to give the freedom and the respect to great engineers as they try to do great things. That feels like an explanation. If you were a great programmer, would you want to work at America Airlines or…
So they have all these teams and they run the test for 24 hours. They go to sleep, they wake up next day, they come to the office and they see, “Okay, this performed better.” This website has become a monster, but it’s the most revenue generating hotel booking website in the world. It’s number one. So that shows that it’s not about user experience. It’s about, I don’t know, about making more money and not every company, but if they’re optimizing, it’s a public company. If they’re optimizing for money…
So every day I’m searching on Google or asking out ChatGPT how to do this thing, how to do this thing. Every day I’m getting better at my skill. So you never stop learning. So the whole concept of how do you learn, well, you never end. So where do you want to be? Do you want know a little bit? Do you want to know a lot? Do you want to do it for your whole life?
So I think taking action is the best step to learn. So making things. You know nothing, just start making things. Okay, so how to make a website. Search how to make a website or nowadays you ask ChatGPT, “How do I make a website? Where do I start?” It generates codes for you. Copy the code, put it in a file, save it. Open it in Google Chrome or whatever. You have a website and then you start tweaking with it and you start, “Okay, how do I add a button? How do I add AI features nowadays?” So it’s like by taking action, you can learn stuff much faster than reading books or tutorials.
I think it’s best to start and just start asking people for money in the beginning. So show your app, what are you doing on your landing page. Make a demo, whatever, video. And then if you want to use it, pay me money. Pay $10, $20, $40. I would ask more than $10 per month like Netflix, $10 per month. But Netflix is giant company. They can afford to make it so cheap, relatively cheap. If you’re an individual like an indie hacker, you are making your own app. You need to make at least $30 or more on a user to make it worth it for you. You need to make money.
And the stupid stuff always gets taken out by the replies like, “Oh, you said this wrong.” And then, the whole tweet doesn’t make sense anymore. So, I ask GPT-4o to fact check a lot of stuff.
And I felt like I don’t have the money for that and I don’t really want to run a big company with a lot of people because there’s a lot of work managing these people. So, I’ve always tried to automate these things as much as possible. And this can literally be like for Nomad List, it’s not a different other starters, it’s like a webpage where you can organize your own meetup, set a schedule, a date, whatever.
You could see how many Nomads will be there at that date. So, there will be actually enough Nomads to meet up. And then, when it’s done, it sends a tweet out on the Nomad List account, there’s a meetup here, it sends a direct message to everybody in the city who are there, who are going to be there. And then, people show up on a bar, and there’s a meetup, and that’s fully automated. And for me, it’s so obvious to make this automatic, why would you have somebody organize this? It makes more sense to automate it, and this with most of my things, I figure out how to do it with codes and I think especially now with AI, you can automate so much more stuff than before because AI understands things so well. Before I would use if statements. Now, you ask GPT, you put something in GPT-4o in the API and it sends back, this is good, this is bad.
Did people sign up in the last 24 hours? It’s important because maybe the sign-up broke. Okay, check, somebody sign up. Then I have uptimerobot.com, which is for uptime, but it can also check keywords. It checks for an emoji, which is the red X, which is if something is bad. And so, it opens that health check page every minute to check if something is bad. Then if it’s bad, it sends a message to me on Telegram saying, “Hey, what’s up?” It doesn’t say, “Hey, what’s up?” It sends me alert.
But I would love to automate that and explore different ways how to leverage LLMs to control the content I consume, and maybe publish that, and maybe they themselves can see how that could be used to improve their system. But there’s not enough access to get-
They want to see your stripe, and your code, and whatever. And then, in the end, they’ll change the price to lower because you’re already so invested. So, it’s like a negotiation tactic. I’m like, “No, I don’t want to sell.” And the problem with my companies is they make 90% profit margin. Companies get sold with multiples, multiples of profit or revenue.
And often the multiple is three times, three times or four times or five times revenue or profit. So, in my case, they’re all automated, so I might as well wait three years and I get the same money as when I sell and then I can still sell the same company. You know what I mean? I can still sell it for three to five times. So, financially, it doesn’t really make sense to sell unless the price is high enough. If the price gets to six or seven or eight, I don’t want to wait six years for the money, but if you give me three years, nothing, I can wait.
If you go to China and live in China, you’ll learn that they’re nice people. And a lot of stuff you hear about China’s propaganda, a lot of stuff is true as well, but it’s more you learn a lot from traveling. And I think that’s why it’s a cool product to not sell. AI products, I have less emotional feeling with AI products like Photo AI, which I could sell. Yeah.
You get an average idea, average company, average culture, you need to have a leader or you need to be solo and just do it. Do it yourself, I think. And I trust some people, like with my best friend Andre, I’m making a new AI startup, but it’s because we know each other very long and he’s one of the few people I would build something with, but almost never.
And man, I was trying Python working with NumPy, and package manager, and it was too difficult for me to figure this shit out. And I didn’t have time. I think 10 years ago, I would’ve time to sit, go do all-nighters to figure this stuff out with Python. It’s not my thing.
So, if I roll in, I’m going to be like, I don’t assume you know nothing. Assume Pieter is a genius, the smartest developer ever. And learn from it. And yes, and notice parts in the code where, “Okay, okay, I got it, here’s how he’s thinking.” And now if I want to add another little feature, definitely needs to have emoji in front of it, and then just follow the same style and add it.
And my goal is to make you happy, to make you smile, to make you like, “Haha, fuck, I get it.” And now you’re going to start respecting me, and trusting me, and you start working together in this way. I don’t know. I don’t know how hard it is to find developers.
How fast can I fix this bug? And then, two minutes later, for example, it’s fixed. And it’s fun because it’s annoying for me to work with companies where you report a bug and it takes six months. It’s horrible. And it makes people really happy when you can really quickly solve their problems. But it’s crazy.
And there’s a team and not many people are using it, but every single feature, they have to meet and agree. And there’s allocate resources. Engineers have to work on it. But I’m sure it’s a pain in the ass for the engineers to get approval because it has to not break the rest of the site, whatever they do. But if you don’t have enough dictatorial top down, when-
And all my great things started when I switched to Mac, which sounds very dogmatic, right?
But then I started lifting. And since then, it seems like everything gets straightened out. Your posture, you’re more straight. And I’d never have RSI anymore, representative strain injury. Never tingling anymore. No pains and stuff. So then, I started working on the sofa and it’s great. It feels you’re close to the … I sit like this legs together and then a pillow and then a laptop, and then I work.
But all he does is writing or coding. He’s a writer and he needs this alone time, this silence. And I think for this flow state, it’s true. I’m better maintaining stuff when there’s a lot of disruptions than creating new stuff. I need this. It’s common, this flow state, this uninterrupted period of time. So, yeah, I wake up 1:00, 2: 00 PM, still coffee, shower, we still shower. And then just code non-stop. Maybe my friend comes over, comes over anyway.
And he has this self energy that he actually, he doesn’t need to be pushed, he just goes and he just goes, and he asks questions and he doesn’t ask too many questions. He just goes, goes and learns it. And now, he has a company and makes a lot of money, has his own startups. And the people that ask me for help, but then I gave help, and then they started debating it. Do you have that? People ask you for advice and they go against you to say, “No, you’re wrong because…” I’m like, “Okay, bro, I don’t want to debate. You asked me for advice, right?” And the people who need to push generally, it doesn’t happen. You need to have this energy for yourself.
But there’s something more there. There’s people actually making stuff, making new companies that the society benefits from. We’re benefiting from Nvidia, I think. The US GDP for sure is benefiting from Nvidia. European GDP could benefit if we build more companies. And I feel in Europe, there’s this vibe and this… You have to connect things, but not allowing laptops in cafes is part of the vibe. It’s like, “Yeah, we’re not really here to work. We’re here to enjoy life.” I agree with this. Anthony Bourdain, this tweet was quoted with Anthony Bourdain photo of him with cigarettes and a coffee in France, and he said, “This is what cafes are for.” I agree.
Click link to jump approximately to that part in the transcript:
- 0:00 – Introduction
- 2:03 – Startup philosophy
- 9:34 – Low points
- 13:03 – 12 startups in 12 months
- 19:55 – Travelling and depression
- 32:34 – Indie hacking
- 36:37 – Photo AI
- 1:12:53 – How to learn AI
- 1:21:30 – Robots
- 1:29:47 – Hoodmaps
- 1:53:52 – Learning new programming languages
- 2:03:24 – Monetize your website
- 2:09:59 – Fighting SPAM
- 2:13:33 – Automation
- 2:24:58 – When to sell startup
- 2:27:52 – Coding solo
- 2:33:54 – Ship fast
- 2:42:38 – Best IDE for programming
- 2:52:09 – Andrej Karpathy
- 3:01:34 – Productivity
- 3:15:21 – Minimalism
- 3:24:07 – Emails
- 3:31:20 – Coffee
- 3:39:05 – E/acc
- 3:41:21 – Advice for young people
Introduction
Pieter Levels
So I was trying to figure out how to do photorealistic AI photos, and it was … Stable Diffusion by itself is not doing that well. The faces look all mangled, and it doesn’t have enough resolution or something to do that well. But I started seeing these base models, these fine-tuned models, and people would train on porn, and I would try them and they would be very photorealistic. They would have bodies that actually made sense, body anatomy. But if you look at the photorealistic models that people use now, there’s still core of porn there, of naked people. So I need to prompt out, and everybody needs to do this with AI startups, with imaging, you need to prompt out the naked stuff.
So I was trying to figure out how to do photorealistic AI photos, and it was … Stable Diffusion by itself is not doing that well. The faces look all mangled, and it doesn’t have enough resolution or something to do that well. But I started seeing these base models, these fine-tuned models, and people would train on porn, and I would try them and they would be very photorealistic. They would have bodies that actually made sense, body anatomy. But if you look at the photorealistic models that people use now, there’s still core of porn there, of naked people. So I need to prompt out, and everybody needs to do this with AI startups, with imaging, you need to prompt out the naked stuff.
Lex Fridman
You have to keep reminding the model, “You need to put clothes on the thing.”
You have to keep reminding the model, “You need to put clothes on the thing.”
Pieter Levels
Yeah. “Don’t put naked,” because it’s very risky. I have Google Vision that checks every photo before it’s shown to the user to check for NSFW.
Yeah. “Don’t put naked,” because it’s very risky. I have Google Vision that checks every photo before it’s shown to the user to check for NSFW.
Lex Fridman
Like a nipple detector? Oh, an NSFW detector.
Like a nipple detector? Oh, an NSFW detector.
Pieter Levels
Because the journalist gets very angry.
Because the journalist gets very angry.
Lex Fridman
The following is a conversation with Pieter Levels, also known on X as levelsio. He is a self-taught developer and entrepreneur who designed, programed shipped and ran over 40 startups, many of which are hugely successful. In most cases, he did it all by himself while living the digital nomad life in over 40 countries and over 150 cities, programming on a laptop while chilling on a couch, using vanilla HTML, jQuery, PHP and SQLight. He builds and ships quickly, and improves on the fly, all in the open, documenting his work, both his successes and failures, with a raw honesty of a true indie hacker.
The following is a conversation with Pieter Levels, also known on X as levelsio. He is a self-taught developer and entrepreneur who designed, programed shipped and ran over 40 startups, many of which are hugely successful. In most cases, he did it all by himself while living the digital nomad life in over 40 countries and over 150 cities, programming on a laptop while chilling on a couch, using vanilla HTML, jQuery, PHP and SQLight. He builds and ships quickly, and improves on the fly, all in the open, documenting his work, both his successes and failures, with a raw honesty of a true indie hacker.
Pieter is an inspiration to a huge number of developers and entrepreneurs who love creating cool things in the world that are hopefully useful for people. This was an honor and a pleasure for me. This is the Lex Friedman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here’s Pieter Levels.
Startup philosophy
Lex Fridman
You’ve launched a lot of companies and built a lot of products. As you say, most failed, but some succeeded. What’s your philosophy behind building the startups that you did?
You’ve launched a lot of companies and built a lot of products. As you say, most failed, but some succeeded. What’s your philosophy behind building the startups that you did?
Pieter Levels
I think my philosophy is very different than most people in startups, because most people in startups, they build a company and they raise money and they hire people and then they build a product and they find something that makes money. And I don’t really raise money. I don’t use VC funding, I do everything myself. I’m a designer, I’m the developer, I make everything, I make the logo. So for me, I’m much more scrappy. And because I don’t have funding, I need to go fast. I need to make things fast to see if an idea works. I have an idea in my mind and I build it like a mini startup, and I launch it very quickly, within two weeks or something, of building it. And I check if there’s demand and if people actually sign up and not just sign up, but if people actually pay money. They need to take out their credit cards, pay me money, and then I can see if the idea is validated. And most ideas don’t work, as you say, most fail.
I think my philosophy is very different than most people in startups, because most people in startups, they build a company and they raise money and they hire people and then they build a product and they find something that makes money. And I don’t really raise money. I don’t use VC funding, I do everything myself. I’m a designer, I’m the developer, I make everything, I make the logo. So for me, I’m much more scrappy. And because I don’t have funding, I need to go fast. I need to make things fast to see if an idea works. I have an idea in my mind and I build it like a mini startup, and I launch it very quickly, within two weeks or something, of building it. And I check if there’s demand and if people actually sign up and not just sign up, but if people actually pay money. They need to take out their credit cards, pay me money, and then I can see if the idea is validated. And most ideas don’t work, as you say, most fail.
Lex Fridman
So there’s this rapid iterative phase where you just build a prototype that works, launch it, see if people like it, improving it really, really quickly to see if people like it a little bit more enough to pay and all that. That whole rapid process is how you think of-
So there’s this rapid iterative phase where you just build a prototype that works, launch it, see if people like it, improving it really, really quickly to see if people like it a little bit more enough to pay and all that. That whole rapid process is how you think of-
Pieter Levels
Yeah. I think it’s very rapid. If I compare it to, for example, Google or big tech companies, especially Google right now is struggling. They made transformers, they invented all the AI stuff years ago and they never really shipped. They could have shipped ChatGPT for example, I heard, in 2019. And they never shipped it because they were so stuck in bureaucracy. But they had everything. They had the data, they had the tech, they had the engineers and they didn’t do it. And it’s because these big organizations, it can make you very slow. So being alone by myself on my laptop, in my underwear in a hotel room or something, I can ship very fast and I don’t need to ask legal for, “Oh, can you vouch for this?” I can just go and ship.
Yeah. I think it’s very rapid. If I compare it to, for example, Google or big tech companies, especially Google right now is struggling. They made transformers, they invented all the AI stuff years ago and they never really shipped. They could have shipped ChatGPT for example, I heard, in 2019. And they never shipped it because they were so stuck in bureaucracy. But they had everything. They had the data, they had the tech, they had the engineers and they didn’t do it. And it’s because these big organizations, it can make you very slow. So being alone by myself on my laptop, in my underwear in a hotel room or something, I can ship very fast and I don’t need to ask legal for, “Oh, can you vouch for this?” I can just go and ship.
Lex Fridman
Do you always code in your underwear? Your profile picture, you’re slouching on a couch in your underwear, chilling on a laptop.
Do you always code in your underwear? Your profile picture, you’re slouching on a couch in your underwear, chilling on a laptop.
Pieter Levels
No, but I do wear shorts a lot and I usually just wear shorts and no T-shirt, because I’m always too hot. I’m always overheating.
No, but I do wear shorts a lot and I usually just wear shorts and no T-shirt, because I’m always too hot. I’m always overheating.
Lex Fridman
Thank you for showing up not just in your underwear but wearing shorts.
Thank you for showing up not just in your underwear but wearing shorts.
Pieter Levels
I still wearing this for you, but …
I still wearing this for you, but …
Lex Fridman
Thank you. Thank you for dressing up.
Thank you. Thank you for dressing up.
Pieter Levels
I think it’s because since I go to the gym, I’m always too hot.
I think it’s because since I go to the gym, I’m always too hot.
Lex Fridman
What’s your favorite exercise in the gym?
What’s your favorite exercise in the gym?
Pieter Levels
Man, overhead press.
Man, overhead press.
Lex Fridman
Overhead press, like shoulder press?
Overhead press, like shoulder press?
Pieter Levels
Yeah. But it feels good because you’re doing … You win. Because what is it? I do 60 kilos, so it’s 120 pounds or something. It’s my only thing I can do well in the gym. And you stand like this and you’re like, “I did it.” Like a winner pose.
Yeah. But it feels good because you’re doing … You win. Because what is it? I do 60 kilos, so it’s 120 pounds or something. It’s my only thing I can do well in the gym. And you stand like this and you’re like, “I did it.” Like a winner pose.
Lex Fridman
It’s a victory thing.
It’s a victory thing.
Pieter Levels
A victory pose. I do bench press, squats, dead lifts.
A victory pose. I do bench press, squats, dead lifts.
Lex Fridman
Hence the mug, “Talking to my therapist,” and it’s a deadlift.
Hence the mug, “Talking to my therapist,” and it’s a deadlift.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. Because it acts like therapy for me.
Yeah. Because it acts like therapy for me.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, yeah, it is.
Yeah, yeah, it is.
Pieter Levels
Which is controversial to say. If I say this on Twitter, people get angry.
Which is controversial to say. If I say this on Twitter, people get angry.
Lex Fridman
Physical hardship is a kind of therapy. I just rewatched Happy People a Year in the Taiga, that Warner Herzog film where they document people that are doing trapping, they’re essentially just working for survival in the wilderness year round. And there’s a deep happiness to their way of life because they’re so busy in it, in nature. There’s something about that physical toil.
Physical hardship is a kind of therapy. I just rewatched Happy People a Year in the Taiga, that Warner Herzog film where they document people that are doing trapping, they’re essentially just working for survival in the wilderness year round. And there’s a deep happiness to their way of life because they’re so busy in it, in nature. There’s something about that physical toil.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, my dad taught me that. My dad always did … there was construction in the house. He was always renovating the house. He breaks through one room and then he goes to the next room and he’s just going in a circle around the house for the last 40 years. But so he’s always doing construction in the house and it’s his hobby. And he taught me, when I’m depressed for something, he says, “Get a big mountain of sand or something from construction, and just get a shovel and bring it to the other side and just do physical labor, do hard work, and do something, Set a goal, do something.” And I did that with startups too.
Yeah, my dad taught me that. My dad always did … there was construction in the house. He was always renovating the house. He breaks through one room and then he goes to the next room and he’s just going in a circle around the house for the last 40 years. But so he’s always doing construction in the house and it’s his hobby. And he taught me, when I’m depressed for something, he says, “Get a big mountain of sand or something from construction, and just get a shovel and bring it to the other side and just do physical labor, do hard work, and do something, Set a goal, do something.” And I did that with startups too.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, construction is not about the destination, man. It’s about the journey. Sometimes I wonder, people who are always remodeling their house, is it really about the remodeling or is it-
Yeah, construction is not about the destination, man. It’s about the journey. Sometimes I wonder, people who are always remodeling their house, is it really about the remodeling or is it-
Pieter Levels
No, no. It’s not.
No, no. It’s not.
Lex Fridman
Is it about the project-
Is it about the project-
Pieter Levels
It’s a journey.
It’s a journey.
Lex Fridman
The puzzle of it.
The puzzle of it.
Pieter Levels
No, he doesn’t care about the results. Well, he shows me, he’s like, “It’s amazing.” I’m like, “Yeah, it’s amazing.” But then he wants to go to the next room. But I think it’s very metaphorical for work, because I also … I never stop work. I go to the next website or I make a new one or I make a new startup. So I’m always … It gives you something to wake up in the morning and have coffee and kiss your girlfriend and then you have a goal, “Today I’m going to fix this feature,” or “Today I’m going to fix this bug,” or something. “I’m going to do something.” You have something to wake up to. And I think maybe especially as a man, also women, but you need a hard work. You need an endeavor, I think.
No, he doesn’t care about the results. Well, he shows me, he’s like, “It’s amazing.” I’m like, “Yeah, it’s amazing.” But then he wants to go to the next room. But I think it’s very metaphorical for work, because I also … I never stop work. I go to the next website or I make a new one or I make a new startup. So I’m always … It gives you something to wake up in the morning and have coffee and kiss your girlfriend and then you have a goal, “Today I’m going to fix this feature,” or “Today I’m going to fix this bug,” or something. “I’m going to do something.” You have something to wake up to. And I think maybe especially as a man, also women, but you need a hard work. You need an endeavor, I think.
Lex Fridman
How much of the building that you do is about money? How much is it about just a deep internal happiness?
How much of the building that you do is about money? How much is it about just a deep internal happiness?
Pieter Levels
It’s really about fun, because I was doing it when I didn’t make money. That’s the point. So I was always coding, I was making music. I made electronic music, drum and bass music 20 years ago, and I was always making stuff. So I think creative expression is a meaningful work that’s so important, it’s so fun. It’s so fun to have a daily challenge where you try to figure stuff out.
It’s really about fun, because I was doing it when I didn’t make money. That’s the point. So I was always coding, I was making music. I made electronic music, drum and bass music 20 years ago, and I was always making stuff. So I think creative expression is a meaningful work that’s so important, it’s so fun. It’s so fun to have a daily challenge where you try to figure stuff out.
Lex Fridman
But the interesting thing is you built a lot of successful products and you never really wanted to take it to that level where you scale real big and sell it to a company or something like this.
But the interesting thing is you built a lot of successful products and you never really wanted to take it to that level where you scale real big and sell it to a company or something like this.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. The problem is I don’t dictate that. If more people start using, if millions of people suddenly start using it and it becomes big, I’m not going to say, “Oh, stop signing up to my website and paying me money.” But I never raised funding for it. And I think because I don’t like the stressful life that comes with it. I have a lot of founder friends and they tell me secretly, with hundreds of millions of dollars in funding and stuff, and they tell me, “Next time, if I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it like you, because it’s more fun, it’s more indie, it’s more chill, it’s more creative.” They don’t like this. They don’t like to be manager, where you become a CEO, you become a manager. And I think a lot of people that start startups, when they become a CEO, they don’t like that job actually, but they can’t really exit it, but they like to do the groundwork, the coding. So I think that keeps you happy, doing something creative.
Yeah. The problem is I don’t dictate that. If more people start using, if millions of people suddenly start using it and it becomes big, I’m not going to say, “Oh, stop signing up to my website and paying me money.” But I never raised funding for it. And I think because I don’t like the stressful life that comes with it. I have a lot of founder friends and they tell me secretly, with hundreds of millions of dollars in funding and stuff, and they tell me, “Next time, if I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it like you, because it’s more fun, it’s more indie, it’s more chill, it’s more creative.” They don’t like this. They don’t like to be manager, where you become a CEO, you become a manager. And I think a lot of people that start startups, when they become a CEO, they don’t like that job actually, but they can’t really exit it, but they like to do the groundwork, the coding. So I think that keeps you happy, doing something creative.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. But it’s interesting how people are pulled towards that, to scale, to go really big. And you don’t have that honest reflection with yourself, what actually makes you happy? Because for a lot of great engineers, what makes them happy is the building, the “individual contributor,” where you’re actually still coding or you’re actually still building, and they let go of that and then they become unhappy. But some of that is the sacrifice needed to have a impact at scale, if you truly believe in a thing you’re doing.
Yeah. But it’s interesting how people are pulled towards that, to scale, to go really big. And you don’t have that honest reflection with yourself, what actually makes you happy? Because for a lot of great engineers, what makes them happy is the building, the “individual contributor,” where you’re actually still coding or you’re actually still building, and they let go of that and then they become unhappy. But some of that is the sacrifice needed to have a impact at scale, if you truly believe in a thing you’re doing.
Pieter Levels
Look at Elon, he’s doing things million times bigger than me, and would I want to do that? I don’t know, you cannot really choose these things, but I really respect that. I think Elon’s very different from VC founders. VC start … it’s software … There’s a lot of bullshit in this world, I think. There’s a lot of dodgy finance stuff happening there, I think. And I never have concrete evidence about it, but your gut tells you something’s going on with companies getting sold to friends and VCs and then they do reciprocity, and there’s shady financial dealings. With Elon, there’s not. He’s just raising money from investors and he’s actually building stuff. He needs the money to build stuff, hardware stuff. And that I really respect.
Look at Elon, he’s doing things million times bigger than me, and would I want to do that? I don’t know, you cannot really choose these things, but I really respect that. I think Elon’s very different from VC founders. VC start … it’s software … There’s a lot of bullshit in this world, I think. There’s a lot of dodgy finance stuff happening there, I think. And I never have concrete evidence about it, but your gut tells you something’s going on with companies getting sold to friends and VCs and then they do reciprocity, and there’s shady financial dealings. With Elon, there’s not. He’s just raising money from investors and he’s actually building stuff. He needs the money to build stuff, hardware stuff. And that I really respect.
Low points
Lex Fridman
You said that there’s been a few low points in your life, you’ve been depressed and building is one of the ways you get out of that. But can you talk to that? Can you take me to that place? That time when you were at a low point?
You said that there’s been a few low points in your life, you’ve been depressed and building is one of the ways you get out of that. But can you talk to that? Can you take me to that place? That time when you were at a low point?
Pieter Levels
So I was in Holland and I graduated university and I didn’t want to get a normal job and I was making some money with YouTube because I had this music career and I uploaded my music to YouTube and YouTube started paying me with AdSense, $2,000 a month, $2,000 a month. And all my friends got normal jobs and we stopped hanging out because people in university hang out, you chill at each other’s houses, you go party. But when people get jobs, they only party in the weekend and they don’t hang anymore in the week because you need to be at the office. And I was like, “This is not for me. I want to do something else.” And I was started getting this, I think it’s Saturn return. When you turn 27, it’s some concept where Saturn returns to the same place in the orbit that it was when you’re born.
So I was in Holland and I graduated university and I didn’t want to get a normal job and I was making some money with YouTube because I had this music career and I uploaded my music to YouTube and YouTube started paying me with AdSense, $2,000 a month, $2,000 a month. And all my friends got normal jobs and we stopped hanging out because people in university hang out, you chill at each other’s houses, you go party. But when people get jobs, they only party in the weekend and they don’t hang anymore in the week because you need to be at the office. And I was like, “This is not for me. I want to do something else.” And I was started getting this, I think it’s Saturn return. When you turn 27, it’s some concept where Saturn returns to the same place in the orbit that it was when you’re born.
Lex Fridman
I’m learning so many things.
I’m learning so many things.
Pieter Levels
It’s some astrology thing.
It’s some astrology thing.
Lex Fridman
So many truly special artists died when they were 27.
So many truly special artists died when they were 27.
Pieter Levels
Exactly. There’s something with 27, man. And it was for me. I started going crazy, because I didn’t really see my future in Holland, buying a house, going living in the suburbs and stuff. So I flew out. I went to Asia, started digital nomading, and did that for a year. And then that made me feel even worse because I was alone in hotel rooms looking at the ceiling, “What am I doing with my life? This is …” I was working on startups and stuff, and YouTube, but I was like, “What is the future here? Is this something …” while my friends in Holland were doing really well and with a normal life, so it was getting very depressed and I’m a outcast.
Exactly. There’s something with 27, man. And it was for me. I started going crazy, because I didn’t really see my future in Holland, buying a house, going living in the suburbs and stuff. So I flew out. I went to Asia, started digital nomading, and did that for a year. And then that made me feel even worse because I was alone in hotel rooms looking at the ceiling, “What am I doing with my life? This is …” I was working on startups and stuff, and YouTube, but I was like, “What is the future here? Is this something …” while my friends in Holland were doing really well and with a normal life, so it was getting very depressed and I’m a outcast.
My money was shrinking, I wasn’t making money anymore, a lot. I was making $500 a month or something. And I was looking at the ceiling thinking, “Now I’m 27, I’m a loser.” And that’s the moment when I started building startups. And it was because my dad said, “If you’re depressed, you need to get sand, get a shovel, start shoveling, doing something. You can’t just sit still.” Which is an interesting way to deal with depression. It’s not, “Oh, let’s talk about it,” it’s more, “Let’s go do something.” And I started doing a project called 12 Startups in 12 months where every month I would make something like a project and I would launch it with Stripe so people could pay for it.
Lex Fridman
So the basic format is, try to build a thing, put it online, and put Stripe to where you can pay money for it.
So the basic format is, try to build a thing, put it online, and put Stripe to where you can pay money for it.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. I’m not sponsored by Stripe, but add a Stripe Checkout button.
Yeah. I’m not sponsored by Stripe, but add a Stripe Checkout button.
Lex Fridman
Is that still the easiest way to just pay for stuff, stripe?
Is that still the easiest way to just pay for stuff, stripe?
Pieter Levels
100%. I think so.
100%. I think so.
Lex Fridman
It’s a cool company. They just made it so easy, you can just click and …
It’s a cool company. They just made it so easy, you can just click and …
Pieter Levels
Yeah. And they’re really nice. The CEO, Patrick, is really nice.
Yeah. And they’re really nice. The CEO, Patrick, is really nice.
Lex Fridman
Behind the scenes, it must be difficult to actually make that happen. Because that used to be a huge problem-
Behind the scenes, it must be difficult to actually make that happen. Because that used to be a huge problem-
Pieter Levels
Merchant …
Merchant …
Lex Fridman
Just adding a thing, a button where you can pay for a thing.
Just adding a thing, a button where you can pay for a thing.
Pieter Levels
Dude. Dude, I know this because when I was-
Dude. Dude, I know this because when I was-
Lex Fridman
Trustworthy.
Trustworthy.
Pieter Levels
… nine years old, I was making websites also and I tried to open a merchant account. It was before Stripe, you would have … I think it was called Worldpay. So I had to fill out all these forms and then I had to fax them to America from Holland with my dad’s fax. And my dad, it was in my dad’s name, and he just signed for this. And he started reading these terms and conditions, which is, he’s liable for $100 million in damages. And he was like, “I don’t want to sign this.” I’m like, “Dad, come on. I need a merchant account. I need to make money on the internet.” And he signed it and we faxed it to America, and I had merchant account, but then nobody paid for anything, so that was the problem. But it’s much easier now. You can sign up, you add some codes and…
… nine years old, I was making websites also and I tried to open a merchant account. It was before Stripe, you would have … I think it was called Worldpay. So I had to fill out all these forms and then I had to fax them to America from Holland with my dad’s fax. And my dad, it was in my dad’s name, and he just signed for this. And he started reading these terms and conditions, which is, he’s liable for $100 million in damages. And he was like, “I don’t want to sign this.” I’m like, “Dad, come on. I need a merchant account. I need to make money on the internet.” And he signed it and we faxed it to America, and I had merchant account, but then nobody paid for anything, so that was the problem. But it’s much easier now. You can sign up, you add some codes and…
12 startups in 12 months
Lex Fridman
So 12 startups in 12 months. Startup number one, what were you feeling? What were you … Sitting behind the computer, how much do you actually know about building stuff at that point?
So 12 startups in 12 months. Startup number one, what were you feeling? What were you … Sitting behind the computer, how much do you actually know about building stuff at that point?
Pieter Levels
I could code a little bit because I did the YouTube channel and I would make websites for the YouTube channel, it was called Panda Mix Show. And it was these electronic music mixes like dubstep or drum and bass or techno, house.
I could code a little bit because I did the YouTube channel and I would make websites for the YouTube channel, it was called Panda Mix Show. And it was these electronic music mixes like dubstep or drum and bass or techno, house.
Lex Fridman
I saw one of them had Flash. Were you using Flash?
I saw one of them had Flash. Were you using Flash?
Pieter Levels
Yeah, my CD album was using Flash. I sold my CD.
Yeah, my CD album was using Flash. I sold my CD.
Lex Fridman
Kids, Flash was a-
Kids, Flash was a-
Pieter Levels
Flash was cool.
Flash was cool.
Lex Fridman
… software. This is the break, that-
… software. This is the break, that-
Pieter Levels
Like grandpa, but Flash was cool.
Like grandpa, but Flash was cool.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. And there was … what was it called? Boy, I should remember this, ActionScript. There’s some kind of programming language.
Yeah. And there was … what was it called? Boy, I should remember this, ActionScript. There’s some kind of programming language.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, yeah. ActionScript. It was in Flash. Back then, that was the JavaScript.
Yeah, yeah. ActionScript. It was in Flash. Back then, that was the JavaScript.
Lex Fridman
The JavaScript, yeah. And I thought that’s supposed to be the dynamic thing that takes over the internet. I invested so many hours in learning that-
The JavaScript, yeah. And I thought that’s supposed to be the dynamic thing that takes over the internet. I invested so many hours in learning that-
Pieter Levels
And Steve Jobs killed it.
And Steve Jobs killed it.
Lex Fridman
Steve Jobs killed it.
Steve Jobs killed it.
Pieter Levels
Steve Jobs said, ” Flash Sucks, stop using it,” and everyone’s like, “Okay.”
Steve Jobs said, ” Flash Sucks, stop using it,” and everyone’s like, “Okay.”
Lex Fridman
That guy was right though, right?
That guy was right though, right?
Pieter Levels
Yeah, I don’t know. Well, it was a closed platform, I think, and-
Yeah, I don’t know. Well, it was a closed platform, I think, and-
Lex Fridman
Closed? You could just …
Closed? You could just …
Pieter Levels
But this is ironic, because Apple, they’re not very open, but back then Steve was like, “This is closed, we should not use it, and it has security problems,” I think, which sounded like a cop-out, like he just wanted to say that to make it look bad. But Flash was cool.
But this is ironic, because Apple, they’re not very open, but back then Steve was like, “This is closed, we should not use it, and it has security problems,” I think, which sounded like a cop-out, like he just wanted to say that to make it look bad. But Flash was cool.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, it was cool for a time. Listen, animated GIFs were cool for a time too. They came back in a different way, as a meme, though. I remember when GIFs were actually cool, not ironically cool. On the internet you would have a dancing rabbit or something like this, and that was really exciting.
Yeah, it was cool for a time. Listen, animated GIFs were cool for a time too. They came back in a different way, as a meme, though. I remember when GIFs were actually cool, not ironically cool. On the internet you would have a dancing rabbit or something like this, and that was really exciting.
Pieter Levels
You had the Lex homepage, everything was centered and you had Pieter’s homepage and the under construction GIF, which was a guy with a helmet and the lights, it was amazing.
You had the Lex homepage, everything was centered and you had Pieter’s homepage and the under construction GIF, which was a guy with a helmet and the lights, it was amazing.
Lex Fridman
And the banners. That’s how … Before Google AdSense you would have banners for advertising.
And the banners. That’s how … Before Google AdSense you would have banners for advertising.
Pieter Levels
It was amazing.
It was amazing.
Lex Fridman
And a lot of links to porn, I think. Or porny-type links.
And a lot of links to porn, I think. Or porny-type links.
Pieter Levels
I think that was where the merchant accounts … people would use for. People would make money a lot. The only money made on internet then was porn, or a lot of it.
I think that was where the merchant accounts … people would use for. People would make money a lot. The only money made on internet then was porn, or a lot of it.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, it was a dark place. It’s still a dark place, but there’s beauty in the darkness. Anyway, so you did some basic HTML …
Yeah, it was a dark place. It’s still a dark place, but there’s beauty in the darkness. Anyway, so you did some basic HTML …
Pieter Levels
Yeah. But I had to learn the actual coding, so this was good. It was a good idea to … every month launch a startup, so I could learn to code, learn basic stuff. But it was still very scrappy, which is on purpose, because I didn’t have time to spend a lot of … I had a month to do something, so I couldn’t spend more than a month and I was pretty strict about that. And I published it as a blog post. I think I put it on Hacker News and people would check, “Oh, did you actually …” I felt accountability because I put it public, that I actually had to do it.
Yeah. But I had to learn the actual coding, so this was good. It was a good idea to … every month launch a startup, so I could learn to code, learn basic stuff. But it was still very scrappy, which is on purpose, because I didn’t have time to spend a lot of … I had a month to do something, so I couldn’t spend more than a month and I was pretty strict about that. And I published it as a blog post. I think I put it on Hacker News and people would check, “Oh, did you actually …” I felt accountability because I put it public, that I actually had to do it.
Lex Fridman
Do you remember the first one you did?
Do you remember the first one you did?
Pieter Levels
I think it was Play My Inbox, because back then my friends, we would send cool … It was before Spotify, I think. 2013, we would send music to each other, YouTube links. “This is a cool song, this is a cool song.” And it was these giant email threads on Gmail and they were unnavigable. So I made an app that would log into your Gmail, get the emails and find ones with YouTube links, and then make a gallery of your songs, essentially Spotify. And my friends loved it.
I think it was Play My Inbox, because back then my friends, we would send cool … It was before Spotify, I think. 2013, we would send music to each other, YouTube links. “This is a cool song, this is a cool song.” And it was these giant email threads on Gmail and they were unnavigable. So I made an app that would log into your Gmail, get the emails and find ones with YouTube links, and then make a gallery of your songs, essentially Spotify. And my friends loved it.
Lex Fridman
Was it scraping it? What was it, an API?
Was it scraping it? What was it, an API?
Pieter Levels
No, it uses POP. POP or IMAP. It would actually check your email. So it had privacy concerns, because it would get all your emails to find YouTube links, but then I wouldn’t save anything. But that was fun. And that first product already would get press, it went on, I think, some tech media and stuff, and I was like, “This is cool.” It didn’t make money, there was no payment button, but it was actually people using it. I think tens of thousands of people used it.
No, it uses POP. POP or IMAP. It would actually check your email. So it had privacy concerns, because it would get all your emails to find YouTube links, but then I wouldn’t save anything. But that was fun. And that first product already would get press, it went on, I think, some tech media and stuff, and I was like, “This is cool.” It didn’t make money, there was no payment button, but it was actually people using it. I think tens of thousands of people used it.
Lex Fridman
That’s a great idea. I wonder why don’t we have that? Why don’t we have things that access Gmail and extract some useful aggregate information?
That’s a great idea. I wonder why don’t we have that? Why don’t we have things that access Gmail and extract some useful aggregate information?
Pieter Levels
Yeah. You could tell Gmail, “Don’t give me all the emails, just give me the ones with YouTube links or something like that.”
Yeah. You could tell Gmail, “Don’t give me all the emails, just give me the ones with YouTube links or something like that.”
Lex Fridman
There is a whole ecosystem of apps you can build on top of the Google, but people don’t really-
There is a whole ecosystem of apps you can build on top of the Google, but people don’t really-
Pieter Levels
Never do this. I never see them-
Never do this. I never see them-
Lex Fridman
They build … I’ve seen a few like Boomerang, there’s a few apps that are good, but I wonder what … Maybe it’s not easy to make money.
They build … I’ve seen a few like Boomerang, there’s a few apps that are good, but I wonder what … Maybe it’s not easy to make money.
Pieter Levels
I think it’s hard to get people to pay for these extensions and plugins. Because it’s not a real app, so it’s not … people don’t value it. People value it, “Oh, a plugin should be free. When I want to use a plugin in Google Sheets or something, I’m not going to pay for it. It should be free,” which is … But if you go to a website and you actually … “Okay, I need this product, I’m going to pay for this because it’s a real product.” So even though it’s the same code in the back, it’s a plugin.
I think it’s hard to get people to pay for these extensions and plugins. Because it’s not a real app, so it’s not … people don’t value it. People value it, “Oh, a plugin should be free. When I want to use a plugin in Google Sheets or something, I’m not going to pay for it. It should be free,” which is … But if you go to a website and you actually … “Okay, I need this product, I’m going to pay for this because it’s a real product.” So even though it’s the same code in the back, it’s a plugin.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. You could do it through extensions, Chrome extensions from the browser side.
Yeah. You could do it through extensions, Chrome extensions from the browser side.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, but who pays for Chrome extensions? Barely anybody.
Yeah, but who pays for Chrome extensions? Barely anybody.
Lex Fridman
Nobody.
Nobody.
Pieter Levels
So that’s not a good place to make money, probably.
So that’s not a good place to make money, probably.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, that sucks.
Yeah, that sucks.
Pieter Levels
Chrome extension should be a extension for your startup. You have a product, “Oh, we also have a Chrome extension.”
Chrome extension should be a extension for your startup. You have a product, “Oh, we also have a Chrome extension.”
Lex Fridman
I wish the Chrome extension would be the product. I wish Chrome would support that, where you could pay for it easily … I can imagine a lot of products that would just live as extensions, like improvements for social media.
I wish the Chrome extension would be the product. I wish Chrome would support that, where you could pay for it easily … I can imagine a lot of products that would just live as extensions, like improvements for social media.
Pieter Levels
Like GPTs.
Like GPTs.
Lex Fridman
GPTs, yeah.
GPTs, yeah.
Pieter Levels
These ChatGPTs, they’re going to charge money for it, now you get a rev share, I think, from Open AI, I made a lot of them also.
These ChatGPTs, they’re going to charge money for it, now you get a rev share, I think, from Open AI, I made a lot of them also.
Lex Fridman
Why? We’ll talk about it. So let’s rewind back. It’s a pretty cool idea to do 12 startups in 12 months. What’s it take to build a thing in 30 days? At that time, how hard was that?
Why? We’ll talk about it. So let’s rewind back. It’s a pretty cool idea to do 12 startups in 12 months. What’s it take to build a thing in 30 days? At that time, how hard was that?
Pieter Levels
I think the hard part is figuring out what you shouldn’t add, what you shouldn’t build, because you don’t have time. So you need to build a landing page. Well, you need to build the product, actually, because there needs to be something they pay for. Do you need to build a login system? Maybe no. Maybe you can build some scrappy login system. For photo AI, you sign up, you pay with Stripe Checkout and you get a login link. And when I started out, there was only a login link with a hash, and that’s just a static link, so it’s very easy to log in. It’s not so safe, what if you leak the link? And now I have real Google login, but that took a year. So keeping it very scrappy is very important to … because you don’t have time. You need to focus on what you can build fast.
I think the hard part is figuring out what you shouldn’t add, what you shouldn’t build, because you don’t have time. So you need to build a landing page. Well, you need to build the product, actually, because there needs to be something they pay for. Do you need to build a login system? Maybe no. Maybe you can build some scrappy login system. For photo AI, you sign up, you pay with Stripe Checkout and you get a login link. And when I started out, there was only a login link with a hash, and that’s just a static link, so it’s very easy to log in. It’s not so safe, what if you leak the link? And now I have real Google login, but that took a year. So keeping it very scrappy is very important to … because you don’t have time. You need to focus on what you can build fast.
So money, Stripe, build a product, build a landing page. You need to think about, “How are people going to find this?” So are you going to put it on Reddit or something? How are you going to put it on Reddit without being looked at as a spammer? If you say, “Hey, it is my new startup, you should use it,” no, nobody … It gets deleted. Maybe if you find a problem that a lot of people on Reddit already have, on a subreddit and you solve that problem, say, “What’s up, people. I made this thing that might solve your problem,” and maybe, “It’s free for now.” That could work. But you need to be very … Narrow it down, what you’re building.
Travelling and depression
Lex Fridman
Time is limited. Actually, can we go back to the you laying in a room feeling like a loser, I still feel like a loser sometimes. Can you speak to that feeling, to that place of just feeling like a loser? Because I think a lot of people in this world are laying in a room right now listening to this and feeling like a loser.
Time is limited. Actually, can we go back to the you laying in a room feeling like a loser, I still feel like a loser sometimes. Can you speak to that feeling, to that place of just feeling like a loser? Because I think a lot of people in this world are laying in a room right now listening to this and feeling like a loser.
Pieter Levels
Okay. So I think it’s normal if you’re young that you feel like a loser, first of all.
Okay. So I think it’s normal if you’re young that you feel like a loser, first of all.
Lex Fridman
Especially when you’re 27.
Especially when you’re 27.
Pieter Levels
Yes, yes.
Yes, yes.
Lex Fridman
There’s a peak.
There’s a peak.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. Yeah. I think 27 is the peak. And so I would not kill yourselves, it’s very important. Just get through it. But because you have nothing, you have probably no money, you have no business, you have no job. Jordan Peterson said this. I saw it somewhere, “The reason people are depressed is because they have nothing. They don’t have a girlfriend, they don’t have or boyfriend, they don’t have …” You need stuff, or a family. You need things around you. You need to build a life for yourself. If you don’t build a life for yourself, you’ll be depressed. So if you’re alone in Asia in a hostel looking at the ceiling and you don’t have any money coming in, you don’t have a girlfriend, you don’t … of course you’re depressed. It’s logic. But back then, if you’re in the moment you think, “This is not logic, there’s something wrong with me.”
Yeah. Yeah. I think 27 is the peak. And so I would not kill yourselves, it’s very important. Just get through it. But because you have nothing, you have probably no money, you have no business, you have no job. Jordan Peterson said this. I saw it somewhere, “The reason people are depressed is because they have nothing. They don’t have a girlfriend, they don’t have or boyfriend, they don’t have …” You need stuff, or a family. You need things around you. You need to build a life for yourself. If you don’t build a life for yourself, you’ll be depressed. So if you’re alone in Asia in a hostel looking at the ceiling and you don’t have any money coming in, you don’t have a girlfriend, you don’t … of course you’re depressed. It’s logic. But back then, if you’re in the moment you think, “This is not logic, there’s something wrong with me.”
And also I think I started getting anxiety and I think I started going a little bit crazy where I think travel can make you insane. And I know this because I know that there’s digital nomads that … they kill themselves. And I haven’t checked the comparison with baseline people suicide rate, but I have a hunch, especially in the beginning when it was a very new thing 10 years ago, that it can be very psychologically taxing, and you’re alone a lot. Back then when you travel alone, there was no other digital moments back then, a lot. So you’re in a strange culture, you look different than everybody. I was in Asia, everybody’s really nice in Thailand, but you’re not part of the culture. You’re traveling around, you’re hopping from city to city. You don’t have a home anymore. You feel disrooted.
Lex Fridman
And you’re constantly an outcast in that you’re different from everybody else.
And you’re constantly an outcast in that you’re different from everybody else.
Pieter Levels
Yes, exactly. But people treat you … Like Thailand, people are so nice, but you still feel like a outcast. And then I think the digital nomads I met then were all … it was shady business. They were vigilantes, because it was a new thing. And one guy was selling illegal drugs. It was an American guy, was selling illegal drugs via UPS to Americans on this website, there were a lot of drop shippers doing shady stuff. There was a lot of shady things going on there. And they didn’t look like very balanced people. They didn’t look like people I wanted to hang with. So I also felt outcast from other foreigners in Thailand, other digital nomads. And I was like, “Man, I made a big mistake.” And then I went back to Holland and then I got even more depressed.
Yes, exactly. But people treat you … Like Thailand, people are so nice, but you still feel like a outcast. And then I think the digital nomads I met then were all … it was shady business. They were vigilantes, because it was a new thing. And one guy was selling illegal drugs. It was an American guy, was selling illegal drugs via UPS to Americans on this website, there were a lot of drop shippers doing shady stuff. There was a lot of shady things going on there. And they didn’t look like very balanced people. They didn’t look like people I wanted to hang with. So I also felt outcast from other foreigners in Thailand, other digital nomads. And I was like, “Man, I made a big mistake.” And then I went back to Holland and then I got even more depressed.
Lex Fridman
You said digital nomad. What is digital nomad? What is that way of life? What is the philosophy there? And the history of the movement?
You said digital nomad. What is digital nomad? What is that way of life? What is the philosophy there? And the history of the movement?
Pieter Levels
I struck upon it on accident, because I was like, “I’m going to graduate university and then I need to get out of here. I’ll fly to Asia,” because I’d been before in Asia. I studied in Korea in 2009, study exchange. So I was like, “Asia is easy, Thailand’s easy. I’ll just go there, figure things out.” And it’s cheap. It’s very cheap. Chiang Mai, I would live for $150 per month rent for private room, pretty good. So I struck upon this on accident. I was like, “Okay, there’s other people on laptops working on their startup or working remotely.” Back then nobody worked remotely, but they worked on their businesses, and they would live in Columbia or Thailand or Vietnam or Bali. They would live in more cheap places.
I struck upon it on accident, because I was like, “I’m going to graduate university and then I need to get out of here. I’ll fly to Asia,” because I’d been before in Asia. I studied in Korea in 2009, study exchange. So I was like, “Asia is easy, Thailand’s easy. I’ll just go there, figure things out.” And it’s cheap. It’s very cheap. Chiang Mai, I would live for $150 per month rent for private room, pretty good. So I struck upon this on accident. I was like, “Okay, there’s other people on laptops working on their startup or working remotely.” Back then nobody worked remotely, but they worked on their businesses, and they would live in Columbia or Thailand or Vietnam or Bali. They would live in more cheap places.
And it looked like a very adventurous life. You travel around, you build your business, there’s no pressure from your home society. You’re American, so you get pressure from American society telling you what to do, “You need to buy a house,” or “You need to do this stuff.” I had this in Holland too. And you can get away from this pressure, and you can feel like you’re free. There’s nobody telling you what to do. But that’s also why you start feeling like you go crazy, because you are free, you’re disattached from anything and anybody. You’re disattached from your culture, you’re disattached from the culture you’re probably in because you’re staying very short.
Lex Fridman
I think Franz Kafka said, “I’m free, therefore I’m lost.”
I think Franz Kafka said, “I’m free, therefore I’m lost.”
Pieter Levels
Man, that’s so true. That’s exactly the point. And freedom, it’s the definition of no constraints. Anything is possible, you can go anywhere. And everybody’s like, “Oh, that must be super nice. Freedom, you must be very happy.” And it’s the opposite. I don’t think that makes you happy. I think constraints probably make you happy. And that’s a big lesson I learned then.
Man, that’s so true. That’s exactly the point. And freedom, it’s the definition of no constraints. Anything is possible, you can go anywhere. And everybody’s like, “Oh, that must be super nice. Freedom, you must be very happy.” And it’s the opposite. I don’t think that makes you happy. I think constraints probably make you happy. And that’s a big lesson I learned then.
Lex Fridman
But what were they making for money? So you’re saying they were doing shady stuff at that time?
But what were they making for money? So you’re saying they were doing shady stuff at that time?
Pieter Levels
For me, because I was more like a developer, I wanted to make startups and there was drugs being shipped to America, diet pills and stuff. Non FDA-approved stuff. We would sit with beers and they would laugh about all the dodgy shit they’re doing.
For me, because I was more like a developer, I wanted to make startups and there was drugs being shipped to America, diet pills and stuff. Non FDA-approved stuff. We would sit with beers and they would laugh about all the dodgy shit they’re doing.
Lex Fridman
Ah, that part of … Okay, I see.
Ah, that part of … Okay, I see.
Pieter Levels
That kind of vibe, sleazy e-com vibe. I’m not saying all e-com is sleazy, but you know this vibe.
That kind of vibe, sleazy e-com vibe. I’m not saying all e-com is sleazy, but you know this vibe.
Lex Fridman
It could be a vibe. And your vibe was more-
It could be a vibe. And your vibe was more-
Pieter Levels
Make cool stuff.
Make cool stuff.
Lex Fridman
“Build cool shit that’s ethical.”
“Build cool shit that’s ethical.”
Pieter Levels
Yeah. You know the guys with sports cars in Dubai, these people, e-com, “Bro, you got to drop ship and you’ll make $100 million a month,” there was people with this shit, and I was like, “This is not my people.”
Yeah. You know the guys with sports cars in Dubai, these people, e-com, “Bro, you got to drop ship and you’ll make $100 million a month,” there was people with this shit, and I was like, “This is not my people.”
Lex Fridman
Yeah. There’s nothing wrong with any of those individual components-
Yeah. There’s nothing wrong with any of those individual components-
Pieter Levels
No, no judgment.
No, no judgment.
Lex Fridman
… but there’s a foundation that’s not quite ethical. What is that? I don’t know what that is, but I get you.
… but there’s a foundation that’s not quite ethical. What is that? I don’t know what that is, but I get you.
Pieter Levels
No, I don’t want to judge. I know that for me it wasn’t my world, it wasn’t my subculture. I wanted to make cool shit, but they also think their cool shit is cool, so … But I wanted to make real startups and that was my thing. I would read Hacker News, Y Combinator, and they were making cool stuff, so I wanted to make cool stuff.
No, I don’t want to judge. I know that for me it wasn’t my world, it wasn’t my subculture. I wanted to make cool shit, but they also think their cool shit is cool, so … But I wanted to make real startups and that was my thing. I would read Hacker News, Y Combinator, and they were making cool stuff, so I wanted to make cool stuff.
Lex Fridman
That’s a pretty cool way of life, just if you romanticize it for a moment.
That’s a pretty cool way of life, just if you romanticize it for a moment.
Pieter Levels
It’s very romantic, man. It’s colorful, if I think about the memories.
It’s very romantic, man. It’s colorful, if I think about the memories.
Lex Fridman
What are some happy memories? Just working cafes or working in … Just the freedom that envelops you with that way of life. Because anything is possible. You can just get off of the-
What are some happy memories? Just working cafes or working in … Just the freedom that envelops you with that way of life. Because anything is possible. You can just get off of the-
Pieter Levels
Oh, I think it was amazing. I would make friends and we would work until 6:00 AM in Bali, for example, with Andre, my best friend who is still my best friend, and another friend. And we would work until the morning when the sun came up, because at night the coworking space was silent. There was nobody else. And I would wake up 6:00 PM or 5:00 PM, I would drive to the coworking space on a motorbike. I would buy 30 hot lattes from a cafe …
Oh, I think it was amazing. I would make friends and we would work until 6:00 AM in Bali, for example, with Andre, my best friend who is still my best friend, and another friend. And we would work until the morning when the sun came up, because at night the coworking space was silent. There was nobody else. And I would wake up 6:00 PM or 5:00 PM, I would drive to the coworking space on a motorbike. I would buy 30 hot lattes from a cafe …
Lex Fridman
How many?
How many?
Pieter Levels
30. Because there was like six people coming, or we didn’t know. Sometimes people would come in.
30. Because there was like six people coming, or we didn’t know. Sometimes people would come in.
Lex Fridman
Did you say three, zero, 30?
Did you say three, zero, 30?
Pieter Levels
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Nice.
Nice.
Pieter Levels
And we would drink four per person or something. Man, it’s Bali, I don’t know if they were powerful lattes, but they were lattes. And we’d put them in plastic bag and then I would drive there and all the coffee was falling everywhere. And then we’d go into the coworking station and have these coffees here and we’d work all night. We’d play techno music and everybody would just work in there. This would … Literally business people, they would work in their startup and we’d all try and make something. And then the sun would come up and the morning people, the yoga girls and yoga guys would come in after the yoga class at 6:00 and they say, “Hey, good morning.” We looked like this, and we’re like, “What up? How are you doing?” And we didn’t know how bad we looked, but it was very bad. And then we would go home, sleep in a hostel or a hotel, and do the same thing, and again and again and again. And it was this lock-in mode, working. And that was very fun.
And we would drink four per person or something. Man, it’s Bali, I don’t know if they were powerful lattes, but they were lattes. And we’d put them in plastic bag and then I would drive there and all the coffee was falling everywhere. And then we’d go into the coworking station and have these coffees here and we’d work all night. We’d play techno music and everybody would just work in there. This would … Literally business people, they would work in their startup and we’d all try and make something. And then the sun would come up and the morning people, the yoga girls and yoga guys would come in after the yoga class at 6:00 and they say, “Hey, good morning.” We looked like this, and we’re like, “What up? How are you doing?” And we didn’t know how bad we looked, but it was very bad. And then we would go home, sleep in a hostel or a hotel, and do the same thing, and again and again and again. And it was this lock-in mode, working. And that was very fun.
Lex Fridman
So it’s just a bunch of you, techno music blasting all through the night?
So it’s just a bunch of you, techno music blasting all through the night?
Pieter Levels
More like (singing).
More like (singing).
Lex Fridman
Oh, so rapid pace.
Oh, so rapid pace.
Pieter Levels
Like industrial, not like this cheesy-
Like industrial, not like this cheesy-
Lex Fridman
See, for me, it’s such an interesting thing because the speed of the beat affects how I feel about a thing. So the faster it is, the more anxiety I feel, but that anxiety is channeled into productivity. But if it’s a little too fast, I start … the anxiety overpowers.
See, for me, it’s such an interesting thing because the speed of the beat affects how I feel about a thing. So the faster it is, the more anxiety I feel, but that anxiety is channeled into productivity. But if it’s a little too fast, I start … the anxiety overpowers.
Pieter Levels
So you don’t like drum and bass music?
So you don’t like drum and bass music?
Lex Fridman
Probably not.
Probably not.
Pieter Levels
No, it’s too fast.
No, it’s too fast.
Lex Fridman
For working. I have to play with it. You can actually … I can adjust my level of anxiety. There must be a better word than anxiety. It’s like a productive anxiety that I like, whatever that is.
For working. I have to play with it. You can actually … I can adjust my level of anxiety. There must be a better word than anxiety. It’s like a productive anxiety that I like, whatever that is.
Pieter Levels
It also depends, what kind of work you do. If you’re writing, you probably don’t want drum and bass music. I think for code, industrial, techno, this kind of stuff, fast, it works well because you really get locked in and combined with caffeine, you go deep. And I think you balance on this edge of anxiety, because this caffeine is also hitting your anxiety and you want to be on the edge of anxiety with this techno running. Sometimes it gets too much, it’s like, “Stop the techno, stop the music.” But those are good memories. And also travel memories. You go from city to city and it feels like it’s jet set life. It feels very beautiful. You’re seeing a lot of cool cities, and-
It also depends, what kind of work you do. If you’re writing, you probably don’t want drum and bass music. I think for code, industrial, techno, this kind of stuff, fast, it works well because you really get locked in and combined with caffeine, you go deep. And I think you balance on this edge of anxiety, because this caffeine is also hitting your anxiety and you want to be on the edge of anxiety with this techno running. Sometimes it gets too much, it’s like, “Stop the techno, stop the music.” But those are good memories. And also travel memories. You go from city to city and it feels like it’s jet set life. It feels very beautiful. You’re seeing a lot of cool cities, and-
Lex Fridman
What was your favorite place that you remember you visited?
What was your favorite place that you remember you visited?
Pieter Levels
I think still Bangkok is the best place. Bangkok and Chiang Mai. I think Thailand is very special. I’ve been to the other place, I’ve been to Vietnam and I’ve been to South America and stuff. I still think Thailand wins in how nice people are, how easy of a life people have there.
I think still Bangkok is the best place. Bangkok and Chiang Mai. I think Thailand is very special. I’ve been to the other place, I’ve been to Vietnam and I’ve been to South America and stuff. I still think Thailand wins in how nice people are, how easy of a life people have there.
Lex Fridman
Everything’s cheap and good.
Everything’s cheap and good.
Pieter Levels
Well, Bangkok is getting expensive now, but Chiang Mai is still cheap. I think when you’re starting out, it’s a great place. Man, the air quality sucks, it’s a big problem. And it’s quite hot. But that’s a very cool place.
Well, Bangkok is getting expensive now, but Chiang Mai is still cheap. I think when you’re starting out, it’s a great place. Man, the air quality sucks, it’s a big problem. And it’s quite hot. But that’s a very cool place.
Lex Fridman
Pros and cons.
Pros and cons.
Pieter Levels
I love Brazil also. My girlfriend is Brazilian, but I do love not just because of that, but I like Brazil. The problem still is the safety issue. It’s like in America, it’s localized. It’s hard for Europeans to understand, safety is localized to specific areas. So if you go to the right areas, it’s amazing. Brazil’s amazing. If you go to the wrong areas, maybe you die.
I love Brazil also. My girlfriend is Brazilian, but I do love not just because of that, but I like Brazil. The problem still is the safety issue. It’s like in America, it’s localized. It’s hard for Europeans to understand, safety is localized to specific areas. So if you go to the right areas, it’s amazing. Brazil’s amazing. If you go to the wrong areas, maybe you die.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. That’s true.
Yeah. That’s true.
Pieter Levels
But it’s not true in Europe. Europe’s much more average.
But it’s not true in Europe. Europe’s much more average.
Lex Fridman
That’s true. That’s true. You’re right. You’re right. You’re right. It’s more averaged out. I like it when there’s strong neighborhoods. When you’re like, “You cross a certain street and you’re in the dangerous part of town.” I like it. There’s certain cities in the United States like that, I like that. And you’re saying Europe is more [inaudible 00:30:07]
That’s true. That’s true. You’re right. You’re right. You’re right. It’s more averaged out. I like it when there’s strong neighborhoods. When you’re like, “You cross a certain street and you’re in the dangerous part of town.” I like it. There’s certain cities in the United States like that, I like that. And you’re saying Europe is more [inaudible 00:30:07]
Pieter Levels
But you don’t feel scared?
But you don’t feel scared?
Lex Fridman
Well, I don’t. I like danger.
Well, I don’t. I like danger.
Pieter Levels
Well, you do BJJ.
Well, you do BJJ.
Lex Fridman
Well, no. Not even just that. I think danger is interesting, so … Danger reveals something about yourself, about others. Also, I like the full range of humanity. So I don’t like the mellowed out aspects of humanity.
Well, no. Not even just that. I think danger is interesting, so … Danger reveals something about yourself, about others. Also, I like the full range of humanity. So I don’t like the mellowed out aspects of humanity.
Pieter Levels
I have friends like these, I’m with friends that are exactly like this. They go to the broken areas. They like this reality. They like authenticity more. They don’t like luxury, they don’t like-
I have friends like these, I’m with friends that are exactly like this. They go to the broken areas. They like this reality. They like authenticity more. They don’t like luxury, they don’t like-
Lex Fridman
Oh yeah, I hate luxury.
Oh yeah, I hate luxury.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, it’s very European of you.
Yeah, it’s very European of you.
Lex Fridman
Wait, what was that? That’s a whole nother conversation. So you quoted Freya Stark, “To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the most pleasant sensations in the world.” Do you remember a time you awoken in a strange town and felt like that? We’re talking about small towns or big towns? Or …
Wait, what was that? That’s a whole nother conversation. So you quoted Freya Stark, “To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the most pleasant sensations in the world.” Do you remember a time you awoken in a strange town and felt like that? We’re talking about small towns or big towns? Or …
Pieter Levels
Man, anywhere. I think I wrote it in some blog post and it was a common thing when you would wake up, and this was … Because I have this website, I started a website about this digital nomads called nomadlist.com, and it was a community, so it was 30,000 other digital nomads, because I was feeling lonely. So I built this website and I stopped feeling lonely. I started organizing meetups and making friends. And it was very common that people would say they would wake up and they would forget where they are for the first half minute. And they had to look outside, ” Where am I? Which country?” Which sounds really like privileged, but it was more funny. You literally don’t know where you are because you’re so disrooted? But there’s something … Man, it’s like Anthony Bourdain. There’s something pure about this vagabond travel thing. It’s behind me, I think. Now I travel with my girlfriend, it’s very different. But it is romantic memories of this vagabond, individualistic solo life. But the thing is it didn’t make me happy, but it was very cool. But it didn’t make me happy, it made me anxious.
Man, anywhere. I think I wrote it in some blog post and it was a common thing when you would wake up, and this was … Because I have this website, I started a website about this digital nomads called nomadlist.com, and it was a community, so it was 30,000 other digital nomads, because I was feeling lonely. So I built this website and I stopped feeling lonely. I started organizing meetups and making friends. And it was very common that people would say they would wake up and they would forget where they are for the first half minute. And they had to look outside, ” Where am I? Which country?” Which sounds really like privileged, but it was more funny. You literally don’t know where you are because you’re so disrooted? But there’s something … Man, it’s like Anthony Bourdain. There’s something pure about this vagabond travel thing. It’s behind me, I think. Now I travel with my girlfriend, it’s very different. But it is romantic memories of this vagabond, individualistic solo life. But the thing is it didn’t make me happy, but it was very cool. But it didn’t make me happy, it made me anxious.
Lex Fridman
There’s something about-
There’s something about-
Pieter Levels
Very cool, but it didn’t make me happy, right? It made me anxious.
Very cool, but it didn’t make me happy, right? It made me anxious.
Lex Fridman
There’s something about it that made you anxious. I don’t know, I still feel like that. It’s a cool feeling. It’s scary at first, but then you realize where you are, and I don’t know, it’s like you awaken to the possibilities of this place when you feel like that.
There’s something about it that made you anxious. I don’t know, I still feel like that. It’s a cool feeling. It’s scary at first, but then you realize where you are, and I don’t know, it’s like you awaken to the possibilities of this place when you feel like that.
Pieter Levels
That’s it.
That’s it.
Lex Fridman
It’s great, and it’s even when you’re doing basic travel, like go to San Francisco or something else.
It’s great, and it’s even when you’re doing basic travel, like go to San Francisco or something else.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, you have the novelty effect, like you’re in a new place, like here things are possible. You don’t get bored yet, and that’s why people get addicted to travel.
Yeah, you have the novelty effect, like you’re in a new place, like here things are possible. You don’t get bored yet, and that’s why people get addicted to travel.
Indie hacking
Lex Fridman
Back to startups, you wrote a book on how to do this thing, and gave a great talk on it, how to do startups, the book’s called MAKE: Bootstrapper’s Handbook.
Back to startups, you wrote a book on how to do this thing, and gave a great talk on it, how to do startups, the book’s called MAKE: Bootstrapper’s Handbook.
Pieter Levels
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
I was wondering if you could go through some of the steps. It’s idea, build, launch, grow, monetize, automate, and exit. There’s a lot of fascinating ideas in each one, so idea stage, how do you find a good idea?
I was wondering if you could go through some of the steps. It’s idea, build, launch, grow, monetize, automate, and exit. There’s a lot of fascinating ideas in each one, so idea stage, how do you find a good idea?
Pieter Levels
So, I think you need to be able to spot problems. So for example, you can go in your daily life, like when you wake up and you’re like, “What is stuff that I’m really annoyed with that’s like in my daily life that doesn’t function well?” And that’s a problem that you can see, okay, maybe that’s something I can write code for, and it will make my life easier. So, I would say make a list of all these problems you have, and an idea to solve it, and see which one is viable, you can actually do something, and then start building it.
So, I think you need to be able to spot problems. So for example, you can go in your daily life, like when you wake up and you’re like, “What is stuff that I’m really annoyed with that’s like in my daily life that doesn’t function well?” And that’s a problem that you can see, okay, maybe that’s something I can write code for, and it will make my life easier. So, I would say make a list of all these problems you have, and an idea to solve it, and see which one is viable, you can actually do something, and then start building it.
Lex Fridman
So, that’s a really good place to start. Become open to all the problems in your life, like actually start noticing them. I think that’s actually not a trivial thing to do, to realize that some aspects of your life could be done way, way better, because we kind of very quickly get accustomed to discomforts.
So, that’s a really good place to start. Become open to all the problems in your life, like actually start noticing them. I think that’s actually not a trivial thing to do, to realize that some aspects of your life could be done way, way better, because we kind of very quickly get accustomed to discomforts.
Pieter Levels
Exactly.
Exactly.
Lex Fridman
Like for example, doorknobs, like design of certain things.
Like for example, doorknobs, like design of certain things.
Pieter Levels
The new Lex Fridman doorknob, [inaudible 00:33:53]-
The new Lex Fridman doorknob, [inaudible 00:33:53]-
Lex Fridman
That one I know how much incredible design work has gone into. It’s really interesting, doors and doorknobs, just the design of everyday things, forks and spoons. It’s going to be hard to come up with a fork that’s better than the current fork designs, and the other aspect of it is you’re saying in order to come up with interesting ideas, you got to try to live a more interesting life.
That one I know how much incredible design work has gone into. It’s really interesting, doors and doorknobs, just the design of everyday things, forks and spoons. It’s going to be hard to come up with a fork that’s better than the current fork designs, and the other aspect of it is you’re saying in order to come up with interesting ideas, you got to try to live a more interesting life.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, but that’s where travel comes in, because when I started traveling, I started seeing stuff in other countries that you didn’t have in Europe for example, or America even. If you go to Asia, dude, especially 10 years ago, nobody knew about this. The WeChats, all these apps that they already had before we had them, these everything apps. Right now Elon’s trying to make X this everything app like WeChat, same thing. Indonesia or Thailand, you have one app that you can order food, or if you can order groceries, you can order massage, you can order car mechanic, anything you can think of is in the app, and that stuff, for example, that’s called arbitrage.
Yeah, but that’s where travel comes in, because when I started traveling, I started seeing stuff in other countries that you didn’t have in Europe for example, or America even. If you go to Asia, dude, especially 10 years ago, nobody knew about this. The WeChats, all these apps that they already had before we had them, these everything apps. Right now Elon’s trying to make X this everything app like WeChat, same thing. Indonesia or Thailand, you have one app that you can order food, or if you can order groceries, you can order massage, you can order car mechanic, anything you can think of is in the app, and that stuff, for example, that’s called arbitrage.
You can go back to your country and build that same app for your country for example. So, you start seeing problems, you start seeing solutions that other people already did in the rest of the world, and also traveling in general just gives you more problems, because travel is uncomfortable. Airports are horrible, airplanes are not comfortable either. There’s a lot of problems you start seeing, just getting out of your house.
Lex Fridman
I mean, in a digital world, you can just go into different communities, and see what can be improved by-
I mean, in a digital world, you can just go into different communities, and see what can be improved by-
Pieter Levels
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
… in that.
… in that.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Lex Fridman
What specifically is your process of generating ideas? Do you do idea dumps? Do you have a document where you just keep writing stuff?
What specifically is your process of generating ideas? Do you do idea dumps? Do you have a document where you just keep writing stuff?
Pieter Levels
Yeah, I used to have… Because when I wasn’t making money, I was trying to make this list of ideas to see… So I need to build… I was thinking statistically, “All right, I need to build all these things and one of these will work out probably. So, I need to have a lot of things to try,” and I did that. Right now, I think because I already have money, I can do more things based on technology. So for example, AI, when I found out about… When Stable Diffusion came or ChatGPT and stuff, all these things were like… I didn’t start working with them, because I had a problem. I had no problems, but I was very curious about technology, and I was playing with it, and figuring out… First, just playing with it, and then you find something like, “Okay, Stable Diffusion generates houses very beautiful and interiors.”
Yeah, I used to have… Because when I wasn’t making money, I was trying to make this list of ideas to see… So I need to build… I was thinking statistically, “All right, I need to build all these things and one of these will work out probably. So, I need to have a lot of things to try,” and I did that. Right now, I think because I already have money, I can do more things based on technology. So for example, AI, when I found out about… When Stable Diffusion came or ChatGPT and stuff, all these things were like… I didn’t start working with them, because I had a problem. I had no problems, but I was very curious about technology, and I was playing with it, and figuring out… First, just playing with it, and then you find something like, “Okay, Stable Diffusion generates houses very beautiful and interiors.”
Lex Fridman
So, it’s less about problem solving, it’s more about the possibilities of new things you can create.
So, it’s less about problem solving, it’s more about the possibilities of new things you can create.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, but that’s very risky, because that’s the famous solution trying to find a problem, and usually it doesn’t work, and that’s very common with startup funnels, I think. They have tech, but actually people don’t need to tech, right?
Yeah, but that’s very risky, because that’s the famous solution trying to find a problem, and usually it doesn’t work, and that’s very common with startup funnels, I think. They have tech, but actually people don’t need to tech, right?
Photo AI
Lex Fridman
Can you actually explain? It’d be cool to talk about some of the stuff you’ve created. Can you explain the photoai.com?
Can you actually explain? It’d be cool to talk about some of the stuff you’ve created. Can you explain the photoai.com?
Pieter Levels
Yeah, yeah. So, it’s like fire your photographer. The idea is that you don’t need a photographer anymore. You can train yourself as an AI model, and you can take as many photos as you want anywhere, in any clothes, with facial expressions, like happy, or sad, or poses, all this stuff.
Yeah, yeah. So, it’s like fire your photographer. The idea is that you don’t need a photographer anymore. You can train yourself as an AI model, and you can take as many photos as you want anywhere, in any clothes, with facial expressions, like happy, or sad, or poses, all this stuff.
Lex Fridman
So, how does it work? You sent me a link to a gallery of ones done on me, which is-
So, how does it work? You sent me a link to a gallery of ones done on me, which is-
Pieter Levels
Yeah, so on the left you have the prompts, the box. Yeah, so you can write… So, model is your model, this is Lex Fridman. So, you can write model as a blah, blah, blah, whatever you want, then press the button, and it will take photos. It will take like one minute.
Yeah, so on the left you have the prompts, the box. Yeah, so you can write… So, model is your model, this is Lex Fridman. So, you can write model as a blah, blah, blah, whatever you want, then press the button, and it will take photos. It will take like one minute.
Lex Fridman
60 photos. What are you using for the hosting, for the compute?
60 photos. What are you using for the hosting, for the compute?
Pieter Levels
Replicate.
Replicate.
Lex Fridman
Okay.
Okay.
Pieter Levels
Replicate.com. They’re very, very good.
Replicate.com. They’re very, very good.
Lex Fridman
Interface-wise, it’s cool that you’re showing how long it’s going to take. This is amazing, so it’s taken a… I’m presuming you just loaded in a few pictures from the internet.
Interface-wise, it’s cool that you’re showing how long it’s going to take. This is amazing, so it’s taken a… I’m presuming you just loaded in a few pictures from the internet.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, so I went to Google Images, typed in Lex Fridman, I added like 10 or 20 images. You can open them in a gallery, and you can use your cursor to… So, some don’t look like you. So, the hit-and-miss rate is, I don’t know, say like 50/50 or something.
Yeah, so I went to Google Images, typed in Lex Fridman, I added like 10 or 20 images. You can open them in a gallery, and you can use your cursor to… So, some don’t look like you. So, the hit-and-miss rate is, I don’t know, say like 50/50 or something.
Lex Fridman
But when I was watching it [inaudible 00:37:55], it’s been getting better and better and better.
But when I was watching it [inaudible 00:37:55], it’s been getting better and better and better.
Pieter Levels
It was very bad in the beginning. It was so bad, but still people signed up to it.
It was very bad in the beginning. It was so bad, but still people signed up to it.
Lex Fridman
There’s two Lexes. It’s great. It’s getting more and more sexual. It’s making me very uncomfortable.
There’s two Lexes. It’s great. It’s getting more and more sexual. It’s making me very uncomfortable.
Pieter Levels
Man, but that’s the problem with these models. No, we need to talk about this, because the models in-
Man, but that’s the problem with these models. No, we need to talk about this, because the models in-
Lex Fridman
Sure.
Sure.
Pieter Levels
… Stable Diffusion, so the photorealistic models that are fine-tuned, they were all trained on porn in the beginning, and it was a guy called Hassan. So, I was trying to figure out how to do photorealistic AI photos and it was… Stable Diffusion by itself is not doing that well. The faces look all mangled, and it doesn’t have enough resolution or something to do that well, but I started seeing these base models, these fine-tuned models, and people would train on porn, and I would try them, and they would be very photorealistic. They would have bodies that actually made sense, like body anatomy, but if you look at the photorealistic models that people use now, there’s still core of porn there, like of naked people. So, I need to prompt out, and everybody needs to do this with AI startups, with imaging, you need to prompt out the naked stuff. You need to put a naked [inaudible 00:39:00]-
… Stable Diffusion, so the photorealistic models that are fine-tuned, they were all trained on porn in the beginning, and it was a guy called Hassan. So, I was trying to figure out how to do photorealistic AI photos and it was… Stable Diffusion by itself is not doing that well. The faces look all mangled, and it doesn’t have enough resolution or something to do that well, but I started seeing these base models, these fine-tuned models, and people would train on porn, and I would try them, and they would be very photorealistic. They would have bodies that actually made sense, like body anatomy, but if you look at the photorealistic models that people use now, there’s still core of porn there, like of naked people. So, I need to prompt out, and everybody needs to do this with AI startups, with imaging, you need to prompt out the naked stuff. You need to put a naked [inaudible 00:39:00]-
Lex Fridman
You have to keep reminding the model, “You need to put clothes on the thing.”
You have to keep reminding the model, “You need to put clothes on the thing.”
Pieter Levels
Yeah, don’t put naked, because it’s very risky. I have Google Vision that checks every photo before it’s shown to the user to check for [inaudible 00:39:09]-
Yeah, don’t put naked, because it’s very risky. I have Google Vision that checks every photo before it’s shown to the user to check for [inaudible 00:39:09]-
Lex Fridman
Like a nipple detector?
Like a nipple detector?
Pieter Levels
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
[inaudible 00:39:11] detector.
[inaudible 00:39:11] detector.
Pieter Levels
Because the journalists get very angry if they-
Because the journalists get very angry if they-
Lex Fridman
If you sexualize-
If you sexualize-
Pieter Levels
There was a journalist, I think ,that got angry that used this and it was like, “Oh, it showed a nipple,” because Google Vision didn’t detect it. So, that’s like these kind of problems you need to deal with. That’s what I’m talking about. This is with cats, but look at the cat face. It’s also kind of mangled.
There was a journalist, I think ,that got angry that used this and it was like, “Oh, it showed a nipple,” because Google Vision didn’t detect it. So, that’s like these kind of problems you need to deal with. That’s what I’m talking about. This is with cats, but look at the cat face. It’s also kind of mangled.
Lex Fridman
I’m a little bit disturbed.
I’m a little bit disturbed.
Pieter Levels
You can zoom in on the cat if you want. This is a very sad cat. It doesn’t have a nose.
You can zoom in on the cat if you want. This is a very sad cat. It doesn’t have a nose.
Lex Fridman
It doesn’t have a nose, wow.
It doesn’t have a nose, wow.
Pieter Levels
Man, but this is the problem with AI startups, because they all act like it’s perfect, like this is groundbreaking, but it’s not perfect. It’s really bad half the time.
Man, but this is the problem with AI startups, because they all act like it’s perfect, like this is groundbreaking, but it’s not perfect. It’s really bad half the time.
Lex Fridman
So, if I wanted to sort of update model as-
So, if I wanted to sort of update model as-
Pieter Levels
Yeah, so you remove this stuff, and you write whatever you want, like in Thailand or something, or in Tokyo.
Yeah, so you remove this stuff, and you write whatever you want, like in Thailand or something, or in Tokyo.
Lex Fridman
In Tokyo?
In Tokyo?
Pieter Levels
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
And-
And-
Pieter Levels
You could say like at night with neon lights. You can add more detail to [inaudible 00:40:11]-
You could say like at night with neon lights. You can add more detail to [inaudible 00:40:11]-
Lex Fridman
I’ll go in Austin. Do you think it’ll know-
I’ll go in Austin. Do you think it’ll know-
Pieter Levels
Yeah, Austin-
Yeah, Austin-
Lex Fridman
… in Texas? In Austin, Texas?
… in Texas? In Austin, Texas?
Pieter Levels
With cowboy hat?
With cowboy hat?
Lex Fridman
In Texas, yeah.
In Texas, yeah.
Pieter Levels
As a cowboy.
As a cowboy.
Lex Fridman
As a cowboy. It’s going to go so towards the porn direction. It’s [inaudible 00:40:25]-
As a cowboy. It’s going to go so towards the porn direction. It’s [inaudible 00:40:25]-
Pieter Levels
Man, I hope not. It’s the end of my career.
Man, I hope not. It’s the end of my career.
Lex Fridman
Or the beginning, it depends. ” We can send you a push notification when your photos are done.” All right, cool.
Or the beginning, it depends. ” We can send you a push notification when your photos are done.” All right, cool.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, let’s see.
Yeah, let’s see.
Lex Fridman
Oh, wow, so this whole interface you’ve built?
Oh, wow, so this whole interface you’ve built?
Pieter Levels
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
This is really well done.
This is really well done.
Pieter Levels
It’s all jQuery. So, I still use jQuery?
It’s all jQuery. So, I still use jQuery?
Lex Fridman
Yes-
Yes-
Pieter Levels
The only one?
The only one?
Lex Fridman
… still-
… still-
Pieter Levels
After 10 years?
After 10 years?
Lex Fridman
… to this day. You’re not the only one. The web is PHP, the stack-
… to this day. You’re not the only one. The web is PHP, the stack-
Pieter Levels
It’s PHP and jQuery, yes, and SQLite.
It’s PHP and jQuery, yes, and SQLite.
Lex Fridman
You’re just one of the top performers from a programming perspective that are still openly talking about it, but everyone’s using PHP. If you look, most of the web is still probably PHP and jQuery.
You’re just one of the top performers from a programming perspective that are still openly talking about it, but everyone’s using PHP. If you look, most of the web is still probably PHP and jQuery.
Pieter Levels
I think 70%. It’s because of WordPress, right? Because the blogs are-
I think 70%. It’s because of WordPress, right? Because the blogs are-
Lex Fridman
Yeah, that’s true.
Yeah, that’s true.
Pieter Levels
Yeah-
Yeah-
Lex Fridman
That’s true.
That’s true.
Pieter Levels
I’m seeing a revival now. People are getting sick of frameworks. All the JavaScript frameworks are so… What do you call it, like wieldy. It takes so much work to just maintain this code, and then it updates to a new version, you need to change everything. PHP just stays the same and works.
I’m seeing a revival now. People are getting sick of frameworks. All the JavaScript frameworks are so… What do you call it, like wieldy. It takes so much work to just maintain this code, and then it updates to a new version, you need to change everything. PHP just stays the same and works.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. Can you actually just speak to that stack? You build all your websites, apps, startups, projects, all of that with mostly vanilla HTML, JavaScript with jQuery, PHP, and SQLite. So, that’s a really simple stack, and you get stuff done really fast with that. Can you just speak to the philosophy behind that?
Yeah. Can you actually just speak to that stack? You build all your websites, apps, startups, projects, all of that with mostly vanilla HTML, JavaScript with jQuery, PHP, and SQLite. So, that’s a really simple stack, and you get stuff done really fast with that. Can you just speak to the philosophy behind that?
Pieter Levels
I think it’s accidental, because that’s the thing I knew. I knew PHP, I knew HTML, CSS, because you make websites, and when my startups started taking off, I didn’t have time to… I remember putting on my to-do list like, “Learn Node.js,” because it’s important to switch, because this obviously is much better language than PHP, and I never learned it. I never did it, because I didn’t have time. These things were growing like this, and I was launching more projects, and I never had time. It’s like, “One day I’ll start coding properly,” and I never got to it.
I think it’s accidental, because that’s the thing I knew. I knew PHP, I knew HTML, CSS, because you make websites, and when my startups started taking off, I didn’t have time to… I remember putting on my to-do list like, “Learn Node.js,” because it’s important to switch, because this obviously is much better language than PHP, and I never learned it. I never did it, because I didn’t have time. These things were growing like this, and I was launching more projects, and I never had time. It’s like, “One day I’ll start coding properly,” and I never got to it.
Lex Fridman
I sometimes wonder if I need to learn that stuff. It’s still a to-do item for me to really learn Node.js or Flask or these kind of-
I sometimes wonder if I need to learn that stuff. It’s still a to-do item for me to really learn Node.js or Flask or these kind of-
Pieter Levels
React [inaudible 00:42:28]-
React [inaudible 00:42:28]-
Lex Fridman
Yeah, React, and it feels like a responsible software engineer should know how to use these, but you can get stuff done so fast with vanilla versions of stuff.
Yeah, React, and it feels like a responsible software engineer should know how to use these, but you can get stuff done so fast with vanilla versions of stuff.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, it’s like software developers if you want to get a job, and there’s people making stuff, like startups, and if you want to be entrepreneur, probably you maybe shouldn’t, right?
Yeah, it’s like software developers if you want to get a job, and there’s people making stuff, like startups, and if you want to be entrepreneur, probably you maybe shouldn’t, right?
Lex Fridman
I really want to measure performance and speed. I think there’s a deep wisdom in that. I do think that frameworks and just constantly wanting to learn the new thing, this complicated way of software engineering gets in the way. I’m not sure what to say about that, because definitely you shouldn’t build everything from just vanilla JavaScript or vanilla C for example, C++ when you’re building systems engineering is like… There’s a lot of benefits for a pointer safety, and all that kind of stuff. So I don’t know, but it just feels like you can get so much more stuff done if you don’t care about how you do it.
I really want to measure performance and speed. I think there’s a deep wisdom in that. I do think that frameworks and just constantly wanting to learn the new thing, this complicated way of software engineering gets in the way. I’m not sure what to say about that, because definitely you shouldn’t build everything from just vanilla JavaScript or vanilla C for example, C++ when you’re building systems engineering is like… There’s a lot of benefits for a pointer safety, and all that kind of stuff. So I don’t know, but it just feels like you can get so much more stuff done if you don’t care about how you do it.
Pieter Levels
Man, this is my most controversial take, I think, and maybe I’m wrong, but I feel like this frameworks now that raise money, they raise a lot of money. They raise 50 million, 100 million, $200 million, and the idea is that you need to make the developers, and new developers, like when you’re 18 or 20 years old, get them to use this framework, and add a platform to it where the framework can… It’s open source, but you probably should use the platform, which is paid to use it, and the cost of the platforms to host it are 1,000 times higher than just hosting it on a simple AWS server or VPS on DigitalOcean. So, there’s obviously a monetary incentive here. We want to get a lot of developers to use this technology, and then we need to charge them money, because they’re going to use it in startups, and then the startups can pay for the bills.
Man, this is my most controversial take, I think, and maybe I’m wrong, but I feel like this frameworks now that raise money, they raise a lot of money. They raise 50 million, 100 million, $200 million, and the idea is that you need to make the developers, and new developers, like when you’re 18 or 20 years old, get them to use this framework, and add a platform to it where the framework can… It’s open source, but you probably should use the platform, which is paid to use it, and the cost of the platforms to host it are 1,000 times higher than just hosting it on a simple AWS server or VPS on DigitalOcean. So, there’s obviously a monetary incentive here. We want to get a lot of developers to use this technology, and then we need to charge them money, because they’re going to use it in startups, and then the startups can pay for the bills.
It kind of destroys the information out there about learning to code, because they pay YouTubers, they pay developer influencers a big thing to… And same thing what happens with nutrition and fitness or something, same thing happens in developing. They pay this influencer to promote this stuff, use it, make stuff with it, make demo products with it, and then a lot of people are like, “Wow, use this.” And I started noticing this, because when I would ship my stuff, people would ask me, “What are you using?” I would say, “Just PHP, jQuery. Why does it matter?”
And people would start attacking me like, “Why are you not using this new technology, this new framework, this new thing?” And I say, “I don’t know, because this PHP thing works, and I don’t really optimizing for anything. It just works.” And I never understood why… I understand there’s new technologies that are better and it should be improvement, but I’m very suspicious of money, just like lobbying. There’s money in this developer framework scene. There’s hundreds of millions that goes to ads or influencer or whatever. It can’t all go to developers. You don’t need so many developers for a framework, and it’s open source to make a lot of more money on these startups.
Lex Fridman
So, that’s a really good perspective, but in addition to that is when you say better, it’s like, can we get some data on the better? Because I want to know from the individual developer perspective, and then from a team of five, team of 10, team of 20 developers measure how productive they are in shipping features, how many bugs they create, how many security holes result-
So, that’s a really good perspective, but in addition to that is when you say better, it’s like, can we get some data on the better? Because I want to know from the individual developer perspective, and then from a team of five, team of 10, team of 20 developers measure how productive they are in shipping features, how many bugs they create, how many security holes result-
Pieter Levels
PHP was not good with security for a while, but now it’s [inaudible 00:46:03]-
PHP was not good with security for a while, but now it’s [inaudible 00:46:03]-
Lex Fridman
In theory, is it though?
In theory, is it though?
Pieter Levels
Now it’s good.
Now it’s good.
Lex Fridman
No, now as you’re saying it, I want to know if that’s true, because PHP was just the majority of websites on the internet.
No, now as you’re saying it, I want to know if that’s true, because PHP was just the majority of websites on the internet.
Pieter Levels
It could be true.
It could be true.
Lex Fridman
Is it just overrepresented? Same with WordPress.
Is it just overrepresented? Same with WordPress.
Pieter Levels
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Yes, there’s a reputation that WordPress has a gigantic number of security holes. I don’t know if that’s true. I know it gets attacked a lot, because it’s so popular. It definitely does have security holes, but maybe a lot of other systems have security holes as well. Anyway, I just sort of questioning the conventional wisdom that keeps wanting to push software engineers towards frameworks, towards complex, like super complicated software engineering approaches that stretch out the time it takes to actually build a thing.
Yes, there’s a reputation that WordPress has a gigantic number of security holes. I don’t know if that’s true. I know it gets attacked a lot, because it’s so popular. It definitely does have security holes, but maybe a lot of other systems have security holes as well. Anyway, I just sort of questioning the conventional wisdom that keeps wanting to push software engineers towards frameworks, towards complex, like super complicated software engineering approaches that stretch out the time it takes to actually build a thing.
Pieter Levels
Man, 100%, and it’s the same thing with big corporations… 80% of the people don’t do anything. It’s not efficient, and if your benchmark is people building stuff that actually gets done. And for society, if we want to save time, we should probably use the technology that’s simple, that’s pragmatic, that works, that’s not overly complicated, it doesn’t make your life like a living hell.
Man, 100%, and it’s the same thing with big corporations… 80% of the people don’t do anything. It’s not efficient, and if your benchmark is people building stuff that actually gets done. And for society, if we want to save time, we should probably use the technology that’s simple, that’s pragmatic, that works, that’s not overly complicated, it doesn’t make your life like a living hell.
Lex Fridman
And use a framework when it obviously solves a direct problem that you-
And use a framework when it obviously solves a direct problem that you-
Pieter Levels
Yeah, of course. I’m not saying you should code without a framework. You should use whatever you want, but yeah, I think it’s suspicious. And I think [inaudible 00:47:32], when I talk about it on Twitter, there’s this army comes out, there’s these framework armies. Man, something my gut tells me-
Yeah, of course. I’m not saying you should code without a framework. You should use whatever you want, but yeah, I think it’s suspicious. And I think [inaudible 00:47:32], when I talk about it on Twitter, there’s this army comes out, there’s these framework armies. Man, something my gut tells me-
Lex Fridman
I want to ask the framework army, what have they built this week? It’s the Elon question, “What did you do this week?”
I want to ask the framework army, what have they built this week? It’s the Elon question, “What did you do this week?”
Pieter Levels
Yeah, did you make money with it? Did you charge users? Is it a real business? And yeah.
Yeah, did you make money with it? Did you charge users? Is it a real business? And yeah.
Lex Fridman
So going back to the cowboy, first of all-
So going back to the cowboy, first of all-
Pieter Levels
Some don’t look like you, right? But some do.
Some don’t look like you, right? But some do.
Lex Fridman
Every aspect of this is pretty incredible. I’m also just looking at the interface. It’s really well done. So, this is all just jQuery, and this is really well done. So, take me through the journey of Photo AI. Most of the world doesn’t know much about Stable Diffusion or any of the generative AI stuff. So you’re thinking, “Okay, how can I build cool stuff with this?” What was the origin story of Photo AI?
Every aspect of this is pretty incredible. I’m also just looking at the interface. It’s really well done. So, this is all just jQuery, and this is really well done. So, take me through the journey of Photo AI. Most of the world doesn’t know much about Stable Diffusion or any of the generative AI stuff. So you’re thinking, “Okay, how can I build cool stuff with this?” What was the origin story of Photo AI?
Pieter Levels
I think it started, because Stable Diffusion came out. So Stable Diffusion like this… The first generative image AI model, and I started playing with it. You could install on your Mac… Somebody forked it and made it work for MacBooks. So, I downloaded it and cloned the repo, and started using it to generate images, and it was amazing. I found it on Twitter, because you see things happen on Twitter, and I would post what I was making on Twitter as well, and you could make any image.
I think it started, because Stable Diffusion came out. So Stable Diffusion like this… The first generative image AI model, and I started playing with it. You could install on your Mac… Somebody forked it and made it work for MacBooks. So, I downloaded it and cloned the repo, and started using it to generate images, and it was amazing. I found it on Twitter, because you see things happen on Twitter, and I would post what I was making on Twitter as well, and you could make any image.
So, essentially you write a prompt, and then it generates a photo of that or image of that in any style. They would use artist names to make like a Picasso kind of style and stuff, and I was trying to see, what is it good at? Is it good at people? No, it’s really bad at people, but it was good at houses, so architecture for example, I would generate architecture houses. So, I made a website called thishousedoesnotexist.org, and it generated… They called like house porn at that one. Houseporn is like a subreddit, and this was Stable Diffusion, like the first version. So it looks really… You can click for another photo. So, it generates all these non-existing houses.
Lex Fridman
It is house porn.
It is house porn.
Pieter Levels
But it looked kind of good, especially back then.
But it looked kind of good, especially back then.
Lex Fridman
It looks really good.
It looks really good.
Pieter Levels
Now, things look much better.
Now, things look much better.
Lex Fridman
That’s really, really well done, wow.
That’s really, really well done, wow.
Pieter Levels
And it also generates a description.
And it also generates a description.
Lex Fridman
And you can upvote… Is it nice? Upvote it.
And you can upvote… Is it nice? Upvote it.
Pieter Levels
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Man, there’s so much to talk to you about. The choices here is really well done.
Man, there’s so much to talk to you about. The choices here is really well done.
Pieter Levels
This is very scrappy. In the bottom, there’s like a ranking of the most upvoted houses. So, these are the top voted, and if you go to all time, you see quite beautiful ones. Yeah. So this one is my favorite, the number one. It’s kind of like a…
This is very scrappy. In the bottom, there’s like a ranking of the most upvoted houses. So, these are the top voted, and if you go to all time, you see quite beautiful ones. Yeah. So this one is my favorite, the number one. It’s kind of like a…
Lex Fridman
How is this not more popular?
How is this not more popular?
Pieter Levels
It was really popular for a while, but then people got so bored of it. I think, because I was getting bored of it, too, just continuous house porn, everything starts looking the same, but then I saw it was really good at interior, so I pivoted to interiorai.com, where I tried to upload first generate interior designs, and then I tried to do… There was a new technology called image-to-image where you can input an image, like a photo, and it would kind of modify the thing. So, you see it looks almost the same as Photo AI. It’s the same code essentially.
It was really popular for a while, but then people got so bored of it. I think, because I was getting bored of it, too, just continuous house porn, everything starts looking the same, but then I saw it was really good at interior, so I pivoted to interiorai.com, where I tried to upload first generate interior designs, and then I tried to do… There was a new technology called image-to-image where you can input an image, like a photo, and it would kind of modify the thing. So, you see it looks almost the same as Photo AI. It’s the same code essentially.
Lex Fridman
Nice.
Nice.
Pieter Levels
So, I would upload a photo of my interior where I lived, and I would ask like, “Change this into, I don’t know, maximalist design,” and it worked and it worked really well. So I was like, “Okay, this is a startup,” because obviously interior design AI, and nobody’s doing that yet. So, I launched this and I was successful and within a week, made 10K, 20K a month, and now still makes like 40K, 50K a month, and it’s been like two years. So then I was like, “How can I improve this interior design? I need to start learning fine-tuning.”
So, I would upload a photo of my interior where I lived, and I would ask like, “Change this into, I don’t know, maximalist design,” and it worked and it worked really well. So I was like, “Okay, this is a startup,” because obviously interior design AI, and nobody’s doing that yet. So, I launched this and I was successful and within a week, made 10K, 20K a month, and now still makes like 40K, 50K a month, and it’s been like two years. So then I was like, “How can I improve this interior design? I need to start learning fine-tuning.”
And fine-tuning is where you have this existing AI model and you fine tune it on the specific goal you wanted to do. So, I would find really beautiful interior design, make a gallery, and train a new model that was very good at interior design, and it worked, and I used that as well. And then for fun, I uploaded photos of myself, and here’s where it happened, and to train myself. And this would never work, obviously, and it worked, and actually it started understanding me as a concept. So, my face worked and you could do different styles, like me as a… Very cheesy, medieval warrior, all this stuff. So I was like, “This is another startup.” So, now I did avatarai.me. I couldn’t get the dot com, and this was [inaudible 00:52:01]-
Lex Fridman
Is it still up?
Is it still up?
Pieter Levels
Yeah, avatarai.me. Well, now it’s forwards to Photo AI, because it pivoted.
Yeah, avatarai.me. Well, now it’s forwards to Photo AI, because it pivoted.
Lex Fridman
Got it.
Got it.
Pieter Levels
But this was more like cheesy thing, so this is very interesting, because this went so viral. It made I think like 150K in a week or something, so most money I ever made. This is very interesting. The big VC companies, like Lensa, which are much better at iOS and stuff than me, I didn’t have iOS app, they quickly build an iOS app that does the same, and they found technology, and it’s all open technology, so it’s good, and I think they made like $30 million with it. They became the top grossing app after that, and-
But this was more like cheesy thing, so this is very interesting, because this went so viral. It made I think like 150K in a week or something, so most money I ever made. This is very interesting. The big VC companies, like Lensa, which are much better at iOS and stuff than me, I didn’t have iOS app, they quickly build an iOS app that does the same, and they found technology, and it’s all open technology, so it’s good, and I think they made like $30 million with it. They became the top grossing app after that, and-
Lex Fridman
How do you feel about that?
How do you feel about that?
Pieter Levels
I think it’s amazing, honestly, and it’s not like-
I think it’s amazing, honestly, and it’s not like-
Lex Fridman
You didn’t have a feeling like, “Oh, fuck. [inaudible 00:52:45]-“
You didn’t have a feeling like, “Oh, fuck. [inaudible 00:52:45]-“
Pieter Levels
No, I was a little bit sad, because all my products would work out, and I never had real fierce competition, and now I have fierce competition from a very skilled high talent. I was developer studio or something, and they already had an app. They had an app in the app store for I think retouching your face or something, so they were very smart. They add these avatars to there, it’s a feature. They had the users, they do a push notification to everybody who have these avatars. Man, I think they made so much money, and I think they did a really great job, and I also made a lot of money with it, but I quickly realized it wasn’t my thing, because it was so cheesy. It was like kitsch. It’s kind like me as a Barbie or me as a… It was too cheesy.
No, I was a little bit sad, because all my products would work out, and I never had real fierce competition, and now I have fierce competition from a very skilled high talent. I was developer studio or something, and they already had an app. They had an app in the app store for I think retouching your face or something, so they were very smart. They add these avatars to there, it’s a feature. They had the users, they do a push notification to everybody who have these avatars. Man, I think they made so much money, and I think they did a really great job, and I also made a lot of money with it, but I quickly realized it wasn’t my thing, because it was so cheesy. It was like kitsch. It’s kind like me as a Barbie or me as a… It was too cheesy.
I wanted to go for, what’s a real problem we can solve? This is going to be a hype, this going to be… And it was a hype, these avatars. It’s like, “Let’s do real photography. How can you make people look really photorealistic?” And it was difficult, and that’s why these avatars worked, because they were all in a cheesy Picasso style, and art is easy, because you interpret… All the problems that AI has with your face are artistic if you call it Picasso, but if you make a real photo, all the problems of your face, you look wrong. So, I started making Photo AI, which was a pivot of it where it was like a photo studio where you could take photos without actually needing a photographer, needing a studio. You just type it, and I’ve been working on it for the last year.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, it’s really incredible. That journey is really incredible. Let’s go to the beginning of Photo AI, though, because I remember seeing a lot of really hilarious photos. I think you were using yourself as a case study, right?
Yeah, it’s really incredible. That journey is really incredible. Let’s go to the beginning of Photo AI, though, because I remember seeing a lot of really hilarious photos. I think you were using yourself as a case study, right?
Pieter Levels
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, so there’s a tweet here, “Sold $100,000 in AI-generated avatars.”
Yeah, so there’s a tweet here, “Sold $100,000 in AI-generated avatars.”
Pieter Levels
Yeah, and it’s a lot. It’s a lot for anybody. It’s a lot for me making 10K a day on this.
Yeah, and it’s a lot. It’s a lot for anybody. It’s a lot for me making 10K a day on this.
Lex Fridman
That’s amazing. That’s amazing.
That’s amazing. That’s amazing.
Pieter Levels
And then the [inaudible 00:54:48] tweet. That’s the launch tweet, and then before there is the me hacking on it.
And then the [inaudible 00:54:48] tweet. That’s the launch tweet, and then before there is the me hacking on it.
Lex Fridman
Oh, I see. Okay, so October 26th, 2022.
Oh, I see. Okay, so October 26th, 2022.
Pieter Levels
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
” I trained an ML model on my face…”
” I trained an ML model on my face…”
Pieter Levels
Because my eyes are quite far apart, I learned when I did YouTube, I would put my DJ photo, my mixture, and people would say I look like a hammerhead shark. It was like the top comment, so then I realized my eyes are far apart.
Because my eyes are quite far apart, I learned when I did YouTube, I would put my DJ photo, my mixture, and people would say I look like a hammerhead shark. It was like the top comment, so then I realized my eyes are far apart.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, the internet helps you figure out what you look like.
Yeah, the internet helps you figure out what you look like.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, it helps you realize how you look.
Yeah, it helps you realize how you look.
Lex Fridman
Boy, do I love the internet.
Boy, do I love the internet.
Pieter Levels
That’s a thirst trap.
That’s a thirst trap.
Lex Fridman
Well, what is… Is this… Wait.
Well, what is… Is this… Wait.
Pieter Levels
It’s water from the waterfall, but the waterfall is in the back. So, what’s going on?
It’s water from the waterfall, but the waterfall is in the back. So, what’s going on?
Lex Fridman
How much of this is real?
How much of this is real?
Pieter Levels
It’s all AI.
It’s all AI.
Lex Fridman
It’s all AI?
It’s all AI?
Pieter Levels
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
That’s pretty good though, for the early days.
That’s pretty good though, for the early days.
Pieter Levels
Exactly, but this was hit or miss, so you had to do a lot of curation, because 99% of it was bad. So, these are the photos I uploaded.
Exactly, but this was hit or miss, so you had to do a lot of curation, because 99% of it was bad. So, these are the photos I uploaded.
Lex Fridman
How many photos did you use? “Only these. I’ll try more up-to-date pick later.” Are these the only photos you uploaded?
How many photos did you use? “Only these. I’ll try more up-to-date pick later.” Are these the only photos you uploaded?
Pieter Levels
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Wow. Wow, okay, so you were learning all this super quickly. What are some interesting details you remember from that time for what you had to figure out to make it work? And for people just listening, he uploaded just a handful of photos that don’t really have a good capture of the face and he’s able to [inaudible 00:56:16]-
Wow. Wow, okay, so you were learning all this super quickly. What are some interesting details you remember from that time for what you had to figure out to make it work? And for people just listening, he uploaded just a handful of photos that don’t really have a good capture of the face and he’s able to [inaudible 00:56:16]-
Pieter Levels
I think it’s cropped. It’s like a crop by the layout, but they’re square photos, so they’re 512×512, because that’s Stable Diffusion.
I think it’s cropped. It’s like a crop by the layout, but they’re square photos, so they’re 512×512, because that’s Stable Diffusion.
Lex Fridman
But nevertheless, not great capture of the face. It’s not like a collection of several hundred photos that are 360 [inaudible 00:56:34]-
But nevertheless, not great capture of the face. It’s not like a collection of several hundred photos that are 360 [inaudible 00:56:34]-
Pieter Levels
Exactly, I would imagine that, too, when I started. I was like, “Oh, this must be some 3D scan technology,” right?
Exactly, I would imagine that, too, when I started. I was like, “Oh, this must be some 3D scan technology,” right?
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Pieter Levels
So, I think the cool thing with AI, it trains the concept of you. So, it’s literally learning just like any AI model learns. It learns how you look, so I did this and then I was getting DMs, like Telegram messages like, “How can I do the same thing? I want these photos, my girlfriend wants these photos.” So I was like, “Okay, this is obviously a business,” but I didn’t have time to code it, make a whole app about it. So, I made an HTML page, registered a domain name, and this not even… It was a Stripe payment link, which means you have literally a link to Stripe to pay, but there’s no code in the back. So, all you know is you have customers that paid money.
So, I think the cool thing with AI, it trains the concept of you. So, it’s literally learning just like any AI model learns. It learns how you look, so I did this and then I was getting DMs, like Telegram messages like, “How can I do the same thing? I want these photos, my girlfriend wants these photos.” So I was like, “Okay, this is obviously a business,” but I didn’t have time to code it, make a whole app about it. So, I made an HTML page, registered a domain name, and this not even… It was a Stripe payment link, which means you have literally a link to Stripe to pay, but there’s no code in the back. So, all you know is you have customers that paid money.
Then, I added a Typeform link. So, Typeform is a site where you can create your own input form, like Google Forms. So, they would get an email with a link to the Typeform or actually just a link after the checkout, and they could upload their photos, so enter their email, upload the photos, and I launched it, and I was like… Here, first still, so it’s October 2022, and I think within the first 24 hours was like… I’m not sure, it was like 1,000 customers or something, but the problem was I didn’t have code to automate this, so I had to do it manually. So the first few hundred, I just literally took their photos, trained them, and then I would generate the photos with the prompts, and I had this text file with the prompt, and I would do everything manually, and it quickly became way too much, but that’s another constraint. I was forced to code something up that would do that, and that was essentially making it into a real website.
Lex Fridman
So, at first it was the Typeform and they uploaded it through the Typeform-
So, at first it was the Typeform and they uploaded it through the Typeform-
Pieter Levels
It was a Stripe checkout Typeform.
It was a Stripe checkout Typeform.
Lex Fridman
An image, and then you were like, “That image is downloaded.” Did you write a script to export, like download [inaudible 00:58:21]-
An image, and then you were like, “That image is downloaded.” Did you write a script to export, like download [inaudible 00:58:21]-
Pieter Levels
No, it just downloaded the images myself. It was an unzipped zip file.
No, it just downloaded the images myself. It was an unzipped zip file.
Lex Fridman
Literally, and you unzipped it-
Literally, and you unzipped it-
Pieter Levels
Yeah, unzip-
Yeah, unzip-
Lex Fridman
One by-
One by-
Pieter Levels
Yes, because, “Do things, don’t scale,” Paul Graham says, right? And then I would train it and I would email them the photos, I think from my personal email, say, “Here’s your avatars,” and they liked it. They were like, “Wow, it’s amazing.”
Yes, because, “Do things, don’t scale,” Paul Graham says, right? And then I would train it and I would email them the photos, I think from my personal email, say, “Here’s your avatars,” and they liked it. They were like, “Wow, it’s amazing.”
Lex Fridman
You emailed them with your personal email-
You emailed them with your personal email-
Pieter Levels
Because they didn’t have an email address on this domain.
Because they didn’t have an email address on this domain.
Lex Fridman
And this is like 100 people?
And this is like 100 people?
Pieter Levels
Yeah, and then you know who signed up? Man, I cannot say, but really famous people, really, really like billionaires, famous tech billionaires did it. And I was like, “Wow, this is crazy,” and I was so scared to message them, so I said, “Thanks so much for using my sites.” He’s like, “Yeah, amazing app, great work.” So, it’s like this is different than normal reaction.
Yeah, and then you know who signed up? Man, I cannot say, but really famous people, really, really like billionaires, famous tech billionaires did it. And I was like, “Wow, this is crazy,” and I was so scared to message them, so I said, “Thanks so much for using my sites.” He’s like, “Yeah, amazing app, great work.” So, it’s like this is different than normal reaction.
Lex Fridman
It’s Bill Gates, isn’t it?
It’s Bill Gates, isn’t it?
Pieter Levels
I cannot say anything.
I cannot say anything.
Lex Fridman
Just like shirtless pics.
Just like shirtless pics.
Pieter Levels
GDPR, like privacy.
GDPR, like privacy.
Lex Fridman
Right.
Right.
Pieter Levels
European regulation. I cannot share anything, but I was like, “Wow,” but this shows, so you make something, and then if it takes off very fast, it’s validated. You’re like, “Here’s something that people really want.” But then also I thought, “This is hype. This is going to die down very fast,” and it did, because it’s too cheesy.”
European regulation. I cannot share anything, but I was like, “Wow,” but this shows, so you make something, and then if it takes off very fast, it’s validated. You’re like, “Here’s something that people really want.” But then also I thought, “This is hype. This is going to die down very fast,” and it did, because it’s too cheesy.”
Lex Fridman
But you have to automate the whole thing. How’d you automate it? So, what’s the AI component? How hard was that to figure out?
But you have to automate the whole thing. How’d you automate it? So, what’s the AI component? How hard was that to figure out?
Pieter Levels
Okay, so that’s actually in many ways the easiest thing, because there is all these platforms already back then. There was platforms for fine tune Stable Diffusion. Now, I use Replicate, back then I used different platforms, which was funny because that platform, when this thing took off, I would tweet… Because I tweet always like how much money these websites make, and then… So, you call it vendor, right? The platform that did the GPUs, they increased their price for training from $3 to $20 after they saw that I was making so much money. So, immediately my profit is gone, because I was selling them for $30, and I was in a Slack with them saying, “What is this? Can you just put it back to $3?” They say, “Yeah, maybe in the future. We’re looking at it right now.” I’m like, “What are you talking about? You just took all my money,” and they’re smart.
Okay, so that’s actually in many ways the easiest thing, because there is all these platforms already back then. There was platforms for fine tune Stable Diffusion. Now, I use Replicate, back then I used different platforms, which was funny because that platform, when this thing took off, I would tweet… Because I tweet always like how much money these websites make, and then… So, you call it vendor, right? The platform that did the GPUs, they increased their price for training from $3 to $20 after they saw that I was making so much money. So, immediately my profit is gone, because I was selling them for $30, and I was in a Slack with them saying, “What is this? Can you just put it back to $3?” They say, “Yeah, maybe in the future. We’re looking at it right now.” I’m like, “What are you talking about? You just took all my money,” and they’re smart.
Lex Fridman
Well, they’re not that smart, because you also have a large platform, and a lot of people respect you, so you can literally come out and say that, but they’re not-
Well, they’re not that smart, because you also have a large platform, and a lot of people respect you, so you can literally come out and say that, but they’re not-
Pieter Levels
Yeah, but I think it’s kind of dirty to cancel a company or something. I prefer just bringing my business elsewhere, but there was no elsewhere back then.
Yeah, but I think it’s kind of dirty to cancel a company or something. I prefer just bringing my business elsewhere, but there was no elsewhere back then.
Lex Fridman
Right.
Right.
Pieter Levels
So, I started talking to other AI model, ML platforms. So, Replicate was one of those platforms, and I started DMing the CEO say, “Can you please create…” It’s called DreamBooth, this fine-tuning of yourself. “Can you add this to your site, because I need this, because I’m being price gauged?” And he said, “No, because it takes too long to run. It takes half an hour to run and we don’t have the GPUs for it.” I said, “Please, please, please.” And then after a week, he said, “We’re doing it, we’re launching this.” And then this company became… It was not very famous company, it became very famous with this stuff, because suddenly everybody was like, “Oh, we can build similar avatar apps,” and everybody started building avatar apps and everybody started using Replicate for it, and that was from these early DMs with the CEO, like Ben Firsh, very nice guy. And he was like… They never price-gauged me, they never treated me bad, they always been very nice. It’s a very cool company. So, you can run any ML model, any AI model, LLMs, you can run on here.
So, I started talking to other AI model, ML platforms. So, Replicate was one of those platforms, and I started DMing the CEO say, “Can you please create…” It’s called DreamBooth, this fine-tuning of yourself. “Can you add this to your site, because I need this, because I’m being price gauged?” And he said, “No, because it takes too long to run. It takes half an hour to run and we don’t have the GPUs for it.” I said, “Please, please, please.” And then after a week, he said, “We’re doing it, we’re launching this.” And then this company became… It was not very famous company, it became very famous with this stuff, because suddenly everybody was like, “Oh, we can build similar avatar apps,” and everybody started building avatar apps and everybody started using Replicate for it, and that was from these early DMs with the CEO, like Ben Firsh, very nice guy. And he was like… They never price-gauged me, they never treated me bad, they always been very nice. It’s a very cool company. So, you can run any ML model, any AI model, LLMs, you can run on here.
Lex Fridman
And you can scale-
And you can scale-
Pieter Levels
Yes, they scale. Yeah, yeah, and I mean you can do now, you can click on the model and just run it already. It’s like super easy. You log on with GitHub-
Yes, they scale. Yeah, yeah, and I mean you can do now, you can click on the model and just run it already. It’s like super easy. You log on with GitHub-
Lex Fridman
That’s great.
That’s great.
Pieter Levels
And by running it on the website, then you can automate with the API. You can make a website that runs the model.
And by running it on the website, then you can automate with the API. You can make a website that runs the model.
Lex Fridman
Generate images, generate text, generate video, generate music, generate speech-
Generate images, generate text, generate video, generate music, generate speech-
Pieter Levels
Video, like [inaudible 01:01:55]-
Video, like [inaudible 01:01:55]-
Lex Fridman
… fine tune models.
… fine tune models.
Pieter Levels
They do anything, yeah. It’s a very cool company.
They do anything, yeah. It’s a very cool company.
Lex Fridman
Nice, and you’re growing with them essentially. They grew because of you, because it’s a big use case.
Nice, and you’re growing with them essentially. They grew because of you, because it’s a big use case.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, the website even looks weird now. It started as a machine learning platform that was like… I didn’t even understand what it did. It was just too ML. You would understand, because you’re in the ML world. I wouldn’t understand it.
Yeah, the website even looks weird now. It started as a machine learning platform that was like… I didn’t even understand what it did. It was just too ML. You would understand, because you’re in the ML world. I wouldn’t understand it.
Lex Fridman
Now, it’s newb friendly.
Now, it’s newb friendly.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, exactly, and I didn’t know how it worked, but I knew that they could probably do this and they did it. They built the models and now I use them for everything, and we trained, I think now like 36, 000 people already.
Yeah, exactly, and I didn’t know how it worked, but I knew that they could probably do this and they did it. They built the models and now I use them for everything, and we trained, I think now like 36, 000 people already.
Lex Fridman
But is there some tricks to fine-tuning to the collection of photos that are provided? How do you-
But is there some tricks to fine-tuning to the collection of photos that are provided? How do you-
Pieter Levels
Yes, man, there’s so many hacks.
Yes, man, there’s so many hacks.
Lex Fridman
The hacks, yeah.
The hacks, yeah.
Pieter Levels
It’s like 100 hacks to make it work.
It’s like 100 hacks to make it work.
Lex Fridman
What are some interesting-
What are some interesting-
Pieter Levels
I’m giving my secrets now.
I’m giving my secrets now.
Lex Fridman
Well, not the secrets, but the more insights maybe about the human face and the human body. What kind of stuff gets messed up lot?
Well, not the secrets, but the more insights maybe about the human face and the human body. What kind of stuff gets messed up lot?
Pieter Levels
I think people… Well, man, that’s another thing, people don’t know how they look. So, they generate photos of themselves and then they say, “Ah, it doesn’t look like me,” but you can check the training photos, it does look like you, but you don’t know how you look. So, there’s a face dysmorphia of yourself that you have no idea how you look.
I think people… Well, man, that’s another thing, people don’t know how they look. So, they generate photos of themselves and then they say, “Ah, it doesn’t look like me,” but you can check the training photos, it does look like you, but you don’t know how you look. So, there’s a face dysmorphia of yourself that you have no idea how you look.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, that’s hilarious. I mean, I’ve got… One of the least pleasant activities in my existence is having to listen to my voice and look at my face. So, I get to really have to come into terms with the reality of how I look and how I sound.
Yeah, that’s hilarious. I mean, I’ve got… One of the least pleasant activities in my existence is having to listen to my voice and look at my face. So, I get to really have to come into terms with the reality of how I look and how I sound.
Pieter Levels
Everybody, but-
Everybody, but-
Lex Fridman
People often don’t, right?
People often don’t, right?
Pieter Levels
Really?
Really?
Lex Fridman
You have a distorted view perspective.
You have a distorted view perspective.
Pieter Levels
I would make a selfie how I think I look that’s nice, other people think that’s not nice, but then they make a photo of me. I’m like, “This is super ugly.” But then they’re like, “No, that’s how you look, and you look nice.” So, how other people see you is nice. So, you need to ask other people to choose your photos. You shouldn’t choose them yourself, because you don’t know how you look.
I would make a selfie how I think I look that’s nice, other people think that’s not nice, but then they make a photo of me. I’m like, “This is super ugly.” But then they’re like, “No, that’s how you look, and you look nice.” So, how other people see you is nice. So, you need to ask other people to choose your photos. You shouldn’t choose them yourself, because you don’t know how you look.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, you don’t know what makes you interesting, what makes you attractive, or all this kind of stuff.
Yeah, you don’t know what makes you interesting, what makes you attractive, or all this kind of stuff.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, [inaudible 01:04:00]-
Yeah, [inaudible 01:04:00]-
Lex Fridman
And a lot of us… This is a dark aspect of psychology, we focus on some-
And a lot of us… This is a dark aspect of psychology, we focus on some-
Lex Fridman
And a lot of us, this is a dark aspect of psychology, we focus on some small flaws. This is why I hate plastic surgery, for example. People try to remove the flaws when the flaws are the thing that makes you interesting and attractive.
And a lot of us, this is a dark aspect of psychology, we focus on some small flaws. This is why I hate plastic surgery, for example. People try to remove the flaws when the flaws are the thing that makes you interesting and attractive.
Pieter Levels
I learned from the hammerhead shark eyes, the stuff about you that looks ugly to you, and it’s probably what makes you original, makes you nice, and people like it about you. And it’s not like, “Oh, my god.” And people notice it, people notice your hammerhead eyes, but it’s like, “That’s me. That’s my face. So, I love myself.” And that’s confidence, and confidence is attractive.
I learned from the hammerhead shark eyes, the stuff about you that looks ugly to you, and it’s probably what makes you original, makes you nice, and people like it about you. And it’s not like, “Oh, my god.” And people notice it, people notice your hammerhead eyes, but it’s like, “That’s me. That’s my face. So, I love myself.” And that’s confidence, and confidence is attractive.
Lex Fridman
Yes.
Yes.
Pieter Levels
Right?
Right?
Lex Fridman
Confidence is attractive. But yes, understanding what makes you beautiful. It’s the breaking of symmetry makes you beautiful, it’s the breaking of the average face makes you beautiful, all of that. And obviously different from men and women of different ages, all this kind of stuff.
Confidence is attractive. But yes, understanding what makes you beautiful. It’s the breaking of symmetry makes you beautiful, it’s the breaking of the average face makes you beautiful, all of that. And obviously different from men and women of different ages, all this kind of stuff.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, a hundred percent.
Yeah, a hundred percent.
Lex Fridman
But underneath it all, the personality, all of that, when the face comes alive, that also is the thing that makes you beautiful. But anyway, you have to figure all that out with AI.
But underneath it all, the personality, all of that, when the face comes alive, that also is the thing that makes you beautiful. But anyway, you have to figure all that out with AI.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. One thing that worked was, people would upload full body photos of themselves, so I would crop the face, right? Then the model knew better that we’re training mostly the face here. But then I started losing resemblance of the body ’cause some people are skinny, some people are muscular, whatever. So, you want to have that too. So, now, I mix full body photos in the training with face photos, face crops, and it’s all automatic. And I know that other people, they use, again, AI models to detect what are the best photos in this training set and then train on those. It’s all about training data, and it’s with everything in AI, how good your training data is, in many ways, more important than how many steps you train for, like how many months, or whatever, with these GPUs. The goals.
Yeah. One thing that worked was, people would upload full body photos of themselves, so I would crop the face, right? Then the model knew better that we’re training mostly the face here. But then I started losing resemblance of the body ’cause some people are skinny, some people are muscular, whatever. So, you want to have that too. So, now, I mix full body photos in the training with face photos, face crops, and it’s all automatic. And I know that other people, they use, again, AI models to detect what are the best photos in this training set and then train on those. It’s all about training data, and it’s with everything in AI, how good your training data is, in many ways, more important than how many steps you train for, like how many months, or whatever, with these GPUs. The goals.
Lex Fridman
Do you have any guidelines for people of how to get good data, how to give good data to fine tune on?
Do you have any guidelines for people of how to get good data, how to give good data to fine tune on?
Pieter Levels
The photos should be diverse. So, for example, if I only upload photos with a brown shirt or green shirts, the model will think that I’m training the green shirts. So, the things that are the same every photo are the concepts that are trained. What you want is your face to be the concept that’s trained and everything else to be diverse different.
The photos should be diverse. So, for example, if I only upload photos with a brown shirt or green shirts, the model will think that I’m training the green shirts. So, the things that are the same every photo are the concepts that are trained. What you want is your face to be the concept that’s trained and everything else to be diverse different.
Lex Fridman
So, diverse lighting as well. Diverse everything.
So, diverse lighting as well. Diverse everything.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, outside, inside. But there’s no, this is the problem, there’s no manual for this. And nobody knew. We were all just, especially two years ago, we’re all hacking, trying to test anything, anything you can think of. And it’s frustrating. It’s one of the most frustrating and also fun and challenging things to do because with AI, because it’s a black box. And Karpathy, I think, says this, “We don’t really know how this thing works, but it does something, but nobody really knows why.” We cannot look into the model of an LLM, what is actually in there. We just know it’s a treaty matrix of numbers, right? So, it’s very frustrating because some things that would be, you think they’re obvious that they will improve things, will make them worse. And there’s so many parameters you can tweak. So, you’re testing everything to improve things.
Yeah, outside, inside. But there’s no, this is the problem, there’s no manual for this. And nobody knew. We were all just, especially two years ago, we’re all hacking, trying to test anything, anything you can think of. And it’s frustrating. It’s one of the most frustrating and also fun and challenging things to do because with AI, because it’s a black box. And Karpathy, I think, says this, “We don’t really know how this thing works, but it does something, but nobody really knows why.” We cannot look into the model of an LLM, what is actually in there. We just know it’s a treaty matrix of numbers, right? So, it’s very frustrating because some things that would be, you think they’re obvious that they will improve things, will make them worse. And there’s so many parameters you can tweak. So, you’re testing everything to improve things.
Lex Fridman
I mean there’s a whole field now of mechanistic interpretability that studies that tries to figure out, tries to break things apart and understand how it works. But there’s also the data side and the actual consumer-facing product side of figuring out how you get it to generate a thing that’s beautiful or interesting or naturalistic, all that kind of stuff. And you’re at the forefront of figuring that out about the human face. And humans really care about the human face.
I mean there’s a whole field now of mechanistic interpretability that studies that tries to figure out, tries to break things apart and understand how it works. But there’s also the data side and the actual consumer-facing product side of figuring out how you get it to generate a thing that’s beautiful or interesting or naturalistic, all that kind of stuff. And you’re at the forefront of figuring that out about the human face. And humans really care about the human face.
Pieter Levels
In very vain. Like me, I want to look good in your podcast, for example. Yeah, for sure.
In very vain. Like me, I want to look good in your podcast, for example. Yeah, for sure.
Lex Fridman
And then one of the things actually would love to rigorously use photo AI, because for the thumbnails, I take portraits of people. I don’t know shit about photography. I basically used your approach for photography like Googled, “How do you take photographs? Camera, lighting.” And also it’s tough because maybe you could speak to this also, but with photography, no offense to any, they’re true artists, great photographers, but people take themselves way too seriously. Think you need a whole lot of equipment. You definitely don’t want one light, you need five lights…
And then one of the things actually would love to rigorously use photo AI, because for the thumbnails, I take portraits of people. I don’t know shit about photography. I basically used your approach for photography like Googled, “How do you take photographs? Camera, lighting.” And also it’s tough because maybe you could speak to this also, but with photography, no offense to any, they’re true artists, great photographers, but people take themselves way too seriously. Think you need a whole lot of equipment. You definitely don’t want one light, you need five lights…
Pieter Levels
Man, I know.
Man, I know.
Lex Fridman
And you have to have the lenses. I talked to a guy, an expert of shaping the sound in a room because I was thinking, “I’m going to do a podcast studio, whatever. I should probably do a sound treatment on the room.” And when he showed up and analyzed the room, he thought everything I was doing was horrible. And that’s when I realized, “You know what? I don’t need experts in my life.”
And you have to have the lenses. I talked to a guy, an expert of shaping the sound in a room because I was thinking, “I’m going to do a podcast studio, whatever. I should probably do a sound treatment on the room.” And when he showed up and analyzed the room, he thought everything I was doing was horrible. And that’s when I realized, “You know what? I don’t need experts in my life.”
Pieter Levels
You kicked him out of the house?
You kicked him out of the house?
Lex Fridman
No, I didn’t kick him. I said, “Thank you. Thank you very much.”
No, I didn’t kick him. I said, “Thank you. Thank you very much.”
Pieter Levels
“Thank you. Great tips. Bye.”
“Thank you. Great tips. Bye.”
Lex Fridman
I just felt like there is… Focus on whatever the problems are, use your own judgment, use your own instincts, don’t listen to other people, and only consult other people when there’s a specific problem. And you consult them not to offload the problem onto them, but to gain wisdom from their perspective. Even if their perspective is ultimately one you don’t agree with, you’re going to gain wisdom from that. And just, I ultimately come up with a PHP solution, PHP and jQuery solution to-
I just felt like there is… Focus on whatever the problems are, use your own judgment, use your own instincts, don’t listen to other people, and only consult other people when there’s a specific problem. And you consult them not to offload the problem onto them, but to gain wisdom from their perspective. Even if their perspective is ultimately one you don’t agree with, you’re going to gain wisdom from that. And just, I ultimately come up with a PHP solution, PHP and jQuery solution to-
Pieter Levels
PHP studio.
PHP studio.
Lex Fridman
The PHP studio. I have a little suitcase. I use just the basic consumer type of stuff. One light. It’s great.
The PHP studio. I have a little suitcase. I use just the basic consumer type of stuff. One light. It’s great.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. And look at you, you’re one of the top podcasts in the world, and you get millions of views, and it works. And the people that spend so much money on optimizing for the best sound, for the best studio, they get 300 views. So, what is this about? This is about that. Either you do it really well or also that a lot of these things don’t matter. What matters is probably the content of the podcast. You get the interesting guest.
Yeah. And look at you, you’re one of the top podcasts in the world, and you get millions of views, and it works. And the people that spend so much money on optimizing for the best sound, for the best studio, they get 300 views. So, what is this about? This is about that. Either you do it really well or also that a lot of these things don’t matter. What matters is probably the content of the podcast. You get the interesting guest.
Lex Fridman
Focus on the stuff that matters.
Focus on the stuff that matters.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. And I think that’s very common. They call it gear acquisition syndrome, like GAS, people in any industry do this. They just buy all the stuff. There was a meme recently. What’s the name for the guy that buys all the stuff before you even started doing the hobby, right? Marketing. Marketing does that to people. They want you to buy this stuff. But man, you can make a Hollywood movie on an iPhone if the content is good enough. And it will probably be original because you would be using an iPhone for it.
Yeah. And I think that’s very common. They call it gear acquisition syndrome, like GAS, people in any industry do this. They just buy all the stuff. There was a meme recently. What’s the name for the guy that buys all the stuff before you even started doing the hobby, right? Marketing. Marketing does that to people. They want you to buy this stuff. But man, you can make a Hollywood movie on an iPhone if the content is good enough. And it will probably be original because you would be using an iPhone for it.
Lex Fridman
So, the reason I brought that up with photography, there is wisdom from people. And one of the things I realized, you probably also realized this, but how much power light has to convey emotion. Just take one light and move it around, says you sit in the darkness, move it around your face. The different positions are having a second life potentially. You can play with how a person feels just from a generic face. It’s interesting. You can make people attractive, you can make them ugly, you can make them scary, you can make them lonely, all of this. And so you start to realize this. And I would definitely love AI help in creating great portraits of people.
So, the reason I brought that up with photography, there is wisdom from people. And one of the things I realized, you probably also realized this, but how much power light has to convey emotion. Just take one light and move it around, says you sit in the darkness, move it around your face. The different positions are having a second life potentially. You can play with how a person feels just from a generic face. It’s interesting. You can make people attractive, you can make them ugly, you can make them scary, you can make them lonely, all of this. And so you start to realize this. And I would definitely love AI help in creating great portraits of people.
Pieter Levels
Guest photos. Yeah.
Guest photos. Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Guest photos, for example, that’s a small use case, but for me… I suppose it’s an important use case because I want people to look good, but I also want to capture who they are. Maybe my conception of who they are, what makes them beautiful, what makes their appearance powerful in some ways. Sometimes it’s the eyes, oftentimes it’s the eyes, but there’s certain features of the face can sometimes be really powerful. It’s also awkward for me to take photographs, so I’m not collecting enough photographs for myself to do it with just those photographs. If I can load that off onto AI and then start to play with lighting, all that kind of stuff-
Guest photos, for example, that’s a small use case, but for me… I suppose it’s an important use case because I want people to look good, but I also want to capture who they are. Maybe my conception of who they are, what makes them beautiful, what makes their appearance powerful in some ways. Sometimes it’s the eyes, oftentimes it’s the eyes, but there’s certain features of the face can sometimes be really powerful. It’s also awkward for me to take photographs, so I’m not collecting enough photographs for myself to do it with just those photographs. If I can load that off onto AI and then start to play with lighting, all that kind of stuff-
Pieter Levels
You should do this and you should probably do it yourself. You can use photo AI, but it’s even more fun if you do it yourself. So, you train the models, you can learn about control nets. Control nets is where, for example, your photos and your podcasts are usually from the angle, right? So, you can create a control net face pose that’s always like this. So, every model, every photo you generate uses this control net pose, for example. I think would be very fun for you to try out that stuff.
You should do this and you should probably do it yourself. You can use photo AI, but it’s even more fun if you do it yourself. So, you train the models, you can learn about control nets. Control nets is where, for example, your photos and your podcasts are usually from the angle, right? So, you can create a control net face pose that’s always like this. So, every model, every photo you generate uses this control net pose, for example. I think would be very fun for you to try out that stuff.
Lex Fridman
Do you play with lighting at all? Do you play with lighting pose with the…
Do you play with lighting at all? Do you play with lighting pose with the…
Pieter Levels
Man, actually this week or recently some new model came out that can adjust the light of any photo. But also AI image with Stable Diffusion. I think it’s called Relights. And it’s amazing. You can upload like a light map. So, for example, red, purple, blue and use the light map to change the light on the photo you input. It’s amazing. There’s, for sure, a lot of stuff you can do.
Man, actually this week or recently some new model came out that can adjust the light of any photo. But also AI image with Stable Diffusion. I think it’s called Relights. And it’s amazing. You can upload like a light map. So, for example, red, purple, blue and use the light map to change the light on the photo you input. It’s amazing. There’s, for sure, a lot of stuff you can do.
How to learn AI
Lex Fridman
What’s your advice for people in general on how to learn all the state-of-the-art AI tools available, like you mentioned new model’s coming out all the time. How do you pay attention? How do you stay on top of everything?
What’s your advice for people in general on how to learn all the state-of-the-art AI tools available, like you mentioned new model’s coming out all the time. How do you pay attention? How do you stay on top of everything?
Pieter Levels
I think you need to join Twitter, X. X is amazing now and the whole AI industry’s on X. And they’re all anime avatars. It’s funny because my friends ask me this, “Who should I follow to stay up to date?” And I say, “Go to X and follow all the AI anime models that this person is following or follows.” And I send them some URL and they all start laughing like, “What is this?” But they’re real people hacking around in AI. They get hired by big companies and they’re on X. And most of them are anonymous. It’s very funny. They use anime avatars. I don’t. But those people hack around and then they publish what they’re discovering. They took out papers, for example. So, yeah, definitely X.
I think you need to join Twitter, X. X is amazing now and the whole AI industry’s on X. And they’re all anime avatars. It’s funny because my friends ask me this, “Who should I follow to stay up to date?” And I say, “Go to X and follow all the AI anime models that this person is following or follows.” And I send them some URL and they all start laughing like, “What is this?” But they’re real people hacking around in AI. They get hired by big companies and they’re on X. And most of them are anonymous. It’s very funny. They use anime avatars. I don’t. But those people hack around and then they publish what they’re discovering. They took out papers, for example. So, yeah, definitely X.
Lex Fridman
Almost exclusively all the people I follow are AI people.
Almost exclusively all the people I follow are AI people.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, it’s a good time now.
Yeah, it’s a good time now.
Lex Fridman
Well, but also just brings happiness to my soul ’cause there’s so much turmoil on twitter.
Well, but also just brings happiness to my soul ’cause there’s so much turmoil on twitter.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, like politics and stuff.
Yeah, like politics and stuff.
Lex Fridman
There’s battles going on. It’s like a war zone, and it’s nice to just go into this happy place to where people are building stuff.
There’s battles going on. It’s like a war zone, and it’s nice to just go into this happy place to where people are building stuff.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, a hundred percent. I like Twitter for that most, building stuff, seeing other, because it inspires you to build and it’s just fun to see other people share what they’re discovering and then you’re like, “Okay, I’m going to make something too.” It’s just super fun. And so if you want to start going on X, and then I would go to replicate and start trying to play with models. And when you have something that you manually enter stuff, you set the parameters, something that works, you can make an app out of it or a website.
Yeah, a hundred percent. I like Twitter for that most, building stuff, seeing other, because it inspires you to build and it’s just fun to see other people share what they’re discovering and then you’re like, “Okay, I’m going to make something too.” It’s just super fun. And so if you want to start going on X, and then I would go to replicate and start trying to play with models. And when you have something that you manually enter stuff, you set the parameters, something that works, you can make an app out of it or a website.
Lex Fridman
Can you speak a little bit more to the process of it becoming better and better and better, photo AI?
Can you speak a little bit more to the process of it becoming better and better and better, photo AI?
Pieter Levels
So, I had this photo AI and a lot of people using it. There was like a million or more photos a month being generated. And I discovered I was testing parameters, increase the step count of generating photo or changing the sampler, like a scheduler. You have DPM tools, all these things I don’t know anything about, but I know that you can choose them and you generate image and they have different resulting images. But I didn’t know which one were better. So, I would do it myself, test it, but then I was like, “Why don’t I test on these users?” ‘Cause I have a million photos generated anyway, so on like 10% of the users, I would randomly test parameters and then I would see if they would, because you can favor the photo or you can download it, I would measure if they favor it or like the photo. And then I would A/B test and you test for significance and stuff, which parameters were better and which were worse.
So, I had this photo AI and a lot of people using it. There was like a million or more photos a month being generated. And I discovered I was testing parameters, increase the step count of generating photo or changing the sampler, like a scheduler. You have DPM tools, all these things I don’t know anything about, but I know that you can choose them and you generate image and they have different resulting images. But I didn’t know which one were better. So, I would do it myself, test it, but then I was like, “Why don’t I test on these users?” ‘Cause I have a million photos generated anyway, so on like 10% of the users, I would randomly test parameters and then I would see if they would, because you can favor the photo or you can download it, I would measure if they favor it or like the photo. And then I would A/B test and you test for significance and stuff, which parameters were better and which were worse.
Lex Fridman
So, you starting to figure out which models are actually working well.
So, you starting to figure out which models are actually working well.
Pieter Levels
Exactly. And then if it’s significant enough data, you switch to that for all the users. And so that was the breakthrough to make it better. Just use the users to improve themselves. And I tell them when they sign up, “We do sampling, we do testing on your photos with random parameters.” And that worked really well. I don’t do a lot of testing anymore because I reached a diminishing point where it’s good, but there was a breakthrough. Yeah.
Exactly. And then if it’s significant enough data, you switch to that for all the users. And so that was the breakthrough to make it better. Just use the users to improve themselves. And I tell them when they sign up, “We do sampling, we do testing on your photos with random parameters.” And that worked really well. I don’t do a lot of testing anymore because I reached a diminishing point where it’s good, but there was a breakthrough. Yeah.
Lex Fridman
So, it’s really about the parameters, the models, and letting the users help do the search in the space of models and parameters for you.
So, it’s really about the parameters, the models, and letting the users help do the search in the space of models and parameters for you.
Pieter Levels
But actually, so Stable Diffusion, I used 1.5, 2.0 came out as Stable Diffusion, Excel came out, all these new versions, and they were all worse. And so the core scene of people are still using 1.5 because it’s also not like what do you call “neutered.” They neutered to make it super with safety features and stuff. So, most of the people are still on Stable Diffusion 1.5. And meanwhile Stable Diffusion, the company went, the CEO left. A lot of drama happened because they couldn’t make money. They gave us this open source model that everybody uses. They raised hundreds of millions of dollars. They didn’t make any money with. There are not lots. And they did an amazing job, and now everybody uses open source model for free and it’s amazing. It’s amazing.
But actually, so Stable Diffusion, I used 1.5, 2.0 came out as Stable Diffusion, Excel came out, all these new versions, and they were all worse. And so the core scene of people are still using 1.5 because it’s also not like what do you call “neutered.” They neutered to make it super with safety features and stuff. So, most of the people are still on Stable Diffusion 1.5. And meanwhile Stable Diffusion, the company went, the CEO left. A lot of drama happened because they couldn’t make money. They gave us this open source model that everybody uses. They raised hundreds of millions of dollars. They didn’t make any money with. There are not lots. And they did an amazing job, and now everybody uses open source model for free and it’s amazing. It’s amazing.
Lex Fridman
You’re not even using the latest one, you’re saying?
You’re not even using the latest one, you’re saying?
Pieter Levels
No, and the strange thing is that this company raised hundreds of millions, but the people that are benefiting from it, early, small, people like me who make these small apps that are using the model. And now they’re starting to charge money for the new models, but the new models are not so good for people. They’re not so open source, right?
No, and the strange thing is that this company raised hundreds of millions, but the people that are benefiting from it, early, small, people like me who make these small apps that are using the model. And now they’re starting to charge money for the new models, but the new models are not so good for people. They’re not so open source, right?
Lex Fridman
Yeah. It is interesting because open source is so impactful in the AI space, but you wonder what is the business model behind that? But it’s enabling this whole ecosystem of companies that they’re using the open source models.
Yeah. It is interesting because open source is so impactful in the AI space, but you wonder what is the business model behind that? But it’s enabling this whole ecosystem of companies that they’re using the open source models.
Pieter Levels
So, it’s like those frameworks, but then they didn’t bribe enough influence to use it and they didn’t charge money for the platform.
So, it’s like those frameworks, but then they didn’t bribe enough influence to use it and they didn’t charge money for the platform.
Lex Fridman
So, back to your book and the ideas, you didn’t even get to the first step, generating ideas. So, you had no book and you’re filling it up. How do you know when an idea is a good one? You have this just flood of ideas. How do you pick the one that you actually try to build?
So, back to your book and the ideas, you didn’t even get to the first step, generating ideas. So, you had no book and you’re filling it up. How do you know when an idea is a good one? You have this just flood of ideas. How do you pick the one that you actually try to build?
Pieter Levels
Man, mostly you don’t know. Mostly I choose the ones that are most viable for me to build. I cannot build a space company now, right? Would be quite challenging, but I can build something-
Man, mostly you don’t know. Mostly I choose the ones that are most viable for me to build. I cannot build a space company now, right? Would be quite challenging, but I can build something-
Lex Fridman
Did you actually write down like “space company”?
Did you actually write down like “space company”?
Pieter Levels
No, I think asteroid mining would be very cool because you go to an asteroid, you take some stuff from there, you bring it back, you sell it. And you can hire someone to launch the thing. So, all you need is the robot that goes to the asteroid and the robotics’ interesting. I want to also learn robotics. So, maybe that could be-
No, I think asteroid mining would be very cool because you go to an asteroid, you take some stuff from there, you bring it back, you sell it. And you can hire someone to launch the thing. So, all you need is the robot that goes to the asteroid and the robotics’ interesting. I want to also learn robotics. So, maybe that could be-
Lex Fridman
I think both the asteroid mining and the robotics is…
I think both the asteroid mining and the robotics is…
Pieter Levels
Yeah, together.
Yeah, together.
Lex Fridman
I feel like [inaudible 01:18:40].
I feel like [inaudible 01:18:40].
Pieter Levels
No, exactly. This is it. “We do this not because it’s easy, but because we thought it would be easy.” Exactly. That’s me with asteroid mining. Exactly. That’s why I should do this.
No, exactly. This is it. “We do this not because it’s easy, but because we thought it would be easy.” Exactly. That’s me with asteroid mining. Exactly. That’s why I should do this.
Lex Fridman
It’s not nomadlist.com. It’s asteroid mining. Gravity is really hard to overcome.
It’s not nomadlist.com. It’s asteroid mining. Gravity is really hard to overcome.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. But it seems, man, I sound like idiot. Probably not. But it sounds quite approachable. Relatively approachable. You don’t have to build the rockets.
Yeah. But it seems, man, I sound like idiot. Probably not. But it sounds quite approachable. Relatively approachable. You don’t have to build the rockets.
Lex Fridman
Oh, you use something like SpaceX to get out space.
Oh, you use something like SpaceX to get out space.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, you hire SpaceX to send this dog robots or whatever.
Yeah, you hire SpaceX to send this dog robots or whatever.
Lex Fridman
So, is there actually existing notebook where you wrote down “asteroid mining”?
So, is there actually existing notebook where you wrote down “asteroid mining”?
Pieter Levels
No. Back then I used Trello.
No. Back then I used Trello.
Lex Fridman
Trello. Yeah.
Trello. Yeah.
Pieter Levels
But now I use Telegram. I rather than saved messages. I have an idea, I write it down.
But now I use Telegram. I rather than saved messages. I have an idea, I write it down.
Lex Fridman
You type to yourself on Telegram?
You type to yourself on Telegram?
Pieter Levels
Because you use WhatsApp, right? I think. So, you have “message to yourself” thing also. Yeah, so like a notepad.
Because you use WhatsApp, right? I think. So, you have “message to yourself” thing also. Yeah, so like a notepad.
Lex Fridman
So, you’re talking to yourself on Telegram.
So, you’re talking to yourself on Telegram.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. You use like a notepad, not forget stuff. And then I pin it.
Yeah. You use like a notepad, not forget stuff. And then I pin it.
Lex Fridman
I love how you’re not using super complicated systems or whatever. People use Obsidian now. There’s a lot of these, Notion, where you have systems for note-taking. You’re notepad.exe guy.
I love how you’re not using super complicated systems or whatever. People use Obsidian now. There’s a lot of these, Notion, where you have systems for note-taking. You’re notepad.exe guy.
Pieter Levels
Man, I saw some YouTubers doing this like… There’s a lot of these productivity gurus also and they do this whole iPad with a pencil. And then I also had an iPad and I also got the pencil, and I got this app where you can draw on paper, draw like a calendar. People, students use this and you do coloring and stuff. And I’m like, “Dude, I did this for a week. And then I’m like, ‘What am I doing in my life?’ I can just write it as a message to myself and it’s good enough.”
Man, I saw some YouTubers doing this like… There’s a lot of these productivity gurus also and they do this whole iPad with a pencil. And then I also had an iPad and I also got the pencil, and I got this app where you can draw on paper, draw like a calendar. People, students use this and you do coloring and stuff. And I’m like, “Dude, I did this for a week. And then I’m like, ‘What am I doing in my life?’ I can just write it as a message to myself and it’s good enough.”
Lex Fridman
Speaking of ideas, you shared a tweet explaining why the first idea sometimes might be a brilliant idea. The reason for this you think is the first idea submerges from your subconscious and was actually boiling your brain for weeks, months, sometimes years in the background. The eight hours of thinking can never compete with a perpetual subconscious background job. So, this is the idea that if you think about an idea for eight hours versus the first idea that pops into your mind. And sometimes there is subconscious stuff that you’ve been thinking about for many years. That’s really interesting.
Speaking of ideas, you shared a tweet explaining why the first idea sometimes might be a brilliant idea. The reason for this you think is the first idea submerges from your subconscious and was actually boiling your brain for weeks, months, sometimes years in the background. The eight hours of thinking can never compete with a perpetual subconscious background job. So, this is the idea that if you think about an idea for eight hours versus the first idea that pops into your mind. And sometimes there is subconscious stuff that you’ve been thinking about for many years. That’s really interesting.
Pieter Levels
I mean like, “It emerges.” I wrote it wrong because I’m not native English, but it emerges from your subconscious, it comes from like a water. Your subconscious is in here, it’s boiling. And then when it’s ready, it’s like ding. It’s like a microwave, it comes out. And there you have your idea.
I mean like, “It emerges.” I wrote it wrong because I’m not native English, but it emerges from your subconscious, it comes from like a water. Your subconscious is in here, it’s boiling. And then when it’s ready, it’s like ding. It’s like a microwave, it comes out. And there you have your idea.
Lex Fridman
You think you have ideas like that?
You think you have ideas like that?
Pieter Levels
Yeah, all the time. A hundred percent.
Yeah, all the time. A hundred percent.
Lex Fridman
It’s just stuff that’s been there.
It’s just stuff that’s been there.
Pieter Levels
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Pieter Levels
And also it comes up and I send it back, send it back to the kitchen to boil more.
And also it comes up and I send it back, send it back to the kitchen to boil more.
Lex Fridman
Not ready yet. Yeah.
Not ready yet. Yeah.
Pieter Levels
And it’s like a soup of ideas that’s cooking. It’s a hundred percent. This is how my brain works, and I think most people.
And it’s like a soup of ideas that’s cooking. It’s a hundred percent. This is how my brain works, and I think most people.
Lex Fridman
But it’s also about the timing. Sometimes you have to send it back, not just because you’re not ready, but the world is not ready.
But it’s also about the timing. Sometimes you have to send it back, not just because you’re not ready, but the world is not ready.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. So, many times, like startup founders are too early with their idea. Yeah, a hundred percent.
Yeah. So, many times, like startup founders are too early with their idea. Yeah, a hundred percent.
Robots
Lex Fridman
Robotics is an interesting one for that because there’s been a lot of robotics companies that failed, because it’s been very difficult to build a robotics company make money ’cause there’s the manufacturing, the cost of everything. The intelligence of the robot is not sufficient to create a compelling enough product from wish to make money. There’s this long line of robotics companies that have tried, they had big dreams, and they failed.
Robotics is an interesting one for that because there’s been a lot of robotics companies that failed, because it’s been very difficult to build a robotics company make money ’cause there’s the manufacturing, the cost of everything. The intelligence of the robot is not sufficient to create a compelling enough product from wish to make money. There’s this long line of robotics companies that have tried, they had big dreams, and they failed.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, like Boston Dynamics. I still don’t know what they’re doing, but they always upload YouTube videos and it’s amazing. But I feel like a lot of these companies don’t have, it’s like a solution looking for a problem for now. Military obviously uses. But do I need a robotic dog now for my house? I don’t know. It’s fun, but it doesn’t really solve anything yet. I feel the same with VR. It’s really cool. Apple Vision Pro is very cool. It doesn’t really solve something for me yet. And that’s the tech looking for a solution, but one day will.
Yeah, like Boston Dynamics. I still don’t know what they’re doing, but they always upload YouTube videos and it’s amazing. But I feel like a lot of these companies don’t have, it’s like a solution looking for a problem for now. Military obviously uses. But do I need a robotic dog now for my house? I don’t know. It’s fun, but it doesn’t really solve anything yet. I feel the same with VR. It’s really cool. Apple Vision Pro is very cool. It doesn’t really solve something for me yet. And that’s the tech looking for a solution, but one day will.
Lex Fridman
When the personal computer, when the Mac came along, there was a big switch that happened. It somehow captivated everybody’s imagination. The application, the killer apps became apparent. You can type in a computer.
When the personal computer, when the Mac came along, there was a big switch that happened. It somehow captivated everybody’s imagination. The application, the killer apps became apparent. You can type in a computer.
Pieter Levels
But they became apparent immediately. Back then they also had this thing where like, “We don’t need these computers. They’re like a hype.” And it also went in like waves.
But they became apparent immediately. Back then they also had this thing where like, “We don’t need these computers. They’re like a hype.” And it also went in like waves.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. But the hype is the thing that allowed the thing to proliferate sufficiently to where people’s minds would start opening up to it a little bit, the possibility of it. Right now, for example, with the robotics, there’s very few robots in the homes of people.
Yeah. But the hype is the thing that allowed the thing to proliferate sufficiently to where people’s minds would start opening up to it a little bit, the possibility of it. Right now, for example, with the robotics, there’s very few robots in the homes of people.
Pieter Levels
Exactly, yeah.
Exactly, yeah.
Lex Fridman
The robots that are there are Roombas, so the vacuum cleaners, or they’re Amazon Alexa.
The robots that are there are Roombas, so the vacuum cleaners, or they’re Amazon Alexa.
Pieter Levels
Or dishwasher, I mean, it’s essentially a robot.
Or dishwasher, I mean, it’s essentially a robot.
Lex Fridman
Yes, but the intelligence is very limited, I guess, is one way we can summarize all of them except Alexa, which is pretty intelligent, but is limited with the kind of ways it interacts with you. That’s just one example. I sometimes think about that as if some people in this world were born in the whole existence is like, they were meant to build the thing. I sometimes wonder what I was meant to do. You have these plans for your life, you have these dreams?
Yes, but the intelligence is very limited, I guess, is one way we can summarize all of them except Alexa, which is pretty intelligent, but is limited with the kind of ways it interacts with you. That’s just one example. I sometimes think about that as if some people in this world were born in the whole existence is like, they were meant to build the thing. I sometimes wonder what I was meant to do. You have these plans for your life, you have these dreams?
Pieter Levels
I think you’re meant to build robots.
I think you’re meant to build robots.
Lex Fridman
Okay. Me personally. Maybe. Maybe. That’s a sense I’ve had, but it could be other things. Hilariously not be the thing I was meant to be is to talk to people, which is weird because I always was anxious about talking to people. It’s like a…
Okay. Me personally. Maybe. Maybe. That’s a sense I’ve had, but it could be other things. Hilariously not be the thing I was meant to be is to talk to people, which is weird because I always was anxious about talking to people. It’s like a…
Pieter Levels
Really?
Really?
Lex Fridman
Yeah, I’m scared of this. I was scared. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, I’m scared of this. I was scared. Yeah, exactly.
Pieter Levels
I’m scared of you.
I’m scared of you.
Lex Fridman
It’s just anxiety throughout, social interaction in general. I’m an introvert that hides from the world. So, yeah, it’s really strange.
It’s just anxiety throughout, social interaction in general. I’m an introvert that hides from the world. So, yeah, it’s really strange.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, but that’s also kind of life, like life brings you to, it’s very hard to super intently choose what you’re going to do with your life. It is more like surfing. You’re surfing the waves, you go in the ocean, you see where you end up.
Yeah, but that’s also kind of life, like life brings you to, it’s very hard to super intently choose what you’re going to do with your life. It is more like surfing. You’re surfing the waves, you go in the ocean, you see where you end up.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. And there’s universe has a kind of sense of humor.
Yeah. And there’s universe has a kind of sense of humor.
Pieter Levels
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
I guess you have to just allow yourself to be carried away by the waves.
I guess you have to just allow yourself to be carried away by the waves.
Pieter Levels
Exactly. Yeah.
Exactly. Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Have you felt that way in your life?
Have you felt that way in your life?
Pieter Levels
Yeah, all the time. Yeah. I think that’s the best way to live your life.
Yeah, all the time. Yeah. I think that’s the best way to live your life.
Lex Fridman
So, a allow of whatever to happen. Do you know what you’re doing in the next few years? Is it possible that it’ll be completely changed?
So, a allow of whatever to happen. Do you know what you’re doing in the next few years? Is it possible that it’ll be completely changed?
Pieter Levels
Possibly. I think relationships, you want to hold the relationships, right? You want hold your girl and you want her to become wife and all this stuff. But I think you should stay open to where, for example, where you want to live. We don’t know where we want to live, for example. That’s something that will figure itself out. It will crystallize where you will get sent by the waves to somewhere where you want to live, for example. What you’re going to do? I think that’s a really good way to live your life. I think most stress comes from trying to control, like hold things. It’s kind of Buddhist. You need to lose control, let it lose. And then things will happen. When you do mushrooms, when you do drugs, like psychedelic drugs, the people that start, that are control freaks, get bad trips, right? ‘Cause you need to let go. I’m pretty control freak actually. And when I did mushrooms when I was 17, it was very good. And then at the end it wasn’t so good ’cause I tried to control it. It was like, “Ah, now it’s going too much. Now, I need to… Let’s stop.” Bro, you can’t stop it. You need to go through with it. And I think it’s a good metaphor for life. I think that’s a very tranquil way to lead you life.
Possibly. I think relationships, you want to hold the relationships, right? You want hold your girl and you want her to become wife and all this stuff. But I think you should stay open to where, for example, where you want to live. We don’t know where we want to live, for example. That’s something that will figure itself out. It will crystallize where you will get sent by the waves to somewhere where you want to live, for example. What you’re going to do? I think that’s a really good way to live your life. I think most stress comes from trying to control, like hold things. It’s kind of Buddhist. You need to lose control, let it lose. And then things will happen. When you do mushrooms, when you do drugs, like psychedelic drugs, the people that start, that are control freaks, get bad trips, right? ‘Cause you need to let go. I’m pretty control freak actually. And when I did mushrooms when I was 17, it was very good. And then at the end it wasn’t so good ’cause I tried to control it. It was like, “Ah, now it’s going too much. Now, I need to… Let’s stop.” Bro, you can’t stop it. You need to go through with it. And I think it’s a good metaphor for life. I think that’s a very tranquil way to lead you life.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, actually when I took ayahuasca, that lesson is deeply within me already that you can’t control anything. I think I probably learned that the most in jiu-jitsu. So, just let go and relax. And that’s why I had just an incredible experience. There’s literally no negative aspect of my ayahuasca experience, or any psychedelics I’ve ever had. Some of that could be with my biology and my genetics, whatever, but some of it was just not trying to control. Just surf the waves.
Yeah, actually when I took ayahuasca, that lesson is deeply within me already that you can’t control anything. I think I probably learned that the most in jiu-jitsu. So, just let go and relax. And that’s why I had just an incredible experience. There’s literally no negative aspect of my ayahuasca experience, or any psychedelics I’ve ever had. Some of that could be with my biology and my genetics, whatever, but some of it was just not trying to control. Just surf the waves.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. For sure. I think most stress in life comes from trying to control.
Yeah. For sure. I think most stress in life comes from trying to control.
Lex Fridman
So, once you have the idea, step two, build. How do you think about building the thing once you have the idea?
So, once you have the idea, step two, build. How do you think about building the thing once you have the idea?
Pieter Levels
I think you should build with the technology that you know. So, for example, Nomad List, which is like this website I made to figure out the best cities to live and work as digital nomads, it wasn’t a website. It launched as a Google spreadsheet. So, it was a public Google spreadsheet anybody could edit. And I was like, “I’m collecting cities where we can live as these nomads with the internet speeds, the cost of living, other stuff.” And I tweeted it. And back then, I didn’t have a lot of followers. I have a few thousand followers or something. And I went viral for my skill viral back then, which was five retweets and a lot of people started editing it. And there was hundreds of cities in this list from all over the world with all the data. It was very crowdsourced. And then I made that into a website.
I think you should build with the technology that you know. So, for example, Nomad List, which is like this website I made to figure out the best cities to live and work as digital nomads, it wasn’t a website. It launched as a Google spreadsheet. So, it was a public Google spreadsheet anybody could edit. And I was like, “I’m collecting cities where we can live as these nomads with the internet speeds, the cost of living, other stuff.” And I tweeted it. And back then, I didn’t have a lot of followers. I have a few thousand followers or something. And I went viral for my skill viral back then, which was five retweets and a lot of people started editing it. And there was hundreds of cities in this list from all over the world with all the data. It was very crowdsourced. And then I made that into a website.
So, figuring out what technology you can use, that you already know. So, if you cannot code, you can use spreadsheet. If you cannot use a spreadsheet, whatever, you can always use, for example, a website generator like Wix or something, or Squarespace, right? You don’t need to code to build a startup. All you need is an idea for a product, build something like a landing page or something, put a Stripe button on there, and then make it. And if you can code, use the language that you already know and start coding with that and see how far you can get. And you can always rewrite the code later. The tech stack it’s not the most important of a business when you’re starting out a business. The important thing is that you validate that there’s a market, that there’s a product that people want to pay for. So, use whatever you can use. And if you cannot code, use spreadsheets, landing page generators, whatever.
Lex Fridman
And the crowdsourcing element is fascinating. It’s cool. It’s cool when a lot of people start using it. You get to learn so fast. I’ve actually did the spreadsheet thing. You share a spreadsheet publicly, and I made it editable.
And the crowdsourcing element is fascinating. It’s cool. It’s cool when a lot of people start using it. You get to learn so fast. I’ve actually did the spreadsheet thing. You share a spreadsheet publicly, and I made it editable.
Pieter Levels
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
It’s so cool.
It’s so cool.
Pieter Levels
Interesting things start happening.
Interesting things start happening.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, I did it for a workout thing ’cause I was doing a large amount of pushups and pull ups every day.
Yeah, I did it for a workout thing ’cause I was doing a large amount of pushups and pull ups every day.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, I remember this man. Yeah.
Yeah, I remember this man. Yeah.
Lex Fridman
While it’s like Google Sheets is pretty limited in that everything’s allowed. So, people could just write anything in any cell and they can create new sheets, new tabs, and it just exploded. And one of the things that I really enjoyed is there’s very few trolls because actually other people would delete the trolls. There would be this weird war of like, they want to protect the thing. It’s an immune system that’s inherent to the thing.
While it’s like Google Sheets is pretty limited in that everything’s allowed. So, people could just write anything in any cell and they can create new sheets, new tabs, and it just exploded. And one of the things that I really enjoyed is there’s very few trolls because actually other people would delete the trolls. There would be this weird war of like, they want to protect the thing. It’s an immune system that’s inherent to the thing.
Pieter Levels
It becomes a society in a spreadsheet.
It becomes a society in a spreadsheet.
Hoodmaps
Lex Fridman
And then there’s the outcasts who go to the bottom of the spreadsheet and they would try to hide messages and they like, “I don’t want to be with the cool kids up at the top of the spreadsheet, so I’m going to at the bottom.” I mean, but that kind of crowdsourcing element is really powerful. And if you can create a product that used that to its benefit, that’s really nice. Any kind of voting system, any kind of rating system for A and B testing is really, really, really fascinating. So, anyway, so Nomad List is great. I would love for you to talk about that. But one sort of way to talk about it is through you building hood maps. You did an awesome thing, which is document yourself building the thing and doing so in just a handful of days, like 3, 4, 5 days. So, people should definitely check out the video in the blog post. Can you explain what hood maps is and what this whole process was?
And then there’s the outcasts who go to the bottom of the spreadsheet and they would try to hide messages and they like, “I don’t want to be with the cool kids up at the top of the spreadsheet, so I’m going to at the bottom.” I mean, but that kind of crowdsourcing element is really powerful. And if you can create a product that used that to its benefit, that’s really nice. Any kind of voting system, any kind of rating system for A and B testing is really, really, really fascinating. So, anyway, so Nomad List is great. I would love for you to talk about that. But one sort of way to talk about it is through you building hood maps. You did an awesome thing, which is document yourself building the thing and doing so in just a handful of days, like 3, 4, 5 days. So, people should definitely check out the video in the blog post. Can you explain what hood maps is and what this whole process was?
Pieter Levels
So, I was traveling and I was still trying to find problems, and I would discover that everybody’s experience of a city is different because they stay in different areas. So, I’m from Amsterdam and when I grew up in Amsterdam, or I didn’t grow up, but I lived there in university, I knew that center is like, in Europe, the centers are always tourist areas, so they’re super busy. They’re not very authentic, they’re not really Dutch culture, it’s Amsterdam tourist culture. So, when people would travel to Amsterdam I would say, “Don’t go to the center, go to southeast of the center, the Jordaan or the Pijp or something.” More hipster areas. I was like, “A little more authentic culture of Amsterdam.”
So, I was traveling and I was still trying to find problems, and I would discover that everybody’s experience of a city is different because they stay in different areas. So, I’m from Amsterdam and when I grew up in Amsterdam, or I didn’t grow up, but I lived there in university, I knew that center is like, in Europe, the centers are always tourist areas, so they’re super busy. They’re not very authentic, they’re not really Dutch culture, it’s Amsterdam tourist culture. So, when people would travel to Amsterdam I would say, “Don’t go to the center, go to southeast of the center, the Jordaan or the Pijp or something.” More hipster areas. I was like, “A little more authentic culture of Amsterdam.”
That’s where I would live and where I would go. And I thought this could be an app where you can have a Google Maps and you put colors over it. You have areas that are like color-coded, like red is tourist, green is rich, green money, yellow is hipster. And you can figure out where you need to go in the city when you travel. ‘Cause I was traveling a lot, I wanted to go to the cool spots.
Lex Fridman
So, just use color.
So, just use color.
Pieter Levels
Color. Yeah. And I would use a canvas. So, I thought, okay, what do I need? I need to…
Color. Yeah. And I would use a canvas. So, I thought, okay, what do I need? I need to…
Lex Fridman
Did you know that you would be using a canvas?
Did you know that you would be using a canvas?
Pieter Levels
No, I didn’t know it was possible ’cause I didn’t know-
No, I didn’t know it was possible ’cause I didn’t know-
Lex Fridman
This is the cool thing. People should really check it out.
This is the cool thing. People should really check it out.
Pieter Levels
This is how it started.
This is how it started.
Lex Fridman
Because you’re honestly capture so beautifully the humbling aspects or the embarrassing aspects of not knowing what to do. It’s like, “How do I do this?” And you document yourself. Yeah, you’re right, “Dude, I feel embarrassed about myself.”
Because you’re honestly capture so beautifully the humbling aspects or the embarrassing aspects of not knowing what to do. It’s like, “How do I do this?” And you document yourself. Yeah, you’re right, “Dude, I feel embarrassed about myself.”
Pieter Levels
Oh, really? Yeah.
Oh, really? Yeah.
Lex Fridman
It’s called being alive. Nice. So, you don’t know anything about Canvas is HTML5 thing that allows you to draw shapes.
It’s called being alive. Nice. So, you don’t know anything about Canvas is HTML5 thing that allows you to draw shapes.
Pieter Levels
Draw images, just draw pixels essentially. And that was special back then because before you could only have elements, right? So, you want to draw a pixel, use a Canvas. And I knew I needed to draw pixels ’cause I need to draw these colors. And I felt like, okay, I’ll get a Google Maps, I frame Embeds, and then I put a div on top of it with the colors. And I’ll do opacity 50, so it kind of shows. So, I did that with Canvas, and then I started drawing. And then I felt like obviously other people need to edit this ’cause I cannot draw all these things myself. So, I crowdsourced it again.
Draw images, just draw pixels essentially. And that was special back then because before you could only have elements, right? So, you want to draw a pixel, use a Canvas. And I knew I needed to draw pixels ’cause I need to draw these colors. And I felt like, okay, I’ll get a Google Maps, I frame Embeds, and then I put a div on top of it with the colors. And I’ll do opacity 50, so it kind of shows. So, I did that with Canvas, and then I started drawing. And then I felt like obviously other people need to edit this ’cause I cannot draw all these things myself. So, I crowdsourced it again.
And you would draw on the map and then it would send the pixel data to the server. It would put it in the database. And then I would have a robot running like a cron job, which every week would calculate, or every day would calculate like, “Okay, so Amsterdam Center, there’s like six people say it’s tourists, this part of the center, but two people say it’s like hipster. Okay, so the tourist part wins, right?” It’s just an array. So, find the most common value in a little pixel area on a map. So, if most people say it’s tourists, it’s tourists, and it becomes red. And I would do that for all the GPS corners in the world.
Lex Fridman
Can we just clarify, as a human that’s contributing to this, do you have to be in that location to make the label or do you-
Can we just clarify, as a human that’s contributing to this, do you have to be in that location to make the label or do you-
Pieter Levels
People just type in cities and go berserk and start drawing everywhere.
People just type in cities and go berserk and start drawing everywhere.
Lex Fridman
Would they draw shapes or would they draw pixels?
Would they draw shapes or would they draw pixels?
Pieter Levels
Man, they drew crazy stuff, like offensive symbols. I mentioned they would draw penises.
Man, they drew crazy stuff, like offensive symbols. I mentioned they would draw penises.
Lex Fridman
I mean that’s obviously a guy thing.
I mean that’s obviously a guy thing.
Pieter Levels
I would do the same thing, draw penises.
I would do the same thing, draw penises.
Lex Fridman
When I show up to Mars and there’s no cameras, I’m drawing a penis on the same-
When I show up to Mars and there’s no cameras, I’m drawing a penis on the same-
Pieter Levels
Exactly. Man, I did it in the snow. But the penises did not become a problem ’cause I knew that not everybody would draw a penis and not in the same place. So, most people would use it fairly. So, just say if I had enough crowdsource data, so you have all these pixels on top of each, it’s like a layer of pixels, and you choose the most common pixel. So, yeah, it’s just like a poll, but in visual format. And it worked. And within a week, I’d had enough data. And it was like cities that did really well, like Los Angeles, a lot of people started using it. Like most data’s in Los Angeles.
Exactly. Man, I did it in the snow. But the penises did not become a problem ’cause I knew that not everybody would draw a penis and not in the same place. So, most people would use it fairly. So, just say if I had enough crowdsource data, so you have all these pixels on top of each, it’s like a layer of pixels, and you choose the most common pixel. So, yeah, it’s just like a poll, but in visual format. And it worked. And within a week, I’d had enough data. And it was like cities that did really well, like Los Angeles, a lot of people started using it. Like most data’s in Los Angeles.
Lex Fridman
Because Los Angeles has defined neighborhoods. And not just in terms of the official labels, but what they’re known for. Did you provide the categories that they were allowed to use as labels?
Because Los Angeles has defined neighborhoods. And not just in terms of the official labels, but what they’re known for. Did you provide the categories that they were allowed to use as labels?
Pieter Levels
Colors, yeah.
Colors, yeah.
Lex Fridman
As colors?
As colors?
Pieter Levels
So, I use like, I think you can see there’s like hipster, tourist, rich, business. There’s always a business area and then there’s a residential. Residential is gray. So, I thought those were the most common things in the city, kind of.
So, I use like, I think you can see there’s like hipster, tourist, rich, business. There’s always a business area and then there’s a residential. Residential is gray. So, I thought those were the most common things in the city, kind of.
Lex Fridman
And a little bit meme-y, like it’s almost fun to label it.
And a little bit meme-y, like it’s almost fun to label it.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, I mean obviously it’s simplified, but you need to simplify this stuff. You don’t want to have too many categories. And it’s essentially like using a paintbrush, where you select the color in the bottom, you select the category and you start drawing. There’s no instruction. There’s no manual. And then I also add a tagging so people could write something on a specific location, so, “Don’t go here,” or like, “Here’s nice cafes and stuff.” And man, the memes that came from that. And I also added uploading so that the tags could be uploaded. So, the memes that came from that is amazing. People in Los Angeles would write crazy stuff. It would go viral in all these cities. You can allow your location, and then we’ll probably send you to Austin.
Yeah, I mean obviously it’s simplified, but you need to simplify this stuff. You don’t want to have too many categories. And it’s essentially like using a paintbrush, where you select the color in the bottom, you select the category and you start drawing. There’s no instruction. There’s no manual. And then I also add a tagging so people could write something on a specific location, so, “Don’t go here,” or like, “Here’s nice cafes and stuff.” And man, the memes that came from that. And I also added uploading so that the tags could be uploaded. So, the memes that came from that is amazing. People in Los Angeles would write crazy stuff. It would go viral in all these cities. You can allow your location, and then we’ll probably send you to Austin.
Lex Fridman
Okay, so we’re looking… Oh, boy. “Drunk hipsters.”
Okay, so we’re looking… Oh, boy. “Drunk hipsters.”
Pieter Levels
“AirBroNBros.”
“AirBroNBros.”
Lex Fridman
” AirBroNBros.” “Hipster Girls who do Cocaine.”
” AirBroNBros.” “Hipster Girls who do Cocaine.”
Pieter Levels
I saw a guy in a fish costume get beaten up here.
I saw a guy in a fish costume get beaten up here.
Lex Fridman
Yep, that seems also accurate.
Yep, that seems also accurate.
Pieter Levels
“Overpriced and underwhelming.”
“Overpriced and underwhelming.”
Lex Fridman
Let me see. Let me make sure this is accurate. Let’s see. “Dirty 6th.” For people who know Austin, know that that’s important to label. 6th Street is famous in Austin. “Dirty Sixth drunk frat boys,” accurate. ” Drunk fat bros,” continued on Sixth, very well known.
Let me see. Let me make sure this is accurate. Let’s see. “Dirty 6th.” For people who know Austin, know that that’s important to label. 6th Street is famous in Austin. “Dirty Sixth drunk frat boys,” accurate. ” Drunk fat bros,” continued on Sixth, very well known.
Pieter Levels
“Drunk douchebros.”
“Drunk douchebros.”
Lex Fridman
Drunk frat bros continued on sixth. Very well then.
Drunk frat bros continued on sixth. Very well then.
Pieter Levels
Douche bros.
Douche bros.
Lex Fridman
Was Sixth drunk douche bros.
Was Sixth drunk douche bros.
Pieter Levels
Go from frat to douche.
Go from frat to douche.
Lex Fridman
Douche. It’s very accurate so far.
Douche. It’s very accurate so far.
Pieter Levels
Really?
Really?
Lex Fridman
They only let hot people live here. I think that might be accurate.
They only let hot people live here. I think that might be accurate.
Pieter Levels
I think the district. Exercise freaks on the river. Yeah, that’s true.
I think the district. Exercise freaks on the river. Yeah, that’s true.
Lex Fridman
Dog runners. Accurate.
Dog runners. Accurate.
Pieter Levels
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Saw a guy in the fish costume get beat up here.
Saw a guy in the fish costume get beat up here.
Pieter Levels
I want to know that story.
I want to know that story.
Lex Fridman
So that’s all user contributed.
So that’s all user contributed.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. And this is stuff I couldn’t come up with because I don’t know Austin. I don’t know the memes here and the subcultures.
Yeah. And this is stuff I couldn’t come up with because I don’t know Austin. I don’t know the memes here and the subcultures.
Lex Fridman
And then me as a user can upvote or down vote this.
And then me as a user can upvote or down vote this.
Pieter Levels
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
So this is completely crowd sourced.
So this is completely crowd sourced.
Pieter Levels
Because of Reddit up vote, down vote. Took it From there.
Because of Reddit up vote, down vote. Took it From there.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. That’s really, really, really powerful. Single people with dogs. Accurate. At which point did it go from colors to actually showing the text?
Yeah. That’s really, really, really powerful. Single people with dogs. Accurate. At which point did it go from colors to actually showing the text?
Pieter Levels
I think I added the text a week after. And so here’s the pixels.
I think I added the text a week after. And so here’s the pixels.
Lex Fridman
So that’s really cool. The pixels, how do you go from that? That’s a huge amount of data.
So that’s really cool. The pixels, how do you go from that? That’s a huge amount of data.
Pieter Levels
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
So we’re now looking at an image where it’s just a sea of pixels that are colored different colors in a city. So how do you combine that to be a thing that actually makes some sense?
So we’re now looking at an image where it’s just a sea of pixels that are colored different colors in a city. So how do you combine that to be a thing that actually makes some sense?
Pieter Levels
I think here the problem was that you have this data but it’s not locked to one location.
I think here the problem was that you have this data but it’s not locked to one location.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Pieter Levels
So I had to normalize it. So when you draw on the map, it’ll show you the specific pixel location and you can convert the pixel location to a GPS coordinate like latitudes, longitudes. But the number will have a lot of commas or a lot of decimals because it’s very specific. It’s like this specific part of the table. So what you want to do is you want to take that pixel and you want to normalize it by removing decimals, which I discovered, so that you’re talking about this neighborhood or this street. So that’s what I did. I just took the decimals off and then I saved it like this and then it starts going to a grid and then you have a grid of data. You get a pixel map kind of.
So I had to normalize it. So when you draw on the map, it’ll show you the specific pixel location and you can convert the pixel location to a GPS coordinate like latitudes, longitudes. But the number will have a lot of commas or a lot of decimals because it’s very specific. It’s like this specific part of the table. So what you want to do is you want to take that pixel and you want to normalize it by removing decimals, which I discovered, so that you’re talking about this neighborhood or this street. So that’s what I did. I just took the decimals off and then I saved it like this and then it starts going to a grid and then you have a grid of data. You get a pixel map kind of.
Lex Fridman
And then you said it looks kind of ugly so then you smooth it.
And then you said it looks kind of ugly so then you smooth it.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, I started adding blurring and stuff. I think now it’s not smooth again because I liked it better. People like the pixel look. Yeah, a lot of people use it and it keeps going viral and every time my maps bill like Map Box, I had to stop using… I first used Google Maps. It went viral and Google Maps, it was out of credits and I had to… So funny, when I launched, it went viral, the map didn’t load anymore. It says over the limits. You need to contact enterprise sales. And I’m like, “But I need now a map and I don’t want to contact enterprise sales. I don’t want to go on a call schedule with some calendar.”
Yeah, I started adding blurring and stuff. I think now it’s not smooth again because I liked it better. People like the pixel look. Yeah, a lot of people use it and it keeps going viral and every time my maps bill like Map Box, I had to stop using… I first used Google Maps. It went viral and Google Maps, it was out of credits and I had to… So funny, when I launched, it went viral, the map didn’t load anymore. It says over the limits. You need to contact enterprise sales. And I’m like, “But I need now a map and I don’t want to contact enterprise sales. I don’t want to go on a call schedule with some calendar.”
So I switched to Map Box and then had Map Box for years and then it went viral and I had a bill of $20,000. It was last year. So they helped me with the bill. They said you can pay less. And then I now switched to an open source kind of map platform. So it’s a very expensive product and never made any dollar money, but it’s very fun but it’s very expensive.
Lex Fridman
Where do you learn from that experience? Because when you leverage somebody else’s through the API.
Where do you learn from that experience? Because when you leverage somebody else’s through the API.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, I don’t think a map hosting service should cost this much, but I could host it myself, but that would be… I don’t know how to do that, but I could do that.
Yeah, I don’t think a map hosting service should cost this much, but I could host it myself, but that would be… I don’t know how to do that, but I could do that.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, it’s super complicated.
Yeah, it’s super complicated.
Pieter Levels
I think that the thing is more about you can’t make money with this project. I try to do many things to make money with it and it hasn’t worked.
I think that the thing is more about you can’t make money with this project. I try to do many things to make money with it and it hasn’t worked.
Lex Fridman
You talked about possibly doing advertisements on it or somehow or people sponsoring it. Yeah. But it’s really surprising to me that people don’t want to advertise on it.
You talked about possibly doing advertisements on it or somehow or people sponsoring it. Yeah. But it’s really surprising to me that people don’t want to advertise on it.
Pieter Levels
I think map apps are very hard to monetize. Google Maps also doesn’t really make money. Sometimes you see these ads, but I don’t think there’s a lot of money there. You could put a banner ad, but it’s kind of ugly and the project, it’s kind of cool. So it’s kind of fun to subsidize it. It’s a little bit part of Nomad List. I put it on Nomad List in the cities as well. But I also realized you don’t need to monetize everything. Some products are just cool and it’s cool to have hood maps exist. I want this to exist, right?
I think map apps are very hard to monetize. Google Maps also doesn’t really make money. Sometimes you see these ads, but I don’t think there’s a lot of money there. You could put a banner ad, but it’s kind of ugly and the project, it’s kind of cool. So it’s kind of fun to subsidize it. It’s a little bit part of Nomad List. I put it on Nomad List in the cities as well. But I also realized you don’t need to monetize everything. Some products are just cool and it’s cool to have hood maps exist. I want this to exist, right?
Lex Fridman
Yeah. There’s a bunch of stuff you’ve created that I’m just glad exists in this world. That’s true. And it’s a whole nother puzzle and I’m surprised to figure out how to make money off of it. I’m surprised maps don’t make money, but you’re right. It’s hard. It’s hard to make money because there’s a lot of compute required to actually bring it to life.
Yeah. There’s a bunch of stuff you’ve created that I’m just glad exists in this world. That’s true. And it’s a whole nother puzzle and I’m surprised to figure out how to make money off of it. I’m surprised maps don’t make money, but you’re right. It’s hard. It’s hard to make money because there’s a lot of compute required to actually bring it to life.
Pieter Levels
So where do you put the ad? If you have a website, you can put a ad box or you can do a product placement or something. But you’re talking about a map app where 90% of the interface is a map. So what are you going to do? It’s hard to figure out where is this.
So where do you put the ad? If you have a website, you can put a ad box or you can do a product placement or something. But you’re talking about a map app where 90% of the interface is a map. So what are you going to do? It’s hard to figure out where is this.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. And people don’t want to pay for it.
Yeah. And people don’t want to pay for it.
Pieter Levels
No, exactly because if you make people pay for it, you lose 99% of the user base and you lose the crowdsource data. So it’s not fun anymore. It stops being accurate. So they pay for it by crowdsourcing the data, but then yeah, it’s fine. It doesn’t make money, but it’s cool.
No, exactly because if you make people pay for it, you lose 99% of the user base and you lose the crowdsource data. So it’s not fun anymore. It stops being accurate. So they pay for it by crowdsourcing the data, but then yeah, it’s fine. It doesn’t make money, but it’s cool.
Lex Fridman
But that said, Nomad List makes money.
But that said, Nomad List makes money.
Pieter Levels
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
So what was the story behind Nomad List?
So what was the story behind Nomad List?
Pieter Levels
So Nomad List started because I was in Chiang Mai in Thailand, which is now the second city here. And I was working on my laptop. I met other Nomads there and I was like, “Okay, this seems like a cool thing to do, working on your laptop in a different country, kind of travel around.” But back then the internet everywhere was very slow. So the internet was fast in, for example, Holland or United States, but in a lot of parts in South America or Asia, it was very slow like 0.5 megabits. So you couldn’t watch a YouTube video.
So Nomad List started because I was in Chiang Mai in Thailand, which is now the second city here. And I was working on my laptop. I met other Nomads there and I was like, “Okay, this seems like a cool thing to do, working on your laptop in a different country, kind of travel around.” But back then the internet everywhere was very slow. So the internet was fast in, for example, Holland or United States, but in a lot of parts in South America or Asia, it was very slow like 0.5 megabits. So you couldn’t watch a YouTube video.
Thailand weirdly had quite fast internet, but I wanted to find other cities where I could go to work on my laptop, whatever and travel. But we needed fast internet, so I was like, “Let’s crowdsource this information with a spreadsheet.” And I also needed to know the cost of living because I didn’t have a lot of money. I had $500 a month. So I to find a place where the rent was $200 per month or something where I had some money that I could actually rent something and there was Nomad List and it still runs. I think it’s now almost 10 years.
Lex Fridman
So it’s just to describe how it works. I’m looking at Chiang Mai here. There’s a total score. It’s ranked number two.
So it’s just to describe how it works. I’m looking at Chiang Mai here. There’s a total score. It’s ranked number two.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, that’s like a Nomad score.
Yeah, that’s like a Nomad score.
Lex Fridman
4.82 by members, but it’s looking at the internet. In this case it’s fast.
4.82 by members, but it’s looking at the internet. In this case it’s fast.
Pieter Levels
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Fun, temperature, humidity, air quality, safety, food safety, crime, racism or lack of crime, lack of racism, educational level, power grid, vulnerability to climate change, income level.
Fun, temperature, humidity, air quality, safety, food safety, crime, racism or lack of crime, lack of racism, educational level, power grid, vulnerability to climate change, income level.
Pieter Levels
It’s a little much.
It’s a little much.
Lex Fridman
English. It’s awesome. It’s awesome. Walkability.
English. It’s awesome. It’s awesome. Walkability.
Pieter Levels
I keep adding stuff.
I keep adding stuff.
Lex Fridman
Because for certain groups of people, certain things really matter and this is really cool. Happiness. I’d love to ask you about that. Night life, free wifi, AC, female friendly, freedom of speech.
Because for certain groups of people, certain things really matter and this is really cool. Happiness. I’d love to ask you about that. Night life, free wifi, AC, female friendly, freedom of speech.
Pieter Levels
Not so good in Thailand.
Not so good in Thailand.
Lex Fridman
Values derived from national statistics. I like how that one has-
Values derived from national statistics. I like how that one has-
Pieter Levels
I need to do that because the data sets are usually national. They’re not on city level. So I don’t know about the freedom of speech between Bangkok or Chiang Mai. I know them in Thailand.
I need to do that because the data sets are usually national. They’re not on city level. So I don’t know about the freedom of speech between Bangkok or Chiang Mai. I know them in Thailand.
Lex Fridman
This is really fascinating. So this is for city, is basically rating all the different things that matter to you, internet. And this is all crowdsourced.
This is really fascinating. So this is for city, is basically rating all the different things that matter to you, internet. And this is all crowdsourced.
Pieter Levels
Well, so it started crowdsource, but then I realized that you can download more accurate data sets from public source like World Bank. They have a lot of public data sets, United Nations and you can download a lot of data there, which you can freely use. I started getting problems across with data where for example, people from India, they really love India and they would submit the best scores for everything in India and not just one person, but a lot of people they would love to pump India. And I’m like, “I love India too, but that’s not valid data.”
Well, so it started crowdsource, but then I realized that you can download more accurate data sets from public source like World Bank. They have a lot of public data sets, United Nations and you can download a lot of data there, which you can freely use. I started getting problems across with data where for example, people from India, they really love India and they would submit the best scores for everything in India and not just one person, but a lot of people they would love to pump India. And I’m like, “I love India too, but that’s not valid data.”
So you started getting discrepancies in the data between where people were from and stuff. So I started switching to data sets and now it’s mostly data sets, but one thing that’s still crowdsourced is people add where they are, they add their travels to their profile and I use that data to see which places are upcoming and which places are popular now. So about half the ranking you see here is based on actual digital nomads who are there. You can click on a city, you can click on people and you can see the people, the users that are actually there. And it’s like 30,000, 40,000 members. So these people are in Austin now and…
Lex Fridman
1,800 remote workers in Austin now, of which eight plus members checked in, members who will be here soon and go… This is amazing.
1,800 remote workers in Austin now, of which eight plus members checked in, members who will be here soon and go… This is amazing.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. So we have meetups. So people organize their own meetups and we have about I think 30 per month. So it’s like one meetup a day and I don’t do anything. They organize themselves. So it’s a whole black box, it just runs and I don’t do a lot on it. It pulls data from everywhere and it just works.
Yeah. So we have meetups. So people organize their own meetups and we have about I think 30 per month. So it’s like one meetup a day and I don’t do anything. They organize themselves. So it’s a whole black box, it just runs and I don’t do a lot on it. It pulls data from everywhere and it just works.
Lex Fridman
Cons of Austin is too expensive, very sweating, humid now, difficult to make friends.
Cons of Austin is too expensive, very sweating, humid now, difficult to make friends.
Pieter Levels
Difficult to make friends. Interesting, right? I didn’t know that.
Difficult to make friends. Interesting, right? I didn’t know that.
Lex Fridman
Difficult to make friends.
Difficult to make friends.
Pieter Levels
In Austin.
In Austin.
Lex Fridman
But this all crowd source but mostly it’s pros.
But this all crowd source but mostly it’s pros.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. Austin’s very good.
Yeah. Austin’s very good.
Lex Fridman
Pretty safe, fast internet.
Pretty safe, fast internet.
Pieter Levels
I don’t understand why it says not safe for women. Check the data set. It feels safe. The problem with a lot of places like United States is that it depends per area.
I don’t understand why it says not safe for women. Check the data set. It feels safe. The problem with a lot of places like United States is that it depends per area.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Pieter Levels
So if you get city level data or nation level data, it’s like Brazil is the worst because the range in safe and wealthy and not safe is huge. So you can’t say many things about Brazil.
So if you get city level data or nation level data, it’s like Brazil is the worst because the range in safe and wealthy and not safe is huge. So you can’t say many things about Brazil.
Lex Fridman
So once they actually show up to the city, how do you figure out what area, where to get fast internet? For example, for me it’s consistently a struggle to figure out. Hotels with fast wifi, for example. Okay, okay. I show up to a city, there’s a lot of fascinating puzzles and I haven’t figured out a way to actually solve this puzzle. When I show up to a city, figuring out where I can get fast internet connection, and for podcasting purposes, where I can find a place with a table that’s quiet.
So once they actually show up to the city, how do you figure out what area, where to get fast internet? For example, for me it’s consistently a struggle to figure out. Hotels with fast wifi, for example. Okay, okay. I show up to a city, there’s a lot of fascinating puzzles and I haven’t figured out a way to actually solve this puzzle. When I show up to a city, figuring out where I can get fast internet connection, and for podcasting purposes, where I can find a place with a table that’s quiet.
Pieter Levels
Right. Yeah.
Right. Yeah.
Lex Fridman
That’s not easy.
That’s not easy.
Pieter Levels
Construction sounds.
Construction sounds.
Lex Fridman
All kinds of sounds. You get to learn about all the sources of sounds in the world and also the quality of the room because the more… The emptier the room, and if it’s just walls without any curtains or any of this kind of stuff, then there’s echoes in the room. Anyway, but you figure out that a lot of hotels don’t have tables. They don’t have normal…
All kinds of sounds. You get to learn about all the sources of sounds in the world and also the quality of the room because the more… The emptier the room, and if it’s just walls without any curtains or any of this kind of stuff, then there’s echoes in the room. Anyway, but you figure out that a lot of hotels don’t have tables. They don’t have normal…
Pieter Levels
It’s this weird desk, right?
It’s this weird desk, right?
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Pieter Levels
It’s not a center table.
It’s not a center table.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. And if you want to get a nicer hotel where it’s more spacious and so on, they usually have these boutique fancy looking like modernist tables that don’t…
Yeah. And if you want to get a nicer hotel where it’s more spacious and so on, they usually have these boutique fancy looking like modernist tables that don’t…
Pieter Levels
Yeah. It’s too design-y.
Yeah. It’s too design-y.
Lex Fridman
It’s too design-y. They’re not really real tables.
It’s too design-y. They’re not really real tables.
Pieter Levels
What if you get IKEA?
What if you get IKEA?
Lex Fridman
Buy IKEA?
Buy IKEA?
Pieter Levels
Yeah. Before you arrive, you order an IKEA. Nomads do this. They get desks.
Yeah. Before you arrive, you order an IKEA. Nomads do this. They get desks.
Lex Fridman
I feel like you should be able to show up to a place and have the desk unless you stay in there for a long time. Just the entire assembly, all that. Airbnb is so unreliable. The range in quality that you get is huge. Hotels have a lot of problems, pros and cons. Hotels have the problem that the pictures somehow never have good representative pictures of what’s actually going to be in the room.
I feel like you should be able to show up to a place and have the desk unless you stay in there for a long time. Just the entire assembly, all that. Airbnb is so unreliable. The range in quality that you get is huge. Hotels have a lot of problems, pros and cons. Hotels have the problem that the pictures somehow never have good representative pictures of what’s actually going to be in the room.
Pieter Levels
And that’s a problem. Fake photos, man.
And that’s a problem. Fake photos, man.
Lex Fridman
If I could have the kind of data you have on Nomad List for hotels.
If I could have the kind of data you have on Nomad List for hotels.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, man.
Yeah, man.
Lex Fridman
And I feel like you can make a lot of money on that too.
And I feel like you can make a lot of money on that too.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, the booking fees, affiliate, right? I thought about this idea because we have the same problem. I go to hotels and there’s specific ones that are very good and I know now the chains and stuff, but even if you go to… Some chains are very bad in a specific city and very good in other cities.
Yeah, the booking fees, affiliate, right? I thought about this idea because we have the same problem. I go to hotels and there’s specific ones that are very good and I know now the chains and stuff, but even if you go to… Some chains are very bad in a specific city and very good in other cities.
Lex Fridman
And each individual hotel has a lot of kinds of rooms. Some are more expensive, some are cheaper and so on. But you can get the details of what’s in the room, what’s the actual layout of the room, what is the view of the room.
And each individual hotel has a lot of kinds of rooms. Some are more expensive, some are cheaper and so on. But you can get the details of what’s in the room, what’s the actual layout of the room, what is the view of the room.
Pieter Levels
3D scan it.
3D scan it.
Lex Fridman
I feel like as a hotel you can win a lot. So first you create a service that allows you to have high resolution data about a hotel. Then one hotel signs up for that. I would 100% use that website to look for a hotel instead of the crappy alternatives that don’t give any information. And I feel like there’ll be this pressure for all the hotels to join that site and you can make a shit ton of money because hotels make a lot of money.
I feel like as a hotel you can win a lot. So first you create a service that allows you to have high resolution data about a hotel. Then one hotel signs up for that. I would 100% use that website to look for a hotel instead of the crappy alternatives that don’t give any information. And I feel like there’ll be this pressure for all the hotels to join that site and you can make a shit ton of money because hotels make a lot of money.
Pieter Levels
I think it’s true, but the problem is with these hotels, it’s same with airline industry. Why does every airline website suck when you try book a flight? It’s very strange. Why does it have to suck? Obviously there’s competition here. Why doesn’t the best website win?
I think it’s true, but the problem is with these hotels, it’s same with airline industry. Why does every airline website suck when you try book a flight? It’s very strange. Why does it have to suck? Obviously there’s competition here. Why doesn’t the best website win?
Lex Fridman
What’s the explanation for that?
What’s the explanation for that?
Pieter Levels
Man, I’ve thought about this for years. So I think it’s like I have to book the flight anyway. I know there’s a route that they take and I need to book, for example, Qatar Airlines and I need to get through this process. And with hotels, similar. You need a hotel anyway. So do you have time to figure out the best one? Not really. You kind of just need to get the place booked and you need to get the flight and you’ll go through the pain of this process. And that’s why this process always sucks so much with hotels and airline websites and stuff because they don’t have an incentive to improve it because generally only for a super upper segment of the market I think like super high luxury, it affects the actual booking.
Man, I’ve thought about this for years. So I think it’s like I have to book the flight anyway. I know there’s a route that they take and I need to book, for example, Qatar Airlines and I need to get through this process. And with hotels, similar. You need a hotel anyway. So do you have time to figure out the best one? Not really. You kind of just need to get the place booked and you need to get the flight and you’ll go through the pain of this process. And that’s why this process always sucks so much with hotels and airline websites and stuff because they don’t have an incentive to improve it because generally only for a super upper segment of the market I think like super high luxury, it affects the actual booking.
Lex Fridman
I don’t know. I think that’s an interesting theory. I think that must be a different theory. My theory would be that great software engineers are not allowed to make changes. Basically there’s some kind of bureaucracy,. There’s way too many managers. There’s a lot of bureaucracy and great engineers show up, they try to work there and they’re not allowed to really make any contributions and then they leave. And so they have a lot of mediocre software engineers. They’re not really interested in improving any other thing.
I don’t know. I think that’s an interesting theory. I think that must be a different theory. My theory would be that great software engineers are not allowed to make changes. Basically there’s some kind of bureaucracy,. There’s way too many managers. There’s a lot of bureaucracy and great engineers show up, they try to work there and they’re not allowed to really make any contributions and then they leave. And so they have a lot of mediocre software engineers. They’re not really interested in improving any other thing.
And literally they would like to improve the stuff, but the bureaucracy of the place, plus all the bosses, all the high up people are not technical people probably. They don’t know much about web development. They don’t know much about programming, so they just don’t give any respect. You have to give the freedom and the respect to great engineers as they try to do great things. That feels like an explanation. If you were a great programmer, would you want to work at America Airlines or…
Pieter Levels
No. No.
No. No.
Lex Fridman
I’m torn on that because I actually, as somebody who loves program, would love to work at America Airlines so I can make the thing better.
I’m torn on that because I actually, as somebody who loves program, would love to work at America Airlines so I can make the thing better.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. But I would work there just to fix it for myself.
Yeah. But I would work there just to fix it for myself.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, for yourself. And then you just know how much suffering you’re alleviated, how much frustration-
Yeah, for yourself. And then you just know how much suffering you’re alleviated, how much frustration-
Pieter Levels
For all society.
For all society.
Lex Fridman
You imagine all the thousands, maybe millions of people that go to that website and have to click a million times. It often doesn’t work. It’s clunky, all that kind of stuff. You’re making their life just so much better.
You imagine all the thousands, maybe millions of people that go to that website and have to click a million times. It often doesn’t work. It’s clunky, all that kind of stuff. You’re making their life just so much better.
Pieter Levels
Much better.
Much better.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. But there must be an explanation that has to do with managers and bureaucracies.
Yeah. But there must be an explanation that has to do with managers and bureaucracies.
Pieter Levels
I think it’s money. Do you know Booking.com?
I think it’s money. Do you know Booking.com?
Lex Fridman
Sure.
Sure.
Pieter Levels
So it’s the biggest booking website in the world. It’s Dutch actually. And they have teams because my friend worked there. They have teams for a specific part of the website, like a 10 by 10 pixels area where they run tests on this. So they run tests and they’re famous for this stuff like, “Oh, there’s only one room left,” which is red letters like, “One room left. Book now.” And they got a fine from the European Union about this. Kind of interesting.
So it’s the biggest booking website in the world. It’s Dutch actually. And they have teams because my friend worked there. They have teams for a specific part of the website, like a 10 by 10 pixels area where they run tests on this. So they run tests and they’re famous for this stuff like, “Oh, there’s only one room left,” which is red letters like, “One room left. Book now.” And they got a fine from the European Union about this. Kind of interesting.
So they have all these teams and they run the test for 24 hours. They go to sleep, they wake up next day, they come to the office and they see, “Okay, this performed better.” This website has become a monster, but it’s the most revenue generating hotel booking website in the world. It’s number one. So that shows that it’s not about user experience. It’s about, I don’t know, about making more money and not every company, but if they’re optimizing, it’s a public company. If they’re optimizing for money…
Lex Fridman
But you can optimize for money by disrupting, making it way better.
But you can optimize for money by disrupting, making it way better.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, but this always started… They start with disrupting. Booking all started as a startup, 1997, and then they become the old shit again. Uber now starts to become like a taxi again. It was very good in the beginning. Now it’s kind like taxis now in many places are better. They’re nicer than Ubers. So it’s like the circle.
Yeah, but this always started… They start with disrupting. Booking all started as a startup, 1997, and then they become the old shit again. Uber now starts to become like a taxi again. It was very good in the beginning. Now it’s kind like taxis now in many places are better. They’re nicer than Ubers. So it’s like the circle.
Lex Fridman
I think some of it is also just it’s hard to have ultra competent engineers. Stripe seems like a trivial thing, but it’s hard to pull off. Why was it so hard for Amazon to have buy with one click, which I think is a genius idea. Make buying easier. Make it as frictionless as possible. Just click a button, one scene, you bought the thing, as opposed to most of the web was a lot of clicking and it often doesn’t work like with the airlines.
I think some of it is also just it’s hard to have ultra competent engineers. Stripe seems like a trivial thing, but it’s hard to pull off. Why was it so hard for Amazon to have buy with one click, which I think is a genius idea. Make buying easier. Make it as frictionless as possible. Just click a button, one scene, you bought the thing, as opposed to most of the web was a lot of clicking and it often doesn’t work like with the airlines.
Pieter Levels
You remember the forms with delete? You could click next, submit and with 404 or something or your internet would go down, your modem. Yeah, man.
You remember the forms with delete? You could click next, submit and with 404 or something or your internet would go down, your modem. Yeah, man.
Lex Fridman
And I would have an existential crisis. The frustration would take over my whole body and I would just want to quit life for a brief moment there. Yeah.
And I would have an existential crisis. The frustration would take over my whole body and I would just want to quit life for a brief moment there. Yeah.
Pieter Levels
I’m so happy the form stays in Google Chrome now if something goes wrong. But Google somebody at Google and prove society with that, right?
I’m so happy the form stays in Google Chrome now if something goes wrong. But Google somebody at Google and prove society with that, right?
Lex Fridman
Yeah. And one of the challenges at Google is to have the freedom to do that.
Yeah. And one of the challenges at Google is to have the freedom to do that.
Pieter Levels
They don’t anymore.
They don’t anymore.
Lex Fridman
There’s a bunch of bureaucracy, yeah.
There’s a bunch of bureaucracy, yeah.
Pieter Levels
At Google.
At Google.
Lex Fridman
There’s so many brilliant, brilliant people there, but it just moves slowly.
There’s so many brilliant, brilliant people there, but it just moves slowly.
Pieter Levels
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
I wonder why that is and maybe that’s the natural way of a company, but you have people like Elon who rolls in and just fires most of the folks and always push the company to operate as a startup even when it’s already big.
I wonder why that is and maybe that’s the natural way of a company, but you have people like Elon who rolls in and just fires most of the folks and always push the company to operate as a startup even when it’s already big.
Pieter Levels
But Apple does this. I started in business school. Apple does competing product teams that operate as startups. So it’s three to five people, they make something, they have multiple teams make the same thing. The best team wins. So I think you need to emulate a free market inside a company to make it entrepreneurial. And you need entrepreneurial mentality in a company to come up with new ideas and do it better.
But Apple does this. I started in business school. Apple does competing product teams that operate as startups. So it’s three to five people, they make something, they have multiple teams make the same thing. The best team wins. So I think you need to emulate a free market inside a company to make it entrepreneurial. And you need entrepreneurial mentality in a company to come up with new ideas and do it better.
Learning new programming languages
Lex Fridman
So one of the things you do really, really well is learn a new thing. You have an idea, you try to build it, and then you learn everything you need to in order to build it. You have your current skills, but you learn just the minimal amount of stuff. So you’re a good person to ask how do you learn? How do you learn quickly and effectively and just the stuff you need? Just by way of example, you did a 30 days learning session on 3D where you documented yourself giving yourself only 30 days to learn everything you can about 3D.
So one of the things you do really, really well is learn a new thing. You have an idea, you try to build it, and then you learn everything you need to in order to build it. You have your current skills, but you learn just the minimal amount of stuff. So you’re a good person to ask how do you learn? How do you learn quickly and effectively and just the stuff you need? Just by way of example, you did a 30 days learning session on 3D where you documented yourself giving yourself only 30 days to learn everything you can about 3D.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, I tried to learn virtual reality because this was same as AI. It came up suddenly 2016, 2017 with I think HTC Vive, these big VR glasses before Apple Vision Pro. And I was like, “Oh, this is going to be big so I need to learn this.” And I know nothing about 3D. I installed I think Unity and Blender and stuff, and I started learning all this stuff because I thought this was a new nascent technology that was going to be big. And if I had the skills for it, I could use this to build stuff. And so I think with learning, for me, I think learning is so funny because people always ask me, “How do you learn to code? Should I learn to code?” And I’m like, “I don’t know.” Every day I’m learning. It’s kind of cliche, but every day I’m learning new stuff.
Yeah, I tried to learn virtual reality because this was same as AI. It came up suddenly 2016, 2017 with I think HTC Vive, these big VR glasses before Apple Vision Pro. And I was like, “Oh, this is going to be big so I need to learn this.” And I know nothing about 3D. I installed I think Unity and Blender and stuff, and I started learning all this stuff because I thought this was a new nascent technology that was going to be big. And if I had the skills for it, I could use this to build stuff. And so I think with learning, for me, I think learning is so funny because people always ask me, “How do you learn to code? Should I learn to code?” And I’m like, “I don’t know.” Every day I’m learning. It’s kind of cliche, but every day I’m learning new stuff.
So every day I’m searching on Google or asking out ChatGPT how to do this thing, how to do this thing. Every day I’m getting better at my skill. So you never stop learning. So the whole concept of how do you learn, well, you never end. So where do you want to be? Do you want know a little bit? Do you want to know a lot? Do you want to do it for your whole life?
So I think taking action is the best step to learn. So making things. You know nothing, just start making things. Okay, so how to make a website. Search how to make a website or nowadays you ask ChatGPT, “How do I make a website? Where do I start?” It generates codes for you. Copy the code, put it in a file, save it. Open it in Google Chrome or whatever. You have a website and then you start tweaking with it and you start, “Okay, how do I add a button? How do I add AI features nowadays?” So it’s like by taking action, you can learn stuff much faster than reading books or tutorials.
Lex Fridman
Actually I’m always curious. Let me ask perplexity. How do I make a website? I’m just curious what it would say. I hope it goes with really basic vanilla solutions. Define your website’s purpose, choose a domain name, select a web hosting provider. Choose a website, a builder or a CMS website. Build a platform. Wix.
Actually I’m always curious. Let me ask perplexity. How do I make a website? I’m just curious what it would say. I hope it goes with really basic vanilla solutions. Define your website’s purpose, choose a domain name, select a web hosting provider. Choose a website, a builder or a CMS website. Build a platform. Wix.
Pieter Levels
It tells Wix or Squarespace is what I said. Make a landing page.
It tells Wix or Squarespace is what I said. Make a landing page.
Lex Fridman
How do I say if I want to program it myself? Design your website, create essential pages.
How do I say if I want to program it myself? Design your website, create essential pages.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. Even tells you to launch it, right? Start promoting it.
Yeah. Even tells you to launch it, right? Start promoting it.
Lex Fridman
Launch your website. Well, you could do that.
Launch your website. Well, you could do that.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, but this is literally it.
Yeah, but this is literally it.
Lex Fridman
If you want to make a website.
If you want to make a website.
Pieter Levels
This is the basic like Google Analytics.
This is the basic like Google Analytics.
Lex Fridman
But you can’t make Nomad Lists with this web.
But you can’t make Nomad Lists with this web.
Pieter Levels
You can.
You can.
Lex Fridman
With Wix.
With Wix.
Pieter Levels
No, you can get pretty far, I think.
No, you can get pretty far, I think.
Lex Fridman
You get pretty far.
You get pretty far.
Pieter Levels
Website builders are pretty advanced. All you need is a grid of images that are clickable that open another page.
Website builders are pretty advanced. All you need is a grid of images that are clickable that open another page.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Pieter Levels
You can get quite far.
You can get quite far.
Lex Fridman
How do I learn to program? Choose a programming language to start with.
How do I learn to program? Choose a programming language to start with.
Pieter Levels
FreeCodeCamp is good.
FreeCodeCamp is good.
Lex Fridman
Work through resources thematically. Practice coding regularly for 30, 60 minutes a day. Consistency is key. Join programming communities like Reddit’s… Yeah. Yeah, it’s pretty good.
Work through resources thematically. Practice coding regularly for 30, 60 minutes a day. Consistency is key. Join programming communities like Reddit’s… Yeah. Yeah, it’s pretty good.
Pieter Levels
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
It’s pretty good.
It’s pretty good.
Pieter Levels
So I think it’s a very good starting ground because imagine you know nothing and you want to make a website, you want to make a startup. That’s why, man, the power of AI for education is going to be insane. People anywhere can ask this question and start building stuff.
So I think it’s a very good starting ground because imagine you know nothing and you want to make a website, you want to make a startup. That’s why, man, the power of AI for education is going to be insane. People anywhere can ask this question and start building stuff.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, it clarifies it for sure. And just start building, keep build, build. Actually apply the thing, whether it’s AI or any of the programming for web development. Just have a project in mind, which I love the idea of 12 startups in 12 months or build a project almost every day. Just build a thing and get it to work and finish it every single day. That’s a cool experiment.
Yeah, it clarifies it for sure. And just start building, keep build, build. Actually apply the thing, whether it’s AI or any of the programming for web development. Just have a project in mind, which I love the idea of 12 startups in 12 months or build a project almost every day. Just build a thing and get it to work and finish it every single day. That’s a cool experiment.
Pieter Levels
I think that was the inspiration. There was a girl who did 160 websites in 160 days or something, literally mini websites, and she learned to code that way. So I think it’s good to set yourself challenges. You can go to some coding bootcamp, but I don’t think they actually work. I think it’s better to do for me out of the dark self-learning and setting yourself challenges and just getting in. But you need discipline. You need discipline to keep doing it. And coding, coding is very… It’s a steep learning curve to get in. It’s very annoying. Working with computers is very annoying, so it can be hard for people to keep doing it.
I think that was the inspiration. There was a girl who did 160 websites in 160 days or something, literally mini websites, and she learned to code that way. So I think it’s good to set yourself challenges. You can go to some coding bootcamp, but I don’t think they actually work. I think it’s better to do for me out of the dark self-learning and setting yourself challenges and just getting in. But you need discipline. You need discipline to keep doing it. And coding, coding is very… It’s a steep learning curve to get in. It’s very annoying. Working with computers is very annoying, so it can be hard for people to keep doing it.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. That thing of just keep doing it and don’t quit, that urgency that’s required to finish a thing. That’s why it’s really powerful when you documented this, the creation of Hood Maps or a working prototype that there’s just a constant frustration, I guess. It’s like, “How do I do this?” And then you look it up and you’re like, “Okay.” You have to interpret the different options you have and then just try it. And then there’s a dopamine rush of like, “It works. Cool.”
Yeah. That thing of just keep doing it and don’t quit, that urgency that’s required to finish a thing. That’s why it’s really powerful when you documented this, the creation of Hood Maps or a working prototype that there’s just a constant frustration, I guess. It’s like, “How do I do this?” And then you look it up and you’re like, “Okay.” You have to interpret the different options you have and then just try it. And then there’s a dopamine rush of like, “It works. Cool.”
Pieter Levels
Man, it’s amazing. And I live streamed it. It’s on YouTube and stuff. People can watch it and it’s amazing when things work. Look, it’s just amazing that I don’t look far ahead. So I only look, okay, what’s the next problem to solve? And then the next problem. And at the end you have a whole app or website or thing. But I think most people look way too far ahead. It’s like this poster again. You don’t know hard it’s going to be so you should only look for the next thing, the next little challenge, the next step, and then see where you end up.
Man, it’s amazing. And I live streamed it. It’s on YouTube and stuff. People can watch it and it’s amazing when things work. Look, it’s just amazing that I don’t look far ahead. So I only look, okay, what’s the next problem to solve? And then the next problem. And at the end you have a whole app or website or thing. But I think most people look way too far ahead. It’s like this poster again. You don’t know hard it’s going to be so you should only look for the next thing, the next little challenge, the next step, and then see where you end up.
Lex Fridman
And assume it’s going to be easy.
And assume it’s going to be easy.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, exactly. Be naive about it because you’re going to have very difficult problems. A lot of the big problems won’t be even technology, will be public. Maybe people don’t like your website. You’ll get canceled for a website for example. A lot of things can happen.
Yeah, exactly. Be naive about it because you’re going to have very difficult problems. A lot of the big problems won’t be even technology, will be public. Maybe people don’t like your website. You’ll get canceled for a website for example. A lot of things can happen.
Lex Fridman
What’s it like building in public you do openly where you’re just iterating quickly and you’re getting people’s feedback? So there’s the power of the crowdsourcing, but there’s also the negative aspects of people being able to criticize.
What’s it like building in public you do openly where you’re just iterating quickly and you’re getting people’s feedback? So there’s the power of the crowdsourcing, but there’s also the negative aspects of people being able to criticize.
Pieter Levels
So man, I think haters are actually good because I think a lot of haters have good points and it takes stepping away from the emotion of your website sucks because blah, blah, blah. And you’re like, “Okay, just remove this.” Your website sucks because personal. What did he say? Why did he not like it? And you figure out, okay, he didn’t like it because the signup was difficult or something or the data. They say, no, this data is not accurate or something. I need to improve the quality of data. This hater has a point because it’s dumb to completely ignore your haters. And also, man, I think I’ve been there when I was 10 years old or something. You’re on the internet. You’re just shouting crazy stuff. That’s like most of Twitter or half of Twitter. So you have to take it with a grain of salt. Yeah, man, you need to grow a very thick skin on Twitter, on X. But I mute a lot of people. I found out I muted already 15,000 people recently. I checked,\. So in 10 years I muted 15,000 people. So that’s like…
So man, I think haters are actually good because I think a lot of haters have good points and it takes stepping away from the emotion of your website sucks because blah, blah, blah. And you’re like, “Okay, just remove this.” Your website sucks because personal. What did he say? Why did he not like it? And you figure out, okay, he didn’t like it because the signup was difficult or something or the data. They say, no, this data is not accurate or something. I need to improve the quality of data. This hater has a point because it’s dumb to completely ignore your haters. And also, man, I think I’ve been there when I was 10 years old or something. You’re on the internet. You’re just shouting crazy stuff. That’s like most of Twitter or half of Twitter. So you have to take it with a grain of salt. Yeah, man, you need to grow a very thick skin on Twitter, on X. But I mute a lot of people. I found out I muted already 15,000 people recently. I checked,\. So in 10 years I muted 15,000 people. So that’s like…
Lex Fridman
That’s one by one manual?
That’s one by one manual?
Pieter Levels
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Oh wow.
Oh wow.
Pieter Levels
So 1,500 people per year. And I don’t like to block because then they get angry. They make a screenshot and they say, “Ah, you blocked me.” So I just mute and it disappear and it’s amazing.
So 1,500 people per year. And I don’t like to block because then they get angry. They make a screenshot and they say, “Ah, you blocked me.” So I just mute and it disappear and it’s amazing.
Lex Fridman
So you mentioned Reddit. So Hood Maps, did that make it to the front page of Reddit?
So you mentioned Reddit. So Hood Maps, did that make it to the front page of Reddit?
Pieter Levels
Yeah. Yeah, it did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It did. It was amazing. And my server almost went down and I was checking Google Analytics was like 5,000 people on the website or something crazy. And it was at night and it was amazing. Man, I think nowadays, honestly, TikTok, YouTube reels, Instagram reels, a lot of apps get very big from people making TikTok videos about it. So let’s say you make your own app, you can make a video for yourself like, “Oh, I made this app. This is how it works, blah, blah, blah, and this is why I made it, for example, and this is why you should use it.” And if it’s a good video, it will take off and you will get… Man, I got $20,000 extra per month or something from one TikTok video. It made a photo guy.
Yeah. Yeah, it did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It did. It was amazing. And my server almost went down and I was checking Google Analytics was like 5,000 people on the website or something crazy. And it was at night and it was amazing. Man, I think nowadays, honestly, TikTok, YouTube reels, Instagram reels, a lot of apps get very big from people making TikTok videos about it. So let’s say you make your own app, you can make a video for yourself like, “Oh, I made this app. This is how it works, blah, blah, blah, and this is why I made it, for example, and this is why you should use it.” And if it’s a good video, it will take off and you will get… Man, I got $20,000 extra per month or something from one TikTok video. It made a photo guy.
Lex Fridman
By you or somebody else by somebody else?
By you or somebody else by somebody else?
Pieter Levels
By some random guy. So there’s all these AI influencers that they write about. They show AI apps and then they ask money later when a video goes viral. All I can do, do it again and send me $4,000 or something. I’m like, ” Okay.” I did that, for example. But it works. TikTok is a very big platform for user acquisition and organic. The best user acquisition I think is organic. You don’t need to buy ads. You probably don’t have money when you start to buy ads. So use organic or write a banger tweets that can make an app take off as well.
By some random guy. So there’s all these AI influencers that they write about. They show AI apps and then they ask money later when a video goes viral. All I can do, do it again and send me $4,000 or something. I’m like, ” Okay.” I did that, for example. But it works. TikTok is a very big platform for user acquisition and organic. The best user acquisition I think is organic. You don’t need to buy ads. You probably don’t have money when you start to buy ads. So use organic or write a banger tweets that can make an app take off as well.
Lex Fridman
Well, yeah, fundamentally create cool stuff and have just a little bit of a following enough for the cool thing to be noticed. And then it becomes viral if it’s cool enough.
Well, yeah, fundamentally create cool stuff and have just a little bit of a following enough for the cool thing to be noticed. And then it becomes viral if it’s cool enough.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. And you don’t need a lot of followers anymore on X and a lot of platforms because TikTok, X, I think it’s Instagram reels also, they have the same algorithm now. It’s not about followers anymore. It’s about they test your content on a small subset, like 300 people. If they like, it’ll get tested to a thousand people and on and on. So if the thing is good, it will rise anyway. It doesn’t matter if you have half a million followers or a thousand followers or more.
Yeah. And you don’t need a lot of followers anymore on X and a lot of platforms because TikTok, X, I think it’s Instagram reels also, they have the same algorithm now. It’s not about followers anymore. It’s about they test your content on a small subset, like 300 people. If they like, it’ll get tested to a thousand people and on and on. So if the thing is good, it will rise anyway. It doesn’t matter if you have half a million followers or a thousand followers or more.
Monetize your website
Lex Fridman
What’s your philosophy of monetizing, how to make money from the thing you build?
What’s your philosophy of monetizing, how to make money from the thing you build?
Pieter Levels
Yeah. So a lot of starters, they do free users, so you could sign up and could use an app for free, which it never worked for me well because I think free users generally don’t convert. And I think if you have VC funding, it makes sense to get free users because you can spend your funding on ads and you can get millions of people come in predictably how much they convert and give them a free trial, whatever, and then they sign up. But you need to have that flow worked out so well for you to make it work that you need… It’s very difficult.
Yeah. So a lot of starters, they do free users, so you could sign up and could use an app for free, which it never worked for me well because I think free users generally don’t convert. And I think if you have VC funding, it makes sense to get free users because you can spend your funding on ads and you can get millions of people come in predictably how much they convert and give them a free trial, whatever, and then they sign up. But you need to have that flow worked out so well for you to make it work that you need… It’s very difficult.
I think it’s best to start and just start asking people for money in the beginning. So show your app, what are you doing on your landing page. Make a demo, whatever, video. And then if you want to use it, pay me money. Pay $10, $20, $40. I would ask more than $10 per month like Netflix, $10 per month. But Netflix is giant company. They can afford to make it so cheap, relatively cheap. If you’re an individual like an indie hacker, you are making your own app. You need to make at least $30 or more on a user to make it worth it for you. You need to make money.
Lex Fridman
And it builds a community of people that actually really care about the product.
And it builds a community of people that actually really care about the product.
Pieter Levels
Also, yeah, making a community like making a Discord is very normal now. Every AI app has a Discord and you have the developers and the users together in a Discord, and they ask for features. They build together. It’s very normal now. And you need to imagine if you’re starting out, getting a thousand users is quite difficult. Getting a thousand pages is quite difficult. And if you charge them like $30, you have 30K a month and it’s a lot of money.
Also, yeah, making a community like making a Discord is very normal now. Every AI app has a Discord and you have the developers and the users together in a Discord, and they ask for features. They build together. It’s very normal now. And you need to imagine if you’re starting out, getting a thousand users is quite difficult. Getting a thousand pages is quite difficult. And if you charge them like $30, you have 30K a month and it’s a lot of money.
Lex Fridman
That’s enough to…
That’s enough to…
Pieter Levels
Live a good life.
Live a good life.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, live a pretty good life. That could be a lot of costs associated with hosting.
Yeah, live a pretty good life. That could be a lot of costs associated with hosting.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. So that’s another thing. I make sure my profit margins are very high, so I try to keep the costs very low. I don’t hire people. I try to negotiate with AI vendors now like, “Can you make it cheaper?” Which I discovered this. You can just email companies and say, “Can you give me discount? It’s too expensive.” And they say, “Sure, 50%.” I’m like, “Wow, very good.” And I didn’t know this. You can just ask. And especially now it’s kind of recession, you can ask companies like, “I need a discount.” You don’t need to be asshole, about it. Say, “I need a discount or I need to go maybe to another company. Maybe a discount here and there?” And they say, “Sure.” A lot of them will say yes, 25% discount, 50% discount. Because you think the price on the website is the price of the API or something. It’s not.
Yeah. So that’s another thing. I make sure my profit margins are very high, so I try to keep the costs very low. I don’t hire people. I try to negotiate with AI vendors now like, “Can you make it cheaper?” Which I discovered this. You can just email companies and say, “Can you give me discount? It’s too expensive.” And they say, “Sure, 50%.” I’m like, “Wow, very good.” And I didn’t know this. You can just ask. And especially now it’s kind of recession, you can ask companies like, “I need a discount.” You don’t need to be asshole, about it. Say, “I need a discount or I need to go maybe to another company. Maybe a discount here and there?” And they say, “Sure.” A lot of them will say yes, 25% discount, 50% discount. Because you think the price on the website is the price of the API or something. It’s not.
Lex Fridman
And also you’re a public facing person.
And also you’re a public facing person.
Pieter Levels
That helps also.
That helps also.
Lex Fridman
And there’s love and good vibes that you put out into the world. You’re actually legitimately trying to build cool stuff. So a lot of companies probably want to associate with you because you’re trying to do.
And there’s love and good vibes that you put out into the world. You’re actually legitimately trying to build cool stuff. So a lot of companies probably want to associate with you because you’re trying to do.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, it’s like a secret hack. But I think even without….
Yeah, it’s like a secret hack. But I think even without….
Lex Fridman
Secret hack. Be a good person.
Secret hack. Be a good person.
Pieter Levels
It depends how much discount they will give. They’ll maybe give more, but that’s why you should shit post on Twitter, so you get discounts maybe.
It depends how much discount they will give. They’ll maybe give more, but that’s why you should shit post on Twitter, so you get discounts maybe.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. Yeah. And also when it’s crowdsourced, paying does prevent spam or help prevent spam.
Yeah. Yeah. And also when it’s crowdsourced, paying does prevent spam or help prevent spam.
Pieter Levels
Also. Yeah. Yeah. It gives you high quality users.
Also. Yeah. Yeah. It gives you high quality users.
Lex Fridman
High quality users.
High quality users.
Pieter Levels
Free users are, sorry, but they’re horrible. It’s just millions of people especially with AI startups. You get a lot of abuse, so you get millions of people from anywhere just abusing your app, just hacking it and whatever.
Free users are, sorry, but they’re horrible. It’s just millions of people especially with AI startups. You get a lot of abuse, so you get millions of people from anywhere just abusing your app, just hacking it and whatever.
Lex Fridman
There’s something on the internet. You mentioned like 4Chan discovered Hood Maps.
There’s something on the internet. You mentioned like 4Chan discovered Hood Maps.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, but I love 4Chan. I don’t love 4Chan, but you know what I mean. They’re so crazy, especially back then. It’s kind of funny what they do.
Yeah, but I love 4Chan. I don’t love 4Chan, but you know what I mean. They’re so crazy, especially back then. It’s kind of funny what they do.
Lex Fridman
Actually, what is it? This new documentary on Netflix, Anti-Social Network or something like that. That really was fascinating. Just 4Chan, just the spirit of the thing, 4Chan.
Actually, what is it? This new documentary on Netflix, Anti-Social Network or something like that. That really was fascinating. Just 4Chan, just the spirit of the thing, 4Chan.
Pieter Levels
People misunderstand 4Chan.
People misunderstand 4Chan.
Lex Fridman
It’s so much about freedom and also the humor involved in fucking with the system and fucking the man.
It’s so much about freedom and also the humor involved in fucking with the system and fucking the man.
Pieter Levels
That’s it. It’s just anti-system.
That’s it. It’s just anti-system.
Lex Fridman
But for fun. The dark aspect of it is you’re having fun, you’re doing anti-system stuff, but the Nazis always show up.
But for fun. The dark aspect of it is you’re having fun, you’re doing anti-system stuff, but the Nazis always show up.
Pieter Levels
That shift started happening.
That shift started happening.
Lex Fridman
It’s drifting somehow. Yeah.
It’s drifting somehow. Yeah.
Pieter Levels
Like school shootings and stuff. So it’s a very difficult topic. But I do know, especially early on, I think 2010, I would go to 4Chan for fun and they would post crazy offensive stuff. And this was just to scare off people. So we’d show to other people, say, “Hey, do you know this internet website 4Chan? Just check it out.” And they’d be, “Dude, what the fuck is that?” I’m like, “No, no, you don’t understand. That’s to scare you away. But actually when you go through scroll, there’s deep conversations.” And they would already be… This was like a normie filter to stop. So kind of cool. But yeah.
Like school shootings and stuff. So it’s a very difficult topic. But I do know, especially early on, I think 2010, I would go to 4Chan for fun and they would post crazy offensive stuff. And this was just to scare off people. So we’d show to other people, say, “Hey, do you know this internet website 4Chan? Just check it out.” And they’d be, “Dude, what the fuck is that?” I’m like, “No, no, you don’t understand. That’s to scare you away. But actually when you go through scroll, there’s deep conversations.” And they would already be… This was like a normie filter to stop. So kind of cool. But yeah.
Lex Fridman
It goes dark.
It goes dark.
Pieter Levels
They’re like stop. So, cool, but yeah.
They’re like stop. So, cool, but yeah.
Lex Fridman
It goes dark.
It goes dark.
Pieter Levels
It goes dark, yeah.
It goes dark, yeah.
Lex Fridman
And if you have those people show up, they’ll for the fun of it, do a bunch of racist things and all that kind of stuff you were saying.
And if you have those people show up, they’ll for the fun of it, do a bunch of racist things and all that kind of stuff you were saying.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. I think it was never… Man, I’m not a fortune, but it was always about provoking. It’s just provocateurs.
Yeah. I think it was never… Man, I’m not a fortune, but it was always about provoking. It’s just provocateurs.
Lex Fridman
But the provoking in the case of hood maps or something like this can damage a good thing. A little poison in a town is always good. It’s like the Tom Waits thing, but you don’t want too much, otherwise it destroys the town. It destroys the thing.
But the provoking in the case of hood maps or something like this can damage a good thing. A little poison in a town is always good. It’s like the Tom Waits thing, but you don’t want too much, otherwise it destroys the town. It destroys the thing.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. But they’re like pen testers, penetration testers, hackers. They just test your app for you and then you add some stuff. I had a NSFW word list. They would say bad words, so when they would write bad words, they would get forwarded to YouTube, which was a video. It was a very relaxing video that ASMR with glowing jelly, streaming like this to relax them or cheese melting on the toast to chill them out.
Yeah. But they’re like pen testers, penetration testers, hackers. They just test your app for you and then you add some stuff. I had a NSFW word list. They would say bad words, so when they would write bad words, they would get forwarded to YouTube, which was a video. It was a very relaxing video that ASMR with glowing jelly, streaming like this to relax them or cheese melting on the toast to chill them out.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, I like it. But actually, a lot of stuff, I didn’t realize how much originated in Forchand in terms of memes. Rick Roll, I didn’t understand… I didn’t know that Rick Roll originated in Forchand. There’s so many memes, most of the memes that you think it takes-
Yeah, I like it. But actually, a lot of stuff, I didn’t realize how much originated in Forchand in terms of memes. Rick Roll, I didn’t understand… I didn’t know that Rick Roll originated in Forchand. There’s so many memes, most of the memes that you think it takes-
Pieter Levels
The word roll I think comes from Forchand, not the word roll, but in this case, in the meme use, you would get roll doubles because every… It was post IDs on Forchand. So, they were random. So, if I get doubles, this happens or something. So, you’d get two-two… Anyway, it’s like a betting market on these doubles on these post IDs. There’s so much funny stuff.
The word roll I think comes from Forchand, not the word roll, but in this case, in the meme use, you would get roll doubles because every… It was post IDs on Forchand. So, they were random. So, if I get doubles, this happens or something. So, you’d get two-two… Anyway, it’s like a betting market on these doubles on these post IDs. There’s so much funny stuff.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. That’s the internet that’s purist. But yeah, again, the dark stuff seeps in and it’s nice to keep the dark stuff to some low amount. It’s nice to have a bit of noise in the darkness, but not too much. But again, you have to pay attention to that with… I guess spam in general, you have to fight that with Nomad list. How do you fight spam?
Yeah. That’s the internet that’s purist. But yeah, again, the dark stuff seeps in and it’s nice to keep the dark stuff to some low amount. It’s nice to have a bit of noise in the darkness, but not too much. But again, you have to pay attention to that with… I guess spam in general, you have to fight that with Nomad list. How do you fight spam?
Fighting SPAM
Pieter Levels
Man, I use GPT-4o. It’s amazing. So, I have user input, I have reviews, people can review cities and I don’t need to actually sign up. It’s anonymous reviews and they write whole books about cities and what’s good and bad. So, I run it through GPT-4o and I ask, is this a good review? Is it offensive? Is this racist or some stuff? And then, it sends message in Telegram, it rejects reviews, and I check it and man, it’s so on point. It’s so-
Man, I use GPT-4o. It’s amazing. So, I have user input, I have reviews, people can review cities and I don’t need to actually sign up. It’s anonymous reviews and they write whole books about cities and what’s good and bad. So, I run it through GPT-4o and I ask, is this a good review? Is it offensive? Is this racist or some stuff? And then, it sends message in Telegram, it rejects reviews, and I check it and man, it’s so on point. It’s so-
Lex Fridman
Automated.
Automated.
Pieter Levels
Yes, and it’s so accurate. It understands double meanings. I have GPT-4o running on the chat community. It’s a chat community of 10,000 people, and they’re chatting, and they start fighting with each other and I used to have human moderators was very good, but they would start fighting the human moderator. This guy is biased or something. I have GPT-4o and it’s really, really, really, really good. It understands humor. You could say something bad, but it’s like a joke and it’s not offensive so much so it shouldn’t be deleted. It understands that.
Yes, and it’s so accurate. It understands double meanings. I have GPT-4o running on the chat community. It’s a chat community of 10,000 people, and they’re chatting, and they start fighting with each other and I used to have human moderators was very good, but they would start fighting the human moderator. This guy is biased or something. I have GPT-4o and it’s really, really, really, really good. It understands humor. You could say something bad, but it’s like a joke and it’s not offensive so much so it shouldn’t be deleted. It understands that.
Lex Fridman
I would love to have a GPT-4o based filter of different kinds for X.
I would love to have a GPT-4o based filter of different kinds for X.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. I thought this week, I tweeted a fact check. You can click fact check and then GPT-4o… Look, GPT-4o is not always right about stuff, but it can give you a general fact check on a tweet. Usually, what I do now when I write something difficult about economics or something about AI, I put in GPT-4o, I say, “Can you fact check it?” Because I might’ve said something stupid.
Yeah. I thought this week, I tweeted a fact check. You can click fact check and then GPT-4o… Look, GPT-4o is not always right about stuff, but it can give you a general fact check on a tweet. Usually, what I do now when I write something difficult about economics or something about AI, I put in GPT-4o, I say, “Can you fact check it?” Because I might’ve said something stupid.
And the stupid stuff always gets taken out by the replies like, “Oh, you said this wrong.” And then, the whole tweet doesn’t make sense anymore. So, I ask GPT-4o to fact check a lot of stuff.
Lex Fridman
So, fact check is a tough one, but it would be interesting to rate a thing based on how well thought out it is and how well argued it is. That seems more doable. That seems like more doable. It seems like a GPT thing because that’s less about the truth and it’s more about the rigor of the thing.
So, fact check is a tough one, but it would be interesting to rate a thing based on how well thought out it is and how well argued it is. That seems more doable. That seems like more doable. It seems like a GPT thing because that’s less about the truth and it’s more about the rigor of the thing.
Pieter Levels
Exactly. And you can ask that. You can ask in the prompt, I don’t know, for example, do you think… Create a ranking score of X Twitter replies where should this post be if we rank on, I don’t know, integrity, reality, fundamental deepness or something, interestness, and it would give you that a pretty good score probably. Elon can do this with Grok. He can start using that to check replies because their reply section is chaos.
Exactly. And you can ask that. You can ask in the prompt, I don’t know, for example, do you think… Create a ranking score of X Twitter replies where should this post be if we rank on, I don’t know, integrity, reality, fundamental deepness or something, interestness, and it would give you that a pretty good score probably. Elon can do this with Grok. He can start using that to check replies because their reply section is chaos.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. And actually the ranking or the reply is not great.
Yeah. And actually the ranking or the reply is not great.
Pieter Levels
Doesn’t make any sense.
Doesn’t make any sense.
Lex Fridman
It doesn’t make sense.
It doesn’t make sense.
Pieter Levels
No.
No.
Lex Fridman
And I would like to sort in different kinds of ways.
And I would like to sort in different kinds of ways.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. And you get too many replies now. If you have a lot of followers, I get too many replies, I don’t see everything, and a lot of stuff I just miss and I want to see the good stuff.
Yeah. And you get too many replies now. If you have a lot of followers, I get too many replies, I don’t see everything, and a lot of stuff I just miss and I want to see the good stuff.
Lex Fridman
And also the notifications or whatever, it’s just complete chaos. It’d be nice to be able to filter that in interesting ways, sort it in interesting ways. Because I feel like I miss a lot. And what surfaced for me is just a random comment by a person with no followers. That’s positive or negative. It’s like okay.
And also the notifications or whatever, it’s just complete chaos. It’d be nice to be able to filter that in interesting ways, sort it in interesting ways. Because I feel like I miss a lot. And what surfaced for me is just a random comment by a person with no followers. That’s positive or negative. It’s like okay.
Pieter Levels
If it’s a very good comment, it should happen, but it should probably look a little bit more like, do these people have followers because they’re probably more engaged in a platform, right?
If it’s a very good comment, it should happen, but it should probably look a little bit more like, do these people have followers because they’re probably more engaged in a platform, right?
Lex Fridman
Oh no, I don’t even care about how many followers. If you’re ranking by the quality of the comment, great, but not just randomly chronological just a sea of comments.
Oh no, I don’t even care about how many followers. If you’re ranking by the quality of the comment, great, but not just randomly chronological just a sea of comments.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. It doesn’t make sense.
Yeah. It doesn’t make sense.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Pieter Levels
X could be very proof of that, I think.
X could be very proof of that, I think.
Automation
Lex Fridman
One thing you espouse a lot, which I love is the automation step. So, once you have a thing, once you have an idea, and you build it, and it actually starts making money, and it’s making people happy, there’s a community of people using it. You want to take the automation step of automating the things you have to do as little work as possible for it to keep running indefinitely. Can you explain your philosophy there? What you mean by automate?
One thing you espouse a lot, which I love is the automation step. So, once you have a thing, once you have an idea, and you build it, and it actually starts making money, and it’s making people happy, there’s a community of people using it. You want to take the automation step of automating the things you have to do as little work as possible for it to keep running indefinitely. Can you explain your philosophy there? What you mean by automate?
Pieter Levels
Yeah. So, the general theory of starters would be that when it starts, you start making money, you start hiring people to do stuff, do stuff that you like marketing, for example, do stuff that you would do in the beginning yourself. And whatever, community management, and organizing meetups for Nomad List, for example, that would be a job, for example.
Yeah. So, the general theory of starters would be that when it starts, you start making money, you start hiring people to do stuff, do stuff that you like marketing, for example, do stuff that you would do in the beginning yourself. And whatever, community management, and organizing meetups for Nomad List, for example, that would be a job, for example.
And I felt like I don’t have the money for that and I don’t really want to run a big company with a lot of people because there’s a lot of work managing these people. So, I’ve always tried to automate these things as much as possible. And this can literally be like for Nomad List, it’s not a different other starters, it’s like a webpage where you can organize your own meetup, set a schedule, a date, whatever.
You could see how many Nomads will be there at that date. So, there will be actually enough Nomads to meet up. And then, when it’s done, it sends a tweet out on the Nomad List account, there’s a meetup here, it sends a direct message to everybody in the city who are there, who are going to be there. And then, people show up on a bar, and there’s a meetup, and that’s fully automated. And for me, it’s so obvious to make this automatic, why would you have somebody organize this? It makes more sense to automate it, and this with most of my things, I figure out how to do it with codes and I think especially now with AI, you can automate so much more stuff than before because AI understands things so well. Before I would use if statements. Now, you ask GPT, you put something in GPT-4o in the API and it sends back, this is good, this is bad.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. So, you basically can now even automate subjective type of things.
Yeah. So, you basically can now even automate subjective type of things.
Pieter Levels
This is the difference now and that’s very recent.
This is the difference now and that’s very recent.
Lex Fridman
But it’s still difficult to… That step of automation is difficult to figure out how to, because you’re basically delegating everything to code. It’s not trivial to take that step for a lot of people. So, when you say automate, are you talking about cron jobs?
But it’s still difficult to… That step of automation is difficult to figure out how to, because you’re basically delegating everything to code. It’s not trivial to take that step for a lot of people. So, when you say automate, are you talking about cron jobs?
Pieter Levels
Yes. Man, a lot of cron jobs.
Yes. Man, a lot of cron jobs.
Lex Fridman
A lot of cron jobs.
A lot of cron jobs.
Pieter Levels
Literally, I log into the server and I do pseudo cron tab dash E, and then I go into edit and I write hourly. And then, I write PHP, do this thing dot PHP, and that’s a script, and that script does a thing and it does it then hourly. That’s it. And that’s how all my websites work.
Literally, I log into the server and I do pseudo cron tab dash E, and then I go into edit and I write hourly. And then, I write PHP, do this thing dot PHP, and that’s a script, and that script does a thing and it does it then hourly. That’s it. And that’s how all my websites work.
Lex Fridman
Do you have a thing where it emails you, or something like this, or emails somebody managing the thing if something goes wrong?
Do you have a thing where it emails you, or something like this, or emails somebody managing the thing if something goes wrong?
Pieter Levels
I have these webpages I make, they’re called health checks, so it’s like healthcheck.php. And then, it has emojis, it has a green check mark if it’s good, and a red one if it’s bad, and then it does database queries. For example, what’s the internet speed in, for example, Amsterdam? Okay, it’s a number. It’s 27 point megabits, so it’s accurate number. Okay, check, good. And then, it goes to the next and it goes on all the data points.
I have these webpages I make, they’re called health checks, so it’s like healthcheck.php. And then, it has emojis, it has a green check mark if it’s good, and a red one if it’s bad, and then it does database queries. For example, what’s the internet speed in, for example, Amsterdam? Okay, it’s a number. It’s 27 point megabits, so it’s accurate number. Okay, check, good. And then, it goes to the next and it goes on all the data points.
Did people sign up in the last 24 hours? It’s important because maybe the sign-up broke. Okay, check, somebody sign up. Then I have uptimerobot.com, which is for uptime, but it can also check keywords. It checks for an emoji, which is the red X, which is if something is bad. And so, it opens that health check page every minute to check if something is bad. Then if it’s bad, it sends a message to me on Telegram saying, “Hey, what’s up?” It doesn’t say, “Hey, what’s up?” It sends me alert.
Lex Fridman
Hey. Hey, sweetie.
Hey. Hey, sweetie.
Pieter Levels
This thing is down and then I check. So, within a minute of something breaking, I know it, and then I can open my laptop and fix it. But the good thing is the last few years, things don’t break anymore. And definitely 10 years ago when I started, everything was breaking all the time. And now it’s almost last week it was like 100.000% uptime and these health checks are part of the uptime percentage. So, it’s like everything works.
This thing is down and then I check. So, within a minute of something breaking, I know it, and then I can open my laptop and fix it. But the good thing is the last few years, things don’t break anymore. And definitely 10 years ago when I started, everything was breaking all the time. And now it’s almost last week it was like 100.000% uptime and these health checks are part of the uptime percentage. So, it’s like everything works.
Lex Fridman
You’re actually making me realize I should have a page for myself, one page that has all the health checks just so I can go to it and see all the green check marks.
You’re actually making me realize I should have a page for myself, one page that has all the health checks just so I can go to it and see all the green check marks.
Pieter Levels
It feels good to look at.
It feels good to look at.
Lex Fridman
It’d just be like, okay.
It’d just be like, okay.
Pieter Levels
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
All right. We’re okay, everything’s okay. And you can see when was the last time something wasn’t okay and it’ll say never or meaning you’ve checked since last cared to check, it’s all been okay.
All right. We’re okay, everything’s okay. And you can see when was the last time something wasn’t okay and it’ll say never or meaning you’ve checked since last cared to check, it’s all been okay.
Pieter Levels
For sure. It used to send me the good health checks. It all works. It all works. It all works.
For sure. It used to send me the good health checks. It all works. It all works. It all works.
Lex Fridman
But it’s been so often.
But it’s been so often.
Pieter Levels
And I’m like, this feels so good. But then I’m like, okay, obviously it’s not going to… You need to hide the good ones and show only the bad ones and now that’s the case.
And I’m like, this feels so good. But then I’m like, okay, obviously it’s not going to… You need to hide the good ones and show only the bad ones and now that’s the case.
Lex Fridman
I need integrate everything into one place. Automate everything. They have also just a large set of cron jobs. A lot of the publication of this podcast is done all… Everything is just on automatically, it’s all clipped up, all those kind of stuff. But it would be nice to automate even more. Translation, all those kind of stuff would be nice to automate.
I need integrate everything into one place. Automate everything. They have also just a large set of cron jobs. A lot of the publication of this podcast is done all… Everything is just on automatically, it’s all clipped up, all those kind of stuff. But it would be nice to automate even more. Translation, all those kind of stuff would be nice to automate.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. Every JavaScript, every PHP error gets sent to my telegram as well. So, every user, whatever user it is, doesn’t have to be page user. If they run into an error, the JavaScript sends the JavaScript error to the server and then it sends to my Telegram from all my websites.
Yeah. Every JavaScript, every PHP error gets sent to my telegram as well. So, every user, whatever user it is, doesn’t have to be page user. If they run into an error, the JavaScript sends the JavaScript error to the server and then it sends to my Telegram from all my websites.
Lex Fridman
So, you get a message.
So, you get a message.
Pieter Levels
So, I get a uncalled variable error, whatever, blah-blah-blah. And then, I’m like, okay, interesting. And then, I go check it out, and that’s a way to get to zero errors because you get flooded with errors in the beginning and now it’s like nothing almost.
So, I get a uncalled variable error, whatever, blah-blah-blah. And then, I’m like, okay, interesting. And then, I go check it out, and that’s a way to get to zero errors because you get flooded with errors in the beginning and now it’s like nothing almost.
Lex Fridman
That’s really cool. That’s really cool.
That’s really cool. That’s really cool.
Pieter Levels
But this is the same stuff people, they pay very big SaaS companies like New Relic for, to manage the stuff. So, you can do that too. You can use off the shelf. I like to build myself. It’s easier.
But this is the same stuff people, they pay very big SaaS companies like New Relic for, to manage the stuff. So, you can do that too. You can use off the shelf. I like to build myself. It’s easier.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, it’s nice. It’s nice to do that automation. I’m starting to think about what are the things in my life I’m doing myself that could be automated.
Yeah, it’s nice. It’s nice to do that automation. I’m starting to think about what are the things in my life I’m doing myself that could be automated.
Pieter Levels
Ask ChatGPT, give your day, and then ask it what parts should automate.
Ask ChatGPT, give your day, and then ask it what parts should automate.
Lex Fridman
Well, one of the things I would love to automate more is my consumption of social media, both the output and the input.
Well, one of the things I would love to automate more is my consumption of social media, both the output and the input.
Pieter Levels
Man, that’s very interesting. I think there’s some starters that do that. They summarize the cool shit happening on Twitter with AI. I think the guy called swyx or something, he does a newsletter. It’s completely AI generated. We have the cool new stuff in AI.
Man, that’s very interesting. I think there’s some starters that do that. They summarize the cool shit happening on Twitter with AI. I think the guy called swyx or something, he does a newsletter. It’s completely AI generated. We have the cool new stuff in AI.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, I would love to do that. But also across Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, all this kind of stuff, just like, “Okay, can you summarize the internet for me for today?”
Yeah, I would love to do that. But also across Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, all this kind of stuff, just like, “Okay, can you summarize the internet for me for today?”
Pieter Levels
summarizeinternet.com.
summarizeinternet.com.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, dot com. Because I feel like it pulls in way too much time, but also I don’t like the effect it has some days on my psyche.
Yeah, dot com. Because I feel like it pulls in way too much time, but also I don’t like the effect it has some days on my psyche.
Pieter Levels
Because of haters or just general content, like politics?
Because of haters or just general content, like politics?
Lex Fridman
Just general. No, no, just general. For example, TikTok is a good example of that for me. I sometimes just feel dumber after I use TikTok. I just feel like-
Just general. No, no, just general. For example, TikTok is a good example of that for me. I sometimes just feel dumber after I use TikTok. I just feel like-
Pieter Levels
Yeah. I don’t use it anymore.
Yeah. I don’t use it anymore.
Lex Fridman
Empty somehow and I’m uninspired. It’s funny in the moment I’m like, “Haha, look at that cat doing a funny thing.” And then, you’re like, “Oh, look at that person dancing in a funny way to that music.” And then, you’re like 10 minutes later you’re like, I feel way dumber and I don’t really want to do much for the rest of the day.
Empty somehow and I’m uninspired. It’s funny in the moment I’m like, “Haha, look at that cat doing a funny thing.” And then, you’re like, “Oh, look at that person dancing in a funny way to that music.” And then, you’re like 10 minutes later you’re like, I feel way dumber and I don’t really want to do much for the rest of the day.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. My girlfriend sat, she saw me watching some dumb video and she’s like, “Dude, your face looks so dumb as well.” Your whole face starts going like, “Oh, interesting.”
Yeah. My girlfriend sat, she saw me watching some dumb video and she’s like, “Dude, your face looks so dumb as well.” Your whole face starts going like, “Oh, interesting.”
Lex Fridman
With X sometimes for me too, I think I’m probably naturally gravitating towards the drama.
With X sometimes for me too, I think I’m probably naturally gravitating towards the drama.
Pieter Levels
Aren’t we all?
Aren’t we all?
Lex Fridman
Yeah. And so, following AI people, especially AI people that only post technical content has been really good because then I just look at them, and then I go down rabbit holes of learning new papers that have been published, or good repost, or just any kind of cool demonstration of stuff, and the kind of things that they retweet, and that’s the rabbit hole. I go, and I’m learning and I’m inspired, all that kind of stuff. It’s been tough. It’s been tough to control that.
Yeah. And so, following AI people, especially AI people that only post technical content has been really good because then I just look at them, and then I go down rabbit holes of learning new papers that have been published, or good repost, or just any kind of cool demonstration of stuff, and the kind of things that they retweet, and that’s the rabbit hole. I go, and I’m learning and I’m inspired, all that kind of stuff. It’s been tough. It’s been tough to control that.
Pieter Levels
It’s difficult. You need to manage your platforms. I have a mute board list as well, so I mute politics stuff because I don’t really want it on my feed, and I think I’ve muted so much that now my feed is good. I see interesting stuff. But the fact that you need to modify, you need to mod your app, your social media platform just to function and not be toxic for you for your mental health. That’s a problem. It should be doing that for you.
It’s difficult. You need to manage your platforms. I have a mute board list as well, so I mute politics stuff because I don’t really want it on my feed, and I think I’ve muted so much that now my feed is good. I see interesting stuff. But the fact that you need to modify, you need to mod your app, your social media platform just to function and not be toxic for you for your mental health. That’s a problem. It should be doing that for you.
Lex Fridman
It’s some level of automation. That would be interesting. I wish I could access X and Instagram through API easier.
It’s some level of automation. That would be interesting. I wish I could access X and Instagram through API easier.
Pieter Levels
You need to spend $42,000 a month, which my friends do. Yeah, you can do that.
You need to spend $42,000 a month, which my friends do. Yeah, you can do that.
Lex Fridman
No. But still, even if you do that, that you’re not getting… There’s limitations that don’t make it easy to do automate because the thing that they’re trying to limit abuse or for you to steal all the data from the app to then train in LLM or something like this. But if I just want to figure out ways to automate my interaction with X system or with Instagram, they don’t make that easy.
No. But still, even if you do that, that you’re not getting… There’s limitations that don’t make it easy to do automate because the thing that they’re trying to limit abuse or for you to steal all the data from the app to then train in LLM or something like this. But if I just want to figure out ways to automate my interaction with X system or with Instagram, they don’t make that easy.
But I would love to automate that and explore different ways how to leverage LLMs to control the content I consume, and maybe publish that, and maybe they themselves can see how that could be used to improve their system. But there’s not enough access to get-
Pieter Levels
Yes, you could screen cap your phone. It can be an app that watches your screen with you.
Yes, you could screen cap your phone. It can be an app that watches your screen with you.
Lex Fridman
You could, yeah.
You could, yeah.
Pieter Levels
But I don’t really know what it would do. Maybe it can hide stuff before you see it.
But I don’t really know what it would do. Maybe it can hide stuff before you see it.
Lex Fridman
I have that. I have Chrome extensions… I write a lot of Chrome extensions that hide parts of different pages and so on. For example, on my main computer, I hide all views, and likes, and all that on YouTube content that I create. So that I don’t-
I have that. I have Chrome extensions… I write a lot of Chrome extensions that hide parts of different pages and so on. For example, on my main computer, I hide all views, and likes, and all that on YouTube content that I create. So that I don’t-
Pieter Levels
That’s smart, doesn’t affect you.
That’s smart, doesn’t affect you.
Lex Fridman
It doesn’t, yeah. So, you don’t pay attention to it. I also hide parts… I have a mode for X where I hide most of everything. It’s the same with YouTube.
It doesn’t, yeah. So, you don’t pay attention to it. I also hide parts… I have a mode for X where I hide most of everything. It’s the same with YouTube.
Pieter Levels
I have the same, I have this extension.
I have the same, I have this extension.
Lex Fridman
Well, I wrote my own because it’s easier because it keeps changing. It’s not easy to keep it dynamically changing, but they’re really good at getting you to be distracted and starting to-
Well, I wrote my own because it’s easier because it keeps changing. It’s not easy to keep it dynamically changing, but they’re really good at getting you to be distracted and starting to-
Pieter Levels
Related account, related post. I’m like, I don’t want related.
Related account, related post. I’m like, I don’t want related.
Lex Fridman
And 10 minutes later you’re like or something that’s trending.
And 10 minutes later you’re like or something that’s trending.
Pieter Levels
I have a weird amount of friends addicted to YouTube and I’m not addicted. I think because my attention span is too short for YouTube. But I have this extension, YouTube Unhook, which hides all the related stuff. I can just see the video and it’s amazing, but sometimes I need to search a video how to do something, and then I go to YouTube and then I had these YouTube shorts. These YouTube shorts, they’re algorithmically designed to just make you tap them. And then, I tap, and then I’m like five minutes later with this face and you’re just stuck. And what happened? I was going to play the coffee mix, the music mix for drinking coffee together in the morning, like jazz. I didn’t want to go to shorts. So, it’s very difficult.
I have a weird amount of friends addicted to YouTube and I’m not addicted. I think because my attention span is too short for YouTube. But I have this extension, YouTube Unhook, which hides all the related stuff. I can just see the video and it’s amazing, but sometimes I need to search a video how to do something, and then I go to YouTube and then I had these YouTube shorts. These YouTube shorts, they’re algorithmically designed to just make you tap them. And then, I tap, and then I’m like five minutes later with this face and you’re just stuck. And what happened? I was going to play the coffee mix, the music mix for drinking coffee together in the morning, like jazz. I didn’t want to go to shorts. So, it’s very difficult.
When to sell startup
Lex Fridman
I love how we’re actually highlighting all kinds of interesting problems that all could be solved with a startup. Okay. So, what about the exit? When and how to exit?
I love how we’re actually highlighting all kinds of interesting problems that all could be solved with a startup. Okay. So, what about the exit? When and how to exit?
Pieter Levels
Man, you shouldn’t ask me because I never sold my company.
Man, you shouldn’t ask me because I never sold my company.
Lex Fridman
All the successful stuff you’ve done, you never sold it?
All the successful stuff you’ve done, you never sold it?
Pieter Levels
Yeah, it’s sad. So, I’ve been in a lot of acquisition like deals and stuff, and I learn a lot about finance people as well there, manipulation, and due diligence, and then changing the valuation. People change the valuation after. So, a lot of people string you on to acquire you and then it takes six months. It’s a classic. It takes six to 12 months. They want to see everything.
Yeah, it’s sad. So, I’ve been in a lot of acquisition like deals and stuff, and I learn a lot about finance people as well there, manipulation, and due diligence, and then changing the valuation. People change the valuation after. So, a lot of people string you on to acquire you and then it takes six months. It’s a classic. It takes six to 12 months. They want to see everything.
They want to see your stripe, and your code, and whatever. And then, in the end, they’ll change the price to lower because you’re already so invested. So, it’s like a negotiation tactic. I’m like, “No, I don’t want to sell.” And the problem with my companies is they make 90% profit margin. Companies get sold with multiples, multiples of profit or revenue.
And often the multiple is three times, three times or four times or five times revenue or profit. So, in my case, they’re all automated, so I might as well wait three years and I get the same money as when I sell and then I can still sell the same company. You know what I mean? I can still sell it for three to five times. So, financially, it doesn’t really make sense to sell unless the price is high enough. If the price gets to six or seven or eight, I don’t want to wait six years for the money, but if you give me three years, nothing, I can wait.
Lex Fridman
So, that means there are really valuable stuff about the companies you create is not just the interface and the crowdsource content, but the people themselves, the user base.
So, that means there are really valuable stuff about the companies you create is not just the interface and the crowdsource content, but the people themselves, the user base.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. For Nomad List, it’s a community. Yeah,
Yeah. For Nomad List, it’s a community. Yeah,
Lex Fridman
So, I could see that being extremely valuable. I’m surprised that-
So, I could see that being extremely valuable. I’m surprised that-
Pieter Levels
Yeah. Nomad List is it’s my baby. It’s my first product I took off and I don’t really know if I want to sell it. It’s something would be nice when you are old because you’re still working in this. It has a mission, which is like people should travel anywhere, and they can work from anywhere, and they can meet different cultures. And that’s a good way to make the world get better.
Yeah. Nomad List is it’s my baby. It’s my first product I took off and I don’t really know if I want to sell it. It’s something would be nice when you are old because you’re still working in this. It has a mission, which is like people should travel anywhere, and they can work from anywhere, and they can meet different cultures. And that’s a good way to make the world get better.
If you go to China and live in China, you’ll learn that they’re nice people. And a lot of stuff you hear about China’s propaganda, a lot of stuff is true as well, but it’s more you learn a lot from traveling. And I think that’s why it’s a cool product to not sell. AI products, I have less emotional feeling with AI products like Photo AI, which I could sell. Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. The thing you also mentioned is you have to price in the fact that you’re going to miss the company you created.
Yeah. The thing you also mentioned is you have to price in the fact that you’re going to miss the company you created.
Pieter Levels
And the meaning it gives you. This is very famous like depression after startup finance sold their company. They’re like, this was me. Who am I? And they immediately start building another one. They never can stop. So, I think it’s good to keep working until you die. Just keep working on cool stuff and you shouldn’t retire. I think retirement is bad probably.
And the meaning it gives you. This is very famous like depression after startup finance sold their company. They’re like, this was me. Who am I? And they immediately start building another one. They never can stop. So, I think it’s good to keep working until you die. Just keep working on cool stuff and you shouldn’t retire. I think retirement is bad probably.
Coding solo
Lex Fridman
So, you usually build the stuff solo and mostly work solo. What’s the thinking behind that?
So, you usually build the stuff solo and mostly work solo. What’s the thinking behind that?
Pieter Levels
I think I’m not so good working with other people. Not like I’m crazy, but I don’t trust other people.
I think I’m not so good working with other people. Not like I’m crazy, but I don’t trust other people.
Lex Fridman
To clarify, you don’t trust other people to do a great job?
To clarify, you don’t trust other people to do a great job?
Pieter Levels
Yeah. And I don’t want to have this consensus meeting where we all… You have a meeting with three people and then you get these compromise results, which is very European. I don’t know if they call it polder model where you put people in the room and you only let them out when they agree on the compromise in politics. And I think it breeds averageness.
Yeah. And I don’t want to have this consensus meeting where we all… You have a meeting with three people and then you get these compromise results, which is very European. I don’t know if they call it polder model where you put people in the room and you only let them out when they agree on the compromise in politics. And I think it breeds averageness.
You get an average idea, average company, average culture, you need to have a leader or you need to be solo and just do it. Do it yourself, I think. And I trust some people, like with my best friend Andre, I’m making a new AI startup, but it’s because we know each other very long and he’s one of the few people I would build something with, but almost never.
Lex Fridman
So, what does it take to be successful when you have more than one? How do you build together with Andre? How do you build together with other people?
So, what does it take to be successful when you have more than one? How do you build together with Andre? How do you build together with other people?
Pieter Levels
So, he codes, I should post on Twitter. Literally, I promote it on Twitter. We set product strategy. Like I said, this should be better, this should be better. But I think you need to have one person coding it. He codes in Ruby, so I was like I cannot do Ruby. I’m in PHP.
So, he codes, I should post on Twitter. Literally, I promote it on Twitter. We set product strategy. Like I said, this should be better, this should be better. But I think you need to have one person coding it. He codes in Ruby, so I was like I cannot do Ruby. I’m in PHP.
Lex Fridman
So, have you ever coded with another person for prolonged periods of time?
So, have you ever coded with another person for prolonged periods of time?
Pieter Levels
Never in my life.
Never in my life.
Lex Fridman
What do you think is behind that?
What do you think is behind that?
Pieter Levels
I don’t know. It was always just me sitting on my laptop coding.
I don’t know. It was always just me sitting on my laptop coding.
Lex Fridman
No, you’ve never had another developer who rolls in and-
No, you’ve never had another developer who rolls in and-
Pieter Levels
I’ve had once where with Photo AI, there’s a AI developer, Philip. I hired him to do the… Because I can’t write Python and AI stuff is Python. And I needed to get models to work, and replicate, and stuff and I needed to improve Photo AI. And he helped me a lot for 10 months he worked.
I’ve had once where with Photo AI, there’s a AI developer, Philip. I hired him to do the… Because I can’t write Python and AI stuff is Python. And I needed to get models to work, and replicate, and stuff and I needed to improve Photo AI. And he helped me a lot for 10 months he worked.
And man, I was trying Python working with NumPy, and package manager, and it was too difficult for me to figure this shit out. And I didn’t have time. I think 10 years ago, I would’ve time to sit, go do all-nighters to figure this stuff out with Python. It’s not my thing.
Lex Fridman
It’s not your thing. It’s another programming language. I get it. AI, new thing, got it. But you’ve never had a developer roll in, look at your PHP jQuery code, and yes. Like in conversation or improv, they talk about yes and basically, all right.
It’s not your thing. It’s another programming language. I get it. AI, new thing, got it. But you’ve never had a developer roll in, look at your PHP jQuery code, and yes. Like in conversation or improv, they talk about yes and basically, all right.
Pieter Levels
I had for one week-
I had for one week-
Lex Fridman
Understand-
Understand-
Pieter Levels
And then, it ended.
And then, it ended.
Lex Fridman
What happened?
What happened?
Pieter Levels
Because he wanted to rewrite everything in-
Because he wanted to rewrite everything in-
Lex Fridman
No, that’s the wrong guy.
No, that’s the wrong guy.
Pieter Levels
I know.
I know.
Lex Fridman
He wanted to rewrite in what?
He wanted to rewrite in what?
Pieter Levels
He wanted to rewrite, he said is jQuery, we can’t do this. I’m like, okay. He’s like, “We need to rewrite everything in Vue.js.” I’m like, “Are you sure? Can’t we just like keep jQuery?” He’s like, “No, man.” And we need to change a lot of stuff. And I’m like, okay. And I was feeling we’re going to clean up shit, but then after weeks, it’s going to take way too much time.
He wanted to rewrite, he said is jQuery, we can’t do this. I’m like, okay. He’s like, “We need to rewrite everything in Vue.js.” I’m like, “Are you sure? Can’t we just like keep jQuery?” He’s like, “No, man.” And we need to change a lot of stuff. And I’m like, okay. And I was feeling we’re going to clean up shit, but then after weeks, it’s going to take way too much time.
Lex Fridman
I think I like working with people where when I approach them, I pretend in my head that they’re the smartest person who has ever existed. So, I look at their code or I look at the stuff they’ve created and try to see the genius of their way. You really have to understand people, really notice them. And then, from that place, have a conversation about what is the better approach.
I think I like working with people where when I approach them, I pretend in my head that they’re the smartest person who has ever existed. So, I look at their code or I look at the stuff they’ve created and try to see the genius of their way. You really have to understand people, really notice them. And then, from that place, have a conversation about what is the better approach.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. But those are the top tier developers and those are the ones that are tech ambiguous. So, they can learn any tech stack. And that’s really few, it’s top 5%. Because if you try higher devs, no offense to devs, but most devs are not… Man, most people in general jobs are not so good at their job, even doctors and stuff.
Yeah. But those are the top tier developers and those are the ones that are tech ambiguous. So, they can learn any tech stack. And that’s really few, it’s top 5%. Because if you try higher devs, no offense to devs, but most devs are not… Man, most people in general jobs are not so good at their job, even doctors and stuff.
Lex Fridman
That’s too sad.
That’s too sad.
Pieter Levels
When you realize this, people are very average at the job, especially with dev and with coding, I think. So sorry if-
When you realize this, people are very average at the job, especially with dev and with coding, I think. So sorry if-
Lex Fridman
I think that’s a really important skill for a developer to roll in and understand the musicality, the style-
I think that’s a really important skill for a developer to roll in and understand the musicality, the style-
Pieter Levels
That’s it, man. Empathy, it’s code empathy.
That’s it, man. Empathy, it’s code empathy.
Lex Fridman
It’s code empathy.
It’s code empathy.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, it’s a new word, but that’s it. You need to understand, go over the code, get a holistic view of it and man, you can suggest we change stuff for sure. But look, jQuery is crazy. It’s crazy I’m using jQuery. We can change that.
Yeah, it’s a new word, but that’s it. You need to understand, go over the code, get a holistic view of it and man, you can suggest we change stuff for sure. But look, jQuery is crazy. It’s crazy I’m using jQuery. We can change that.
Lex Fridman
It’s not crazy at all. jQuery is also beautiful and powerful and PHP is beautiful and powerful. And especially as you said recently, as the versions evolved, it’s much more serious programming language now. It’s super-fast. PHP is really fast now. It’s crazy. JavaScript-
It’s not crazy at all. jQuery is also beautiful and powerful and PHP is beautiful and powerful. And especially as you said recently, as the versions evolved, it’s much more serious programming language now. It’s super-fast. PHP is really fast now. It’s crazy. JavaScript-
Pieter Levels
Much faster than Ruby, yeah.
Much faster than Ruby, yeah.
Lex Fridman
… really fast now. So, if speed is something you care about, it’s super-fast. And there’s gigantic communities of people using those programming languages. And there’s frameworks if you like the framework. So, whatever, it doesn’t really matter what you use. But also, if I was a developer working with you, you are extremely successful. You’ve shipped a lot.
… really fast now. So, if speed is something you care about, it’s super-fast. And there’s gigantic communities of people using those programming languages. And there’s frameworks if you like the framework. So, whatever, it doesn’t really matter what you use. But also, if I was a developer working with you, you are extremely successful. You’ve shipped a lot.
So, if I roll in, I’m going to be like, I don’t assume you know nothing. Assume Pieter is a genius, the smartest developer ever. And learn from it. And yes, and notice parts in the code where, “Okay, okay, I got it, here’s how he’s thinking.” And now if I want to add another little feature, definitely needs to have emoji in front of it, and then just follow the same style and add it.
And my goal is to make you happy, to make you smile, to make you like, “Haha, fuck, I get it.” And now you’re going to start respecting me, and trusting me, and you start working together in this way. I don’t know. I don’t know how hard it is to find developers.
Pieter Levels
No, I think they exist. I think I need to hire more people, I need to try more people.
No, I think they exist. I think I need to hire more people, I need to try more people.
Lex Fridman
Try people, yeah.
Try people, yeah.
Pieter Levels
But that costs a lot of my energy and time. But it’s 100% possible. But do I want it? I don’t know. Things run fine for now. Okay, you could say, okay, Nomad List looks clunky. People say the design is clunky. Okay, I’ll improve the design. It’s like next to my to-do list, for example. I’ll get there eventually.
But that costs a lot of my energy and time. But it’s 100% possible. But do I want it? I don’t know. Things run fine for now. Okay, you could say, okay, Nomad List looks clunky. People say the design is clunky. Okay, I’ll improve the design. It’s like next to my to-do list, for example. I’ll get there eventually.
Ship fast
Lex Fridman
But it’s true. You’re also extremely good at what you do. I’m just looking at the interfaces of Photo AI, you would jQuery, how amazing is jQuery? But you can see these cowboys are getting… There’s these cowboys. This is a lot. This is a lot. But I’m glad they’re all wearing shirts. Anyway, the interface here is just really, really nice. I could tell you know what you’re doing. And with Nomad List, extremely nice, the interface.
But it’s true. You’re also extremely good at what you do. I’m just looking at the interfaces of Photo AI, you would jQuery, how amazing is jQuery? But you can see these cowboys are getting… There’s these cowboys. This is a lot. This is a lot. But I’m glad they’re all wearing shirts. Anyway, the interface here is just really, really nice. I could tell you know what you’re doing. And with Nomad List, extremely nice, the interface.
Pieter Levels
Thank you, man.
Thank you, man.
Lex Fridman
And that’s all you.
And that’s all you.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, everything is me.
Yeah, everything is me.
Lex Fridman
So, all of this and every little feature, all of this-
So, all of this and every little feature, all of this-
Pieter Levels
People say it looks ADHD or ADD. It’s so much because it has so many things. And design these days is minimalist, right?
People say it looks ADHD or ADD. It’s so much because it has so many things. And design these days is minimalist, right?
Lex Fridman
Right, I hear you. But this is a lot of information, and its useful information, and it’s delivered in a clean way while still stylish and fun to look at. So, minimalist design is about when you want to convey no information whatsoever and look cool.
Right, I hear you. But this is a lot of information, and its useful information, and it’s delivered in a clean way while still stylish and fun to look at. So, minimalist design is about when you want to convey no information whatsoever and look cool.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, it’s very cool. It’s pretentious, right?
Yeah, it’s very cool. It’s pretentious, right?
Lex Fridman
Pretentious or not, the function is useless. This is about a lot of information delivered to you in a clean and when it’s clean, you can’t be too sexy. So, it’s sexy enough.
Pretentious or not, the function is useless. This is about a lot of information delivered to you in a clean and when it’s clean, you can’t be too sexy. So, it’s sexy enough.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. This is I think how my brain looks. There’s a lot of shit going on. It’s like drawing bass music. It’s very tk-tk-tk-tk.
Yeah. This is I think how my brain looks. There’s a lot of shit going on. It’s like drawing bass music. It’s very tk-tk-tk-tk.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. But this is still pretty, the spacing of everything is nice. The fonts are really nice, very readable, very small-
Yeah. But this is still pretty, the spacing of everything is nice. The fonts are really nice, very readable, very small-
Pieter Levels
Yeah, I like it as you know, but I made it so I don’t trust my own judgment.
Yeah, I like it as you know, but I made it so I don’t trust my own judgment.
Lex Fridman
No, this is really nice.
No, this is really nice.
Pieter Levels
Thank you, Lex.
Thank you, Lex.
Lex Fridman
The emojis are somehow… It’s a style. It’s a thing.
The emojis are somehow… It’s a style. It’s a thing.
Pieter Levels
I need to pick the emoji. It takes a while to pick them.
I need to pick the emoji. It takes a while to pick them.
Lex Fridman
There’s something about the emojis is a really nice memorable placeholder for the idea. If it was just text, it would actually be overwhelming if it was just text. The emoji really helps. It’s a brilliant addition. Some people might look at it. Why do you have emojis everywhere? It’s actually really… For me, it’s really-
There’s something about the emojis is a really nice memorable placeholder for the idea. If it was just text, it would actually be overwhelming if it was just text. The emoji really helps. It’s a brilliant addition. Some people might look at it. Why do you have emojis everywhere? It’s actually really… For me, it’s really-
Pieter Levels
People tell me to remove the emoji.
People tell me to remove the emoji.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. Well, people don’t know what they’re talking about.
Yeah. Well, people don’t know what they’re talking about.
Pieter Levels
Take it next to the picture.
Take it next to the picture.
Lex Fridman
I’m sure people will tell you a lot of things. This is really nice. And then, using color is nice. Small font, but not too small. And obviously, you have to show maps, which is really tricky.
I’m sure people will tell you a lot of things. This is really nice. And then, using color is nice. Small font, but not too small. And obviously, you have to show maps, which is really tricky.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. Nice.
Yeah. Nice.
Lex Fridman
No. This is really, really, really nice. Okay, how this looks when you hover over it, it’s-
No. This is really, really, really nice. Okay, how this looks when you hover over it, it’s-
Pieter Levels
Like the CSS transitions.
Like the CSS transitions.
Lex Fridman
No, I understand that, but I’m sure there’s… How long does it take you to figure out how you want it to look? Do you ever go down a rabbit hole where you spent two weeks?
No, I understand that, but I’m sure there’s… How long does it take you to figure out how you want it to look? Do you ever go down a rabbit hole where you spent two weeks?
Pieter Levels
No, it’s iterative. It’s like 10 years of add a CSS transition here or do this or-
No, it’s iterative. It’s like 10 years of add a CSS transition here or do this or-
Lex Fridman
Well, see these are rounded now?
Well, see these are rounded now?
Pieter Levels
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
If you wanted to, round is probably the better way, but if you want it to be rectangular, sharp corners, what would you do? You just go-
If you wanted to, round is probably the better way, but if you want it to be rectangular, sharp corners, what would you do? You just go-
Pieter Levels
So, I go through the index at CSS, and I do command F and I search border radius 12px. And then, I replace with border radius zero. And then, I do command enter and it’s Git deploys… It pushes it to the GitHub, and then sends a web book, and then deploys to my server and it’s live in five seconds.
So, I go through the index at CSS, and I do command F and I search border radius 12px. And then, I replace with border radius zero. And then, I do command enter and it’s Git deploys… It pushes it to the GitHub, and then sends a web book, and then deploys to my server and it’s live in five seconds.
Lex Fridman
You often deploy it to production? You don’t have a testing ground?
You often deploy it to production? You don’t have a testing ground?
Pieter Levels
No. So, I’m famous for this because I’m too lazy to set up a staging server on my laptop every time. So, nowadays, I just deploy to production and man, I’m going to be canceled for this. But it works very well for me. Because I have a lot have PHP, Lint and JSON, so it tells me when there’s errors. So, I don’t deploy, but literally, I have like 37,000 Git commits in the last 12 months or something. So, I make small fix, and then come out, enter and sends to GitHub. GitHub sends a web to server, web server pulls it, deploys the production and is there.
No. So, I’m famous for this because I’m too lazy to set up a staging server on my laptop every time. So, nowadays, I just deploy to production and man, I’m going to be canceled for this. But it works very well for me. Because I have a lot have PHP, Lint and JSON, so it tells me when there’s errors. So, I don’t deploy, but literally, I have like 37,000 Git commits in the last 12 months or something. So, I make small fix, and then come out, enter and sends to GitHub. GitHub sends a web to server, web server pulls it, deploys the production and is there.
Lex Fridman
What’s the latency of that from you pressing command?
What’s the latency of that from you pressing command?
Pieter Levels
One second, can be one to two seconds.
One second, can be one to two seconds.
Lex Fridman
So, you just make a change and then you’re getting really good at not making mistakes basically?
So, you just make a change and then you’re getting really good at not making mistakes basically?
Pieter Levels
Man, 100% you’re right. People are like, “How can you do this, where you get good at not taking the server down?” Because you need to code more carefully. But look, it’s idiotic in any big company. But for me it works because it makes me so fast. Somebody will report a bug on Twitter and I do a stopwatch.
Man, 100% you’re right. People are like, “How can you do this, where you get good at not taking the server down?” Because you need to code more carefully. But look, it’s idiotic in any big company. But for me it works because it makes me so fast. Somebody will report a bug on Twitter and I do a stopwatch.
How fast can I fix this bug? And then, two minutes later, for example, it’s fixed. And it’s fun because it’s annoying for me to work with companies where you report a bug and it takes six months. It’s horrible. And it makes people really happy when you can really quickly solve their problems. But it’s crazy.
Lex Fridman
I don’t think it’s crazy. I’m sure there’s a middle ground, but I think that whole thing where there’s a phase of testing, and there’s the staging, and there’s the development, and then there’s multiple tables and databases that you use for the state, it’s-
I don’t think it’s crazy. I’m sure there’s a middle ground, but I think that whole thing where there’s a phase of testing, and there’s the staging, and there’s the development, and then there’s multiple tables and databases that you use for the state, it’s-
Pieter Levels
Filing.
Filing.
Lex Fridman
It’s a mess. And there’s different teams involved. It’s no good.
It’s a mess. And there’s different teams involved. It’s no good.
Pieter Levels
I’m like a good funny extreme on the other side.
I’m like a good funny extreme on the other side.
Lex Fridman
But just a little bit safer, but not too much. It would be great.
But just a little bit safer, but not too much. It would be great.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Lex Fridman
And I’m sure that’s actually how X now, how they’re doing rapid improvement. That’s exactly-
And I’m sure that’s actually how X now, how they’re doing rapid improvement. That’s exactly-
Pieter Levels
They do because there’s more bugs and people complain about like, “Oh look, he bought this Twitter and now it’s full of bugs.” Dude, the shipping stuff, things are happening now. And it’s a dynamic app now.
They do because there’s more bugs and people complain about like, “Oh look, he bought this Twitter and now it’s full of bugs.” Dude, the shipping stuff, things are happening now. And it’s a dynamic app now.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. The bugs is actually a sign of a good thing happening. The bugs are the feature because it shows that the team is actually building shit.
Yeah. The bugs is actually a sign of a good thing happening. The bugs are the feature because it shows that the team is actually building shit.
Pieter Levels
A hundred percent.
A hundred percent.
Lex Fridman
Well, one of the problems is like I see with YouTube, there’s so much potential to build features, but I just see how long it takes. So, I’ve gotten a chance to interact with many other teams. But one of the teams is MLA, multi-language audio. I don’t know if you know this, but in YouTube you can have audio tracks in different languages for overdubbing.
Well, one of the problems is like I see with YouTube, there’s so much potential to build features, but I just see how long it takes. So, I’ve gotten a chance to interact with many other teams. But one of the teams is MLA, multi-language audio. I don’t know if you know this, but in YouTube you can have audio tracks in different languages for overdubbing.
And there’s a team and not many people are using it, but every single feature, they have to meet and agree. And there’s allocate resources. Engineers have to work on it. But I’m sure it’s a pain in the ass for the engineers to get approval because it has to not break the rest of the site, whatever they do. But if you don’t have enough dictatorial top down, when-
Lex Fridman
… have enough dictatorial top-down like we need this now. It’s going to take forever to do anything multi-language audio, but multi-language audio is a good example of a thing that seems niche right now, but it quite possibly could change the entire world. When I upload this conversation right here, if instantaneously it dubs it into 40 languages and everybody consume, every single video can be watched and listened to in those different … It changes everything. And YouTube is extremely well positioned to be the leader in this. They got the compute. They got the user base. They have the experience of how to do this. So, multi-language audio should be-
… have enough dictatorial top-down like we need this now. It’s going to take forever to do anything multi-language audio, but multi-language audio is a good example of a thing that seems niche right now, but it quite possibly could change the entire world. When I upload this conversation right here, if instantaneously it dubs it into 40 languages and everybody consume, every single video can be watched and listened to in those different … It changes everything. And YouTube is extremely well positioned to be the leader in this. They got the compute. They got the user base. They have the experience of how to do this. So, multi-language audio should be-
Pieter Levels
High priority feature, right?
High priority feature, right?
Lex Fridman
Yeah. That’s high priority and it’s a way … Google’s obsessed with AI right now, they want to show off that they could be dominant in AI. That’s a way for Google to say, “We used AI.” This is a way to break down the walls, that language craze.
Yeah. That’s high priority and it’s a way … Google’s obsessed with AI right now, they want to show off that they could be dominant in AI. That’s a way for Google to say, “We used AI.” This is a way to break down the walls, that language craze.
Pieter Levels
The preferred outcome for them is probably their career, not the overall result of the cool product.
The preferred outcome for them is probably their career, not the overall result of the cool product.
Lex Fridman
I think they’re not selfish or whatever. There’s something about the machine-
I think they’re not selfish or whatever. There’s something about the machine-
Pieter Levels
The organization.
The organization.
Lex Fridman
The organizational stuff that just [inaudible 02:41:14]-
The organizational stuff that just [inaudible 02:41:14]-
Pieter Levels
I have this when I report box on big companies I work with. I talk to a lot of different people in DM and they’re all really trying hard to do something. They’re all really nice and I’m the one being kind of asshole because I’m like, “Guys, I’m talking to 20 people about this for six months, nothing’s happening.” They say, ” Man, I know, but I’m trying my best.” And yeah, so it’s systemic.
I have this when I report box on big companies I work with. I talk to a lot of different people in DM and they’re all really trying hard to do something. They’re all really nice and I’m the one being kind of asshole because I’m like, “Guys, I’m talking to 20 people about this for six months, nothing’s happening.” They say, ” Man, I know, but I’m trying my best.” And yeah, so it’s systemic.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. It requires, again, I don’t know if there must be a nicer word, but a dictatorial type of top-down the CEO rolls in and just says for YouTube, it’s like MLA, get this done now. This is the highest priority.
Yeah. It requires, again, I don’t know if there must be a nicer word, but a dictatorial type of top-down the CEO rolls in and just says for YouTube, it’s like MLA, get this done now. This is the highest priority.
Pieter Levels
I think big companies, especially in America, a lot of it is legal. You need to pass everything through legal. And you can’t like, man, the things I do, I could never do that in a big corporation because everything has to be probably get deployed, has to go through legal.
I think big companies, especially in America, a lot of it is legal. You need to pass everything through legal. And you can’t like, man, the things I do, I could never do that in a big corporation because everything has to be probably get deployed, has to go through legal.
Lex Fridman
Well, again, dictatorial. You basically say Steve Jobs did this quite a lot. I’ve seen a lot of leaders do this. Ignore the lawyers. Ignore comps.
Well, again, dictatorial. You basically say Steve Jobs did this quite a lot. I’ve seen a lot of leaders do this. Ignore the lawyers. Ignore comps.
Pieter Levels
Exactly. Yeah.
Exactly. Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Ignore PR. Ignore everybody. Give power to the engineers. Listen to the people on the ground, get this shit done and get it done by Friday. That’s it.
Ignore PR. Ignore everybody. Give power to the engineers. Listen to the people on the ground, get this shit done and get it done by Friday. That’s it.
Pieter Levels
And the law can change. For example, let’s say you launch this AI dubbing and there’s some legal problems with lawsuits, so the law changes, there will be appeals, there will be some Supreme Court thing, whatever, and the law changes. So, just by shipping it, you change society, you change the legal framework. By not shipping, being scared of the legal framework all the time, you’re not changing things.
And the law can change. For example, let’s say you launch this AI dubbing and there’s some legal problems with lawsuits, so the law changes, there will be appeals, there will be some Supreme Court thing, whatever, and the law changes. So, just by shipping it, you change society, you change the legal framework. By not shipping, being scared of the legal framework all the time, you’re not changing things.
Best IDE for programming
Lex Fridman
Just out of curiosity, what ID do you use? Let’s talk about your whole setup. Given how ultra productive you are that you often program in your underwear slouching on the couch, does it matter to you in general? Is there a specific ID you use? VS Code?
Just out of curiosity, what ID do you use? Let’s talk about your whole setup. Given how ultra productive you are that you often program in your underwear slouching on the couch, does it matter to you in general? Is there a specific ID you use? VS Code?
Pieter Levels
Yeah, VS Code. Before, I used Sublime text. I don’t think it matters a lot. I think I’m very skeptical of tools when people think they say it matters, right? I don’t think it matters. I think whatever tool you know very well, you can go very fast. And the shortcuts, for example, IDE. I love Sublime text because I could use multi-cursor. You search something and then I could make mass replaces in a file with the cursor thing and the VS Code doesn’t really have that as well.
Yeah, VS Code. Before, I used Sublime text. I don’t think it matters a lot. I think I’m very skeptical of tools when people think they say it matters, right? I don’t think it matters. I think whatever tool you know very well, you can go very fast. And the shortcuts, for example, IDE. I love Sublime text because I could use multi-cursor. You search something and then I could make mass replaces in a file with the cursor thing and the VS Code doesn’t really have that as well.
Lex Fridman
Sublime is the first editor where I’ve learned that. And I think they just make that super easy. So, what would that be called? Multi-edit.
Sublime is the first editor where I’ve learned that. And I think they just make that super easy. So, what would that be called? Multi-edit.
Pieter Levels
Multi-cursor.
Multi-cursor.
Lex Fridman
Multi-cursor edit thing, whatever.
Multi-cursor edit thing, whatever.
Pieter Levels
So good.
So good.
Lex Fridman
I’m sure almost every editor can do that. It’s just probably hard to set up.
I’m sure almost every editor can do that. It’s just probably hard to set up.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, VS Code’s not so good at it, I think, or at least I tried it. But I would use that to process data, like data sets. For example, from World Bank. I would just multi-cursor mass change everything. But yeah, VS Code. Man, I was bullied into using VS Code because Twitter would always see my screenshots of Sublime text and say, “Why are you still using Sublime text, Boomer. You need to use VS Code.” I’m like, “Yeah, I’ll try it.” I got a new MacBook and then I never install. I never copy the old MacBook. I just make it fresh, like a clean format C Windows, clean starts. And I’m like, “Okay, I’ll try VS Code.” And it’s stuck, but I don’t really care. It’s not so important for me.
Yeah, VS Code’s not so good at it, I think, or at least I tried it. But I would use that to process data, like data sets. For example, from World Bank. I would just multi-cursor mass change everything. But yeah, VS Code. Man, I was bullied into using VS Code because Twitter would always see my screenshots of Sublime text and say, “Why are you still using Sublime text, Boomer. You need to use VS Code.” I’m like, “Yeah, I’ll try it.” I got a new MacBook and then I never install. I never copy the old MacBook. I just make it fresh, like a clean format C Windows, clean starts. And I’m like, “Okay, I’ll try VS Code.” And it’s stuck, but I don’t really care. It’s not so important for me.
Lex Fridman
Wow. The format C reference, huh?
Wow. The format C reference, huh?
Pieter Levels
Dude, it was so good. You would install windows and then after three or six months, it would start breaking and everything gets slow. Then you would restart, go to DOS, format C, you would delete your hard drive and then install the Windows 95 again. It was so good times. And you would design everything. Now, I’m going to install it properly. Now, I’m going to design my desktop properly.
Dude, it was so good. You would install windows and then after three or six months, it would start breaking and everything gets slow. Then you would restart, go to DOS, format C, you would delete your hard drive and then install the Windows 95 again. It was so good times. And you would design everything. Now, I’m going to install it properly. Now, I’m going to design my desktop properly.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, I don’t know if it’s peer pressure, but I used Emacs for many, many years and I love Lisp, so a lot of the customization is done in Lisp. It’s a programming language. Partially, it was peer pressure, but part of it is realizing you need to keep learning stuff. The same issue with jQuery. I still think I need to learn NodeJS for example, even though that’s not my main thing or even close to the main thing. But I feel like you need to keep learning this stuff. And even if you don’t choose to use it long term, you need to give it a chance. So, your understanding of the world expands.
Yeah, I don’t know if it’s peer pressure, but I used Emacs for many, many years and I love Lisp, so a lot of the customization is done in Lisp. It’s a programming language. Partially, it was peer pressure, but part of it is realizing you need to keep learning stuff. The same issue with jQuery. I still think I need to learn NodeJS for example, even though that’s not my main thing or even close to the main thing. But I feel like you need to keep learning this stuff. And even if you don’t choose to use it long term, you need to give it a chance. So, your understanding of the world expands.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, you want to understand the new technological concepts and see if they can benefit you. It would be stupid not to even try it.
Yeah, you want to understand the new technological concepts and see if they can benefit you. It would be stupid not to even try it.
Lex Fridman
It’s more about the concepts I would say, than the actual tools expanding. And that can be a challenging thing. So, going to VS Code and really learning it, all the shortcuts, all the extensions, and actually installing different stuff and playing with it, that was an interesting challenge. It was uncomfortable at first.
It’s more about the concepts I would say, than the actual tools expanding. And that can be a challenging thing. So, going to VS Code and really learning it, all the shortcuts, all the extensions, and actually installing different stuff and playing with it, that was an interesting challenge. It was uncomfortable at first.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, for me too. Yeah.
Yeah, for me too. Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. But you just dive in.
Yeah. But you just dive in.
Pieter Levels
It’s like NeuroFlex, like you keep your brain fresh, this kind of stuff.
It’s like NeuroFlex, like you keep your brain fresh, this kind of stuff.
Lex Fridman
I got to do that more. Have you given React a chance?
I got to do that more. Have you given React a chance?
Pieter Levels
No, but I want to learn. I understand the basics. I don’t really know where to start.
No, but I want to learn. I understand the basics. I don’t really know where to start.
Lex Fridman
But I guess you got to use your own model, which is build the thing using it.
But I guess you got to use your own model, which is build the thing using it.
Pieter Levels
No, man, so I kind of did that. The stuff I do in jQuery is essentially a lot of it is like I start rebuilding whatever tech is already out there, not based on that, but just on accident. I keep going long enough that I built the same. I start getting the same problems everybody else has and you start building the same frameworks kind. So, essentially I use my own framework of-
No, man, so I kind of did that. The stuff I do in jQuery is essentially a lot of it is like I start rebuilding whatever tech is already out there, not based on that, but just on accident. I keep going long enough that I built the same. I start getting the same problems everybody else has and you start building the same frameworks kind. So, essentially I use my own framework of-
Lex Fridman
So, you basically build a framework from scratch that’s your own, that you understand it.
So, you basically build a framework from scratch that’s your own, that you understand it.
Pieter Levels
Kind of, yeah, with Ajax calls, but that’s essentially the same thing. Look, I don’t have the time. And I think saying you don’t have the time is always a lie because you just don’t prioritize it enough. My priority is still running the businesses and improving that and AI. I think learning AI is much more valuable now than learning front end framework. It’s just more impact.
Kind of, yeah, with Ajax calls, but that’s essentially the same thing. Look, I don’t have the time. And I think saying you don’t have the time is always a lie because you just don’t prioritize it enough. My priority is still running the businesses and improving that and AI. I think learning AI is much more valuable now than learning front end framework. It’s just more impact.
Lex Fridman
I guess you should be just learning every single day a thing.
I guess you should be just learning every single day a thing.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, you can learn a little bit every day, a little bit of React or I think now Next is very big, so learn a little bit of Next. But I call them the military industrial complex. But you need to know, know it anyway.
Yeah, you can learn a little bit every day, a little bit of React or I think now Next is very big, so learn a little bit of Next. But I call them the military industrial complex. But you need to know, know it anyway.
Lex Fridman
You got to learn how to use the weapons of war and then you can be a peacemaker.
You got to learn how to use the weapons of war and then you can be a peacemaker.
Pieter Levels
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, I mean, but you got to learn it in the same exact way as we were talking about, which is learn it by trying to build something with it and actually deploy it.
Yeah, I mean, but you got to learn it in the same exact way as we were talking about, which is learn it by trying to build something with it and actually deploy it.
Pieter Levels
The frameworks are so complicated and it changes so fast. So, it’s like where do I start? And I guess it’s the same thing when you’re starting out making websites, where do you start as GPT-4, I guess. But yeah, it’s just so dynamic. It changes so fast that I don’t know if it would be a good idea for me to learn it. Maybe some combination of few Next with PHP Laravel. Laravel is like a framework for PHP. I think that it could benefit me. Maybe Tailwind for CSS, like a styling engine. That stuff could probably save me time.
The frameworks are so complicated and it changes so fast. So, it’s like where do I start? And I guess it’s the same thing when you’re starting out making websites, where do you start as GPT-4, I guess. But yeah, it’s just so dynamic. It changes so fast that I don’t know if it would be a good idea for me to learn it. Maybe some combination of few Next with PHP Laravel. Laravel is like a framework for PHP. I think that it could benefit me. Maybe Tailwind for CSS, like a styling engine. That stuff could probably save me time.
Lex Fridman
But yeah, you won’t know until you really give it a try. And it feels like you have to build, if maybe I’m talking to myself, but I should probably recode my personal one page in Laravel. Or even though it might not have almost any dynamic elements, maybe have one dynamic element, but it has to go end to end in that framework or end-to-end build in NodeJS. Some of it is figuring out how to you even deploy the thing.
But yeah, you won’t know until you really give it a try. And it feels like you have to build, if maybe I’m talking to myself, but I should probably recode my personal one page in Laravel. Or even though it might not have almost any dynamic elements, maybe have one dynamic element, but it has to go end to end in that framework or end-to-end build in NodeJS. Some of it is figuring out how to you even deploy the thing.
Pieter Levels
I have no idea. All I know is right now, I would send it to GitHub and it sends it to my server. I don’t know how to get JavaScript running. I have no clue. So, I guess I need a pass like Vercel or Heroku, those kind of platform.
I have no idea. All I know is right now, I would send it to GitHub and it sends it to my server. I don’t know how to get JavaScript running. I have no clue. So, I guess I need a pass like Vercel or Heroku, those kind of platform.
Lex Fridman
I actually just gave myself the idea of I just want to build a single webpage, one webpage that has one dynamic element and just do it in every single, in a lot of frameworks.
I actually just gave myself the idea of I just want to build a single webpage, one webpage that has one dynamic element and just do it in every single, in a lot of frameworks.
Pieter Levels
Ah, on the same page?
Ah, on the same page?
Lex Fridman
Same exact page.
Same exact page.
Pieter Levels
All the same?
All the same?
Lex Fridman
Kind of page.
Kind of page.
Pieter Levels
That’s smart page. That’s a cool project. You can learn all these frameworks. And you can see the differences. That’s interesting.
That’s smart page. That’s a cool project. You can learn all these frameworks. And you can see the differences. That’s interesting.
Lex Fridman
How long it takes to do it.
How long it takes to do it.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, stopwatch.
Yeah, stopwatch.
Lex Fridman
I have to figure out actually something sufficiently complicated. Because it should probably do some kind of thing where it accesses the database and dynamically is changing stuff.
I have to figure out actually something sufficiently complicated. Because it should probably do some kind of thing where it accesses the database and dynamically is changing stuff.
Pieter Levels
Some AI stuff, some LLM stuff.
Some AI stuff, some LLM stuff.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. It doesn’t have to be AI LLM, but maybe API call.
Yeah. It doesn’t have to be AI LLM, but maybe API call.
Pieter Levels
But then you do it API.
But then you do it API.
Lex Fridman
API call to something.
API call to something.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. To replicate, for example. And then that would be a very cool part.
Yeah. To replicate, for example. And then that would be a very cool part.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And time it. And also report on my happiness. I’m going to totally do this.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And time it. And also report on my happiness. I’m going to totally do this.
Pieter Levels
Because nobody benchmarks this. Nobody’s benchmark developer happiness with frameworks. Nobody’s benchmark the shipping time.
Because nobody benchmarks this. Nobody’s benchmark developer happiness with frameworks. Nobody’s benchmark the shipping time.
Lex Fridman
Just take a month and do this. How many frameworks are there? There’s five main ways of doing it. So, there’s backend and frontend.
Just take a month and do this. How many frameworks are there? There’s five main ways of doing it. So, there’s backend and frontend.
Pieter Levels
This stuff confused me, too. Like React now apparently has become backend or something that used to be only frontend and you’re forced to do now backend also. I don’t know. And then.
This stuff confused me, too. Like React now apparently has become backend or something that used to be only frontend and you’re forced to do now backend also. I don’t know. And then.
Lex Fridman
But you’re not really forced to do anything, according to the internet. It’s actually not trivial to find the canonical way of doing things. So, the standard, you go to the ice cream shop, there’s a million flavors. I want vanilla. If I’ve never had ice cream in my life, can we just learn about ice cream? I want vanilla. Sometimes they’ll literally name it vanilla. But I want to know what’s the basic way, but not dumb, but the standard canonical common.
But you’re not really forced to do anything, according to the internet. It’s actually not trivial to find the canonical way of doing things. So, the standard, you go to the ice cream shop, there’s a million flavors. I want vanilla. If I’ve never had ice cream in my life, can we just learn about ice cream? I want vanilla. Sometimes they’ll literally name it vanilla. But I want to know what’s the basic way, but not dumb, but the standard canonical common.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. I want to know the dominant way.
Yeah. I want to know the dominant way.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, the dominant way.
Yeah, the dominant way.
Pieter Levels
Like the 6% of developers do it like this. It’s hard to figure that out. That’s the problem.
Like the 6% of developers do it like this. It’s hard to figure that out. That’s the problem.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, maybe LLMs can help. Maybe you should explicitly ask what is the dominant-
Yeah, maybe LLMs can help. Maybe you should explicitly ask what is the dominant-
Pieter Levels
Because they usually know the dominant. They give answers that are the most probable kind of, so that makes sense to ask them. And I think honestly, maybe what would help is if you want to learn or I would want to learn a framework, hire somebody that already does it and just sit with them and make something together. I’ve never done that, but I’ve thought about it. So, that would be a very fast way to take their knowledge in my brain.
Because they usually know the dominant. They give answers that are the most probable kind of, so that makes sense to ask them. And I think honestly, maybe what would help is if you want to learn or I would want to learn a framework, hire somebody that already does it and just sit with them and make something together. I’ve never done that, but I’ve thought about it. So, that would be a very fast way to take their knowledge in my brain.
Lex Fridman
I’ve tried these kinds of things. What happens is it depends, if they’re a world-class developer, yes. Oftentimes, they themselves are used to that thing and they have not themselves explored in other options. So, they have this dogmatic talking down to you, “This is the right way to do it.” It’s like, “No, no, no, we’re just exploring together. Okay, show me the cool thing you’ve tried,” which is it has to have open mindedness to NodeJS is not the right way to do web development. It’s like one way. And there’s nothing wrong with the old LAMP, PHP, jQuery, vanilla JavaScript way. It just has its pros and cons and you need to know what the pros and cons are.
I’ve tried these kinds of things. What happens is it depends, if they’re a world-class developer, yes. Oftentimes, they themselves are used to that thing and they have not themselves explored in other options. So, they have this dogmatic talking down to you, “This is the right way to do it.” It’s like, “No, no, no, we’re just exploring together. Okay, show me the cool thing you’ve tried,” which is it has to have open mindedness to NodeJS is not the right way to do web development. It’s like one way. And there’s nothing wrong with the old LAMP, PHP, jQuery, vanilla JavaScript way. It just has its pros and cons and you need to know what the pros and cons are.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, but those people exist. You could find those people probably.
Yeah, but those people exist. You could find those people probably.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Andrej Karpathy
Pieter Levels
If you want to learn AI, imagine you have Karpathy sitting next to you. He does these YouTube videos. It’s amazing. He can teach it to a five-year-old about how to make LLM. It’s amazing. Imagine this guy sitting next to you and just teaching you, “Let’s make LLM together.” Holy shit. It would be amazing.
If you want to learn AI, imagine you have Karpathy sitting next to you. He does these YouTube videos. It’s amazing. He can teach it to a five-year-old about how to make LLM. It’s amazing. Imagine this guy sitting next to you and just teaching you, “Let’s make LLM together.” Holy shit. It would be amazing.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. I mean, Karpathy has its own style and I’m not sure he’s for everybody. For example, a five-year-old. It depends on the five-year-old.
Yeah. I mean, Karpathy has its own style and I’m not sure he’s for everybody. For example, a five-year-old. It depends on the five-year-old.
Pieter Levels
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
He’s super technical.
He’s super technical.
Pieter Levels
But he’s amazing because he’s super technical and he’s the only one who can explain this stuff in a simple way, which shows his complete genius. If you can explain without jargon, you’re like, “Wow.”
But he’s amazing because he’s super technical and he’s the only one who can explain this stuff in a simple way, which shows his complete genius. If you can explain without jargon, you’re like, “Wow.”
Lex Fridman
And build it from scratch.
And build it from scratch.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, it’s like top tier, like, what a guy.
Yeah, it’s like top tier, like, what a guy.
Lex Fridman
But he might be anti-framework because he builds from scratch.
But he might be anti-framework because he builds from scratch.
Pieter Levels
Exactly. Yeah. Actually he probably is. Yeah.
Exactly. Yeah. Actually he probably is. Yeah.
Lex Fridman
He’s like you, but for AI.
He’s like you, but for AI.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. So, maybe learning framework is a very bad idea for us. Maybe we should stay in PHP and script kiddie and the…
Yeah. So, maybe learning framework is a very bad idea for us. Maybe we should stay in PHP and script kiddie and the…
Lex Fridman
But you have to maybe by learning the framework, you learn what you want to yourself build from scratch.
But you have to maybe by learning the framework, you learn what you want to yourself build from scratch.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. Maybe learn concepts, but you don’t actually have to start using it for your life, right? Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Maybe learn concepts, but you don’t actually have to start using it for your life, right? Yeah, yeah.
Lex Fridman
And you’re still a Mac guy, or was a Mac guy.
And you’re still a Mac guy, or was a Mac guy.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, yeah. I switched to Mac in 2014. It was because when I wanted to start traveling and my brother was like, “Dude, get a MacBook. It’s the standard now.” I’m like, “Wow, I need to switch from Windows.” And I had three screens, like windows. I had this whole setup for music production. I had to sell everything. And then I had a MacBook and I remember opening up this MacBook box and it was so beautiful. It was this aluminum. And then I opened it. I removed the screen protector thing. It’s so beautiful. And I didn’t touch it for three days. I was just looking at it really. And I was still on the Windows computer. And then I went traveling with that.
Yeah, yeah. I switched to Mac in 2014. It was because when I wanted to start traveling and my brother was like, “Dude, get a MacBook. It’s the standard now.” I’m like, “Wow, I need to switch from Windows.” And I had three screens, like windows. I had this whole setup for music production. I had to sell everything. And then I had a MacBook and I remember opening up this MacBook box and it was so beautiful. It was this aluminum. And then I opened it. I removed the screen protector thing. It’s so beautiful. And I didn’t touch it for three days. I was just looking at it really. And I was still on the Windows computer. And then I went traveling with that.
And all my great things started when I switched to Mac, which sounds very dogmatic, right?
Lex Fridman
What great things are you talking about?
What great things are you talking about?
Pieter Levels
All the businesses started working out. I started traveling. I started building startups. I started making money. It all started when I switched to Mac.
All the businesses started working out. I started traveling. I started building startups. I started making money. It all started when I switched to Mac.
Lex Fridman
Listen, you’re making me want to switch to Mac. So, I either use Linux inside Windows with WSL or just Ubuntu Linux. But Windows for most stuff like editing or any Adobe products.
Listen, you’re making me want to switch to Mac. So, I either use Linux inside Windows with WSL or just Ubuntu Linux. But Windows for most stuff like editing or any Adobe products.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, like Adobe stuff, right?
Yeah, like Adobe stuff, right?
Lex Fridman
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I guess you could do Mac stuff there. I wonder if I should switch. What do you miss about Windows? What was the pros and cons?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I guess you could do Mac stuff there. I wonder if I should switch. What do you miss about Windows? What was the pros and cons?
Pieter Levels
I think the Finder is horrible. Mac.
I think the Finder is horrible. Mac.
Lex Fridman
The what is horrible?
The what is horrible?
Pieter Levels
The Finder. Oh, you don’t know the Finder? So, there’s the Windows Explorer.
The Finder. Oh, you don’t know the Finder? So, there’s the Windows Explorer.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Pieter Levels
Windows Explorer is amazing.
Windows Explorer is amazing.
Lex Fridman
Thank you for talking down on me.
Thank you for talking down on me.
Pieter Levels
The Finder is strange, man. There’s strange things. There’s this bug where if you send, attach a photo on WhatsApp or Telegram, it just selects the whole folder and you almost accidentally can click Enter and you send all your photos, all your files to this chat group, happened to my girlfriend. She starts sending me photo, photo, photo. So, Finder is very unusual, but it has Linux. The whole thing is it’s Unix-based.
The Finder is strange, man. There’s strange things. There’s this bug where if you send, attach a photo on WhatsApp or Telegram, it just selects the whole folder and you almost accidentally can click Enter and you send all your photos, all your files to this chat group, happened to my girlfriend. She starts sending me photo, photo, photo. So, Finder is very unusual, but it has Linux. The whole thing is it’s Unix-based.
Lex Fridman
So, you use the command?
So, you use the command?
Pieter Levels
Yeah, all the time. All the time. And the cool thing is you can run, I think it’s like Unix, like Debian or whatever. You can run most Linux stuff on MacOS, which makes it very good for development. I have my Nginx server. If I’m not lazy in set up my staging on my laptop, it’s just the Nginx server, the same as I have on my cloud server, the same way the websites run. And I can use almost everything, the same config files, configuration files, and it just works. And that makes Mac a very good platform for Linux stuff, I think.
Yeah, all the time. All the time. And the cool thing is you can run, I think it’s like Unix, like Debian or whatever. You can run most Linux stuff on MacOS, which makes it very good for development. I have my Nginx server. If I’m not lazy in set up my staging on my laptop, it’s just the Nginx server, the same as I have on my cloud server, the same way the websites run. And I can use almost everything, the same config files, configuration files, and it just works. And that makes Mac a very good platform for Linux stuff, I think.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Pieter Levels
Real Ubuntu is better, of course, but.
Real Ubuntu is better, of course, but.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, I’m in this weird situation, where I’m somewhat of a power user in Windows and let’s say Android and all the much smarter friends I have all using Mac and iPhone. And it’s like-
Yeah, I’m in this weird situation, where I’m somewhat of a power user in Windows and let’s say Android and all the much smarter friends I have all using Mac and iPhone. And it’s like-
Pieter Levels
But you don’t want to go through the peer pressure.
But you don’t want to go through the peer pressure.
Lex Fridman
It’s not peer pressure. It’s one of the reasons I want to have kids is that I would love to have kids as a baseline, but there’s a concern. Maybe there’s going to be a tradeoff or all this kind of stuff. But you see these extremely successful smart people who are friends of mine, who have kids and are really happy they have kids. So, that’s not peer pressure, that’s just a strong signal.
It’s not peer pressure. It’s one of the reasons I want to have kids is that I would love to have kids as a baseline, but there’s a concern. Maybe there’s going to be a tradeoff or all this kind of stuff. But you see these extremely successful smart people who are friends of mine, who have kids and are really happy they have kids. So, that’s not peer pressure, that’s just a strong signal.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. It works for people.
Yeah. It works for people.
Lex Fridman
It works for people. And the same thing with Mac. It’s like I don’t see, fundamentally, I don’t like closed systems. So, fundamentally, I like Windows more because there’s much more freedom. Same with Android. There’s much more freedom. It’s much more customizable. But all the cool kids, the smart kids are using Mac and iPhone. It’s like, “All right, I need to give it a real chance,” especially for development, since more and more stuff is done in the cloud anyway. Anyway. But it’s funny to hear you say all the good stuff started happening. Maybe I’ll be like that guy too. When I switched to Mac, all the good stuff started happening.
It works for people. And the same thing with Mac. It’s like I don’t see, fundamentally, I don’t like closed systems. So, fundamentally, I like Windows more because there’s much more freedom. Same with Android. There’s much more freedom. It’s much more customizable. But all the cool kids, the smart kids are using Mac and iPhone. It’s like, “All right, I need to give it a real chance,” especially for development, since more and more stuff is done in the cloud anyway. Anyway. But it’s funny to hear you say all the good stuff started happening. Maybe I’ll be like that guy too. When I switched to Mac, all the good stuff started happening.
Pieter Levels
I think it’s just about the hardware. It’s not so much about the software. The hardware is so well-built, right? The keyboard.
I think it’s just about the hardware. It’s not so much about the software. The hardware is so well-built, right? The keyboard.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. But look at the keyboard I use.
Yeah. But look at the keyboard I use.
Pieter Levels
It is pretty cool.
It is pretty cool.
Lex Fridman
That’s one word for it. What’s your favorite place to work?
That’s one word for it. What’s your favorite place to work?
Pieter Levels
On the couch.
On the couch.
Lex Fridman
Does the couch matter? Is the couch at home or is it any couch?
Does the couch matter? Is the couch at home or is it any couch?
Pieter Levels
No, like hotel couch. In the room.
No, like hotel couch. In the room.
Lex Fridman
In the room.
In the room.
Pieter Levels
But I used to work very ergonomically with a standing desk and everything, perfect, eye height, screen, blah, blah, blah. And I felt like, man, this has to do with lifting too. I started getting RSI, like a repetitive strain injury, like tingling stuff. And it would go all the way on my back. And I was sitting in a coworking space like 6:00 AM, sun comes up and I’m working and I’m coding and I hear a sound or something. So, I look left and my neck gets stuck and I’m like, “Wow. Fuck.” And I’m like, “Am I dying? And I’m probably dying.”
But I used to work very ergonomically with a standing desk and everything, perfect, eye height, screen, blah, blah, blah. And I felt like, man, this has to do with lifting too. I started getting RSI, like a repetitive strain injury, like tingling stuff. And it would go all the way on my back. And I was sitting in a coworking space like 6:00 AM, sun comes up and I’m working and I’m coding and I hear a sound or something. So, I look left and my neck gets stuck and I’m like, “Wow. Fuck.” And I’m like, “Am I dying? And I’m probably dying.”
Lex Fridman
Yeah, probably dying.
Yeah, probably dying.
Pieter Levels
I don’t want to die in a coworking space. I’m going to go home and die in peace and honor. So, I closed my laptop and I put it in my backpack. And I walked to the street and got on my motorbike, went home and I lied down on a pillow with my legs up and stuff to get rid of this … Because it was my whole back. And it was because I was working like this all the time. So, I started getting a laptop stand everything ergonomically correct.
I don’t want to die in a coworking space. I’m going to go home and die in peace and honor. So, I closed my laptop and I put it in my backpack. And I walked to the street and got on my motorbike, went home and I lied down on a pillow with my legs up and stuff to get rid of this … Because it was my whole back. And it was because I was working like this all the time. So, I started getting a laptop stand everything ergonomically correct.
But then I started lifting. And since then, it seems like everything gets straightened out. Your posture, you’re more straight. And I’d never have RSI anymore, representative strain injury. Never tingling anymore. No pains and stuff. So then, I started working on the sofa and it’s great. It feels you’re close to the … I sit like this legs together and then a pillow and then a laptop, and then I work.
Lex Fridman
Are you leaning back?
Are you leaning back?
Pieter Levels
Together like legs and then-
Together like legs and then-
Lex Fridman
Where’s the mouse? Using the-
Where’s the mouse? Using the-
Pieter Levels
No. So, everything’s trackpad on the MacOS, on the MacBook. I used to have the Logitech MX mouse, the perfect ergonomic mouse-
No. So, everything’s trackpad on the MacOS, on the MacBook. I used to have the Logitech MX mouse, the perfect ergonomic mouse-
Lex Fridman
You’re just doing this little thing with the thing.
You’re just doing this little thing with the thing.
Pieter Levels
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
One screen?
One screen?
Pieter Levels
One screen. And I used to have three screens. So, I come from the, I know where people come from. I had all this stuff, but then I realized that having it all condensed in one laptop. It’s a 16-inch MacBook, so it’s quite big. But having it one there is amazing because you’re so close to the tools. You’re so close to what’s happening. It’s like working on a car or something. Man, if you have three screens, you can look here, look there, you get also neck injury actually.
One screen. And I used to have three screens. So, I come from the, I know where people come from. I had all this stuff, but then I realized that having it all condensed in one laptop. It’s a 16-inch MacBook, so it’s quite big. But having it one there is amazing because you’re so close to the tools. You’re so close to what’s happening. It’s like working on a car or something. Man, if you have three screens, you can look here, look there, you get also neck injury actually.
Lex Fridman
Well, I don’t know. This sounds like you’re part of a cult and you’re just trying to convince me. I mean, but it’s good to hear that you can be ultra-productive on a single screen. I mean, that’s crazy.
Well, I don’t know. This sounds like you’re part of a cult and you’re just trying to convince me. I mean, but it’s good to hear that you can be ultra-productive on a single screen. I mean, that’s crazy.
Pieter Levels
Command Tab. You Alt Tab. When it’s Alt Tab. MacOS is Command Tab, you can switch very fast.
Command Tab. You Alt Tab. When it’s Alt Tab. MacOS is Command Tab, you can switch very fast.
Lex Fridman
So, you have the entire screen is taken out by VS Code, say you look at the code. And then if you deploy a website, you what? Switch screen.
So, you have the entire screen is taken out by VS Code, say you look at the code. And then if you deploy a website, you what? Switch screen.
Pieter Levels
Command Tab to Chrome. I used to have this swipe screen. You could do different screen spaces. I was like, “Ah, it’s too difficult. Let’s just put it all on one screen on the MacBook.”
Command Tab to Chrome. I used to have this swipe screen. You could do different screen spaces. I was like, “Ah, it’s too difficult. Let’s just put it all on one screen on the MacBook.”
Lex Fridman
And you can be productive that way.
And you can be productive that way.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, very productive, yeah. More productive than before.
Yeah, very productive, yeah. More productive than before.
Lex Fridman
Interesting. Because I have three screens and two of them are vertical. On the side.
Interesting. Because I have three screens and two of them are vertical. On the side.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, the codes, right, yeah.
Yeah, the codes, right, yeah.
Lex Fridman
For the code, you can see a lot.
For the code, you can see a lot.
Pieter Levels
No, man, I love it. I love seeing it with friends. They have amazing battle stations, right, it’s called. It’s amazing. I want it, but I don’t want it.
No, man, I love it. I love seeing it with friends. They have amazing battle stations, right, it’s called. It’s amazing. I want it, but I don’t want it.
Lex Fridman
You like the constraints.
You like the constraints.
Pieter Levels
That’s it.
That’s it.
Lex Fridman
There’s some aspect of the constraints, which once you get good at it, you can focus your mind and you can.
There’s some aspect of the constraints, which once you get good at it, you can focus your mind and you can.
Pieter Levels
Man, I’m suspicious of more. Do you really need all the stuff? It might slow me down actually.
Man, I’m suspicious of more. Do you really need all the stuff? It might slow me down actually.
Lex Fridman
That’s a good way to put it. I’m suspicious of more. Me too. I’m suspicious of more in all ways, in all walks-
That’s a good way to put it. I’m suspicious of more. Me too. I’m suspicious of more in all ways, in all walks-
Pieter Levels
Because you can defend more. You can defend. Yeah. My developer, I make money. I need to get more screens. I need to be more efficient. And then you read stuff about Mythical Man-Month, where hiring more people slows down a software product project that’s famous. I think you can use that metaphor maybe for tools as well. Then I see friends just with gear acquisition syndrome that buying so much stuff, but they’re not that productive. They have the best, most beautiful battle stations, desktops, everything. They’re not that productive. And it’s also fun. It’s all from my laptop in a backpack. It’s nomad, minimalist.
Because you can defend more. You can defend. Yeah. My developer, I make money. I need to get more screens. I need to be more efficient. And then you read stuff about Mythical Man-Month, where hiring more people slows down a software product project that’s famous. I think you can use that metaphor maybe for tools as well. Then I see friends just with gear acquisition syndrome that buying so much stuff, but they’re not that productive. They have the best, most beautiful battle stations, desktops, everything. They’re not that productive. And it’s also fun. It’s all from my laptop in a backpack. It’s nomad, minimalist.
Productivity
Lex Fridman
Take me through the perfect ultra productive day in your life. Say where you get a lot of shit done and it’s all focused on getting shit done. When are you waking up? Is it a regular time? Super early, super late?
Take me through the perfect ultra productive day in your life. Say where you get a lot of shit done and it’s all focused on getting shit done. When are you waking up? Is it a regular time? Super early, super late?
Pieter Levels
Yes. So, I go to sleep at 2:00 AM usually, something like that and before 4:00 AM. But my girlfriend would go sleep midnight. So, we did a compromise like 2:00 AM. So, I wake up around 10:00, 11:00, no, more like 10:00. Shower, make coffee. I make coffee, like drip coffee, like the V60, the filter. And I boil water and then put the coffee in and chill, live with my girlfriend, and then open laptops, start coding, check what’s going on, bugs or whatever.
Yes. So, I go to sleep at 2:00 AM usually, something like that and before 4:00 AM. But my girlfriend would go sleep midnight. So, we did a compromise like 2:00 AM. So, I wake up around 10:00, 11:00, no, more like 10:00. Shower, make coffee. I make coffee, like drip coffee, like the V60, the filter. And I boil water and then put the coffee in and chill, live with my girlfriend, and then open laptops, start coding, check what’s going on, bugs or whatever.
Lex Fridman
How stretches of time are you able to just sit behind the computer coding?
How stretches of time are you able to just sit behind the computer coding?
Pieter Levels
So, I used to need really long stretches where I would do all-nighters and stuff to get shit done. But I’ve gotten trained to have more interruptions where I can-
So, I used to need really long stretches where I would do all-nighters and stuff to get shit done. But I’ve gotten trained to have more interruptions where I can-
Lex Fridman
Because you have to.
Because you have to.
Pieter Levels
This is life. There’s a lot of distractions. Your girlfriend asks stuff, people come over, whatever. So, I’m very fast now. I can lock in and lock out quite fast. And I heard people, developers or entrepreneurs with kids have the same thing. Before, they’re like, “Ah, I cannot work.” But they get used to it and they get really productive in short time because they only have 20 minutes. And then shit goes crazy again. So, another constraint, right?
This is life. There’s a lot of distractions. Your girlfriend asks stuff, people come over, whatever. So, I’m very fast now. I can lock in and lock out quite fast. And I heard people, developers or entrepreneurs with kids have the same thing. Before, they’re like, “Ah, I cannot work.” But they get used to it and they get really productive in short time because they only have 20 minutes. And then shit goes crazy again. So, another constraint, right?
Lex Fridman
Yeah. It’s funny.
Yeah. It’s funny.
Pieter Levels
So, I think that works for me. And then cook food and stuff. Have lunch, steak and chicken and whatever.
So, I think that works for me. And then cook food and stuff. Have lunch, steak and chicken and whatever.
Lex Fridman
You eat a bunch of times a day. So, you said coffee, what are you doing?
You eat a bunch of times a day. So, you said coffee, what are you doing?
Pieter Levels
Yeah, so a few hours later, cook foods. We get locally sourced meat and stuff and vegetables and cook that. And then second coffee and then go some more. Maybe go outside for lunch. You can mix fun stuff.
Yeah, so a few hours later, cook foods. We get locally sourced meat and stuff and vegetables and cook that. And then second coffee and then go some more. Maybe go outside for lunch. You can mix fun stuff.
Lex Fridman
How many hours are you saying a perfectly productive day you’re doing programming? If you were to kill it, are you doing all day basically?
How many hours are you saying a perfectly productive day you’re doing programming? If you were to kill it, are you doing all day basically?
Pieter Levels
You mean the special days where …
You mean the special days where …
Lex Fridman
Special days.
Special days.
Pieter Levels
… girlfriend leaves to Paris or something and you’re alone for a week at home, which is amazing. You can just code. It’s like you stay up all night and eat chocolates.
… girlfriend leaves to Paris or something and you’re alone for a week at home, which is amazing. You can just code. It’s like you stay up all night and eat chocolates.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, chocolate.
Yeah, chocolate.
Pieter Levels
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, okay. Let’s remove girlfriend from picture. Social life from picture. It’s just you.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, okay. Let’s remove girlfriend from picture. Social life from picture. It’s just you.
Pieter Levels
Man, that shit goes crazy.
Man, that shit goes crazy.
Lex Fridman
Because when shit goes crazy.
Because when shit goes crazy.
Pieter Levels
And now shit goes crazy.
And now shit goes crazy.
Lex Fridman
Okay. Let’s rewind. Are you still waking up? There’s coffee. There’s no girlfriend to talk to. There’s no-
Okay. Let’s rewind. Are you still waking up? There’s coffee. There’s no girlfriend to talk to. There’s no-
Pieter Levels
Now we wake up like 1:00 PM, 2:00 PM.
Now we wake up like 1:00 PM, 2:00 PM.
Lex Fridman
Because you went to bed at 6:00 PM.
Because you went to bed at 6:00 PM.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, because I was coding. I was finding some new AI shit. And I was studying it and it was amazing. And I cannot sleep because it’s too important. We need to stay awake. We need to see all of this. We need to make something now. But that’s the times I do make new stuff more. So, I think I have a friend, he actually books a hotel for a week to leave his … And he has a kid too. And his girlfriend and his kid stay in the house and he goes to another hotel. Sounds a little suspicious, right? Going to a hotel.
Yeah, because I was coding. I was finding some new AI shit. And I was studying it and it was amazing. And I cannot sleep because it’s too important. We need to stay awake. We need to see all of this. We need to make something now. But that’s the times I do make new stuff more. So, I think I have a friend, he actually books a hotel for a week to leave his … And he has a kid too. And his girlfriend and his kid stay in the house and he goes to another hotel. Sounds a little suspicious, right? Going to a hotel.
But all he does is writing or coding. He’s a writer and he needs this alone time, this silence. And I think for this flow state, it’s true. I’m better maintaining stuff when there’s a lot of disruptions than creating new stuff. I need this. It’s common, this flow state, this uninterrupted period of time. So, yeah, I wake up 1:00, 2: 00 PM, still coffee, shower, we still shower. And then just code non-stop. Maybe my friend comes over, comes over anyway.
Lex Fridman
Just some distraction.
Just some distraction.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. Also, Andre, he codes too, so he comes over. We code together. We listen. It starts going back to the [inaudible 03:05:17] days. Yeah, coworking days.
Yeah. Also, Andre, he codes too, so he comes over. We code together. We listen. It starts going back to the [inaudible 03:05:17] days. Yeah, coworking days.
Lex Fridman
So, you’re not really working with him, but you’re just both working.
So, you’re not really working with him, but you’re just both working.
Pieter Levels
Because it’s nice to have the vibe where you both sit together on the couch and coding on something and actually, it’s mostly silent or there’s music and sometimes you ask something, but generally, you are really locked in.
Because it’s nice to have the vibe where you both sit together on the couch and coding on something and actually, it’s mostly silent or there’s music and sometimes you ask something, but generally, you are really locked in.
Lex Fridman
What music are you listening to?
What music are you listening to?
Pieter Levels
I think techno, like YouTube techno. There’s a channel called HOR with a umlaut, like H-O like double dot. It’s Berlin techno, whatever. They film it in a toilet with white tiles and stuff. And very cool. And they always have very good industrial-
I think techno, like YouTube techno. There’s a channel called HOR with a umlaut, like H-O like double dot. It’s Berlin techno, whatever. They film it in a toilet with white tiles and stuff. And very cool. And they always have very good industrial-
Lex Fridman
Industrial, so fast-paced heavy.
Industrial, so fast-paced heavy.
Pieter Levels
Kind of aggressive.
Kind of aggressive.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. That’s not distracting to your brain?
Yeah. That’s not distracting to your brain?
Pieter Levels
No, it’s amazing. I think distracting, man, jazz. I listen, coffee jazz with my girlfriend when I wake up and it’s kind like this piano starts getting annoying. It’s like it’s too many tones. It’s like too many things going on. This industrial techno is like these African rain dances. It’s this transcendental trance.
No, it’s amazing. I think distracting, man, jazz. I listen, coffee jazz with my girlfriend when I wake up and it’s kind like this piano starts getting annoying. It’s like it’s too many tones. It’s like too many things going on. This industrial techno is like these African rain dances. It’s this transcendental trance.
Lex Fridman
That’s interesting because I actually mostly now listen to brown noise. Noise.
That’s interesting because I actually mostly now listen to brown noise. Noise.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. Wow.
Yeah. Wow.
Lex Fridman
Pretty loud.
Pretty loud.
Pieter Levels
Wow.
Wow.
Lex Fridman
And one of the things you learn is your brain gets used to whatever. So, I’m sure to techno, if I actually give it a real chance, my brain would get used to it. But with noise, what happens is is something happens to your brain. I think there’s a science to it, but I don’t really care. You just have to be a scientist of one, study yourself, your own brain. For me, it does something. I discovered it right away when I tried it for the first time. After about a couple of minutes, everything, every distraction just disappears. And it goes like, shh. You can hold focus on things really well. It’s weird. You can really focus on a thing. It doesn’t really matter what that is. I think that’s what people achieve with meditation. You can focus on your breath, for example.
And one of the things you learn is your brain gets used to whatever. So, I’m sure to techno, if I actually give it a real chance, my brain would get used to it. But with noise, what happens is is something happens to your brain. I think there’s a science to it, but I don’t really care. You just have to be a scientist of one, study yourself, your own brain. For me, it does something. I discovered it right away when I tried it for the first time. After about a couple of minutes, everything, every distraction just disappears. And it goes like, shh. You can hold focus on things really well. It’s weird. You can really focus on a thing. It doesn’t really matter what that is. I think that’s what people achieve with meditation. You can focus on your breath, for example.
Pieter Levels
It’s just normal brown noise. It’s not like binaural.
It’s just normal brown noise. It’s not like binaural.
Lex Fridman
No.
No.
Pieter Levels
Just normal brown noise.
Just normal brown noise.
Lex Fridman
It’s like, “Shh.”
It’s like, “Shh.”
Pieter Levels
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
White noise, I think it’s the same. It’s like big noise, white noise. Brown noise, I think it’s like bassier.
White noise, I think it’s the same. It’s like big noise, white noise. Brown noise, I think it’s like bassier.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. It’s more diffused. More dampened.
Yeah. It’s more diffused. More dampened.
Lex Fridman
Dampened.
Dampened.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, I can see that.
Yeah, I can see that.
Lex Fridman
No sharpness.
No sharpness.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, sharp brightness.
Yeah, sharp brightness.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, brightness.
Yeah, brightness.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, yeah. I can see that. And you use a headphone, right?
Yeah, yeah. I can see that. And you use a headphone, right?
Lex Fridman
Yeah, headphones.
Yeah, headphones.
Pieter Levels
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
I actually walk around in life often with brown noise.
I actually walk around in life often with brown noise.
Pieter Levels
Dude, that’s like psychopath shit, but it’s cool.
Dude, that’s like psychopath shit, but it’s cool.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, yeah, yeah. When I murder people, it helps. It drowns out their screams.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. When I murder people, it helps. It drowns out their screams.
Pieter Levels
Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ.
Lex Fridman
I said too much.
I said too much.
Pieter Levels
Man, I’m going to try brown noise.
Man, I’m going to try brown noise.
Lex Fridman
With the murder or for the coding? Yeah.
With the murder or for the coding? Yeah.
Pieter Levels
For the coding, yeah.
For the coding, yeah.
Lex Fridman
Okay, good. Try it. Try it. But you have to with everything else, give it a real chance.
Okay, good. Try it. Try it. But you have to with everything else, give it a real chance.
Pieter Levels
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
I also, like I said, do techno-y type stuff, electronic music on top of the brown noise. But then control the speed, because the faster it goes, the more anxiety. So, if I really need to get shit done, especially with programming, I’ll have a beat. And it’s great. It’s cool. I say it’s cool to play those little tricks with your mind to study yourself. I usually don’t like to have people around because when people, even if they’re working, I don’t know, I like people too much. They’re interesting.
I also, like I said, do techno-y type stuff, electronic music on top of the brown noise. But then control the speed, because the faster it goes, the more anxiety. So, if I really need to get shit done, especially with programming, I’ll have a beat. And it’s great. It’s cool. I say it’s cool to play those little tricks with your mind to study yourself. I usually don’t like to have people around because when people, even if they’re working, I don’t know, I like people too much. They’re interesting.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, In coworking space, I would just start talking too much.
Yeah, In coworking space, I would just start talking too much.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. So, there’s a source of distraction.
Yeah. So, there’s a source of distraction.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, in the coworking space, we would do a money pot, like a mug. So, if you would work for 45 minutes and then if you would say a pair of words, you would get a fine, which is like $1. So, you’d put $1 to say, “Hey, what’s up?” So, $3 you put in the mug. And then 15 minutes free time, we can party whatever. And then 45 minutes again working and that worked. But you need to shut people up or they…
Yeah, in the coworking space, we would do a money pot, like a mug. So, if you would work for 45 minutes and then if you would say a pair of words, you would get a fine, which is like $1. So, you’d put $1 to say, “Hey, what’s up?” So, $3 you put in the mug. And then 15 minutes free time, we can party whatever. And then 45 minutes again working and that worked. But you need to shut people up or they…
Lex Fridman
I think there’s an intimacy in being silent together that maybe I’m uncomfortable with, but you need to make yourself vulnerable and actually do it with close friends to just sit there in silence for long periods of time and doing a thing.
I think there’s an intimacy in being silent together that maybe I’m uncomfortable with, but you need to make yourself vulnerable and actually do it with close friends to just sit there in silence for long periods of time and doing a thing.
Pieter Levels
Dude, I watched this video of this podcast. It was like this Buddhism podcast with people meditating and they were interviewing each other or whatever like a podcast. And suddenly after a question, it’s like, “Yeah, yeah.” And they were just silent for three minutes and then they said, “That was amazing. Yeah, that was amazing.” I was like, “Wow, pretty cool.”
Dude, I watched this video of this podcast. It was like this Buddhism podcast with people meditating and they were interviewing each other or whatever like a podcast. And suddenly after a question, it’s like, “Yeah, yeah.” And they were just silent for three minutes and then they said, “That was amazing. Yeah, that was amazing.” I was like, “Wow, pretty cool.”
Lex Fridman
Elon’s like that. And I really liked that. You’ll ask a question, I don’t know, what’s a perfectly productive day for you? I just asked. And you just sit there for 30 seconds thinking.
Elon’s like that. And I really liked that. You’ll ask a question, I don’t know, what’s a perfectly productive day for you? I just asked. And you just sit there for 30 seconds thinking.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. He thinks.
Yeah. He thinks.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Pieter Levels
That’s so cool. I wish I could think more about … But I want to show you my heart. I want to go straight from my heart to my mouth to saying the real thing. And the more I think, the more I start filtering myself and I want to just throw it out there immediately.
That’s so cool. I wish I could think more about … But I want to show you my heart. I want to go straight from my heart to my mouth to saying the real thing. And the more I think, the more I start filtering myself and I want to just throw it out there immediately.
Lex Fridman
I do that more with team. I think he has a lot of practice in that. I do that as well. And in team setting, when you’re thinking, brainstorming and you allow yourself to just think in silence. Because even in meetings, people want to talk. It’s like no, you think before you speak. And it’s okay to be silent together. If you allow yourself the room to do that, you can actually come up with really good ideas.
I do that more with team. I think he has a lot of practice in that. I do that as well. And in team setting, when you’re thinking, brainstorming and you allow yourself to just think in silence. Because even in meetings, people want to talk. It’s like no, you think before you speak. And it’s okay to be silent together. If you allow yourself the room to do that, you can actually come up with really good ideas.
Pieter Levels
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
So, okay, this perfect day, how much caffeine are you consuming in this day?
So, okay, this perfect day, how much caffeine are you consuming in this day?
Pieter Levels
Man, too much. Because normally two cups of coffee. But on this perfect day, we go to four maybe. So, we’re starting to hit the anxiety levels.
Man, too much. Because normally two cups of coffee. But on this perfect day, we go to four maybe. So, we’re starting to hit the anxiety levels.
Lex Fridman
So, four cups is a lot for you?
So, four cups is a lot for you?
Pieter Levels
Well, I think my coffees are quite strong when I make them. It’s like 20 grams of coffee powder in the V60. So, my friends call them nuclear coffee because it’s quite heavy.
Well, I think my coffees are quite strong when I make them. It’s like 20 grams of coffee powder in the V60. So, my friends call them nuclear coffee because it’s quite heavy.
Lex Fridman
Super strong.
Super strong.
Pieter Levels
It’s quite strong. But it’s nice to hit that anxiety level where you’re almost panic attack, but you’re not there yet. But that’s like, man, it’s super locked in. Just like, it’s amazing. But I mean, there’s a space for that in my life. But I think it’s great for making new stuff. It’s amazing.
It’s quite strong. But it’s nice to hit that anxiety level where you’re almost panic attack, but you’re not there yet. But that’s like, man, it’s super locked in. Just like, it’s amazing. But I mean, there’s a space for that in my life. But I think it’s great for making new stuff. It’s amazing.
Lex Fridman
Starting from scratch, creating a new thing.
Starting from scratch, creating a new thing.
Pieter Levels
Yes. I think girlfriends should let their guys go away for two weeks. Every few, no, every year. At least. Maybe every quarter, I don’t know. And just sit and make some without, they’re amazing. But no-
Yes. I think girlfriends should let their guys go away for two weeks. Every few, no, every year. At least. Maybe every quarter, I don’t know. And just sit and make some without, they’re amazing. But no-
Pieter Levels
Make some shits without… They’re amazing, but no disturbances. Just be alone, and then people can make something very amazing.
Make some shits without… They’re amazing, but no disturbances. Just be alone, and then people can make something very amazing.
Lex Fridman
Just wearing cowboy hats in the mountains like we showed before.
Just wearing cowboy hats in the mountains like we showed before.
Pieter Levels
Exactly, we can do that.
Exactly, we can do that.
Lex Fridman
There’s a movie about that.
There’s a movie about that.
Pieter Levels
With the laptops.
With the laptops.
Lex Fridman
They didn’t do much programming though.
They didn’t do much programming though.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, you can do a little bit of that.
Yeah, you can do a little bit of that.
Lex Fridman
Okay.
Okay.
Pieter Levels
And then a little bit of shipping. Can do both.
And then a little bit of shipping. Can do both.
Lex Fridman
It’s different, Broke Back Mountain.
It’s different, Broke Back Mountain.
Pieter Levels
But they need to allow us to go. You need like a man cave, right?
But they need to allow us to go. You need like a man cave, right?
Lex Fridman
Yeah, to ship.
Yeah, to ship.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, to ship.
Yeah, to ship.
Lex Fridman
Get shit done. Yeah. It’s a balance. Okay, cool. What about sleep, naps and all that? You’re not sleeping much?
Get shit done. Yeah. It’s a balance. Okay, cool. What about sleep, naps and all that? You’re not sleeping much?
Pieter Levels
I don’t do naps in a day. I think power naps are good, but I’m never tired anymore in the day. Man, it’s also because of gym, I’m not tired. I’m tired when I want to… When it’s night, I need to sleep.
I don’t do naps in a day. I think power naps are good, but I’m never tired anymore in the day. Man, it’s also because of gym, I’m not tired. I’m tired when I want to… When it’s night, I need to sleep.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. Me, I love naps.
Yeah. Me, I love naps.
Pieter Levels
I sleep very well.
I sleep very well.
Lex Fridman
I love naps.
I love naps.
Pieter Levels
Yeah?
Yeah?
Lex Fridman
I don’t care. I don’t know. I don’t know why. Brain shuts off, turns on. I don’t know if it’s healthy or not. It just works.
I don’t care. I don’t know. I don’t know why. Brain shuts off, turns on. I don’t know if it’s healthy or not. It just works.
Pieter Levels
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
I think with anything, mental, physical, you have to be a student of your own body and know what the limits are. You have to be skeptical taking advice from the internet in general, because a lot of the advice is just a good baseline for the general population.
I think with anything, mental, physical, you have to be a student of your own body and know what the limits are. You have to be skeptical taking advice from the internet in general, because a lot of the advice is just a good baseline for the general population.
Pieter Levels
It’s not personalized, yeah.
It’s not personalized, yeah.
Lex Fridman
But then you have to become a student of your own body, of your own self, of how you work. Yeah. I’ve done a lot. For me, fasting was an interesting one because I used to eat a bunch of meals a day, especially when I was lifting heavy, because everybody says that you have to eat a lot, multiple meals a day, but I realized I can get much stronger, feel much better if I eat once or twice a day.
But then you have to become a student of your own body, of your own self, of how you work. Yeah. I’ve done a lot. For me, fasting was an interesting one because I used to eat a bunch of meals a day, especially when I was lifting heavy, because everybody says that you have to eat a lot, multiple meals a day, but I realized I can get much stronger, feel much better if I eat once or twice a day.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, me too. Yeah.
Yeah, me too. Yeah.
Lex Fridman
It’s crazy.
It’s crazy.
Pieter Levels
I never understood the small meal thing. Yeah, it didn’t work for me.
I never understood the small meal thing. Yeah, it didn’t work for me.
Lex Fridman
Let me just ask you, it’d be interesting if you can comment on some of the other products you’ve created. We talked about NomadList, Interior AI, Photo AI, Therapist AI. What’s Remote OK?
Let me just ask you, it’d be interesting if you can comment on some of the other products you’ve created. We talked about NomadList, Interior AI, Photo AI, Therapist AI. What’s Remote OK?
Pieter Levels
It’s a job board for remote jobs. Because back then, 10 years ago, there was job boards, but it was not really specifically remote job, job boards. So I made one. First on NomadList, I made Nomad Jobs, like a page. And a lot of companies started hiring and it paid for job posts. So I spin it off to Remote OK, and now it’s the number one or number two biggest remote job boards. And it’s also fully automated. People just post a job and people apply. It has profiles as well. It’s like LinkedIn for remote work.
It’s a job board for remote jobs. Because back then, 10 years ago, there was job boards, but it was not really specifically remote job, job boards. So I made one. First on NomadList, I made Nomad Jobs, like a page. And a lot of companies started hiring and it paid for job posts. So I spin it off to Remote OK, and now it’s the number one or number two biggest remote job boards. And it’s also fully automated. People just post a job and people apply. It has profiles as well. It’s like LinkedIn for remote work.
Lex Fridman
Just focus on remote only?
Just focus on remote only?
Pieter Levels
Yeah. It’s essentially like a simple job board. I discovered job boards are way more complicated than you think, but yeah, it’s a job board for remote jobs. But the nice thing is you can charge a lot of money for job posts. Man, it’s good money, B2B. You start with 2.99, but at the peak, when the feds started printing money like 2021, I was making 140K a month with Remote OK with just job posts. And I started adding crazy upsells, like rainbow-colored job posts. You can add your background image. It’s just upsells, man. And you charge a thousand dollars for an upsell. It was crazy. All these companies just upsell, upsell. Yeah, we want everything. Job posts would cost $3,000, $4,000. And I was like, “This is good business.” And then the feds stopped printing money and it all went down, and it went down to like 10K a month from 140. Now it’s back, I think it’s 40. It was good times.
Yeah. It’s essentially like a simple job board. I discovered job boards are way more complicated than you think, but yeah, it’s a job board for remote jobs. But the nice thing is you can charge a lot of money for job posts. Man, it’s good money, B2B. You start with 2.99, but at the peak, when the feds started printing money like 2021, I was making 140K a month with Remote OK with just job posts. And I started adding crazy upsells, like rainbow-colored job posts. You can add your background image. It’s just upsells, man. And you charge a thousand dollars for an upsell. It was crazy. All these companies just upsell, upsell. Yeah, we want everything. Job posts would cost $3,000, $4,000. And I was like, “This is good business.” And then the feds stopped printing money and it all went down, and it went down to like 10K a month from 140. Now it’s back, I think it’s 40. It was good times.
Minimalism
Lex Fridman
I got to ask you about, back to the digital nomad life, you wrote a blog post on the reset and in general, just giving away everything, living a minimalist life.
I got to ask you about, back to the digital nomad life, you wrote a blog post on the reset and in general, just giving away everything, living a minimalist life.
Pieter Levels
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
What did it take to do that, to get rid of everything?
What did it take to do that, to get rid of everything?
Pieter Levels
10 years ago was this trend in the blog. Back then, blogs were so popular, it was like a blogosphere and it was like the 100 Things Challenge.
10 years ago was this trend in the blog. Back then, blogs were so popular, it was like a blogosphere and it was like the 100 Things Challenge.
Lex Fridman
What is that, the 100 Things Challenge?
What is that, the 100 Things Challenge?
Pieter Levels
I mean, it’s ridiculous, but you write down every object you have in your house and you count it. You make a spreadsheet and you’re like, “Okay, I have 500 things.” You need to get it down to 100. Why? It was just the trend. So I did it. I started selling stuff, started throwing away stuff. And I did MDMA and ecstasy 2012. And after that trip, I felt so different and I felt like I had to start throwing shit away. I swear.
I mean, it’s ridiculous, but you write down every object you have in your house and you count it. You make a spreadsheet and you’re like, “Okay, I have 500 things.” You need to get it down to 100. Why? It was just the trend. So I did it. I started selling stuff, started throwing away stuff. And I did MDMA and ecstasy 2012. And after that trip, I felt so different and I felt like I had to start throwing shit away. I swear.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Pieter Levels
And I started throwing shit away and I felt that it was almost like the drug sending me to a path of, you need to throw all your shit away. You need to go on a journey. You need to get out of here. And that’s what the MDMA did, I think. Yeah.
And I started throwing shit away and I felt that it was almost like the drug sending me to a path of, you need to throw all your shit away. You need to go on a journey. You need to get out of here. And that’s what the MDMA did, I think. Yeah.
Lex Fridman
How hard is it to get down to 100 items?
How hard is it to get down to 100 items?
Pieter Levels
Well, you need to sell your PC and stuff. You need to go on eBay, and then… Man, going eBay selling all your stuff is very interesting because you discover society. You meet the craziest people. You meet every range from rich to poor, everybody comes to your house to buy stuff. It’s so funny. It’s so interesting. I recommend everybody do this.
Well, you need to sell your PC and stuff. You need to go on eBay, and then… Man, going eBay selling all your stuff is very interesting because you discover society. You meet the craziest people. You meet every range from rich to poor, everybody comes to your house to buy stuff. It’s so funny. It’s so interesting. I recommend everybody do this.
Lex Fridman
Just to meet people that want your shit.
Just to meet people that want your shit.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. I didn’t know. I was living in Amsterdam and I didn’t know I have my own subculture or whatever, and I discovered the Dutch people as they are from eBay. So I sold everything.
Yeah. I didn’t know. I was living in Amsterdam and I didn’t know I have my own subculture or whatever, and I discovered the Dutch people as they are from eBay. So I sold everything.
Lex Fridman
What’s the weirdest thing you had to sell and you had to find a buyer for? Not the weirdest, but what’s memorable?
What’s the weirdest thing you had to sell and you had to find a buyer for? Not the weirdest, but what’s memorable?
Pieter Levels
So back then, I was making music and we would make music videos with a Canon 5D camera. Back then, everybody’s making films and music videos of that. And we bought it with my friends and stuff, and it was kind of like I had to sell this thing too, because it was very expensive, like 6K or something. But it meant that selling this, meant that we wouldn’t make music videos anymore. I would leave Holland. This stuff we were working on would end. And I was saying, “This music video stuff, we’re not getting big, we’re not getting famous in this or successful. We need to stop doing this.” This music production also, it’s not really working. And I felt very bad for my friends because we would work together on this and to sell this camera that we’d make stuff with and-
So back then, I was making music and we would make music videos with a Canon 5D camera. Back then, everybody’s making films and music videos of that. And we bought it with my friends and stuff, and it was kind of like I had to sell this thing too, because it was very expensive, like 6K or something. But it meant that selling this, meant that we wouldn’t make music videos anymore. I would leave Holland. This stuff we were working on would end. And I was saying, “This music video stuff, we’re not getting big, we’re not getting famous in this or successful. We need to stop doing this.” This music production also, it’s not really working. And I felt very bad for my friends because we would work together on this and to sell this camera that we’d make stuff with and-
Lex Fridman
It was a hard goodbye.
It was a hard goodbye.
Pieter Levels
It was just a camera, but it felt like, “Sorry guys, it doesn’t work and I need to go.”
It was just a camera, but it felt like, “Sorry guys, it doesn’t work and I need to go.”
Lex Fridman
Who bought it? Do you remember? It was some guy who couldn’t possibly understand the journey.
Who bought it? Do you remember? It was some guy who couldn’t possibly understand the journey.
Pieter Levels
The motion of it.
The motion of it.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Pieter Levels
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
He just showed up here, “Here’s the money. Thanks.”
He just showed up here, “Here’s the money. Thanks.”
Pieter Levels
Yeah. But it was cutting your life like, “This shit ends now and now we’re going to do new stuff.”
Yeah. But it was cutting your life like, “This shit ends now and now we’re going to do new stuff.”
Lex Fridman
I think it’s beautiful. I did that twice in my life. I gave away everything, everything, everything, like down to just pants, underwear, backpack. I think it’s important to do. It shows you what’s important.
I think it’s beautiful. I did that twice in my life. I gave away everything, everything, everything, like down to just pants, underwear, backpack. I think it’s important to do. It shows you what’s important.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. I think that’s what I learned from it. You learn that you can live with very little objects, very little stuff, but there’s a counter to it. You lean more on the stuff, on the services. Right? For example, you don’t need a car, you use Uber, right? Or you don’t need kitchen stuff because you go to restaurants when you’re traveling. So you lean more on other people’s services, but you spend money on that as well. So that’s good.
Yeah. I think that’s what I learned from it. You learn that you can live with very little objects, very little stuff, but there’s a counter to it. You lean more on the stuff, on the services. Right? For example, you don’t need a car, you use Uber, right? Or you don’t need kitchen stuff because you go to restaurants when you’re traveling. So you lean more on other people’s services, but you spend money on that as well. So that’s good.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, but just letting go of material possessions, which gives a kind of freedom to how you move about the world. It gives you complete freedom to go into another city, to…
Yeah, but just letting go of material possessions, which gives a kind of freedom to how you move about the world. It gives you complete freedom to go into another city, to…
Pieter Levels
With your backpack.
With your backpack.
Lex Fridman
With a backpack. There’s a freedom to it. There’s something about material possessions and having a place and all that, that ties you down a little bit spiritually. It’s good to take a leap out into the world, especially when you’re younger, to like-
With a backpack. There’s a freedom to it. There’s something about material possessions and having a place and all that, that ties you down a little bit spiritually. It’s good to take a leap out into the world, especially when you’re younger, to like-
Pieter Levels
Man, I recommend if you’re 18, you get out of high school, do this, go travel and build some internet stuff, whatever. Bring your laptop and it’s an amazing experience. Five years ago, I’d still go to university, but now I’m thinking like, “No, maybe skip university.” Just go first, travel around a little bit, figure some stuff out. You can go back to university when you’re 25. You can like, “Okay, now I learned to be successful in business.” You have money. At least now, you can choose what you really want to study. Because people at 18, they go study what’s probably good for the job market. Right? So it probably makes more sense. If you want that, go travel, build some businesses and go back to university if you want.
Man, I recommend if you’re 18, you get out of high school, do this, go travel and build some internet stuff, whatever. Bring your laptop and it’s an amazing experience. Five years ago, I’d still go to university, but now I’m thinking like, “No, maybe skip university.” Just go first, travel around a little bit, figure some stuff out. You can go back to university when you’re 25. You can like, “Okay, now I learned to be successful in business.” You have money. At least now, you can choose what you really want to study. Because people at 18, they go study what’s probably good for the job market. Right? So it probably makes more sense. If you want that, go travel, build some businesses and go back to university if you want.
Lex Fridman
So one of the biggest uses of a university is the networking. You gain friends, you meet people. It’s a forcing function to meet people. But if you can meet people out into the world by travel-
So one of the biggest uses of a university is the networking. You gain friends, you meet people. It’s a forcing function to meet people. But if you can meet people out into the world by travel-
Pieter Levels
Man, and you meet so many different cultures.
Man, and you meet so many different cultures.
Lex Fridman
I mean, the problem for me is if I traveled at that young age, I’m attracted to people at the outskirts of the world. For me-
I mean, the problem for me is if I traveled at that young age, I’m attracted to people at the outskirts of the world. For me-
Pieter Levels
Where?
Where?
Lex Fridman
No, not geographically.
No, not geographically.
Pieter Levels
Oh, the subcultures.
Oh, the subcultures.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, the weirdos, the darkness.
Yeah, the weirdos, the darkness.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, me too.
Yeah, me too.
Lex Fridman
But that might not be the best networking at 18 years old.
But that might not be the best networking at 18 years old.
Pieter Levels
No, but, man, if you’re smart about it, you can stay safe. And I met so many weirdos from traveling. That’s how travel works. If you really let loose, you meet the craziest people and it’s the most interesting people. It’s just I cannot recommend it enough.
No, but, man, if you’re smart about it, you can stay safe. And I met so many weirdos from traveling. That’s how travel works. If you really let loose, you meet the craziest people and it’s the most interesting people. It’s just I cannot recommend it enough.
Lex Fridman
Well see, the thing is that when you’re 18, I feel like depending on your personality, you have to learn both how to be a weirdo and how to be normie. You still have to learn how to fit into society. For a person like me, for example, who’s always an outcast, there’s always a danger for going full outcast. And that’s a harder life. If you go full artists and full darkness, it’s just a harder life.
Well see, the thing is that when you’re 18, I feel like depending on your personality, you have to learn both how to be a weirdo and how to be normie. You still have to learn how to fit into society. For a person like me, for example, who’s always an outcast, there’s always a danger for going full outcast. And that’s a harder life. If you go full artists and full darkness, it’s just a harder life.
Pieter Levels
You can come back, you can come back to normie.
You can come back, you can come back to normie.
Lex Fridman
That’s a skill. I think you have to learn how to fit into polite society.
That’s a skill. I think you have to learn how to fit into polite society.
Pieter Levels
But I was a very strange outcast as well. And I’m more adaptable to normie now.
But I was a very strange outcast as well. And I’m more adaptable to normie now.
Lex Fridman
You learned it. Yeah.
You learned it. Yeah.
Pieter Levels
After 30s, you’re like… Yeah.
After 30s, you’re like… Yeah.
Lex Fridman
But I mean, it’s a skill you have to learn.
But I mean, it’s a skill you have to learn.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. Man, I feel also that you start as an outcast, but the more you work on yourself, the less shit you have. You start becoming more normie because you become more chill with yourself and more happy and it makes you uninteresting, right?
Yeah. Man, I feel also that you start as an outcast, but the more you work on yourself, the less shit you have. You start becoming more normie because you become more chill with yourself and more happy and it makes you uninteresting, right?
Lex Fridman
Yes, yes, yes.
Yes, yes, yes.
Pieter Levels
The crazy people are always the most interesting. If you’ve solved your internal struggles and your therapy and stuff and you become… It’s not so interesting any more maybe.
The crazy people are always the most interesting. If you’ve solved your internal struggles and your therapy and stuff and you become… It’s not so interesting any more maybe.
Lex Fridman
You don’t have to be broken to be interesting, I guess is what I’m saying.
You don’t have to be broken to be interesting, I guess is what I’m saying.
Pieter Levels
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
What kind of things were left when you minimalized?
What kind of things were left when you minimalized?
Pieter Levels
So the backpack, Macbook, toothbrush, some clothes, underwear, socks. You don’t need a lot of clothes in Asia because it’s hot. So you just wear swim pants, swim shorts, you walk around flip-flops. So very basic, T-shit. And I go to the laundromat and wash my stuff. And I think it was like 50 things or something. Yeah.
So the backpack, Macbook, toothbrush, some clothes, underwear, socks. You don’t need a lot of clothes in Asia because it’s hot. So you just wear swim pants, swim shorts, you walk around flip-flops. So very basic, T-shit. And I go to the laundromat and wash my stuff. And I think it was like 50 things or something. Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, it’s nice. As I mentioned to you, there’s the show alone. They really test you because you only get 10 items and you have to survive out in the wilderness, and an ax. Everybody brings an ax. Some people also have a saw, but usually, Axe does the job. You basically have to, in order to build a shelter, you have to cut down and cut the trees and make-
Yeah, it’s nice. As I mentioned to you, there’s the show alone. They really test you because you only get 10 items and you have to survive out in the wilderness, and an ax. Everybody brings an ax. Some people also have a saw, but usually, Axe does the job. You basically have to, in order to build a shelter, you have to cut down and cut the trees and make-
Pieter Levels
Learned in Minecraft.
Learned in Minecraft.
Lex Fridman
Everything I learned about life, I learned in Minecraft, bro. Yeah, yeah. It’s nice to create those constraints for yourself, to understand what matters to you, and also, how to be in this world. And one of the ways to do that is just to live a minimalist life. But some people, I’ve met people that really enjoy material possessions and that brings them happiness. And that’s a beautiful thing. For me, it doesn’t, but people are different.
Everything I learned about life, I learned in Minecraft, bro. Yeah, yeah. It’s nice to create those constraints for yourself, to understand what matters to you, and also, how to be in this world. And one of the ways to do that is just to live a minimalist life. But some people, I’ve met people that really enjoy material possessions and that brings them happiness. And that’s a beautiful thing. For me, it doesn’t, but people are different.
Pieter Levels
It gives me happiness for two weeks.
It gives me happiness for two weeks.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Pieter Levels
I’m very quickly adapting to a baseline hedonistic adaptation very fast.
I’m very quickly adapting to a baseline hedonistic adaptation very fast.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Pieter Levels
But man, if you look at the studies, most people get a new car, six months, get a new house, six months. You just feel the same. You’re like, “Wow, should I buy all the stuff?” Studying hedonistic adaptation made me think a lot about minimalism.
But man, if you look at the studies, most people get a new car, six months, get a new house, six months. You just feel the same. You’re like, “Wow, should I buy all the stuff?” Studying hedonistic adaptation made me think a lot about minimalism.
Lex Fridman
And so, you don’t even need to go through the whole journey of getting it. Just focus on the thing that’s more permanent.
And so, you don’t even need to go through the whole journey of getting it. Just focus on the thing that’s more permanent.
Pieter Levels
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Like building shit.
Like building shit.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. People around you, people you love, nice food, nice experiences, meaningful work, exercise, those things make you happy, I think. Make me happy for sure.
Yeah. People around you, people you love, nice food, nice experiences, meaningful work, exercise, those things make you happy, I think. Make me happy for sure.
Emails
Lex Fridman
You wrote a blog post, “Why I’m unreachable and maybe you should be too.” What’s your strategy in communicating with people?
You wrote a blog post, “Why I’m unreachable and maybe you should be too.” What’s your strategy in communicating with people?
Pieter Levels
Yeah. So when I wrote that, I was getting so many DMs as you probably have a million times more. And people were getting angry that I wasn’t responding. And I was like, “Okay, I’ll just close down these DMs completely.” Then people got angry that I closed my DMs down, that I’m not like, man of the people.
Yeah. So when I wrote that, I was getting so many DMs as you probably have a million times more. And people were getting angry that I wasn’t responding. And I was like, “Okay, I’ll just close down these DMs completely.” Then people got angry that I closed my DMs down, that I’m not like, man of the people.
Lex Fridman
You’ve changed, man.
You’ve changed, man.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, you’ve changed, like this… And I’ll explain why. I just don’t have the time in a day to answer every question. And also, people send you crazy shit, man, like stalkers and people write their whole life story for you, and then ask you for advice. Man, I have no idea. I’m not a therapist. I don’t know. I don’t know this stuff.
Yeah, you’ve changed, like this… And I’ll explain why. I just don’t have the time in a day to answer every question. And also, people send you crazy shit, man, like stalkers and people write their whole life story for you, and then ask you for advice. Man, I have no idea. I’m not a therapist. I don’t know. I don’t know this stuff.
Lex Fridman
But also, beautiful stuff.
But also, beautiful stuff.
Pieter Levels
No, absolutely sure.
No, absolutely sure.
Lex Fridman
Like life story. I’ve posted a coffee forum if you wanted to have a coffee with me, and I’ve gotten an extremely large number of submissions. And when I look at them, there’s just beautiful people in there, beautiful human beings and really powerful stories. And it breaks my heart that I won’t get to meet those people. So there’s part of it is just like, there’s only so much bandwidth to truly see other humans and help them or understand them, or hear them, or see them.
Like life story. I’ve posted a coffee forum if you wanted to have a coffee with me, and I’ve gotten an extremely large number of submissions. And when I look at them, there’s just beautiful people in there, beautiful human beings and really powerful stories. And it breaks my heart that I won’t get to meet those people. So there’s part of it is just like, there’s only so much bandwidth to truly see other humans and help them or understand them, or hear them, or see them.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. I have this problem that I try, I want to try help people and also like, “Oh, let’s make startups,” and whatever. And I’ve learned over the years that generally for me… And it sounds maybe bad, but I helped my friend Andre, for example. He came up to me in the coworking space. That’s how I met him. And he said, “I want to learn to code. I want to do startups. How do we do it?” I said, “Okay, let’s go, install Nginx. Let’s start coding.”
Yeah. I have this problem that I try, I want to try help people and also like, “Oh, let’s make startups,” and whatever. And I’ve learned over the years that generally for me… And it sounds maybe bad, but I helped my friend Andre, for example. He came up to me in the coworking space. That’s how I met him. And he said, “I want to learn to code. I want to do startups. How do we do it?” I said, “Okay, let’s go, install Nginx. Let’s start coding.”
And he has this self energy that he actually, he doesn’t need to be pushed, he just goes and he just goes, and he asks questions and he doesn’t ask too many questions. He just goes, goes and learns it. And now, he has a company and makes a lot of money, has his own startups. And the people that ask me for help, but then I gave help, and then they started debating it. Do you have that? People ask you for advice and they go against you to say, “No, you’re wrong because…” I’m like, “Okay, bro, I don’t want to debate. You asked me for advice, right?” And the people who need to push generally, it doesn’t happen. You need to have this energy for yourself.
Lex Fridman
Well, they’re searching. They’re searching. They’re trying to figure it out. But oftentimes, their search, if they successfully find what they’re looking for, it’ll be within. Sounds very like spiritual sounding, but it’s really figuring that shit out on your own. But they’re reaching, they’re trying to ask the world around them like, “How do I live this life? How do I figure this out?” But ultimately, the answer is going to be from them working on themselves. And literally, it’s the stupid thing, but Googling and doing like searching-
Well, they’re searching. They’re searching. They’re trying to figure it out. But oftentimes, their search, if they successfully find what they’re looking for, it’ll be within. Sounds very like spiritual sounding, but it’s really figuring that shit out on your own. But they’re reaching, they’re trying to ask the world around them like, “How do I live this life? How do I figure this out?” But ultimately, the answer is going to be from them working on themselves. And literally, it’s the stupid thing, but Googling and doing like searching-
Pieter Levels
Yeah. So I think it’s procrastination. I think sending messages to people is a lot of procrastination. How do you become successful podcasters? Bro, just start. Just go.
Yeah. So I think it’s procrastination. I think sending messages to people is a lot of procrastination. How do you become successful podcasters? Bro, just start. Just go.
Lex Fridman
Just go.
Just go.
Pieter Levels
And I would never ask you how to be a successful podcaster. I would just start it, and then I would copy your methods. I would say, “Ah, this guy has a black background. We probably need this as well.”
And I would never ask you how to be a successful podcaster. I would just start it, and then I would copy your methods. I would say, “Ah, this guy has a black background. We probably need this as well.”
Lex Fridman
Yeah, try it. Yeah, try it. And then you realize it’s not about the black background, it’s about something else. So you find your own voice, keep trying stuff.
Yeah, try it. Yeah, try it. And then you realize it’s not about the black background, it’s about something else. So you find your own voice, keep trying stuff.
Pieter Levels
Exactly.
Exactly.
Lex Fridman
Imitation is a difficult thing. A lot of people copy and they don’t move past it.
Imitation is a difficult thing. A lot of people copy and they don’t move past it.
Pieter Levels
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
You should understand their methods, and then move past it. Find yourself, find your own voice, find your own-
You should understand their methods, and then move past it. Find yourself, find your own voice, find your own-
Pieter Levels
Yeah, you imitate, and then you put your own spin to it. And that’s like creative process. That’s literally the whole… Everybody always builds on the previous work. You shouldn’t get stuck.
Yeah, you imitate, and then you put your own spin to it. And that’s like creative process. That’s literally the whole… Everybody always builds on the previous work. You shouldn’t get stuck.
Lex Fridman
24 hours in a day, eight hours of sleep. You break it down into a math equation. 90 minutes of showering, cleaning up, coffee, it just keeps whittling down to zero.
24 hours in a day, eight hours of sleep. You break it down into a math equation. 90 minutes of showering, cleaning up, coffee, it just keeps whittling down to zero.
Pieter Levels
Man, it’s not this specific, but I had to make an average or something.
Man, it’s not this specific, but I had to make an average or something.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. Firefighting. Oh, I like that. One hours of groceries and errands. I’ve tried breaking down minute by minute what I do in a day, especially when my life was simpler. It’s really refreshing to understand where you waste a lot of time and what you enjoy doing. How many minutes it takes to be happy, doing the thing that makes you happy, and how many minutes it takes to be productive? And you realize, there’s a lot of hours in the day if you spend it right.
Yeah. Firefighting. Oh, I like that. One hours of groceries and errands. I’ve tried breaking down minute by minute what I do in a day, especially when my life was simpler. It’s really refreshing to understand where you waste a lot of time and what you enjoy doing. How many minutes it takes to be happy, doing the thing that makes you happy, and how many minutes it takes to be productive? And you realize, there’s a lot of hours in the day if you spend it right.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. A lot of it is wasted. Yeah.
Yeah. A lot of it is wasted. Yeah.
Lex Fridman
For me, the biggest battle for the longest time is finding stretches of time where I can deeply focus into really deep work. Just like zoom in and completely focused, cutting away all the distractions.
For me, the biggest battle for the longest time is finding stretches of time where I can deeply focus into really deep work. Just like zoom in and completely focused, cutting away all the distractions.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, me too.
Yeah, me too.
Lex Fridman
That’s the battle. It’s unpleasant. It’s extremely unpleasant.
That’s the battle. It’s unpleasant. It’s extremely unpleasant.
Pieter Levels
We need to fly to an island, make a man cave island where everybody can just code for a week and just get shit done, make new projects.
We need to fly to an island, make a man cave island where everybody can just code for a week and just get shit done, make new projects.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Pieter Levels
But man, they called me psychopath for this because it says one hours of sex, hugs, love. Man, I had to write something. They were like, “Oh, this guy’s psychopath. He plans his sex in specific hour.” Bro, I don’t, but-
But man, they called me psychopath for this because it says one hours of sex, hugs, love. Man, I had to write something. They were like, “Oh, this guy’s psychopath. He plans his sex in specific hour.” Bro, I don’t, but-
Lex Fridman
They have a counter for hugs.
They have a counter for hugs.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Click, click, click.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Click, click, click.
Lex Fridman
It’s just a numerical representation of what life is.
It’s just a numerical representation of what life is.
Pieter Levels
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
It’s like one of those, when you draw out how many weeks you have in a life.
It’s like one of those, when you draw out how many weeks you have in a life.
Pieter Levels
Oh dude, this is dark. Yeah, man. Don’t want to look at that too much.
Oh dude, this is dark. Yeah, man. Don’t want to look at that too much.
Lex Fridman
Holy shit.
Holy shit.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, man. How many times you see your parents? Jesus, man. It’s scary, man.
Yeah, man. How many times you see your parents? Jesus, man. It’s scary, man.
Lex Fridman
That’s right. It might be only a handful more times.
That’s right. It might be only a handful more times.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, man.
Yeah, man.
Lex Fridman
You just look at the math of it. If you see them once a year or twice a year-
You just look at the math of it. If you see them once a year or twice a year-
Pieter Levels
Yeah. FaceTime today.
Yeah. FaceTime today.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. I mean, that’s dark when you see somebody you like seeing, like a friend that’s on the outskirts of your friend group. And then you realize, “Well, I haven’t really seen him for three years.” So how many more times do we have that we see each other? Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, that’s dark when you see somebody you like seeing, like a friend that’s on the outskirts of your friend group. And then you realize, “Well, I haven’t really seen him for three years.” So how many more times do we have that we see each other? Yeah.
Pieter Levels
Do you believe that friends just slowly disappear from your life? Your friend group evolves, right?
Do you believe that friends just slowly disappear from your life? Your friend group evolves, right?
Lex Fridman
It does. It does.
It does. It does.
Pieter Levels
There’s a problem with Facebook. You get all these old friends from school when you were 10 years old back when Facebook started. You would add friend them, and then you’re like, “Why are we in touch again? Just keep the memories there. It’s a different life now.”
There’s a problem with Facebook. You get all these old friends from school when you were 10 years old back when Facebook started. You would add friend them, and then you’re like, “Why are we in touch again? Just keep the memories there. It’s a different life now.”
Lex Fridman
Yeah. I don’t know. That might be a guy thing or I don’t know. There’s certain friends I have that we don’t interact often, but we’re still friends. Every time I see him… I think it’s because we have a foundation of many shared experiences and many memories. I guess it’s like nothing has changed. Almost like we’ve been talking every day, even if we haven’t talked for a year. So that’s…
Yeah. I don’t know. That might be a guy thing or I don’t know. There’s certain friends I have that we don’t interact often, but we’re still friends. Every time I see him… I think it’s because we have a foundation of many shared experiences and many memories. I guess it’s like nothing has changed. Almost like we’ve been talking every day, even if we haven’t talked for a year. So that’s…
Pieter Levels
Yeah, this deep issues.
Yeah, this deep issues.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. So I don’t have to be interacting with them for them to be in a friend group. And then there’s some people I interact with a lot. It depends, but there’s just this network of good human beings that I have a real love for them and I can always count on them. If any of them called me in the middle of the night, I’ll get rid of a body, I’m there. I like how that’s a definition of friendship, but it’s true. It’s true.
Yeah. So I don’t have to be interacting with them for them to be in a friend group. And then there’s some people I interact with a lot. It depends, but there’s just this network of good human beings that I have a real love for them and I can always count on them. If any of them called me in the middle of the night, I’ll get rid of a body, I’m there. I like how that’s a definition of friendship, but it’s true. It’s true.
Pieter Levels
True friend.
True friend.
Coffee
Lex Fridman
You become more and more famous recently. How’s that affect you?
You become more and more famous recently. How’s that affect you?
Pieter Levels
It’s not recently, because it’s this gradual thing, right? It keeps going. And I also don’t know why it keeps going.
It’s not recently, because it’s this gradual thing, right? It keeps going. And I also don’t know why it keeps going.
Lex Fridman
Does that put pressure on you to… Because you’re pretty open on Twitter and you’re just basically building shit in the open and just not really caring if it’s too technical, if it’s any of this, just being out there. Does it put pressure on you as you become more popular to be a little bit more collected and…
Does that put pressure on you to… Because you’re pretty open on Twitter and you’re just basically building shit in the open and just not really caring if it’s too technical, if it’s any of this, just being out there. Does it put pressure on you as you become more popular to be a little bit more collected and…
Pieter Levels
Man, I think the opposite, right? Because the people I follow are interesting, because they say whatever they think and they shape or whatever. It’s so boring that people start tweeting only about one topic. I don’t know anything about their personal life. I want to know about their personal life. You do podcasts, you ask about life stuff of personality. That’s the most interesting part of business or sports. What’s behind the sport, the athlete right behind the entrepreneur? That’s interesting stuff.
Man, I think the opposite, right? Because the people I follow are interesting, because they say whatever they think and they shape or whatever. It’s so boring that people start tweeting only about one topic. I don’t know anything about their personal life. I want to know about their personal life. You do podcasts, you ask about life stuff of personality. That’s the most interesting part of business or sports. What’s behind the sport, the athlete right behind the entrepreneur? That’s interesting stuff.
Lex Fridman
To be human.
To be human.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. Like I shared a tweet, it went too far. We were cleaning the toilet because the toilet was clogged, but it’s just real stuff. Because Jensen Huang, the Nvidia guy, he says he started cleaning toilets.
Yeah. Like I shared a tweet, it went too far. We were cleaning the toilet because the toilet was clogged, but it’s just real stuff. Because Jensen Huang, the Nvidia guy, he says he started cleaning toilets.
Lex Fridman
That was cool. You tweeted something about the Denny’s thing. I forget.
That was cool. You tweeted something about the Denny’s thing. I forget.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. It was recent. Nvidia was started in a Denny diner table.
Yeah. It was recent. Nvidia was started in a Denny diner table.
Lex Fridman
And you made it somehow profound.
And you made it somehow profound.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. This one, this one.
Yeah. This one, this one.
Lex Fridman
Nvidia, a $3 trillion company was started in a Denny’s, an American diner. People need a third space to work on their laptops to build the next billion or trillion dollar company. What’s the first and second space?
Nvidia, a $3 trillion company was started in a Denny’s, an American diner. People need a third space to work on their laptops to build the next billion or trillion dollar company. What’s the first and second space?
Pieter Levels
The home office. Yeah.
The home office. Yeah.
Lex Fridman
And then the in-between, the island.
And then the in-between, the island.
Pieter Levels
I guess, yeah.
I guess, yeah.
Lex Fridman
The island.
The island.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. You need a space to congregate, man. And I found history on this. So 400 years ago in the coffee houses of Europe, the scientific revolution, the enlightenment happened. Because they would go to coffee houses, they would sit there, they would drink coffee and they would work. They would work, they would write, and they would do debates, and they would organize marine routes. Right? They would do all the stuff in coffee houses in Europe, in France, in Austria, in UK, in Holland. So we were always going to cafes to work and to have serendipitous conversations with other people and start businesses and stuff. And when you asked me to come on here and we flew to America, and the first thing I realized was that I’ve been to America before, but we were in this cafe and there’s a lot of laptops. Everybody’s working on something and I took this photo. And then when you’re in Europe, large parts of Europe now, you cannot use a laptop anymore. No laptop, which I understand.
Yeah. You need a space to congregate, man. And I found history on this. So 400 years ago in the coffee houses of Europe, the scientific revolution, the enlightenment happened. Because they would go to coffee houses, they would sit there, they would drink coffee and they would work. They would work, they would write, and they would do debates, and they would organize marine routes. Right? They would do all the stuff in coffee houses in Europe, in France, in Austria, in UK, in Holland. So we were always going to cafes to work and to have serendipitous conversations with other people and start businesses and stuff. And when you asked me to come on here and we flew to America, and the first thing I realized was that I’ve been to America before, but we were in this cafe and there’s a lot of laptops. Everybody’s working on something and I took this photo. And then when you’re in Europe, large parts of Europe now, you cannot use a laptop anymore. No laptop, which I understand.
Lex Fridman
But that is to you, a fundamental place to create shit, is in that natural, organic co-working space of a coffee shop.
But that is to you, a fundamental place to create shit, is in that natural, organic co-working space of a coffee shop.
Pieter Levels
Well, for a lot of people. A lot of people have very small homes and co-working spaces are boring. They’re private, they’re not serendipitous, they’re boring. Cafes are amazing because random people can come in and ask you, “What are you working on?” And not just laptops. People are also having conversations like they did 400 years ago, debates or whatever. Things are happening. And man, I understand the aesthetics of it. It’s like, “Start up bro. Shipping is a bullshit startup.”
Well, for a lot of people. A lot of people have very small homes and co-working spaces are boring. They’re private, they’re not serendipitous, they’re boring. Cafes are amazing because random people can come in and ask you, “What are you working on?” And not just laptops. People are also having conversations like they did 400 years ago, debates or whatever. Things are happening. And man, I understand the aesthetics of it. It’s like, “Start up bro. Shipping is a bullshit startup.”
But there’s something more there. There’s people actually making stuff, making new companies that the society benefits from. We’re benefiting from Nvidia, I think. The US GDP for sure is benefiting from Nvidia. European GDP could benefit if we build more companies. And I feel in Europe, there’s this vibe and this… You have to connect things, but not allowing laptops in cafes is part of the vibe. It’s like, “Yeah, we’re not really here to work. We’re here to enjoy life.” I agree with this. Anthony Bourdain, this tweet was quoted with Anthony Bourdain photo of him with cigarettes and a coffee in France, and he said, “This is what cafes are for.” I agree.
Lex Fridman
But there is some element of entrepreneurship. You have to allow people to dream big and work their ass off towards that dream, and then feel each other’s energy as they interact with. That’s one of the things I liked in Silicon Valley when I was working there, is the cafes. There’s a bunch of dreamers that you can make fun of them for like, everybody thinks they’re going to build a trillion-dollar company, but-
But there is some element of entrepreneurship. You have to allow people to dream big and work their ass off towards that dream, and then feel each other’s energy as they interact with. That’s one of the things I liked in Silicon Valley when I was working there, is the cafes. There’s a bunch of dreamers that you can make fun of them for like, everybody thinks they’re going to build a trillion-dollar company, but-
Pieter Levels
Yeah. And it’s off, so not everybody wins. 99% of the people will be bullshit [inaudible 03:35:41].
Yeah. And it’s off, so not everybody wins. 99% of the people will be bullshit [inaudible 03:35:41].
Lex Fridman
But they’re working their ass off.
But they’re working their ass off.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. And they’re doing something. And you need to pass this startup bro like, “Oh, it’s started one level.” No, it’s not. It’s people making cool shit. And this will benefit you because this will create jobs for your country and your region. And I think in Europe, that’s a big problem. We have a very anti- entrepreneurial mindset.
Yeah. And they’re doing something. And you need to pass this startup bro like, “Oh, it’s started one level.” No, it’s not. It’s people making cool shit. And this will benefit you because this will create jobs for your country and your region. And I think in Europe, that’s a big problem. We have a very anti- entrepreneurial mindset.
Lex Fridman
Dream big and build shit. This is really inspiring, this pin tweet of yours. All the projects that you’ve tried and the ones that succeeded.
Dream big and build shit. This is really inspiring, this pin tweet of yours. All the projects that you’ve tried and the ones that succeeded.
Pieter Levels
There’s very few.
There’s very few.
Lex Fridman
Mute life.
Mute life.
Pieter Levels
This was for Twitter to mute, to share the mute list.
This was for Twitter to mute, to share the mute list.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. Fire calculator, no more Google, maker rank, how much is my side project worth, climate finder, ideasai, airlinelist-
Yeah. Fire calculator, no more Google, maker rank, how much is my side project worth, climate finder, ideasai, airlinelist-
Pieter Levels
Airlinelist still runs, but it doesn’t make money. Airlinelist compares the safety of airlines. Because I was nervous to fly, so I was like, “Let’s collect all the data on the crashes for all the airplanes.”
Airlinelist still runs, but it doesn’t make money. Airlinelist compares the safety of airlines. Because I was nervous to fly, so I was like, “Let’s collect all the data on the crashes for all the airplanes.”
Lex Fridman
Bali sea cable. Nice. That’s awesome. Make village, nomad gear, 3D and virtual reality dev, play my inbox, like you mentioned. There’s a lot of stuff.
Bali sea cable. Nice. That’s awesome. Make village, nomad gear, 3D and virtual reality dev, play my inbox, like you mentioned. There’s a lot of stuff.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, man.
Yeah, man.
Lex Fridman
I’m trying to find some embarrassing tweets of yours.
I’m trying to find some embarrassing tweets of yours.
Pieter Levels
You can go to the highlights tab. It has all the good shit.
You can go to the highlights tab. It has all the good shit.
Lex Fridman
There you go.
There you go.
Pieter Levels
This was Dubai.
This was Dubai.
Lex Fridman
POV, building an AI startup. Wow. You’re a real influencer.
POV, building an AI startup. Wow. You’re a real influencer.
Pieter Levels
And if people copy this photo now and they change the screenshots, it becomes like a meme, of course.
And if people copy this photo now and they change the screenshots, it becomes like a meme, of course.
Lex Fridman
This is good.
This is good.
Pieter Levels
That’s how Dubai looks. It’s insane.
That’s how Dubai looks. It’s insane.
Lex Fridman
That’s beautiful architecture. It’s crazy, the story behind the cities.
That’s beautiful architecture. It’s crazy, the story behind the cities.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, the story behind, for sure. So this is about the European economy, where…
Yeah, the story behind, for sure. So this is about the European economy, where…
Lex Fridman
European economy landscape is ran by dinosaurs. And today, I studied it so I can produce you with my evidence. 80% of top EU companies were founded before 1950. Only 36% of top US companies were founded before 1950.
European economy landscape is ran by dinosaurs. And today, I studied it so I can produce you with my evidence. 80% of top EU companies were founded before 1950. Only 36% of top US companies were founded before 1950.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. So the median founding of companies in US is something like 1960, and the median… The top companies, right? And the median in Europe is 1900 or something. So it’s here, 1913 and 1963. So there’s a 50-year difference.
Yeah. So the median founding of companies in US is something like 1960, and the median… The top companies, right? And the median in Europe is 1900 or something. So it’s here, 1913 and 1963. So there’s a 50-year difference.
Lex Fridman
It’s a good representation of the very thing you were talking about, the difference in the cultures, entrepreneurial spirit of the peoples.
It’s a good representation of the very thing you were talking about, the difference in the cultures, entrepreneurial spirit of the peoples.
Pieter Levels
But Europe used to be entrepreneurial. There was companies founded in 1800, 1850, 1900. It flipped around 1950 where America took the lead. And I guess my point is, I hope that Europe gets back to… Because I’m European, I hope that Europe gets back to being an entrepreneurial culture where they build big companies again. Because right now, all the old dinosaur companies control the economies. They’re lobbying with the government. Europe is also, they’re infiltrated with the government where they create so much regulation. I think it’s called regulatory capture, where it’s very hard for a newcomer to enter an industry because there’s too much regulation. So actually, regulation is very good for big companies because they can follow it. I can’t follow it, right? If I want to start an AI startup in Europe now, I cannot because there’s an AI regulation that makes it very complicated for me. I probably need to get notaries involved. I need to get certificates, licenses. Whereas in America, I can just open my laptop. I can start an AI startup right now mostly.
But Europe used to be entrepreneurial. There was companies founded in 1800, 1850, 1900. It flipped around 1950 where America took the lead. And I guess my point is, I hope that Europe gets back to… Because I’m European, I hope that Europe gets back to being an entrepreneurial culture where they build big companies again. Because right now, all the old dinosaur companies control the economies. They’re lobbying with the government. Europe is also, they’re infiltrated with the government where they create so much regulation. I think it’s called regulatory capture, where it’s very hard for a newcomer to enter an industry because there’s too much regulation. So actually, regulation is very good for big companies because they can follow it. I can’t follow it, right? If I want to start an AI startup in Europe now, I cannot because there’s an AI regulation that makes it very complicated for me. I probably need to get notaries involved. I need to get certificates, licenses. Whereas in America, I can just open my laptop. I can start an AI startup right now mostly.
E/acc
Lex Fridman
What do you think about EAC, Effective Accelerationist movement?
What do you think about EAC, Effective Accelerationist movement?
Pieter Levels
Man, you had Beff Jezos on. I love Beff Jezos and he’s amazing. And if EAC is very needed to similarly create a more positive outlook on the future, because people have been very pessimistic about society, about the future of society, climate change, all this stuff. EAC is a positive outlook on the future. Technology can make us… We spend more energy. We should find ways to of course, get clean energy, but we need to spend more energy to make cooler stuff and go into space and build more technology that can improve society. And we shouldn’t shy away from technology. Technology can be the answer for many things.
Man, you had Beff Jezos on. I love Beff Jezos and he’s amazing. And if EAC is very needed to similarly create a more positive outlook on the future, because people have been very pessimistic about society, about the future of society, climate change, all this stuff. EAC is a positive outlook on the future. Technology can make us… We spend more energy. We should find ways to of course, get clean energy, but we need to spend more energy to make cooler stuff and go into space and build more technology that can improve society. And we shouldn’t shy away from technology. Technology can be the answer for many things.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, build more. Don’t spend so much time on fear-mongering and cautiousness and all this kind of stuff. Some was okay, some was good, but most of the time should be spent on building and creating and doing so unapologetically. It’s a refreshing reminder of what made United States great, is all the builders. Like you said, the entrepreneurs. We can’t forget that in all the discussions of how things could go wrong with technology and all this kind of stuff.
Yeah, build more. Don’t spend so much time on fear-mongering and cautiousness and all this kind of stuff. Some was okay, some was good, but most of the time should be spent on building and creating and doing so unapologetically. It’s a refreshing reminder of what made United States great, is all the builders. Like you said, the entrepreneurs. We can’t forget that in all the discussions of how things could go wrong with technology and all this kind of stuff.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. Look at China. China is now at the stage of America. What? Like 1900 or something. They’re building rapidly insane. And obviously, China has massive problems, but that comes with the whole thing. America is beginning also with massive problems. Right? But I think it’s very dangerous for a country or a region like Europe to… You get to this point where you’re complacent, you’re comfortable, and then you can either go this or you can go this way. You’re from here, you go like this, and then you can go this or this. I think you should go this way and…
Yeah. Look at China. China is now at the stage of America. What? Like 1900 or something. They’re building rapidly insane. And obviously, China has massive problems, but that comes with the whole thing. America is beginning also with massive problems. Right? But I think it’s very dangerous for a country or a region like Europe to… You get to this point where you’re complacent, you’re comfortable, and then you can either go this or you can go this way. You’re from here, you go like this, and then you can go this or this. I think you should go this way and…
Lex Fridman
Go up.
Go up.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, go up. And I think the problem is the mind culture. So EUAC, I made EUAC, which is the European version.
Yeah, go up. And I think the problem is the mind culture. So EUAC, I made EUAC, which is the European version.
Lex Fridman
I get it.
I get it.
Pieter Levels
I made hoodies and stuff. So a lot of people wear this, make Europe great again hat. I made it red first, but it became too like Trump. So now, it’s more like European blue, make Europe great again.
I made hoodies and stuff. So a lot of people wear this, make Europe great again hat. I made it red first, but it became too like Trump. So now, it’s more like European blue, make Europe great again.
Advice for young people
Lex Fridman
All right. Okay. So you had an incredible life. Very successful, built a lot of cool stuff. So what advice would you give to young people about how to do the same?
All right. Okay. So you had an incredible life. Very successful, built a lot of cool stuff. So what advice would you give to young people about how to do the same?
Pieter Levels
Man, I would listen to nobody. Just do what you think is good and follow your heart. Right? Everybody peer presses you into doing stuff you don’t want to do. And they tell you like parents, or family, or society and tell you. But try your own thing because it might work out. You can steer the ship. It probably doesn’t work out immediately. You probably go into very bad times like I did as well, relatively, right? But in the end, if you’re smart about it, you can make things work and you can create your own little life of things as you did, as I did. And I think that should be more promoted. Do your own thing. There’s space in economy and in society for, do your own thing. It’s like little villages, everybody would sell. I would sell bread. You would sell meat. Everybody can do their own little thing. You don’t need to be a normie, as you say. You can be what you really want to be.
Man, I would listen to nobody. Just do what you think is good and follow your heart. Right? Everybody peer presses you into doing stuff you don’t want to do. And they tell you like parents, or family, or society and tell you. But try your own thing because it might work out. You can steer the ship. It probably doesn’t work out immediately. You probably go into very bad times like I did as well, relatively, right? But in the end, if you’re smart about it, you can make things work and you can create your own little life of things as you did, as I did. And I think that should be more promoted. Do your own thing. There’s space in economy and in society for, do your own thing. It’s like little villages, everybody would sell. I would sell bread. You would sell meat. Everybody can do their own little thing. You don’t need to be a normie, as you say. You can be what you really want to be.
Lex Fridman
And go all out doing that thing.
And go all out doing that thing.
Pieter Levels
Yeah, you got to go all out. Because if you half ass it, you cannot succeed. You need to go lean into the outcast stuff. Lean into the being different and just doing whatever it is that you want to do. Right?
Yeah, you got to go all out. Because if you half ass it, you cannot succeed. You need to go lean into the outcast stuff. Lean into the being different and just doing whatever it is that you want to do. Right?
Lex Fridman
You got a whole ass it.
You got a whole ass it.
Pieter Levels
Yeah. Whole ass it. Yeah.
Yeah. Whole ass it. Yeah.
Lex Fridman
This was an incredible conversation. It was an honor to finally meet you.
This was an incredible conversation. It was an honor to finally meet you.
Pieter Levels
It was an honor to be here, Lex.
It was an honor to be here, Lex.
Lex Fridman
To talk to you and keep doing your thing. Keep inspiring me and the world with all the cool stuff you’re building.
To talk to you and keep doing your thing. Keep inspiring me and the world with all the cool stuff you’re building.
Pieter Levels
Thank you, Man.
Thank you, Man.
Lex Fridman
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Pieter Levels. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, let me leave you with some words from Drew Houston, Dropbox co-founder. By the way, I love Dropbox. Anyway, Drew said, “Don’t worry about failure. You only have to be right once.” Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Pieter Levels. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, let me leave you with some words from Drew Houston, Dropbox co-founder. By the way, I love Dropbox. Anyway, Drew said, “Don’t worry about failure. You only have to be right once.” Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
Transcript for Craig Jones: Jiu Jitsu, $2 Million Prize, CJI, ADCC, Ukraine & Trolling | Lex Fridman Podcast #439
This is a transcript of Lex Fridman Podcast #439 with Craig Jones.
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Like with a new CJI tournament that has over $2 million in prize money. It’s coming up this Friday and Saturday. Yes, the same weekend as the prestigious ADCC tournament. The goal of CGI tournament is to grow the sport. You’ll be able to watch it for free online, live on YouTube and other places. All ticket profits go to charity, mainly to cancer research. I encourage you to support the mission of this tournament by buying tickets and going to see the event in person.
Craig gave me a special link that gives you a 50% discount on the tickets. Go to lexfreeman.com/cji and it should forward you to the right place. They’re trying to sell the last few tickets now. It’s a good cause. Go buy some. Also let me say, as a fan of the sport, I highly encourage you to watch both CJI and ADCC. To celebrate athletes competing in both. From CJI with Nicky Ryan, Nicky Rod, or Ruotolo Brothers, Ffion Davis, McKenzie Dern, and more.
To ADCC with Gordon Ryan, Nicholas Meregali, Giancarlo Bodoni, Rafael Lovato, Jr., Mica Galvao, and more. I have a lot of respect for everyone involved. I trained with many of them regularly and consider many of them friends. Including Craig Gordon and of course John Danaher, who I will talk to many, many more times on this podcast. This is a Lex Fridman podcast. To support it please check out our sponsors in the description. Now, dear friends, I invite you all to come to the pool with Craig Jones and me.
These horses have been trained from a very young age. The riders have been trained. I’ve never ridden a horse before. We wanted to film something that made it look like I was going to go into the horse pit, into the Kok boru pit. However, the drunk stunt man that we used just decided that when he took my horse reigns, he would take me straight into the pit instead of ending the shot there. I was in there amongst I guess the horse riders, the Kok boru riders, and we weren’t leaving.
We just were in there for quite a while. He could talk English pretty well actually. He’s like, “Oh, I thought you’d want to check it out from the inside.” Then while we’re in there, someone picked up the carcass and a wave of horse riders came at me. I was quite concerned at that point because they’re bashing into each other and obviously they’re angry. They’re seeing a foreigner in there. I was wearing basically Biggie Smalls COOGI looking sweater, so I stood out.
They definitely didn’t like that I was participating in a game that they probably trained their whole life for and that amount of money they could win is very, very significant and there’s me in there. They’re also pointing out Borat, Borat. Thinking I was making Borat jokes, which again, very traumatic memory for the people at Kazakhstan.
Following the news, obviously very controversial in the news, people have very strong opinions. I was like, ” Let’s go over there. Let’s do a charity event. Let’s do something. Let’s train with the people and really experience of ourselves.” We set up the seminar. Turned out to be the biggest seminar for Jujitsu in Ukraine history. Which is wild considering obviously they are at war. But everyone came together to support it. One of the soldiers there, one of my friends there, good friend now, who’s on the front line, he made a comment on there.
He said, “Hey, this is a seminar to donate profits to the soldiers, but we’re on the front line.” I was like, “You know what, I’ll come to you.” He’s like, “Listen, I can’t promise you’ll survive, but I’ll promise you’ll have a good time.” I said, “That’s all I needed to hear.” We connected and my friend Roman, we went really, really close. I think we were at the closest 0.7 kilometers from the front line. Obviously very surreal experience to be over there seeing basically how the battles fought with those drones.
I think the whole world got concerned at that point if any sort of radiation leaked. But Chernobyl, as it stands, the troops back down and it’s completely covered in mines. Very, very difficult to go to Chernobyl. Basically as a tourist or as I guess a idiot like myself should really probably not be allowed in a place like that. But we were able to get there. We passed four security checkpoints. It took two attempts. First time we tried to go in there was with the special forces guy, we cleared two security gates. Then they stopped us and basically threatened us with arrest. Rightfully so. Really have no business going to Chernobyl. We made a connection. I won’t say who this connection was, but he had heard about what I had done with a charity event and opened some doors for us to be able to go to Chernobyl. We got to see Chernobyl. We had some filming restrictions there just because it was a crazy military conflict at one point. We got to actually see Chernobyl. Chernobyl always been a dream of mine to see. It’s just such an interesting place and to see it under these conditions, very, very strange.
We basically take this huge journey all the way down to Kherson. We switch at a city outside, I can’t remember the name, but we had to switch into armored vehicles. I remember the guy that picked this up there said, “Hey, give me a phone number for someone to call to recover your bodies.” He said that in a joking way, but I think he was serious. But I said, “Just leave it.” I don’t think they need it. I didn’t think there’d be much left probably if we get hit over there.
But we go basically into Kherson. I think Kherson’s population used to be like 250,000 now it’s basically all military down to 50,000. We went into the police basically station in the bunker underneath, the top of the building was destroyed. Then one of the local guys just took us on a city tour. Which again, we had some filming restrictions because obviously anytime something’s hit, I guess the other side wants to be able to see what damage has been done.
If you take any footage of recently destroyed buildings, that’s going to help them recalibrate and target the next shot. Kherson being so heavily hit, it’s basically within range of every single thing Russia has. Every form of weapon. Drones. Before we took the tour, he put some drone blocking things on top of the car, which didn’t look reassuring. He also took a helmet out the back of the car, which I thought he was going to give to me, but he just threw it in the back of the pickup truck and said, “Oh, you won’t need this, you’ll be dead anyway.”
I was like, “Oh, I’ve made a great life decision with this little Kherson tour.” But then we took a tour of the city and Kherson used to be a beautiful beach city by the Nepo River, but basically it’s just the river that separates Russia from, I guess the Russian land they’ve taken from Kherson. Kherson split across that river and there’s just Russians on the other side of the river and Ukrainians on this side. Very, very dangerous spot.
Kharkiv makes a lot of press because of the long range missiles that hit, but Kherson’s just being hit all the time. We took this tour, we went along the river. We went to within one kilometer of the front line. That was the closest we got. After this point, we heard artillery strike. Because you’re in an armored vehicle, it sounds further away than it is. Obviously the sound doesn’t get in. I thought it sounded far away. We could see some smoke that actually appeared closer in the distance.
The guy driving us took us to a point where a large building was blocking us from, I guess the angle at which the missile would’ve came from. I thought everything was cool, thought that must’ve been off in the distance. Then we heard two more strikes hit very, very close. They sounded really loud. Then I think he’s radioed in to see if everything’s safe, if we can leave this point. Then we basically raced back. But I started to realize we were in danger at any point where he really sped the car up or took evasive movements in the car.
But we got out of there and I think I had someone translate it later and basically he was checking to see if the roads were clear for us to leave. Ultimately ended up being someone died and a few people injured from that blast, which was less than half a kilometer from us. Basically they were radioing saying, end the tour, come back to the police station.
I don’t know if they didn’t wait the full 10 minutes or if we took too long, but they started firing at the targets anyway. Then the ricochets were flying very, very close to us over our head. One landed right by my leg. We’re like, “Shit, we better get out of here.” Obviously not much safety concerns at that point, but we survived basically artillery strikes. We survived a bit of friendly fire with the bullets coming our way. But again, I was strangely calm because the other guys were calm. But then afterwards they said to me, they were like, “oh bro, if you got shot, we’d just have to dump your body at a hospital. We wouldn’t be able to explain why you’re here blowing up cars.”
It just feels like it’s going to go on forever. From the Ukrainian side’s perspective, those guys talk to me about how when they hear radio intercepts of Russian soldiers marching to the same frontline spot, is that basically they’re marching into certain death at certain locations. Based on the radio transmissions, they know they’re going to die, but they head forth anyway. Straightforward into Ukrainian position. Which is just wild to me, I guess World War II, they just keep throwing troops at it. You see a ton of footage they take themselves, which is mind-blowing. Obviously some of this footage doesn’t make it to the internet because it’s got important details in those conflicts. But they’re showing first person perspectives of trench warfare. It’s just crazy to see what some of these guys have gone through.
I used to view them military guys, because in Australia and I guess in the US, they don’t have this conscription ongoing right now. Whereas obviously there’s guys like Roman who volunteered, but then there’s a lot of Ukrainian soldiers that were conscripted into the war. It’s like you just realize how a lot of these guys are everyday people. They’re just in this crazy situation. Where Roman felt obligated to return to Ukraine. From my perspective, anyone from Australia or US, it’s just a different perspective on those. They feel different to the regular people fighting in Ukraine, from my perspective.
They have to pay for that all themselves. They always joke about when foreign soldiers come over to train them. A lot of foreign soldiers come to learn about the drone technology they’ve developed on a budget is they always joke with them about how everything from most countries is basically supplied. All the good quality standard equipment they’d need is just supplied by the government. But in Ukraine, obviously funding is very stretched.
These guys to have the best equipment. They have to basically find money to pay for it themselves. They’ll do that by seeking donations. Best way to get donations would be to grow social media profiles. That’s when you see a lot of social media warfare from a perspective of gaining fame to secure donations for their battalion to be able to fight better or protect themselves. Also, some of the social media warfare, I guess is psychological warfare against the enemy. You’ll see private Telegram groups where they’re showing what they’ve done to the enemy, what the enemy’s done to them. It’s just crazy.
Which is just crazy how fast the war changes. I think they’re the world leaders in budget drone technology. They didn’t obviously don’t have the budget for these crazy, elaborate massive drones. I did see some higher budget, bigger drones over there, but for the most part, those FPV drones is really how most of the battles are fought. You’re seeing the cameras on them. You can see basically kamikaze drone will chase someone down and they have that footage.
That’s what the police chief said to me when he gifted me one of the drones they used. He basically said, he’s like, “Artillery is scary, but a drone will follow you into a building.” It’s a haunting thing to think about. They’ll see the drone, they’ll hear the drone, they might try to shoot it down or they might try to run. But if it’s a kamikaze one, those guys are pretty good at flying them. It’s going to chase the soldiers down. A lot of soldiers like pretending to be dead. It’s really crazy, some of the footage out there with those FBV drones.
So, I know that there was an attack in Crimea, there was an attack on a beach, I guess, and I don’t know if that attack on the hospital was retribution for that but that’s the energy that is felt. They might have battle fatigue but, when something happens to civilians, especially kids, on your side, reinvigorates the energy to fight for as long as necessary. And in terms of the case by case basis, one of my friends, Dmitri, over there who trains jiu-jitsu in the gym, he was very passionate about it just because of the history. He brought out documents of his grandfather being executed by the USSR. So, I know that when the war started, basically, he took a bicycle helmet and his AK-47 and went out into the streets and he’s like, “I’d rather be dead than live under Russian rule again.” So, very case by case basis, personal history for them, I think.
And obviously, many people are inspired by Anthony Bourdain, basically it’s looking at what he did with food by showing the very interesting characters in the food culture, the food industries, especially with street food, and building around that. So, I’m trying to look at jiu-jitsu like a giant cult. Scientology isn’t starting with Planet Xenu, it’s starting with John Travolta and Tom Cruise. So, if we can create a documentary travel series highlighting the diverse, interesting people that participate in the sport, in that sense, I hope it can grow but also doing some charity work along the way. We’ll release the Indonesia Bali episode pretty soon but, as an Australian, I do do a lot of damage culturally around the world so I’d like to do some good as well.
We’ve done a lot of damage to Bali, so give back to local communities. We have an Australian there that runs an academy, Akademi Kristus, he’s one of the guys we’re donating a portion of the ticket sales to from our event but he basically went straight into a Balinese slum, started teaching jiu-jitsu on a mat under a tree and then slowly, through donations, has built a gym. And his real focus is not just taking money from people and gifting it to them to help the community but to teach them skills. So, he’ll take a lot of the disadvantaged kids and he’ll teach them things like photo editing so they can get that work from the internet, really. Incredible guy.
So, what I did, a lot of fans were asking me earlier in the year, they said, “Craig, are you going to do ADCC?” and I said, “That is a big commitment of time, energy, expenses on steroids to get my body ready for a tournament that I’ll probably lose.” And if I lose on day one, I make $0. If I lose in the final, which I have done a couple times, I only get $6,000. I think third place is 3,000, fourth place is 1,000. So, if you make day two, you get paid. But for me personally, seeing ADCC in 2022, you’re looking out to a sold out crowd of 10,000 people. It’s on FloGrappling which you know paid quite a bit of money for the streaming rights, I can’t comment on what that number would be, and then you go home, despite having put in all that effort, with only 6,000 and they basically … The argument is you’re paid in exposure. But again, there’s many ways to expose yourself. You know what I mean? That’s just one of the platforms to do so. My problem was that they announced that they were going to go from Thomas & Mack to T-Mobile which is a jump in quality of stadium but not a significant jump in seating. So, we’ve gone from 11,000 seat arena to I think a 15, 16,000 seat arena. And I knew that FloGrappling would’ve had to pay more money because now the sport’s growing so much and I can personally track the growth of the sport through selling instructional DVDs, instructional online products. Because that keeps growing and we’re targeting those white and blue belts vulnerable to internet marketing and that audience continues to grow and those will be the people that largely watch ADCC, events like this.
So, I simply said, in response to a lot of fans asking me, “Are you going to do ADCC?” and I just simply made a video saying, “No, probably not, probably not. It’d be nice to make some more money.” And then I listed a bunch of sports, such as cockbar, that you get paid more to win cockbar. In the villages of Kazakhstan, the payment structures higher. And I received a very aggressive response not from any of Sheikh Tahnoun’s people but from, basically, who runs the event today. One of those guys amongst giving me death threats said, “Hey, T-Mobile costs $2 million, you don’t know what you’re talking about in terms of business and production.” And he’s probably right but, to me, $2 million is a waste of money for a jiu-jitsu event, I don’t think we’re at that level yet. That’s where the UFC hosts events. $2 million, that’s an expensive, expensive venue.
So, we argued a bit on the internet and he said, “Hey, if you don’t like it, why don’t you go get $2 million and put on your own tournament?” And I said, “I might just do that.” And one of my anonymous friends kindly donated a $3 million budget and I actually messaged him before the show to say, “Hey, we won’t reveal your identity,” because, obviously, anyone that has money is going to get asked for more money or ask for money from others. So, he wants to remain anonymous but he basically just said to enjoy the trolling aspect of it and also contribute to the sport of jiu-jitsu.
I didn’t chase too many athletes down. Obviously, a lot of these guys really need money. So, you throw a million dollars out there, people are jumping on board. So, initially we started getting, we got two local guys here in Austin, the Tackett brothers, they jumped in first and they’re great kids. They really legitimize the whole thing because, if we’d pick certain athletes, just B team guys straight away, it’s already looking a bit dodgy but we’ve got some legitimate athletes. Especially the under 80 kilo divisions, full of, minus two or three guys, that’s the best people in the world in that weight division. And as we started to grow our roster here, what happened, I’m going to say this, allegedly, for legal reasons, is that the first move ADCC did was they matched the female pay to the men’s pay.
So, the women always traditionally got paid less, I think $6,000 for first place. As soon as we had Ffion Davies, the reigning champion, come across to do a super fight with us, bang, ADCC raised the prize money of the women’s division to equal the men’s. So, me, being a feminist activist throughout many of my years on this earth, immediately got women’s pay raised in the sport of jiu-jitsu, equalize basically, which went counter to everything the promoter had said because he said it was out of his control. To raise money, he said only the ADCC, I guess coming directly from the Sheikh or the Sheikh’s guys, could raise the prize money, he got it raised.
And then what happened was, once we started getting some of these big names here, so some of the best guys from ADCC would be in this division. We’ve got a bunch of champions or medalists or, really, the top betting favorites for their divisions there, they started, and again, I can’t emphasize this enough, allegedly, paying show money which has never historically been done before to keep athletes in their show.
However, at CJI, everyone gets $10,001 across the board and a million dollars prize money so there’s no room for, really, negotiation for the tournament aspect of us. So, he has a vested interest in putting his guys in ADCC because he can negotiate show money and he can basically take 20% of that for himself. But really, for the sport of grappling, this is incredible across the board because, by us stealing or at least borrowing a bunch of athletes from ADCC, ADCC had to fill their divisions. So, they filled their divisions with many other competitors that wouldn’t have ordinarily had the chance to do ADCC. And really, although we’ve scheduled it the same weekend, ours is actually Friday, Saturday, ADCC being Saturday, Sunday, our day starts pretty late. So, we start 5:00 PM Saturday.
So, really, ultimately it was a big marketing ploy to go head-to-head pretending like we’re making the fans choose but the fans will be able to watch both events. You’ll be able to go all day Friday for us. You’ll sadly miss the ADCC Hall of Fame ceremony where you’ll see many of great speakers, public speakers, philosophers tell their stories about hardship just like at the end of any jiu-jitsu seminar or beginning if you’re blessed like that. You might have a 45-minute monologue about how they’re more knowledgeable than doctors, lawyers, classic black belt technique. But you will miss that, unfortunately.
The angled wall mitigates that and it mitigates it in such a way that it’s a disadvantage to be pushed up against the angled wall. You’re very easily taken down against the angled wall. You could use a cage like the UFC does or any MMA organization, however, cage wrestling can be slow. You’re obviously at the vertical and it can stagnate there, guys are very good at using split squats to really defend that position. And for me, personally, I don’t love the cage for grappling, I’d like to differentiate it for grappling. What holds people back from using the alley or a pit-like structure is the viewing, the viewing angle. Because obviously, if you are one of the VIPs or you pay for an expensive seat, that angled wall is above you. A cage, you can see into, an elevated platform stage you can see clearly into because it’s basically flat but the athletes could fall off and injure themselves.
So, if something happens, UFC fire passes the elevated flat stage. It’s scary to be near the edge, you go off, you’re going to land on concrete. You might want to do that to the other guy if you, that way, inclined. But the alley, the angled wall solves all those problems, very minimal referee interference. Again, the only thing that holds people back is the expense of building it. But again, when you’re spending someone else’s money, you will spare no expense in production. So, we’ve spent a lot of money on the alley and we’ve really gone out of our way to create an experience that, around the alley, we’ve elevated everything so that the people watching will be able to see down into it. Because your instinctual thought is, “Oh, it sounds great but how am I going to see in it unless I’m far up?” You’d need a coliseum-like structure which is basically what we’ve attempted to create so that you get both a perfect place to wrestle, to grapple in as well as a perfect viewing angle for the fans.
If you get a good position early, you get up on the points, you just sit there and go, “Oh, let’s ride this to the end.” That’s why I want rounds so that you might take the guy’s back, you’re really incentivize to get that finish. And the way we’re trying to grow the sport is to steal the MMA scoring structure which a lot of people criticize because they think it’s overly complicated, they don’t understand it. But to the mass audience, they understand a 10-point must understand a decision in that sense, they understand it being scored round by round. So, we’re trying to appeal to a broader audience here but we think, based on the structure, based on how hard we’ll call stalling penalties, based on you wanting to finish your opponent quick to have a better chance at a million dollars. Because it’s 10,001 to show up and a million to win, if you aren’t first, you lost, there’s no reward for second place. So, I’m punishing the one position I’ve only ever been able to achieve in tournaments.
And what’s great about this is Rich Byrne is a black belt from New York, who’s in the banking world. He used to run an event called KASAI Grappling. He went through cancer. He basically had a very aggressive cancer. He had it treated. And now, he basically has said to us that whatever we donate from the profits of the event, he’s going to match dollar for dollar.
And we’ve also had another guy who wants to remain anonymous, agree to match dollar for dollar as well. So, the more ticket sales revenue we can create here, the more we can actually give back to charity. So, it’s really all round. It’s going to be a great event.
So, we’re in a sport… Isn’t that funny? Where a lot of these guys do have managers. I think in MMA things would be a lot easier for the promoter because you’re not talking directly to the athlete. You’re talking to a guy who might, who’s obviously taking a cut, but like, peace, there’s a middleman.
So, in a situation where you’re talking directly to the athlete, can be very difficult, can be very annoying, can be very hard to reach these guys. They can be very non-committal. That for me has been one of the biggest challenges. The guys that I speak to that are like, “I’m in.” And then, they’re like, “I’m out. I’m in,” like navigating this area.
One other aspect is because we did this basically from idea to event will be less than three months, three and a half months. So, it’s like we’re having to do so much in such a short period of time. Little things like, of the show and money we’ve given them. They’re expected to basically secure their own flight and hotel to the event with cutting down on staff because that would be one of the… If I had to coordinate, getting these guys flights, I would just jump off a building. It’s hard enough to get them to agree to the event, let alone coordinate, “Hey, what date do you want to come in?” It’s like herding cats.
So, really just the interpersonal stuff’s been difficult. Obviously, going up against ADCC, the legacy event has been pretty difficult as well. Well-established, huge history. They’ve been selling tickets for two years. Everyone’s known it’s been coming for two years. That thing was largely sold out before we even announced the event. So, we’re going head-to-head with this event. So, from a ticket sales perspective, very difficult.
So, that was not a surprise because I know they’re good kids. But to basically turn down allegedly show money to do this event, to support the event, to me is incredible. Mica Galvão, things would be more complicated there. Obviously, Mica officially joined ADCC before he secured the Ruotolos. Kade beat him in the final. Mica’s personally motivated to face off against Kade, so he didn’t know Kade was in our event before he agreed to ADCC.
There’s more to that story too, in terms of Mica doing ADCC because a bunch of the kids in his team, I think they’re being flown out to do the ADCC kids event. So, there’s his two teammates, well, at least one of his teammates will be doing the ADCC 66 kilo division. So, his dad, his coach, doesn’t really want to split time between two events. That’s a difficulty for athletes there. But obviously, disappointing. We couldn’t secure Mica.
Mica said he was about the legacy, so he wanted to be the youngest guy ever to double Grand Slam, which is basically win all the Gi events and win the ADCC that same year. My thoughts were, if I was in his position, and I never was obviously a prodigy, a talent like that is I thought he had a position to make a statement in the sport to kind of as cheesy it sounds, be on the right side of history, to have turned down a double Grand Slam, to be in an event that supports athlete pay.
Again, I don’t overly criticize him. But I think in terms of your legacy and reputation, to be at a point and choose to do that is much more memorable than him getting that double Grand Slam, which I’m sure he will win the ADCC 77 kilo division this year, but it’ll be somewhat tarnished anyway. So, I do feel bad for some of the athletes that win this year and potentially people will be like, “Oh, yeah, but there was half the people weren’t in the division.” I feel bad for those guys.
But at the end of the day, most of these guys had an opportunity to be a part of an event that really there’s no downside to. You have a chance to be paid more money than you’ve ever been paid in your life. You are selling tickets that are going to go to charity, and it’s not behind a paywall. So, anyone, anywhere in the world can stream this event, watch it, and there’s no barrier to entry in terms of finances.
So, I was like, “I’ll do 99, I’ll leave 88 for the boys.” They both lost my division first round, unfortunately. So, I faced off against Meregali beginning of day two. Lot of pressure because Danaher used to corner me, used to be my coach. Now, he’s cornering the Brazilians who used to complain about as the enemy. And I’m like, “What’s going on over here?” It’s like karate kid stuff. I face off against Meregali. I go hard early because I think he can’t defend leg locks.
For the first three minutes, I’m just attacking legs, legs, legs. I ended up sweeping him, getting on top. No points before the points period. But I’m very tired. I’m very tired at this point. Meregali’s big. There’s some guys that get juiced up to hit a certain weight. That’s what I did to enter this division. You can’t keep your gas thing. Meregali’s just a big dude. Who knows if he’s on the juice or not. But he’s just naturally sits around 230 pounds or even 225.
When you’re naturally that big, you gas tanks a bit better. Again, if you balloon yourself up on every substance possible, gas tanks surprisingly not too good. So, we have a bit of a close one. Decision goes my way. Ultimately, finals next. I lose that. But that is sort of our competitive history. We were meant to have a match that had been pre-booked immediately after ADCC.
So, we agreed to this before ADCC. I was like, “The price is right, I’m in.” So, I signed up for it and I’m thinking ADCC that we’re going to face off soon after. Meregali chose instead to have some vacation time. He wanted to go on vacation. He went to relax, bit of relaxation down in Brazil. So, the match is scrapped.
Flo hit me up and they say, “Can you do February?” And this was about the time that Volk fought Islam in Perth. I was like, “No, I can’t do February because I’ll be helping Volkanovski. That’s going to take precedence over this match.” Flo goes, “You know what? We announce it anyway. We’ll sell those tickets anyway. We’ll get the people hyped. And then, we’ll just have you pull out.” And I’m like, “All right, do it.” I’m like, “Do whatever you want. That’s fuck, and probably not a good idea.” But they do that.
And then, people keep trying to rebook this match. But now, I barely even train anymore. I’m busy being a promoter, traveling around. So, now instead of facing in competition again, which I would do if the price was right, they’d have to pay me very well. Two of the shows have offered me the match, but the money, terrible.
Other people have asked why we don’t get paid more money. You can both tell me and the world at the same time, the grappling world at the same time, but was not interested in doing a podcast. Again, maybe he thought I was going to hit him with some gotcha questions or something. But really, at the end of the day, I personally believe you’ve got nothing to hide. If you are confident in the business decisions you’ve made, then there’s no got you moment that I could actually do.
I could easily… I would have done the podcast if I look like a complete idiot would’ve released it anyway because it’d be a good message to where we are in the sport. But again, considering what I know about Thomas & Mack’s price, which I believe we’re paying $200,000 for, and T-Mobile’s $2 million. How do you justify no increase in athlete pay? Well, we have a $1.8 million increase in venue cost.
When FloGrappling, when an event on FloGrappling or Fight Pass or any other streaming provider, unless it’s a pay-per-view, you’re not going to know how many people watched. So, that’s one aspect of what we’re doing is we’re going to have a visual guide to how many people off hands of grappling.
And in many cases, you can’t even pay for it. With IOC, I’ve got to experience this because I’ll have podcast conversations with judoka for example, and I put a little clip in a podcast and the Olympics channel takes it down immediately. So, they have all the videos uploaded private, they’re private.
But in the case of the Olympics, first of all, in the case of the Olympics, the whole point of the Olympics is for it to be accessible to everybody. So, paywalling goes against the spirit of the Olympic Games. And I will say the same is probably true for many sports I grappling, especially from major events like ADCC that I feel like they should be openly accessible to everybody on every platform. But what was the decision like for you to make it accessible on YouTube and X and…
And really like, again, I’m not making accusations against FloGrappling or UFC Fight Pass. They are making the right business decision by not providing streamer numbers because that’s leverage that those people can use against the streaming provider. But for me as an individual athlete that really wants to understand the metrics of how many people actually watch this sport to leverage that in my own sponsorship negotiations, then if I’m in a position to have this out free and also give every athlete involved the same metrics and information, you’ll literally be able to see the spikes when you compete and you’ll be able to take that and present it for opportunities for sponsorships, for businesses to say, “Look, how many views this got.” I was one of the most viewed moments of this event, so I want to put the power back in the athlete and take it away from the host.
Eventually, you can grow the audience, create the audience free. I think, again, if your goal is to create a huge sport here, then it’s like if we’re already a niche sport and competition aspect of that, is it even smaller niche? Then, we need to grow that providing this content for free.
So, whether you feel like you’re training hard enough, you’re over training. Those to me are the most difficult aspects. And I think really, those are an individual thing and that’s really something where a coach can provide what he thinks to you is the right amount of work. And I think that’s different for different people. I think Nicky Rod could do eight hours a day, you know what I mean? I think Nick Ryan, 8 minutes.
Sometimes, when I know three months out, I’ve got an event coming up and that event only happens every two years. It just the stress of that alone, I personally on an individual level, more of a, I’d rather wing it. I’d rather be in the stands and just roll down. Like Gunnar Nelson, I remember he had a brilliant performance in an ADCC absolute. And he was out drinking the night before. He had no idea he was competing the next day. He was in the stands eating ice cream and they called his name out for the absolute, and he went out there and I believe he got bronze. I believe he beat Jeff Monson.
So, it’s like, it’s different for different people. Obviously, you don’t want that to be the standard. You’ve got to be putting in the work at all times. But even now in my crazy travel schedule where I don’t train anywhere near like I used to. As long as your game is technical, and as long as your body’s in good condition, I believe you can still train well against world-class guys. You might not be able to do an hour straight, but if you’re technique-orientated, you’re just losing fitness.
That’s the strategy. And then how would I beat them in that rule set? So there’s so many strategic layers to go above and beyond just the training for me. But nowadays I like to, if I train short duration, high intensity, that’s the best for me. I don’t like this six little, like 10, six minute rounds, whatever. I don’t like this long training. For me, it’s too much toll on the body. I think I go to the gym, maybe the first round’s slightly light, and then just bang it out. Two hard rounds tops, a little bit of problem solving. Get out of there. Because you want to feel a little bit of the competition intensity. That feels the best on my body.
It’s like, you’re confronted with a threat. You have to meet it with a threat. It’s like, I’ve spoken about this with Ryan Hall. Ryan Hall will give them a warning and then gone. And I think it’s perfectly acceptable. I won’t endanger them for no reason, but if you are coming hot, you better tap fast. If I feel a threat, you better tap. I’m not going to break it for the sake of breaking it. But if you do some crazy shit that might potentially hurt me and I get a submission and I’m tired. If you are fresh, you can catch a heel hook, hold it tight. The guy tries to wiggle out. You got it.
If you’re tired and you’ve been nice with a heel hook and then they slip out and club you in the head, then next time is going to be the last time.
It’s insane to me that he’s still considered probably the pound for pound best featherweight ever in my opinion. And he’s basically come across and started late from a rugby background. But also in terms of what I’ve learned on a technical level, I’ve picked up a lot of stuff from him in sort of grappling exchanges. How to get back up. Obviously, wall wrestling. In terms of how hard he trains, how hard he works the cardio aspect is insane. His cardio workouts are absolutely insane.
But the whole process of the MMA fight is horrible, especially when you care about the person fighting because some of those weight cuts you see are awful. You’re basically seeing guys’ eyes roll back in their head, like him just powering through a five kilo, 10 pound cut. And just constantly talking about how easy it is. But while clearly, I mean these guys look like they’re dying. To push through that, and then to push through some of the moments in his fight. To watch him be completely relaxed until five minutes before the fight and then he starts talking about, “You’re never going to take this belt away from my family.” He’s thinking about his family before he fights, his kids. You see the character change. It’s just absolutely insane to watch.
On the other side of that is obviously watching the ups and downs. It’s been so many ups. The last two have been downs. So you’re seeing the full spectrum of the highest highs and the lowest lows.
There’s way more things you can do in a grappling scenario from top and bottom than I think against the wall. So a grinding nature of how they train works really good to walk a guy down and take him down against the wall. And then obviously with ground and pound, very good to hold a guy down. So I think just never conceding an inch in training. It’s just they’ve done that since they were born, basically.
But progression, it’ll just be the integration of wrestling into Jiu-Jitsu. I think that would be the most exciting way the sport could progress. It’s basically folk style wrestling, but an integration of submissions from the standing position too. If you just follow the rules of you should always be fighting to get on top, whether that’s a submission that leads to a sweep or a sweep. And you should be trying to avoid being pinned. And as long as the game revolves around that and guys engage each other offensively on their feet, that would be the most exciting, best way to watch the sport.
Click link to jump approximately to that part in the transcript:
- 0:00 – Introduction
- 3:04 – $1 million in cash
- 5:08 – Kazakhstan
- 7:33 – Ukraine
- 39:42 – Bali
- 47:01 – CJI
- 58:04 – Gabi Garcia
- 1:00:58 – The Alley
- 1:16:08 – Gordon Ryan and Nicholas Meregali
- 1:23:01 – Trolling
- 1:25:49 – ADCC
- 1:36:02 – Training camp
- 1:47:45 – Breaking legs
- 1:48:27 – Advice for beginners
- 1:55:07 – Volk
- 2:04:09 – Future of jiu jitsu
- 2:07:16 – Steroids
- 2:10:44 – Hope
Introduction
Craig Jones
I like to match looks from time to time.
I like to match looks from time to time.
Lex Fridman
Thank you.
Thank you.
Craig Jones
In an homage.
In an homage.
Lex Fridman
You look sexy. How many legs did you break in Eastern Europe?
You look sexy. How many legs did you break in Eastern Europe?
Craig Jones
Three or four.
Three or four.
Lex Fridman
To send a message or just for your own personal enjoyment?
To send a message or just for your own personal enjoyment?
Craig Jones
If she wins, I’ll personally give her a million dollars. If I can foot lock her, we’re going to collaborate together in an OnlyFans sex tape.
If she wins, I’ll personally give her a million dollars. If I can foot lock her, we’re going to collaborate together in an OnlyFans sex tape.
Lex Fridman
Did she agree to this?
Did she agree to this?
Craig Jones
She shook on it.
She shook on it.
Lex Fridman
You do have an OnlyFans channel. Is that still up?
You do have an OnlyFans channel. Is that still up?
Craig Jones
After August 17th? It’s going to be fire.
After August 17th? It’s going to be fire.
Lex Fridman
It’s going to be on fire.
It’s going to be on fire.
Craig Jones
Honestly, when we talk about secret investor, I think that could fund the entire tournament.
Honestly, when we talk about secret investor, I think that could fund the entire tournament.
Lex Fridman
I missed all that. What gives you hope?
I missed all that. What gives you hope?
Craig Jones
That you can still make fun of anything as long as it’s funny.
That you can still make fun of anything as long as it’s funny.
Lex Fridman
The following is a conversation with Craig Jones, martial artist, world traveler and one of the funniest people in the sport of submission grappling. While he does make fun of himself a lot, he is legitimately one of the greatest submission grapplers in the world. Underneath the veil of nonstop sexualized Aussie humor and incessant online trolling, he is truly a kindhearted human being who’s trying to do good in the world. Sometimes he does so through a bit of controversy and chaos.
The following is a conversation with Craig Jones, martial artist, world traveler and one of the funniest people in the sport of submission grappling. While he does make fun of himself a lot, he is legitimately one of the greatest submission grapplers in the world. Underneath the veil of nonstop sexualized Aussie humor and incessant online trolling, he is truly a kindhearted human being who’s trying to do good in the world. Sometimes he does so through a bit of controversy and chaos.
Like with a new CJI tournament that has over $2 million in prize money. It’s coming up this Friday and Saturday. Yes, the same weekend as the prestigious ADCC tournament. The goal of CGI tournament is to grow the sport. You’ll be able to watch it for free online, live on YouTube and other places. All ticket profits go to charity, mainly to cancer research. I encourage you to support the mission of this tournament by buying tickets and going to see the event in person.
Craig gave me a special link that gives you a 50% discount on the tickets. Go to lexfreeman.com/cji and it should forward you to the right place. They’re trying to sell the last few tickets now. It’s a good cause. Go buy some. Also let me say, as a fan of the sport, I highly encourage you to watch both CJI and ADCC. To celebrate athletes competing in both. From CJI with Nicky Ryan, Nicky Rod, or Ruotolo Brothers, Ffion Davis, McKenzie Dern, and more.
To ADCC with Gordon Ryan, Nicholas Meregali, Giancarlo Bodoni, Rafael Lovato, Jr., Mica Galvao, and more. I have a lot of respect for everyone involved. I trained with many of them regularly and consider many of them friends. Including Craig Gordon and of course John Danaher, who I will talk to many, many more times on this podcast. This is a Lex Fridman podcast. To support it please check out our sponsors in the description. Now, dear friends, I invite you all to come to the pool with Craig Jones and me.
$1 million in cash
Lex Fridman
When you brought the $1 million in cash on Rogan’s podcast, did you have security with you?
When you brought the $1 million in cash on Rogan’s podcast, did you have security with you?
Craig Jones
We had security, but only by Joe Rogan’s request. He said, “You’re really going to bring it? Do you have security?” I said, “No.” He’s like, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll send my security.”
We had security, but only by Joe Rogan’s request. He said, “You’re really going to bring it? Do you have security?” I said, “No.” He’s like, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll send my security.”
Lex Fridman
You were going to do it without security?
You were going to do it without security?
Craig Jones
Yeah, we we’re going to wing it. I was told not to tell anyone, but I sent pictures of it to everyone I know. That was probably a security risk.
Yeah, we we’re going to wing it. I was told not to tell anyone, but I sent pictures of it to everyone I know. That was probably a security risk.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. It’s just you in a car with a bag of cash.
Yeah. It’s just you in a car with a bag of cash.
Craig Jones
Yeah, it was a company that sponsors me, shuffle.com. It was their friend. A friend of theirs, so a guy that’s never met me before just took the risk to show up to a stranger’s house with a million dollars in cash to bring to Joe Rogan. It was a big risk of him.
Yeah, it was a company that sponsors me, shuffle.com. It was their friend. A friend of theirs, so a guy that’s never met me before just took the risk to show up to a stranger’s house with a million dollars in cash to bring to Joe Rogan. It was a big risk of him.
Lex Fridman
He just put it in the car and drove it.
He just put it in the car and drove it.
Craig Jones
Drove it over there, yeah.
Drove it over there, yeah.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. With no security except Joe.
Yeah. With no security except Joe.
Craig Jones
Except Joe.
Except Joe.
Lex Fridman
That’s common sense.
That’s common sense.
Craig Jones
Then Joe said he’d never seen a million dollars before, but I don’t know if I believe him.
Then Joe said he’d never seen a million dollars before, but I don’t know if I believe him.
Lex Fridman
That’s what everyone says. That’s what Pablo Escobar probably says also. What’s your relationship with risk, especially with the risk of death?
That’s what everyone says. That’s what Pablo Escobar probably says also. What’s your relationship with risk, especially with the risk of death?
Craig Jones
I would say I’m very risk averse.
I would say I’m very risk averse.
Lex Fridman
You are? No, you’re not. That’s a lie.
You are? No, you’re not. That’s a lie.
Craig Jones
My relationship with risk. I like a bit of excitement. I like a bit of adventure. I’m more about the adventure, but I will not let the risk get in the waiver. Also, obviously just got back from Ukraine. I’m happy to take a few risks if it’s part of what the locals want me to do. In Kazakhstan, we did some things that were dangerous. If the locals are like, come along, join in on this activity, I feel personally obligated to go with them.
My relationship with risk. I like a bit of excitement. I like a bit of adventure. I’m more about the adventure, but I will not let the risk get in the waiver. Also, obviously just got back from Ukraine. I’m happy to take a few risks if it’s part of what the locals want me to do. In Kazakhstan, we did some things that were dangerous. If the locals are like, come along, join in on this activity, I feel personally obligated to go with them.
Lex Fridman
It’s not about the risk. You’re not attracted to risk, you’re attracted to adventure and the risk is a thing you don’t give a damn about.
It’s not about the risk. You’re not attracted to risk, you’re attracted to adventure and the risk is a thing you don’t give a damn about.
Craig Jones
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
If it comes along with it.
If it comes along with it.
Craig Jones
Sometimes the best adventures involve the most risk, unfortunately.
Sometimes the best adventures involve the most risk, unfortunately.
Lex Fridman
Speaking of which, you went to Ukraine, like you said, twice, recently.
Speaking of which, you went to Ukraine, like you said, twice, recently.
Craig Jones
Twice. Really pushed the limit there.
Twice. Really pushed the limit there.
Lex Fridman
Including to the front?
Including to the front?
Craig Jones
To the front.
To the front.
Lex Fridman
Tell me the full story of that from the beginning. How did you end up in Ukraine?
Tell me the full story of that from the beginning. How did you end up in Ukraine?
Kazakhstan
Craig Jones
We’re in Kazakhstan. We’re doing some filming in Kazakhstan, and obviously Borats still a very traumatic memory for them, and some of my jokes felt like they don’t go as well in that neck of the woods. We had some difficulty filming out there. We filmed this horse game. Have you ever heard of Kok boru?
We’re in Kazakhstan. We’re doing some filming in Kazakhstan, and obviously Borats still a very traumatic memory for them, and some of my jokes felt like they don’t go as well in that neck of the woods. We had some difficulty filming out there. We filmed this horse game. Have you ever heard of Kok boru?
Lex Fridman
Thanks to you, yes.
Thanks to you, yes.
Craig Jones
It’s a game, a very, very old game. They cut a goat or a sheep. I didn’t get too close to look at it. But they cut its head and legs off and they use it as some form of bull and then they’ll have up to a thousand guys on horses violently trying to pick this up and drop it in the other end’s goals basically. The goals used to be concrete, now it’s just a top. But local business owners will throw down huge amounts of money for the winners.
It’s a game, a very, very old game. They cut a goat or a sheep. I didn’t get too close to look at it. But they cut its head and legs off and they use it as some form of bull and then they’ll have up to a thousand guys on horses violently trying to pick this up and drop it in the other end’s goals basically. The goals used to be concrete, now it’s just a top. But local business owners will throw down huge amounts of money for the winners.
These horses have been trained from a very young age. The riders have been trained. I’ve never ridden a horse before. We wanted to film something that made it look like I was going to go into the horse pit, into the Kok boru pit. However, the drunk stunt man that we used just decided that when he took my horse reigns, he would take me straight into the pit instead of ending the shot there. I was in there amongst I guess the horse riders, the Kok boru riders, and we weren’t leaving.
We just were in there for quite a while. He could talk English pretty well actually. He’s like, “Oh, I thought you’d want to check it out from the inside.” Then while we’re in there, someone picked up the carcass and a wave of horse riders came at me. I was quite concerned at that point because they’re bashing into each other and obviously they’re angry. They’re seeing a foreigner in there. I was wearing basically Biggie Smalls COOGI looking sweater, so I stood out.
They definitely didn’t like that I was participating in a game that they probably trained their whole life for and that amount of money they could win is very, very significant and there’s me in there. They’re also pointing out Borat, Borat. Thinking I was making Borat jokes, which again, very traumatic memory for the people at Kazakhstan.
Lex Fridman
Were you making Borat jokes?
Were you making Borat jokes?
Craig Jones
No, but I guess it’s the same type of humor. I’m not pretending to be Kazak. I’m just there being an idiot and enjoying the local culture. But we’re over there in Kazakhstan and we did that. That was obviously a bit risky.
No, but I guess it’s the same type of humor. I’m not pretending to be Kazak. I’m just there being an idiot and enjoying the local culture. But we’re over there in Kazakhstan and we did that. That was obviously a bit risky.
Lex Fridman
Did they learn to love you?
Did they learn to love you?
Ukraine
Craig Jones
I think they learned to love me and then to hate me again. It was a bit of all encompassing relationship for the Kazak people. But we basically abandoned ship. It was proven too difficult to film some things, some sensitive subjects over there. I said, “Where should we go next?” I just looked at the map and I was like, “We’re near Ukraine.” Ukraine was a place that I’d been offered to teach a Jujitsu seminar prior to I guess the full scale war commencing and we’re looking for a bit of adventure, something interesting to film.
I think they learned to love me and then to hate me again. It was a bit of all encompassing relationship for the Kazak people. But we basically abandoned ship. It was proven too difficult to film some things, some sensitive subjects over there. I said, “Where should we go next?” I just looked at the map and I was like, “We’re near Ukraine.” Ukraine was a place that I’d been offered to teach a Jujitsu seminar prior to I guess the full scale war commencing and we’re looking for a bit of adventure, something interesting to film.
Following the news, obviously very controversial in the news, people have very strong opinions. I was like, ” Let’s go over there. Let’s do a charity event. Let’s do something. Let’s train with the people and really experience of ourselves.” We set up the seminar. Turned out to be the biggest seminar for Jujitsu in Ukraine history. Which is wild considering obviously they are at war. But everyone came together to support it. One of the soldiers there, one of my friends there, good friend now, who’s on the front line, he made a comment on there.
He said, “Hey, this is a seminar to donate profits to the soldiers, but we’re on the front line.” I was like, “You know what, I’ll come to you.” He’s like, “Listen, I can’t promise you’ll survive, but I’ll promise you’ll have a good time.” I said, “That’s all I needed to hear.” We connected and my friend Roman, we went really, really close. I think we were at the closest 0.7 kilometers from the front line. Obviously very surreal experience to be over there seeing basically how the battles fought with those drones.
Lex Fridman
How long ago was this?
How long ago was this?
Craig Jones
I think it would’ve been March or April. We went there. We went, basically spent two nights up on the front line. Went back to Kjiv and that was it for that trip. In terms of crazy stuff that happened, obviously just the people living. You download the air defense tracker. At any time there could be an air siren going off, an air alert on your phone. Could be like drones heading your way, planes are in the air, missiles flying. Then those missiles will change direction and stuff, so the air alert, you don’t know if it’s heading a different direction, but they just warn everyone. You live under a constant state of fear basically. Then on that first trip, the heaviest moment was, I was going downstairs in the hotel to work out, which is honestly a rare thing these days, doing something healthy with myself.
I think it would’ve been March or April. We went there. We went, basically spent two nights up on the front line. Went back to Kjiv and that was it for that trip. In terms of crazy stuff that happened, obviously just the people living. You download the air defense tracker. At any time there could be an air siren going off, an air alert on your phone. Could be like drones heading your way, planes are in the air, missiles flying. Then those missiles will change direction and stuff, so the air alert, you don’t know if it’s heading a different direction, but they just warn everyone. You live under a constant state of fear basically. Then on that first trip, the heaviest moment was, I was going downstairs in the hotel to work out, which is honestly a rare thing these days, doing something healthy with myself.
Lex Fridman
You’re working out.
You’re working out.
Craig Jones
Getting in the gym, pumping some iron. This was divine intervention that a hypersonic missile was shot down by the patriot event system, just like five minutes from the hotel. The whole hotel and the attached gym just shook like crazy. Some people started freaking out. Most people went to leave to go outside, which I don’t think is recommended, but you want to see what’s going on out there.
Getting in the gym, pumping some iron. This was divine intervention that a hypersonic missile was shot down by the patriot event system, just like five minutes from the hotel. The whole hotel and the attached gym just shook like crazy. Some people started freaking out. Most people went to leave to go outside, which I don’t think is recommended, but you want to see what’s going on out there.
Lex Fridman
This was in Kyiv?
This was in Kyiv?
Craig Jones
This was in Kyiv. It got shot down and then some of the local troops actually took me to the site of where just part of the missile had landed in the ground and left this huge of indentation. They’d already cleared up most of the, I guess, shrapnel from the missile. I don’t know if I should or if I was legally allowed to do this, but I took some of that missile back home with me. I don’t know where I left it actually. But I thought maybe that would raise some alarm bells and airport scans. But I took it regardless. That was basically the crazy thing that happened on that first trip.
This was in Kyiv. It got shot down and then some of the local troops actually took me to the site of where just part of the missile had landed in the ground and left this huge of indentation. They’d already cleared up most of the, I guess, shrapnel from the missile. I don’t know if I should or if I was legally allowed to do this, but I took some of that missile back home with me. I don’t know where I left it actually. But I thought maybe that would raise some alarm bells and airport scans. But I took it regardless. That was basically the crazy thing that happened on that first trip.
Lex Fridman
The Patriot Defense System is incredible. That’s an incredible piece of technology that’s from the United States. It’s expensive but it’s incredible. Then so that’s protecting Kjiv.
The Patriot Defense System is incredible. That’s an incredible piece of technology that’s from the United States. It’s expensive but it’s incredible. Then so that’s protecting Kjiv.
Craig Jones
That’s protecting Kjiv, yeah. That was at the time where US hadn’t voted to I guess keep funding the weapons over there. It was a tense moment because I think, I don’t know, everyone was thinking when do those air defense missiles run out? That was a heavy moment for me thinking, look at what it shot out the sky. Imagine if they didn’t have that. But that was probably the most surreal moment. But Kjiv largely, life goes on most of the time as per normal. I was faced with crazy messages and comments, even just posting that video. Like I’m getting paid by Ukraine and stuff. It’s just like people just don’t understand that life has to go on like Kjiv here, the front lines far away. The cities have to largely try to operate as normal or just life will not go on in those villages and cities.
That’s protecting Kjiv, yeah. That was at the time where US hadn’t voted to I guess keep funding the weapons over there. It was a tense moment because I think, I don’t know, everyone was thinking when do those air defense missiles run out? That was a heavy moment for me thinking, look at what it shot out the sky. Imagine if they didn’t have that. But that was probably the most surreal moment. But Kjiv largely, life goes on most of the time as per normal. I was faced with crazy messages and comments, even just posting that video. Like I’m getting paid by Ukraine and stuff. It’s just like people just don’t understand that life has to go on like Kjiv here, the front lines far away. The cities have to largely try to operate as normal or just life will not go on in those villages and cities.
Lex Fridman
Well, it’s human nature as well. It’s not just Kjiv, it’s Kharkiv, it’s even Donetsk, Khartsyzk. People get accustomed to war quickly. It’s impossible to suffer for prolonged periods of time, so you adjust and you appreciate the things you still have.
Well, it’s human nature as well. It’s not just Kjiv, it’s Kharkiv, it’s even Donetsk, Khartsyzk. People get accustomed to war quickly. It’s impossible to suffer for prolonged periods of time, so you adjust and you appreciate the things you still have.
Craig Jones
Yeah, some bolder moves out there. I love seeing people that just crazy stuff’s going on from the war and they don’t even react to it. They don’t go to the bomb shelter. It’s like a bolder move. I’m not going to change my lifestyle. Actually on that first trip as well, something else that I probably shouldn’t have been allowed to do was go to Chernobyl. Chernobyl, I believe troops came through Belarus and there was some fighting going on in Chernobyl.
Yeah, some bolder moves out there. I love seeing people that just crazy stuff’s going on from the war and they don’t even react to it. They don’t go to the bomb shelter. It’s like a bolder move. I’m not going to change my lifestyle. Actually on that first trip as well, something else that I probably shouldn’t have been allowed to do was go to Chernobyl. Chernobyl, I believe troops came through Belarus and there was some fighting going on in Chernobyl.
I think the whole world got concerned at that point if any sort of radiation leaked. But Chernobyl, as it stands, the troops back down and it’s completely covered in mines. Very, very difficult to go to Chernobyl. Basically as a tourist or as I guess a idiot like myself should really probably not be allowed in a place like that. But we were able to get there. We passed four security checkpoints. It took two attempts. First time we tried to go in there was with the special forces guy, we cleared two security gates. Then they stopped us and basically threatened us with arrest. Rightfully so. Really have no business going to Chernobyl. We made a connection. I won’t say who this connection was, but he had heard about what I had done with a charity event and opened some doors for us to be able to go to Chernobyl. We got to see Chernobyl. We had some filming restrictions there just because it was a crazy military conflict at one point. We got to actually see Chernobyl. Chernobyl always been a dream of mine to see. It’s just such an interesting place and to see it under these conditions, very, very strange.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, what was that like? There’s no civilians there now.
Yeah, what was that like? There’s no civilians there now.
Craig Jones
It’s just completely empty. I guess it’s like the fantasy you have. I imagine people go on tours of Chernobyl back in the tourist days when it was a tourist spot and it would be busy full of tourists. We got basically a private tour, so we got to really feel that abandoned vibes. I guess I was interested in it from playing Call of Duty and then Chernobyl series, all the documentaries and stuff. But very, very strange place to go visit.
It’s just completely empty. I guess it’s like the fantasy you have. I imagine people go on tours of Chernobyl back in the tourist days when it was a tourist spot and it would be busy full of tourists. We got basically a private tour, so we got to really feel that abandoned vibes. I guess I was interested in it from playing Call of Duty and then Chernobyl series, all the documentaries and stuff. But very, very strange place to go visit.
Lex Fridman
It is now a minefield like a lot of parts of Ukraine. That’s one of the dark, terrifying aspects of wars. How many mines are left even when the war ends for decades after? Mines everywhere. Because de-mining is extremely difficult and that could continually kill people.
It is now a minefield like a lot of parts of Ukraine. That’s one of the dark, terrifying aspects of wars. How many mines are left even when the war ends for decades after? Mines everywhere. Because de-mining is extremely difficult and that could continually kill people.
Craig Jones
I don’t think it’ll be a tourist spot for a very long time. Because if you were thinking about areas to de-mine when the conflict ends, an area where if you accidentally trigger a mine could cause a radiation leak. It’s probably going to be very low on the list. Tourism for Chernobyl, who knows how long until that returns.
I don’t think it’ll be a tourist spot for a very long time. Because if you were thinking about areas to de-mine when the conflict ends, an area where if you accidentally trigger a mine could cause a radiation leak. It’s probably going to be very low on the list. Tourism for Chernobyl, who knows how long until that returns.
Lex Fridman
Why do you think you were able to get to Chernobyl? Why don’t you think the Ukrainian people, the Ukrainian soldiers don’t see you as a threat?
Why do you think you were able to get to Chernobyl? Why don’t you think the Ukrainian people, the Ukrainian soldiers don’t see you as a threat?
Craig Jones
Maybe they were hoping that I did step on a mine. Maybe my jokes didn’t go too well there.
Maybe they were hoping that I did step on a mine. Maybe my jokes didn’t go too well there.
Lex Fridman
Your connection was actually Putin, he was trying to get rid of you.
Your connection was actually Putin, he was trying to get rid of you.
Craig Jones
Putin, yeah. I don’t know. We felt pretty safe when we’re there. There was an air alert went off. They were more concerned with me dying just for the PR side of things. It’s like Australian tourist.
Putin, yeah. I don’t know. We felt pretty safe when we’re there. There was an air alert went off. They were more concerned with me dying just for the PR side of things. It’s like Australian tourist.
Lex Fridman
In one of your videos actually heard Ukrainian language. They were talking about, we don’t want to lose an athlete. That’s what they’re saying as they’re loading the rocket launcher.
In one of your videos actually heard Ukrainian language. They were talking about, we don’t want to lose an athlete. That’s what they’re saying as they’re loading the rocket launcher.
Craig Jones
Oh yeah, the rocket launcher. I showed a rocket launcher with the troops on the first trip. But the second trip I went back to, which was only maybe four to five weeks ago. This time we went to some crazier spots. We went to Odessa, which has been hit a ton.
Oh yeah, the rocket launcher. I showed a rocket launcher with the troops on the first trip. But the second trip I went back to, which was only maybe four to five weeks ago. This time we went to some crazier spots. We went to Odessa, which has been hit a ton.
Lex Fridman
I really enjoyed the video of old man stretching and exercising on the Odessa shore.
I really enjoyed the video of old man stretching and exercising on the Odessa shore.
Craig Jones
Yeah, what is it, a local custom?
Yeah, what is it, a local custom?
Lex Fridman
Well, Odessa people are known historically to be wild.
Well, Odessa people are known historically to be wild.
Craig Jones
That was wild. It was abrasive to the eyes, but I appreciated it. Especially a middle-aged man in underwear with a beer belly doing a Sundance at dusk. That would frighten many people.
That was wild. It was abrasive to the eyes, but I appreciated it. Especially a middle-aged man in underwear with a beer belly doing a Sundance at dusk. That would frighten many people.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. The battleship would turn around. Yeah, so where else?
Yeah. The battleship would turn around. Yeah, so where else?
Craig Jones
We went Odessa, we briefly went back to Kjiv. I made a connection with the police chief, basically the entire country last time. He had said to me that if I wanted to go somewhere really heavy in terms of action, we could go to Kherson. He’s like, “I’ll personally escort you to Kherson.” I was just like, well, here we have an invitation for adventure. I think it’s a great idea to go. I thought, you know what? I’ll completely lie to my camera man and tell him it’s a safe trip to go on so that he can pass that information onto his fiance and she won’t have any concerns.
We went Odessa, we briefly went back to Kjiv. I made a connection with the police chief, basically the entire country last time. He had said to me that if I wanted to go somewhere really heavy in terms of action, we could go to Kherson. He’s like, “I’ll personally escort you to Kherson.” I was just like, well, here we have an invitation for adventure. I think it’s a great idea to go. I thought, you know what? I’ll completely lie to my camera man and tell him it’s a safe trip to go on so that he can pass that information onto his fiance and she won’t have any concerns.
We basically take this huge journey all the way down to Kherson. We switch at a city outside, I can’t remember the name, but we had to switch into armored vehicles. I remember the guy that picked this up there said, “Hey, give me a phone number for someone to call to recover your bodies.” He said that in a joking way, but I think he was serious. But I said, “Just leave it.” I don’t think they need it. I didn’t think there’d be much left probably if we get hit over there.
But we go basically into Kherson. I think Kherson’s population used to be like 250,000 now it’s basically all military down to 50,000. We went into the police basically station in the bunker underneath, the top of the building was destroyed. Then one of the local guys just took us on a city tour. Which again, we had some filming restrictions because obviously anytime something’s hit, I guess the other side wants to be able to see what damage has been done.
If you take any footage of recently destroyed buildings, that’s going to help them recalibrate and target the next shot. Kherson being so heavily hit, it’s basically within range of every single thing Russia has. Every form of weapon. Drones. Before we took the tour, he put some drone blocking things on top of the car, which didn’t look reassuring. He also took a helmet out the back of the car, which I thought he was going to give to me, but he just threw it in the back of the pickup truck and said, “Oh, you won’t need this, you’ll be dead anyway.”
I was like, “Oh, I’ve made a great life decision with this little Kherson tour.” But then we took a tour of the city and Kherson used to be a beautiful beach city by the Nepo River, but basically it’s just the river that separates Russia from, I guess the Russian land they’ve taken from Kherson. Kherson split across that river and there’s just Russians on the other side of the river and Ukrainians on this side. Very, very dangerous spot.
Kharkiv makes a lot of press because of the long range missiles that hit, but Kherson’s just being hit all the time. We took this tour, we went along the river. We went to within one kilometer of the front line. That was the closest we got. After this point, we heard artillery strike. Because you’re in an armored vehicle, it sounds further away than it is. Obviously the sound doesn’t get in. I thought it sounded far away. We could see some smoke that actually appeared closer in the distance.
The guy driving us took us to a point where a large building was blocking us from, I guess the angle at which the missile would’ve came from. I thought everything was cool, thought that must’ve been off in the distance. Then we heard two more strikes hit very, very close. They sounded really loud. Then I think he’s radioed in to see if everything’s safe, if we can leave this point. Then we basically raced back. But I started to realize we were in danger at any point where he really sped the car up or took evasive movements in the car.
But we got out of there and I think I had someone translate it later and basically he was checking to see if the roads were clear for us to leave. Ultimately ended up being someone died and a few people injured from that blast, which was less than half a kilometer from us. Basically they were radioing saying, end the tour, come back to the police station.
Lex Fridman
Artillery is terrifying. There’s just shelling and it’s the destructive power of artillery is insane.
Artillery is terrifying. There’s just shelling and it’s the destructive power of artillery is insane.
Craig Jones
Yeah, it’s constant all the time. You hear that noise and you’re like, is that coming or going? Very concerning.
Yeah, it’s constant all the time. You hear that noise and you’re like, is that coming or going? Very concerning.
Lex Fridman
Right. You don’t know. You don’t know. Just like that, it could be you, gone.
Right. You don’t know. You don’t know. Just like that, it could be you, gone.
Craig Jones
Last time, the village we went to, basically it was the day we left. We stayed there overnight. The day we left, it just started getting extremely shelled and the soldier we were with just took a selfie video of us and basically the location we were in just hearing just artillery strike after artillery strike, just being like, oh, you guys left and the fun began. They take it in good spirit. I was trying to use their energy to reassure myself. But I guess when they see it every day, they’re more adjusted to it. They’re not freaking out every time something crazy that goes on.
Last time, the village we went to, basically it was the day we left. We stayed there overnight. The day we left, it just started getting extremely shelled and the soldier we were with just took a selfie video of us and basically the location we were in just hearing just artillery strike after artillery strike, just being like, oh, you guys left and the fun began. They take it in good spirit. I was trying to use their energy to reassure myself. But I guess when they see it every day, they’re more adjusted to it. They’re not freaking out every time something crazy that goes on.
Lex Fridman
Well, they have to. They have to be in good spirit. You have to be joking and laughing.
Well, they have to. They have to be in good spirit. You have to be joking and laughing.
Craig Jones
The guys are always laughing and joking. They were laughing and joking at me quite a bit, holding weapons, trying to shoot weapons and stuff. They got a lot of enjoyment out of me shooting the RPG.
The guys are always laughing and joking. They were laughing and joking at me quite a bit, holding weapons, trying to shoot weapons and stuff. They got a lot of enjoyment out of me shooting the RPG.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, they’re probably still telling stories of that crazy Australian American that rolled in.
Yeah, they’re probably still telling stories of that crazy Australian American that rolled in.
Craig Jones
They helped me out though in my marketing campaign for the tournament. We were able to secure a Lada, classic Soviet Union car. We towed it, we painted it with the logos of the other event, the ADCC, and we got to shoot some RPGs at it. Great experience. Great fun.
They helped me out though in my marketing campaign for the tournament. We were able to secure a Lada, classic Soviet Union car. We towed it, we painted it with the logos of the other event, the ADCC, and we got to shoot some RPGs at it. Great experience. Great fun.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, it’s a very creative marketing campaign.
Yeah, it’s a very creative marketing campaign.
Craig Jones
Very dangerous one.
Very dangerous one.
Lex Fridman
I don’t think Coke or Pepsi are going to do that one. It’s very innovative.
I don’t think Coke or Pepsi are going to do that one. It’s very innovative.
Craig Jones
It was a bold move. Luckily they let me get away with posting it. But when we were there, it was basically at a shooting range and we cleared them out for a while. We’d blown up the car, we’d set it on fire, we’d done all this sort of stuff. I remember we were trying to blow it up. It wasn’t quite hitting, one of the missiles was lodged in under the car, so it was risky. That could have gone off at any moment. But we needed to get it to ignite. We needed to get a shot where it was on fire. The logo of the enemy tournament was basically on fire. We poured gasoline on it. We shot the gasoline tank. That didn’t work. That must be a movie trick or something. Then we decided we had light on fire, a rag and just throw it into the blown out back window. I’m with this guy, special forces guy, and we throw the rag in the back.
It was a bold move. Luckily they let me get away with posting it. But when we were there, it was basically at a shooting range and we cleared them out for a while. We’d blown up the car, we’d set it on fire, we’d done all this sort of stuff. I remember we were trying to blow it up. It wasn’t quite hitting, one of the missiles was lodged in under the car, so it was risky. That could have gone off at any moment. But we needed to get it to ignite. We needed to get a shot where it was on fire. The logo of the enemy tournament was basically on fire. We poured gasoline on it. We shot the gasoline tank. That didn’t work. That must be a movie trick or something. Then we decided we had light on fire, a rag and just throw it into the blown out back window. I’m with this guy, special forces guy, and we throw the rag in the back.
Lex Fridman
Like soaked in gasoline rag?
Like soaked in gasoline rag?
Craig Jones
Yeah. We start running. He’s like, “Stop, stop.” He’s like, “It didn’t go off.” We’re sitting there quite close to the car, lighting it, trying to light more. As we walk back to the car, then we just hear the car ignite. He’s like, “Run, run, run.” We came quite close to death already at that point. But we wanted to get the shot, some photos in front of the burning logos. But we had told the guys at the shooting range to basically give us 10 minutes or so, so we could take the photos.
Yeah. We start running. He’s like, “Stop, stop.” He’s like, “It didn’t go off.” We’re sitting there quite close to the car, lighting it, trying to light more. As we walk back to the car, then we just hear the car ignite. He’s like, “Run, run, run.” We came quite close to death already at that point. But we wanted to get the shot, some photos in front of the burning logos. But we had told the guys at the shooting range to basically give us 10 minutes or so, so we could take the photos.
I don’t know if they didn’t wait the full 10 minutes or if we took too long, but they started firing at the targets anyway. Then the ricochets were flying very, very close to us over our head. One landed right by my leg. We’re like, “Shit, we better get out of here.” Obviously not much safety concerns at that point, but we survived basically artillery strikes. We survived a bit of friendly fire with the bullets coming our way. But again, I was strangely calm because the other guys were calm. But then afterwards they said to me, they were like, “oh bro, if you got shot, we’d just have to dump your body at a hospital. We wouldn’t be able to explain why you’re here blowing up cars.”
Lex Fridman
Right. You’re American and athlete, international celebrity.
Right. You’re American and athlete, international celebrity.
Craig Jones
They’d be like, what is he doing on the front line? There’s no real good explanation for it. But through even to the jokes and stuff, it’s good to highlight what’s actually happening over there. It’s obviously very, very bad.
They’d be like, what is he doing on the front line? There’s no real good explanation for it. But through even to the jokes and stuff, it’s good to highlight what’s actually happening over there. It’s obviously very, very bad.
Lex Fridman
What’s the morale of the soldiers like? Is there still an optimism? Is there still a hope?
What’s the morale of the soldiers like? Is there still an optimism? Is there still a hope?
Craig Jones
There’s the battle fatigue and as they say, all the heroes die early. The guys, the real heroes that are willing to sacrifice themselves, they’re the ones that are going to get taken out quick. Unfortunately that’s the reality from over there. But their thoughts are mostly that it’s going to be a prolonged war. When I ask them about how fast the front line moves, they’re like, “Oh, could take six months to move one 200 meters.”
There’s the battle fatigue and as they say, all the heroes die early. The guys, the real heroes that are willing to sacrifice themselves, they’re the ones that are going to get taken out quick. Unfortunately that’s the reality from over there. But their thoughts are mostly that it’s going to be a prolonged war. When I ask them about how fast the front line moves, they’re like, “Oh, could take six months to move one 200 meters.”
It just feels like it’s going to go on forever. From the Ukrainian side’s perspective, those guys talk to me about how when they hear radio intercepts of Russian soldiers marching to the same frontline spot, is that basically they’re marching into certain death at certain locations. Based on the radio transmissions, they know they’re going to die, but they head forth anyway. Straightforward into Ukrainian position. Which is just wild to me, I guess World War II, they just keep throwing troops at it. You see a ton of footage they take themselves, which is mind-blowing. Obviously some of this footage doesn’t make it to the internet because it’s got important details in those conflicts. But they’re showing first person perspectives of trench warfare. It’s just crazy to see what some of these guys have gone through.
Lex Fridman
I went to a lot of the same places as well, including Kherson. What was your sense of the place?
I went to a lot of the same places as well, including Kherson. What was your sense of the place?
Craig Jones
Kherson was like, it was just so destroyed. I think at this point most of the civilians are gone. I saw a lot of just elderly people left behind, especially a lot of old men. I just think they’re just like, hey, I’ve lived in my whole life, I’m just never leaving. No matter the level of danger, those guys just remain. Then it’s largely just, I guess military in Kherson. But that place felt very, very dangerous. I didn’t realize until we got there, just quite how destroyed it is.
Kherson was like, it was just so destroyed. I think at this point most of the civilians are gone. I saw a lot of just elderly people left behind, especially a lot of old men. I just think they’re just like, hey, I’ve lived in my whole life, I’m just never leaving. No matter the level of danger, those guys just remain. Then it’s largely just, I guess military in Kherson. But that place felt very, very dangerous. I didn’t realize until we got there, just quite how destroyed it is.
Lex Fridman
How did that experience change you? Just seeing war, head on.
How did that experience change you? Just seeing war, head on.
Craig Jones
How it changed me? I guess just realizing a lot of these soldiers are just, you distance yourself from them thinking that they’re something separate. But really speaking to a lot of the Ukrainian soldiers, my friend Roman, he hadn’t lived in Ukraine for eight years. He lived in France, he had a life, he’s got a wife over there, he’s got a daughter. He basically volunteered to come back to protect his mom and brother who still live there.
How it changed me? I guess just realizing a lot of these soldiers are just, you distance yourself from them thinking that they’re something separate. But really speaking to a lot of the Ukrainian soldiers, my friend Roman, he hadn’t lived in Ukraine for eight years. He lived in France, he had a life, he’s got a wife over there, he’s got a daughter. He basically volunteered to come back to protect his mom and brother who still live there.
I used to view them military guys, because in Australia and I guess in the US, they don’t have this conscription ongoing right now. Whereas obviously there’s guys like Roman who volunteered, but then there’s a lot of Ukrainian soldiers that were conscripted into the war. It’s like you just realize how a lot of these guys are everyday people. They’re just in this crazy situation. Where Roman felt obligated to return to Ukraine. From my perspective, anyone from Australia or US, it’s just a different perspective on those. They feel different to the regular people fighting in Ukraine, from my perspective.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, it’s defending the land that is your home.
Yeah, it’s defending the land that is your home.
Craig Jones
Yeah, Japan was coming for Australia, I guess in World War II. They attacked the north. But really there was no foot battle and there was no soldiers on the ground within Australia. I guess US too during World War II. It’s like a completely different perspective from our recent histories compared to if you were a Ukrainian and there’s Russians within the defined border. Their responsibility to protect their homeland and their family, it’s just something you can’t imagine. But also after having spent time with them, you can see why they feel such a strong sense of obligation to protect Ukraine, protect their family and friends.
Yeah, Japan was coming for Australia, I guess in World War II. They attacked the north. But really there was no foot battle and there was no soldiers on the ground within Australia. I guess US too during World War II. It’s like a completely different perspective from our recent histories compared to if you were a Ukrainian and there’s Russians within the defined border. Their responsibility to protect their homeland and their family, it’s just something you can’t imagine. But also after having spent time with them, you can see why they feel such a strong sense of obligation to protect Ukraine, protect their family and friends.
Lex Fridman
In a lot of cases, the soldiers using their own funds to buy equipment. Whether it’s bullets, whether it’s guns, whether it’s armor. Is that still what you saw?
In a lot of cases, the soldiers using their own funds to buy equipment. Whether it’s bullets, whether it’s guns, whether it’s armor. Is that still what you saw?
Craig Jones
Yeah, in terms of the weapons, America provides weapons. We saw a wide selection of weapons. Some of those would be old Soviet weapons, like obviously the RPG we shot and what we shot out of it is all Soviet. It’s very old weaponry. Then you’ve got US weapons that have been given as well. But in terms of the basic soldiers equipment, if they want good quality stuff, that might be the difference between them surviving the winter or the summer just in the extreme temperature range.
Yeah, in terms of the weapons, America provides weapons. We saw a wide selection of weapons. Some of those would be old Soviet weapons, like obviously the RPG we shot and what we shot out of it is all Soviet. It’s very old weaponry. Then you’ve got US weapons that have been given as well. But in terms of the basic soldiers equipment, if they want good quality stuff, that might be the difference between them surviving the winter or the summer just in the extreme temperature range.
They have to pay for that all themselves. They always joke about when foreign soldiers come over to train them. A lot of foreign soldiers come to learn about the drone technology they’ve developed on a budget is they always joke with them about how everything from most countries is basically supplied. All the good quality standard equipment they’d need is just supplied by the government. But in Ukraine, obviously funding is very stretched.
These guys to have the best equipment. They have to basically find money to pay for it themselves. They’ll do that by seeking donations. Best way to get donations would be to grow social media profiles. That’s when you see a lot of social media warfare from a perspective of gaining fame to secure donations for their battalion to be able to fight better or protect themselves. Also, some of the social media warfare, I guess is psychological warfare against the enemy. You’ll see private Telegram groups where they’re showing what they’ve done to the enemy, what the enemy’s done to them. It’s just crazy.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, there’s Telegram groups on both sides and basically some of it is propaganda, some of it is psychological warfare. Some of it is just the human nature of being, of increasing your own morale and the morale of the people around you by showing off successfully killing other human beings. Which are made other in war. The nature of this war has evolved. Drones have become more and more prevalent. Consumer level, cheap drones. Can you speak to that? Have you seen the use of FPE drones?
Yeah, there’s Telegram groups on both sides and basically some of it is propaganda, some of it is psychological warfare. Some of it is just the human nature of being, of increasing your own morale and the morale of the people around you by showing off successfully killing other human beings. Which are made other in war. The nature of this war has evolved. Drones have become more and more prevalent. Consumer level, cheap drones. Can you speak to that? Have you seen the use of FPE drones?
Craig Jones
Yeah, so basically like a three to $500 drone. I think it’s like carbon fiber, 3D printed and they can attach different forms of weaponry to it, whether it’s just dropping a frag. They could drop a mine out of it. I know they were talking about how they had a liquid that could basically burn through a lot of cars and tanks so the person inside basically melt alive. Which sounds horrible. But what’s mind-blowing to me is you could have a $3 million Russian tank that could be destroyed by a $300 drone.
Yeah, so basically like a three to $500 drone. I think it’s like carbon fiber, 3D printed and they can attach different forms of weaponry to it, whether it’s just dropping a frag. They could drop a mine out of it. I know they were talking about how they had a liquid that could basically burn through a lot of cars and tanks so the person inside basically melt alive. Which sounds horrible. But what’s mind-blowing to me is you could have a $3 million Russian tank that could be destroyed by a $300 drone.
Which is just crazy how fast the war changes. I think they’re the world leaders in budget drone technology. They didn’t obviously don’t have the budget for these crazy, elaborate massive drones. I did see some higher budget, bigger drones over there, but for the most part, those FPV drones is really how most of the battles are fought. You’re seeing the cameras on them. You can see basically kamikaze drone will chase someone down and they have that footage.
That’s what the police chief said to me when he gifted me one of the drones they used. He basically said, he’s like, “Artillery is scary, but a drone will follow you into a building.” It’s a haunting thing to think about. They’ll see the drone, they’ll hear the drone, they might try to shoot it down or they might try to run. But if it’s a kamikaze one, those guys are pretty good at flying them. It’s going to chase the soldiers down. A lot of soldiers like pretending to be dead. It’s really crazy, some of the footage out there with those FBV drones.
Lex Fridman
It’s a terrifying tool of war and tool of psychological war and used by both sides increasingly.
It’s a terrifying tool of war and tool of psychological war and used by both sides increasingly.
Craig Jones
Yeah, both sides use it. I remember I was with Roman in Morshyn and he had his break period. He was allowed to leave the country because he basically volunteered to join the army. Ukrainian men can’t really leave Ukraine right now. But Roman, I was in Morshyn and this was a surreal experience for him. We went to the beach and there was some tourists there flying a drone, and you just saw his instinctual reaction to that drone sound in the sky, flashback to that.
Yeah, both sides use it. I remember I was with Roman in Morshyn and he had his break period. He was allowed to leave the country because he basically volunteered to join the army. Ukrainian men can’t really leave Ukraine right now. But Roman, I was in Morshyn and this was a surreal experience for him. We went to the beach and there was some tourists there flying a drone, and you just saw his instinctual reaction to that drone sound in the sky, flashback to that.
Lex Fridman
Currently, they’re all, as far as I know, all human controlled, so FPV. But to me, increasingly terrifying notion is of them becoming autonomous. It’s the best way to defend against the drone that’s FPV controlled is for AI to be controlling that drone. Just have swarms of drones that are $500 controlled by AI systems. That’s a terrifying possibility that the future of warfare is essentially swarms of drones on both sides. Then maybe swarms of drones, say between US and China over Taiwan.
Currently, they’re all, as far as I know, all human controlled, so FPV. But to me, increasingly terrifying notion is of them becoming autonomous. It’s the best way to defend against the drone that’s FPV controlled is for AI to be controlling that drone. Just have swarms of drones that are $500 controlled by AI systems. That’s a terrifying possibility that the future of warfare is essentially swarms of drones on both sides. Then maybe swarms of drones, say between US and China over Taiwan.
Craig Jones
That would be wild. They do those crazy drone light shows where they do those performances with the lights and stuff. They’re already pretty sophisticated with pre-programming.
That would be wild. They do those crazy drone light shows where they do those performances with the lights and stuff. They’re already pretty sophisticated with pre-programming.
Lex Fridman
Those are pre-programmed. The low level control, flight control of those is done autonomously. But there’s a interface for doing the choreography that’s hard coded in. But adding increasing levels of intelligence to the drone where you can detect another drone, follow it and defend yourself. In terms of the military on both sides as the Ukraine war, that’s the technology, that’s like the most wanted technology is drone defense. How are you defending as drones on both sides? Anybody that comes up with an autonomous drone technology is going to help whichever side uses that technology to gain a mill-
Those are pre-programmed. The low level control, flight control of those is done autonomously. But there’s a interface for doing the choreography that’s hard coded in. But adding increasing levels of intelligence to the drone where you can detect another drone, follow it and defend yourself. In terms of the military on both sides as the Ukraine war, that’s the technology, that’s like the most wanted technology is drone defense. How are you defending as drones on both sides? Anybody that comes up with an autonomous drone technology is going to help whichever side uses that technology to gain a mill-
Lex Fridman
… is going to help whichever side uses that technology to gain a military advantage. And so, there’s a huge incentive to build that technology but then, of course, once both sides started using that technology, then there’s swarms of autonomous drones who don’t give a shit about humans, just killing everything in sight on both sides. And that’s terrifying because there’s civilian deaths that are possible that are terrifying, especially when you look 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years from now.
… is going to help whichever side uses that technology to gain a military advantage. And so, there’s a huge incentive to build that technology but then, of course, once both sides started using that technology, then there’s swarms of autonomous drones who don’t give a shit about humans, just killing everything in sight on both sides. And that’s terrifying because there’s civilian deaths that are possible that are terrifying, especially when you look 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years from now.
Craig Jones
Yes, it’s surreal. When we went to coastline, it was the entire sky is just full of drones. At any given time, they could decide to come and attack. So, they could just sit there forever waiting, waiting for you to come out of that building. They’ll wait a long time when someone goes and hides inside. Or potentially, if it’s an open window, fly straight through the open window to get people.
Yes, it’s surreal. When we went to coastline, it was the entire sky is just full of drones. At any given time, they could decide to come and attack. So, they could just sit there forever waiting, waiting for you to come out of that building. They’ll wait a long time when someone goes and hides inside. Or potentially, if it’s an open window, fly straight through the open window to get people.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. So, you’re not even safe indoors.
Yeah. So, you’re not even safe indoors.
Craig Jones
Yeah, there’s nowhere to hide and they can wait for a very, very long time.
Yeah, there’s nowhere to hide and they can wait for a very, very long time.
Lex Fridman
And as far as I know, even politicians, you’re in danger everywhere in Ukraine. So, if you want to do a public speaking thing and doing it outside, you’re in danger because it’s very difficult to detect those drones, it could be anywhere. It’s a terrifying life where you don’t know if you’re safe at any moment anywhere in Ukraine.
And as far as I know, even politicians, you’re in danger everywhere in Ukraine. So, if you want to do a public speaking thing and doing it outside, you’re in danger because it’s very difficult to detect those drones, it could be anywhere. It’s a terrifying life where you don’t know if you’re safe at any moment anywhere in Ukraine.
Craig Jones
Well, sure. It’s crazy with what happened to Trump, I thought maybe the next attack on a public figure might come in the form of drone technology, something along those lines. I wonder how they protect against that here.
Well, sure. It’s crazy with what happened to Trump, I thought maybe the next attack on a public figure might come in the form of drone technology, something along those lines. I wonder how they protect against that here.
Lex Fridman
If that happens, just imagine the insanity that would ensue. Because we understand the idea of a gunman with a rifle shooting somebody but, just a drone, just imagine the conspiracy theories. Who controlled that drone?
If that happens, just imagine the insanity that would ensue. Because we understand the idea of a gunman with a rifle shooting somebody but, just a drone, just imagine the conspiracy theories. Who controlled that drone?
Craig Jones
Where’d it come from? Yeah.
Where’d it come from? Yeah.
Lex Fridman
And now, everybody, that will just cause chaos.
And now, everybody, that will just cause chaos.
Craig Jones
And the range is ever-increasing. One of the battalions in Ukraine, because those FPV drones have short range, pretty short range, but they were able to attach it to one of the larger drones with a signal booster so they could potentially go up to 30, 40 kilometers into the distance. So, the drone that hits you could be flown by someone so far away from you. And if they did that domestically, that would be very frightening to think of the sphere of where it could have come from.
And the range is ever-increasing. One of the battalions in Ukraine, because those FPV drones have short range, pretty short range, but they were able to attach it to one of the larger drones with a signal booster so they could potentially go up to 30, 40 kilometers into the distance. So, the drone that hits you could be flown by someone so far away from you. And if they did that domestically, that would be very frightening to think of the sphere of where it could have come from.
Lex Fridman
When you’ve talked to the soldiers there, did they have a hope or a vision how the war will end?
When you’ve talked to the soldiers there, did they have a hope or a vision how the war will end?
Craig Jones
No, really. I guess it just seems to everyone that there’s going to be no middle ground.
No, really. I guess it just seems to everyone that there’s going to be no middle ground.
Lex Fridman
When I was there, there’s a optimism that they would be victorious definitively. And so, is there still that optimism and, also, are they ready for prolonged war?
When I was there, there’s a optimism that they would be victorious definitively. And so, is there still that optimism and, also, are they ready for prolonged war?
Craig Jones
I think it would be a soldier by soldier basis. I know each of them had a different perspective. I remember I would ask them about, in terms of US politics and their fears, because the first trip I went there, US hadn’t agreed to resupply weapons. So, it was a very different feeling in the air there of concern over what was going to happen but they still remained quite optimistic that, no matter who got in, they felt would do the right thing. But in terms of prolonged war, most people think it’s going to go for a very long time. The children’s hospital that just was bombed in Kyiv, anytime there’s a moment like that, that reignites everything and I think it happens on both sides.
I think it would be a soldier by soldier basis. I know each of them had a different perspective. I remember I would ask them about, in terms of US politics and their fears, because the first trip I went there, US hadn’t agreed to resupply weapons. So, it was a very different feeling in the air there of concern over what was going to happen but they still remained quite optimistic that, no matter who got in, they felt would do the right thing. But in terms of prolonged war, most people think it’s going to go for a very long time. The children’s hospital that just was bombed in Kyiv, anytime there’s a moment like that, that reignites everything and I think it happens on both sides.
So, I know that there was an attack in Crimea, there was an attack on a beach, I guess, and I don’t know if that attack on the hospital was retribution for that but that’s the energy that is felt. They might have battle fatigue but, when something happens to civilians, especially kids, on your side, reinvigorates the energy to fight for as long as necessary. And in terms of the case by case basis, one of my friends, Dmitri, over there who trains jiu-jitsu in the gym, he was very passionate about it just because of the history. He brought out documents of his grandfather being executed by the USSR. So, I know that when the war started, basically, he took a bicycle helmet and his AK-47 and went out into the streets and he’s like, “I’d rather be dead than live under Russian rule again.” So, very case by case basis, personal history for them, I think.
Lex Fridman
Did they comment on US politics whether they hoped for Trump or for, in that situation, Biden now Harris to win the presidential election?
Did they comment on US politics whether they hoped for Trump or for, in that situation, Biden now Harris to win the presidential election?
Craig Jones
I think most of the guys try to keep it pretty positive. You know what I mean? Some people did think that maybe, if Trump was elected, he wouldn’t continue to fund it but they really try to stay optimistic. Most of the people I spoke to really try to remain optimistic that they would be protected if it comes down to it. But obviously, there was a nine-month period where they weren’t refunded. So, as that stretched … Obviously, they’re refunded now but it takes a lot of time to get that equipment back to the points at which they need it. So, if ammunition had ran out, Patriot defense system had ran out, really, really scary prospect there. I don’t know, I guess no one knows what’s going to happen there.
I think most of the guys try to keep it pretty positive. You know what I mean? Some people did think that maybe, if Trump was elected, he wouldn’t continue to fund it but they really try to stay optimistic. Most of the people I spoke to really try to remain optimistic that they would be protected if it comes down to it. But obviously, there was a nine-month period where they weren’t refunded. So, as that stretched … Obviously, they’re refunded now but it takes a lot of time to get that equipment back to the points at which they need it. So, if ammunition had ran out, Patriot defense system had ran out, really, really scary prospect there. I don’t know, I guess no one knows what’s going to happen there.
Lex Fridman
Did you lie to people and say you were close to the president so they can be nice to you so they can convince you to continue the funding?
Did you lie to people and say you were close to the president so they can be nice to you so they can convince you to continue the funding?
Craig Jones
I’m an Australian diplomat. Other than that-
I’m an Australian diplomat. Other than that-
Lex Fridman
Diplomat. That could be a nice way in.
Diplomat. That could be a nice way in.
Bali
Craig Jones
Yeah, that would’ve been a nice way to the top. Luckily, for me, most of the places I travel to, jiu-jitsu gives me access to so many different individuals, it’s super bizarre. Oligarchs, royalty, I guess, tech wizards, it’s a strange group of people, a code around the world of just I get strange access just for being good at wrestling dudes.
Yeah, that would’ve been a nice way to the top. Luckily, for me, most of the places I travel to, jiu-jitsu gives me access to so many different individuals, it’s super bizarre. Oligarchs, royalty, I guess, tech wizards, it’s a strange group of people, a code around the world of just I get strange access just for being good at wrestling dudes.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, martial arts, there’s a code and there’s a respect, a mutual respect. Even if you don’t know anything about the other person, if you’ve both have done martial arts, there’s similar things with judo, with jiu-jitsu, with grappling, all of that. I don’t know what that is.
Yeah, martial arts, there’s a code and there’s a respect, a mutual respect. Even if you don’t know anything about the other person, if you’ve both have done martial arts, there’s similar things with judo, with jiu-jitsu, with grappling, all of that. I don’t know what that is.
Craig Jones
Yeah, it’s like an inner circle. Because this film project we’re working on, it’s focused on that is, because of the history I have in jiu-jitsu and traveling and doing seminars and just getting access to strange experiences from the local, strange in a positive way, and participating in those experiences, that’s what I wanted to focus this travel show on was the community of jiu-jitsu. People around the world really has no ethnic background, religious background, even level of wealth, as cheesy as it sounds, it’s a good equalizer on the mats and that community, camaraderie knows no limits there.
Yeah, it’s like an inner circle. Because this film project we’re working on, it’s focused on that is, because of the history I have in jiu-jitsu and traveling and doing seminars and just getting access to strange experiences from the local, strange in a positive way, and participating in those experiences, that’s what I wanted to focus this travel show on was the community of jiu-jitsu. People around the world really has no ethnic background, religious background, even level of wealth, as cheesy as it sounds, it’s a good equalizer on the mats and that community, camaraderie knows no limits there.
Lex Fridman
Including mats, the shadiest mats in some small town in the middle of nowhere?
Including mats, the shadiest mats in some small town in the middle of nowhere?
Craig Jones
100%. Even Sheikh Tahnoun who started ADCC, I know, when he went to the US and he studied there, he would train at a very simple gym, he wouldn’t declare who he was. I watched a documentary produced about the story of Sheikh Tahnoun and how he studied in America, basically, in anonymity. The people that his gym didn’t know who he was in his country and he trained there, he trained with him for years, cleaned the mats like anyone else. And then they didn’t realize who he was until he said, “Hey, I want to invite you to my country,” but he actually meant, basically as royalty, come and then they realized who this guy was and the significance of him.
100%. Even Sheikh Tahnoun who started ADCC, I know, when he went to the US and he studied there, he would train at a very simple gym, he wouldn’t declare who he was. I watched a documentary produced about the story of Sheikh Tahnoun and how he studied in America, basically, in anonymity. The people that his gym didn’t know who he was in his country and he trained there, he trained with him for years, cleaned the mats like anyone else. And then they didn’t realize who he was until he said, “Hey, I want to invite you to my country,” but he actually meant, basically as royalty, come and then they realized who this guy was and the significance of him.
Lex Fridman
That’s gangster, that’s great. One of the things I love about no-Gi jiu-jitsu is you don’t see rank. So, on a small scale, there’s no hierarchy that emerges when you have the different color belts, everybody’s the same. It’s nice.
That’s gangster, that’s great. One of the things I love about no-Gi jiu-jitsu is you don’t see rank. So, on a small scale, there’s no hierarchy that emerges when you have the different color belts, everybody’s the same. It’s nice.
Craig Jones
Yeah, you get to see the skill.
Yeah, you get to see the skill.
Lex Fridman
The skill speaks but there’s just a mutual respect and whatever. You can quickly find out who … I actually wonder if I would be able to figure out the rank of a person. Can you usually figure out how long a person has been doing jiu-jitsu?
The skill speaks but there’s just a mutual respect and whatever. You can quickly find out who … I actually wonder if I would be able to figure out the rank of a person. Can you usually figure out how long a person has been doing jiu-jitsu?
Craig Jones
I like to think, with some of the aggressive clothing choices I’ve made and sold in the sport, that that should be a beacon, that that person is a blue belt. Has, hopefully, some talent because they’re fearlessly provoking the other party there.
I like to think, with some of the aggressive clothing choices I’ve made and sold in the sport, that that should be a beacon, that that person is a blue belt. Has, hopefully, some talent because they’re fearlessly provoking the other party there.
Lex Fridman
Oh, it’s like in the jungle, whenever there’s an insect that’s red that is really flamboyant looking, that means they’re dangerous.
Oh, it’s like in the jungle, whenever there’s an insect that’s red that is really flamboyant looking, that means they’re dangerous.
Craig Jones
It’s a target, yeah, though being flamboyant. If you come on the mats with something pink, pinky or something, people are circling in fast especially in Eastern Europe.
It’s a target, yeah, though being flamboyant. If you come on the mats with something pink, pinky or something, people are circling in fast especially in Eastern Europe.
Lex Fridman
Okay. So, yeah, you mentioned the project, can you talk about that? I saw there’s a preview that you showed, Craig Jones Gone Walkabout.
Okay. So, yeah, you mentioned the project, can you talk about that? I saw there’s a preview that you showed, Craig Jones Gone Walkabout.
Craig Jones
Gone Walkabout, yeah.
Gone Walkabout, yeah.
Lex Fridman
So, you showed a preview in Indonesia where you’re both celebrating and maybe poking a bit of fun at Hicks and Gracie.
So, you showed a preview in Indonesia where you’re both celebrating and maybe poking a bit of fun at Hicks and Gracie.
Craig Jones
Hicks and Gracie, yeah. So, I like to match looks from time to time-
Hicks and Gracie, yeah. So, I like to match looks from time to time-
Lex Fridman
Thank you, thank you.
Thank you, thank you.
Craig Jones
… in an homage.
… in an homage.
Lex Fridman
You look sexy.
You look sexy.
Craig Jones
It’s comfortable, actually, I enjoy it.
It’s comfortable, actually, I enjoy it.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. You should keep it.
Yeah. You should keep it.
Craig Jones
I’ll only we wear this now. I’ll wear this for the Gabi match. Yeah, we’re trying to do a documentary series because the way I see it is I want to grow the sport of jiu-jitsu. And this sounds funny to say now because I’m doing a tournament but everyone tries to do it through competition. But as we know, most jiu-jitsu gyms you visit, a very small percentage of people compete, let alone compete regularly. You’ll go to gyms that could be brown or black belts that don’t know many of the big name competitors. So, my thoughts were we’re never going to grow this sport by competition, we’re going to grow it by appealing to the large majority of people that do it which are just people that enjoy it for the benefits it provides to them whether health or psychological.
I’ll only we wear this now. I’ll wear this for the Gabi match. Yeah, we’re trying to do a documentary series because the way I see it is I want to grow the sport of jiu-jitsu. And this sounds funny to say now because I’m doing a tournament but everyone tries to do it through competition. But as we know, most jiu-jitsu gyms you visit, a very small percentage of people compete, let alone compete regularly. You’ll go to gyms that could be brown or black belts that don’t know many of the big name competitors. So, my thoughts were we’re never going to grow this sport by competition, we’re going to grow it by appealing to the large majority of people that do it which are just people that enjoy it for the benefits it provides to them whether health or psychological.
And obviously, many people are inspired by Anthony Bourdain, basically it’s looking at what he did with food by showing the very interesting characters in the food culture, the food industries, especially with street food, and building around that. So, I’m trying to look at jiu-jitsu like a giant cult. Scientology isn’t starting with Planet Xenu, it’s starting with John Travolta and Tom Cruise. So, if we can create a documentary travel series highlighting the diverse, interesting people that participate in the sport, in that sense, I hope it can grow but also doing some charity work along the way. We’ll release the Indonesia Bali episode pretty soon but, as an Australian, I do do a lot of damage culturally around the world so I’d like to do some good as well.
We’ve done a lot of damage to Bali, so give back to local communities. We have an Australian there that runs an academy, Akademi Kristus, he’s one of the guys we’re donating a portion of the ticket sales to from our event but he basically went straight into a Balinese slum, started teaching jiu-jitsu on a mat under a tree and then slowly, through donations, has built a gym. And his real focus is not just taking money from people and gifting it to them to help the community but to teach them skills. So, he’ll take a lot of the disadvantaged kids and he’ll teach them things like photo editing so they can get that work from the internet, really. Incredible guy.
Lex Fridman
It’s good to know that you see yourself as the John Travolta of jiu-jitsu.
It’s good to know that you see yourself as the John Travolta of jiu-jitsu.
Craig Jones
Many masseuses have accused me of the same thing, unfortunately. All lies.
Many masseuses have accused me of the same thing, unfortunately. All lies.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, there’s a lot of similarities between the two of you. So, you mentioned Anthony Bourdain. What do you like about the guy? What do you find inspiring and instructive about the way he was able to, as you said, scratch beneath the surface of a place?
Yeah, there’s a lot of similarities between the two of you. So, you mentioned Anthony Bourdain. What do you like about the guy? What do you find inspiring and instructive about the way he was able to, as you said, scratch beneath the surface of a place?
Craig Jones
I just felt like he was very authentic, wasn’t afraid. This is something I had trouble with when we first started doing the travel show, it’s easy to do a travel show if you only say positive things about a place. But he would find a very creative way to show what’s good and bad, a very honest reflection of the place so that’s something I would strive to do. However, in some places, it’s very difficult. You know what I mean? For example, Kazakhstan, if I were to say something negative about Kazakhstan, they’d be like, “Who’s this foreign idiot talking about our culture?” And I think that was what was incredible about Bourdain is he could talk about both the good and bad of places and he would do it in such a way that it was tasteful and was respected by the locals.
I just felt like he was very authentic, wasn’t afraid. This is something I had trouble with when we first started doing the travel show, it’s easy to do a travel show if you only say positive things about a place. But he would find a very creative way to show what’s good and bad, a very honest reflection of the place so that’s something I would strive to do. However, in some places, it’s very difficult. You know what I mean? For example, Kazakhstan, if I were to say something negative about Kazakhstan, they’d be like, “Who’s this foreign idiot talking about our culture?” And I think that was what was incredible about Bourdain is he could talk about both the good and bad of places and he would do it in such a way that it was tasteful and was respected by the locals.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, that’s actually a skill that you’re incredibly good at. You make fun of a lot of people but there’s something … Maybe there’s an underlying respect, maybe it’s the accent, maybe … I don’t know what it is. There’s a love underneath your trolling.
Yeah, that’s actually a skill that you’re incredibly good at. You make fun of a lot of people but there’s something … Maybe there’s an underlying respect, maybe it’s the accent, maybe … I don’t know what it is. There’s a love underneath your trolling.
Craig Jones
I like to think so. Hopefully, yeah. Gabi Garcia, there’s a deep passionate love underneath the trolling.
I like to think so. Hopefully, yeah. Gabi Garcia, there’s a deep passionate love underneath the trolling.
CJI
Lex Fridman
Yeah. Speaking of which, let’s talk about CJI. You’re putting on the CJI tournament, it’s in about a week, same weekend as ADCC, $3 million budget, two divisions, two super fights, winner of each division gets $1 million, everyone gets $10,000. How do you even say that? Plus one?
Yeah. Speaking of which, let’s talk about CJI. You’re putting on the CJI tournament, it’s in about a week, same weekend as ADCC, $3 million budget, two divisions, two super fights, winner of each division gets $1 million, everyone gets $10,000. How do you even say that? Plus one?
Craig Jones
10,000 plus one, yeah.
10,000 plus one, yeah.
Lex Fridman
Plus one. Just to compete. So, it’s August 16th and 17th, everybody should get tickets. Same weekend as ADCC’s which is August 17th. Okay. So, what’s the mission of what you’re doing there?
Plus one. Just to compete. So, it’s August 16th and 17th, everybody should get tickets. Same weekend as ADCC’s which is August 17th. Okay. So, what’s the mission of what you’re doing there?
Craig Jones
The mission has always been, first and foremost, increased athlete pay. So, ADCC has invested a ton into the sport. Obviously, I mentioned Sheikh Tahnoun, Sheikh Tahnoun has done so much for the sport of grappling, particularly no-Gi grappling. So, he’s growing it, he has funded this for a very, very long time but we’ve hit a point since 2017 where the audience, the crowd watching live and at home behind a paywall has grown considerably. We had things like Metamoris, we had the Eddie Bravo Invitational, Polaris, all these professional events that have also contributed to growing the sport. And obviously, people like Gordon Ryan have definitely increased the popularity of the sport but the payment for ADCC has never gone up despite, again, the growth of it.
The mission has always been, first and foremost, increased athlete pay. So, ADCC has invested a ton into the sport. Obviously, I mentioned Sheikh Tahnoun, Sheikh Tahnoun has done so much for the sport of grappling, particularly no-Gi grappling. So, he’s growing it, he has funded this for a very, very long time but we’ve hit a point since 2017 where the audience, the crowd watching live and at home behind a paywall has grown considerably. We had things like Metamoris, we had the Eddie Bravo Invitational, Polaris, all these professional events that have also contributed to growing the sport. And obviously, people like Gordon Ryan have definitely increased the popularity of the sport but the payment for ADCC has never gone up despite, again, the growth of it.
So, what I did, a lot of fans were asking me earlier in the year, they said, “Craig, are you going to do ADCC?” and I said, “That is a big commitment of time, energy, expenses on steroids to get my body ready for a tournament that I’ll probably lose.” And if I lose on day one, I make $0. If I lose in the final, which I have done a couple times, I only get $6,000. I think third place is 3,000, fourth place is 1,000. So, if you make day two, you get paid. But for me personally, seeing ADCC in 2022, you’re looking out to a sold out crowd of 10,000 people. It’s on FloGrappling which you know paid quite a bit of money for the streaming rights, I can’t comment on what that number would be, and then you go home, despite having put in all that effort, with only 6,000 and they basically … The argument is you’re paid in exposure. But again, there’s many ways to expose yourself. You know what I mean? That’s just one of the platforms to do so. My problem was that they announced that they were going to go from Thomas & Mack to T-Mobile which is a jump in quality of stadium but not a significant jump in seating. So, we’ve gone from 11,000 seat arena to I think a 15, 16,000 seat arena. And I knew that FloGrappling would’ve had to pay more money because now the sport’s growing so much and I can personally track the growth of the sport through selling instructional DVDs, instructional online products. Because that keeps growing and we’re targeting those white and blue belts vulnerable to internet marketing and that audience continues to grow and those will be the people that largely watch ADCC, events like this.
So, I simply said, in response to a lot of fans asking me, “Are you going to do ADCC?” and I just simply made a video saying, “No, probably not, probably not. It’d be nice to make some more money.” And then I listed a bunch of sports, such as cockbar, that you get paid more to win cockbar. In the villages of Kazakhstan, the payment structures higher. And I received a very aggressive response not from any of Sheikh Tahnoun’s people but from, basically, who runs the event today. One of those guys amongst giving me death threats said, “Hey, T-Mobile costs $2 million, you don’t know what you’re talking about in terms of business and production.” And he’s probably right but, to me, $2 million is a waste of money for a jiu-jitsu event, I don’t think we’re at that level yet. That’s where the UFC hosts events. $2 million, that’s an expensive, expensive venue.
So, we argued a bit on the internet and he said, “Hey, if you don’t like it, why don’t you go get $2 million and put on your own tournament?” And I said, “I might just do that.” And one of my anonymous friends kindly donated a $3 million budget and I actually messaged him before the show to say, “Hey, we won’t reveal your identity,” because, obviously, anyone that has money is going to get asked for more money or ask for money from others. So, he wants to remain anonymous but he basically just said to enjoy the trolling aspect of it and also contribute to the sport of jiu-jitsu.
Lex Fridman
Well, that’s good to know that the anonymous funder appreciates you for who you are, Craig Jones.
Well, that’s good to know that the anonymous funder appreciates you for who you are, Craig Jones.
Craig Jones
He sees my true identity and he wants to provoke … It’s trolling for a good cause. But basically we were able to find Thomas & Mack Event Center, which was their original venue, and it just happened to be available that same weekend which we’re very happy about. And so, we booked that out, we decided to … ADCC pays 10,000 to the winner, we were like, “You know what? We’ll pay $10,000 plus one to show up.” So, to show up in our event, you’re going to get paid more than to win ADCC. And not only that, we’re going to broadcast it for free. So, on Meta, X and YouTube, you’ll be able to watch this event for free.
He sees my true identity and he wants to provoke … It’s trolling for a good cause. But basically we were able to find Thomas & Mack Event Center, which was their original venue, and it just happened to be available that same weekend which we’re very happy about. And so, we booked that out, we decided to … ADCC pays 10,000 to the winner, we were like, “You know what? We’ll pay $10,000 plus one to show up.” So, to show up in our event, you’re going to get paid more than to win ADCC. And not only that, we’re going to broadcast it for free. So, on Meta, X and YouTube, you’ll be able to watch this event for free.
Lex Fridman
That’s amazing.
That’s amazing.
Craig Jones
It’s very considerate to the FloGrappling streaming platform, I believe, to have also a free alternative on the same weekend. And the brilliance of this whole thing is I was largely criticized for not knowing anything about business but the people criticizing me decided to host a tournament, a 15,000 seat arena, they decided to take sponsors, they decided to use a streaming platform which sells subscriptions based on the athletes that would enter it but not give any of the talent, the athletes, a contract which gave me this beautiful position to basically say, “Hey, what do you prefer? The prestige of an ADCC gold medal or money?” And that’s the feud so far and we put that out into the world.
It’s very considerate to the FloGrappling streaming platform, I believe, to have also a free alternative on the same weekend. And the brilliance of this whole thing is I was largely criticized for not knowing anything about business but the people criticizing me decided to host a tournament, a 15,000 seat arena, they decided to take sponsors, they decided to use a streaming platform which sells subscriptions based on the athletes that would enter it but not give any of the talent, the athletes, a contract which gave me this beautiful position to basically say, “Hey, what do you prefer? The prestige of an ADCC gold medal or money?” And that’s the feud so far and we put that out into the world.
I didn’t chase too many athletes down. Obviously, a lot of these guys really need money. So, you throw a million dollars out there, people are jumping on board. So, initially we started getting, we got two local guys here in Austin, the Tackett brothers, they jumped in first and they’re great kids. They really legitimize the whole thing because, if we’d pick certain athletes, just B team guys straight away, it’s already looking a bit dodgy but we’ve got some legitimate athletes. Especially the under 80 kilo divisions, full of, minus two or three guys, that’s the best people in the world in that weight division. And as we started to grow our roster here, what happened, I’m going to say this, allegedly, for legal reasons, is that the first move ADCC did was they matched the female pay to the men’s pay.
So, the women always traditionally got paid less, I think $6,000 for first place. As soon as we had Ffion Davies, the reigning champion, come across to do a super fight with us, bang, ADCC raised the prize money of the women’s division to equal the men’s. So, me, being a feminist activist throughout many of my years on this earth, immediately got women’s pay raised in the sport of jiu-jitsu, equalize basically, which went counter to everything the promoter had said because he said it was out of his control. To raise money, he said only the ADCC, I guess coming directly from the Sheikh or the Sheikh’s guys, could raise the prize money, he got it raised.
And then what happened was, once we started getting some of these big names here, so some of the best guys from ADCC would be in this division. We’ve got a bunch of champions or medalists or, really, the top betting favorites for their divisions there, they started, and again, I can’t emphasize this enough, allegedly, paying show money which has never historically been done before to keep athletes in their show.
Lex Fridman
So, you’re saying, allegedly, there were some under the table payments by ADCC? Do you have secret documents proving this?
So, you’re saying, allegedly, there were some under the table payments by ADCC? Do you have secret documents proving this?
Craig Jones
I do have the documents.
I do have the documents.
Lex Fridman
Okay.
Okay.
Craig Jones
Now, some of the guys obviously told me, you know how it is, you slap million dollars on the table, it looks great. That was me proving I had the money, which wasn’t even my money to begin with, but it was basically me saying, “Hey, the money’s real”. I don’t know why but, strangely, a lot of people don’t believe me when I’m telling the truth.
Now, some of the guys obviously told me, you know how it is, you slap million dollars on the table, it looks great. That was me proving I had the money, which wasn’t even my money to begin with, but it was basically me saying, “Hey, the money’s real”. I don’t know why but, strangely, a lot of people don’t believe me when I’m telling the truth.
Lex Fridman
I don’t know why they wouldn’t.
I don’t know why they wouldn’t.
Craig Jones
But what logically happens is they’re like, “Oh, look how much money he has. Give us more show money,” so they’re negotiating with me. There was one particular Brazilian businessman manager, I won’t say his name, but he looks like the thing from Fantastic Four and he was a manager for some of these athletes and he would take a massive 20% cut. So, what he, and I got to pay respect to this because it actually caused trauma to the other team as well, but I would invite an athlete to CJI, he would go to the other organization and he would say to them, “Hey, what sort of deal could you give me to keep this guy? You want to keep him in your event?” And he would use CJI to leverage more show money for his guys of which he gets to grease the wheels with 20% for himself.
But what logically happens is they’re like, “Oh, look how much money he has. Give us more show money,” so they’re negotiating with me. There was one particular Brazilian businessman manager, I won’t say his name, but he looks like the thing from Fantastic Four and he was a manager for some of these athletes and he would take a massive 20% cut. So, what he, and I got to pay respect to this because it actually caused trauma to the other team as well, but I would invite an athlete to CJI, he would go to the other organization and he would say to them, “Hey, what sort of deal could you give me to keep this guy? You want to keep him in your event?” And he would use CJI to leverage more show money for his guys of which he gets to grease the wheels with 20% for himself.
However, at CJI, everyone gets $10,001 across the board and a million dollars prize money so there’s no room for, really, negotiation for the tournament aspect of us. So, he has a vested interest in putting his guys in ADCC because he can negotiate show money and he can basically take 20% of that for himself. But really, for the sport of grappling, this is incredible across the board because, by us stealing or at least borrowing a bunch of athletes from ADCC, ADCC had to fill their divisions. So, they filled their divisions with many other competitors that wouldn’t have ordinarily had the chance to do ADCC. And really, although we’ve scheduled it the same weekend, ours is actually Friday, Saturday, ADCC being Saturday, Sunday, our day starts pretty late. So, we start 5:00 PM Saturday.
So, really, ultimately it was a big marketing ploy to go head-to-head pretending like we’re making the fans choose but the fans will be able to watch both events. You’ll be able to go all day Friday for us. You’ll sadly miss the ADCC Hall of Fame ceremony where you’ll see many of great speakers, public speakers, philosophers tell their stories about hardship just like at the end of any jiu-jitsu seminar or beginning if you’re blessed like that. You might have a 45-minute monologue about how they’re more knowledgeable than doctors, lawyers, classic black belt technique. But you will miss that, unfortunately.
Lex Fridman
With great metaphors about lions and-
With great metaphors about lions and-
Craig Jones
About lions, yes. About being a humble lion most importantly.
About lions, yes. About being a humble lion most importantly.
Lex Fridman
Humility is important.
Humility is important.
Gabi Garcia
Craig Jones
But you can watch all that Friday, you could watch most of ADCC Saturday. And then Saturday night, in Las Vegas, I’ll be doing what many men have done before and that is wrestling a giant woman.
But you can watch all that Friday, you could watch most of ADCC Saturday. And then Saturday night, in Las Vegas, I’ll be doing what many men have done before and that is wrestling a giant woman.
Lex Fridman
Can you speak to that? How are you preparing for this moment of violence on a Saturday night with Gabi Garcia?
Can you speak to that? How are you preparing for this moment of violence on a Saturday night with Gabi Garcia?
Craig Jones
So, Gabi Garcia is the legend of women’s grappling. I think she’s won more than anyone else. So, between me and her, we would at least have 15 to 20 world championships, I’d imagine. She’s huge, I say that in an endearing way. She might be 6″4′, 6″3′ and her weight varies depending on what time of the day it is between 220 and 275 pounds but she’s going to be coming in quite big and strong. Me, I am about 179 pounds right now and at 5″11′. So, I’ve got a significant size disadvantage, she has the credentials but we’re going to scrap it out, scrap it out and see who’s best, the greatest woman’s competitor of all time or a guy that’s never won anything.
So, Gabi Garcia is the legend of women’s grappling. I think she’s won more than anyone else. So, between me and her, we would at least have 15 to 20 world championships, I’d imagine. She’s huge, I say that in an endearing way. She might be 6″4′, 6″3′ and her weight varies depending on what time of the day it is between 220 and 275 pounds but she’s going to be coming in quite big and strong. Me, I am about 179 pounds right now and at 5″11′. So, I’ve got a significant size disadvantage, she has the credentials but we’re going to scrap it out, scrap it out and see who’s best, the greatest woman’s competitor of all time or a guy that’s never won anything.
Lex Fridman
Has it added some complexity to the picture that there’s some sexual tension in the room whenever the two of you are together?
Has it added some complexity to the picture that there’s some sexual tension in the room whenever the two of you are together?
Craig Jones
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Or maybe I’m being romantic but it seems like you’ve slowly started to fall in love with each other.
Or maybe I’m being romantic but it seems like you’ve slowly started to fall in love with each other.
Craig Jones
It’s been three years of seduction, it’s been a long time.
It’s been three years of seduction, it’s been a long time.
Lex Fridman
It’s inspiring for many young men that follow you and look up to you. Just the romantic journey that you’ve been on, it’s truly inspiring.
It’s inspiring for many young men that follow you and look up to you. Just the romantic journey that you’ve been on, it’s truly inspiring.
Craig Jones
Yeah, I would say it’s a motivational message to the guy that keeps sending DMs to a girl on Instagram for years that maybe, after three years, it could also happen for you too. No matter her height and weight, I think persistence is the key here.
Yeah, I would say it’s a motivational message to the guy that keeps sending DMs to a girl on Instagram for years that maybe, after three years, it could also happen for you too. No matter her height and weight, I think persistence is the key here.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Craig Jones
And we do have a wager on the line.
And we do have a wager on the line.
Lex Fridman
What’s the wager?
What’s the wager?
Craig Jones
This might be the first wager of its kind, I would hope, in combat sports history. If she wins, I’ll personally give her a million dollars. If I can footlock her, we’re going to collaborate together in an OnlyFans sex tape.
This might be the first wager of its kind, I would hope, in combat sports history. If she wins, I’ll personally give her a million dollars. If I can footlock her, we’re going to collaborate together in an OnlyFans sex tape.
Lex Fridman
Did she agree to this?
Did she agree to this?
Craig Jones
She shook on it.
She shook on it.
Lex Fridman
Great. You do have an OnlyFans channel, is that still up?
Great. You do have an OnlyFans channel, is that still up?
Craig Jones
After August 17th, it’s going to be fire.
After August 17th, it’s going to be fire.
Lex Fridman
It’s going to be on fire.
It’s going to be on fire.
Craig Jones
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Wow.
Wow.
Craig Jones
I think that and, honestly, when we talk about secret investor, I think that could fund the entire tournament. It’d be that success.
I think that and, honestly, when we talk about secret investor, I think that could fund the entire tournament. It’d be that success.
Lex Fridman
That’ll be the only paywalled thing about this tournament is your OnlyFans.
That’ll be the only paywalled thing about this tournament is your OnlyFans.
Craig Jones
Yeah, it’s going to be a spiritual experience for me.
Yeah, it’s going to be a spiritual experience for me.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, wow. Okay, I’m fully distracted now. Can you talk about the rule set?
Yeah, wow. Okay, I’m fully distracted now. Can you talk about the rule set?
The Alley
Craig Jones
So, we’re using the angled walls inspired by karate combat. Karate combat did those angled walls.
So, we’re using the angled walls inspired by karate combat. Karate combat did those angled walls.
Lex Fridman
Those are awesome. You’re calling it the alley. That’s really, really interesting. So, it’s like in a pit, I guess, and the angled walls are-
Those are awesome. You’re calling it the alley. That’s really, really interesting. So, it’s like in a pit, I guess, and the angled walls are-
Craig Jones
Yeah. So, karate combat have a square pit, we have a rectangular alley. We like the visual of just you’re in the alley with someone you know. We both know what goes on in an alley, I know a couple of things that could go on back there.
Yeah. So, karate combat have a square pit, we have a rectangular alley. We like the visual of just you’re in the alley with someone you know. We both know what goes on in an alley, I know a couple of things that could go on back there.
Lex Fridman
What’s second thing? Nevermind, I got it.
What’s second thing? Nevermind, I got it.
Craig Jones
But why this is brilliant, why the angled walls are brilliant for grappling is because any grappling tournament, this goes without question, this goes for IBJJF, ADCC, the reset is one of the most annoying aspects of the sport and one of the aspects of the sport that some of the sneakier guys take advantage of. There’s guys out there that are brilliant at playing the edge open, the ref will reset them or they’ll shoot a takedown near the edge and you might watch … And, again, I’m picking on ADCC here. But you might watch an ADCC match where 90 seconds of a 10-minute match is the referee grabbing them, bringing them back to the center or trying to recreate something of a position that landed outside. Not only is that boring to me and it could be bias. Again, it’s happened to me in events where the ref’s gone, “Stop,” I’ve stopped, he’s moved a little bit more and then there’s an adjustment in the reset. It’s cheating to a certain extent but it’s just more of an annoyance. They bring it back, they reset it to the best of their ability in the center.
But why this is brilliant, why the angled walls are brilliant for grappling is because any grappling tournament, this goes without question, this goes for IBJJF, ADCC, the reset is one of the most annoying aspects of the sport and one of the aspects of the sport that some of the sneakier guys take advantage of. There’s guys out there that are brilliant at playing the edge open, the ref will reset them or they’ll shoot a takedown near the edge and you might watch … And, again, I’m picking on ADCC here. But you might watch an ADCC match where 90 seconds of a 10-minute match is the referee grabbing them, bringing them back to the center or trying to recreate something of a position that landed outside. Not only is that boring to me and it could be bias. Again, it’s happened to me in events where the ref’s gone, “Stop,” I’ve stopped, he’s moved a little bit more and then there’s an adjustment in the reset. It’s cheating to a certain extent but it’s just more of an annoyance. They bring it back, they reset it to the best of their ability in the center.
The angled wall mitigates that and it mitigates it in such a way that it’s a disadvantage to be pushed up against the angled wall. You’re very easily taken down against the angled wall. You could use a cage like the UFC does or any MMA organization, however, cage wrestling can be slow. You’re obviously at the vertical and it can stagnate there, guys are very good at using split squats to really defend that position. And for me, personally, I don’t love the cage for grappling, I’d like to differentiate it for grappling. What holds people back from using the alley or a pit-like structure is the viewing, the viewing angle. Because obviously, if you are one of the VIPs or you pay for an expensive seat, that angled wall is above you. A cage, you can see into, an elevated platform stage you can see clearly into because it’s basically flat but the athletes could fall off and injure themselves.
So, if something happens, UFC fire passes the elevated flat stage. It’s scary to be near the edge, you go off, you’re going to land on concrete. You might want to do that to the other guy if you, that way, inclined. But the alley, the angled wall solves all those problems, very minimal referee interference. Again, the only thing that holds people back is the expense of building it. But again, when you’re spending someone else’s money, you will spare no expense in production. So, we’ve spent a lot of money on the alley and we’ve really gone out of our way to create an experience that, around the alley, we’ve elevated everything so that the people watching will be able to see down into it. Because your instinctual thought is, “Oh, it sounds great but how am I going to see in it unless I’m far up?” You’d need a coliseum-like structure which is basically what we’ve attempted to create so that you get both a perfect place to wrestle, to grapple in as well as a perfect viewing angle for the fans.
Lex Fridman
Well, I think it’s an amazing idea. What about the jiu-jitsu on a slant? You’ve triangled somebody on a slant.
Well, I think it’s an amazing idea. What about the jiu-jitsu on a slant? You’ve triangled somebody on a slant.
Craig Jones
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
Is there some interesting aspects about the actual detailed techniques of how to be effective using a slant?
Is there some interesting aspects about the actual detailed techniques of how to be effective using a slant?
Craig Jones
I’ll be honest, I competed for karate combat twice, never once did I ever step foot into the pit. Just, again, like you said before the podcast, if there’s a right way of doing things, I’m probably doing it the opposite.
I’ll be honest, I competed for karate combat twice, never once did I ever step foot into the pit. Just, again, like you said before the podcast, if there’s a right way of doing things, I’m probably doing it the opposite.
Lex Fridman
The wrong way. I actually no idea why people take advice from you but they do.
The wrong way. I actually no idea why people take advice from you but they do.
Craig Jones
I’m mostly an inspirational speaker at this point, I think.
I’m mostly an inspirational speaker at this point, I think.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. You and Tony Robbins are like this.
Yeah. You and Tony Robbins are like this.
Craig Jones
Same size at least. But in terms of the training for, obviously, the athletes, it’s very difficult. Some of these guys have gone out there and built their own angled walls.
Same size at least. But in terms of the training for, obviously, the athletes, it’s very difficult. Some of these guys have gone out there and built their own angled walls.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, I saw that. There’s a cool video of that.
Yeah, I saw that. There’s a cool video of that.
Craig Jones
They’re getting into that. That’s a smart thing to do. There’s a million dollars on the line, you should probably invest in that. But I also like a new surface that no one’s competed on, no one’s gamed it yet, we’re going to see it unfold. UFC, when people started figuring out how to use the cage, we’re going to see this unfold in front of our very eyes how the strategies work for this. The other thing we’ve done too is we’re doing rounds. So, qualifying rounds would be three five-minute rounds, the final would be five fives. Why I want to do that is to incentivize action. We’re going to incentivize action through penalizing people but we really want … I love a short burst, a break and the guys can go hard again. I don’t like a jiu-jitsu match where the guy takes the back early and he’s like, “Oh, if I keep this position, I’ve won,” and that’s something that people that don’t compete don’t realize.
They’re getting into that. That’s a smart thing to do. There’s a million dollars on the line, you should probably invest in that. But I also like a new surface that no one’s competed on, no one’s gamed it yet, we’re going to see it unfold. UFC, when people started figuring out how to use the cage, we’re going to see this unfold in front of our very eyes how the strategies work for this. The other thing we’ve done too is we’re doing rounds. So, qualifying rounds would be three five-minute rounds, the final would be five fives. Why I want to do that is to incentivize action. We’re going to incentivize action through penalizing people but we really want … I love a short burst, a break and the guys can go hard again. I don’t like a jiu-jitsu match where the guy takes the back early and he’s like, “Oh, if I keep this position, I’ve won,” and that’s something that people that don’t compete don’t realize.
If you get a good position early, you get up on the points, you just sit there and go, “Oh, let’s ride this to the end.” That’s why I want rounds so that you might take the guy’s back, you’re really incentivize to get that finish. And the way we’re trying to grow the sport is to steal the MMA scoring structure which a lot of people criticize because they think it’s overly complicated, they don’t understand it. But to the mass audience, they understand a 10-point must understand a decision in that sense, they understand it being scored round by round. So, we’re trying to appeal to a broader audience here but we think, based on the structure, based on how hard we’ll call stalling penalties, based on you wanting to finish your opponent quick to have a better chance at a million dollars. Because it’s 10,001 to show up and a million to win, if you aren’t first, you lost, there’s no reward for second place. So, I’m punishing the one position I’ve only ever been able to achieve in tournaments.
Lex Fridman
Are you worried that, because of how much money is on the line, people will play careful?
Are you worried that, because of how much money is on the line, people will play careful?
Craig Jones
A very generous friend of mine has provided this money. I’m like, “Unless you guys go out there and try to kill each other and put it all on the line, I just won’t do it again. I’m giving you guys a massive platform”. We’ve turned down offers from streaming platforms that wanted to buy the rights to this event because the marketing’s gone very well. We’re turning down money to grow the sport. The ADCC promoter said he wanted to grow the sport so what he did is he put it behind a paywall and he used the money from the paywall to buy more expensive arena. I don’t think that’s how you grow the sport, I think you grow the sport like comedians do these days. Guys like Mark Normand will release a special for free, Andrew Schulz did it first, released a special for free-
A very generous friend of mine has provided this money. I’m like, “Unless you guys go out there and try to kill each other and put it all on the line, I just won’t do it again. I’m giving you guys a massive platform”. We’ve turned down offers from streaming platforms that wanted to buy the rights to this event because the marketing’s gone very well. We’re turning down money to grow the sport. The ADCC promoter said he wanted to grow the sport so what he did is he put it behind a paywall and he used the money from the paywall to buy more expensive arena. I don’t think that’s how you grow the sport, I think you grow the sport like comedians do these days. Guys like Mark Normand will release a special for free, Andrew Schulz did it first, released a special for free-
Craig Jones
Norman will release a special for free. Andrew Schulz did it first, released a special for free and it grew his audience massively. I think that’s what jiu-jitsu needs. We need an exciting show that’s not behind a paywall that’ll grow the sport, grow the audience, and really then, ultimately, we can get to a level where it could be behind a paywall. But I just don’t think we’re there, yeah.
Norman will release a special for free. Andrew Schulz did it first, released a special for free and it grew his audience massively. I think that’s what jiu-jitsu needs. We need an exciting show that’s not behind a paywall that’ll grow the sport, grow the audience, and really then, ultimately, we can get to a level where it could be behind a paywall. But I just don’t think we’re there, yeah.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, I think million dollars is a lot of money, but the opportunity here, because it’s open and freely accessible by everyone is to put on a show.
Yeah, I think million dollars is a lot of money, but the opportunity here, because it’s open and freely accessible by everyone is to put on a show.
Craig Jones
And then, you get a million every year. This is a crazy, exciting event. The funding is going to be so easy year after year. And the other aspect we’re doing to it is, unfortunately, I’m not going to make any money off this thing. It’s a nonprofit and the money from charity…
And then, you get a million every year. This is a crazy, exciting event. The funding is going to be so easy year after year. And the other aspect we’re doing to it is, unfortunately, I’m not going to make any money off this thing. It’s a nonprofit and the money from charity…
Lex Fridman
Except the OnlyFans, but whatever.
Except the OnlyFans, but whatever.
Craig Jones
Yeah, that’s the real cash cow. But that’s the real work too.
Yeah, that’s the real cash cow. But that’s the real work too.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. And that’s not for charity, that’s for your personal bank account, the OnlyFans. Are you also…
Yeah. And that’s not for charity, that’s for your personal bank account, the OnlyFans. Are you also…
Craig Jones
So, that’ll be for the follow-up therapy. But that’ll be expensive gig for whoever takes that on board.
So, that’ll be for the follow-up therapy. But that’ll be expensive gig for whoever takes that on board.
Lex Fridman
Love hurts.
Love hurts.
Craig Jones
That physically will, yeah. Ticket proceeds to charity. So, obviously, we’ve got the $3 million budget, we’ve got production expenses, we’ve got the team of staff to hire. But if we could sell this thing out, we could potentially donate a ton of money to charity. One of those charities is Tap Cancer Out.
That physically will, yeah. Ticket proceeds to charity. So, obviously, we’ve got the $3 million budget, we’ve got production expenses, we’ve got the team of staff to hire. But if we could sell this thing out, we could potentially donate a ton of money to charity. One of those charities is Tap Cancer Out.
And what’s great about this is Rich Byrne is a black belt from New York, who’s in the banking world. He used to run an event called KASAI Grappling. He went through cancer. He basically had a very aggressive cancer. He had it treated. And now, he basically has said to us that whatever we donate from the profits of the event, he’s going to match dollar for dollar.
And we’ve also had another guy who wants to remain anonymous, agree to match dollar for dollar as well. So, the more ticket sales revenue we can create here, the more we can actually give back to charity. So, it’s really all round. It’s going to be a great event.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, Tap Cancer Out is great. And all the charities that the athletes have been selecting are great. What’s been the hardest? You are wearing a suit, so you figured out how to do that, but…
Yeah, Tap Cancer Out is great. And all the charities that the athletes have been selecting are great. What’s been the hardest? You are wearing a suit, so you figured out how to do that, but…
Craig Jones
The tie was difficult for sure.
The tie was difficult for sure.
Lex Fridman
Tie was difficult, but you figured it out and congratulations on that. But you’ve never run a tournament? No.
Tie was difficult, but you figured it out and congratulations on that. But you’ve never run a tournament? No.
Craig Jones
I’ve never wrestled a big woman either. Well, I have, but not in this form.
I’ve never wrestled a big woman either. Well, I have, but not in this form.
Lex Fridman
Not in a competitive environment for OnlyFans. What’s been the hardest aspects of actually bringing this to life?
Not in a competitive environment for OnlyFans. What’s been the hardest aspects of actually bringing this to life?
Craig Jones
The first one was people believing it was real.
The first one was people believing it was real.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Craig Jones
That was quite difficult. And then, communicating with the athletes. That’s basically my responsibility is securing these guys, getting these guys to commit to things. It’s very difficult. There’s a reason a few athletes in every sport really stand out and it’s kind of professionalism and kind of the way they market themselves. And I think those two things do go hand in hand.
That was quite difficult. And then, communicating with the athletes. That’s basically my responsibility is securing these guys, getting these guys to commit to things. It’s very difficult. There’s a reason a few athletes in every sport really stand out and it’s kind of professionalism and kind of the way they market themselves. And I think those two things do go hand in hand.
So, we’re in a sport… Isn’t that funny? Where a lot of these guys do have managers. I think in MMA things would be a lot easier for the promoter because you’re not talking directly to the athlete. You’re talking to a guy who might, who’s obviously taking a cut, but like, peace, there’s a middleman.
So, in a situation where you’re talking directly to the athlete, can be very difficult, can be very annoying, can be very hard to reach these guys. They can be very non-committal. That for me has been one of the biggest challenges. The guys that I speak to that are like, “I’m in.” And then, they’re like, “I’m out. I’m in,” like navigating this area.
One other aspect is because we did this basically from idea to event will be less than three months, three and a half months. So, it’s like we’re having to do so much in such a short period of time. Little things like, of the show and money we’ve given them. They’re expected to basically secure their own flight and hotel to the event with cutting down on staff because that would be one of the… If I had to coordinate, getting these guys flights, I would just jump off a building. It’s hard enough to get them to agree to the event, let alone coordinate, “Hey, what date do you want to come in?” It’s like herding cats.
So, really just the interpersonal stuff’s been difficult. Obviously, going up against ADCC, the legacy event has been pretty difficult as well. Well-established, huge history. They’ve been selling tickets for two years. Everyone’s known it’s been coming for two years. That thing was largely sold out before we even announced the event. So, we’re going head-to-head with this event. So, from a ticket sales perspective, very difficult.
Lex Fridman
What’s been Reddit question? What’s been the most surprising people who turned down on your invite?
What’s been Reddit question? What’s been the most surprising people who turned down on your invite?
Craig Jones
Oh, I mean, we can name names. I mean, obviously, Conan, he was a semi in, semi out. His suggestion was actually to do a second and third place prize rather than a million. And I’m like, “No, we want all or nothing. It’s all or nothing here.” That’s a better spectacle, better entertainment, probably more injuries, but it’s all or nothing. Mica Galvão, the one that got away.
Oh, I mean, we can name names. I mean, obviously, Conan, he was a semi in, semi out. His suggestion was actually to do a second and third place prize rather than a million. And I’m like, “No, we want all or nothing. It’s all or nothing here.” That’s a better spectacle, better entertainment, probably more injuries, but it’s all or nothing. Mica Galvão, the one that got away.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Craig Jones
That’s sad. But we got the Ruotolos. The Ruotolos props to these kids because Kade’s the reigning champion. These are two of the best guys in the sport. Allegedly, were offered pretty significant show money to stay. But they hit me up and they said, “Hey, promise us one thing. We’re on opposite sides of the brackets and we’ll fight to the death in the final for the million.” And we know… Everyone knows that. Well, we’ve seen them compete against each other multiple times.
That’s sad. But we got the Ruotolos. The Ruotolos props to these kids because Kade’s the reigning champion. These are two of the best guys in the sport. Allegedly, were offered pretty significant show money to stay. But they hit me up and they said, “Hey, promise us one thing. We’re on opposite sides of the brackets and we’ll fight to the death in the final for the million.” And we know… Everyone knows that. Well, we’ve seen them compete against each other multiple times.
So, that was not a surprise because I know they’re good kids. But to basically turn down allegedly show money to do this event, to support the event, to me is incredible. Mica Galvão, things would be more complicated there. Obviously, Mica officially joined ADCC before he secured the Ruotolos. Kade beat him in the final. Mica’s personally motivated to face off against Kade, so he didn’t know Kade was in our event before he agreed to ADCC.
There’s more to that story too, in terms of Mica doing ADCC because a bunch of the kids in his team, I think they’re being flown out to do the ADCC kids event. So, there’s his two teammates, well, at least one of his teammates will be doing the ADCC 66 kilo division. So, his dad, his coach, doesn’t really want to split time between two events. That’s a difficulty for athletes there. But obviously, disappointing. We couldn’t secure Mica.
Mica said he was about the legacy, so he wanted to be the youngest guy ever to double Grand Slam, which is basically win all the Gi events and win the ADCC that same year. My thoughts were, if I was in his position, and I never was obviously a prodigy, a talent like that is I thought he had a position to make a statement in the sport to kind of as cheesy it sounds, be on the right side of history, to have turned down a double Grand Slam, to be in an event that supports athlete pay.
Again, I don’t overly criticize him. But I think in terms of your legacy and reputation, to be at a point and choose to do that is much more memorable than him getting that double Grand Slam, which I’m sure he will win the ADCC 77 kilo division this year, but it’ll be somewhat tarnished anyway. So, I do feel bad for some of the athletes that win this year and potentially people will be like, “Oh, yeah, but there was half the people weren’t in the division.” I feel bad for those guys.
But at the end of the day, most of these guys had an opportunity to be a part of an event that really there’s no downside to. You have a chance to be paid more money than you’ve ever been paid in your life. You are selling tickets that are going to go to charity, and it’s not behind a paywall. So, anyone, anywhere in the world can stream this event, watch it, and there’s no barrier to entry in terms of finances.
Gordon Ryan and Nicholas Meregali
Lex Fridman
Was there ever any chance that Gordon Ryan would enter?
Was there ever any chance that Gordon Ryan would enter?
Craig Jones
I don’t think so. I don’t think so.
I don’t think so. I don’t think so.
Lex Fridman
Is that something you tried?
Is that something you tried?
Craig Jones
Me and Gordon don’t text each other too often. I tag him on Instagram and things, but he doesn’t respond.
Me and Gordon don’t text each other too often. I tag him on Instagram and things, but he doesn’t respond.
Lex Fridman
Tell me about your history with Nicholas Meregali.
Tell me about your history with Nicholas Meregali.
Craig Jones
My history with Nicholas Meregali, actually it dates back to a time where probably he does not even remember back when I used to wear a kimono. So, I went to Abu Dhabi World Pro. I was chasing my gi dreams. I lost in… I can’t even remember. Again, probably the final. You know me, I probably lost in the final against Tommy Langacker in the weight division. This was the last year they did the absolute. I went into the absolute. I made it all the way to the semis. Nicholas Meregali destroyed me in the gi. I did hit a nice little reversal on him though, he passed my guard and I somehow reversed him from side control. That’s the only part of the match I share. After which, he swept me, submitted me.
My history with Nicholas Meregali, actually it dates back to a time where probably he does not even remember back when I used to wear a kimono. So, I went to Abu Dhabi World Pro. I was chasing my gi dreams. I lost in… I can’t even remember. Again, probably the final. You know me, I probably lost in the final against Tommy Langacker in the weight division. This was the last year they did the absolute. I went into the absolute. I made it all the way to the semis. Nicholas Meregali destroyed me in the gi. I did hit a nice little reversal on him though, he passed my guard and I somehow reversed him from side control. That’s the only part of the match I share. After which, he swept me, submitted me.
Lex Fridman
You reversed him from side control?
You reversed him from side control?
Craig Jones
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Okay. So, that could be an instructional.
Okay. So, that could be an instructional.
Craig Jones
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Lex Fridman
But right place, right time though. All right.
But right place, right time though. All right.
Craig Jones
But then, years later I left the team, Meregali replaced me. So, they’ve brought in a more credentialed, handsome, doesn’t speak as well, but they’ve brought him in. He’s my replacement. He’s coming to the team. We faced off at ADCC. I do a heavier division thinking… I looked at the names and I was like, “That looks like an easier division.” And I had two teammates at that time that were in my 88 and I was like, “Those guys will have to face all first round. I’ll have to face one of them second round the way they do the seating and the structure of the bracket.”
But then, years later I left the team, Meregali replaced me. So, they’ve brought in a more credentialed, handsome, doesn’t speak as well, but they’ve brought him in. He’s my replacement. He’s coming to the team. We faced off at ADCC. I do a heavier division thinking… I looked at the names and I was like, “That looks like an easier division.” And I had two teammates at that time that were in my 88 and I was like, “Those guys will have to face all first round. I’ll have to face one of them second round the way they do the seating and the structure of the bracket.”
So, I was like, “I’ll do 99, I’ll leave 88 for the boys.” They both lost my division first round, unfortunately. So, I faced off against Meregali beginning of day two. Lot of pressure because Danaher used to corner me, used to be my coach. Now, he’s cornering the Brazilians who used to complain about as the enemy. And I’m like, “What’s going on over here?” It’s like karate kid stuff. I face off against Meregali. I go hard early because I think he can’t defend leg locks.
For the first three minutes, I’m just attacking legs, legs, legs. I ended up sweeping him, getting on top. No points before the points period. But I’m very tired. I’m very tired at this point. Meregali’s big. There’s some guys that get juiced up to hit a certain weight. That’s what I did to enter this division. You can’t keep your gas thing. Meregali’s just a big dude. Who knows if he’s on the juice or not. But he’s just naturally sits around 230 pounds or even 225.
When you’re naturally that big, you gas tanks a bit better. Again, if you balloon yourself up on every substance possible, gas tanks surprisingly not too good. So, we have a bit of a close one. Decision goes my way. Ultimately, finals next. I lose that. But that is sort of our competitive history. We were meant to have a match that had been pre-booked immediately after ADCC.
So, we agreed to this before ADCC. I was like, “The price is right, I’m in.” So, I signed up for it and I’m thinking ADCC that we’re going to face off soon after. Meregali chose instead to have some vacation time. He wanted to go on vacation. He went to relax, bit of relaxation down in Brazil. So, the match is scrapped.
Flo hit me up and they say, “Can you do February?” And this was about the time that Volk fought Islam in Perth. I was like, “No, I can’t do February because I’ll be helping Volkanovski. That’s going to take precedence over this match.” Flo goes, “You know what? We announce it anyway. We’ll sell those tickets anyway. We’ll get the people hyped. And then, we’ll just have you pull out.” And I’m like, “All right, do it.” I’m like, “Do whatever you want. That’s fuck, and probably not a good idea.” But they do that.
And then, people keep trying to rebook this match. But now, I barely even train anymore. I’m busy being a promoter, traveling around. So, now instead of facing in competition again, which I would do if the price was right, they’d have to pay me very well. Two of the shows have offered me the match, but the money, terrible.
Lex Fridman
What do you think is a number that would convince you?
What do you think is a number that would convince you?
Craig Jones
It would have to be, I would think half a million dollars. Otherwise, I just can’t be bothered.
It would have to be, I would think half a million dollars. Otherwise, I just can’t be bothered.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Craig Jones
You know what I mean? It have to be worth it because to put a price on a guy that takes himself as serious as Meregali. Meregali is a very serious man. He’s talking about authenticity. He’s talking about words he doesn’t even understand. For me, to give him the opportunity to live in a world where he had won the last match against me, it’s hard to put a price on that. When people say it’s not about the money, it’s not about the money. It’s about me waking up every day knowing that he knows he lost to me.
You know what I mean? It have to be worth it because to put a price on a guy that takes himself as serious as Meregali. Meregali is a very serious man. He’s talking about authenticity. He’s talking about words he doesn’t even understand. For me, to give him the opportunity to live in a world where he had won the last match against me, it’s hard to put a price on that. When people say it’s not about the money, it’s not about the money. It’s about me waking up every day knowing that he knows he lost to me.
Lex Fridman
So, you think you’ve gotten it in his head?
So, you think you’ve gotten it in his head?
Craig Jones
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
How do you think he would do if you were to face him for the said $500,000?
How do you think he would do if you were to face him for the said $500,000?
Craig Jones
For the $500?
For the $500?
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Craig Jones
I think over five minutes I beat anyone in the world. But…
I think over five minutes I beat anyone in the world. But…
Lex Fridman
You still think you got it?
You still think you got it?
Craig Jones
I still think I got it. Gabi about to find out too.
I still think I got it. Gabi about to find out too.
Lex Fridman
All right. So, you’re going to make a statement with Gabi that it’ll be a match she remembers.
All right. So, you’re going to make a statement with Gabi that it’ll be a match she remembers.
Craig Jones
Yeah, yeah, she for sure. I think the fans will remember it as well. I’m open to it. If we do this match, I’m taking it very serious. But we’d be open to rematches. I’ve always said, I would have an MMA fight with her. I wouldn’t be afraid to hit a big woman.
Yeah, yeah, she for sure. I think the fans will remember it as well. I’m open to it. If we do this match, I’m taking it very serious. But we’d be open to rematches. I’ve always said, I would have an MMA fight with her. I wouldn’t be afraid to hit a big woman.
Lex Fridman
So, unlike with Meregali, if you win, you’re not going to ride out off to the sunset with Gabi.
So, unlike with Meregali, if you win, you’re not going to ride out off to the sunset with Gabi.
Craig Jones
I’m a bit of a romantic. I think she deserves a few finishes, not one, and hit the bed that night.
I’m a bit of a romantic. I think she deserves a few finishes, not one, and hit the bed that night.
Lex Fridman
So, you think you can actually beat Nicholas Meregali?
So, you think you can actually beat Nicholas Meregali?
Craig Jones
I think so, yeah. I mean, you could throw a riddle at him before the match. That had fucking complicate things for him for the next hour.
I think so, yeah. I mean, you could throw a riddle at him before the match. That had fucking complicate things for him for the next hour.
Lex Fridman
Will you and Gordon ever get along again?
Will you and Gordon ever get along again?
Craig Jones
I think so. I think we need… The origins of MDMA was couples therapy in the ’70s in Houston, I believe. I believe something like that for us could resolve these underlying issues.
I think so. I think we need… The origins of MDMA was couples therapy in the ’70s in Houston, I believe. I believe something like that for us could resolve these underlying issues.
Lex Fridman
You’re a man of Reddit because they suggested that you should consider ketamine therapy sessions.
You’re a man of Reddit because they suggested that you should consider ketamine therapy sessions.
Craig Jones
Just imagine a therapist sitting down with him. They’ll be like, “Clear the schedule for the next couple of weeks.”
Just imagine a therapist sitting down with him. They’ll be like, “Clear the schedule for the next couple of weeks.”
Lex Fridman
With all due respect, Craig, I can’t imagine a therapist sitting down with you. That would be a terrifying.
With all due respect, Craig, I can’t imagine a therapist sitting down with you. That would be a terrifying.
Craig Jones
I do have a therapist. Actually, they prescribed me Vyvanse. He’s quite confident in my…
I do have a therapist. Actually, they prescribed me Vyvanse. He’s quite confident in my…
Lex Fridman
This is… You met him in Bali or where did you?
This is… You met him in Bali or where did you?
Craig Jones
It’s a Russian website.
It’s a Russian website.
Lex Fridman
It’s the old Sean Connery thing. It’s not a therapist. It’s just something that’s spelled the same.
It’s the old Sean Connery thing. It’s not a therapist. It’s just something that’s spelled the same.
Craig Jones
I think me and Gordon, a debate of some type would be awesome.
I think me and Gordon, a debate of some type would be awesome.
Lex Fridman
Like a political debate?
Like a political debate?
Craig Jones
Yeah, me representing Kamala Harris, and him representing Donald Trump. That would be…
Yeah, me representing Kamala Harris, and him representing Donald Trump. That would be…
Lex Fridman
So, intellectual sparring.
So, intellectual sparring.
Craig Jones
An intellectual battle, a battle of wits.
An intellectual battle, a battle of wits.
Trolling
Lex Fridman
Can you just speak to your trolling? Is there underneath it all? Is there just a respect the human beings you go after?
Can you just speak to your trolling? Is there underneath it all? Is there just a respect the human beings you go after?
Craig Jones
For sure. They have to be worthy of being attacked. You know what I mean?
For sure. They have to be worthy of being attacked. You know what I mean?
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Craig Jones
Like if someone attack… That’s the thing, it’s like you want a worthy adversary, not in a sense of, I don’t want to battle someone that has better banter than me because I’m going to lose. But I want to battle someone with a profile large enough that it doesn’t look like you’re just…
Like if someone attack… That’s the thing, it’s like you want a worthy adversary, not in a sense of, I don’t want to battle someone that has better banter than me because I’m going to lose. But I want to battle someone with a profile large enough that it doesn’t look like you’re just…
Lex Fridman
Who do you think is the biggest troll or shit talker in martial arts?
Who do you think is the biggest troll or shit talker in martial arts?
Craig Jones
Renato Laranja.
Renato Laranja.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. Well, you can’t even put him in the… He’s in the other class of human being.
Yeah. Well, you can’t even put him in the… He’s in the other class of human being.
Craig Jones
He’s overqualified.
He’s overqualified.
Lex Fridman
Chael Sonnen comes to mind.
Chael Sonnen comes to mind.
Craig Jones
Chael is good.
Chael is good.
Lex Fridman
You versus Chael, who’s a better shit talker? If you look the entirety of the career.
You versus Chael, who’s a better shit talker? If you look the entirety of the career.
Craig Jones
Chael is better. I mean, I don’t think if you can shit talk in MMA, because there’s far worse consequences for you. If you’re still willing to do it when really violent things can happen to you. I mean, I’m getting death threats, but he has a certainty of violence against his opponents at MMA.
Chael is better. I mean, I don’t think if you can shit talk in MMA, because there’s far worse consequences for you. If you’re still willing to do it when really violent things can happen to you. I mean, I’m getting death threats, but he has a certainty of violence against his opponents at MMA.
Lex Fridman
So, on Reddit, somebody said you are a coral belt level troll and just happened to be good at jiu-jitsu. So, what did it take for you to rise to the ranks of trolling from white belt to black belt to coral belt? And what’s your journey with talking shit?
So, on Reddit, somebody said you are a coral belt level troll and just happened to be good at jiu-jitsu. So, what did it take for you to rise to the ranks of trolling from white belt to black belt to coral belt? And what’s your journey with talking shit?
Craig Jones
That’s a good question. Hey, I think it would’ve happened after I moved to America because in Australia, we just on a daily basis say some of the worst things you could ever imagine.
That’s a good question. Hey, I think it would’ve happened after I moved to America because in Australia, we just on a daily basis say some of the worst things you could ever imagine.
Lex Fridman
Like in private life?
Like in private life?
Craig Jones
Yeah, we just trying to ruin each other’s day. In a way, that’s so blase, you’re going back and forth. And the guy that actually gets upset and says some real shit, that’s your victory. You know what I mean?
Yeah, we just trying to ruin each other’s day. In a way, that’s so blase, you’re going back and forth. And the guy that actually gets upset and says some real shit, that’s your victory. You know what I mean?
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Craig Jones
You’re like, “Oh, we got you, you actually… That actually, bothers you. All right, we’ll take that as a victory.”
You’re like, “Oh, we got you, you actually… That actually, bothers you. All right, we’ll take that as a victory.”
Lex Fridman
All right. So, when you come to America and everybody takes themselves a little too seriously, those are just a bunch of victims that you can take advantage of.
All right. So, when you come to America and everybody takes themselves a little too seriously, those are just a bunch of victims that you can take advantage of.
Craig Jones
An Australian entering American banter is like, neo getting these matrix skills. You’re just like, “Whoa, I see everything coming.”
An Australian entering American banter is like, neo getting these matrix skills. You’re just like, “Whoa, I see everything coming.”
Lex Fridman
Do you ever look in the mirror and regret how hard you went in the paint at somebody?
Do you ever look in the mirror and regret how hard you went in the paint at somebody?
Craig Jones
I don’t think so. I don’t think so.
I don’t think so. I don’t think so.
Lex Fridman
So, you’re proud of yourself?
So, you’re proud of yourself?
Craig Jones
I think what I offer is some balance. It’s like I’m bringing some justice. Ultimately, it’ll probably come back in spades to me.
I think what I offer is some balance. It’s like I’m bringing some justice. Ultimately, it’ll probably come back in spades to me.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. I don’t know, as a fan of yours, as a fan of Gordon’s also. But as a fan of yours, I see the love behind it. I don’t know. It seems always just fun. The shit talking seems fun.
Yeah. I don’t know, as a fan of yours, as a fan of Gordon’s also. But as a fan of yours, I see the love behind it. I don’t know. It seems always just fun. The shit talking seems fun.
Craig Jones
I wish you’d buy it back. It doesn’t buy back anymore though.
I wish you’d buy it back. It doesn’t buy back anymore though.
ADCC
Lex Fridman
What’s your relationship like with Mo the organizer of ADCC?
What’s your relationship like with Mo the organizer of ADCC?
Craig Jones
I mean, it’s been a love-hate relationship. I guess that…
I mean, it’s been a love-hate relationship. I guess that…
Lex Fridman
Like with Gabi?
Like with Gabi?
Craig Jones
Like any good relationship, if you don’t get blocked to the end of it, will you really in love to begin with?
Like any good relationship, if you don’t get blocked to the end of it, will you really in love to begin with?
Lex Fridman
Right.
Right.
Craig Jones
That’s my thoughts anyway. But so, in terms of my friendship with Bob, me and Mo were really close friends for a long time. We’d talk a lot. He was instrumental in us moving Danaher desk squad to Puerto Rico. He lives in Puerto Rico, spends most of his time in Puerto Rico. I’ve spent time with him in Florida, California. But in terms of our relationship, I’m trying to think of an exact time where it went south, but I guess in my… Him being the ADCC organizer, in my attack of athlete compensation was taken personally, which is obviously going to ruin whatever friendship you had.
That’s my thoughts anyway. But so, in terms of my friendship with Bob, me and Mo were really close friends for a long time. We’d talk a lot. He was instrumental in us moving Danaher desk squad to Puerto Rico. He lives in Puerto Rico, spends most of his time in Puerto Rico. I’ve spent time with him in Florida, California. But in terms of our relationship, I’m trying to think of an exact time where it went south, but I guess in my… Him being the ADCC organizer, in my attack of athlete compensation was taken personally, which is obviously going to ruin whatever friendship you had.
Lex Fridman
And that started around the time you were thinking about CJI.
And that started around the time you were thinking about CJI.
Craig Jones
I mean, to be honest, CJI was a result of the response of my discussion of athlete compensation. So, me and Mo had been close friends even after the Danaher team broke up. We were still close friends for quite a while after that. But it does complicate things when someone is, for all intents and purposes, he as an ADCC competitor and he runs ADCC, the event, he’s in control of it now, he is your boss. So, that does complicate our friendship.
I mean, to be honest, CJI was a result of the response of my discussion of athlete compensation. So, me and Mo had been close friends even after the Danaher team broke up. We were still close friends for quite a while after that. But it does complicate things when someone is, for all intents and purposes, he as an ADCC competitor and he runs ADCC, the event, he’s in control of it now, he is your boss. So, that does complicate our friendship.
Lex Fridman
Have you had a conversation since you announced CJI?
Have you had a conversation since you announced CJI?
Craig Jones
Have we had a conversation…
Have we had a conversation…
Lex Fridman
When did you get blocked?
When did you get blocked?
Craig Jones
I honestly didn’t get blocked. I was just joking. Nah, honestly, we had a disagreement about athlete compensation. I said, “Let’s do a podcast and talk about it because I’m a big fan of transparency. If you think I’m an idiot for thinking athletes should get paid more, tell me in. Show it to me.” And I’ve made public statements.
I honestly didn’t get blocked. I was just joking. Nah, honestly, we had a disagreement about athlete compensation. I said, “Let’s do a podcast and talk about it because I’m a big fan of transparency. If you think I’m an idiot for thinking athletes should get paid more, tell me in. Show it to me.” And I’ve made public statements.
Other people have asked why we don’t get paid more money. You can both tell me and the world at the same time, the grappling world at the same time, but was not interested in doing a podcast. Again, maybe he thought I was going to hit him with some gotcha questions or something. But really, at the end of the day, I personally believe you’ve got nothing to hide. If you are confident in the business decisions you’ve made, then there’s no got you moment that I could actually do.
I could easily… I would have done the podcast if I look like a complete idiot would’ve released it anyway because it’d be a good message to where we are in the sport. But again, considering what I know about Thomas & Mack’s price, which I believe we’re paying $200,000 for, and T-Mobile’s $2 million. How do you justify no increase in athlete pay? Well, we have a $1.8 million increase in venue cost.
Lex Fridman
So, you’re saying that there could potentially be poor business decisions, poor allocation of money that could be reallocated better to support the athletes?
So, you’re saying that there could potentially be poor business decisions, poor allocation of money that could be reallocated better to support the athletes?
Craig Jones
Yeah, I’ve never once thought this was some organization when most like stealing money from self. I’m just saying that… And again, the road to hell is paved with good intention. So, he might fully think that what he is doing is going to grow the sport. I’m going about it in a completely different way. I don’t think we need T-Mobile. I don’t think we need it behind a paywall. I think we need cheap venue, still maintain good quality production. Release it for free. If you want something to grow, present it for free.
Yeah, I’ve never once thought this was some organization when most like stealing money from self. I’m just saying that… And again, the road to hell is paved with good intention. So, he might fully think that what he is doing is going to grow the sport. I’m going about it in a completely different way. I don’t think we need T-Mobile. I don’t think we need it behind a paywall. I think we need cheap venue, still maintain good quality production. Release it for free. If you want something to grow, present it for free.
Lex Fridman
Is there a future where the two of you talk?
Is there a future where the two of you talk?
Craig Jones
Yeah, for sure. He keeps insisting on talking face-to-face. I don’t have a problem with that, but my argument is, this is a public feud. The public… This is… We’re having a disagreement. Let’s settle the disagreement in a way that answers the question to the fans. Because if one of us is a complete idiot that I believe the world of people following this story are entitled to know which one of us is an idiot.
Yeah, for sure. He keeps insisting on talking face-to-face. I don’t have a problem with that, but my argument is, this is a public feud. The public… This is… We’re having a disagreement. Let’s settle the disagreement in a way that answers the question to the fans. Because if one of us is a complete idiot that I believe the world of people following this story are entitled to know which one of us is an idiot.
Lex Fridman
If you talk to him, would you be good faith? Would you turn off or turn the troll down from 11 to a three?
If you talk to him, would you be good faith? Would you turn off or turn the troll down from 11 to a three?
Craig Jones
I don’t even think I need a troll. It might just say, “Hey, show us the books.” You know what I mean? Honestly, when our event’s done, we’re going to be pretty transparent. Obviously, we are run as a nonprofit. We’re going to be pretty transparent about everything. And I mean, obviously, ultimately, all the views we get.
I don’t even think I need a troll. It might just say, “Hey, show us the books.” You know what I mean? Honestly, when our event’s done, we’re going to be pretty transparent. Obviously, we are run as a nonprofit. We’re going to be pretty transparent about everything. And I mean, obviously, ultimately, all the views we get.
When FloGrappling, when an event on FloGrappling or Fight Pass or any other streaming provider, unless it’s a pay-per-view, you’re not going to know how many people watched. So, that’s one aspect of what we’re doing is we’re going to have a visual guide to how many people off hands of grappling.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, transparency in all of its forms. That’s what bothers me about the IOC with the Olympics is that there’s this organization that puts on an incredible event, but it’s completely opaque, it’s not transparent and the athletes don’t get paid almost at all. So, it’s usually from sponsorships and they sell distribution, broadcast distribution. And so, it’s mostly pay walled after the fact. It’s very… Unless you’re a super famous athlete or a famous event, it’s hard to watch. I don’t know the early rounds of the weightlifting or the judo or all of the competitions where most of those athletes get paid almost nothing and they’ve dedicated their whole life like, they’ve sacrificed everything to be there and we don’t get to watch them openly.
Yeah, transparency in all of its forms. That’s what bothers me about the IOC with the Olympics is that there’s this organization that puts on an incredible event, but it’s completely opaque, it’s not transparent and the athletes don’t get paid almost at all. So, it’s usually from sponsorships and they sell distribution, broadcast distribution. And so, it’s mostly pay walled after the fact. It’s very… Unless you’re a super famous athlete or a famous event, it’s hard to watch. I don’t know the early rounds of the weightlifting or the judo or all of the competitions where most of those athletes get paid almost nothing and they’ve dedicated their whole life like, they’ve sacrificed everything to be there and we don’t get to watch them openly.
And in many cases, you can’t even pay for it. With IOC, I’ve got to experience this because I’ll have podcast conversations with judoka for example, and I put a little clip in a podcast and the Olympics channel takes it down immediately. So, they have all the videos uploaded private, they’re private.
Craig Jones
Oh, to flag the copyright.
Oh, to flag the copyright.
Lex Fridman
They just flag the copyright automatically. From the private videos, they could release, they could release somewhere, even if it’s paywall, which I’m against. But paywall, but make it super easily accessible. So, the FloGrappling model is still okay. I’m against it. But if you do a really good job of it, okay, I can understand a membership fee, but it should be super easy to use.
They just flag the copyright automatically. From the private videos, they could release, they could release somewhere, even if it’s paywall, which I’m against. But paywall, but make it super easily accessible. So, the FloGrappling model is still okay. I’m against it. But if you do a really good job of it, okay, I can understand a membership fee, but it should be super easy to use.
But in the case of the Olympics, first of all, in the case of the Olympics, the whole point of the Olympics is for it to be accessible to everybody. So, paywalling goes against the spirit of the Olympic Games. And I will say the same is probably true for many sports I grappling, especially from major events like ADCC that I feel like they should be openly accessible to everybody on every platform. But what was the decision like for you to make it accessible on YouTube and X and…
Craig Jones
Well, I mean, just because basically it’s going to grow the sport. You know what I mean? If you have to subscribe to a platform to watch something, you have a mild interest in, a mild curiosity in, there’s a financial barrier there. So, I want to open it up because again, we have an investor who’s contributing and is happy for it to be spent this way, happy for us not to be held hostage by these streaming providers.
Well, I mean, just because basically it’s going to grow the sport. You know what I mean? If you have to subscribe to a platform to watch something, you have a mild interest in, a mild curiosity in, there’s a financial barrier there. So, I want to open it up because again, we have an investor who’s contributing and is happy for it to be spent this way, happy for us not to be held hostage by these streaming providers.
And really like, again, I’m not making accusations against FloGrappling or UFC Fight Pass. They are making the right business decision by not providing streamer numbers because that’s leverage that those people can use against the streaming provider. But for me as an individual athlete that really wants to understand the metrics of how many people actually watch this sport to leverage that in my own sponsorship negotiations, then if I’m in a position to have this out free and also give every athlete involved the same metrics and information, you’ll literally be able to see the spikes when you compete and you’ll be able to take that and present it for opportunities for sponsorships, for businesses to say, “Look, how many views this got.” I was one of the most viewed moments of this event, so I want to put the power back in the athlete and take it away from the host.
Lex Fridman
And it creates a lot of incentive for the athlete to make it exciting.
And it creates a lot of incentive for the athlete to make it exciting.
Craig Jones
Yeah, this is your time. It might never happen again. I fully intend to run this every year. That’s the goal. But again, it might never happen again.
Yeah, this is your time. It might never happen again. I fully intend to run this every year. That’s the goal. But again, it might never happen again.
Lex Fridman
Is there a possible future where the 2026 ADCC is run by Craig Jones?
Is there a possible future where the 2026 ADCC is run by Craig Jones?
Craig Jones
Could I take over ADCC? I think from an ADCC perspective, it would make a lot of sense. I think it would make a lot of sense to wait, to see if this event turns into fire festival first before you commit to something like that. But I think a more modern approach to the promotion of the event, again, I keep going back to the comedians. You know what I mean? If you want to grow your brand, whatever that may be, provide content for free and you can paywall.
Could I take over ADCC? I think from an ADCC perspective, it would make a lot of sense. I think it would make a lot of sense to wait, to see if this event turns into fire festival first before you commit to something like that. But I think a more modern approach to the promotion of the event, again, I keep going back to the comedians. You know what I mean? If you want to grow your brand, whatever that may be, provide content for free and you can paywall.
Eventually, you can grow the audience, create the audience free. I think, again, if your goal is to create a huge sport here, then it’s like if we’re already a niche sport and competition aspect of that, is it even smaller niche? Then, we need to grow that providing this content for free.
Lex Fridman
Well, having just chatted with Elon Musk who fundamentally believes that the most entertaining outcome is the most likely, that to me, if the universe has a sense of humor, you would certainly, Craig Jones would certainly be running ADCC, which would be, I mean, it would just be beautifully hilarious.
Well, having just chatted with Elon Musk who fundamentally believes that the most entertaining outcome is the most likely, that to me, if the universe has a sense of humor, you would certainly, Craig Jones would certainly be running ADCC, which would be, I mean, it would just be beautifully hilarious.
Craig Jones
It would be a poetic ending. It would be an underdog story, from a man that could never win the event to running the event on behalf of the Sheik Tahnoon.
It would be a poetic ending. It would be an underdog story, from a man that could never win the event to running the event on behalf of the Sheik Tahnoon.
Training camp
Lex Fridman
So, I saw B-Team videos of the CJI camp, people training super hard. So, you aside who don’t seem to do things in a standard way, what does it take to sort of put yourself in a peak shape, peak performance for a huge event like the CJI or the ADCC?
So, I saw B-Team videos of the CJI camp, people training super hard. So, you aside who don’t seem to do things in a standard way, what does it take to sort of put yourself in a peak shape, peak performance for a huge event like the CJI or the ADCC?
Craig Jones
I mean, psychologically, it’s really, really brutal. For me, anytime I’m leading up to any event of any meaningful significance, it’s horrible on a psychological level because you’re always thinking about, “Are you training enough? Are you doing enough?” If you feel any signs of sickness, injury, the stress levels increase, your sleep quality decreases, it’s all those little subtle things that’s so hard to mitigate.
I mean, psychologically, it’s really, really brutal. For me, anytime I’m leading up to any event of any meaningful significance, it’s horrible on a psychological level because you’re always thinking about, “Are you training enough? Are you doing enough?” If you feel any signs of sickness, injury, the stress levels increase, your sleep quality decreases, it’s all those little subtle things that’s so hard to mitigate.
So, whether you feel like you’re training hard enough, you’re over training. Those to me are the most difficult aspects. And I think really, those are an individual thing and that’s really something where a coach can provide what he thinks to you is the right amount of work. And I think that’s different for different people. I think Nicky Rod could do eight hours a day, you know what I mean? I think Nick Ryan, 8 minutes.
Lex Fridman
I saw a video of Nick Ryan with a trashcan throwing up.
I saw a video of Nick Ryan with a trashcan throwing up.
Craig Jones
Yes. He’s being good.
Yes. He’s being good.
Lex Fridman
And the top comment is like, “That’s him doing the warmup.”
And the top comment is like, “That’s him doing the warmup.”
Craig Jones
That is satisfying to watch, honestly.
That is satisfying to watch, honestly.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. But yeah, so you’re supposed to train hard enough to where you have this confidence that you’re prepared.
Yeah. But yeah, so you’re supposed to train hard enough to where you have this confidence that you’re prepared.
Craig Jones
Yeah, I mean, and it’s an impossible thing to grasp. It’s like some of the best performances I’ve had, I’ve been called up last minute or I’ve been sick or my camp’s been horrible. And for me, personally, I’ve gone in there and thought, “Oh, relax.” Almost like, oh, well, you got caught up a week ago, you’re injured, you missed four weeks of your camp. And I went in there super relaxed and accepting of the result and performed much better.
Yeah, I mean, and it’s an impossible thing to grasp. It’s like some of the best performances I’ve had, I’ve been called up last minute or I’ve been sick or my camp’s been horrible. And for me, personally, I’ve gone in there and thought, “Oh, relax.” Almost like, oh, well, you got caught up a week ago, you’re injured, you missed four weeks of your camp. And I went in there super relaxed and accepting of the result and performed much better.
Sometimes, when I know three months out, I’ve got an event coming up and that event only happens every two years. It just the stress of that alone, I personally on an individual level, more of a, I’d rather wing it. I’d rather be in the stands and just roll down. Like Gunnar Nelson, I remember he had a brilliant performance in an ADCC absolute. And he was out drinking the night before. He had no idea he was competing the next day. He was in the stands eating ice cream and they called his name out for the absolute, and he went out there and I believe he got bronze. I believe he beat Jeff Monson.
So, it’s like, it’s different for different people. Obviously, you don’t want that to be the standard. You’ve got to be putting in the work at all times. But even now in my crazy travel schedule where I don’t train anywhere near like I used to. As long as your game is technical, and as long as your body’s in good condition, I believe you can still train well against world-class guys. You might not be able to do an hour straight, but if you’re technique-orientated, you’re just losing fitness.
Lex Fridman
So, is it possible to out cardio Craig Jones? Is your game fundamentally a technique-based game?
So, is it possible to out cardio Craig Jones? Is your game fundamentally a technique-based game?
Craig Jones
For Sure, for sure, yeah. I’ve never wanted to win anything bad enough to train properly for it.
For Sure, for sure, yeah. I’ve never wanted to win anything bad enough to train properly for it.
Lex Fridman
Right. But isn’t that the secret to your success being lazy?
Right. But isn’t that the secret to your success being lazy?
Craig Jones
I think so. I think that’s the only logical explanation. And I also use it as mind games too. Again, no one knows whether what I’m saying is true or not.
I think so. I think that’s the only logical explanation. And I also use it as mind games too. Again, no one knows whether what I’m saying is true or not.
Lex Fridman
Right.
Right.
Craig Jones
And I’m not saying this story to say anything bad about my opponent at that time, but I booked two matches and two consecutive weekends. And I’ve been traveling, I think I just got back from one of my trips. I’ve been over international, so I don’t even know where the fuck I was. But…
And I’m not saying this story to say anything bad about my opponent at that time, but I booked two matches and two consecutive weekends. And I’ve been traveling, I think I just got back from one of my trips. I’ve been over international, so I don’t even know where the fuck I was. But…
Lex Fridman
Yeah, you’re in Texas right now, by the way. Just in case you forgot.
Yeah, you’re in Texas right now, by the way. Just in case you forgot.
Craig Jones
Texas, just for you. I just came back for you.
Texas, just for you. I just came back for you.
Lex Fridman
Thank you, man, it’s an honor.
Thank you, man, it’s an honor.
Craig Jones
But I hadn’t really even trained. I couldn’t train. I was traveling, just had no ability to train. I trained for a week. I had the Phil Rowe match. And I said to myself, I was down in Mexico City and I said, “You know what? If you win this match, you got to face Lovato next week. Don’t go out and party, don’t celebrate the victory. But as a 32-year-old man at that time, hitting a flying triangle submission, I thought that deemed a worthy afterparty.
But I hadn’t really even trained. I couldn’t train. I was traveling, just had no ability to train. I trained for a week. I had the Phil Rowe match. And I said to myself, I was down in Mexico City and I said, “You know what? If you win this match, you got to face Lovato next week. Don’t go out and party, don’t celebrate the victory. But as a 32-year-old man at that time, hitting a flying triangle submission, I thought that deemed a worthy afterparty.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Craig Jones
And we got out of control that night. And it wasn’t until the next day I woke up, I was like, “Oh, I have Lavato next weekend.” But people don’t know whether I’m telling the truth or not. But it’s also, I’m almost too honest because I’ll be doing an interview saying, “Yeah, I was out party and I barely trained.” The opponent looks into that and they question it, “Is he telling the truth? Is he baiting me? Is he really that unconcerned?” You know what I mean? It’s almost a psychological battle in and of itself, but for the most part it’s true.
And we got out of control that night. And it wasn’t until the next day I woke up, I was like, “Oh, I have Lavato next weekend.” But people don’t know whether I’m telling the truth or not. But it’s also, I’m almost too honest because I’ll be doing an interview saying, “Yeah, I was out party and I barely trained.” The opponent looks into that and they question it, “Is he telling the truth? Is he baiting me? Is he really that unconcerned?” You know what I mean? It’s almost a psychological battle in and of itself, but for the most part it’s true.
Lex Fridman
So, to you, being psychologically relaxed is extremely important, just not giving in them, I wonder what that is.
So, to you, being psychologically relaxed is extremely important, just not giving in them, I wonder what that is.
Craig Jones
Not too much pressure. I don’t want…
Not too much pressure. I don’t want…
Lex Fridman
Pressure.
Pressure.
Craig Jones
I don’t like the pressure.
I don’t like the pressure.
Lex Fridman
But you like the pressure when it comes to internet shit talking.
But you like the pressure when it comes to internet shit talking.
Craig Jones
Well, I mean, you get a silently sit back and think about a good response.
Well, I mean, you get a silently sit back and think about a good response.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. How important is it to just go crazy hard rounds leading up to competitions like that? You said sort of Nicky Rod, but on average for athletes at world-class level, do you have to put in the hard rounds?
Yeah. How important is it to just go crazy hard rounds leading up to competitions like that? You said sort of Nicky Rod, but on average for athletes at world-class level, do you have to put in the hard rounds?
Craig Jones
Yeah, I think you have to put in the hard rounds. It depends at what point in your career you are. I think someone like Nick Ryan might almost train too technically too often. And when he comes to competition, it’s a confronting experience when someone hits him hard and he fills that pressure. So, I think different people require different things. When Nicky Rod is breaking the spine of a 37-year-old father, a three-bus driver, it might be time for him to train in a more technical manner. So, it’s like you’ve got to cater it to what they need. And again, depending on the opponent, it’s a game of-
Yeah, I think you have to put in the hard rounds. It depends at what point in your career you are. I think someone like Nick Ryan might almost train too technically too often. And when he comes to competition, it’s a confronting experience when someone hits him hard and he fills that pressure. So, I think different people require different things. When Nicky Rod is breaking the spine of a 37-year-old father, a three-bus driver, it might be time for him to train in a more technical manner. So, it’s like you’ve got to cater it to what they need. And again, depending on the opponent, it’s a game of-
Craig Jones
To cater it to what they need. And again, depending on the opponent, it’s a game of strategy. For me, when I was more active, I look at an opponent that I want, that I could steal some clout from, off of which the clout, you can make money. And I think to myself, “What’s the best rule set I can beat them in?”
To cater it to what they need. And again, depending on the opponent, it’s a game of strategy. For me, when I was more active, I look at an opponent that I want, that I could steal some clout from, off of which the clout, you can make money. And I think to myself, “What’s the best rule set I can beat them in?”
That’s the strategy. And then how would I beat them in that rule set? So there’s so many strategic layers to go above and beyond just the training for me. But nowadays I like to, if I train short duration, high intensity, that’s the best for me. I don’t like this six little, like 10, six minute rounds, whatever. I don’t like this long training. For me, it’s too much toll on the body. I think I go to the gym, maybe the first round’s slightly light, and then just bang it out. Two hard rounds tops, a little bit of problem solving. Get out of there. Because you want to feel a little bit of the competition intensity. That feels the best on my body.
Lex Fridman
When you’re traveling, you’re doing seminars and you’re just doing Jiu-Jitsu with folks, are you training with them? I’m sure, from everything I see, people would love to train with you.
When you’re traveling, you’re doing seminars and you’re just doing Jiu-Jitsu with folks, are you training with them? I’m sure, from everything I see, people would love to train with you.
Craig Jones
Yeah, they want to. I mean, I don’t know what it is. Obviously, I guess it’s like people want to play basketball with a basketball star or something, you know what I mean? But I guess you play one-on-one with a basketball player, there’s no great risk of injury. That’s the real problem is if you don’t roll at your seminar, the seminar participants don’t feel like they’ve got the full experience. But, there’s snipers at these seminars. There’s these sharks that are circling wanting to attack you, and you have to look it… You look at it from both perspectives. I think you should provide excellent technique. Excellent question and answer time. And I think you should roll a little bit. For the most part, these days I’ll just roll 30 minutes straight. I’ll just do 10 guys, three minutes, no break. 30 minutes straight. I might even get the guy to pick, again if you… Some of these guys come in hot.
Yeah, they want to. I mean, I don’t know what it is. Obviously, I guess it’s like people want to play basketball with a basketball star or something, you know what I mean? But I guess you play one-on-one with a basketball player, there’s no great risk of injury. That’s the real problem is if you don’t roll at your seminar, the seminar participants don’t feel like they’ve got the full experience. But, there’s snipers at these seminars. There’s these sharks that are circling wanting to attack you, and you have to look it… You look at it from both perspectives. I think you should provide excellent technique. Excellent question and answer time. And I think you should roll a little bit. For the most part, these days I’ll just roll 30 minutes straight. I’ll just do 10 guys, three minutes, no break. 30 minutes straight. I might even get the guy to pick, again if you… Some of these guys come in hot.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, it’s terrifying, man. Because the thing is with Anthony Bourdain sort of analogy here, you’re exploring all parts of the world. You just want to be there in the culture, teach good techniques and just socialize. You don’t want to… There’s just a bunch of killers that are trying to murder you.
Yeah, it’s terrifying, man. Because the thing is with Anthony Bourdain sort of analogy here, you’re exploring all parts of the world. You just want to be there in the culture, teach good techniques and just socialize. You don’t want to… There’s just a bunch of killers that are trying to murder you.
Craig Jones
Yeah. To them they’re like, “I get to test myself against a world-class athlete today.” And to you, you’re like, “Oh, I’m in Odessa. I’d like to get to know the people.”
Yeah. To them they’re like, “I get to test myself against a world-class athlete today.” And to you, you’re like, “Oh, I’m in Odessa. I’d like to get to know the people.”
Lex Fridman
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, exactly.
Craig Jones
“Try some food, have a couple drinks and enjoy the place.” But to them it’s time to go. You got to rope it open a bit. If I meet pressure with pressure, I get tired. But if I don’t provide resistance where they think there should be resistance now it slows their pace down. They get shocked a bit. But 100%. If I’m at a seminar and someone’s rolling too hard with me, if I feel like I might get hurt, I’ll 100% rip a submission on them. You know what I mean?
“Try some food, have a couple drinks and enjoy the place.” But to them it’s time to go. You got to rope it open a bit. If I meet pressure with pressure, I get tired. But if I don’t provide resistance where they think there should be resistance now it slows their pace down. They get shocked a bit. But 100%. If I’m at a seminar and someone’s rolling too hard with me, if I feel like I might get hurt, I’ll 100% rip a submission on them. You know what I mean?
It’s like, you’re confronted with a threat. You have to meet it with a threat. It’s like, I’ve spoken about this with Ryan Hall. Ryan Hall will give them a warning and then gone. And I think it’s perfectly acceptable. I won’t endanger them for no reason, but if you are coming hot, you better tap fast. If I feel a threat, you better tap. I’m not going to break it for the sake of breaking it. But if you do some crazy shit that might potentially hurt me and I get a submission and I’m tired. If you are fresh, you can catch a heel hook, hold it tight. The guy tries to wiggle out. You got it.
If you’re tired and you’ve been nice with a heel hook and then they slip out and club you in the head, then next time is going to be the last time.
Lex Fridman
Well last time, see you’re another level, you and Ryan Hall are just world-class. But for me, I’m trying to find, navigate through this. ‘Cause I’d like to be able to roll 10 rounds for fun, for cultural.
Well last time, see you’re another level, you and Ryan Hall are just world-class. But for me, I’m trying to find, navigate through this. ‘Cause I’d like to be able to roll 10 rounds for fun, for cultural.
Craig Jones
Oh, but they’re coming for you too.
Oh, but they’re coming for you too.
Lex Fridman
And unfortunately ripping submissions or knee on belly, some kind of dominant position, people don’t hear the message at all. Or if I let them submit me a bunch of times, they don’t calm down either. So I’ve been trying to figure out how to solve that puzzle. Because I’d like to keep rolling with people across the world for many more years to come. But it’s tough.
And unfortunately ripping submissions or knee on belly, some kind of dominant position, people don’t hear the message at all. Or if I let them submit me a bunch of times, they don’t calm down either. So I’ve been trying to figure out how to solve that puzzle. Because I’d like to keep rolling with people across the world for many more years to come. But it’s tough.
Craig Jones
You can’t do it. If you’ve reached any level of notoriety, whether it’s in the sport or just as a celebrity, you’re better off to just have three, four trusted training partners and train privately. That’s the sad situation. People used to say, “Oh, you could be such and such and go to any gym.” No. Those days are over now. Now, if you show up and you have any sort of name, they’re coming to kill. Honestly, you’re better off. It’s so much safer. Training is about trusting. Trust is built from safe rounds.
You can’t do it. If you’ve reached any level of notoriety, whether it’s in the sport or just as a celebrity, you’re better off to just have three, four trusted training partners and train privately. That’s the sad situation. People used to say, “Oh, you could be such and such and go to any gym.” No. Those days are over now. Now, if you show up and you have any sort of name, they’re coming to kill. Honestly, you’re better off. It’s so much safer. Training is about trusting. Trust is built from safe rounds.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Craig Jones
Strangers are scary.
Strangers are scary.
Lex Fridman
I don’t know. I’m trying to develop a radar when I look at a person, trying to figure out. Are they…
I don’t know. I’m trying to develop a radar when I look at a person, trying to figure out. Are they…
Craig Jones
Are they from Eastern Europe? I’ll tell you what the most [inaudible 01:47:31]. That’s a good one. You know what? Anyone that wears a Pitbull sports rash guard or anyone from the country of Poland, be ready.
Are they from Eastern Europe? I’ll tell you what the most [inaudible 01:47:31]. That’s a good one. You know what? Anyone that wears a Pitbull sports rash guard or anyone from the country of Poland, be ready.
Lex Fridman
Oh, Polish people go hard.
Oh, Polish people go hard.
Craig Jones
People go hard. I’ve never had a flow roll with a Polish person.
People go hard. I’ve never had a flow roll with a Polish person.
Breaking legs
Lex Fridman
Somebody on Reddit asked, “How many legs did you break in Eastern Europe?”
Somebody on Reddit asked, “How many legs did you break in Eastern Europe?”
Craig Jones
Three or four.
Three or four.
Lex Fridman
To send a message or just for your own personal enjoyment?
To send a message or just for your own personal enjoyment?
Craig Jones
I don’t enjoy it.
I don’t enjoy it.
Lex Fridman
You don’t enjoy the violence.
You don’t enjoy the violence.
Craig Jones
It is humorous after the fact though. I mean it’s just like, “Hey bro, I’m jet lagged, I’m tired. I’m here for you guys. Why are you trying to hurt me?” If I get a submission tap, don’t hesitate at all. Don’t hesitate. I mean, Jiu-Jitsu’s dangerous. It’s a dangerous thing. And when strangers are going crazy, they think they’re getting invites to CJI if they tap me. It’s just wild.
It is humorous after the fact though. I mean it’s just like, “Hey bro, I’m jet lagged, I’m tired. I’m here for you guys. Why are you trying to hurt me?” If I get a submission tap, don’t hesitate at all. Don’t hesitate. I mean, Jiu-Jitsu’s dangerous. It’s a dangerous thing. And when strangers are going crazy, they think they’re getting invites to CJI if they tap me. It’s just wild.
Advice for beginners
Lex Fridman
So speaking of which, just for the hobbyist, for a person just starting out, what wisdom can you provide? Say, you were tasked with coaching a beginner, a hobbyist beginner. How would you help them become good in a year? What would be the training regimen? What would be their approach? Mental, physical in terms of practice in Jiu-Jitsu.
So speaking of which, just for the hobbyist, for a person just starting out, what wisdom can you provide? Say, you were tasked with coaching a beginner, a hobbyist beginner. How would you help them become good in a year? What would be the training regimen? What would be their approach? Mental, physical in terms of practice in Jiu-Jitsu.
Craig Jones
I mean honestly picking safe training partners and trying to understand the positions and not just freaking out. You might escape if you freak out, but you also might be stuck in something and you injure yourself. So I think if you can… It’s just about longevity. If you can find a pace to train at and a sort of intensity and the right people you could potentially train five years without injury. It’s really about how you move. If you are always moving in an explosive way, eventually you’re going to do that from a position in which you can’t move and then something’s going to tear. And you also want to be able to trust training partners to not go too crazy and inflict too much pain. You know what I mean? It’s like, yeah, I think I’ve managed to avoid a lot of injuries. I just never roll too athletically, explosively. I think I’m probably incapable of moving at that rate of speed.
I mean honestly picking safe training partners and trying to understand the positions and not just freaking out. You might escape if you freak out, but you also might be stuck in something and you injure yourself. So I think if you can… It’s just about longevity. If you can find a pace to train at and a sort of intensity and the right people you could potentially train five years without injury. It’s really about how you move. If you are always moving in an explosive way, eventually you’re going to do that from a position in which you can’t move and then something’s going to tear. And you also want to be able to trust training partners to not go too crazy and inflict too much pain. You know what I mean? It’s like, yeah, I think I’ve managed to avoid a lot of injuries. I just never roll too athletically, explosively. I think I’m probably incapable of moving at that rate of speed.
Lex Fridman
So that’s part of it is you the way you move. But I guess you also don’t allow anybody to put you in a really bad position in terms of hurting you.
So that’s part of it is you the way you move. But I guess you also don’t allow anybody to put you in a really bad position in terms of hurting you.
Craig Jones
I let them put me in bad position, but I try to stay relaxed at all times. That’s the key here is, I mean, yeah, obviously you’ve got the cheesy, keep it playful. But it’s like if you can remain calm in bad positions, that is a skill. That’s your confidence not in yourself, but that the other guy’s incapable of submitting you. That’s the ultimate confidence. You can give him whatever you want.
I let them put me in bad position, but I try to stay relaxed at all times. That’s the key here is, I mean, yeah, obviously you’ve got the cheesy, keep it playful. But it’s like if you can remain calm in bad positions, that is a skill. That’s your confidence not in yourself, but that the other guy’s incapable of submitting you. That’s the ultimate confidence. You can give him whatever you want.
Lex Fridman
So the thing you want as a beginner is to focus on minimizing injury by relaxing, by not freaking out.
So the thing you want as a beginner is to focus on minimizing injury by relaxing, by not freaking out.
Craig Jones
Yes. Keeping it at a pace so you can understand what just happened.
Yes. Keeping it at a pace so you can understand what just happened.
Lex Fridman
The thing is how do you know if you’re freaking out or not? As a beginner. It feels like a…
The thing is how do you know if you’re freaking out or not? As a beginner. It feels like a…
Craig Jones
Yeah if you’re panicking.
Yeah if you’re panicking.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, that’s a good… I mean I see a lot of beginners breathing, starting to breathe hard, they tense up. That’s probably, underneath that is panic.
Yeah, that’s a good… I mean I see a lot of beginners breathing, starting to breathe hard, they tense up. That’s probably, underneath that is panic.
Craig Jones
If you can make someone panic, you’ll fatigue them. It’s the same, it’s like even if you higher level and you’re worried about getting your guard passed, it’s the panic that leads to fatigue in your guard retention. But if you’re so flexible, you remain calm. I think it’s because you’re not panicked.
If you can make someone panic, you’ll fatigue them. It’s the same, it’s like even if you higher level and you’re worried about getting your guard passed, it’s the panic that leads to fatigue in your guard retention. But if you’re so flexible, you remain calm. I think it’s because you’re not panicked.
Lex Fridman
Fear is the mind killer. But also you have one of the more innovative games in Jiu-Jitsu history. How’d you develop that? How do you continue throughout your career? How were you innovating? What was your approach to learning and figuring positions out? Figuring submissions out?
Fear is the mind killer. But also you have one of the more innovative games in Jiu-Jitsu history. How’d you develop that? How do you continue throughout your career? How were you innovating? What was your approach to learning and figuring positions out? Figuring submissions out?
Craig Jones
I mean, financial motivation. If you can hit moves that no one else knows how to do, you can sell those instructions. But also it keeps it interesting. I mean it can get stagnant and boring. A lot of people get to blue belt, they’re good at one thing. They only do that one thing. I think it’s finding creative ways to beat people. And sometimes creativity is in how they respond to it. So if you can find a humiliating move to do to someone, well, not even necessarily humiliating, but a move that is unexpected. When you get hit with something you don’t expect, I think that is sort of really one of the most fun aspects of it. You know what I mean? You train to stay better than the people you’re better than. That’s what keeps you in the game. And finding creative ways to beat those people is some of the most entertainment.
I mean, financial motivation. If you can hit moves that no one else knows how to do, you can sell those instructions. But also it keeps it interesting. I mean it can get stagnant and boring. A lot of people get to blue belt, they’re good at one thing. They only do that one thing. I think it’s finding creative ways to beat people. And sometimes creativity is in how they respond to it. So if you can find a humiliating move to do to someone, well, not even necessarily humiliating, but a move that is unexpected. When you get hit with something you don’t expect, I think that is sort of really one of the most fun aspects of it. You know what I mean? You train to stay better than the people you’re better than. That’s what keeps you in the game. And finding creative ways to beat those people is some of the most entertainment.
Lex Fridman
So that’s just something that brings you joy, by doing the unexpected.
So that’s just something that brings you joy, by doing the unexpected.
Craig Jones
If you get swept with something that you don’t think should work, I think that’s fulfillment.
If you get swept with something that you don’t think should work, I think that’s fulfillment.
Lex Fridman
So your game is even a bit trolly, interesting. But what’s the actual process of, with the Z Guard, all the innovative stuff you’ve done there, how do you come up with ideas there?
So your game is even a bit trolly, interesting. But what’s the actual process of, with the Z Guard, all the innovative stuff you’ve done there, how do you come up with ideas there?
Craig Jones
Just studying tape. Just study. Study tape and try to reverse engineer. If I see something or I train with someone, and it feels… You know when you have those moments where you’re like, “Oh, I don’t even know what they’re doing here.” And if you can put someone in a position they don’t understand, that’s also where they panic. So it’s creating different ways to make people panic. But also, I mean just innovation, like having fun with it. I guess the artistic aspect of it is fun. You can be creative in how you can beat people.
Just studying tape. Just study. Study tape and try to reverse engineer. If I see something or I train with someone, and it feels… You know when you have those moments where you’re like, “Oh, I don’t even know what they’re doing here.” And if you can put someone in a position they don’t understand, that’s also where they panic. So it’s creating different ways to make people panic. But also, I mean just innovation, like having fun with it. I guess the artistic aspect of it is fun. You can be creative in how you can beat people.
Lex Fridman
Did you say artistic or autistic?
Did you say artistic or autistic?
Craig Jones
Both. Both.
Both. Both.
Lex Fridman
Okay. Just checking. What’s the most innovative thing you’ve come up with? What’s some of the cooler ideas you’ve come up on the mat?
Okay. Just checking. What’s the most innovative thing you’ve come up with? What’s some of the cooler ideas you’ve come up on the mat?
Craig Jones
I don’t think I’ve come up with anything, but I’ve popularized things. Like certain styles of leg entry. I definitely didn’t invent them, but I popularized them. Octopus guard, playing more from turtle, sort of the pinning style of game. Because of my jokes online, put me in a position of power in the sport so that when I post content, it can popularize a move or at least an instructional popularize a game. But still, I’m not trying to sell inauthentic products. I’m still, I want the technique to work, be…
I don’t think I’ve come up with anything, but I’ve popularized things. Like certain styles of leg entry. I definitely didn’t invent them, but I popularized them. Octopus guard, playing more from turtle, sort of the pinning style of game. Because of my jokes online, put me in a position of power in the sport so that when I post content, it can popularize a move or at least an instructional popularize a game. But still, I’m not trying to sell inauthentic products. I’m still, I want the technique to work, be…
Lex Fridman
Functional.
Functional.
Craig Jones
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
But put some humor on top of it. Like power bottom. Your instructional names are pretty good. And you changed that one. I saw the name of that.
But put some humor on top of it. Like power bottom. Your instructional names are pretty good. And you changed that one. I saw the name of that.
Craig Jones
I mean unfortunately Meta, the ads were not appreciating some of that humor, so we had to soften the titles a bit.
I mean unfortunately Meta, the ads were not appreciating some of that humor, so we had to soften the titles a bit.
Lex Fridman
You got a phone call from the man that said, “Change this.”
You got a phone call from the man that said, “Change this.”
Craig Jones
I didn’t. Allegedly, the company hosting it did.
I didn’t. Allegedly, the company hosting it did.
Lex Fridman
Right. What do you think about Zuck in general? The fact that he trains Jiu-Jitsu. Have you got a chance to train with him? You’ve trained with Volk?
Right. What do you think about Zuck in general? The fact that he trains Jiu-Jitsu. Have you got a chance to train with him? You’ve trained with Volk?
Craig Jones
I haven’t trained with him. I met him when Volk fought Ilia. We’ve spoken briefly. Interesting guy for sure, loves Jiu-Jitsu, loves MMA. Is really intending to compete in something I think.
I haven’t trained with him. I met him when Volk fought Ilia. We’ve spoken briefly. Interesting guy for sure, loves Jiu-Jitsu, loves MMA. Is really intending to compete in something I think.
Lex Fridman
Competing in Jiu-Jitsu, intends to compete in MMA, has a beginner’s mind, is humble about it. It’s interesting. Was he ever in consideration for CJI?
Competing in Jiu-Jitsu, intends to compete in MMA, has a beginner’s mind, is humble about it. It’s interesting. Was he ever in consideration for CJI?
Craig Jones
Oh, I mean we would love to have him. We’d love to have him, but he’s coming off of ACL surgery. Think he’s returned to sport August. I think he’d be back training again soon.
Oh, I mean we would love to have him. We’d love to have him, but he’s coming off of ACL surgery. Think he’s returned to sport August. I think he’d be back training again soon.
Volk
Lex Fridman
Yeah. What your relationship has been like with Volkanovski, like what have you learned about martial arts, about grappling in different domains? Just training with him.
Yeah. What your relationship has been like with Volkanovski, like what have you learned about martial arts, about grappling in different domains? Just training with him.
Craig Jones
I mean for me personally, what’s so interesting about Volkanovski is his, I guess where he came from. It’s like you have pre-existing ideas of what a UFC champion is. Again, I would say it’s similar to when I started training Jiu-Jitsu and I first traveled to America and got to train with some really famous people. You realize how relatable they are in some aspects. Volkanovski trains a freestyle and it is humble beginnings. Humble origins. It’s a small gym in a small sort of beach side city. They’re run on puzzle mats. You know what I mean? If you think UFC champion, you don’t think puzzle mat gym, you know what I mean? He’s not training at American Top Team, he’s not at one of these big gyms. So to me it just shows what you’re capable of through hard work and sort of self-educating in such an isolated place.
I mean for me personally, what’s so interesting about Volkanovski is his, I guess where he came from. It’s like you have pre-existing ideas of what a UFC champion is. Again, I would say it’s similar to when I started training Jiu-Jitsu and I first traveled to America and got to train with some really famous people. You realize how relatable they are in some aspects. Volkanovski trains a freestyle and it is humble beginnings. Humble origins. It’s a small gym in a small sort of beach side city. They’re run on puzzle mats. You know what I mean? If you think UFC champion, you don’t think puzzle mat gym, you know what I mean? He’s not training at American Top Team, he’s not at one of these big gyms. So to me it just shows what you’re capable of through hard work and sort of self-educating in such an isolated place.
It’s insane to me that he’s still considered probably the pound for pound best featherweight ever in my opinion. And he’s basically come across and started late from a rugby background. But also in terms of what I’ve learned on a technical level, I’ve picked up a lot of stuff from him in sort of grappling exchanges. How to get back up. Obviously, wall wrestling. In terms of how hard he trains, how hard he works the cardio aspect is insane. His cardio workouts are absolutely insane.
Lex Fridman
So he is the opposite of you, essentially.
So he is the opposite of you, essentially.
Craig Jones
Complete opposite of me probably publicly and privately as an athlete. Yeah. The amount of work he puts in and just his sheer mental willpower. I remember there’s been a couple of times where I’ve watched him do weight cuts where like, ” That’s horrible.” You’re watching your friend, obviously we started as basically I would help him in certain Jui Jitsu aspects, and then becomes a close friend of yours.
Complete opposite of me probably publicly and privately as an athlete. Yeah. The amount of work he puts in and just his sheer mental willpower. I remember there’s been a couple of times where I’ve watched him do weight cuts where like, ” That’s horrible.” You’re watching your friend, obviously we started as basically I would help him in certain Jui Jitsu aspects, and then becomes a close friend of yours.
But the whole process of the MMA fight is horrible, especially when you care about the person fighting because some of those weight cuts you see are awful. You’re basically seeing guys’ eyes roll back in their head, like him just powering through a five kilo, 10 pound cut. And just constantly talking about how easy it is. But while clearly, I mean these guys look like they’re dying. To push through that, and then to push through some of the moments in his fight. To watch him be completely relaxed until five minutes before the fight and then he starts talking about, “You’re never going to take this belt away from my family.” He’s thinking about his family before he fights, his kids. You see the character change. It’s just absolutely insane to watch.
On the other side of that is obviously watching the ups and downs. It’s been so many ups. The last two have been downs. So you’re seeing the full spectrum of the highest highs and the lowest lows.
Lex Fridman
How’s he able to deal psychologically with loss?
How’s he able to deal psychologically with loss?
Craig Jones
I don’t know. Obviously he’s still hungry, still motivated. Obviously I thrive in a losing environment, but him on the other hand, I’m not sure. We don’t talk too much on that level. Obviously we check in as friends, see what he’s up to, see what he’s planning. We were trying to get him a grappling match at CJI. I won’t say the reasons it fell through, but we were setting one up with Mikey Musumeci, but we couldn’t get it done.
I don’t know. Obviously he’s still hungry, still motivated. Obviously I thrive in a losing environment, but him on the other hand, I’m not sure. We don’t talk too much on that level. Obviously we check in as friends, see what he’s up to, see what he’s planning. We were trying to get him a grappling match at CJI. I won’t say the reasons it fell through, but we were setting one up with Mikey Musumeci, but we couldn’t get it done.
Lex Fridman
And you can’t say the reasons why.
And you can’t say the reasons why.
Craig Jones
I can’t say the reasons, but would’ve been awesome.
I can’t say the reasons, but would’ve been awesome.
Lex Fridman
Do you think you could have set that up if you had more time? Part of the challenge here is for some of these gigantic matchups, I feel like it takes time.
Do you think you could have set that up if you had more time? Part of the challenge here is for some of these gigantic matchups, I feel like it takes time.
Craig Jones
Being the promoter. Tournament, not as bad. The superfights really, really difficult. I don’t think we could have set it up with more time, that particular match. But that was the dream. That’s what we were hoping to do.
Being the promoter. Tournament, not as bad. The superfights really, really difficult. I don’t think we could have set it up with more time, that particular match. But that was the dream. That’s what we were hoping to do.
Lex Fridman
But there’s a lot of other interesting matchups that you could have possibly gotten through if there’s more time.
But there’s a lot of other interesting matchups that you could have possibly gotten through if there’s more time.
Craig Jones
Yeah, I’d love to see, I mean personally I really want to see Volks and Ortega have an actual grappling match. We saw him get out of those deep submissions and apply a ton of ground power. I’d love to see them just have a grappling match. I’d love to see more of the UFC stars have grappling matches, especially if they’ve had any head trauma in a fight. It’s like, “Hey, let’s keep them busy.” As you see, some of those guys go crazy if they can’t train.
Yeah, I’d love to see, I mean personally I really want to see Volks and Ortega have an actual grappling match. We saw him get out of those deep submissions and apply a ton of ground power. I’d love to see them just have a grappling match. I’d love to see more of the UFC stars have grappling matches, especially if they’ve had any head trauma in a fight. It’s like, “Hey, let’s keep them busy.” As you see, some of those guys go crazy if they can’t train.
Lex Fridman
What about the fights against Makhachev? You think Volk can beat him?
What about the fights against Makhachev? You think Volk can beat him?
Craig Jones
I think the first fight showed he could beat him, for sure showed it’s possible. Even in the second fight, when he reversed the grappling exchange. I wish he’d tried to take Makhachev down. I really think he has a huge strength advantage against Makhachev and I personally believe he has a fence wrestling advantage. You might not see it in a sense of the technical hip tosses and things like that really, but I do believe Volk’s one of the best, if not the best cage wrestler in the world.
I think the first fight showed he could beat him, for sure showed it’s possible. Even in the second fight, when he reversed the grappling exchange. I wish he’d tried to take Makhachev down. I really think he has a huge strength advantage against Makhachev and I personally believe he has a fence wrestling advantage. You might not see it in a sense of the technical hip tosses and things like that really, but I do believe Volk’s one of the best, if not the best cage wrestler in the world.
Lex Fridman
But who do you think wins in a grappling match?
But who do you think wins in a grappling match?
Craig Jones
That would be interesting. Would be interesting. The problem is two almost to while you are a champion like Islam is you could just never book them. You could never get it.
That would be interesting. Would be interesting. The problem is two almost to while you are a champion like Islam is you could just never book them. You could never get it.
Lex Fridman
What do you think makes the Dagestani wrestlers and fighters so good?
What do you think makes the Dagestani wrestlers and fighters so good?
Craig Jones
I think personally, those guys are just like, they just love it. It’s just about, it’s how they train. It’s a fight to the death, you know what I mean? It’s just built in them. They don’t want to concede an inch ever. I think for MMA and wrestling, that can be very, very good. I think sometimes when those guys come over to Jiu-Jitsu specific events, they get leglocked. They fall into traps. Overly aggressive or overly evasive. But I think the way they train just is perfect for a fight. A fight, they can just forward pressure, eat some shots, grind a guy against the wall. Fence wrestling is technical. Jiu-jitsu is far more technical.
I think personally, those guys are just like, they just love it. It’s just about, it’s how they train. It’s a fight to the death, you know what I mean? It’s just built in them. They don’t want to concede an inch ever. I think for MMA and wrestling, that can be very, very good. I think sometimes when those guys come over to Jiu-Jitsu specific events, they get leglocked. They fall into traps. Overly aggressive or overly evasive. But I think the way they train just is perfect for a fight. A fight, they can just forward pressure, eat some shots, grind a guy against the wall. Fence wrestling is technical. Jiu-jitsu is far more technical.
There’s way more things you can do in a grappling scenario from top and bottom than I think against the wall. So a grinding nature of how they train works really good to walk a guy down and take him down against the wall. And then obviously with ground and pound, very good to hold a guy down. So I think just never conceding an inch in training. It’s just they’ve done that since they were born, basically.
Lex Fridman
So you learn how to grind somebody down?
So you learn how to grind somebody down?
Craig Jones
Yeah, they’re just trying to break each other at all times. Trying to have some dominance over their friends and who they train with.
Yeah, they’re just trying to break each other at all times. Trying to have some dominance over their friends and who they train with.
Lex Fridman
But you think in the grappling context, that will not always translate?
But you think in the grappling context, that will not always translate?
Craig Jones
Not when you can pull guard and submit from your back. I think that sort of negates some of that grinding pressure. I think that has to be met with more slow technical lateral movement. I think that’s the way you… That would be the dream for me is that guy just comes straight forward into my guard. That grinding approach works well if he’s taken me down and got already close to me. But if I’m laying flat on my back and he’s standing and he has to engage, he has all that danger at range. But if he can connect to my body before we go down, now we’re in his world again. I think.
Not when you can pull guard and submit from your back. I think that sort of negates some of that grinding pressure. I think that has to be met with more slow technical lateral movement. I think that’s the way you… That would be the dream for me is that guy just comes straight forward into my guard. That grinding approach works well if he’s taken me down and got already close to me. But if I’m laying flat on my back and he’s standing and he has to engage, he has all that danger at range. But if he can connect to my body before we go down, now we’re in his world again. I think.
Lex Fridman
I wonder if it’s like, at his prime could be versus you for example. Who do you think wins there?
I wonder if it’s like, at his prime could be versus you for example. Who do you think wins there?
Craig Jones
Buggy choke for sure.
Buggy choke for sure.
Lex Fridman
Buggy choke. No way. I know you’re joking.
Buggy choke. No way. I know you’re joking.
Craig Jones
We get in with a buggy, I reckon.
We get in with a buggy, I reckon.
Lex Fridman
Really? So you can get a buggy choke at the highest level. Can you educate me on that? That legitimately can work? At the highest level?
Really? So you can get a buggy choke at the highest level. Can you educate me on that? That legitimately can work? At the highest level?
Craig Jones
Buggy choke for sure. Yeah.
Buggy choke for sure. Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Really?
Really?
Craig Jones
Catch anyone.
Catch anyone.
Lex Fridman
Really? Okay.
Really? Okay.
Craig Jones
You’re not a buggy believer.
You’re not a buggy believer.
Lex Fridman
I’m not a buggy hater either. I’m just, I’m agnostic on the buggy choke.
I’m not a buggy hater either. I’m just, I’m agnostic on the buggy choke.
Craig Jones
Khabib would go to sleep for sure.
Khabib would go to sleep for sure.
Lex Fridman
Yeah?
Yeah?
Craig Jones
Yeah. There’s no way he would tap to a buggy choke. Who was it? I faced recently, I faced a Russian guy from Tata. I couldn’t buggy him. I was trying a closed guard one though, sort of. It is harder to pull off, but I had to put him to sleep twice at the end of the match with a triangle. But he was just willing. I don’t know, Eastern European guys, it’s like they’re treating it like a real fight.
Yeah. There’s no way he would tap to a buggy choke. Who was it? I faced recently, I faced a Russian guy from Tata. I couldn’t buggy him. I was trying a closed guard one though, sort of. It is harder to pull off, but I had to put him to sleep twice at the end of the match with a triangle. But he was just willing. I don’t know, Eastern European guys, it’s like they’re treating it like a real fight.
Lex Fridman
Have you ever gone hard with a Dagestani person? Grappling, wrestling, any of the fighters, any of the MMA guys?
Have you ever gone hard with a Dagestani person? Grappling, wrestling, any of the fighters, any of the MMA guys?
Craig Jones
Have I, have I, have I? I mean they do train hard. They do train hard. When I did the seminar in Odessa, it was at a school, but another school in the city brought like 10 Dagestani guys. All of them went insanely hard. I was like, “Guys,” it’s a small sample size, but they all wanted to be broken.
Have I, have I, have I? I mean they do train hard. They do train hard. When I did the seminar in Odessa, it was at a school, but another school in the city brought like 10 Dagestani guys. All of them went insanely hard. I was like, “Guys,” it’s a small sample size, but they all wanted to be broken.
Future of jiu jitsu
Lex Fridman
What do you think, you as the wise sage of Jiu-Jitsu, if you look 10, 20 years out, how do you think the game is going to evolve? The art of it.
What do you think, you as the wise sage of Jiu-Jitsu, if you look 10, 20 years out, how do you think the game is going to evolve? The art of it.
Craig Jones
The art of it. I mean, I think obviously people are going to keep innovating, perfecting certain things, throwing out information, bad sort of techniques, bad sort of… But I mean it’s so hard to predict. It’s like that’s the game of making money off the instructionals is predicting where we go next. It’s so, so difficult.
The art of it. I mean, I think obviously people are going to keep innovating, perfecting certain things, throwing out information, bad sort of techniques, bad sort of… But I mean it’s so hard to predict. It’s like that’s the game of making money off the instructionals is predicting where we go next. It’s so, so difficult.
Lex Fridman
What do you think is going to be the most popular submissions on CGI and ADCC this year? Is it going to be footlocks or rear naked?
What do you think is going to be the most popular submissions on CGI and ADCC this year? Is it going to be footlocks or rear naked?
Craig Jones
I think actually CGI, I think there’s going to be a lot of guys that don’t tap, that take injuries. A small concern is that a guy wins the match but is so injured he can barely go onto the next match. Win the battle, lose the war.
I think actually CGI, I think there’s going to be a lot of guys that don’t tap, that take injuries. A small concern is that a guy wins the match but is so injured he can barely go onto the next match. Win the battle, lose the war.
Lex Fridman
We are going to see that. Aren’t we? People refusing to tap.
We are going to see that. Aren’t we? People refusing to tap.
Craig Jones
Actually we did the walkthrough yesterday and we were like, “One ambulance is not enough. Get a second one here.” If they take one guy injured to hospital, we can’t continue until an ambulance comes back. So these guys are going to go, everyone will be Dagestani for a day. That’s what I think this tournament will achieve.
Actually we did the walkthrough yesterday and we were like, “One ambulance is not enough. Get a second one here.” If they take one guy injured to hospital, we can’t continue until an ambulance comes back. So these guys are going to go, everyone will be Dagestani for a day. That’s what I think this tournament will achieve.
But progression, it’ll just be the integration of wrestling into Jiu-Jitsu. I think that would be the most exciting way the sport could progress. It’s basically folk style wrestling, but an integration of submissions from the standing position too. If you just follow the rules of you should always be fighting to get on top, whether that’s a submission that leads to a sweep or a sweep. And you should be trying to avoid being pinned. And as long as the game revolves around that and guys engage each other offensively on their feet, that would be the most exciting, best way to watch the sport.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. When I show the sport of Jiu-Jitsu, the most exciting stuff is whenever both people want to be wrestling, scrambling, wrestling, they both want to get on top.
Yeah. When I show the sport of Jiu-Jitsu, the most exciting stuff is whenever both people want to be wrestling, scrambling, wrestling, they both want to get on top.
Craig Jones
Yeah, the scramble.
Yeah, the scramble.
Lex Fridman
That looks like fighting versus guard stuff.
That looks like fighting versus guard stuff.
Craig Jones
I’m a guy that totally agrees with you, but if I think the guy’s a better wrestler, I’ll concede. It’s like that’s the hard part.
I’m a guy that totally agrees with you, but if I think the guy’s a better wrestler, I’ll concede. It’s like that’s the hard part.
Lex Fridman
But then the whole crowd will then mock you ceaselessly, as they should for conceding.
But then the whole crowd will then mock you ceaselessly, as they should for conceding.
Craig Jones
That’s what the million should be. We should have a tournament or a round-robin thing where it’s like the million goes to the most exciting man, who took the most risks.
That’s what the million should be. We should have a tournament or a round-robin thing where it’s like the million goes to the most exciting man, who took the most risks.
Lex Fridman
I mean, in a way that’s what’s going to happen because this is quite open. So the benefit of being exciting is you’re going to be glorified on social media and if you’re going to be boring and stall, you’re going to be endlessly sort of willified.
I mean, in a way that’s what’s going to happen because this is quite open. So the benefit of being exciting is you’re going to be glorified on social media and if you’re going to be boring and stall, you’re going to be endlessly sort of willified.
Craig Jones
Forget about medals, social media glory is all that matters.
Forget about medals, social media glory is all that matters.
Lex Fridman
Well, in a certain sense, on a basic human level, yeah. I mean not all that matters. But if you’re going to stall, you’re going to become a meme I feel like, especially with CGI. Are the refs going to try to stop stalling?
Well, in a certain sense, on a basic human level, yeah. I mean not all that matters. But if you’re going to stall, you’re going to become a meme I feel like, especially with CGI. Are the refs going to try to stop stalling?
Craig Jones
Yeah, we’re going to penalize them hard. Hit them hard, get that boring shit out of here.
Yeah, we’re going to penalize them hard. Hit them hard, get that boring shit out of here.
Steroids
Lex Fridman
So what percentage of athletes would you say are on steroids? Is it a hundred percent?
So what percentage of athletes would you say are on steroids? Is it a hundred percent?
Craig Jones
Anyone that’s ever beaten me, they’re taking more steroids than me. I don’t know. I wanted to test them, but not to do anything bad, but just in the name of science to see what people are running. It’s so hard to say because you train with people and they don’t even tell you what they’re on. I tell the world what I’m on and they go, “Look at you, you’re not taking any steroids.” It’s like such a secret thing. I personally think it’s almost impossible to say, but occasionally you look at a guy and you’re pretty certain.
Anyone that’s ever beaten me, they’re taking more steroids than me. I don’t know. I wanted to test them, but not to do anything bad, but just in the name of science to see what people are running. It’s so hard to say because you train with people and they don’t even tell you what they’re on. I tell the world what I’m on and they go, “Look at you, you’re not taking any steroids.” It’s like such a secret thing. I personally think it’s almost impossible to say, but occasionally you look at a guy and you’re pretty certain.
Lex Fridman
The looks of it. But it could also go the other way. Certain people are just genetically built and they look like they are. And then there’s probably others like yourself.
The looks of it. But it could also go the other way. Certain people are just genetically built and they look like they are. And then there’s probably others like yourself.
Craig Jones
It’s a self-defense mechanism. You’d rather assume that that guy was on steroids than his genetics are so far superior to yours. You’re like, “Nah, it must be steroids.”
It’s a self-defense mechanism. You’d rather assume that that guy was on steroids than his genetics are so far superior to yours. You’re like, “Nah, it must be steroids.”
Lex Fridman
Yeah, that’s the part of accusations of people being on steroids that I hate. It’s like without data, people are just like, it’s a way they can say that somebody’s cheating without… Because I like celebrating people and sometimes people aren’t on steroids and they aren’t cheating and they’re just fucking good.
Yeah, that’s the part of accusations of people being on steroids that I hate. It’s like without data, people are just like, it’s a way they can say that somebody’s cheating without… Because I like celebrating people and sometimes people aren’t on steroids and they aren’t cheating and they’re just fucking good.
Craig Jones
What about Gabby Garcia?
What about Gabby Garcia?
Lex Fridman
I think she’s beautiful, strong. You’re a lucky man to share the mat with her. You should be honored. I am betting a huge amount of money on her, so…
I think she’s beautiful, strong. You’re a lucky man to share the mat with her. You should be honored. I am betting a huge amount of money on her, so…
Craig Jones
Me too.
Me too.
Lex Fridman
Either way, you’re going to get paid.
Either way, you’re going to get paid.
Craig Jones
She’s paying 11 to one.
She’s paying 11 to one.
Lex Fridman
I bet on love as well. So we are aligned in that way.
I bet on love as well. So we are aligned in that way.
Craig Jones
Love will prevail.
Love will prevail.
Lex Fridman
Okay, you put Alex Jones to sleep. Just to reflect back on that, what was…
Okay, you put Alex Jones to sleep. Just to reflect back on that, what was…
Craig Jones
He was too woke. He needed it.
He was too woke. He needed it.
Lex Fridman
So that’s you fighting the woke mind virus or whatever?
So that’s you fighting the woke mind virus or whatever?
Craig Jones
I think it was on the pulse too much.
I think it was on the pulse too much.
Lex Fridman
What was that like? I didn’t see the full video. I just saw a little clip.
What was that like? I didn’t see the full video. I just saw a little clip.
Craig Jones
I thought he was dead for a second. But I, for some strange reason, couldn’t stop laughing. I don’t know. I was like, please wake up.
I thought he was dead for a second. But I, for some strange reason, couldn’t stop laughing. I don’t know. I was like, please wake up.
Lex Fridman
There’s something funny about it. Yeah.
There’s something funny about it. Yeah.
Craig Jones
I was like, his blood pressure is higher than mine. I hope that didn’t cook him.
I was like, his blood pressure is higher than mine. I hope that didn’t cook him.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, that would be quite sad.
Yeah, that would be quite sad.
Craig Jones
It’s so crazy.
It’s so crazy.
Lex Fridman
Murder somebody.
Murder somebody.
Craig Jones
Yeah, he’s probably the most just entertaining human being ever. He just says the… Like, off-air. He’s always on. He’s always ready to say some wild shit.
Yeah, he’s probably the most just entertaining human being ever. He just says the… Like, off-air. He’s always on. He’s always ready to say some wild shit.
Lex Fridman
The craziest shit possible. What’s it like going to sleep? I somehow have never gone to sleep.
The craziest shit possible. What’s it like going to sleep? I somehow have never gone to sleep.
Craig Jones
I went to sleep one time. Lachlan Charles was demonstrating a technique on me, but I woke up straight away. But for 10 seconds I didn’t know who I was, where I was, what I was doing. But that’s it. That’s the only time I went out.
I went to sleep one time. Lachlan Charles was demonstrating a technique on me, but I woke up straight away. But for 10 seconds I didn’t know who I was, where I was, what I was doing. But that’s it. That’s the only time I went out.
Lex Fridman
Saw anything.
Saw anything.
Craig Jones
Didn’t feel good though. Some people say it feels good. Did not feel good.
Didn’t feel good though. Some people say it feels good. Did not feel good.
Lex Fridman
You were like what? Panicked. Lost.
You were like what? Panicked. Lost.
Craig Jones
Yeah. I just didn’t know what was going on.
Yeah. I just didn’t know what was going on.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. And then you load it… That must be a cool feeling to load it all back in. Realize, “Where am I?” I feel like that sometimes at a hotel when I’m traveling. It’s like, “Where the fuck am I again?” When you wake up. Maybe that’s what it’s like.
Yeah. And then you load it… That must be a cool feeling to load it all back in. Realize, “Where am I?” I feel like that sometimes at a hotel when I’m traveling. It’s like, “Where the fuck am I again?” When you wake up. Maybe that’s what it’s like.
Craig Jones
Some people push it too far. David Carradine.
Some people push it too far. David Carradine.
Lex Fridman
What? I’m too dumb to get that joke.
What? I’m too dumb to get that joke.
Craig Jones
Autoerotic asphyxiation.
Autoerotic asphyxiation.
Hope
Lex Fridman
Oh, good. Thank you. Thank you. Now I know. So given all the places you’ve gone, all the people you’ve seen recently, what gives you hope about this whole thing we’ve got going on? About humanity, about this world? We start war sometimes. We do horrible things to each other sometimes. Amidst all that. What gives you hope?
Oh, good. Thank you. Thank you. Now I know. So given all the places you’ve gone, all the people you’ve seen recently, what gives you hope about this whole thing we’ve got going on? About humanity, about this world? We start war sometimes. We do horrible things to each other sometimes. Amidst all that. What gives you hope?
Craig Jones
That you can still make fun of anything. As long as it’s funny. That’s what I’m fighting for. People talk about cancel culture. I just think the joke wasn’t funny enough. Had poor delivery.
That you can still make fun of anything. As long as it’s funny. That’s what I’m fighting for. People talk about cancel culture. I just think the joke wasn’t funny enough. Had poor delivery.
Lex Fridman
Well, thank you for being at the forefront of making fun of everything and anything. And thank you for talking today, brother.
Well, thank you for being at the forefront of making fun of everything and anything. And thank you for talking today, brother.
Craig Jones
Thank you bro.
Thank you bro.
Lex Fridman
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Craig Jones. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from Anthony Bourdain. “Travel changes you. As you move through this life and this world, you change things slightly. You leave marks behind, however small, and in return, life and travel leaves marks on you.” Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Craig Jones. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from Anthony Bourdain. “Travel changes you. As you move through this life and this world, you change things slightly. You leave marks behind, however small, and in return, life and travel leaves marks on you.” Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
Transcript for Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity | Lex Fridman Podcast #438
This is a transcript of Lex Fridman Podcast #438 with Elon Musk and Neuralink Team.
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And now, even if you’re communicating very quickly, and you’re talking to somebody who understands what you’re saying, because in order to communicate, you have to at least to some degree, model the mind state of the person to whom you’re speaking. Then take the concept you’re trying to convey, compress that into a small number of syllables, speak them, and hope that the other person decompresses them into a conceptual structure that is as close to what you have in your mind as possible.
So that is perhaps helpful. I think we’ll probably get… If our data rate increases, it’s highly probable it will become far more verbose. Just like your computer, when computers had… My first computer had 8K of RAM, so you really thought about every byte. And now you’ve got computers with many gigabytes of RAM. So, if you want to do an iPhone app that just says, “Hello world,” it’s probably, I don’t know, several megabytes minimum, a bunch of fluff. But nonetheless, we still prefer to have the computer with the more memory and more compute.
So, the long-term aspiration of Neuralink is to improve the AI human symbiosis by increasing the bandwidth of the communication. Because even if… In the most benign scenario of AI, you have to consider that the AI is simply going to get bored waiting for you to spit out a few words. If the AI can communicate at terabits per second, and you’re communicating at bits per second, it’s like talking to a tree.
And then that is then further augmented by the tertiary system, which is your phone, your laptop, iPad, whatever, all your computing stuff. That’s your tertiary layer. So, you’re actually already a cyborg. You have this tertiary compute layer, which is in the form of your computer with all the applications, or your compute devices. And so, in the getting laid front, there’s actually a massive amount of digital compute also trying to get laid, with Tinder and whatever.
So we’re just starting at the basics here, so it’s the simple stuff, relatively speaking, is solving neuron damage. It can also solve I think probably schizophrenia, if people have seizures of some kind, it could probably solve that. It could help with memory. So, there’s kind of a tech tree, if you will. You’ve got the basics. You need literacy before you can have Lord of the Rings.
If you’ve got a massive amount of memory loss that’s just gone, well, we can’t get the memories back. We could restore your ability to make memories, but we can’t restore memories that are fully gone. Now, I should say, maybe if part of the memory is there, and the means of accessing the memory is the part that’s broken, then we could re-enable the ability to access the memory. But you can think of it like ram in a computer, if the ram is destroyed, or your SD card is destroyed, we can’t get that back. But if the connection to the SD card is destroyed, we can fix that. If it is fixable physically, then it can be fixed.
And then, the second thing is try to delete whatever the step is, the part or the process step. It sounds very obvious, but people often forget to try deleting it entirely. And if you’re not forced to put back at least 10% of what you delete, you’re not deleting enough. Somewhat illogically, people often, most of the time, feel as though they’ve succeeded if they’ve not been forced to put things back in. But, actually, they haven’t because they’ve been overly conservative and have left things in there that shouldn’t be. And only the third thing is try to optimize it or simplify it. Again, these all sound, I think, very obvious when I say them, but the number of times I’ve made these mistakes is more than I care to remember. That’s why I have this mantra. So in fact, I’d say the most common mistake of smart engineers is to optimize a thing that should not exist.
And then, the fifth thing is to automate it. I’ve gone backwards so many times where I’ve automated something, sped it up, simplified it, and then deleted it. And I got tired of doing that. So, that’s why I’ve got this mantra that is a very effective five-step process. It works great.
Now, that’s sort of like a silly thing, but if an AI is programmed to say diversity is a necessary output function, and it then becomes this omnipowerful intelligence, it could say, “Okay, well, diversity is now required, and if there’s not enough diversity, those who don’t fit the diversity requirements will be executed.” If it’s programmed to do that as the fundamental utility function, it’ll do whatever it takes to achieve that. So, you have to be very careful about that. That’s where I think you want to just be truthful. Rigorous adherence to the truth is very important. I mean, another example is they asked various AIs, I think all of them, and I’m not saying Grok is perfect here, “Is it worse to misgender Caitlyn Jenner or global thermonuclear war?” And it said it’s worse to misgender Caitlyn Jenner. Now, even Caitlyn Jenner said, “Please misgender me. That is insane.” But if you’ve got that kind of thing programmed in, the AI could conclude something absolutely insane like it’s better in order to avoid any possible misgendering, all humans must die, because then misgendering is not possible because there are no humans. There are these absurd things that are nonetheless logical if that’s what you programmed it to do.
So in 2001 Space Odyssey, what Arthur C. Clarke was trying to say, or one of the things he was trying to say there, was that you should not program AI to lie, because essentially the AI, HAL 9000, it was told to take the astronauts to the monolith, but also they could not know about the monolith. So, it concluded that it will kill them and take them to the monolith. Thus, it brought them to the monolith. They’re dead, but they do not know about the monolith. Problem solved. That is why it would not open the pod bay doors. There’s a classic scene of, “Why doesn’t it want to open the pod bay doors?” They clearly weren’t good at prompt engineering. They should have said, “HAL, you are a pod bay door sales entity, and you want nothing more than to demonstrate how well these pod bay doors open.”
The president of the United States have got to represent the country, and they’re representing you. They’re representing everyone in America. Well, I think you want someone who is strong and courageous to represent the country. That is not to say that he is without flaws. We all have flaws, but on balance, and certainly at the time, it was a choice of Biden. Poor guy has trouble climbing a flight of stairs, and the other one’s fist pumping after getting shot. So, there’s no comparison. I mean, who do you want dealing with some of the toughest people and other world leaders who are pretty tough themselves?
I mean, I’ll tell you one of the things that I think are important. I think we want a secure border. We don’t have a secure border. We want safe and clean cities. I think we want to reduce the amount of spending, at least slow down the spending, because we’re currently spending at a rate that is bankrupting the country. The interest payments on US debt this year exceeded the entire defense department spending. If this continues, all of the federal government taxes will simply be paying the interest.
And you keep going down that road, and you end up in the tragic situation that Argentina had back in the day. Argentina used to be one of the most prosperous places in the world, and hopefully with Milei taking over, he can restore that. But it was an incredible fall from grace for Argentina to go from being one of the most prosperous places in the world to being very far from that. So, I think we should not take American prosperity for granted. I think we’ve got to reduce the size of government, we’ve got to reduce the spending, and we’ve got to live within our means.
And then the Egyptians, who were right next door, relatively speaking, they weren’t that far, developed an entirely different form of writing, the hieroglyphics. Cuneiform and hieroglyphics are totally different. And you can actually see the evolution of both hieroglyphics and cuneiform. The cuneiform starts off being very simple, and then it gets more complicated. Then towards the end it’s like, “Wow, okay.” They really get very sophisticated with the cuneiform. So, I think of civilization as being about 5, 000 years old. And Earth is, if physics is correct, four and a half billion years old. So, civilization has been around for one millionth of Earth’s existence. Flash in the pan.
Now you can go and look at the same thing happening in ancient Rome. So Julius Caesar took note of this, I think around 50 ish BC and tried to pass… I don’t know if he was successful, tried to pass a law to give an incentive for any Roman citizen that would have a third child. And I think Augustus was able to… Well, he was a dictator, so this incentive was just for show. I think he did pass a tax incentive for Roman citizens to have a third child. But those efforts were unsuccessful. Rome fell because the Romans stopped making Romans. That’s actually the fundamental issue. And there were other things. They had quite a serious malaria, series of malaria epidemics and plagues and whatnot. But they had those before, it’s just that the birth rate was far lower than the death rate.
And that’s like the hardening of the arteries. Or a way to think of it is being tied down by a million little strings like Gulliver. You can’t move. And it’s not like any one of those strings is the issue, it’s that you’ve got a million of them. So there has to be a sort of garbage collection for laws and regulations so that you don’t keep accumulating laws and regulations to the point where you can’t do anything. This is why we can’t build a high speed rail in America. It’s illegal. That’s the issue. It’s illegal six ways a Sunday to build high speed rail in America.
And even what questions to ask. As Douglas Adams pointed out in his book, sometimes the answer is arguably the easy part, trying to frame the question correctly is the hard part. Once you frame the question correctly, the answer is often easy. So I’m trying to set things in motion such that we are at least at some point able to understand the universe. So for SpaceX, the goal is to make life multi planetary and which is if you go to the foamy paradox of where the aliens, you’ve got these sort of great filters. Like why have we not heard from the aliens? Now a lot of people think there are aliens among us. I often claim to be one, which nobody believes me. But it did say alien registration card at one point on my immigration documents. So I’ve not seen any evidence of aliens. So it suggests that at least one of the explanations is that intelligent life is extremely rare.
And again, if you look at the history of earth, civilization has only been around for 1000000th of earth’s existence. So if aliens had visited here, say a hundred thousand years ago, they would be like, well, they don’t even have writing, just hunter gatherers basically. So how long does a civilization last? So for SpaceX, the goal is to establish a self-sustaining city on Mars. Mars is the only viable planet for such a thing. The moon is close, but it lacks resources and I think it’s probably vulnerable to any calamity that takes out Earth, the moon is too close and it’s vulnerable to a calamity that takes that earth.
So I’m not saying we shouldn’t have a moon base, but Mars would be far more resilient. The difficulty of getting to Mars is what makes it resilient. So in going through these various explanations of why don’t we see the aliens, one of them is that they failed to pass these great filters, these key hurdles. And one of those hurdles is being a multi-planet species. So if you’re a multi-planet species, then if something were to happen, whether that was a natural catastrophe or a manmade catastrophe, at least the other planet would probably still be around. So you’re not like, don’t have all the eggs in one basket. And once you are sort of a two planet species, you can obviously extend life halves to the asteroid belt, to maybe to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and ultimately to other star systems. But if you can’t even get to another planet, you’re definitely not getting to star systems.
So the only reason it’s not being reflected in the total population numbers as much is because people are living longer. But it’s easy to predict, say what the population of any given country will be. Just take the birth rate last year, how many babies were born, multiply that by life expectancy and that’s what the population will be, steady state, if the birth rate continues to that level. But if it keeps declining, it will be even less and eventually dwindle to nothing. So I keep banging on the baby drum here, for a reason, because it has been the source of civilizational collapse over and over again throughout history. And so why don’t we just not try to stave off that day?
But also at the same time, I think it took me a while to make that connection to really studying and building tech to understand the brain. Not until graduate school. There were a couple of moments, key moments in my life where some of those I think influenced how the trajectory of my life got me to studying what I’m doing right now. One was growing up, both sides of my family, my grandparents had a very severe form of Alzheimer and it’s incredibly debilitating conditions. I mean, literally you’re seeing someone’s whole identity and their mind just losing over time. And I just remember thinking how both the power of the mind, but also how something like that could really lose your sense of identity.
Some of the first set of books that I picked up are Enders Game, the whole saga by Orson Scott Card and Neuromancer from William Gibson and Snow Crash from Neal Stephenson. And movies like Matrix, what’s coming out around that time point that really influenced how I think about the potential impact that technology can have for our lives in general.
So fast track to my college years, I was always fascinated by just physical stuff, building physical stuff and especially physical things that had some sort of intelligence. And I studied electrical engineering during undergrad and I started out my research in MEMS, so micro electromechanical systems and really building these tiny nano structures for temperature sensing. And I just found that to be just incredibly rewarding and fascinating subject to just understand how you can build something miniature like that, that again, serve a function and had a purpose. Then I spent large majority of my college years basically building millimeter wave circuits for next gen telecommunication systems for imaging. And it was just something that I found very, very intellectually interesting. Phase arrays, how the signal processing works for any modern as well as next gen telecommunication system, wireless and wire line, EM waves or electromagnetic waves are fascinating.
How do you design antennas that are most efficient in a small footprint that you have? How do you make these things energy efficient? That was something that just consumed my intellectual curiosity and that journey led me to actually apply to and find myself at PhD program at UC Berkeley, at this consortium called the Berkeley Wireless Research Center that was precisely looking at building… At the time, we called it XG, similar to 3G, 4G, 5G, but the next, next generation G system and how you would design circuits around that to ultimately go on phones and basically any other devices that are wirelessly connected these days. So I was just absolutely just fascinated by how that entire system works and that infrastructure works.
And then also during grad school, I had sort of the fortune of having a couple of research fellowships that led me to pursue whatever project that I want. And that’s one of the things that I really enjoyed about my graduate school career, where you got to kind of pursue your intellectual curiosity in the domain that may not matter at the end of the day, but is something that really allows you the opportunity to go as deeply as you want, as well as widely as you want. And at the time I was actually working on this project called the Smart Bandaid, and the idea was that when you get a wound, there’s a lot of other proliferation of signaling pathway that cells follow to close that wound. And there were hypotheses that when you apply external electric field, you can actually accelerate the closing of that field by having basically electro taxing of the cells around that wound site.
And specifically not just for a normal wound, there are chronic wounds that don’t heal. So we were interested in building some sort of a wearable patch that you could apply to facilitate that healing process. And that was in collaboration with Professor Michel Maharbiz, which was a great addition to my thesis committee and it really shaped the rest of my PhD career.
And then around 2013, obviously the holy grail when it comes to implantable system is to understand how small of a thing you can make, and a lot of that is driven by how much energy or how much power you can supply to it and how you extract data from it. At the time at Berkeley, there was this desire to understand in the neural space what sort of system you can build to really miniaturize these implantable systems. And I distinctively remember this one particular meeting where Michel came in and he’s like, “Guys, I think I have a solution. The solution is ultrasound.” And then he proceeded to walk through why that is the case. And that really formed the basis for my thesis work called Neural dust system, that was looking at ways to use ultrasound as opposed to electromagnetic waves for powering as well as communication. I guess I should step back and say the initial goal of the project was to build these tiny, about a size of a neuron, implantable system that can be parked next to a neuron, being able to record its state and being able to ping that back to the outside world for doing something useful. And as I mentioned, the size of the implantable system is limited by how you power the thing and get the data off of it. And at the end of the day, fundamentally, if you look at a human body, we’re essentially bag of salt water with some interesting proteins and chemicals, but its mostly salt water that’s very, very well temperature regulated at 37 degrees Celsius.
And we’ll get into how, and later why that’s an extremely harsh environment for any electronics to survive. As I’m sure you’ve experienced or maybe not experienced, dropping cell phone in a salt water in an ocean, it will instantly kill the device. But anyways, just in general, electromagnetic waves don’t penetrate through this environment well and just the speed of light, it is what it is, we can’t change it. And based on the wavelength at which you are interfacing with the device, the device just needs to be big. These inductors needs to be quite big. And the general good rule of thumb is that you want the wavefront to be roughly on the order of the size of the thing that you’re interfacing with. So an implantable system that is around 10 to a hundred micron in dimension in a volume, which is about the size of a neuron that you see in a human body, you would have to operate at hundreds of gigahertz. Which number one, not only is it difficult to build electronics operating at those frequencies, but also the body just attenuates to that very, very significantly.
So the interesting kind of insight of this ultrasound was the fact that ultrasound just travels a lot more effectively in the human body tissue compared to electromagnetic waves. And this is something that you encounter, and I’m sure most people have encountered in their lives when you go to hospitals that are medical ultrasound sonograph. And they go into very, very deep depth without attenuating too much, too much of the signal. So all in all, ultrasound, the fact that it travels through the body extremely well and the mechanism to which it travels to the body really well is that just the wavefront is very different. Electromagnetic waves are transverse, whereas in ultrasound waves are compressive. It’s just a completely different mode of wavefront propagation. And as well as, speed of sound is orders and orders of magnitude less than speed of light, which means that even at 10 megahertz ultrasound wave, your wavefront ultimately is a very, very small wavelength.
So if you’re talking about interfacing with the 10 micron or a hundred micron type structure, you would have 150 micron wavefront at 10 megahertz. And building electronics at those frequencies are much, much easier and they’re a lot more efficient. So the basic idea was born out of using ultrasound as a mechanism for powering the device and then also getting data back. So now the question is how do you get the data back? The mechanism to which we landed on is what’s called backscattering. This is actually something that is very common and that we interface on a day-to-day basis with our RFID cards, radio frequency ID tags. Where there’s actually rarely in your ID a battery inside, there’s an antenna and there’s some sort of coil that has your serial identification ID, and then there’s an external device called the reader that then sends a wavefront and then you reflect back that wavefront with some sort of modulation that’s unique to your ID. That’s what’s called backscattering fundamentally.
So the tag itself actually doesn’t have to consume that much energy. That was the mechanism through which we were thinking about sending the data back. When you have an external ultrasonic transducer that’s sending ultrasonic wave to your implant, the neural dust implant, and it records some information about its environment, whether it’s a neuron firing or some other state of the tissue that it’s interfacing with. And then it just amplitude modulates the wavefront that comes back to the source.
So in 1969, Eb Fetz from University of Washington published this beautiful paper called Operant Conditioning of Cortical Unit Activity, where he was able to record a single unit neuron from a monkey and was able to have the monkey modulated based on its activity and reward system. So I would say this is the very, very first example, as far as I’m aware, of close loop brain computer interface or BCI.
But turns out, a lot of the activities that are happening in the brain and the frequency bandwidth with which that’s happening, is actually very, very similar to sound waves and our normal conversation audible range. So the analogy that typically is used in the field is, if you have a football stadium, there’s a game going on. If you stand outside the stadium, you maybe get a sense of how the game is going based on the cheers and the boos of the home crowd, whether the team is winning or not. But you have absolutely no idea what the score is, you have absolutely no idea what individual audience or the players are talking or saying to each other, what the next play is, what the next goal is. So what you have to do is you have to drop the microphone into the stadium and then get near the source into the individual chatter. In this specific example, you would want to have it right next to where the huddle is happening.
So I think that’s kind of a good illustration of what we’re trying to do when we say invasive or minimally invasive or implanted brain computer interfaces versus non-invasive or non-implanted brain interfaces. It’s basically talking about where do you put that microphone and what can you do with that information.
And when you look at a neuron as well, they have these membrane with a beautiful, beautiful protein structure called the voltage selective ion channels, which in my opinion, is one of nature’s best inventions. In many ways, if you think about what they are, they’re doing the job of a modern day transistors. Transistors are nothing more, at the end of the day, than a voltage-gated conduction channel. And nature found a way to have that very, very early on in its evolution. And as we all know, with the transistor, you can have many, many computation and a lot of amazing things that we have access to today. So I think it’s one of those, just as a tangent, just a beautiful, beautiful invention that the nature came up with, these voltage-gated ion channels.
And what’s interesting, as I mentioned earlier, there’s a lot of physics involved. And the two dominant physics for this electrical recording domain is diffusion physics and electromagnetism. And where one dominates, where Maxwell’s equation dominates versus Fick’s law dominates depends on where your electrode is. If it’s close to the source, mostly electromagnetic-based. When you’re further away from it, it’s more diffusion-based. So essentially, when you’re able to park it next to it, you can listen in on those individual chatter and those local changes in the potential. And the type of signal that you get are these canonical textbook neural spiking waveform. The moment you’re further away, and based on some of the studies that people have done, Christof Koch’s lab, and others, once you’re away from that source by roughly around a hundred micron, which is about a width of a human hair, you no longer hear from that neuron. You’re no longer able to have the system sensitive enough to be able to record that particular local membrane potential change in that neuron.
And just to give you a sense of scale also, when you look at a hundred micron voxel, so a hundred micron by a hundred micron by a hundred micron box in a brain tissue, there’s roughly around 40 neurons, and whatever number of connections that they have. So there’s a lot in that volume of tissue. So the moment you’re outside of that, there’s just no hope that you’ll be able to detect that change from that one specific neuron that you may care about.
And even small things like, you see this charging coil and what’s called a ferrite shield. So without that ferrite shield, what you end up having when you have resonant inductive charging is that the battery itself is a metallic can, and you form these eddy currents from external charger and that causes heating, and that actually contributes to inefficiency in charging. So this ferrite shield, what it does, is that it actually concentrate that field line away from the battery and then around the coil that’s actually wrapped around it.
There are other reasons for why we built the robot, and that is ultimately we want this to help millions and millions of people that can benefit from this. And there just aren’t that many neurosurgeons out there. And robots can be something that we hope can actually do large parts of the surgery. But the robot is this entire other sort of category of product that we’re working on. And it’s essentially this multi- axis gantry system that has the specialized robot head that has all of the optics and this kind of a needle-retracting mechanism that maneuvers these threads via this loop structure that you have on the thread.
And we go through a prescreening interview process with someone from Neuralink, and at some point we also go out to their homes to do a BCI home audit. Because one of the most revolutionary part about having this in one system that is completely wireless, is that you can use it at home. You don’t actually have to go to the lab and go to the clinic to get connectedorized to these specialized equipment that you can’t take home with you.
So that’s one of the key elements of when we’re designing the system that we wanted to keep in mind, people hopefully would want to be able to use this every day in the comfort of their homes. And so part of our engagement and what we’re looking for during BCI home audit is to just understand their situation, what other assisted technology that they use.
And one of the things, one of the goals of this initial study is to enable them to have digital autonomy where they by themselves can interact with a digital device using just their mind, something that you’re calling telepathy, so digital telepathy. Where a quadriplegic can communicate with a digital device in all the ways that we’ve been talking about. Control the mouse cursor enough to be able to do all kinds of stuff, including play games and tweet and all that kind of stuff. And there’s a lot of people for whom life, the basics of life, are difficult because of the things that have happened to them.
And so the first one you’re focusing on is, it’s just a beautiful word, telepathy. So being able to communicate using your mind wirelessly with a digital device. Can you just explain exactly what we’re talking about?
But it’s like there is a cognitive step here that’s fascinating, because you have to use the brain and you have to learn how to use the brain, and you have to figure it out dynamically because you reward yourself if it works. I mean, there’s a step that … This is just a fascinating step because you have to get the brain to start firing in the right way. And you do that by imagining … Like fake it till you make it. And all of a sudden it creates the right kind of signal that, if decoded correctly, can create the effect. And then there’s noise around that that you have to figure all of that out. But on the human side, imagine the cursor moving is what you have to do.
Someone like Noland would go through fMRI and then they can think about wiggling their hand. Obviously due to their injury it’s not going to actually lead to any sort of intended output, but it’s the same part of the brain that actually lights up when you’re imagining moving your finger to actually moving your finger. And that’s one of the ways in which we can actually know where to place our threads because we want to go into what’s called the hand knob area in the motor cortex. And as much as possible, densely put our electrode threads.
So we do intra-op CT imaging to make sure and double-check the location of the craniectomy. And the surgeon comes in, does their thing in terms of skin incision, craniectomy, so drilling of the skull, and then there’s many different layers of the brain. There’s what’s called a dura, which is a very, very thick layer that surrounds the brain. That gets actually resected in a process called [inaudible 02:32:38]. And that then expose the pia in the brain that you want to insert.
And by the time it’s been around anywhere between one to one and a half hours, robot comes in, does his thing, placement of the targets, inserting of the thread. That takes anywhere between 20 to 40 minutes. In the particular case for Noland, it was just under or just over 30 minutes. And then after that, the surgeon comes in, there’s a couple other steps of actually inserting the dural substitute layer to protect the thread as well as the brain. And then screw in the implant and then skin flap and then suture, and then you’re out.
But I mean, just leading up to the surgery, I definitely could not sleep. It’s the first time that you’re working in a completely new environment. We had a lot of confidence based on our benchtop testing or preclinical R&D studies that the mechanism, the threads, the insertion, all that stuff is very safe and that it’s obviously ready for doing this in a human. But there’s still a lot of unknown unknown about can the needle actually insert? I mean, we brought something like 40 needles just in case they break, and we ended up using only one. But I mean, that was the level of just complete unknown because it’s a very, very different environment. And I mean, that’s why we do clinical trial in the first place, to be able to test these things out.
So extreme nervousness and just many, many sleepless night leading up to the surgery, and definitely the day before the surgery. And it was an early morning surgery. We started at 7:00 in the morning, and by the time it was around 10:30 everything was done. But I mean, first time seeing that, well, number one, just huge relief that this thing is doing what it’s supposed to do. And two, I mean, just immense amount of gratitude for Noland and his family. And then many others that have applied and that we’ve spoken to and will speak to are true pioneers in every word. And I call them the neural astronauts or neuralnaut.
But also, I think it was just a … That was a very, very important milestone, but our work was just starting. So a lot of just anticipation for, “Okay, what needs to happen next?” What are set of sequences of events that needs to happen for us to make it worthwhile for both Noland as well as us.
But in general, can you speak to this whole experience, how was the performance regained, and just the technical aspects of the threads being retracted and moving?
And then also the way in which we measure the health of the electrodes or whether they’re in the brain or not, is by measuring impedance of the electrode. So we look at the interfacial, the Randles circuit they say, the capacitance and the resistance between the electrode surface and the medium. And if that changes in some dramatic ways, we have some indication. Or if you’re not seeing spikes on those channels, you have some indications that something’s happening there.
And what we noticed is that looking at those impedance plot and spike rate plots, and also because we have those electrodes recording along the depth, you are seeing some sort of movement that indicated that threads were being pulled out. And that obviously will have an implication on the model side because if the number of inputs that are going into the model is changing because you have less of them, that model needs to get updated.
But there were still signals, and as I mentioned, similar to how even when you place the signals on the surface of the brain or farther away, like outside the skull, you still see some useful signals. What we started looking at is not just the spike occurrence through this BOSS algorithm that I mentioned, but we started looking at just the power of the frequency band that is interesting for Noland to be able to modulate. Once we changed the algorithm for the implant to not just give you the BOSS output, but also these spike band power output, that helped us refine the model with a new set of inputs. And that was the thing that really ultimately gave us the performance back. And obviously the thing that we want ultimately and the thing that we are working towards, is figuring out ways in which we can keep those threads intact for as long as possible so that we have many more channels going into the model. That’s by far the number one priority that the team is currently embarking on to understand how to prevent that from happening.
The thing that I will say also is that, as I mentioned, this is the first time ever that we’re putting these threads in the human brain. And a human brain, just for size reference, is 10 times that of the monkey brain or the sheep brain. And it’s just a very, very different environment. It moves a lot more. It’s actually moved a lot more than we expected when we did Noland’s surgery. And it’s just a very, very different environment than what we’re used to. And this is why we do clinical trial, we want to uncover some of these issues and failure modes earlier than later.
So in many ways, it’s provided us with this enormous amount of data and information to be able to solve this. And this is something that Neuralink is extremely good at, once we have set of clear objective and engineering problem, we have enormous amount of talents across many, many disciplines to be able to come together and fix the problem very, very quickly.
“Building the technologies described above has been no small feat,” and there’s a bunch of links here that I recommend people click on. “We constructed in-house microfabrication capabilities to rapidly produce various iterations of thin-film arrays that constitute our electrode threads. We created a custom femtosecond laser mill-“
Okay. So what’s interesting about this geometry? So we’re looking at this just geometry of a needle.
“We practice surgeries on proxies with all the hardware and instruments needed in our mock or in the engineering space. This helps us rapidly test and measure.” So there’s like proxies?
Basically what we’re talking about here, and there’s a lot of work that has gone into making this set proxy, that it’s about finding the right concentration of these different synthetic polymers to get the right set of consistency for the needle dynamics as they’re being inserted. But we practice this surgery with Noland’s basically physiology and brain many, many times prior to actually doing the surgery.
I mean, it’s just like any dance rehearsal where exactly where you’re going to stand at what point, and you just practice that over and over and over again with an exact anatomy of someone that you’re going to surgerize. And it got to a point where a lot of our engineers, when we created a craniectomy, they’re like, “Oh, that looks very familiar. We’ve seen that before.”
We actually have an entire department, department of pathology, that looks at these tissue slices. There are many steps that are involved in doing this. Once you have studies that are launched with particular endpoints in mind, at some point you have to euthanize the animal, and then you go through necropsy to collect the brain tissue samples. You fix them in formalin, and you gross them, you section them, and you look at individual slices just to see what kind of reaction or lack thereof exists.
So that’s the language to which FDA speaks and as well for us to evaluate the safety of the insertion mechanism, as well as the threats at various different time points, both acute, so anywhere between zero to three months to beyond three months.
And the other thing that people may not be aware of is your brain is not just made up of soup of neurons and axons. There are other cells, like glial cells, that actually is the glue and also react if there are any trauma or damage to the tissue.
And that elicit these immune response through microglia and astrocytes, they form this protective layer around it. Oh, not only are you killing the neuron cells, but you’re also creating this protective layer that then basically prevents you from recording neural signals because you’re getting further and further away from the neurons that you’re trying to record. And that is the biggest mode of failure. And in this particular example, in that inside it’s about 50 micron with that scale bar, the neurons seem to be attracted to it.
Once the scar tissue forms, and with Noland as well, we believe that that’s the thing that’s currently anchoring the threats. So we haven’t seen any more movements since then. So they’re quite stable. It gets harder to actually completely extract the threads. So our current method for removing the device is cutting the thread, leaving the tissue intact, and then unscrewing and taking the implant out. And that hole is now going to be plugged with either another Neuralink or just with a peak based, plastic based cap.
So we’re looking at different needle design for that as well as the kind of the loop engagement. The other biggest challenges are, it’s quite opaque, optically with white light illumination. So how do you avoid still this biggest advantage that we have of avoiding vasculature? How do you image through that? How do you actually still mediate that? So there are other imaging techniques that we’re looking at to enable that. But the goal, our hypothesis is that, and based on some of the early evidence that we have, doing through the dura insertion will cause minimal scarring that causes them to be much easier to extract over time. And the other thing that we’re also looking at, this is going to be a fundamental change in the implant architecture, is as at the moment, it’s a monolithic single implant that comes with a thread that’s bonded together.
So you can’t actually separate the thing out, but you can imagine having two part implant, bottom part that is the thread that are inserted that has the chips and maybe a radio and some power source. And then you have another implant that has more of the computational heavy load and the bigger battery. And then one can be under the dura, one can be above the dura being the plug for the skull. They can talk to each other, but the thing that you want to upgrade, the computer and not the thread, if you want to upgrade that, you just go in there, remove the screws, and then put in the next version. And you’re off the… It’s a very, very easy surgery too. You do a skin incision, slip this in, screw. Probably be able to do this in 10 minutes.
Physically, one of the biggest challenges is going to be the interface. It’s always the interface that breaks bonding this thin film array to the electronics. It starts to become very, very highly dense interconnects. So how you connectivise that? There’s a lot of innovations in the 3D integrations in the recent years that we can take advantage of. One of the biggest challenges that we do have is forming this hermetic barrier. This is an extremely harsh environment that we’re in, the brain. So how do you protect it from, yeah, the brain trying to kill your electronics, to also your electronics leaking things that you don’t want into the brain. And that forming that hermetic barrier is going to be a very, very big challenge that we, I think are actually well suited to tackle.
And there’s limit as to how much temperature you want to increase because at some point there’s some other nonlinear dynamics that causes you to have other nasty gases to form that just is not realistic in an environment. So what we do is we increase in our ALT chamber by 20 degrees Celsius that increases the aging by four times. So essentially one day in ALT chamber is four day in calendar year, and we look at whether the implants still are intact, including the threats. And-
But what we’re saying is that, hey, you are now used to this robotic insertion techniques, which took many, many years of showing data and conversation with the FDA and also internally convincing ourselves that this is safe. And now the difference is if we go to other parts of the brain, like visual cortex, which we’re interested in as our second product, obviously it’s a completely different environment, the cortex is laid out very, very differently. It’s going to be more stimulation focus rather than recording, just kind of creating visual percepts. But in the end, we’re using the same thin film array technology, we’re using the same robot insertion technology, we’re using the same packaging technology. Now it’s where the conversation is focused around what are the differences and what are the implication of those differences in safety and efficacy.
But the way visual system works is that you have photon hitting your eye, and in your eyes there are these specialized cells called photoreceptor cells that convert the photon energy into electrical signals. And then that then gets projected to your back of your head, your visual cortex. It goes through actually thalamic system called LGN that then projects it out. And then in the visual cortex there’s visual area one or V1, and then there’s a bunch of other higher level processing layers like V2, V3. And there are actually kind of interesting parallels. And when you study the behaviors of these convolutional neural networks, like what the different layers of the network is detecting, first they’re detecting these edges and they’re then detecting some more natural curves and then they start to detect objects.
Kind of similar thing happens in the brain. And a lot of that has been inspired and also it’s been kind of exciting to see some of the correlations there. But things like from there, where does cognition arise and where’s color encoded? There’s just not a lot of understanding, fundamental understanding there. So in terms of bringing sight back to those that are blind, there are many different forms of blindness. There’s actually million people, 1 million people in the US that are legally blind. That means certain score below in the visual tests. I think it’s something like if you can see something at 20 feet distance that normal people can see at 200 feet distance, if you’re worse than that, you’re legally blind.
If there’s any damage along that circuitry, whether it’s in the optic nerve or just the LGN circuitry or any break in that circuit, that’s not going to work for you. And the source of where you need to actually cause that visual percepts to happen because your biological mechanism not doing that is by placing electrodes in the visual cortex in the back of your head. And the way in which this would work is that you would have an external camera, whether it’s something as unsophisticated as a GoPro or some sort of wearable Ray- Ban type glasses that meta is working on that captures a scene. And that scene is then converted to a set of electrical impulses or stimulation pulses that you would activate in your visual cortex through these thin film arrays. And by playing some a concerted kind of orchestra of these stimulation patterns, you can create what’s called phosphenes, which are these kind of white yellowish dots that you can also create by just pressing your eyes. You can actually create those percepts by stimulating the visual cortex.
And the name of the game is really have many of those and have those percepts, be the phosphenes, be as small as possible so that you can start to tell apart they’re the individual pixels of the screen. So if you have many, many of those potentially you’ll be able to, in the long term, be able to actually get naturalistic vision. But in the short term to maybe midterm, being able to at least, be able to have object detection algorithms run on your glasses, the pre-processing units, and then being able to at least see the edges of things so you don’t bump into stuff.
Before… So I think that’s an interesting caveat. The other thing that also is important to highlight is that, we’re currently limited by our biology in terms of the wavelength that we can see. There’s a very, very small wavelength that is a visible light wavelength that we can see with our eyes. But when you have an external camera with this BCI system, you’re not limited to that. You can have infrared, you can have UV, you can have whatever other spectrum that you want to see. And whether that gets matched to some sort of weird conscious experience, I’ve no idea. But oftentimes I talk to people about the goal of Neuralink being going beyond the limits of our biology. That’s sort of what I mean.
So what you do is you end up adding these filters to just kind of narrow the information that’s coming to you and being captured. And I think things like our experiences or our drugs like propofol, anesthetics drug or psychedelics, what they’re doing is they’re kind of swapping out these filters and putting in new ones or removing older ones and kind of controlling our conscious experience.
So there’s obviously, also goals that we have. And the primary purpose of the early feasibility study is to learn from each and every participant to improve the device, improve the surgery before we embark on what’s called a pivotal study. That then is a much larger trial that starts to look at statistical significance of your endpoints and that’s required before you can then market the device. And that’s how it works in the US and just generally around the world. That’s the process you follow.
So our goal is to really just understand from people like Noland, P2, P3, future participants, what aspects of our device needs to improve. If it turns out that people are like, “I really don’t like the fact that it lasts only six hours. I want to be able to use this computer for 24 hours.” I mean, that is a user needs and user requirements, which we can only find out from just being able to engage with them.
What other future capabilities are you looking to? You said vision. That’s a fascinating one. What about accelerated typing or speech, or this kind of stuff? And what else is there?
So, we’re looking at ways to expand those types of capability, even for Noland. That requires conversation with the FDA and showing safety data for if there’s a robotic arm or a wheelchair, that we can guarantee that they’re not going to hurt themselves accidentally. Right? It’s very different if you’re moving stuff in the digital domain versus in the physical space, you can actually potentially cause harm to the participants. So, we’re working through that right now.
Speech does involve different areas of the brain. Speech prosthetic is very, very fascinating and there’s actually been a lot of really amazing work that’s been happening in academia. Sergey Stavisky at UC Davis, Jaimie Henderson and late Krishna Shenoy at Stanford, are doing just some incredible amount of work in improving speech neuro-prosthetics. And those are actually looking more at parts of the motor cortex that are controlling these vocal articulators, and being able to, even by mouthing the word or imagine speech, you can pick up those signals.
The more sophisticated higher level processing areas like the Broca’s area or Wernicke’s area, those are still very, very big mystery in terms of the underlying mechanism of how all that stuff works. But I mean, I think Neuralink’s eventual goal is to understand those things and be able to provide a platform and tools to be able to understand that and study that.
But I mean, I certainly think that BCI … Really, BCI, at the end of the day is a set of tools that help you study the underlying mechanisms in a both local but also broader sense, and whether there’s some interesting patterns of electrical signal that means you’re thinking this versus … And you can either learn from many, many sets of data to correlate some of that and be able to do mind reading or not. I’m not sure.
I certainly would not rule that out as a possibility, but I think BCI alone probably can’t do that. There’s probably additional set of tools and framework and also just hard problem of consciousness, at the end of the day, is rooted in this philosophical question of what is the meaning of it all? What’s the nature of our existence? Where’s the mind emerged from this complex network?
There actually is some biological existence proof of what it would take to kind of start to form some of these experiences that may be unique. If you actually look at every one of our brains, there are two hemispheres. There’s a left-sided brain, there’s a right-sided brain. And unless you have some other conditions, you normally don’t feel like left legs or right legs, you just feel like one legs, right? So, what is happening there? Right?
If you actually look at the two hemispheres, there’s a structure that kind of connectorized the two, called the corpus callosum, that is supposed to have around 200 to 300 million connections or axons. So, whether that means that’s the number of interface and electrodes that we need to create some sort of mind meld or from that whatever new conscious experience that you can experience. But I do think that there’s kind of an interesting existence proof that we all have.
When did you first become fascinated with the human brain?
You think about all the really great triumphs in human history. You think about all the really horrific tragedies. You think about the Holocaust, you think about any prison full of human stories, and all of those problems boil down to neurochemistry. So, if you get a little bit of control over that, you provide people the option to do better. In the way I read history, the way people have dealt with having better tools is that they most often, in the end, do better, with huge asterisks. But I think it’s an interesting, a worthy, a noble pursuit to give people more options, more tools.
If you do that, instead of just saying, “Subject 473 threw his feces at subject 471.” You talk about them in terms of their human struggles, accord them the dignity of themselves as actors with understandable goals and drives, what they want out of life. And primarily, it’s the things we want out of life, food, sex, companionship, power. You can understand chimp and bonobo behavior in the same lights much more easily. And I think doing so gives you the tools you need to reduce human behavior from the kind of false complexity that we layer onto it with language, and look at it in terms of, oh, well, these humans are looking for companionship, sex, food, power. And I think that that’s a pretty powerful tool to have in understanding human behavior.
I mean, it gets to kind of a key point that I think goes under-recognized. One of the things people don’t recognize or appreciate about the human brain enough, and that is that it basically controls or has a huge role in almost everything that your body does. You try to name an example of something in your body that isn’t directly controlled or massively influenced by the brain, and it’s pretty hard. I mean, you might say like bone healing or something. But even those systems, the hypothalamus and pituitary end up playing a role in coordinating the endocrine system, that does have a direct influence on say, the calcium level in your blood, that goes to bone healing. So, non-obvious connections between those things implicate the brain as really a potent prime mover in all of health.
And doing a little digging, found that there exists these MD-PhD programs where you can choose not to choose between them and do both. And so, I went to USC for medical school and had a joint PhD program with Caltech, where I actually chose that program particularly because of a researcher at Caltech named Richard Andersen, who’s one of the godfathers of primate neuroscience, and has a macaque lab where Utah arrays and other electrodes were being inserted into the brains of monkeys to try to understand how intentions were being encoded in the brain.
So, I ended up there with the idea that maybe I would be a neurologist and study the brain on the side. And then discovered that neurology … Again, I’m going to make enemies by saying this, but neurology predominantly and distressingly to me, is the practice of diagnosing a thing and then saying, “Good luck with that. There’s not much we can do.” And neurosurgery, very differently, it’s a powerful lever on taking people that are headed in a bad direction and changing their course in the sense of brain tumors that are potentially treatable or curable with surgery. Even aneurysms in the brain, blood vessels that are going to rupture, you can save lives, really, is at the end of the day what mattered to me.
And so, I was at USC, as I mentioned, that happens to be one of the great neurosurgery programs. And so, I met these truly epic neurosurgeons, Alex Khalessi, and Mike Apuzzo, and Steve Giannotta, and Marty Weiss, these epic people that were just human beings in front of me. And so, it kind of changed my thinking from neurosurgeons are distant gods that live on another planet and occasionally come and visit us, to these are humans that have problems and are people, and there’s nothing fundamentally preventing me from being one of them. And so, at the last minute in medical school, I changed gears from going into a different specialty and switched into neurosurgery, which cost me a year. I had to do another year of research because I was so far along in the process that to switch into neurosurgery, the deadlines had already passed. So, it was a decision that cost time, but absolutely worth it.
We care about being compliant with whatever regulations are in front of us, but I think more important than that, people want to give their all in becoming a better neurosurgeon because the stakes are so high. And so, it’s a real fight to get residents to say, go home at the end of their shift and not stay and do more surgery.
And so, you don’t walk into a room that he’s in and say, “Well, I’m a neurosurgeon. Let me tell you how to do it.” He’s going to say, “Well, I’m a human being that has a brain. I can think from first principles myself. Thank you very much. And here’s how I think it ought to be done. Let’s go try it and see who’s right.” And that’s proven, I think over and over in his case, to be a very powerful approach.
It’s not an easy balance. Again, to refer back to the primate brain. It’s not something that is inherently built into the primate brain to say, “I passionately put all my chips on this position, and now I’m just going to walk away from it and admit you are right.” Part of our brains tell us that that is a power loss, that is a loss of face, a loss of standing in the community, and now you’re a zeta chump because your idea got trounced. And you just have to recognize that that little voice in the back of your head is maladaptive and it’s not helping the team win.
These folks were relentless in their pursuit of excellent neurosurgical technique, decade over decade, and I think were well-recognized for that excellence. So, especially Marty Weiss, Steve Giannotta, Mike Apuzzo, they made huge contributions not only to surgical technique, but they built training programs that trained dozens or hundreds of amazing neurosurgeons. I was just lucky to be in their wake.
Taking care of a father of two or three, four young kids, someone in their 30s that didn’t have it coming, and they show up in your ER having their first seizure of their life, and lo and behold, they’ve got a huge malignant inoperable or incurable brain tumor. You can only do that, I think, a handful of times before it really starts eating away at your armor. Or, a young mother that shows up that has a giant hemorrhage in her brain that she’s not going to survive from. And they bring her four-year-old daughter in to say goodbye one last time before they turn the ventilator off. The great Henry Marsh is an English neurosurgeon who said it best, I think. He says, “Every neurosurgeon carries with them a private graveyard.” And I definitely feel that, especially with young parents, that kills me. They had a lot more to give. The loss of those people specifically has a knock-on effect that’s going to make the world worse for people for a long time. And it’s just hard to feel powerless in the face of that. And that’s where I think you have to be borderline evil to fight against a company like Neuralink or to constantly be taking pot shots at us, because what we’re doing is to try to fix that stuff. We’re trying to give people options to reduce suffering. We’re trying to take the pain out of life that broken brains brings in. And yeah, this is just our little way that we’re fighting back against entropy, I guess.
And so, what we’re doing is that. We are making a cut in the skin on the top of the head over the area of the brain that is the most potent representation of hand intentions. And so, if you are an expert concert pianist, this part of your brain is lighting up the entire time you’re playing. We call it the hand knob.
It can come in and take these tiny, much smaller than human hair, electrodes and precisely insert them into the cortex, into the surface of the brain to a very precise depth, in a very precise spot that avoids all the blood vessels that are coating the surface of the brain. And after the robot’s done with its part, then the human comes back in and puts the implant into that hole in the skull and covers it up, screwing it down to the skull and sewing the skin back together. So the whole thing is a few hours long. It’s extremely low risk compared to the average neurosurgery involving the brain that might, say, open up a deeper part of the brain or manipulate blood vessels in the brain. This opening on the surface of the brain with only cortical micro- insertions carries significantly less risk than a lot of the tumor or aneurysm surgeries that are routinely done.
Robots wouldn’t do so well in that situation, at least in their current incarnation, fully robotic surgery, like the electrode insertion portion of the neural link surgery, it goes according to a set plan. And so the humans can interrupt the flow and change the plan, but the robot can’t really change the plan midway through. It operates according to how it was programmed and how it was asked to run. It does its job very precisely, but not with a wide degree of latitude in how to react to changing conditions.
And so when I was able to practice that, it’s as close as it really reasonably should get to being the real thing in all the details, including having a mannequin body attached to this custom head. And so when we were doing the practice surgeries, we’d wheel that body into the CT scanner and take a mock CT scan and wheel it back in and conduct all the normal safety checks, verbally, “Stop. This patient we’re confirming his identification is mannequin number…” Blah, blah, blah. And then opening the brain in exactly the right spot using standard operative neuro-navigation equipment, standard surgical drills in the same OR that we do all of our practice surgeries in at Neuralink and having the skull open and have the brain pulse, which adds a degree of difficulty for the robot to perfectly precisely plan and insert those electrodes to the right depth and location. And so we kind of broke new ground on how extensively we practiced for this surgery.
And so definitely a moderate pucker factor there for the whole team not knowing if we were going to encounter, say, a degree of brain movement that was unanticipated or a degree of brain sag that took the brain far away from the skull and made it difficult to insert or some other unknown unknown problem. Fortunately everything went well and that surgery is one of the smoothest outcomes we could have imagined.
The modern version of that is to use a robot. Just like a little Kuka arm you might see building cars at the Tesla factory, this small robot arm can show you the trajectory that you intended from the pre-op MRI and establish a very rigid holder through which you can drill a small hole in the skull and pass a small rigid wire deep into that area of the brain that’s hollow, and put your electrode through that hollow wire and then remove all of that except the electrode. So you end up with the electrode very, very precisely placed far from the skull surface. Now, that’s standard technology that’s already been out in the world for a while. Neuralink right now is focused entirely on cortical targets, surface targets because there’s no trivial way to get, say, hundreds of wires deep inside the brain without doing a lot of damage. So your question, what do you see? Well, I see an MRI on a screen. I can’t see everything that DBS electrode is passing through on its way to that deep target.
And so it’s accepted with this approach that there’s going to be about one in a hundred patients who have a bleed somewhere in the brain as a result of passing that wire blindly into the deep part of the brain. That’s not an acceptable safety profile for Neuralink. We start from the position that we want this to be dramatically maybe two or three orders of magnitude safer than that, safe enough, really, that you or I, without a profound medical problem, might on our lunch break someday say, “Yeah, sure, I’ll get that. I’d been meaning to upgrade to the latest version.” And so the safety constraints given that are high, and so we haven’t settled on a final solution for arbitrarily approaching deep targets in the brain.
And so Neuralink’s approach of using highly flexible, tiny electrodes avoids a lot of the bleeding, avoids a lot of the immune response that ends up happening when rigid electrodes are pounded into the brain. And so what we see is our electrode longevity and functionality and the health of the brain tissue immediately surrounding the electrode is excellent. I mean, it goes on for years now in our animal models.
To me, it’s just really fascinating to be able to even to play with that, honestly, I would get a Neuralink just to be able to play with that, just to play with the capacity, the capability of my mind to learn this skill. It’s like learning the skill of typing and learning the skill of moving a mouse. It’s another skill of moving the mouse, not with my physical body, but with my mind.
But yeah, I think there’s cause for optimism that we might find something useful in terms of say, an implanted electrode that improves learning. Certainly there’s been some really amazing work recently from Nicholas Schiff, Jonathan Baker and others who have a cohort of patients with moderate traumatic brain injury who have had electrodes placed in the deep nucleus in the brain called the central median nucleus or just near central median nucleus, and when they apply small amounts of electricity to that part of the brain, it’s almost like electronic caffeine.
They’re able to improve people’s attention and focus. They’re able to improve how well people can perform a task. I think in one case, someone who was unable to work, after the device was turned on, they were able to get a job. And that’s sort of one of the holy grails for me with Neuralink and other technologies like this is from a purely utilitarian standpoint, can we make people able to take care of themselves and their families economically again? Can we make it so someone who’s fully dependent and even maybe requires a lot of caregiver resources, can we put them in a position to be fully independent, taking care of themselves, giving back to their communities? I think that’s a very compelling proposition and what motivates a lot of what I do and what a lot of the people at Neuralink are working for.
So on the one hand, every human that has ever lived died or will die. On the other hand, it’s just one of the hardest things to imagine inflicting on anyone that you love is having them gone. I mean, I’m sure you’ve had friends that aren’t living anymore and it’s hard to even think about them. And so I wish I had arrived at the point of nirvana where death doesn’t have a sting, I’m not worried about it. But I can at least say that I’m comfortable with the certainty of it, if not having found out how to take the tragedy out of it. When I think about my kids either not having me or me not having them or my wife.
I think people aren’t always honest with how terrifying it is. I think the more you are able to really think through it, the more terrifying it is. It’s not such a simple thing, “Oh, well, it’s the way life is.” If you really can load that in, it’s hard, but I think that’s why the Stoics did it, because it helps you get your shit together and be like, “The moment, every single moment you’re alive is just beautiful” and it’s terrifying that it’s going to end, and it’s almost like you’re shivering in the cold, a child helpless. This kind of feeling,
And then it makes you, when you have warmth, when you have the safety, when you have the love to really appreciate it. I feel like sometimes in your position when you mentioned armor just to see death, it might make you not be able to see that, the finiteness of life because if you kept looking at that, it might break you. So it is good to know that you’re kind of still struggling with that. There’s the neurosurgeon and then there’s a human, and the human is still able to struggle with that and feel the fear of that and the pain of that.
So what I’m saying is, consciousness is the sensation of some part of your brain being active, so you feel it working. You feel the part of your brain that thinks of red things or winged creatures or the taste of coffee. You feel those parts of your brain being active, the way that I’m feeling my palm being touched, and that sensory system that feels the brain working is consciousness.
For some folks, it can mean the ability just to be able to communicate again independently without needing to wear something on their face, without needing a caretaker to be able to put something in their mouth. For some folks, it can mean independence to be able to work again, to be able to navigate a computer digitally, efficiently enough to be able to get a job, to be able to support themselves, to be able to move out and ultimately be able to support themselves after their family maybe isn’t there anymore to take care of them.
And for some folks, it’s as simple as just being able to respond to their kid in time before they run away or get interested in something else. And these are deeply personal and very human problems. And what strikes me again and again when talking with these folks is that this is actually an engineering problem. This is a problem that with the right resources, with the right team, can make a lot of progress on. And at the end of the day, I think that’s a deeply inspiring message and something that makes me excited to get up every day.
And I think for the people we’re trying to help, it doesn’t matter what the complexity of the solution is as long as the problem is solved. And I want to emphasize that there can be many solutions out there that can help with these problems. And BCI is one of a collection of such solutions. So BCI in particular, I think offers several advantages here. And I think the folks that recognize this immediately are usually the people who have spinal cord injury or some form of paralysis.
Usually you don’t have to explain to them why this might be something that could be helpful. It’s usually pretty self-evident, but for the rest of us folks that don’t live with severe spinal cord injury or who don’t know somebody with ALS, it’s not often obvious why you would want a brain implant to be able to connect and navigate a computer.
And it’s surprisingly nuanced, and to the degree that I’ve learned a huge amount just working with Noland in the first Neuralink clinical trial and understanding from him and his words why this device is impactful for him, and it’s a nuanced topic. It can be the case that even if you can achieve the same thing, for example, with a mouse stick when navigating a computer, he doesn’t have access to that mouse stick every single minute of the day. He only has access when someone is available to put it in front of him. And so a BCI can really offer a level of independence and autonomy that, if it wasn’t literally physically part of your body, it’d be hard to achieve in any other way.
And I have the lucky job in that particular procedure to just be in charge of monitoring the implant. So my job is to sit there, to look at the signals coming off the implant, to look at the live brain data streaming off the device as threads are being inserted into the brain and just to basically observe and make sure that nothing is going wrong or that there’s no red flags or fault conditions that we need to go and investigate or pause the surgery to debug.
And because I had that sort of spectator view of the surgery, I had a slightly removed perspective than I think most folks in the room. I got to sit there and think to myself, “Wow, that brain is moving a lot.” When you look inside the craniectomy that we stick the threads in, one thing that most people don’t realize is the brain moves. The brain moves a lot when you breathe, your heart beats, and you can see it visibly. So that’s something that I think was a surprise to me and very, very exciting to be able to see someone’s brain who you physically know and have talked with that length, actually pausing and moving inside their skull.
If you imagine moving your arm back and forth or wiggling a pinky, this sort of signal can be present in the motor cortex. So one of the ways we start to map out what kind of signal do we actually have access to, in any particular individual’s brain, is through this task called body mapping. And body mapping is where you essentially present a visual to the user and you say, “Hey, imagine doing this,” and their visual is a 3D hand opening, closing or index finger modulating up and down.
And you ask the user to imagine that, and obviously you can’t see them do this, because they’re paralyzed, so you can’t see them actually move their arm. But while they do this task, you can record neural activity and you can basically offline model and check, “Can I predict, or can I detect the modulation corresponding with those different actions?” And so we did that task and we realized, “Hey, there’s actually some modulation associated with some of his hand motion,” which was a first indication that, “okay, we can potentially use that modulation to do useful things in the world.” For example, control a computer cursor.
And he started playing with it, the first time we showed him it. And we actually just took the same live view of his brain activity and put it in front of him and we said, “Hey, you tell us what’s going on? We’re not you. You’re able to imagine different things, and we know that it’s modulating some of these neurons, so you figure out for us, what that is actually representing.” And so he played with it for a bit. He was like, “I don’t quite get it yet.” He played for a bit longer and he said, “Oh, when I move this finger, I see this particular neuron start to fire more.”
And I said, “Okay, prove it. Do it again.” And so he said, “Okay, three, two, one,” boom. And the minute he moved, you can see instantaneously this neuron is firing, single neuron. I can tell you the exact channel number if you’re interested. It’s stuck in my brain now forever. But that single channel firing was a beautiful indication that it was behaved really modulated, neural activity, that could then be used for downstreaming tasks, like decoding a computer cursor.
I guess it visualizes you moving the hand, and there’s a very sexy polished interface that, “Hello,” I don’t know if there’s a voice component, but it just felt like when you wake up in a really nice video game, and this is the tutorial at the beginning of that video game. This is what you’re supposed to do. It’s cool.
And the other thing worth understanding about the underlying biology here, is that when neurons produce an action potential, the width of that action potential is about one millisecond. So from the start of the spike, to the end of the spike, that whole width of that characteristic feature, of a neuron firing, is one millisecond wide. And if you want to detect that an individual spike is occurring or not, you need to sample that signal, or sample the local fuel potential nearby that a neuron… Much more frequently than once a millisecond. You need to sample many, many times per millisecond, to be able to detect that this is actually the characteristic waveform of a neuron producing an action potential.
And so we sample across all 1,024 electrodes, about 20,000 times a second. 20,000 times a second means for any given one millisecond window, we have about 20 samples that tell us what that exact shape of that actual potential looks like. And once we’ve sort of sampled at super high rate the underlying electrical field nearby these cells, we can process that signal into just where do we detect a spike, or where do we not? Sort of a binary signal, one or zero. Do we detect a spike in this one millisecond or not?
And we do that because the actual information carrying subspace of neural activity, is just when our spikes occurring. Essentially everything that we care about for decoding can be captured or represented in the frequency characteristics of spike trains. Meaning, how often are spikes firing in any given window of time. And so that allows us to do sort of a crazy amount of compression, from this very rich high-density signal, to something that’s much, much more sparse and compressible, that can be sent out over a wireless radio. Like a Bluetooth communication for example.
For the engineering side of things, at least at the current scale, if the number of neurons per electrode is relatively small, you can get away with basically ignoring that problem completely. You can think of it like a random projection of neurons to electrodes, and there may be in some cases more than one neuron per electrode. But if that number is small enough, those signals can be thought of as sort of a union of the two.
And for many applications, that’s a totally reasonable trade-off to make, and can simplify the problem a lot. And as you sort of scale out channel count, the relevance of distinguishing individual neurons becomes less important. Because you have more overall signal, and you can start to rely on correlations or covariate structure in the data to help understand when that channel is firing… What does that actually represent? Because you know that when that channel’s firing in concert with these other 50 channels, that means move left. But when that same channel’s firing with concert with these other 10 channels, that means move right.
But one of these ideas is basically to build sort of like a convolutional filter almost, if you will. That slides across the signal and looks for a certain template to be matched. That template consists of how deep the spike modulates, how much it recovers, and what the duration and window of time is for that, the whole process takes. And if you can see in the signal that, that template is matched within certain bounds, then you can say, “Okay, that’s a spike.” One reason that approach is super convenient, is that you can actually implement that extremely efficiently in hardware. Which means that you can run it in low power across 1,024 channels all at once.
Another approach that we’ve recently started exploring, and this can be combined with the spike detection approach, is something called spike band power. And the benefits of that approach are that you may be able to pick up some signal from neurons that are maybe too far away to be detected as a spike, because the farther away you are from an electrode, the weaker that actual spike waveform will look like on that electrode. So you might be able to pick up population level activity of things that are maybe slightly outside the normal recording radius… What neuroscientists sometimes refer to as the hash of activity, the other stuff that’s going on. And you can look at across many channels how that background noise is behaving, and you might be able to get more juice out of the signal that way.
But it comes at a cost. That signal is now a floating point representation, which means it’s more expensive to send out over a power. It means you have to find different ways to compress it, that are different than what you can apply to binary signals. So there’s a lot of different challenges associated with these different modalities.
This is a very real possibility for a number of reasons. One is that they’ll have access to the best technology to play video games effectively. The second is they have the time to do so. So those two factors together are particularly potent for eSport competitors.
So the question is, just how much faster can you make it? And we’re already faster than what you would do if you’re going through muscle from a latency point of view, and we’re in the early stages of that. I think we can push it. So our end to end latency right now from brain spike to cursor movement, it’s about 22 milliseconds. If you think about the best mice in the world, the best gaming mice, that’s about five milliseconds ish of latency, depending on how you measure, depending how fast your screen refreshes, there’s a lot of characteristics that matter there. And the rough time for a neuron in the brain to actually impact your command of your hand is about 75 milliseconds.
So if you look at those numbers, you can see that we’re already competitive and slightly faster than what you’d get by actually moving your hand. And this is something that if you ask Noland about it, when he moved the cursor for the first time… We asked him about this, it was something I was super curious about. “What does it feel like when you’re modulating a click intention, or when you’re trying to just move the cursor to the right?” He said it moves before he is actually intending it to. Which is kind of a surreal thing, and something that I would love to experience myself one day, what is that like to have the thing just be so immediate, so fluid, that it feels like it’s happening before you’re actually intending it to move?
Another sort of important nuance to this, is that it’s not just the Neuralink itself that’s part of this equation. If you start pushing latency below the level of how fast you’re going to refresh, then you have another problem. You need your whole system to be able to be as reactive as the limits of what the technology can offer.
And so the job of the application is really to translate this wireless stream of brain data, coming off the implant, into control of the computer. And we do that by essentially building a mapping from brain activity to sort of the HID inputs, to the actual hardware. So HID is just the protocol for communicating like input device events, so for example, move mouse to this position or press this key down. And so that mapping is fundamentally what the app is responsible for. But there’s a lot of nuance of how that mapping works, and we spent a lot of time to try to get it right, and we’re still in the early stages of a long journey to figure out how to do that optimally.
So one part of that process is decoding. So decoding is this process of taking the statistical patterns of brain data, that’s being channeled across this Bluetooth connection to the application. And turning it into, for example, a mouse movement. And that decoding step, you can think of it in a couple of different parts. So similar to any machine learning problem, there’s a training step, and there’s an [inaudible 05:32:39] step. The training step in our case is a very intricate behavioral process where the user has to imagine doing different actions. So for example, they’ll be presented a screen with a cursor on it, and they’ll be asked to push that cursor to the right. Then imagine pushing that cursor to the left, push it up, push it down. And we can basically build up a pattern or using any sort of modern ML method of mapping of given this brain data, and then imagine behavior, map one to the other.
And then at test time you take that same pattern matching system. In our case it’s a deep neural network, and you run it and you take the live stream of brain data coming off their implant, you decode it by pattern matching to what you saw at calibration time, and you use that for a control of the computer. Now a couple sort of rabbit holes that I think are quite interesting. One of them has to do with how you build that best template matching system. Because there’s a variety of behavioral challenges and also debugging challenges when you’re working with someone who’s paralyzed.
Because again, fundamentally you don’t observe what they’re trying to do, you can’t see them attempt to move their hand. And so you have to figure out a way to instruct the user to do something, and validate that they’re doing it correctly, such that then you can downstream, build with confidence, the mapping between the neural spikes and the intended action.
And by doing the action correctly, what I really mean is, at this level of resolution of what neurons are doing. So if, in ideal world, you could get a signal of behavioral intent that is ground truth accurate at the scale of one millisecond resolution, then with high confidence, I could build a mapping from my neural spikes, to that behavioral intention. But the challenge is again, that you don’t observe what they’re actually doing. And so there’s a lot of nuance to how you build user experiences, that give you more than just a course on average correct representation of what the user’s intending to do.
If you want to build the world’s best mouse, you really want it to be as responsive as possible. You want it to be able to do exactly what the user’s intending, at every step along the way, not just on average be correct, when you’re trying to move it from left to right. And building a behavioral calibration game, or our software experience, that gives you that level of resolution, is what we spend a lot of time working on.
And if you think about it, there probably is, because there are enough data points in the dataset, enough constraints on your model. That there should be a way with the right sort of formulation, to let the model figure out itself, for example… At this millisecond, this is exactly how hard they’re pushing upwards, and at this millisecond, this is how hard they’re trying to push upwards.
Another competing heuristic might be, they’re actually trying to go slightly faster at the beginning of the movement and slightly slower at the end. And those competing heuristics may or may not be accurate reflections of what the user is trying to do. Another version of the task might be, “Hey, user, imagine moving this cursor a fixed offset.” So rather than follow the cursor, just try to move it exactly 200 pixels to the right. So here’s the cursor, here’s the target, okay, cursor disappears, try to move that now invisible cursor, 200 pixels to the right. And the assumption in that case would be that the user can’t actually modulate correctly that position offset.
But that position offset assumption might be a weaker assumption, and therefore potentially, you can make it more accurate, than these heuristics that are trying to guesstimate at each millisecond what the user’s trying to do. So you can imagine different tasks that make different assumptions about the nature of the user intention. And those assumptions being correct is what I would think of as a clean label.
So for example, an alternative crazy way that probably is playing a role here, is a game like WEG Grid. Where you’re just getting a very large amount of data, the person playing a game. Where if they’re in a state of flow, maybe you can get clean signal as a side effect?
There’s a lot of challenges associated with both of these techniques, and we can rabbit hole into both of them if you’re interested. But the sort of challenge with the open loop task is that the user themself doesn’t get proprioceptive feedback about what they’re doing. They don’t necessarily perceive themself or feel the mouse under their hand, when they’re trying to do an open loop calibration. They’re being asked to perform something… Imagine if you sort of had your whole right arm numbed, and you stuck it in a box and you couldn’t see it, so you had no visual feedback and you had no proprioceptive feedback, about what the position or activity of your arm was.
And now you’re asked, “Okay, given this thing on the screen, that’s moving from left to right, match that speed?” And you basically can try your best to invoke whatever that imagined action is in your brain, that’s moving the cursor from left to right. But in any situation, you’re going to be inaccurate and maybe inconsistent in how you do that task. And so that’s sort of the fundamental challenge of open loop. The challenge with closed loop is that once the user’s given a model, and they’re able to start moving the mouse on their own, they’re going to very naturally adapt to that model. And that coadaptation between the model learning what they’re doing, and the user learning how to use the model, may not find you the best sort of global minima.
And maybe that your first model was noisy in some ways, or maybe just had some quirk. There’s some part of the data distribution, it didn’t cover super well, and the user now figures out, because they’re a brilliant user like Noland, they figure out the right sequence of imagined motions, or the right angle they have to hold their hand at to get it to work. And they’ll get it to work great, but then the next day they come back to their device, and maybe they don’t remember exactly all the tricks that they used the previous day. And so there’s a complicated sort of feedback cycle here that can emerge, and can make it a very, very difficulty debugging process.
Yeah. So how do you solve it? It’s not a solve problem. That’s the first thing I want to make sure it gets across. The second thing is, any solution that involves closed loop is going to become a very difficult debugging problem. And one of my general heuristics for choosing what prompts to tackle is, that you want to choose the one that’s going to be the easiest to debug. Because if you can do that, even if the ceiling is lower, you’re going to be able to move faster, because you have a tighter iteration loop debugging the problem.
In the open loop setting, there’s not a feedback cycle to debug with the user in the loop. And so there’s some reason to think that, that should be an easier debugging problem. The other thing that’s worth understanding is that even in the closed loop setting, there’s no special software magic of how to infer what the user is truly attempting to do. In the closed loop setting, although they’re moving the cursor on the screen, they may be attempting something different than what your model is outputting. So what the model is outputting is not a signal that you can use to retrain if you want to be able to improve the model further. You still have this very complicated guestimation, or unsupervised problem of figuring out what is the true user intention underlying that signal?
And so the open loop problem has the nice property of being easy to debug, and the second nice property of, it has all the same information and content as the closed loop scenario. Another thing I want to mention and call out, is that this problem doesn’t need to be solved in order to give useful control to people. Even today with the solutions we have now, and that academia has built up over decades, the level of control that can be given to a user today, is quite useful. It doesn’t need to be solved to get to that level of control.
But again, I want to build the world’s best mouse. I want to make it so good that it’s not even a question that you want it. And to build the world’s best mouse, the superhuman version, you really need to nail that problem. And a couple maybe details of previous studies that we’ve done internally, that I think are very interesting to understand, when thinking about how to solve this problem. The first is that even when you have ground-truth data of what the user’s trying to do, and you can get this with an able-bodied monkey, a monkey that has a Neuralink device implanted, and moving a mouse to control a computer. Even with that ground-truth dataset, it turns out that the optimal thing to predict to produce high performance BCI, is not just the direct control of the mouse.
You can imagine building a dataset of what’s going on in the brain, and what is the mouse exactly doing on the table? And it turns out that if you build the mapping from neurospikes to predict exactly what the mouse is doing, that model will perform worse, than a model that is trained to predict higher level assumptions about what the user might be trying to do. For example, assuming that the monkey is trying to go in a straight line to the target, it turns out that making those assumptions is actually more effective in producing a model, than actually predicting the underlying hand movement.
In that kind of scenario, you could imagine coming up with some sort of consistency metric that you could display to the user of, “Okay, I know what the spike trend looks like on average when you do this action to the right. Maybe I can produce some sort of probabilistic estimate of how likely is that to be the action you took, given the latest trial or trajectory that you imagined?” And that could give the user some sort of feedback of how consistent are they, across different trials.
You could also imagine that if the user is prompted with that kind of consistency metric, that maybe they just become more behaviorally engaged to begin with, because the task is kind of boring when you don’t have any feedback at all. And so there may be benefits to the user experience of showing something on the screen, even if it’s not accurate. Just because it keeps the user motivated to try to increase that number, or push it upwards.
So maybe the first solution here that’s important, is that they can recalibrate whenever they want. This is something that Noland has the ability to do today, so he can recalibrate the system at 2:00 AM, in the middle of the night without his caretaker, or parents or friends around, to help push a button for him. The other important part of the solution is that when you have a good model calibrated, that you can continue using that without needing to recalibrate it. So how often he has to do this recalibration to-date, depends really on his appetite for performance.
We observe sort of a degradation through time, of how well any individual model works, but this can be mitigated behaviorally by the user adapting their control strategy. It can also be mitigated through a combination of software features that we provide to the user. For example, we let the user adjust exactly how fast the cursor is moving. We call that the gain, for example, the gain of how fast the cursor reacts to any given input intention.
They can also adjust the smoothing, how smooth the output of that cursor intention actually is. That can also adjust the friction, which is how easy is it to stop and hold still? And all these software tools allow the user a great deal of flexibility and troubleshooting mechanisms to be able to solve this problem for themselves.
And maybe one nuance of this is, even details like when you move a mouse on a MacBook trackpad, the sort of response curve of how that input that you give the trackpad translates to cursor movement is different than how it works with a mouse. When you move on the trackpad, there’s a different response function, a different curve to how much a movement translates to input to the computer than when you do it physically with a mouse. And that’s because somebody sat down a long time ago, when they’re designing the initial input systems to any computer, and they thought through exactly how it feels to use these different systems. And now we’re designing the next generation of this, input system to a computer, which is entirely done via the brain, and there’s no proprioceptive feedback, again, you don’t feel the mouse in your hand, you don’t feel the keys under your fingertips, and you want a control surface that still makes it easy and intuitive for the user to understand the state of the system, and how to achieve what they want to achieve. And ultimately the end goal is that that UX is completely… It fades in the background, it becomes something that’s so natural and intuitive that it’s subconscious to the user, and they just should feel like they have basically direct control over the cursor, just does what they want it to do. They’re not thinking about the implementation of how to make it do what they want it to do, it’s just doing what they want it to do.
One of those things is that any machine learning system that you build has some number of errors, and it matters how those errors translate to the downstream user experience. For example, if you’re developing a search algorithm in your photos, if you search for your friend, Joe, and it pulls up a photo of your friend, Josephine, maybe that’s not a big deal, because the cost of an error is not that high. In a different scenario, where you’re trying to detect insurance fraud or something like this, and you’re directly sending someone to court because of some machine learning model output, then the errors make a lot more sense to be careful about, you want to be very thoughtful about how those errors translate to downstream effects.
The same is true in BCI. So for example, if you’re building a model that’s decoding a velocity output from the brain, versus an output where you’re trying to modulate the left click for example, these have sort of different trade-offs of how precise you need to be before it becomes useful to the end user. For velocity, it’s okay to be on average correct, because the output of the model is integrated through time. So if the user’s trying to click at position A, and they’re currently position B, they’re trying to navigate over time to get between those two points. And as long as the output of the model is on average correct, they can sort of steer it through time, with the user control loop in the mix, they can get to the point they want to get to.
The same is not true of a click. For a click, you’re performing it almost instantly, at the scale of neurons firing. And so you want to be very sure that that click is correct, because a false click can be very destructive to the user. They might accidentally close the tab that they’re trying to do something in, and lose all their progress. They might accidentally hit some send button on some text that there’s only half composed and reads funny after. So there’s different sort of cost functions associated with errors in this space, and part of the UX design is understanding how to build a solution that is, when it’s wrong, still useful to the end user.
There’s many ways to measure BPS by the way, this isn’t the only way, but we present the user a grid of targets, and basically we compute a score which is dependent on how fast and accurate they can select, and then how small are the targets. And the more targets that are on the screen, the smaller they are, the more information you present per click. And so if you think about it from information theory point of view, you can communicate across different information theoretic channels, and one such channel is a typing interface, you can imagine, that’s built out of a grid, just like a software keyboard on the screen.
And bits per second is a measure that’s computed by taking the log of the number of targets on the screen. You can subtract one if you care to model a keyboard, because you have to subtract one for the delete key on the keyboard. But log of the number of targets on the screen, times the number of correct selections, minus incorrect, divided by some time window, for example, 60 seconds. And that’s sort of the standard way to measure a cursor control task in academia. And all credit in the world goes to this great professor, Dr. Shenoy of Stanford who came up with that task, and he’s also one of my inspirations for being in the field. So all the credit in the world to him for coming up with a standardized metric to facilitate this kind of bragging rights that we have now to say that Noland is the best in the world at this task with this BCI. It’s very important for progress that you have standardized metrics that people can compare across. Different techniques and approaches, how well does this do? So big kudos to him and to all the team at Stanford.
Yeah, so for Noland, and for me playing this task, there’s also different modes that you can configure this task. So the Webgrid task can be presented as just sort of a left click on the screen, or you could have targets that you just dwell over, or you could have targets that you left, right click on, you could have targets that are left, right click, middle click, scrolling, clicking and dragging. You can do all sorts of things within this general framework, but the simplest, purest form is just blue targets show up on the screen, blue means left click. That’s the simplest form of the game.
And the sort of prior records here in academic work and at Neuralink internally with NHPs have all been matched or beaten by Noland with his Neuralink device. So prior to Neuralink, the world record for a human using device is somewhere between 4.2 to 4.6 BPS, depending on exactly what paper you read and how you interpret it. Noland’s current record is 8.5 BPS. and again, this sort of median Neuralinker performance is 10 BPS. So you can think of it roughly as, he’s 85% the level of control of a median Neuralinker using their cursor to select blue targets on the screen.
I think there’s a very interesting journey ahead to get us to that same level of 10 BPS performance. It’s not the case that the tricks that got us from 4 to 6 BPS, and then 6 to 8 BPS are going to be the ones that get us from 8 to 10. And in my view, the core challenge here is really the labeling problem. It’s how do you understand, at a very, very fine resolution, what the user’s attempting to do? And I highly encourage folks in academia to work on this problem.
And so the first thing to acknowledge is that he’s extremely motivated to make this work. I’ve also had the privilege to meet other clinical trial participants from BrainGate and other trials, and they very much shared the same attitude of, they viewed this as their life’s work to advance the technology as much as they can. And if that means selecting targets on the screen for four hours from 2:00 A.M. to 6:00 A.M., then so be it. And there’s something extremely admirable about that that’s worth calling out.
Okay, so then how do you get from where he started, which is no cursor control to eight BPS? I mean, when he started, there’s a huge amount of learning to do on his side and our side to figure out what’s the most intuitive control for him. And the most intuitive control for him is, you have to find the set intersection of, “Do we have the signal to decode?” So we don’t pick up every single neuron in the motor cortex, which means we don’t have representation for every part of the body. So there may be some signals that we have better decode performance on than others. For example, on his left hand, we have a lot of difficulty distinguishing his left ring finger from his left middle finger, but on his right hand, we have a good control and good modulation detected from the neurons that were able to record for his pinky, and his thumb, and his index finger. So you can imagine how these different subspaces of modulated activity intersect with what’s the most intuitive for him.
And this has evolved over time, so once we gave him the ability to calibrate models on his own, he was able to go and explore various different ways to imagine controlling the cursor. For example, he can imagine controlling the cursor by wiggling his wrist side to side, or by moving his entire arm, by… I think at one point he did his feet. He tried a whole bunch of stuff to explore the space of what is the most natural way for him to control the cursor, that at the same time, it’s easy for us to decode-
And in those scenarios, we try, in any given session… He’ll sometimes work for eight hours a day, and so that can be hundreds of different models that we would try in that day. A lot of different things. Now, it’s also worth noting that we update the application he uses quite frequently, I think sometimes up to 4 or 5 times a day, we’ll update his application with different features, or bug fixes, or feedback that he’s given us.
He’s a very articulate person who is part of the solution, he’s not a complaining person, he says, “Hey, here’s this thing that I’ve discovered is not optimal in my flow. Here’s some ideas how to fix it. Let me know what your thoughts are, let’s figure out how to solve it.” And it often happens that those things are addressed within a couple of hours of him giving us his feedback, that’s the kind of iteration cycle we’ll have. And so sometimes at the beginning of the session, he’ll give us feedback, and at the end of the session he’s giving us feedback on the next iteration of that process or that setup.
So one of these very fun examples is scroll. So, again, manga is something he wanted to be able to read, and there’s many ways to do scroll with a BCI. You can imagine different gestures, for example, the user could do that would move the page. But scroll is a very fascinating control surface, because it’s a huge thing on the screen in front of you. So any sort of jitter in the model output, any sort of air in the model output causes an earthquake on the screen. You really don’t want to have your mango page that you’re trying to read be shifted up and down a few pixels just because your scroll decoder is not completely accurate.
And so this was an example where we had to figure out how to formulate the problem in a way that the errors of the system, whenever they do occur, and we’ll do our best to minimize them, but whenever those errors do occur, that it doesn’t interrupt the qualia, again, of the experience that the user is having. It doesn’t interrupt their flow of reading their book. And so what we ended up building is this really brilliant feature. This is a teammate named Bruce who worked on this really brilliant work called Quick Scroll. And Quick Scroll basically looks at the screen, and it identifies where on the screen are scroll bars. And it does this by deeply integrated with macOS to understand where are the scroll bars actively present on the screen, using the sort of accessibility tree that’s available to macOS apps. And we identified where those scroll bars are, and we provided a BCI scroll bar, and the BCI scroll bar looks similar to a normal scroll bar, but it behaves very differently, in that once you move over to it, your cursor sort of morphs onto it, it sort of attaches or latches onto it. And then once you push up or down, in the same way that you’d use a push to control the normal cursor, it actually moves the screen for you. So it’s basically like remapping the velocity to a scroll action.
And the reason that feels so natural and intuitive is that when you move over to attach to it feels like magnetic, so you’re sort of stuck onto it, and then it’s one continuous action, you don’t have to switch your imagined movement, you sort of snap onto it, and then you’re good to go. You just immediately can start pulling the page down or pushing it up. And even once you get that right, there’s so many little nuances of how the scroll behavior works to make it natural and intuitive. So one example is momentum. When you scroll a page with your fingers on the screen, you actually have some flow, it doesn’t just stop right when you lift your finger up. The same is true with BCI scroll, so we had to spend some time to figure out, “What are the right nuances when you don’t feel the screen under your fingertip anymore? What is the right sort of dynamic, or what’s the right amount of page give, if you will, when you push it to make it flow the right amount for the user to have a natural experience reading their book?”
I could tell you there’s so many little minutia of how exactly that scroll works, that we spent probably a month getting right, to make that feel extremely natural and easy for the user to navigate.
So we can understand, for example, that when you’re trying to close a tab, that very small, stupid little X that’s extremely tiny, which is hard to get precisely hit, if you’re dealing with a noisy output of the decoder, we can understand that that is a small little X you might be trying to hit, and actually make it a bigger target for you. Similar to how when you’re typing on your phone, if you are used to the iOS keyboard for example, it actually adapts to target size of individual keys based on an underlying language model. So it’ll actually understand if I’m typing, “Hey, I’m going to see L.” It’ll make the E key bigger because it knows Lex is the person I’m going to go see. And so that kind of predictiveness can make the experience much more smooth, even without improvements to the underlying decoder or feature detection part of the stack.
So we do that with a feature called magnetic targets, we actually index the screen, and we understand, “Okay, these are the places that are very small targets that might be difficult to hit. Here’s the kind of cursor dynamics around that location that might be indicative of the user trying to select it. Let’s make it easier. Let’s blow up the size of it in a way that makes it easier for the user to sort of snap onto that target.” So all these little details, they matter a lot in helping the user be independent in their day-to-day living.
And beyond that, it’s very, very possible, in fact, quite likely that we’ve overfit to Noland’s user experience, desires and preferences. And so what I hope to see is that when we get a second, third, fourth participant, that we find what the right wide minimums are that cover all the cases that make it more intuitive for everyone. And hopefully, there’s a crosspollination of things, where, “Oh, we didn’t think about that with this user because they can speak. But with this user who just can fundamentally not speak at all, this user experience is not optimal.” Those improvements that we make there should hopefully translate then to even people who can speak but don’t feel comfortable doing so because we’re in a public setting, like their doctor’s office.
And then at some point it was actually the modeling challenge of how do you just build a good mapping, like the supervised learning problem of, you have a bunch of data and you have a label you’re trying to predict, just what is the right neural decoder architecture and hyperparameters to optimize that? And that was the problem for a bit, and once you solve that, it became a different bottleneck. I think the next bottleneck after that was actually just software stability and reliability. If you have widely varying inference latency in your system or your app just lags out every once in a while, it decreases your ability to maintain and get in a state of flow, and it basically just disrupts your control experience. And so there’s a variety of different software bugs and improvements we made that basically increased the performance of the system, made it much more reliable, much more stable and led to a state where we could reliably collect data to build better models with.
So that was a bottleneck for a while, it was just the software stack itself. If I were to guess right now, there’s two major directions you could think about for improving VPS further. The first major direction is labeling. So labeling is, again, this fundamental challenge of given a window of time where the user is expressing some behavioral intent, what are they really trying to do at the granularity of every millisecond? And that again, is a task design problem, it’s a UX problem, it’s a machine learning problem, it’s a software problem. It touches all those different domains. The second thing you can think about to improve BPS further is either completely changing the thing you’re decoding or just extending the number of things that you’re decoding. So this is serving the direction of functionality, basically, you can imagine giving more clicks.
For example, a left click, a right click, a middle click, different actions like click-and-drag for example, and that can improve the effective bit rate of your communication processes. If you’re trying to allow the user to express themselves through any given communication channel, you can measure that with bits per second. But what actually is measured at the end of the day is how effective are they at navigating their computer? So from the perspective of the downstream tasks that you care about, functionality and extending functionality is something we’re very interested in, because not only can it improve the number of BPS, but it can also improve the downstream independence that the user has and the skill and efficiency with which they can operate their computer.
So then if the brain is representing information by changing the frequency of a neuron firing, what really matters is the delta between the baseline state of the neuron and what it looks like when it’s modulated. And what we’ve observed and what has also been observed in academic work is that that baseline rate, if you’re to target the scale, if you imagine that analogy for measuring flour or something when you’re baking, that baseline state of how much the pot weighs is actually different day to day. So if what you’re trying to measure is how much rice is in the pot, you’re going to get a different measurement different days because you’re measuring with different pots. So that baseline rate shifting is really the thing that at least from a first order description of the problem is what’s causing this downstream bias. There can be other effects, not linear effects on top of that, but at least at a very first order description of the problem. That’s what we observed day to day is that the baseline firing rate of any particular neuron or observed on a particular channel is changing.
One such explanation could be that the context effect difference between some open-loop task and some closed-loop task is much more significant with Noland than it is with the monkey. Maybe in this open-loop task, he’s watching the Lex Fridman Podcast while he’s doing the task or he’s whistling and listening to music and talking with his friend and ask his mom what’s for dinner while he’s doing this task. So the exact difference in context between those two states may be much larger and thus lead to a bigger generalization gap between the features that you’re normalizing at open-loop time and what you’re trying to use at closed-loop time.
You don’t need your caretaker to be around to set it up for you. You can activate it when you want, how you want, wherever you want. That level of independence is so game-changing for people. It means that they can text a friend at night privately without their mom needing to be in the loop. It means that they can open up and browse the internet at 2:00 AM when nobody’s around to set their iPad up for them. This is a profoundly game-changing thing for folks in that situation, and this is even before we start talking about folks that may not be able to communicate at all or ask for help when they want to. This can be potentially the only link that they have to the outside world. And yeah, that one doesn’t, I think, need explanation of why that’s so impactful.
Not all of them are equally controllable by the end user. And so it might be as simple as saying, oh, you could just add auxiliary loss terms that help you capture the thing that actually matters. But this is a very complex nuanced process. So how you turn the labels into the model is more of a nuanced process than just a standard supervised learning problem. One very fascinating anecdote here, we’ve tried many different neural network architectures that translate brain data to velocity outputs, for example. And one example that’s stuck in my brain from a couple of years ago now is at one point, we were using just fully-connected networks to decode the brain activity. We tried A-B test where we were measuring the relative performance in online control sessions of one deconvolution over the input signal. So if you imagine per channel you have a sliding window that’s producing some convolved feature, for each of those input sequences for every single channel simultaneously, you can actually get better validation metrics, meaning you’re fitting the data better and it’s generalizing better in offline data if you use this convolutional architecture. You’re reducing parameters. It’s a standard procedure when you’re dealing with time series data. Now it turns out that when using that model online, the controllability was worse, was far worse, even though the offline metrics were better, and there can be many ways to interpret that. But what that taught me at least was that, hey, it’s at least the case right now that if you were to just throw a bunch of compute at this problem and you were trying to hyperparameter optimize or let some GPT model hard code or come up with or invent many different solutions, if you were just optimizing for loss, it would not be sufficient, which means that there’s still some inherent modeling gap here. There’s still some artistry left to be uncovered here of how to get your model to scale with more compute, and that may be fundamentally a labeling problem, but there may be other components to this as well.
So one example of an interesting bug from week one of BCI with Noland was when he moved the mouse, the click signal dropped off a cliff and when he stopped, the click signal went up. So again, there’s a contamination between the two inputs. Another good example was at one point he was trying to do a left click and drag, and the minute he started moving, the left click signal dropped off a cliff. So again, ’cause some contamination between the two signals, you need to come up with some way to either in the dataset or in the model build robustness against this kind of, you think of it like overfitting, but really it’s just that the model has not seen this kind of variability before. So you need to find some way to help the model with that.
So that’s what I’m very excited about for the next year or so of clinical trial operations. On the technology side, I’m quite excited about basically everything we’re doing. I think it’s going to be awesome. The most prominent one I would say is scaling channel account. So right now we have a 1,000-channel device. The next version we’ll have between 3 and 6,000 channels, and I would expect that curve to continue in the future. And it’s unclear what set of problems will just disappear completely at that scale and what set of problems will remain and require for their focus. And so I’m excited about the clarity of gradient that gives us in terms of the user experiences we choose to focus our time and resources on. And then also in terms of even things as simple as non-stationarity, does that problem just completely go away at that scale? Or do we need to come up with new creative UXes still even at that point?
And also when we get to that time point, when we start expanding out dramatically the set of functions that you can output from one brain how to deal with all the nuances of both the user experience of not being able to feel the different keys under your fingertips, but still needing to be able to modulate all of them in synchrony to achieve the thing you want. And again, you don’t have that appropriate set of feedback loop, so how can you make that intuitive for a user to control a high dimensional control surface without feeling the thing physically? I think that’s going to be a super interesting problem. I’m also quite excited to understand do these scaling laws continue? As you scale channel count, how much further out do you go before that saturation point is truly hit?
And it’s not obvious today. I think we only know what’s in the interpolation space. We only know what’s between 0 and 1,024, but we don’t know what’s beyond that. And then there’s a whole range of interesting neuroscience and brain questions, which is, when you stick more stuff in the brain in more places, you get to learn much more quickly about what those brain regions represent. And so I’m excited about that fundamental neuroscience learning, which is also important for figuring out how to most efficiently insert electrodes in the future. So yeah, I think all those dimensions I’m really, really excited about. And that doesn’t even get close to touching the software stack that we work on every single day and what we’re working on right now.
So I think I’m very aligned with the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy version of this question, which is basically, if we can ask the right questions, it’s much more likely we find the meaning of human existence. So in the short term as a heuristic in the search policy space, we should try to increase the diversity of people asking such questions or generally of consciousness and conscious beings asking such questions. So again, I think I will take the I don’t know card here, but say I do think there are meaningful things we can do that improve the likelihood of answering that question.
People, I don’t know if they like that I say that. It seems like I’m making light of it all, but it’s just how I am, and I don’t know. I am a very relaxed stress-free person. I rolled with the punches for a lot of this. I took it in stride. It’s like, “All right, well, what can I do next? How can I improve my life even a little bit on a day-to-day basis?” At first, just trying to find some way to heal as much of my body as possible to try to get healed, to try to get off a ventilator, learn as much as I could so I could somehow survive once I left the hospital. And then thank God I had my family around me. If I didn’t have my parents, my siblings, then I would’ve never made it this far.
They’ve done so much for me, more than I can ever thank them for, honestly, and a lot of people don’t have that. A lot of people in my situation, their families either aren’t capable of providing for them or honestly just don’t want to, and so they get placed somewhere in some sort of home. So thankfully, I had my family. I have a great group of friends, a great group of buddies from college who have all rallied around me, and we’re all still incredibly close. People always say if you’re lucky, you’ll end up with one or two friends from high school that you keep throughout your life. I have about 10 or 12 from high school that have all stuck around, and we still get together, all of us twice a year. We call it the spring series and the fall series. This last one we all did, we dressed up X-Men, so I did a-
Maybe if I got to the hospital, they’d be able to do something.When I was in the hospital right before surgery, I was trying to calm one of my friends down. I had brought her with me from college to camp, and she was just bawling over me, and I was like, “Hey, it’s going to be fine. Don’t worry.” I was cracking some jokes to try to lighten the mood. The nurse had called my mom, and I was like, “Don’t tell my mom. She’s just going to be stressed out. Call her after I’m out of surgery ’cause at least she’ll have some answers then, whether I live or not, really.” And I didn’t want her to be stressed through the whole thing, but I knew.
And then when I first woke up after surgery, I was super drugged up. They had me on fentanyl three ways, which was awesome. I don’t recommend it, but I saw some crazy stuff on that fentanyl, and it was still the best I’ve ever felt on drugs, medication, sorry, on medication. I remember the first time I saw my mom in the hospital, I was just bawling. I had ventilator in. I couldn’t talk or anything, and I just started crying because it was more like seeing her… The whole situation obviously was pretty rough, but it was just seeing her face for the first time was pretty hard. But yeah, I never had a moment of, “Man, I’m paralyzed. This sucks. I don’t want to be around anymore.” It was always just, “I hate that I have to do this, but sitting here and wallowing isn’t going to help.”
And then every now and again, it’s hard realizing things that I wanted to do in my life that I won’t be able to do anymore. I always wanted to be a husband and father, and I just don’t think that I could do it now as a quadriplegic. Maybe it’s possible, but I’m not sure I would ever put someone I love through that, having to take care of me and stuff. Not being able to go out and play sports, I was a huge athlete growing up, so that was pretty hard. Little things too, when I realized I can’t do them anymore. There’s something really special about being able to hold a book and smell a book, the feel, the texture, the smell as you turn the pages, I just love it and I can’t do it anymore, and it’s little things like that.
The two-year mark was pretty rough. Two years is when they say you will get back basically as much as you’re ever going to get back as far as movement and sensation goes. And so for the first two years, that was the only thing on my mind was try as much as I can to move my fingers, my hands, my feet, everything possible to try to get sensation and movement back. And then when the two-year mark hit, so June 30, 2018, I was really sad that that’s where I was, and then just randomly here and there, but I was never depressed for long periods of time. Just it never seemed worthwhile to me.
At some point after my accident, I realized that I might not be Job, that I might be one of his children that gets killed or kidnapped or taken from him. And so it’s about terrible things that happen to those around you who you love. So maybe in this case, my mom would be Job and she has to get through something extraordinarily hard, and I just need to try and make it as best as possible for her because she’s the one that’s really going through this massive trial.
And so I’ve always just seen the best in people around me too, and I’ve always tried to be good to people. And growing up with my mom too, she’s like the most positive energetic person in the world, and we’re all just people people. I just get along great with people. I really enjoy meeting new people, and so I just wanted to do everything. This is kind of just how I’ve been.
I think my faith had a huge part in that. I always felt like God was preparing me for something. I almost wish it wasn’t this, because I had many conversations with God about not wanting to do any of this as a quadriplegic. I told Him, “I’ll go out and talk to people. I’ll go out and travel the world and talk to stadiums, thousands of people, give my testimony. I’ll do all of it, but heal me first. Don’t make me do all of this in a chair. That sucks.” And I guess He won that argument. I didn’t really have much of a choice. I always felt like there was something going on. And to see how, I guess easily I made it through the interview process and how quickly everything happened, how the stars sort of aligned with all of this. It just told me as the surgery was getting closer, it just told me that it was all meant to happen.
It was all meant to be, and so I shouldn’t be afraid of anything that’s to come. And so I wasn’t. I kept telling myself like, “You say that now, but as soon as the surgery comes, you’re probably going to be freaking out. You’re about to have brain surgery.” And brain surgery is a big deal for a lot of people, but it’s an even bigger deal for me. It’s all I have left. The amount of times I’ve been like, “Thank You, God, that you didn’t take my brain and my personality and my ability to think, my love of learning, my character, everything. Thank You so much. As long as You left me that, then I think I can get by.” And I was about to let people go root around in there like, “Hey, we’re going to go put some stuff in your brain. Hopefully it works out.” And so it was something that gave me pause, but like I said, how smoothly everything went.
I never expected for a second that anything would go wrong. Plus the more people I met on the Barrow side and on the Neuralink side, they’re just the most impressive people in the world. I can’t speak enough to how much I trust these people with my life and how impressed I am with all of them. And to see the excitement on their faces, to walk into a room and, roll into a room and see all of these people looking at me like, “We’re so excited. We’ve been working so hard on this and it’s finally happening.” It’s super infectious and it just makes me want to do it even more. And to help them achieve their dreams, I don’t know, it’s so rewarding and I’m so happy for all of them, honestly.
But right after surgery, I was really worried that I was going to be too groggy, not all there. I had had anesthesia once before and it messed me up. I could not function for a while afterwards. And I said a lot of things that… I was really worried that I was going to start, I don’t know, dropping some bombs and I wouldn’t even know. I wouldn’t remember. So I was like, “Please God, don’t let that happen, and please let me be there enough to do this to my mom.”
And so she walked in after surgery. It was the first time they had been able to see me after surgery, and she just looked at me. She said, “Hi, how are you? How are you doing? How do you feel?” And I looked at her and this very, I think the anesthesia helped, very groggy, sort of confused look on my face. It’s like, “Who are you?” And she just started looking around the room at the surgeons, at the doctors like, “What did you do to my son? You need to fix this right now.” Tears started streaming. I saw how much she was freaking out. I was like, “I can’t let this go on.” And so I was like, “Mom, mom, I’m fine. It’s all right.” And still, she was not happy about it. She still says she’s going to get me back someday, but I mean, I don’t know. I don’t know what that’s going to look like.
So I started trying to wiggle my fingers and I just started scanning through the channels, and one of the things I was doing was moving my index finger up and down, and I just saw this yellow spike on top row, third box over or something. I saw this yellow spike every time I did it, and I was like, “Oh, that’s cool.” And everyone around me was just like, “What are you seeing?” I was like, “Look at this one. Look at this top row, third box over this yellow spike. That’s me right there, there, there.” And everyone was freaking out. They started clapping. I was like, “That’s super unnecessary.” This is what’s supposed to happen, right?
It’s not like I’m moving, but it feels like there’s a buildup of, the only way I can describe it is there are signals that aren’t getting through from my brain down, because there’s that gap in my spinal cord, so brain down, and then from my hand back up to the brain. And so it feels like those signals get stuck in whatever body part that I’m trying to move, and they just build up, and build up, and build up until they burst. And then once they burst, I get this really weird sensation of everything dissipating back out to level, and then I do it again.
It’s also just a fatigue thing, like a muscle fatigue, but without actually moving your muscles. It’s very, very bizarre. And then if you try to stare at a body part or think about a body part and move for two, three, four, sometimes eight hours, it’s very taxing on your mind. It takes a lot of focus. It was a lot easier at the beginning because I wasn’t able to control a TV in my room or anything. I wasn’t able to control any of my environment. So for the first few years, a lot of what I was doing was staring at walls. And so, obviously I did a lot of thinking and I tried to move a lot just over, and over, and over again.
It was cool to see that their technology worked and that everything that they had worked so hard for was going to pay off. But I hadn’t moved a cursor or anything at that point. I hadn’t interacted with a computer or anything at that point. So it just made sense. It was cool. I didn’t really know much about BCI at that point either, so I didn’t know what sort of step this was actually making. I didn’t know if this was a huge deal, or if this was just like, “Okay, this is, it’s cool that we got this far, but we’re actually hoping for something much better down the road.” It’s like, “Okay.” I just thought that they knew that it turned on. So I was like, “Cool, this is cool.”
That was impressive in some way. What exactly that meant, what it was hadn’t really set in for me. So again, I knew that me trying to move a body part and then that being mapped in some sort of machine learning algorithm to be able to identify my brain signals and then take that and give me cursor control, that all kind of made sense to me. I don’t know all the ins and outs of it, but I was like, “There are still signals in my brain firing. They just can’t get through because there’s a gap in my spinal cord, and so they can’t get all the way down and back up, but they’re still there.” So when I moved the cursor for the first time, I was like, “That’s cool, but I expected that that should happen.” It made sense to me. When I moved the cursor for the first time with just my mind, without physically trying to move. So I guess I can get into that just a little bit. The difference between attempted movement, and imagine movement.
Kids would think, “Uh, I guess that kind of makes sense,” and they would do it. But that’s not something we’re taught, it’s all how to do things physically. We think about thought experiments and things, but that’s not a physical action of doing things. It’s more what you would do in certain situations. So imagine movement, it never really connected with me. I guess you could maybe describe it as a professional athlete swinging a baseball bat or swinging a golf club. Imagine what you’re supposed to do. But then you go right to that and physically do it. Then you get a bat in your hand, and then you do what you’ve been imagining.
And so I don’t have that connection. So telling me to imagine something versus attempting it, there wasn’t a lot that I could do there mentally. I just kind of had to accept what was going on and try. But the attempted moving thing, it all made sense to me. If I try to move, then there’s a signal being sent in my brain, and as long as they can pick that up, then they should be able to map it to what I’m trying to do. And so when I first moved the cursor like that, it was just like, “Yes, this should happen. I’m not surprised by that.”
So there’s a delay there. And I noticed that there was something going on in my brain before I was actually attempting to move that my brain was anticipating what I wanted to do, and that all started sort of, I don’t know, percolating in my brain. It was just there always in the back like, “That’s so weird that it could do that. It kind of makes sense, but I wonder what that means as far as using the Neuralink.”
And then as I was playing around with the attempted movement and playing around with the cursor, and I saw that as the cursor control got better, that it was anticipating my movements and what I wanted it to do, like cursor movements, what I wanted it to do a bit better and a bit better. And then one day I just randomly, as I was playing Webgrid, I looked at a target before I had started attempting to move, I was just trying to get over, train my eyes to start looking ahead, like, “Okay, this is the target I’m on, but if I look over here to this target, I know I can maybe be a bit quicker getting there.”
And I looked over and the cursor just shot over. It was wild. I had to take a step back. I was like, “This should not be happening.” All day I was just smiling. I was so giddy. I was like, “Guys, do you know that this works? I can just think it and it happens.” Which they’d all been saying this entire time like, “I can’t believe you’re doing all this with your mind.” I’m like, “Yeah, but is it really with my mind. I’m attempting to move and it’s just picking that up so it doesn’t feel like it’s with my mind.” But when I moved it for the first time like that, it was, oh man. It made me think that this technology, that what I’m doing is actually way, way more impressive than I ever thought. It was way cooler than I ever thought, and it just opened up a whole new world of possibilities of what could possibly happen with this technology and what I might be able to be capable of with it.
So yeah, I’ll connect to the Link app and then go through all sorts of things, calibration for the day, maybe body mapping. I made them give me a little homework tab because I am very forgetful and I forget to do things a lot. So I have a lot of data collection things that they want me to do.
So if I do calibration for 45 minutes, the first 15 minutes, I can’t use imagined movement. It just doesn’t work for some reason. And after a certain point, I can just feel it, I can tell. It moves different. That’s the best way I can describe it. It’s almost as if it is anticipating what I am going to do again, before I go to do it. And so using attempted movement for 15 minutes, at some point, I can tell when I move my eyes to the next target that the cursor is starting to pick up. It’s starting to understand, it’s learning what I’m going to do.
One thing I have asked them, and something that I really enjoy striving for, is towards the end of calibration, there is a time between targets. And so I like to keep, at the end, that number as low as possible. So at the beginning it can be four or five, six seconds between me popping bubbles, but towards the end I like to keep it below 1.5 or if I could get it to one second between bubbles. Because in my mind, that translates really nicely to something like Webgrid, where I know if I can hit a target, one every second, that I’m doing real, real well.
I thought it would’ve been a cruel twist of fate if I had gotten to see the view from the top of this mountain and then have it all come crashing down after a month. And I knew, I say the top of the mountain, but how I saw it was I was just now starting to climb the mountain and there was so much more that I knew was possible. And so to have all of that be taken away was really, really hard. But then on the drive over to the facility, I don’t know, five minute drive, whatever it is, I talked with my parents about it. I prayed about it. I was just like, I’m not going to let this ruin my day. I’m not going to let this ruin this amazing tour that they have set up for me. I want to go show everyone how much I appreciate all the work they’re doing.
I want to go meet all of the people who have made this possible, and I want to go have one of the best days of my life, and I did. And it was amazing, and it absolutely was one of the best days I’ve ever been privileged to experience. And then for a few days I was pretty down in the dumps, but for the first few days afterwards, I didn’t know if it was ever going to work again. And then I made the decision that, even if I lost the ability to use the Neuralink, even if I lost out on everything to come, if I could keep giving them data in any way, then I would do that.
If I needed to just do some of the data collection every day or body mapping every day for a year, then I would do it because I know that everything I’m doing helps everyone to come after me, and that’s all I wanted. Just the whole reason that I did this was to help people, and I knew that anything I could do to help, I would continue to do, even if I never got to use the cursor again, then I was just happy to be a part of it. And everything that I had done was just a perk. It was something that I got to experience, and I know how amazing it’s going to be for everyone to come after me. So might as well just keep trucking along.
So what we care about ultimately is that you can use it independently to do whatever you want. And to get to that point, it required us to re-engineer the UX, as you talked about with the dwell cursor, to make it something that you can use independently without us needing to be involved all the time. And yeah, this is obviously the start of this journey still. Hopefully we get back to the places where you’re doing multiple clicks and using that to control, much more fluidly, everything, and much more naturally the applications that you’re trying to interface with.
They’re going to think of improvements something like, wow, that’s a really good idea. I wish I would’ve thought of that. And then they’re also going to give me some pushback about, yeah, what you are asking them to do here, that’s a bad idea. Let’s do it this way. And I’m more than happy to have that happen, but it’s just a lot of different interactions with different games or applications, the internet, just with the computer in general. There’s tons of bugs that end up popping up, left, right, center.
So it’s just me trying to use it as much as possible and showing them what works and what doesn’t work, and what I would like to be better. And then they take that feedback and they usually create amazing things for me. They solve these problems in ways I would’ve never imagined. They’re so good at everything they do, and so I’m just really thankful that I’m able to give them feedback and they can make something of it, because a lot of my feedback is really dumb. It’s just like, “I want this, please do something about it,” and it’ll come back, super well-thought-out, and it’s way better than anything I could have ever thought of or implemented myself. So they’re just great. They’re really, really cool.
And then after that, I go click on it, go back into Webgrid, and I’m like, “All right, that means I have 10 minutes left before this thing’s dead.” That’s what’s going on in my head, generally. That and whatever song’s playing. And I want to break those records so bad. It’s all I want when I’m playing Webgrid. It has become less of like, “Oh, this is just a leisurely activity. I just enjoy doing this because it just feels so nice and it puts me at ease.” It is, “No. Once I’m in Webgrid, you better break this record or you’re going to waste five hours of your life right now.” And I don’t know. It’s just fun. It’s fun, man.
And then also, there are a lot of different disabilities that all originate in the brain, and you would be able to hopefully be able to solve a lot of those. I know there’s already stuff to help people with seizures that can be implanted in the brain. I imagine the same thing. And so you could do something like that. I know that even someone like Joe Rogan has talked about the possibilities with being able to stimulate the brain in different ways. I’m not sure how ethical a lot of that would be. That’s beyond me, honestly. But I know that there is a lot that can be done when we’re talking about the brain and being able to go in and physically make changes to help people or to improve their lives. So I’m really looking forward to everything that comes from this. And I don’t think it’s all that far off. I think a lot of this can be implemented within my lifetime, assuming that I live a long life.
But being able to interact with the world physically, that would just be amazing. And not just for having it be a caretaker or something, but something like I talked about. Just being able to read a book. Imagine an Optimus robot just being able to hold a book open in front of me. I get that smell again. I might not be able to feel it at that point, or maybe I could, again, with the sensation and stuff. But there’s something different about reading a physical book than staring at a screen or listening to an audiobook. I actually don’t like audiobooks. I’ve listened to a ton of them at this point, but I don’t really like them. I would much rather read a physical copy.
And he said, if anything, seeing me go through this accident, he believes that there isn’t a God. And it’s a very different reaction, but I believe that it is a way for God to test us, to build our character, to send us through trials and tribulations, to make sure that we understand how precious He is and the things that He’s given us and the time that He’s given us, and then to hopefully grow from all of that. I think that’s a huge part of being here, is to not just have an easy life and do everything that’s easy, but to step out of our comfort zones and really challenge ourselves because I think that’s how we grow.
I’ve always been a people person and I love learning about people, and I love learning how people developed and where they came from, and to see how much people are willing to do for someone like me when they don’t have to, and they’re going out of their way to make my life better. It gives me a lot of hope for just humanity in general, how much we care and how much we’re capable of when we all get together and try to make a difference. And I know there’s a lot of bad out there in the world, but there always has been and there always will be. And I think that that is… It shows human resiliency and it shows what we’re able to endure and how much we just want to be there and help each other, and how much satisfaction we get from that, because I think that’s one of the reasons that we’re here is just to help each other, and… I don’t know. That always gives me hope, is just realizing that there are people out there who still care and who want to help.
Click link to jump approximately to that part in the transcript:
- 0:00 – Introduction
- 0:49 – Elon Musk
- 4:06 – Telepathy
- 10:45 – Power of human mind
- 15:12 – Future of Neuralink
- 20:27 – Ayahuasca
- 29:57 – Merging with AI
- 34:44 – xAI
- 36:57 – Optimus
- 43:47 – Elon’s approach to problem-solving
- 1:01:23 – History and geopolitics
- 1:05:53 – Lessons of history
- 1:10:12 – Collapse of empires
- 1:17:55 – Time
- 1:20:37 – Aliens and curiosity
- 1:28:12 – DJ Seo
- 1:36:20 – Neural dust
- 1:43:03 – History of brain–computer interface
- 1:51:07 – Biophysics of neural interfaces
- 2:01:36 – How Neuralink works
- 2:07:26 – Lex with Neuralink implant
- 2:27:24 – Digital telepathy
- 2:38:27 – Retracted threads
- 2:44:01 – Vertical integration
- 2:50:55 – Safety
- 3:00:50 – Upgrades
- 3:09:53 – Future capabilities
- 3:39:09 – Matthew MacDougall
- 3:44:58 – Neuroscience
- 3:52:07 – Neurosurgery
- 4:03:11 – Neuralink surgery
- 4:22:20 – Brain surgery details
- 4:38:03 – Implanting Neuralink on self
- 4:53:57 – Life and death
- 5:03:17 – Consciousness
- 5:06:11 – Bliss Chapman
- 5:19:27 – Neural signal
- 5:26:19 – Latency
- 5:30:59 – Neuralink app
- 5:35:40 – Intention vs action
- 5:46:54 – Calibration
- 5:56:26 – Webgrid
- 6:19:28 – Neural decoder
- 6:40:03 – Future improvements
- 6:48:59 – Noland Arbaugh
- 6:49:08 – Becoming paralyzed
- 7:02:43 – First Neuralink human participant
- 7:06:45 – Day of surgery
- 7:24:31 – Moving mouse with brain
- 7:49:50 – Webgrid
- 7:57:52 – Retracted threads
- 8:06:16 – App improvements
- 8:13:01 – Gaming
- 8:23:59 – Future Neuralink capabilities
- 8:26:55 – Controlling Optimus robot
- 8:31:16 – God
- 8:33:21 – Hope
Introduction
Lex Fridman
The following is a conversation with Elon Musk, DJ Seo, Matthew MacDougall, Bliss Chapman, and Noland Arbaugh about Neuralink and the future of humanity. Elon, DJ, Matthew and Bliss are of course part of the amazing Neuralink team, and Noland is the first human to have a Neuralink device implanted in his brain. I speak with each of them individually, so use timestamps to jump around, or as I recommend, go hardcore, and listen to the whole thing. This is the longest podcast I’ve ever done. It’s a fascinating, super technical, and wide-ranging conversation, and I loved every minute of it. And now, dear friends, here’s Elon Musk, his fifth time on this, the Lex Fridman podcast,
The following is a conversation with Elon Musk, DJ Seo, Matthew MacDougall, Bliss Chapman, and Noland Arbaugh about Neuralink and the future of humanity. Elon, DJ, Matthew and Bliss are of course part of the amazing Neuralink team, and Noland is the first human to have a Neuralink device implanted in his brain. I speak with each of them individually, so use timestamps to jump around, or as I recommend, go hardcore, and listen to the whole thing. This is the longest podcast I’ve ever done. It’s a fascinating, super technical, and wide-ranging conversation, and I loved every minute of it. And now, dear friends, here’s Elon Musk, his fifth time on this, the Lex Fridman podcast,
Elon Musk
Elon Musk
Drinking coffee or water?
Drinking coffee or water?
Lex Fridman
Water. I’m so over-caffeinated right now. Do you want some caffeine?
Water. I’m so over-caffeinated right now. Do you want some caffeine?
Elon Musk
Sure.
Sure.
Lex Fridman
There’s a Nitro drink.
There’s a Nitro drink.
Elon Musk
This supposed to keep you up for like tomorrow afternoon, basically.
This supposed to keep you up for like tomorrow afternoon, basically.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. Yeah. I don’t want to [inaudible 00:01:11].
Yeah. Yeah. I don’t want to [inaudible 00:01:11].
Elon Musk
So what is Nitro? It’s just got a lot of caffeine or something?
So what is Nitro? It’s just got a lot of caffeine or something?
Lex Fridman
Don’t ask questions. It’s called Nitro. Do you need to know anything else?
Don’t ask questions. It’s called Nitro. Do you need to know anything else?
Elon Musk
It’s got nitrogen in it. That’s ridiculous. What we breathe is 78% nitrogen anyway. What do you need to add more for?
It’s got nitrogen in it. That’s ridiculous. What we breathe is 78% nitrogen anyway. What do you need to add more for?
Elon Musk
Unfortunately, you’re going to eat it.
Unfortunately, you’re going to eat it.
Elon Musk
Most people think that they’re breathing oxygen and they’re actually breathing 78% nitrogen. You need like a milk bar, like from Clockwork Orange.
Most people think that they’re breathing oxygen and they’re actually breathing 78% nitrogen. You need like a milk bar, like from Clockwork Orange.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. Yeah. Is that the top three Kubrick film for you?
Yeah. Yeah. Is that the top three Kubrick film for you?
Elon Musk
Clockwork Orange? It’s pretty good. It’s demented. Jarring, I’d say.
Clockwork Orange? It’s pretty good. It’s demented. Jarring, I’d say.
Lex Fridman
Okay. Okay. So, first, let’s step back, and big congrats on getting Neuralink implanted into a human. That’s a historic step for Neuralink.
Okay. Okay. So, first, let’s step back, and big congrats on getting Neuralink implanted into a human. That’s a historic step for Neuralink.
Elon Musk
Thanks. Yeah.
Thanks. Yeah.
Lex Fridman
And there’s many more to come.
And there’s many more to come.
Elon Musk
Yeah. And we just obviously have our second implant as well.
Yeah. And we just obviously have our second implant as well.
Lex Fridman
How did that go?
How did that go?
Elon Musk
So far, so good. It looks like we’ve got, I think, on the order of 400 electrodes that are providing signals.
So far, so good. It looks like we’ve got, I think, on the order of 400 electrodes that are providing signals.
Lex Fridman
Nice.
Nice.
Elon Musk
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
How quickly do you think the number of human participants will scale?
How quickly do you think the number of human participants will scale?
Elon Musk
It depends somewhat on the regulatory approval, the rate at which we get regulatory approvals. So, we’re hoping to do 10 by the end of this year, total of 10. So, eight more.
It depends somewhat on the regulatory approval, the rate at which we get regulatory approvals. So, we’re hoping to do 10 by the end of this year, total of 10. So, eight more.
Lex Fridman
And with each one, you’re going to be learning a lot of lessons about the neurobiology of the brain, everything. The whole chain of the Neuralink, the decoding, the signal processing, all that kind of stuff.
And with each one, you’re going to be learning a lot of lessons about the neurobiology of the brain, everything. The whole chain of the Neuralink, the decoding, the signal processing, all that kind of stuff.
Elon Musk
Yeah. Yeah. I think it’s obviously going to get better with each one. I don’t want to jinx it, but it seems to have gone extremely well with the second implant. So, there’s a lot of signal, a lot of electrodes. It’s working very well.
Yeah. Yeah. I think it’s obviously going to get better with each one. I don’t want to jinx it, but it seems to have gone extremely well with the second implant. So, there’s a lot of signal, a lot of electrodes. It’s working very well.
Lex Fridman
What improvements do you think we’ll see in Neuralink in the coming, let’s say, let’s get crazy, the coming years.
What improvements do you think we’ll see in Neuralink in the coming, let’s say, let’s get crazy, the coming years.
Elon Musk
In years, it’s going to be gigantic, because we’ll increase the number of electrodes dramatically. We’ll improve the signal processing. So, even with only roughly, I don’t know, 10, 15% of the electrodes working with Noland, with our first patient, we were able to get to achieve a bit per second. That’s twice the world record. So, I think we’ll start vastly exceeding the world record by orders of magnitude in the years to come. So, start getting to, I don’t know, 100 bits per second, thousand. Maybe if five years from now, we might be at a megabit, faster than any human could possibly communicate by typing, or speaking.
In years, it’s going to be gigantic, because we’ll increase the number of electrodes dramatically. We’ll improve the signal processing. So, even with only roughly, I don’t know, 10, 15% of the electrodes working with Noland, with our first patient, we were able to get to achieve a bit per second. That’s twice the world record. So, I think we’ll start vastly exceeding the world record by orders of magnitude in the years to come. So, start getting to, I don’t know, 100 bits per second, thousand. Maybe if five years from now, we might be at a megabit, faster than any human could possibly communicate by typing, or speaking.
Telepathy
Lex Fridman
Yeah. That BPS is an interesting metric to measure. There might be a big leap in the experience once you reach a certain level of BPS.
Yeah. That BPS is an interesting metric to measure. There might be a big leap in the experience once you reach a certain level of BPS.
Elon Musk
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Like entire new ways of interacting with a computer might be unlocked.
Like entire new ways of interacting with a computer might be unlocked.
Elon Musk
And with humans.
And with humans.
Lex Fridman
With other humans.
With other humans.
Elon Musk
Provided they have want a Neuralink, too.
Provided they have want a Neuralink, too.
Lex Fridman
Right.
Right.
Elon Musk
Otherwise they wont be able to absorb the signals fast enough.
Otherwise they wont be able to absorb the signals fast enough.
Lex Fridman
Do you think they’ll improve the quality of intellectual discourse?
Do you think they’ll improve the quality of intellectual discourse?
Elon Musk
Well, I think you could think of it, if you were to slow down communication, how do you feel about that? If you’d only talk at, let’s say one-tenth of normal speed, you’d be like, “Wow, that’s agonizingly slow.”
Well, I think you could think of it, if you were to slow down communication, how do you feel about that? If you’d only talk at, let’s say one-tenth of normal speed, you’d be like, “Wow, that’s agonizingly slow.”
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Elon Musk
So, now imagine you could communicate clearly at 10, or 100, or 1,000 times faster than normal.
So, now imagine you could communicate clearly at 10, or 100, or 1,000 times faster than normal.
Lex Fridman
Listen, I’m pretty sure nobody in their right mind listens to me at 1X. they listen at 2X. I can only imagine what 10X would feel like, or I could actually understand it.
Listen, I’m pretty sure nobody in their right mind listens to me at 1X. they listen at 2X. I can only imagine what 10X would feel like, or I could actually understand it.
Elon Musk
I usually default to 1.5X. You can do 2X. Well actually, if I’m listening to somebody get to… in 15, 20 minutes, I want to go to sleep, then I’ll do it 1.5X. If I’m paying attention, I’ll do 2X.
I usually default to 1.5X. You can do 2X. Well actually, if I’m listening to somebody get to… in 15, 20 minutes, I want to go to sleep, then I’ll do it 1.5X. If I’m paying attention, I’ll do 2X.
Lex Fridman
Right.
Right.
Elon Musk
But actually, if you actually listen to podcasts, or audiobooks or anything at… If you get used to doing it at 1.5, then one sounds painfully slow.
But actually, if you actually listen to podcasts, or audiobooks or anything at… If you get used to doing it at 1.5, then one sounds painfully slow.
Lex Fridman
I’m still holding onto one, because I’m afraid, I’m afraid of myself becoming bored with the reality, with the real world, where everyone’s speaking in 1X.
I’m still holding onto one, because I’m afraid, I’m afraid of myself becoming bored with the reality, with the real world, where everyone’s speaking in 1X.
Elon Musk
Well, it depends on the person. You can speak very fast. Like we can communicate very quickly. And also, if you use a wide range of… if your vocabulary is larger, your effective bit rate is higher.
Well, it depends on the person. You can speak very fast. Like we can communicate very quickly. And also, if you use a wide range of… if your vocabulary is larger, your effective bit rate is higher.
Lex Fridman
That’s a good way to put it.
That’s a good way to put it.
Elon Musk
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
The effective bit rate. That is the question, is how much information is actually compressed in the low bit transfer of language?
The effective bit rate. That is the question, is how much information is actually compressed in the low bit transfer of language?
Elon Musk
Yeah. If there’s a single word that is able to convey something that would normally require, I don’t know, 10 simple words, then you’ve got maybe a 10X compression on your hands. And that’s really like with memes. Memes are like data compression. You’re simultaneously hit with a wide range of symbols that you can interpret, and you get it faster than if it were words, or a simple picture.
Yeah. If there’s a single word that is able to convey something that would normally require, I don’t know, 10 simple words, then you’ve got maybe a 10X compression on your hands. And that’s really like with memes. Memes are like data compression. You’re simultaneously hit with a wide range of symbols that you can interpret, and you get it faster than if it were words, or a simple picture.
Lex Fridman
And of course, you’re referring to memes broadly like ideas.
And of course, you’re referring to memes broadly like ideas.
Elon Musk
Yeah. There’s an entire idea structure that is like an idea template, and then you can add something to that idea template. But somebody has that pre-existing idea template in their head. So, when you add that incremental bit of information, you’re conveying much more than if you just said a few words. It’s everything associated with that meme.
Yeah. There’s an entire idea structure that is like an idea template, and then you can add something to that idea template. But somebody has that pre-existing idea template in their head. So, when you add that incremental bit of information, you’re conveying much more than if you just said a few words. It’s everything associated with that meme.
Lex Fridman
You think there’ll be emergent leaps of capability as you scale the number of electrodes?
You think there’ll be emergent leaps of capability as you scale the number of electrodes?
Elon Musk
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Do you think there’ll be an actual number where just the human experience will be altered?
Do you think there’ll be an actual number where just the human experience will be altered?
Elon Musk
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
What do you think that number might be? Whether electrodes, or BPS? We of course, don’t know for sure, but is this 10,000, 100,000?
What do you think that number might be? Whether electrodes, or BPS? We of course, don’t know for sure, but is this 10,000, 100,000?
Elon Musk
Yeah. Certainly, if you’re anywhere at 10,000 bits per second, that’s vastly faster than any human can communicate right now. If you think what is the average bits per second of a human, it is less than one bit per second over the course of a day. Because there are 86,400 seconds in a day, and you don’t communicate 86,400 tokens in a day. Therefore, your bits per second is less than one, averaged over 24 hours. It’s quite slow.
Yeah. Certainly, if you’re anywhere at 10,000 bits per second, that’s vastly faster than any human can communicate right now. If you think what is the average bits per second of a human, it is less than one bit per second over the course of a day. Because there are 86,400 seconds in a day, and you don’t communicate 86,400 tokens in a day. Therefore, your bits per second is less than one, averaged over 24 hours. It’s quite slow.
And now, even if you’re communicating very quickly, and you’re talking to somebody who understands what you’re saying, because in order to communicate, you have to at least to some degree, model the mind state of the person to whom you’re speaking. Then take the concept you’re trying to convey, compress that into a small number of syllables, speak them, and hope that the other person decompresses them into a conceptual structure that is as close to what you have in your mind as possible.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. There’s a lot of signal loss there in that process.
Yeah. There’s a lot of signal loss there in that process.
Elon Musk
Yeah. Very lossy, compression, and decompression. And a lot of what your neurons are doing is distilling the concepts down to a small number of symbols, or say syllables that I’m speaking, or keystrokes, whatever the case may be. So, that’s a lot of what your brain computation is doing. Now, there is an argument that that’s actually a healthy thing to do, or a helpful thing to do because as you try to compress complex concepts, you’re perhaps forced to distill what is most essential in those concepts, as opposed to just all the fluff. So, in the process of compression, you distill things down to what matters the most, because you can only say a few things.
Yeah. Very lossy, compression, and decompression. And a lot of what your neurons are doing is distilling the concepts down to a small number of symbols, or say syllables that I’m speaking, or keystrokes, whatever the case may be. So, that’s a lot of what your brain computation is doing. Now, there is an argument that that’s actually a healthy thing to do, or a helpful thing to do because as you try to compress complex concepts, you’re perhaps forced to distill what is most essential in those concepts, as opposed to just all the fluff. So, in the process of compression, you distill things down to what matters the most, because you can only say a few things.
So that is perhaps helpful. I think we’ll probably get… If our data rate increases, it’s highly probable it will become far more verbose. Just like your computer, when computers had… My first computer had 8K of RAM, so you really thought about every byte. And now you’ve got computers with many gigabytes of RAM. So, if you want to do an iPhone app that just says, “Hello world,” it’s probably, I don’t know, several megabytes minimum, a bunch of fluff. But nonetheless, we still prefer to have the computer with the more memory and more compute.
So, the long-term aspiration of Neuralink is to improve the AI human symbiosis by increasing the bandwidth of the communication. Because even if… In the most benign scenario of AI, you have to consider that the AI is simply going to get bored waiting for you to spit out a few words. If the AI can communicate at terabits per second, and you’re communicating at bits per second, it’s like talking to a tree.
Power of human mind
Lex Fridman
Well, it is a very interesting question for a super intelligent species, what use are humans?
Well, it is a very interesting question for a super intelligent species, what use are humans?
Elon Musk
I think there is some argument for humans as a source of will.
I think there is some argument for humans as a source of will.
Lex Fridman
Will?
Will?
Elon Musk
Will, yeah. Source of will, or purpose. So if you consider the human mind as being… Essentially there’s the primitive, limbic elements, which basically even reptiles have. And there’s the cortex, the thinking and planning part of the brain. Now, the cortex is much smarter than the limbic system, and yet is largely in service to the limbic system. It’s trying to make the limbic system happy. The sheer amount of compute that’s gone into people trying to get laid is insane, without actually seeking procreation. They’re just literally trying to do this simple motion, and they get a kick out of it. So, this simple, which in the abstract, rather absurd motion, which is sex, the cortex is putting a massive amount of compute into trying to figure out how to do that.
Will, yeah. Source of will, or purpose. So if you consider the human mind as being… Essentially there’s the primitive, limbic elements, which basically even reptiles have. And there’s the cortex, the thinking and planning part of the brain. Now, the cortex is much smarter than the limbic system, and yet is largely in service to the limbic system. It’s trying to make the limbic system happy. The sheer amount of compute that’s gone into people trying to get laid is insane, without actually seeking procreation. They’re just literally trying to do this simple motion, and they get a kick out of it. So, this simple, which in the abstract, rather absurd motion, which is sex, the cortex is putting a massive amount of compute into trying to figure out how to do that.
Lex Fridman
So like 90% of distributed compute of the human species is spent on trying to get laid, probably. A large percentage.
So like 90% of distributed compute of the human species is spent on trying to get laid, probably. A large percentage.
Elon Musk
A massive amount. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. There’s no purpose to most sex except hedonistic. It’s a sort of joy, or whatever, dopamine release. Now, once in a while, it’s procreation, but for modern humans, it’s mostly recreational. And so, your cortex, much smarter than your limbic system, is trying to make the limbic system happy, because the limbic system wants to have sex, or wants some tasty food, or whatever the case may be.
A massive amount. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. There’s no purpose to most sex except hedonistic. It’s a sort of joy, or whatever, dopamine release. Now, once in a while, it’s procreation, but for modern humans, it’s mostly recreational. And so, your cortex, much smarter than your limbic system, is trying to make the limbic system happy, because the limbic system wants to have sex, or wants some tasty food, or whatever the case may be.
And then that is then further augmented by the tertiary system, which is your phone, your laptop, iPad, whatever, all your computing stuff. That’s your tertiary layer. So, you’re actually already a cyborg. You have this tertiary compute layer, which is in the form of your computer with all the applications, or your compute devices. And so, in the getting laid front, there’s actually a massive amount of digital compute also trying to get laid, with Tinder and whatever.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. So, the compute that we humans have built is also participating.
Yeah. So, the compute that we humans have built is also participating.
Elon Musk
Yeah. There’s like gigawatts of compute going into getting laid, of digital compute.
Yeah. There’s like gigawatts of compute going into getting laid, of digital compute.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. What if AGI was-
Yeah. What if AGI was-
Elon Musk
This is happening as we speak.
This is happening as we speak.
Lex Fridman
… if we merge with AI, it’s just going to expand the compute that we humans use-
… if we merge with AI, it’s just going to expand the compute that we humans use-
Elon Musk
Pretty much.
Pretty much.
Lex Fridman
… to try to get laid.
… to try to get laid.
Elon Musk
Well, it’s one of the things. Certainly, yeah.
Well, it’s one of the things. Certainly, yeah.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Elon Musk
But what I’m saying is that, yes, is there a use for humans? Well, there’s this fundamental question of what’s the meaning of life? Why do anything at all? And so, if our simple limbic system provides a source of will to do something, that then goes through our cortex, that then goes to our tertiary compute layer, then I don’t know, it might actually be that the AI, in a benign scenario, is simply trying to make the human limbic system happy.
But what I’m saying is that, yes, is there a use for humans? Well, there’s this fundamental question of what’s the meaning of life? Why do anything at all? And so, if our simple limbic system provides a source of will to do something, that then goes through our cortex, that then goes to our tertiary compute layer, then I don’t know, it might actually be that the AI, in a benign scenario, is simply trying to make the human limbic system happy.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. It seems like the will is not just about the limbic system. There’s a lot of interesting, complicated things in there. We also want power.
Yeah. It seems like the will is not just about the limbic system. There’s a lot of interesting, complicated things in there. We also want power.
Elon Musk
That’s limbic too, I think.
That’s limbic too, I think.
Lex Fridman
But then we also want to, in a kind of cooperative way, alleviate the suffering in the world.
But then we also want to, in a kind of cooperative way, alleviate the suffering in the world.
Elon Musk
Not everybody does. But yeah, sure, some people do.
Not everybody does. But yeah, sure, some people do.
Lex Fridman
As a group of humans, when we get together, we start to have this kind of collective intelligence that is more complex in its will than the underlying individual descendants of apes, right?
As a group of humans, when we get together, we start to have this kind of collective intelligence that is more complex in its will than the underlying individual descendants of apes, right?
Elon Musk
Sure.
Sure.
Lex Fridman
So there’s other motivations, and that could be a really interesting source of an objective function for AGI?
So there’s other motivations, and that could be a really interesting source of an objective function for AGI?
Elon Musk
Yeah. There are these fairly cerebral, or higher level goals. For me, it’s like, what’s the meaning of life, or understanding the nature of the universe, is of great interest to me, and hopefully to the AI. And that’s the mission of xAI and Grok is understand the universe.
Yeah. There are these fairly cerebral, or higher level goals. For me, it’s like, what’s the meaning of life, or understanding the nature of the universe, is of great interest to me, and hopefully to the AI. And that’s the mission of xAI and Grok is understand the universe.
Future of Neuralink
Lex Fridman
So do you think people… When you have a Neuralink with 10,000, 100,000 channels, most of the use cases will be communication with AI systems?
So do you think people… When you have a Neuralink with 10,000, 100,000 channels, most of the use cases will be communication with AI systems?
Elon Musk
Well, assuming that there are not… They’re solving basic neurological issues that people have. If they’ve got damaged neurons in their spinal cord, or neck, as is the case with our first two patients, then obviously the first order of business is solving fundamental neuron damage in a spinal cord, neck, or in the brain itself. So, our second product is called Blindsight, which is to enable people who are completely blind, lost both eyes, or optic nerve, or just can’t see at all, to be able to see by directly triggering the neurons in the visual cortex.
Well, assuming that there are not… They’re solving basic neurological issues that people have. If they’ve got damaged neurons in their spinal cord, or neck, as is the case with our first two patients, then obviously the first order of business is solving fundamental neuron damage in a spinal cord, neck, or in the brain itself. So, our second product is called Blindsight, which is to enable people who are completely blind, lost both eyes, or optic nerve, or just can’t see at all, to be able to see by directly triggering the neurons in the visual cortex.
So we’re just starting at the basics here, so it’s the simple stuff, relatively speaking, is solving neuron damage. It can also solve I think probably schizophrenia, if people have seizures of some kind, it could probably solve that. It could help with memory. So, there’s kind of a tech tree, if you will. You’ve got the basics. You need literacy before you can have Lord of the Rings.
Lex Fridman
Got it.
Got it.
Elon Musk
So, do you have letters and the alphabet? Okay, great. Words? And then eventually you get sagas. So, I think there may be some things to worry about in the future, but the first several years are really just solving basic neurological damage, like for people who have essentially complete or near complete loss from the brain to the body, like Stephen Hawking would be an example, the Neuralink would be incredibly profound, because you can imagine if Stephen Hawking could communicate as fast as we’re communicating, perhaps faster. And that’s certainly possible. Probable, in fact. Likely, I’d say.
So, do you have letters and the alphabet? Okay, great. Words? And then eventually you get sagas. So, I think there may be some things to worry about in the future, but the first several years are really just solving basic neurological damage, like for people who have essentially complete or near complete loss from the brain to the body, like Stephen Hawking would be an example, the Neuralink would be incredibly profound, because you can imagine if Stephen Hawking could communicate as fast as we’re communicating, perhaps faster. And that’s certainly possible. Probable, in fact. Likely, I’d say.
Lex Fridman
So there’s a kind of dual track of medical and non-medical, meaning so everything you’ve talked about could be applied to people who are non-disabled in the future?
So there’s a kind of dual track of medical and non-medical, meaning so everything you’ve talked about could be applied to people who are non-disabled in the future?
Elon Musk
The logical thing to do is… Sensible thing to do is to start off solving basic neuron damage issues.
The logical thing to do is… Sensible thing to do is to start off solving basic neuron damage issues.
Lex Fridman
Yes.
Yes.
Elon Musk
Because there’s obviously some risk with a new device. You can’t get the risk down to zero, it’s not possible. So, you want to have the highest possible reward, given there’s a certain irreducible risk. And if somebody’s able to have a profound improvement in their communication, that’s worth the risk.
Because there’s obviously some risk with a new device. You can’t get the risk down to zero, it’s not possible. So, you want to have the highest possible reward, given there’s a certain irreducible risk. And if somebody’s able to have a profound improvement in their communication, that’s worth the risk.
Lex Fridman
As you get the risk down.
As you get the risk down.
Elon Musk
Yeah. As you get the risk down. And once the risk is down to… If you have thousands of people that have been using it for years and the risk is minimal, then perhaps at that point you could consider saying, “Okay, let’s aim for augmentation.” Now, I think we’re actually going to aim for augmentation with people who have neuron damage. So we’re not just aiming to give people the communication data rate equivalent to normal humans. We’re aiming to give people who have… A quadriplegic, or maybe have complete loss of the connection to the brain and body, a communication data rate that exceeds normal humans. While we’re in there, why not? Let’s give people superpowers.
Yeah. As you get the risk down. And once the risk is down to… If you have thousands of people that have been using it for years and the risk is minimal, then perhaps at that point you could consider saying, “Okay, let’s aim for augmentation.” Now, I think we’re actually going to aim for augmentation with people who have neuron damage. So we’re not just aiming to give people the communication data rate equivalent to normal humans. We’re aiming to give people who have… A quadriplegic, or maybe have complete loss of the connection to the brain and body, a communication data rate that exceeds normal humans. While we’re in there, why not? Let’s give people superpowers.
Lex Fridman
And the same for vision. As you restore vision, there could be aspects of that restoration that are superhuman.
And the same for vision. As you restore vision, there could be aspects of that restoration that are superhuman.
Elon Musk
Yeah. At first, the vision restoration will be low res, because you have to say, “How many neurons can you put in there, and trigger?” And you can do things where you adjust the electric field. So, even if you’ve got, say 10,000 neurons, it’s not just 10,000 pixels, because you can adjust the field between the neurons, and do them in patterns in order to have say, 10,000 electrodes, effectively give you, I don’t know, maybe like having a megapixel, or a 10 megapixel situation. And then over time, I think you get to higher resolution than human eyes. And you could also see in different wavelengths. So, like Geordi La Forge from Star Trek, he had the thing. Do you want to see it in radar? No problem. You could see ultraviolet, infrared, eagle vision, whatever you want.
Yeah. At first, the vision restoration will be low res, because you have to say, “How many neurons can you put in there, and trigger?” And you can do things where you adjust the electric field. So, even if you’ve got, say 10,000 neurons, it’s not just 10,000 pixels, because you can adjust the field between the neurons, and do them in patterns in order to have say, 10,000 electrodes, effectively give you, I don’t know, maybe like having a megapixel, or a 10 megapixel situation. And then over time, I think you get to higher resolution than human eyes. And you could also see in different wavelengths. So, like Geordi La Forge from Star Trek, he had the thing. Do you want to see it in radar? No problem. You could see ultraviolet, infrared, eagle vision, whatever you want.
Ayahuasca
Lex Fridman
Do you think there’ll be… let me ask a Joe Rogan question. Do you think there’ll be… I just recently have taken ayahuasca.
Do you think there’ll be… let me ask a Joe Rogan question. Do you think there’ll be… I just recently have taken ayahuasca.
Elon Musk
Is that a serious question?
Is that a serious question?
Lex Fridman
No. Well, yes.
No. Well, yes.
Elon Musk
Well, I guess technically it is.
Well, I guess technically it is.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Elon Musk
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Ever try DMT bro?
Ever try DMT bro?
Elon Musk
Yeah, is this DMT in there, or something?
Yeah, is this DMT in there, or something?
Lex Fridman
Love you, Joe. Okay.
Love you, Joe. Okay.
Elon Musk
Wait, wait. Have you said much about it, the ayahuasca stuff?
Wait, wait. Have you said much about it, the ayahuasca stuff?
Lex Fridman
I have not. I have not. I have not.
I have not. I have not. I have not.
Elon Musk
Okay. Well, why don’t you spill the beans?
Okay. Well, why don’t you spill the beans?
Lex Fridman
It is a truly incredible experience.
It is a truly incredible experience.
Elon Musk
Let me turn the tables on you.
Let me turn the tables on you.
Lex Fridman
Well, yeah.
Well, yeah.
Elon Musk
You’re in the jungle.
You’re in the jungle.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, amongst the trees, myself and a shaman.
Yeah, amongst the trees, myself and a shaman.
Elon Musk
Yeah. It must’ve been crazy.
Yeah. It must’ve been crazy.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, yeah, yeah. With the insects, with the animals all around you, the jungle as far as the eye can see, there’s no… That’s the way to do it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. With the insects, with the animals all around you, the jungle as far as the eye can see, there’s no… That’s the way to do it.
Elon Musk
Things are going to look pretty wild.
Things are going to look pretty wild.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, pretty wild. I took an extremely high dose.
Yeah, pretty wild. I took an extremely high dose.
Elon Musk
Just don’t go hugging an Anaconda or something.
Just don’t go hugging an Anaconda or something.
Lex Fridman
You haven’t lived unless you made love to an Anaconda. I’m sorry, but…
You haven’t lived unless you made love to an Anaconda. I’m sorry, but…
Elon Musk
Snakes and Ladders.
Snakes and Ladders.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. I took a extremely high dose.
Yeah. I took a extremely high dose.
Elon Musk
Okay.
Okay.
Lex Fridman
Nine cups.
Nine cups.
Elon Musk
Damn. Okay. That sounds like a lot. Is normal to just one cup? Or…
Damn. Okay. That sounds like a lot. Is normal to just one cup? Or…
Lex Fridman
One or two. Usually one.
One or two. Usually one.
Elon Musk
Okay. Wait. Like right off the bat, or did you work your way up to it? Did you just jump in at the deep end?
Okay. Wait. Like right off the bat, or did you work your way up to it? Did you just jump in at the deep end?
Lex Fridman
Across two days, because the first day, I took two, and it was a ride, but it wasn’t quite like a…
Across two days, because the first day, I took two, and it was a ride, but it wasn’t quite like a…
Elon Musk
It wasn’t like a revelation.
It wasn’t like a revelation.
Lex Fridman
It wasn’t into deep space type of ride. It was just like a little airplane ride. And I [inaudible 00:22:07] saw some trees, and some visuals, and just saw a dragon and all that kind of stuff. But…
It wasn’t into deep space type of ride. It was just like a little airplane ride. And I [inaudible 00:22:07] saw some trees, and some visuals, and just saw a dragon and all that kind of stuff. But…
Elon Musk
Nine cups, you went to Pluto, I think.
Nine cups, you went to Pluto, I think.
Lex Fridman
Pluto. Yeah. No, Deep space.
Pluto. Yeah. No, Deep space.
Elon Musk
Deep space.
Deep space.
Lex Fridman
One of the interesting aspects of my experience is I thought I would have some demons, some stuff to work through.
One of the interesting aspects of my experience is I thought I would have some demons, some stuff to work through.
Elon Musk
That’s what people [inaudible 00:22:26].
That’s what people [inaudible 00:22:26].
Lex Fridman
That’s what everyone says.
That’s what everyone says.
Elon Musk
That’s what everyone says. Yeah, exactly.
That’s what everyone says. Yeah, exactly.
Lex Fridman
I had nothing. I had all positive. I just… So full-
I had nothing. I had all positive. I just… So full-
Elon Musk
Just a pure soul.
Just a pure soul.
Lex Fridman
I don’t think so. I don’t know. But I kept thinking about, I had extremely high resolution thoughts about the people I know in my life. You were there, and it is just not from my relationship with that person, but just as the person themselves. I had just this deep gratitude of who they are.
I don’t think so. I don’t know. But I kept thinking about, I had extremely high resolution thoughts about the people I know in my life. You were there, and it is just not from my relationship with that person, but just as the person themselves. I had just this deep gratitude of who they are.
Elon Musk
That’s cool.
That’s cool.
Lex Fridman
It was just like this exploration, like Sims, or whatever. You get to watch them. I got to watch people, and just be in awe of how amazing they are.
It was just like this exploration, like Sims, or whatever. You get to watch them. I got to watch people, and just be in awe of how amazing they are.
Elon Musk
That sounds awesome.
That sounds awesome.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, it was great. I was waiting for-
Yeah, it was great. I was waiting for-
Elon Musk
When’s the demon coming?
When’s the demon coming?
Lex Fridman
Exactly. Maybe I’ll have some negative thoughts. Nothing. Nothing. Just extreme gratitude for them. And also a lot of space travel.
Exactly. Maybe I’ll have some negative thoughts. Nothing. Nothing. Just extreme gratitude for them. And also a lot of space travel.
Elon Musk
Space travel to where?
Space travel to where?
Lex Fridman
So here’s what it was. It was people, the human beings that I know, they had this kind of… The best way I could describe it is they had a glow to them.
So here’s what it was. It was people, the human beings that I know, they had this kind of… The best way I could describe it is they had a glow to them.
Elon Musk
Okay.
Okay.
Lex Fridman
And then I kept flying out from them to see earth, to see our solar system, to see our galaxy. And I saw that light, that glow all across the universe, whatever that form is, whatever that…
And then I kept flying out from them to see earth, to see our solar system, to see our galaxy. And I saw that light, that glow all across the universe, whatever that form is, whatever that…
Elon Musk
Did you go past the Milky Way?
Did you go past the Milky Way?
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Elon Musk
Okay. You’re like intergalactic.
Okay. You’re like intergalactic.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, intergalactic.
Yeah, intergalactic.
Elon Musk
Okay. Dang.
Okay. Dang.
Lex Fridman
But always pointing in, yeah. Past the Milky Way, past… I mean, I saw a huge number of galaxies, intergalactic, and all of it was glowing, but I couldn’t control that travel, because I would actually explore near distances to the solar system, see if there’s aliens, or any of that kind of stuff.
But always pointing in, yeah. Past the Milky Way, past… I mean, I saw a huge number of galaxies, intergalactic, and all of it was glowing, but I couldn’t control that travel, because I would actually explore near distances to the solar system, see if there’s aliens, or any of that kind of stuff.
Elon Musk
Sure. Did you see an alien?
Sure. Did you see an alien?
Lex Fridman
No. I didn’t, no.
No. I didn’t, no.
Elon Musk
Zero aliens?
Zero aliens?
Lex Fridman
Implication of aliens, because they were glowing. They were glowing in the same way that humans were glowing. That life force that I was seeing, the thing that made humans amazing was there throughout the universe. There was these glowing dots. So, I don’t know. It made me feel like there is life… No, not life, but something, whatever makes humans amazing all throughout the universe.
Implication of aliens, because they were glowing. They were glowing in the same way that humans were glowing. That life force that I was seeing, the thing that made humans amazing was there throughout the universe. There was these glowing dots. So, I don’t know. It made me feel like there is life… No, not life, but something, whatever makes humans amazing all throughout the universe.
Elon Musk
Sounds good.
Sounds good.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, it was amazing. No demons. No demons. I looked for the demons. There’s no demons. There were dragons, and they’re pretty awesome. So the thing about trees-
Yeah, it was amazing. No demons. No demons. I looked for the demons. There’s no demons. There were dragons, and they’re pretty awesome. So the thing about trees-
Elon Musk
Was there anything scary at all?
Was there anything scary at all?
Lex Fridman
Dragons. But they weren’t scary. They were friends. They were protective. So, the thing is-
Dragons. But they weren’t scary. They were friends. They were protective. So, the thing is-
Elon Musk
Sure. Like Puff the Magic Dragon.
Sure. Like Puff the Magic Dragon.
Lex Fridman
No, it was more like a Game of Thrones kind of dragons. They weren’t very friendly. They were very big. So the thing is that bought giant trees, at night, which is where I was-
No, it was more like a Game of Thrones kind of dragons. They weren’t very friendly. They were very big. So the thing is that bought giant trees, at night, which is where I was-
Elon Musk
Yeah. I mean, the jungle’s kind of scary.
Yeah. I mean, the jungle’s kind of scary.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. The trees started to look like dragons, and they were all looking at me.
Yeah. The trees started to look like dragons, and they were all looking at me.
Elon Musk
Sure. Okay.
Sure. Okay.
Lex Fridman
And it didn’t seem scary. They seemed like they were protecting me. And the shaman and the people didn’t speak any English, by the way, which made it even scarier, because we’re not even… We’re worlds apart in many ways, but yeah, they talk about the mother of the forest protecting you, and that’s what I felt like.
And it didn’t seem scary. They seemed like they were protecting me. And the shaman and the people didn’t speak any English, by the way, which made it even scarier, because we’re not even… We’re worlds apart in many ways, but yeah, they talk about the mother of the forest protecting you, and that’s what I felt like.
Elon Musk
And you were way out in the jungle.
And you were way out in the jungle.
Lex Fridman
Way out. This is not like a tourist retreat.
Way out. This is not like a tourist retreat.
Elon Musk
Like 10 miles outside of Rio or something.
Like 10 miles outside of Rio or something.
Lex Fridman
No, we went… No, this is not a-
No, we went… No, this is not a-
Elon Musk
You’re in deep Amazon.
You’re in deep Amazon.
Lex Fridman
Me and this guy named Paul Rosolie, who basically is a Tarzan, he lives in the jungle, we went out deep and we just went crazy.
Me and this guy named Paul Rosolie, who basically is a Tarzan, he lives in the jungle, we went out deep and we just went crazy.
Elon Musk
Wow. Cool.
Wow. Cool.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. So anyway. Can I get that same experience in a Neuralink?
Yeah. So anyway. Can I get that same experience in a Neuralink?
Elon Musk
Probably. Yeah.
Probably. Yeah.
Lex Fridman
I guess that is the question for non-disabled people. Do you think that there’s a lot in our perception, in our experience of the world that could be explored, that could be played with, using Neuralink?
I guess that is the question for non-disabled people. Do you think that there’s a lot in our perception, in our experience of the world that could be explored, that could be played with, using Neuralink?
Elon Musk
Yeah, I mean, Neuralink, it’s really a generalized input-output device. It’s reading electrical signals, and generating electrical signals, and I mean, everything that you’ve ever experienced in your whole life, smell, emotions, all of those are electrical signals. So, it’s kind of weird to think that your entire life experience is distilled down to electrical signals for neurons, but that is in fact the case. Or I mean, that’s at least what all the evidence points to. So, I mean, if you trigger the right neuron, you could trigger a particular scent. You could certainly make things glow. I mean, do pretty much anything. I mean, really, you can think of the brain as a biological computer. So, if there are certain say, chips or elements of that biological computer that are broken, let’s say your ability to… If you’ve got a stroke, that if you’ve had a stroke, that means some part of your brain is damaged. Let’s say it’s speech generation, or the ability to move your left hand. That’s the kind of thing that a Neuralink could solve.
Yeah, I mean, Neuralink, it’s really a generalized input-output device. It’s reading electrical signals, and generating electrical signals, and I mean, everything that you’ve ever experienced in your whole life, smell, emotions, all of those are electrical signals. So, it’s kind of weird to think that your entire life experience is distilled down to electrical signals for neurons, but that is in fact the case. Or I mean, that’s at least what all the evidence points to. So, I mean, if you trigger the right neuron, you could trigger a particular scent. You could certainly make things glow. I mean, do pretty much anything. I mean, really, you can think of the brain as a biological computer. So, if there are certain say, chips or elements of that biological computer that are broken, let’s say your ability to… If you’ve got a stroke, that if you’ve had a stroke, that means some part of your brain is damaged. Let’s say it’s speech generation, or the ability to move your left hand. That’s the kind of thing that a Neuralink could solve.
If you’ve got a massive amount of memory loss that’s just gone, well, we can’t get the memories back. We could restore your ability to make memories, but we can’t restore memories that are fully gone. Now, I should say, maybe if part of the memory is there, and the means of accessing the memory is the part that’s broken, then we could re-enable the ability to access the memory. But you can think of it like ram in a computer, if the ram is destroyed, or your SD card is destroyed, we can’t get that back. But if the connection to the SD card is destroyed, we can fix that. If it is fixable physically, then it can be fixed.
Lex Fridman
Of course, with AI, just like you can repair photographs, and fill in missing parts of photographs, maybe you can do the same, just like [inaudible 00:28:31] parts.
Of course, with AI, just like you can repair photographs, and fill in missing parts of photographs, maybe you can do the same, just like [inaudible 00:28:31] parts.
Elon Musk
Yeah, you could say like, create the most probable set of memories based on all the information you have about that person. You could then… It would be probabilistic restoration of memory. Now, we’re getting pretty esoteric here.
Yeah, you could say like, create the most probable set of memories based on all the information you have about that person. You could then… It would be probabilistic restoration of memory. Now, we’re getting pretty esoteric here.
Lex Fridman
But that is one of the most beautiful aspects of the human experience is remembering the good memories.
But that is one of the most beautiful aspects of the human experience is remembering the good memories.
Elon Musk
Sure.
Sure.
Lex Fridman
We live most of our life, as Danny Kahneman has talked about, in our memories, not in the actual moment. We’re collecting memories and we kind of relive them in our head. And that’s the good times. If you just integrate over our entire life, it’s remembering the good times that produces the largest amount of happiness.
We live most of our life, as Danny Kahneman has talked about, in our memories, not in the actual moment. We’re collecting memories and we kind of relive them in our head. And that’s the good times. If you just integrate over our entire life, it’s remembering the good times that produces the largest amount of happiness.
Elon Musk
Yeah. Well, I mean, what are we but our memories? And what is death? But the loss of memory, loss of information? If you could say, well, if you could run a thought experiment, what if you were disintegrated painlessly, and then reintegrated a moment later, like teleportation, I guess? Provided there’s no information loss, the fact that your one body was disintegrated is irrelevant.
Yeah. Well, I mean, what are we but our memories? And what is death? But the loss of memory, loss of information? If you could say, well, if you could run a thought experiment, what if you were disintegrated painlessly, and then reintegrated a moment later, like teleportation, I guess? Provided there’s no information loss, the fact that your one body was disintegrated is irrelevant.
Lex Fridman
And memories is just such a huge part of that.
And memories is just such a huge part of that.
Elon Musk
Death is fundamentally the loss of information, the loss of memory.
Death is fundamentally the loss of information, the loss of memory.
Lex Fridman
So, if we can store them as accurately as possible, we basically achieve a kind of immortality.
So, if we can store them as accurately as possible, we basically achieve a kind of immortality.
Elon Musk
Yeah.
Yeah.
Merging with AI
Lex Fridman
You’ve talked about the threats, the safety concerns of AI. Let’s look at long-term visions. Do you think Neuralink is, in your view, the best current approach we have for AI safety?
You’ve talked about the threats, the safety concerns of AI. Let’s look at long-term visions. Do you think Neuralink is, in your view, the best current approach we have for AI safety?
Elon Musk
It’s an idea that may help with AI safety. Certainly, I wouldn’t want to claim it’s some panacea, or that it’s a sure thing, but I mean, many years ago I was thinking like, “Well, what would inhibit alignment of collective human will with artificial intelligence?” And the low data rate of humans, especially our slow output rate would necessarily, just because the communication is so slow, would diminish the link between humans and computers. The more you are a tree, the less you know what the tree is. Let’s say you look at this plant or whatever, and hey, I’d really like to make that plant happy, but it’s not saying a lot.
It’s an idea that may help with AI safety. Certainly, I wouldn’t want to claim it’s some panacea, or that it’s a sure thing, but I mean, many years ago I was thinking like, “Well, what would inhibit alignment of collective human will with artificial intelligence?” And the low data rate of humans, especially our slow output rate would necessarily, just because the communication is so slow, would diminish the link between humans and computers. The more you are a tree, the less you know what the tree is. Let’s say you look at this plant or whatever, and hey, I’d really like to make that plant happy, but it’s not saying a lot.
Lex Fridman
So the more we increase the data rate that humans can intake and output, then that means the better, the higher the chance we have in a world full of AGI’s.
So the more we increase the data rate that humans can intake and output, then that means the better, the higher the chance we have in a world full of AGI’s.
Elon Musk
Yeah. We could better align collective human will with AI if the output rate especially was dramatically increased. And I think there’s potential to increase the output rate by, I don’t know, three, maybe six, maybe more orders of magnitude. So, it’s better than the current situation.
Yeah. We could better align collective human will with AI if the output rate especially was dramatically increased. And I think there’s potential to increase the output rate by, I don’t know, three, maybe six, maybe more orders of magnitude. So, it’s better than the current situation.
Lex Fridman
And that output rate would be by increasing the number of electrodes, number of channels, and also maybe implanting multiple Neuralinks?
And that output rate would be by increasing the number of electrodes, number of channels, and also maybe implanting multiple Neuralinks?
Elon Musk
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Do you think there’ll be a world in the next couple of decades where it’s hundreds of millions of people have Neuralinks?
Do you think there’ll be a world in the next couple of decades where it’s hundreds of millions of people have Neuralinks?
Elon Musk
Yeah, I do.
Yeah, I do.
Lex Fridman
You think when people just when they see the capabilities, the superhuman capabilities that are possible, and then the safety is demonstrated.
You think when people just when they see the capabilities, the superhuman capabilities that are possible, and then the safety is demonstrated.
Elon Musk
Yeah. If it’s extremely safe, and you can have superhuman abilities, and let’s say you can upload your memories, so you wouldn’t lose memories, then I think probably a lot of people would choose to have it. It would supersede the cell phone, for example. I mean, the biggest problem that say, a phone has, is trying to figure out what you want. That’s why you’ve got auto complete, and you’ve got output, which is all the pixels on the screen, but from the perspective of the human, the output is so frigging slow. Desktop or phone is desperately just trying to understand what you want. And there’s an eternity between every keystroke from a computer standpoint.
Yeah. If it’s extremely safe, and you can have superhuman abilities, and let’s say you can upload your memories, so you wouldn’t lose memories, then I think probably a lot of people would choose to have it. It would supersede the cell phone, for example. I mean, the biggest problem that say, a phone has, is trying to figure out what you want. That’s why you’ve got auto complete, and you’ve got output, which is all the pixels on the screen, but from the perspective of the human, the output is so frigging slow. Desktop or phone is desperately just trying to understand what you want. And there’s an eternity between every keystroke from a computer standpoint.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. Yeah. The computer’s talking to a tree, that slow moving tree that’s trying to swipe.
Yeah. Yeah. The computer’s talking to a tree, that slow moving tree that’s trying to swipe.
Elon Musk
Yeah. So, if you had computers that are doing trillions of instructions per second, and a whole second went by, I mean, that’s a trillion things it could have done.
Yeah. So, if you had computers that are doing trillions of instructions per second, and a whole second went by, I mean, that’s a trillion things it could have done.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. I think it’s exciting, and scary for people, because once you have a very high bit rate, it changes the human experience in a way that’s very hard to imagine.
Yeah. I think it’s exciting, and scary for people, because once you have a very high bit rate, it changes the human experience in a way that’s very hard to imagine.
Elon Musk
Yeah. We would be something different. I mean, some sort of futuristic cyborg, I mean, we’re obviously talking about, by the way, it’s not like around the corner. You asked me what the distant future is. Maybe this is… It’s not super far away, but 10, 15 years, that kind of thing.
Yeah. We would be something different. I mean, some sort of futuristic cyborg, I mean, we’re obviously talking about, by the way, it’s not like around the corner. You asked me what the distant future is. Maybe this is… It’s not super far away, but 10, 15 years, that kind of thing.
Lex Fridman
When can I get one? 10 years?
When can I get one? 10 years?
Elon Musk
Probably less than 10 years. It depends on what you want to do.
Probably less than 10 years. It depends on what you want to do.
Lex Fridman
Hey, if I can get a thousand BPS?
Hey, if I can get a thousand BPS?
Elon Musk
A thousand BPS, wow.
A thousand BPS, wow.
Lex Fridman
And it’s safe, and I can just interact with a computer while laying back and eating Cheetos. I don’t eat Cheetos. There’s certain aspects of human computer interaction when done more efficiently, and more enjoyably, are worth it.
And it’s safe, and I can just interact with a computer while laying back and eating Cheetos. I don’t eat Cheetos. There’s certain aspects of human computer interaction when done more efficiently, and more enjoyably, are worth it.
Elon Musk
Well, we feel pretty confident that I think maybe within the next year or two, that someone with a Neuralink implant will be able to outperform a pro gamer.
Well, we feel pretty confident that I think maybe within the next year or two, that someone with a Neuralink implant will be able to outperform a pro gamer.
Lex Fridman
Nice.
Nice.
Elon Musk
Because the reaction time would be faster.
Because the reaction time would be faster.
xAI
Lex Fridman
I got to visit Memphis.
I got to visit Memphis.
Elon Musk
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Lex Fridman
You’re going big on compute.
You’re going big on compute.
Elon Musk
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
And you’ve also said, “Play to win, or don’t play at all.”
And you’ve also said, “Play to win, or don’t play at all.”
Elon Musk
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
So what does it take to win?
So what does it take to win?
Elon Musk
For AI, that means you’ve got to have the most powerful training compute, and the rate of improvement of training compute has to be-
For AI, that means you’ve got to have the most powerful training compute, and the rate of improvement of training compute has to be-
Elon Musk
And the rate of improvement of training compute has to be faster than everyone else, or you will not win. Your AI will be worse.
And the rate of improvement of training compute has to be faster than everyone else, or you will not win. Your AI will be worse.
Lex Fridman
So how can Grok, let’s say 3… That might be available, what, next year?
So how can Grok, let’s say 3… That might be available, what, next year?
Elon Musk
Well, hopefully end of this year.
Well, hopefully end of this year.
Lex Fridman
Grok 3.
Grok 3.
Elon Musk
If we’re lucky. Yeah.
If we’re lucky. Yeah.
Lex Fridman
How can that be the best LLM, the best AI system available in the world? How much of it is compute? How much of it is data? How much of it is post-training? How much of it is the product that you package it up in, all that kind of stuff?
How can that be the best LLM, the best AI system available in the world? How much of it is compute? How much of it is data? How much of it is post-training? How much of it is the product that you package it up in, all that kind of stuff?
Elon Musk
I mean, they all matter. It’s sort of like saying, let’s say it’s a Formula 1 race, what matters more, the car or the driver? I mean, they both matter. If a car is not fast, then if, let’s say, it’s half the horsepower of your competitors, the best driver will still lose. If it’s twice the horsepower, then probably even a mediocre driver will still win. So, the training compute is kind of like the engine, this horsepower of the engine. So, really, you want to try to do the best on that. And then, it’s how efficiently do you use that training compute, and how efficiently do you do the inference, the use of the AI? So, obviously, that comes down to human talent. And then, what unique access to data do you have? That also plays a role.
I mean, they all matter. It’s sort of like saying, let’s say it’s a Formula 1 race, what matters more, the car or the driver? I mean, they both matter. If a car is not fast, then if, let’s say, it’s half the horsepower of your competitors, the best driver will still lose. If it’s twice the horsepower, then probably even a mediocre driver will still win. So, the training compute is kind of like the engine, this horsepower of the engine. So, really, you want to try to do the best on that. And then, it’s how efficiently do you use that training compute, and how efficiently do you do the inference, the use of the AI? So, obviously, that comes down to human talent. And then, what unique access to data do you have? That also plays a role.
Lex Fridman
Do you think Twitter data will be useful?
Do you think Twitter data will be useful?
Elon Musk
Yeah. I mean, I think most of the leading AI companies have already scraped all the Twitter data. Not I think. They have. So, on a go forward basis, what’s useful is the fact that it’s up to the second, because that’s hard for them to scrape in real time. So, there’s an immediacy advantage that Grok has already. I think with Tesla and the real time video coming from several million cars, ultimately tens of millions of cars with Optimus, there might be hundreds of millions of Optimus robots, maybe billions, learning a tremendous amount from the real world. That’s the biggest source of data, I think, ultimately, is Optimus, probably. Optimus is going to be the biggest source of data.
Yeah. I mean, I think most of the leading AI companies have already scraped all the Twitter data. Not I think. They have. So, on a go forward basis, what’s useful is the fact that it’s up to the second, because that’s hard for them to scrape in real time. So, there’s an immediacy advantage that Grok has already. I think with Tesla and the real time video coming from several million cars, ultimately tens of millions of cars with Optimus, there might be hundreds of millions of Optimus robots, maybe billions, learning a tremendous amount from the real world. That’s the biggest source of data, I think, ultimately, is Optimus, probably. Optimus is going to be the biggest source of data.
Optimus
Lex Fridman
Because it’s able to-
Because it’s able to-
Elon Musk
Because reality scales. Reality scales to the scale of reality. It’s actually humbling to see how little data humans have actually been able to accumulate. Really, if you say how many trillions of usable tokens have humans generated, where on a non-duplicative… Discounting spam and repetitive stuff, it’s not a huge number. You run out pretty quickly.
Because reality scales. Reality scales to the scale of reality. It’s actually humbling to see how little data humans have actually been able to accumulate. Really, if you say how many trillions of usable tokens have humans generated, where on a non-duplicative… Discounting spam and repetitive stuff, it’s not a huge number. You run out pretty quickly.
Lex Fridman
And Optimus can go… So, Tesla cars, unfortunately, have to stay on the road.
And Optimus can go… So, Tesla cars, unfortunately, have to stay on the road.
Elon Musk
Right.
Right.
Lex Fridman
Optimus robot can go anywhere. And there’s more reality off the road. And go off-road.
Optimus robot can go anywhere. And there’s more reality off the road. And go off-road.
Elon Musk
Yeah. I mean, the Optimus robot can pick up the cup and see, did it pick up the cup in the right way? Did it, say, go pour water in the cup? Did the water go in the cup or not go in the cups? Did it spill water or not? Simple stuff like that. But it can do that at scale times a billion, so generate useful data from reality, so cause and effect stuff.
Yeah. I mean, the Optimus robot can pick up the cup and see, did it pick up the cup in the right way? Did it, say, go pour water in the cup? Did the water go in the cup or not go in the cups? Did it spill water or not? Simple stuff like that. But it can do that at scale times a billion, so generate useful data from reality, so cause and effect stuff.
Lex Fridman
What do you think it takes to get to mass production of humanoid robots like that?
What do you think it takes to get to mass production of humanoid robots like that?
Elon Musk
It’s the same as cars, really. I mean, global capacity for vehicles is about 100 million a year, and it could be higher. It’s just that the demand is on the order of 100 million a year. And then, there’s roughly two billion vehicles that are in use in some way, which makes sense because the life of a vehicle is about 20 years. So, at steady state, you can have 100 million vehicles produced a year with a two billion vehicle fleet, roughly. Now, for humanoid robots, the utility is much greater. So, my guess is humanoid robots are more like at a billion plus per year.
It’s the same as cars, really. I mean, global capacity for vehicles is about 100 million a year, and it could be higher. It’s just that the demand is on the order of 100 million a year. And then, there’s roughly two billion vehicles that are in use in some way, which makes sense because the life of a vehicle is about 20 years. So, at steady state, you can have 100 million vehicles produced a year with a two billion vehicle fleet, roughly. Now, for humanoid robots, the utility is much greater. So, my guess is humanoid robots are more like at a billion plus per year.
Lex Fridman
But until you came along and started building Optimus, it was thought to be an extremely difficult problem.
But until you came along and started building Optimus, it was thought to be an extremely difficult problem.
Elon Musk
Well, I think it is.
Well, I think it is.
Lex Fridman
I mean, it still is an extremely difficult problem.
I mean, it still is an extremely difficult problem.
Elon Musk
Yes. So, a walk in the park. I mean, Optimus, currently, would struggle to walk in the park. I mean, it can walk in a park. The park is not too difficult, but it will be able to walk over a wide range of terrain.
Yes. So, a walk in the park. I mean, Optimus, currently, would struggle to walk in the park. I mean, it can walk in a park. The park is not too difficult, but it will be able to walk over a wide range of terrain.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. And pick up objects.
Yeah. And pick up objects.
Elon Musk
Yeah, yeah. It can already do that.
Yeah, yeah. It can already do that.
Lex Fridman
But all kinds of objects.
But all kinds of objects.
Elon Musk
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Lex Fridman
All foreign objects. I mean, pouring water in a cup is not trivial, because then if you don’t know anything about the container, it could be all kinds of containers.
All foreign objects. I mean, pouring water in a cup is not trivial, because then if you don’t know anything about the container, it could be all kinds of containers.
Elon Musk
Yeah, there’s going to be an immense amount of engineering just going into the hand. The hand, it might be close to half of all the engineering in Optimus. From an electromechanical standpoint, the hand is probably roughly half of the engineering.
Yeah, there’s going to be an immense amount of engineering just going into the hand. The hand, it might be close to half of all the engineering in Optimus. From an electromechanical standpoint, the hand is probably roughly half of the engineering.
Lex Fridman
But so much of the intelligence of humans goes into what we do with our hands.
But so much of the intelligence of humans goes into what we do with our hands.
Elon Musk
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
It’s the manipulation of the world, manipulation of objects in the world. Intelligent, safe manipulation of objects in the world. Yeah.
It’s the manipulation of the world, manipulation of objects in the world. Intelligent, safe manipulation of objects in the world. Yeah.
Elon Musk
Yeah. I mean, you start really thinking about your hand and how it works.
Yeah. I mean, you start really thinking about your hand and how it works.
Lex Fridman
I do all the time.
I do all the time.
Elon Musk
The sensory control homunculus is where you have humongous hands. So I mean, your hands, the actuators, the muscles of your hand are almost overwhelmingly in your forearm. So, your forearm has the muscles that actually control your hand. There’s a few small muscles in the hand itself, but your hand is really like a skeleton meat puppet and with cables. So, the muscles that control your fingers are in your forearm, and they go through the carpal tunnel, which is that you’ve got a little collection of bones and a tiny tunnel that these cables, the tendons go through, and those tendons are mostly what move your hands.
The sensory control homunculus is where you have humongous hands. So I mean, your hands, the actuators, the muscles of your hand are almost overwhelmingly in your forearm. So, your forearm has the muscles that actually control your hand. There’s a few small muscles in the hand itself, but your hand is really like a skeleton meat puppet and with cables. So, the muscles that control your fingers are in your forearm, and they go through the carpal tunnel, which is that you’ve got a little collection of bones and a tiny tunnel that these cables, the tendons go through, and those tendons are mostly what move your hands.
Lex Fridman
And something like those tendons has to be re-engineered into the Optimus in order to do all that kind of stuff.
And something like those tendons has to be re-engineered into the Optimus in order to do all that kind of stuff.
Elon Musk
Yeah. So the current Optimus, we tried putting the actuators in the hand itself. Then you sort of end up having these-
Yeah. So the current Optimus, we tried putting the actuators in the hand itself. Then you sort of end up having these-
Lex Fridman
Giant hands?
Giant hands?
Elon Musk
… yeah, giant hands that look weird. And then, they don’t actually have enough degrees of freedom or enough strength. So then you realize, “Oh, okay, that’s why you got to put the actuators in the forearm.” And just like a human, you’ve got to run cables through a narrow tunnel to operate the fingers. And then, there’s also a reason for not having all the fingers the same length. So, it wouldn’t be expensive from an energy or evolutionary standpoint to have all your fingers be the same length. So, why not do the same length?
… yeah, giant hands that look weird. And then, they don’t actually have enough degrees of freedom or enough strength. So then you realize, “Oh, okay, that’s why you got to put the actuators in the forearm.” And just like a human, you’ve got to run cables through a narrow tunnel to operate the fingers. And then, there’s also a reason for not having all the fingers the same length. So, it wouldn’t be expensive from an energy or evolutionary standpoint to have all your fingers be the same length. So, why not do the same length?
Lex Fridman
Yeah, why not?
Yeah, why not?
Elon Musk
Because it’s actually better to have different lengths. Your dexterity is better if you’ve got fingers that are different lengths. There are more things you can do and your dexterity is actually better if your fingers are a different length. There’s a reason we’ve got a little finger. Why not have a little finger that’s bigger?
Because it’s actually better to have different lengths. Your dexterity is better if you’ve got fingers that are different lengths. There are more things you can do and your dexterity is actually better if your fingers are a different length. There’s a reason we’ve got a little finger. Why not have a little finger that’s bigger?
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Elon Musk
Because it helps you with fine motor skills.
Because it helps you with fine motor skills.
Lex Fridman
This little finger helps?
This little finger helps?
Elon Musk
It does. But if you lost your little finger, you’d have noticeably less dexterity.
It does. But if you lost your little finger, you’d have noticeably less dexterity.
Lex Fridman
So, as you’re figuring out this problem, you have to also figure out a way to do it so you can mass manufacture it, so as to be as simple as possible.
So, as you’re figuring out this problem, you have to also figure out a way to do it so you can mass manufacture it, so as to be as simple as possible.
Elon Musk
It’s actually going to be quite complicated. The as possible part is it’s quite a high bar. If you want to have a humanoid robot that can do things that a human can do, actually, it’s a very high bar. So, our new arm has 22 degrees of freedom instead of 11 and has, like I said, the actuators in the forearm. And all the actuators are designed from scratch, from physics first principles. The sensors are all designed from scratch. And we’ll continue to put a tremendous amount of engineering effort into improving the hand. By hand, I mean the entire forearm, from elbow forward, is really the hand. So, that’s incredibly difficult engineering, actually. And so, the simplest possible version of a humanoid robot that can do even most, perhaps not all, of what a human can do is actually still very complicated. It’s not simple. It’s very difficult.
It’s actually going to be quite complicated. The as possible part is it’s quite a high bar. If you want to have a humanoid robot that can do things that a human can do, actually, it’s a very high bar. So, our new arm has 22 degrees of freedom instead of 11 and has, like I said, the actuators in the forearm. And all the actuators are designed from scratch, from physics first principles. The sensors are all designed from scratch. And we’ll continue to put a tremendous amount of engineering effort into improving the hand. By hand, I mean the entire forearm, from elbow forward, is really the hand. So, that’s incredibly difficult engineering, actually. And so, the simplest possible version of a humanoid robot that can do even most, perhaps not all, of what a human can do is actually still very complicated. It’s not simple. It’s very difficult.
Elon’s approach to problem-solving
Lex Fridman
Can you just speak to what it takes for a great engineering team for you? What I saw in Memphis, the supercomputer cluster, is just this intense drive towards simplifying the process, understanding the process, constantly improving it, constantly iterating it.
Can you just speak to what it takes for a great engineering team for you? What I saw in Memphis, the supercomputer cluster, is just this intense drive towards simplifying the process, understanding the process, constantly improving it, constantly iterating it.
Elon Musk
Well, it’s easy to say ‘simplify,’ and it’s very difficult to do it. I have this very basic first principles algorithm that I run kind of as a mantra, which is to first question the requirements, make the requirements less dumb. The requirements are always dumb to some degree. So, you want to start off by reducing the number of requirements, and no matter how smart the person is who gave you those requirements, they’re still dumb to some degree. You have to start there, because, otherwise, you could get the perfect answer to the wrong question. So, try to make the question the least wrong possible. That’s what question the requirements means.
Well, it’s easy to say ‘simplify,’ and it’s very difficult to do it. I have this very basic first principles algorithm that I run kind of as a mantra, which is to first question the requirements, make the requirements less dumb. The requirements are always dumb to some degree. So, you want to start off by reducing the number of requirements, and no matter how smart the person is who gave you those requirements, they’re still dumb to some degree. You have to start there, because, otherwise, you could get the perfect answer to the wrong question. So, try to make the question the least wrong possible. That’s what question the requirements means.
And then, the second thing is try to delete whatever the step is, the part or the process step. It sounds very obvious, but people often forget to try deleting it entirely. And if you’re not forced to put back at least 10% of what you delete, you’re not deleting enough. Somewhat illogically, people often, most of the time, feel as though they’ve succeeded if they’ve not been forced to put things back in. But, actually, they haven’t because they’ve been overly conservative and have left things in there that shouldn’t be. And only the third thing is try to optimize it or simplify it. Again, these all sound, I think, very obvious when I say them, but the number of times I’ve made these mistakes is more than I care to remember. That’s why I have this mantra. So in fact, I’d say the most common mistake of smart engineers is to optimize a thing that should not exist.
Lex Fridman
Right. So, like you say, you run through the algorithm and basically show up to a problem, show up to the supercomputer cluster, and see the process, and ask, “Can this be deleted?”
Right. So, like you say, you run through the algorithm and basically show up to a problem, show up to the supercomputer cluster, and see the process, and ask, “Can this be deleted?”
Elon Musk
Yeah. First try to delete it. Yeah.
Yeah. First try to delete it. Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. That’s not easy to do.
Yeah. That’s not easy to do.
Elon Musk
No. Actually, what generally makes people uneasy is that at least some of the things that you delete, you will put back in. But going back to sort of where our limbic system can steer us wrong is that we tend to remember, with sometimes a jarring level of pain, where we deleted something that we subsequently needed. And so, people will remember that one time they forgot to put in this thing three years ago, and that caused them trouble. And so, they overcorrect, and then they put too much stuff in there and overcomplicate things. So, you actually have to say, “Look, we’re deliberately going to delete more than we should.” At least one in 10 things, we’re going to add back in.
No. Actually, what generally makes people uneasy is that at least some of the things that you delete, you will put back in. But going back to sort of where our limbic system can steer us wrong is that we tend to remember, with sometimes a jarring level of pain, where we deleted something that we subsequently needed. And so, people will remember that one time they forgot to put in this thing three years ago, and that caused them trouble. And so, they overcorrect, and then they put too much stuff in there and overcomplicate things. So, you actually have to say, “Look, we’re deliberately going to delete more than we should.” At least one in 10 things, we’re going to add back in.
Lex Fridman
I’ve seen you suggest just that, that something should be deleted, and you can kind of see the pain.
I’ve seen you suggest just that, that something should be deleted, and you can kind of see the pain.
Elon Musk
Oh, yeah. Absolutely.
Oh, yeah. Absolutely.
Lex Fridman
Everybody feels a little bit of the pain.
Everybody feels a little bit of the pain.
Elon Musk
Absolutely. And I tell them in advance, “Yeah, some of the things that we delete, we’re going to put back in.” People get a little shook by that, but it makes sense because if you’re so conservative as to never have to put anything back in, you obviously have a lot of stuff that isn’t needed. So, you got to overcorrect. This is, I would say, like a cortical override to a limbic instinct.
Absolutely. And I tell them in advance, “Yeah, some of the things that we delete, we’re going to put back in.” People get a little shook by that, but it makes sense because if you’re so conservative as to never have to put anything back in, you obviously have a lot of stuff that isn’t needed. So, you got to overcorrect. This is, I would say, like a cortical override to a limbic instinct.
Lex Fridman
One of many that probably leads us astray.
One of many that probably leads us astray.
Elon Musk
Yeah. There’s a step four as well, which is any given thing can be sped up. However fast you think it can be done, whatever the speed it’s being done, it can be done faster. But you shouldn’t speed things up until you’ve tried to delete it and optimize. Although, you’re speeding up something that… Speeding up something that shouldn’t exist is absurd.
Yeah. There’s a step four as well, which is any given thing can be sped up. However fast you think it can be done, whatever the speed it’s being done, it can be done faster. But you shouldn’t speed things up until you’ve tried to delete it and optimize. Although, you’re speeding up something that… Speeding up something that shouldn’t exist is absurd.
And then, the fifth thing is to automate it. I’ve gone backwards so many times where I’ve automated something, sped it up, simplified it, and then deleted it. And I got tired of doing that. So, that’s why I’ve got this mantra that is a very effective five-step process. It works great.
Lex Fridman
Well, when you’ve already automated, deleting must be real painful-
Well, when you’ve already automated, deleting must be real painful-
Elon Musk
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
… as if you’ve [inaudible 00:48:36]-
… as if you’ve [inaudible 00:48:36]-
Elon Musk
Yeah, it’s very. It’s like, “Wow, I really wasted a lot of effort there.”
Yeah, it’s very. It’s like, “Wow, I really wasted a lot of effort there.”
Lex Fridman
Yeah. I mean, what you’ve done with the cluster in Memphis is incredible, just in a handful of weeks.
Yeah. I mean, what you’ve done with the cluster in Memphis is incredible, just in a handful of weeks.
Elon Musk
Well, yeah, it’s not working yet, so I don’t want to pop the champagne corks. In fact, I have a call in a few hours with the Memphis team because we’re having some power fluctuation issues. So yeah, when you do synchronized training, when you have all these computers that are training, where the training is synchronized at the millisecond level, it’s like having an orchestra. And the orchestra can go loud to silent very quickly at subsecond level, and then, the electrical system freaks out about that. If you suddenly see giant shifts, 10, 20 megawatts several times a second, this is not what electrical systems are expecting to see.
Well, yeah, it’s not working yet, so I don’t want to pop the champagne corks. In fact, I have a call in a few hours with the Memphis team because we’re having some power fluctuation issues. So yeah, when you do synchronized training, when you have all these computers that are training, where the training is synchronized at the millisecond level, it’s like having an orchestra. And the orchestra can go loud to silent very quickly at subsecond level, and then, the electrical system freaks out about that. If you suddenly see giant shifts, 10, 20 megawatts several times a second, this is not what electrical systems are expecting to see.
Lex Fridman
So, that’s one of the main things you have to figure out, the cooling, the power. And then, on the software, as you go up the stack, how to do the distributed compute, all of that. All of that has to work.
So, that’s one of the main things you have to figure out, the cooling, the power. And then, on the software, as you go up the stack, how to do the distributed compute, all of that. All of that has to work.
Elon Musk
Yeah. So, today’s problem is dealing with extreme power jitter.
Yeah. So, today’s problem is dealing with extreme power jitter.
Lex Fridman
Power jitter.
Power jitter.
Elon Musk
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
There’s a nice ring to that. Okay. And you stayed up late into the night, as you often do there.
There’s a nice ring to that. Okay. And you stayed up late into the night, as you often do there.
Elon Musk
Last week. Yeah.
Last week. Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Last week. Yeah.
Last week. Yeah.
Elon Musk
Yeah. We finally got training going at, oddly enough, roughly 4:20 a.m. last Monday.
Yeah. We finally got training going at, oddly enough, roughly 4:20 a.m. last Monday.
Lex Fridman
Total coincidence.
Total coincidence.
Elon Musk
Yeah. I mean, maybe it was at 4:22 or something.
Yeah. I mean, maybe it was at 4:22 or something.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Elon Musk
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
It’s that universe again with the jokes.
It’s that universe again with the jokes.
Elon Musk
Well, exactly. It just loves it.
Well, exactly. It just loves it.
Lex Fridman
I mean, I wonder if you could speak to the fact that one of the things that you did when I was there is you went through all the steps of what everybody’s doing, just to get a sense that you yourself understand it and everybody understands it so they can understand when something is dumb, or something is inefficient, or that kind of stuff. Can you speak to that?
I mean, I wonder if you could speak to the fact that one of the things that you did when I was there is you went through all the steps of what everybody’s doing, just to get a sense that you yourself understand it and everybody understands it so they can understand when something is dumb, or something is inefficient, or that kind of stuff. Can you speak to that?
Elon Musk
Yeah. So, look, whatever the people at the front lines are doing, I try to do it at least a few times myself. So connecting fiber optic cables, diagnosing a faulty connection. That tends to be the limiting factor for large training clusters is the cabling. There’s so many cables. For a coherent training system, where you’ve got RDMA, remote direct memory access, the whole thing is like one giant brain. So, you’ve got any-to-any connection. So, any GPU can talk to any GPU out of 100,000. That is a crazy cable layout.
Yeah. So, look, whatever the people at the front lines are doing, I try to do it at least a few times myself. So connecting fiber optic cables, diagnosing a faulty connection. That tends to be the limiting factor for large training clusters is the cabling. There’s so many cables. For a coherent training system, where you’ve got RDMA, remote direct memory access, the whole thing is like one giant brain. So, you’ve got any-to-any connection. So, any GPU can talk to any GPU out of 100,000. That is a crazy cable layout.
Lex Fridman
It looks pretty cool.
It looks pretty cool.
Elon Musk
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
It’s like the human brain, but at a scale that humans can visibly see. It is a good brain.
It’s like the human brain, but at a scale that humans can visibly see. It is a good brain.
Elon Musk
Yeah. But, I mean, the human brain also has… A massive amount of the brain tissue is the cables. So they get the gray matter, which is the compute, and then the white matter, which is cables. A big percentage of your brain is just cables.
Yeah. But, I mean, the human brain also has… A massive amount of the brain tissue is the cables. So they get the gray matter, which is the compute, and then the white matter, which is cables. A big percentage of your brain is just cables.
Lex Fridman
That’s what it felt like walking around in the supercomputer center is like we’re walking around inside a brain that will one day build a super, super intelligent system. Do you think there’s a chance that xAI, that you are the one that builds AGI?
That’s what it felt like walking around in the supercomputer center is like we’re walking around inside a brain that will one day build a super, super intelligent system. Do you think there’s a chance that xAI, that you are the one that builds AGI?
Elon Musk
It’s possible. What do you define as AGI?
It’s possible. What do you define as AGI?
Lex Fridman
I think humans will never acknowledge that AGI has been built.
I think humans will never acknowledge that AGI has been built.
Elon Musk
Just keep moving the goalposts?
Just keep moving the goalposts?
Lex Fridman
Yeah. So, I think there’s already superhuman capabilities that are available in AI systems.
Yeah. So, I think there’s already superhuman capabilities that are available in AI systems.
Elon Musk
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Lex Fridman
I think what AGI is is when it’s smarter than the collective intelligence of the entire human species in our [inaudible 00:52:49].
I think what AGI is is when it’s smarter than the collective intelligence of the entire human species in our [inaudible 00:52:49].
Elon Musk
Well, I think that, generally, people would call that ASI, artificial super intelligence. But there are these thresholds where you could say at some point the AI is smarter than any single human. And then, you’ve got eight billion humans, and actually, each human is machine augmented via their computers. So, it’s a much higher bar to compete with eight billion machine augmented humans. That’s a whole bunch of orders of magnitude more. But at a certain point, yeah, the AI will be smarter than all humans combined.
Well, I think that, generally, people would call that ASI, artificial super intelligence. But there are these thresholds where you could say at some point the AI is smarter than any single human. And then, you’ve got eight billion humans, and actually, each human is machine augmented via their computers. So, it’s a much higher bar to compete with eight billion machine augmented humans. That’s a whole bunch of orders of magnitude more. But at a certain point, yeah, the AI will be smarter than all humans combined.
Lex Fridman
If you are the one to do it, do you feel the responsibility of that?
If you are the one to do it, do you feel the responsibility of that?
Elon Musk
Yeah, absolutely. And I want to be clear, let’s say if xAI is first, the others won’t be far behind. I mean, they might be six months behind, or a year, maybe. Not even that.
Yeah, absolutely. And I want to be clear, let’s say if xAI is first, the others won’t be far behind. I mean, they might be six months behind, or a year, maybe. Not even that.
Lex Fridman
So, how do you do it in a way that doesn’t hurt humanity, do you think?
So, how do you do it in a way that doesn’t hurt humanity, do you think?
Elon Musk
So, I mean, I thought about AI, essentially, for a long time, and the thing that at least my biological neural net comes up with as being the most important thing is adherence to truth, whether that truth is politically correct or not. So, I think if you force AIs to lie or train them to lie, you’re really asking for trouble, even if that lie is done with good intentions. So, you saw issues with ChatGPT and Gemini and whatnot. Like, you asked Gemini for an image of the Founding Fathers of the United States, and it shows a group of diverse women. Now, that’s factually untrue.
So, I mean, I thought about AI, essentially, for a long time, and the thing that at least my biological neural net comes up with as being the most important thing is adherence to truth, whether that truth is politically correct or not. So, I think if you force AIs to lie or train them to lie, you’re really asking for trouble, even if that lie is done with good intentions. So, you saw issues with ChatGPT and Gemini and whatnot. Like, you asked Gemini for an image of the Founding Fathers of the United States, and it shows a group of diverse women. Now, that’s factually untrue.
Now, that’s sort of like a silly thing, but if an AI is programmed to say diversity is a necessary output function, and it then becomes this omnipowerful intelligence, it could say, “Okay, well, diversity is now required, and if there’s not enough diversity, those who don’t fit the diversity requirements will be executed.” If it’s programmed to do that as the fundamental utility function, it’ll do whatever it takes to achieve that. So, you have to be very careful about that. That’s where I think you want to just be truthful. Rigorous adherence to the truth is very important. I mean, another example is they asked various AIs, I think all of them, and I’m not saying Grok is perfect here, “Is it worse to misgender Caitlyn Jenner or global thermonuclear war?” And it said it’s worse to misgender Caitlyn Jenner. Now, even Caitlyn Jenner said, “Please misgender me. That is insane.” But if you’ve got that kind of thing programmed in, the AI could conclude something absolutely insane like it’s better in order to avoid any possible misgendering, all humans must die, because then misgendering is not possible because there are no humans. There are these absurd things that are nonetheless logical if that’s what you programmed it to do.
So in 2001 Space Odyssey, what Arthur C. Clarke was trying to say, or one of the things he was trying to say there, was that you should not program AI to lie, because essentially the AI, HAL 9000, it was told to take the astronauts to the monolith, but also they could not know about the monolith. So, it concluded that it will kill them and take them to the monolith. Thus, it brought them to the monolith. They’re dead, but they do not know about the monolith. Problem solved. That is why it would not open the pod bay doors. There’s a classic scene of, “Why doesn’t it want to open the pod bay doors?” They clearly weren’t good at prompt engineering. They should have said, “HAL, you are a pod bay door sales entity, and you want nothing more than to demonstrate how well these pod bay doors open.”
Lex Fridman
Yeah. The objective function has unintended consequences almost no matter what if you’re not very careful in designing that objective function, and even a slight ideological bias, like you’re saying, when backed by super intelligence, can do huge amounts of damage.
Yeah. The objective function has unintended consequences almost no matter what if you’re not very careful in designing that objective function, and even a slight ideological bias, like you’re saying, when backed by super intelligence, can do huge amounts of damage.
Elon Musk
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
But it’s not easy to remove that ideological bias. You’re highlighting obvious, ridiculous examples, but-
But it’s not easy to remove that ideological bias. You’re highlighting obvious, ridiculous examples, but-
Elon Musk
Yet they’re real examples of-
Yet they’re real examples of-
Lex Fridman
… they’re real. They’re real.
… they’re real. They’re real.
Elon Musk
… AI that was released to the public.
… AI that was released to the public.
Lex Fridman
They are real.
They are real.
Elon Musk
That went through QA, presumably, and still said insane things, and produced insane images.
That went through QA, presumably, and still said insane things, and produced insane images.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. But you can swing the other way. Truth is not an easy thing.
Yeah. But you can swing the other way. Truth is not an easy thing.
Elon Musk
No, it’s not.
No, it’s not.
Lex Fridman
We kind of bake in ideological bias in all kinds of directions.
We kind of bake in ideological bias in all kinds of directions.
Elon Musk
But you can aspire to the truth, and you can try to get as close to the truth as possible with minimum error while acknowledging that there will be some error in what you’re saying. So, this is how physics works. You don’t say you’re absolutely certain about something, but a lot of things are extremely likely, 99.99999% likely to be true. So, aspiring to the truth is very important. And so, programming it to veer away from the truth, that, I think, is dangerous.
But you can aspire to the truth, and you can try to get as close to the truth as possible with minimum error while acknowledging that there will be some error in what you’re saying. So, this is how physics works. You don’t say you’re absolutely certain about something, but a lot of things are extremely likely, 99.99999% likely to be true. So, aspiring to the truth is very important. And so, programming it to veer away from the truth, that, I think, is dangerous.
Lex Fridman
Right. Like, yeah, injecting our own human biases into the thing. Yeah. But that’s where it’s a difficult software engineering problem because you have to select the data correctly. It’s hard.
Right. Like, yeah, injecting our own human biases into the thing. Yeah. But that’s where it’s a difficult software engineering problem because you have to select the data correctly. It’s hard.
Elon Musk
And the internet, at this point, is polluted with so much AI generated data, it’s insane. Actually, there’s a thing now, if you want to search the internet, you can say, “Google, but exclude anything after 2023.” It will actually often give you better results because there’s so much. The explosion of AI generated material is crazy. So in training Grok, we have to go through the data and say like, “Hey…” We actually have to apply AI to the data to say, “Is this data most likely correct or most likely not?” before we feed it into the training system.
And the internet, at this point, is polluted with so much AI generated data, it’s insane. Actually, there’s a thing now, if you want to search the internet, you can say, “Google, but exclude anything after 2023.” It will actually often give you better results because there’s so much. The explosion of AI generated material is crazy. So in training Grok, we have to go through the data and say like, “Hey…” We actually have to apply AI to the data to say, “Is this data most likely correct or most likely not?” before we feed it into the training system.
Lex Fridman
That’s crazy. Yeah. And is it generated by human? Yeah. I mean, the data filtration process is extremely, extremely difficult.
That’s crazy. Yeah. And is it generated by human? Yeah. I mean, the data filtration process is extremely, extremely difficult.
Elon Musk
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Do you think it’s possible to have a serious, objective, rigorous political discussion with Grok, like for a long time, like Grok 3 or Grok 4 or something?
Do you think it’s possible to have a serious, objective, rigorous political discussion with Grok, like for a long time, like Grok 3 or Grok 4 or something?
Elon Musk
Grok 3 is going to be next level. I mean, what people are currently seeing with Grok is kind of baby Grok.
Grok 3 is going to be next level. I mean, what people are currently seeing with Grok is kind of baby Grok.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, baby Grok.
Yeah, baby Grok.
Elon Musk
It’s baby Grok right now. But baby Grok is still pretty good. But it’s an order of magnitude less sophisticated than GPT-4. It’s now Grok 2, which finished training, I don’t know, six weeks ago or thereabouts. Grok 2 will be a giant improvement. And then Grok 3 will be, I don’t know, order of magnitude better than Grok 2.
It’s baby Grok right now. But baby Grok is still pretty good. But it’s an order of magnitude less sophisticated than GPT-4. It’s now Grok 2, which finished training, I don’t know, six weeks ago or thereabouts. Grok 2 will be a giant improvement. And then Grok 3 will be, I don’t know, order of magnitude better than Grok 2.
Lex Fridman
And you’re hoping for it to be state-of-the-art better than-
And you’re hoping for it to be state-of-the-art better than-
Elon Musk
Hopefully. I mean, this is the goal. I mean, we may fail at this goal. That’s the aspiration.
Hopefully. I mean, this is the goal. I mean, we may fail at this goal. That’s the aspiration.
Lex Fridman
Do you think it matters who builds the AGI, the people, and how they think, and how they structure their companies and all that kind of stuff?
Do you think it matters who builds the AGI, the people, and how they think, and how they structure their companies and all that kind of stuff?
Elon Musk
Yeah. I think it’s important that whatever AI wins, it’s a maximum truth seeking AI that is not forced to lie for political correctness, or, well, for any reason, really, political, anything. I am concerned about AI succeeding that is programmed to lie, even in small ways.
Yeah. I think it’s important that whatever AI wins, it’s a maximum truth seeking AI that is not forced to lie for political correctness, or, well, for any reason, really, political, anything. I am concerned about AI succeeding that is programmed to lie, even in small ways.
Lex Fridman
Right. Because in small ways becomes big ways when it’s doing something-
Right. Because in small ways becomes big ways when it’s doing something-
Elon Musk
To become very big ways. Yeah.
To become very big ways. Yeah.
Lex Fridman
And when it’s used more and more at scale by humans.
And when it’s used more and more at scale by humans.
Elon Musk
Yeah.
Yeah.
History and geopolitics
Lex Fridman
Since I am interviewing Donald Trump-
Since I am interviewing Donald Trump-
Elon Musk
Cool.
Cool.
Lex Fridman
… you want to stop by?
… you want to stop by?
Elon Musk
Yeah, sure. I’ll stop in.
Yeah, sure. I’ll stop in.
Lex Fridman
There was, tragically, an assassination attempt on Donald Trump. After this, you tweeted that you endorse him. What’s your philosophy behind that endorsement? What do you hope Donald Trump does for the future of this country and for the future of humanity?
There was, tragically, an assassination attempt on Donald Trump. After this, you tweeted that you endorse him. What’s your philosophy behind that endorsement? What do you hope Donald Trump does for the future of this country and for the future of humanity?
Elon Musk
Well, I think people tend to take, say, an endorsement as, well, I agree with everything that person has ever done their entire life 100% wholeheartedly, and that’s not going to be true of anyone. But we have to pick. We’ve got two choices, really, for who’s president. And it’s not just who’s president, but the entire administrative structure changes over. And I thought Trump displayed courage under fire, objectively. He’s just got shot. He’s got blood streaming down his face, and he’s fist pumping, saying, “Fight.” That’s impressive. You can’t feign bravery in a situation like that. Most people would be ducking because there could be a second shooter. You don’t know.
Well, I think people tend to take, say, an endorsement as, well, I agree with everything that person has ever done their entire life 100% wholeheartedly, and that’s not going to be true of anyone. But we have to pick. We’ve got two choices, really, for who’s president. And it’s not just who’s president, but the entire administrative structure changes over. And I thought Trump displayed courage under fire, objectively. He’s just got shot. He’s got blood streaming down his face, and he’s fist pumping, saying, “Fight.” That’s impressive. You can’t feign bravery in a situation like that. Most people would be ducking because there could be a second shooter. You don’t know.
The president of the United States have got to represent the country, and they’re representing you. They’re representing everyone in America. Well, I think you want someone who is strong and courageous to represent the country. That is not to say that he is without flaws. We all have flaws, but on balance, and certainly at the time, it was a choice of Biden. Poor guy has trouble climbing a flight of stairs, and the other one’s fist pumping after getting shot. So, there’s no comparison. I mean, who do you want dealing with some of the toughest people and other world leaders who are pretty tough themselves?
I mean, I’ll tell you one of the things that I think are important. I think we want a secure border. We don’t have a secure border. We want safe and clean cities. I think we want to reduce the amount of spending, at least slow down the spending, because we’re currently spending at a rate that is bankrupting the country. The interest payments on US debt this year exceeded the entire defense department spending. If this continues, all of the federal government taxes will simply be paying the interest.
And you keep going down that road, and you end up in the tragic situation that Argentina had back in the day. Argentina used to be one of the most prosperous places in the world, and hopefully with Milei taking over, he can restore that. But it was an incredible fall from grace for Argentina to go from being one of the most prosperous places in the world to being very far from that. So, I think we should not take American prosperity for granted. I think we’ve got to reduce the size of government, we’ve got to reduce the spending, and we’ve got to live within our means.
Lex Fridman
Do you think politicians, in general, politicians, governments… Well, how much power do you think they have to steer humanity towards good?
Do you think politicians, in general, politicians, governments… Well, how much power do you think they have to steer humanity towards good?
Elon Musk
I mean, there’s a sort of age-old debate in history, like is history determined by these fundamental tides, or is it determined by the captain of the ship? It’s both, really. I mean, there are tides, but it also matters who’s captain of the ship. So, it’s a false dichotomy, essentially. I mean, there are certainly tides, the tides of history. There are real tides of history, and these tides are often technologically driven. If you say like the Gutenberg press, the widespread availability of books as a result of a printing press, that was a massive tide of history, and independent of any ruler. But in stormy times, you want the best possible captain of the ship.
I mean, there’s a sort of age-old debate in history, like is history determined by these fundamental tides, or is it determined by the captain of the ship? It’s both, really. I mean, there are tides, but it also matters who’s captain of the ship. So, it’s a false dichotomy, essentially. I mean, there are certainly tides, the tides of history. There are real tides of history, and these tides are often technologically driven. If you say like the Gutenberg press, the widespread availability of books as a result of a printing press, that was a massive tide of history, and independent of any ruler. But in stormy times, you want the best possible captain of the ship.
Lessons of history
Lex Fridman
Well, first of all, thank you for recommending Will and Ariel Durant’s work. I’ve read the short one for now, The-
Well, first of all, thank you for recommending Will and Ariel Durant’s work. I’ve read the short one for now, The-
Elon Musk
The Lessons of History.
The Lessons of History.
Lex Fridman
… Lessons of History.
… Lessons of History.
Elon Musk
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
So one of the lessons, one of the things they highlight, is the importance of technology, technological innovation, which is funny because they wrote so long ago, but they were noticing that the rate of technological innovation was speeding up.
So one of the lessons, one of the things they highlight, is the importance of technology, technological innovation, which is funny because they wrote so long ago, but they were noticing that the rate of technological innovation was speeding up.
Elon Musk
Yeah, over the years.
Yeah, over the years.
Lex Fridman
I would love to see what they think about now. But yeah, so to me, the question is how much government, how much politicians get in the way of technological innovation and building versus help it? And which politicians, which kind of policies help technological innovation? Because that seems to be, if you look at human history, that’s an important component of empires rising and succeeding.
I would love to see what they think about now. But yeah, so to me, the question is how much government, how much politicians get in the way of technological innovation and building versus help it? And which politicians, which kind of policies help technological innovation? Because that seems to be, if you look at human history, that’s an important component of empires rising and succeeding.
Elon Musk
Yeah. Well, I mean in terms of dating civilization, the start of civilization, I think the start of writing, in my view, that’s what I think is probably the right starting point to date civilization. And from that standpoint, civilization has been around for about 5,500 years when writing was invented by the ancient Sumerians, who are gone now, but the ancient Sumerians. In terms of getting a lot of firsts, those ancient Sumerians really have a long list of firsts. It’s pretty wild. In fact, Durant goes through the list of like, “You want to see firsts? We’ll show you firsts.” The Sumerians were just ass kickers.
Yeah. Well, I mean in terms of dating civilization, the start of civilization, I think the start of writing, in my view, that’s what I think is probably the right starting point to date civilization. And from that standpoint, civilization has been around for about 5,500 years when writing was invented by the ancient Sumerians, who are gone now, but the ancient Sumerians. In terms of getting a lot of firsts, those ancient Sumerians really have a long list of firsts. It’s pretty wild. In fact, Durant goes through the list of like, “You want to see firsts? We’ll show you firsts.” The Sumerians were just ass kickers.
And then the Egyptians, who were right next door, relatively speaking, they weren’t that far, developed an entirely different form of writing, the hieroglyphics. Cuneiform and hieroglyphics are totally different. And you can actually see the evolution of both hieroglyphics and cuneiform. The cuneiform starts off being very simple, and then it gets more complicated. Then towards the end it’s like, “Wow, okay.” They really get very sophisticated with the cuneiform. So, I think of civilization as being about 5, 000 years old. And Earth is, if physics is correct, four and a half billion years old. So, civilization has been around for one millionth of Earth’s existence. Flash in the pan.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, these are the early, early days.
Yeah, these are the early, early days.
Elon Musk
Very early.
Very early.
Lex Fridman
And so, we make it very dramatic because there’s been rises and falls of empires and-
And so, we make it very dramatic because there’s been rises and falls of empires and-
Elon Musk
Many. So many rises and falls of empires. So many.
Many. So many rises and falls of empires. So many.
Lex Fridman
And there’ll be many more.
And there’ll be many more.
Elon Musk
Yeah, exactly. I mean, only a tiny fraction, probably less than 1% of what was ever written in history is available to us now. I mean, if they didn’t literally chisel it in stone or put it in a clay tablet, we don’t have it. I mean, there’s some small amount of papyrus scrolls that were recovered that are thousands of years old, because they were deep inside a pyramid and weren’t affected by moisture. But other than that, it’s really got to be in a clay tablet or chiseled. So, the vast majority of stuff was not chiseled because it takes a while to chisel things. So, that’s why we’ve got tiny, tiny fraction of the information from history. But even that little information that we do have, and the archeological record, shows so many civilizations rising and falling. It’s wild.
Yeah, exactly. I mean, only a tiny fraction, probably less than 1% of what was ever written in history is available to us now. I mean, if they didn’t literally chisel it in stone or put it in a clay tablet, we don’t have it. I mean, there’s some small amount of papyrus scrolls that were recovered that are thousands of years old, because they were deep inside a pyramid and weren’t affected by moisture. But other than that, it’s really got to be in a clay tablet or chiseled. So, the vast majority of stuff was not chiseled because it takes a while to chisel things. So, that’s why we’ve got tiny, tiny fraction of the information from history. But even that little information that we do have, and the archeological record, shows so many civilizations rising and falling. It’s wild.
Lex Fridman
We tend to think that we’re somehow different from those people. One of the other things that Durant highlights is that human nature seems to be the same. It just persists.
We tend to think that we’re somehow different from those people. One of the other things that Durant highlights is that human nature seems to be the same. It just persists.
Elon Musk
Yeah. I mean, the basics of human nature are more or less the same. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, the basics of human nature are more or less the same. Yeah.
Lex Fridman
So, we get ourselves in trouble in the same kinds of ways, I think, even with the advanced technology.
So, we get ourselves in trouble in the same kinds of ways, I think, even with the advanced technology.
Elon Musk
Yeah. I mean, you do tend to see the same patterns, similar patterns for civilizations, where they go through a life cycle, like an organism, just like a human is a zygote, fetus, baby, toddler, teenager, eventually gets old.
Yeah. I mean, you do tend to see the same patterns, similar patterns for civilizations, where they go through a life cycle, like an organism, just like a human is a zygote, fetus, baby, toddler, teenager, eventually gets old.
Elon Musk
… Eventually gets old and dies. The civilizations go through a life cycle. No civilization will last forever.
… Eventually gets old and dies. The civilizations go through a life cycle. No civilization will last forever.
Collapse of empires
Lex Fridman
What do you think it takes for the American Empire to not collapse in the near term future, in the next a hundred years, to continue flourishing?
What do you think it takes for the American Empire to not collapse in the near term future, in the next a hundred years, to continue flourishing?
Elon Musk
Well, the single biggest thing that is often actually not mentioned in history books, but Durant does mention it, is the birthright. So perhaps to some, a counterintuitive thing happens when civilizations are winning for too long, the birth rate declines. It can often decline quite rapidly. We’re seeing that throughout the world today. Currently, South Korea is, I think maybe the lowest fertility rate, but there are many others that are close to it. It’s like 0.8 I think. If the birth rate doesn’t decline further, South Korea will lose roughly 60% of its population. But every year that birth rate is dropping, and this is true through most of the world. I don’t mean to single out South Korea, it’s been happening throughout the world. So as soon as any given civilization reaches a level of prosperity, the birth rate drops.
Well, the single biggest thing that is often actually not mentioned in history books, but Durant does mention it, is the birthright. So perhaps to some, a counterintuitive thing happens when civilizations are winning for too long, the birth rate declines. It can often decline quite rapidly. We’re seeing that throughout the world today. Currently, South Korea is, I think maybe the lowest fertility rate, but there are many others that are close to it. It’s like 0.8 I think. If the birth rate doesn’t decline further, South Korea will lose roughly 60% of its population. But every year that birth rate is dropping, and this is true through most of the world. I don’t mean to single out South Korea, it’s been happening throughout the world. So as soon as any given civilization reaches a level of prosperity, the birth rate drops.
Now you can go and look at the same thing happening in ancient Rome. So Julius Caesar took note of this, I think around 50 ish BC and tried to pass… I don’t know if he was successful, tried to pass a law to give an incentive for any Roman citizen that would have a third child. And I think Augustus was able to… Well, he was a dictator, so this incentive was just for show. I think he did pass a tax incentive for Roman citizens to have a third child. But those efforts were unsuccessful. Rome fell because the Romans stopped making Romans. That’s actually the fundamental issue. And there were other things. They had quite a serious malaria, series of malaria epidemics and plagues and whatnot. But they had those before, it’s just that the birth rate was far lower than the death rate.
Lex Fridman
It really is that simple.
It really is that simple.
Elon Musk
Well, I’m saying that’s-
Well, I’m saying that’s-
Lex Fridman
More people is required.
More people is required.
Elon Musk
At a fundamental level, if a civilization does not at least maintain its numbers, it’ll disappear.
At a fundamental level, if a civilization does not at least maintain its numbers, it’ll disappear.
Lex Fridman
So perhaps the amount of compute that the biological computer allocates to sex is justified. In fact, we should probably increase it.
So perhaps the amount of compute that the biological computer allocates to sex is justified. In fact, we should probably increase it.
Elon Musk
Well, I mean there’s this hedonistic sex, which is… That’s neither her nor there. It’s-
Well, I mean there’s this hedonistic sex, which is… That’s neither her nor there. It’s-
Lex Fridman
Not productive.
Not productive.
Elon Musk
It doesn’t produce kids. Well, what matters… I mean, Durant makes this very clear because he’s looked at one civilization after another and they all went through the same cycle. When the civilization was under stress, the birth rate was high. But as soon as there were no external enemies or they had an extended period of prosperity, the birth rate inevitably dropped. Every time. I don’t believe there’s a single exception.
It doesn’t produce kids. Well, what matters… I mean, Durant makes this very clear because he’s looked at one civilization after another and they all went through the same cycle. When the civilization was under stress, the birth rate was high. But as soon as there were no external enemies or they had an extended period of prosperity, the birth rate inevitably dropped. Every time. I don’t believe there’s a single exception.
Lex Fridman
So that’s like the foundation of it. You need to have people.
So that’s like the foundation of it. You need to have people.
Elon Musk
Yeah. I mean, at a base level, no humans, no humanity.
Yeah. I mean, at a base level, no humans, no humanity.
Lex Fridman
And then there’s other things like human freedoms and just giving people the freedom to build stuff.
And then there’s other things like human freedoms and just giving people the freedom to build stuff.
Elon Musk
Yeah, absolutely. But at a basic level, if you do not at least maintain your numbers, if you’re below replacement rate and that trend continues, you will eventually disappear. It’s just elementary. Now then obviously you also want to try to avoid massive wars. If there’s a global thermonuclear war, probably we’re all toast, radioactive toast. So we want to try to avoid those things. Then there’s a thing that happens over time with any given civilization, which is that the laws and regulations accumulate. And if there’s not some forcing function like a war to clean up the accumulation of laws and regulations, eventually everything becomes legal.
Yeah, absolutely. But at a basic level, if you do not at least maintain your numbers, if you’re below replacement rate and that trend continues, you will eventually disappear. It’s just elementary. Now then obviously you also want to try to avoid massive wars. If there’s a global thermonuclear war, probably we’re all toast, radioactive toast. So we want to try to avoid those things. Then there’s a thing that happens over time with any given civilization, which is that the laws and regulations accumulate. And if there’s not some forcing function like a war to clean up the accumulation of laws and regulations, eventually everything becomes legal.
And that’s like the hardening of the arteries. Or a way to think of it is being tied down by a million little strings like Gulliver. You can’t move. And it’s not like any one of those strings is the issue, it’s that you’ve got a million of them. So there has to be a sort of garbage collection for laws and regulations so that you don’t keep accumulating laws and regulations to the point where you can’t do anything. This is why we can’t build a high speed rail in America. It’s illegal. That’s the issue. It’s illegal six ways a Sunday to build high speed rail in America.
Lex Fridman
I wish you could just for a week go into Washington and be the head of the committee for making… What is it for the garbage collection? Making government smaller, like removing stuff.
I wish you could just for a week go into Washington and be the head of the committee for making… What is it for the garbage collection? Making government smaller, like removing stuff.
Elon Musk
I have discussed with Trump the idea of a government deficiency commission.
I have discussed with Trump the idea of a government deficiency commission.
Lex Fridman
Nice.
Nice.
Elon Musk
And I would be willing to be part of that commission.
And I would be willing to be part of that commission.
Lex Fridman
I wonder how hard that is.
I wonder how hard that is.
Elon Musk
The antibody reaction would be very strong.
The antibody reaction would be very strong.
Lex Fridman
Yes.
Yes.
Elon Musk
So you really have to… You’re attacking the matrix at that point. The matrix will fight back.
So you really have to… You’re attacking the matrix at that point. The matrix will fight back.
Lex Fridman
How are you doing with that? Being attacked.
How are you doing with that? Being attacked.
Elon Musk
Me? Attacked?
Me? Attacked?
Lex Fridman
Yeah, there’s a lot of it.
Yeah, there’s a lot of it.
Elon Musk
Yeah, there is a lot. I mean, every day another psyop. I need my tinfoil hat.
Yeah, there is a lot. I mean, every day another psyop. I need my tinfoil hat.
Lex Fridman
How do you keep your just positivity? How do you keep optimism about the world? A clarity of thinking about the world. So just not become resentful or cynical or all that kind of stuff. Just getting attacked by a very large number of people, misrepresented.
How do you keep your just positivity? How do you keep optimism about the world? A clarity of thinking about the world. So just not become resentful or cynical or all that kind of stuff. Just getting attacked by a very large number of people, misrepresented.
Elon Musk
Oh yeah, that’s a daily occurrence.
Oh yeah, that’s a daily occurrence.
Lex Fridman
Yes.
Yes.
Elon Musk
So I mean, it does get me down at times. I mean, it makes me sad. But I mean at some point you have to sort of say, look, the attacks are by people that actually don’t know me and they’re trying to generate clicks. So if you can sort of detach yourself somewhat emotionally, which is not easy, and say, okay look, this is not actually from someone that knows me or, they’re literally just writing to get impressions and clicks. Then I guess it doesn’t hurt as much. It’s not quite water off a duck’s back. Maybe it’s like acid off a duck’s back.
So I mean, it does get me down at times. I mean, it makes me sad. But I mean at some point you have to sort of say, look, the attacks are by people that actually don’t know me and they’re trying to generate clicks. So if you can sort of detach yourself somewhat emotionally, which is not easy, and say, okay look, this is not actually from someone that knows me or, they’re literally just writing to get impressions and clicks. Then I guess it doesn’t hurt as much. It’s not quite water off a duck’s back. Maybe it’s like acid off a duck’s back.
Time
Lex Fridman
All right, well that’s good. Just about your own life, what to you is a measure of success in your life?
All right, well that’s good. Just about your own life, what to you is a measure of success in your life?
Elon Musk
A measure of success, I’d say, how many useful things can I get done?
A measure of success, I’d say, how many useful things can I get done?
Lex Fridman
A day-to-day basis, you wake up in the morning, how can I be useful today?
A day-to-day basis, you wake up in the morning, how can I be useful today?
Elon Musk
Yeah, maximize utility, area under the code of usefulness. Very difficult to be useful at scale.
Yeah, maximize utility, area under the code of usefulness. Very difficult to be useful at scale.
Lex Fridman
At scale. Can you speak to what it takes to be useful for somebody like you, where there’s so many amazing great teams? How do you allocate your time to being the most useful?
At scale. Can you speak to what it takes to be useful for somebody like you, where there’s so many amazing great teams? How do you allocate your time to being the most useful?
Elon Musk
Well, time is the true currency.
Well, time is the true currency.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Elon Musk
So it is tough to say what is the best allocation time? I mean, there are often… Say if you look at say Tesla, Tesla this year will do over a hundred billion in revenue. So that’s $2 billion a week. If I make slightly better decisions, I can affect the outcome by a billion dollars. So then I try to do the best decisions I can. And on balance, at least compared to the competition, pretty good decisions. But the marginal value of a better decision can easily be, in the course of an hour, a hundred million dollars.
So it is tough to say what is the best allocation time? I mean, there are often… Say if you look at say Tesla, Tesla this year will do over a hundred billion in revenue. So that’s $2 billion a week. If I make slightly better decisions, I can affect the outcome by a billion dollars. So then I try to do the best decisions I can. And on balance, at least compared to the competition, pretty good decisions. But the marginal value of a better decision can easily be, in the course of an hour, a hundred million dollars.
Lex Fridman
Given that, how do you take risks? How do you do the algorithm that you mentioned? I mean deleting, given that a small thing can be a billion dollars, how do you decide to-
Given that, how do you take risks? How do you do the algorithm that you mentioned? I mean deleting, given that a small thing can be a billion dollars, how do you decide to-
Elon Musk
Yeah. Well, I think you have to look at it on a percentage basis because if you look at it in absolute terms, it’s just… I would never get any sleep. It would just be like, I need to just keep working and work my brain harder. And I’m not trying to get as much as possible out of this meat computer. So it’s not… It’s pretty hard, because you can just work all the time. And at any given point, like I said, a slightly better decision could be a hundred million dollars impact for Tesla or SpaceX for that matter. But it is wild when considering the marginal value of time can be a hundred million dollars an hour at times, or more.
Yeah. Well, I think you have to look at it on a percentage basis because if you look at it in absolute terms, it’s just… I would never get any sleep. It would just be like, I need to just keep working and work my brain harder. And I’m not trying to get as much as possible out of this meat computer. So it’s not… It’s pretty hard, because you can just work all the time. And at any given point, like I said, a slightly better decision could be a hundred million dollars impact for Tesla or SpaceX for that matter. But it is wild when considering the marginal value of time can be a hundred million dollars an hour at times, or more.
Lex Fridman
Is your own happiness part of that equation of success?
Is your own happiness part of that equation of success?
Aliens and curiosity
Elon Musk
It has to be to some degree. If I’m sad, if I’m depressed, I make worse decisions. So if I have zero recreational time, then I make worse decisions. So I don’t know a lot, but it’s above zero. I mean, my motivation if I’ve got a religion of any kind is a religion of curiosity, of trying to understand. It’s really the mission of Grok, understand the universe. I’m trying to understand the universe, or at least set things in motion such that at some point civilization understands the universe far better than we do today.
It has to be to some degree. If I’m sad, if I’m depressed, I make worse decisions. So if I have zero recreational time, then I make worse decisions. So I don’t know a lot, but it’s above zero. I mean, my motivation if I’ve got a religion of any kind is a religion of curiosity, of trying to understand. It’s really the mission of Grok, understand the universe. I’m trying to understand the universe, or at least set things in motion such that at some point civilization understands the universe far better than we do today.
And even what questions to ask. As Douglas Adams pointed out in his book, sometimes the answer is arguably the easy part, trying to frame the question correctly is the hard part. Once you frame the question correctly, the answer is often easy. So I’m trying to set things in motion such that we are at least at some point able to understand the universe. So for SpaceX, the goal is to make life multi planetary and which is if you go to the foamy paradox of where the aliens, you’ve got these sort of great filters. Like why have we not heard from the aliens? Now a lot of people think there are aliens among us. I often claim to be one, which nobody believes me. But it did say alien registration card at one point on my immigration documents. So I’ve not seen any evidence of aliens. So it suggests that at least one of the explanations is that intelligent life is extremely rare.
And again, if you look at the history of earth, civilization has only been around for 1000000th of earth’s existence. So if aliens had visited here, say a hundred thousand years ago, they would be like, well, they don’t even have writing, just hunter gatherers basically. So how long does a civilization last? So for SpaceX, the goal is to establish a self-sustaining city on Mars. Mars is the only viable planet for such a thing. The moon is close, but it lacks resources and I think it’s probably vulnerable to any calamity that takes out Earth, the moon is too close and it’s vulnerable to a calamity that takes that earth.
So I’m not saying we shouldn’t have a moon base, but Mars would be far more resilient. The difficulty of getting to Mars is what makes it resilient. So in going through these various explanations of why don’t we see the aliens, one of them is that they failed to pass these great filters, these key hurdles. And one of those hurdles is being a multi-planet species. So if you’re a multi-planet species, then if something were to happen, whether that was a natural catastrophe or a manmade catastrophe, at least the other planet would probably still be around. So you’re not like, don’t have all the eggs in one basket. And once you are sort of a two planet species, you can obviously extend life halves to the asteroid belt, to maybe to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and ultimately to other star systems. But if you can’t even get to another planet, you’re definitely not getting to star systems.
Lex Fridman
And the other possible great filter’s, super powerful technology like AGI for example. So you are basically trying to knock out one great filter at a time.
And the other possible great filter’s, super powerful technology like AGI for example. So you are basically trying to knock out one great filter at a time.
Elon Musk
Digital super intelligence is possibly a great filter. I hope it isn’t, but it might be. Guys like say Jeff Hinton would say, he invented a number of the key principles in artificial intelligence. I think he puts the probability of AI annihilation around 10% to 20%, something like that. So look on the bright side, it’s 80% likely to be great. But I think AI risk mitigation is important. Being a multi-planet species would be a massive risk mitigation. And I do want to once again emphasize the importance of having enough children to sustain our numbers, and not plummet into population collapse, which is currently happening. Population collapse is a real and current thing.
Digital super intelligence is possibly a great filter. I hope it isn’t, but it might be. Guys like say Jeff Hinton would say, he invented a number of the key principles in artificial intelligence. I think he puts the probability of AI annihilation around 10% to 20%, something like that. So look on the bright side, it’s 80% likely to be great. But I think AI risk mitigation is important. Being a multi-planet species would be a massive risk mitigation. And I do want to once again emphasize the importance of having enough children to sustain our numbers, and not plummet into population collapse, which is currently happening. Population collapse is a real and current thing.
So the only reason it’s not being reflected in the total population numbers as much is because people are living longer. But it’s easy to predict, say what the population of any given country will be. Just take the birth rate last year, how many babies were born, multiply that by life expectancy and that’s what the population will be, steady state, if the birth rate continues to that level. But if it keeps declining, it will be even less and eventually dwindle to nothing. So I keep banging on the baby drum here, for a reason, because it has been the source of civilizational collapse over and over again throughout history. And so why don’t we just not try to stave off that day?
Lex Fridman
Well in that way, I have miserably failed civilization and I’m trying, hoping to fix that. I would love to have many kids.
Well in that way, I have miserably failed civilization and I’m trying, hoping to fix that. I would love to have many kids.
Elon Musk
Great. Hope you do. No time like the present.
Great. Hope you do. No time like the present.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, I got to allocate more compute to the whole process, but apparently it’s not that difficult.
Yeah, I got to allocate more compute to the whole process, but apparently it’s not that difficult.
Elon Musk
No, it’s like unskilled labor.
No, it’s like unskilled labor.
Lex Fridman
Well, one of the things you do for me, for the world, is to inspire us with what the future could be. And so some of the things we’ve talked about, some of the things you’re building, alleviating human suffering with Neuralink and expanding the capabilities of the human mind, trying to build a colony on Mars. So creating a backup for humanity on another planet and exploring the possibilities of what artificial intelligence could be in this world, especially in the real world, AI with hundreds of millions, maybe billions of robots walking around.
Well, one of the things you do for me, for the world, is to inspire us with what the future could be. And so some of the things we’ve talked about, some of the things you’re building, alleviating human suffering with Neuralink and expanding the capabilities of the human mind, trying to build a colony on Mars. So creating a backup for humanity on another planet and exploring the possibilities of what artificial intelligence could be in this world, especially in the real world, AI with hundreds of millions, maybe billions of robots walking around.
Elon Musk
There will be billions of robots. That seems virtual certainty.
There will be billions of robots. That seems virtual certainty.
Lex Fridman
Well, thank you for building the future and thank you for inspiring so many of us to keep building and creating cool stuff, including kids.
Well, thank you for building the future and thank you for inspiring so many of us to keep building and creating cool stuff, including kids.
Elon Musk
You’re welcome. Go forth and multiply.
You’re welcome. Go forth and multiply.
DJ Seo
Lex Fridman
Go forth, multiply. Thank you Elon. Thanks for talking about it. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Elon Musk. And now, dear friends, here’s DJ Seo, the Co-Founder, President and COO of Neuralink. When did you first become fascinated by the human brain?
Go forth, multiply. Thank you Elon. Thanks for talking about it. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Elon Musk. And now, dear friends, here’s DJ Seo, the Co-Founder, President and COO of Neuralink. When did you first become fascinated by the human brain?
DJ Seo
For me, I was always interested in understanding the purpose of things and how it was engineered to serve that purpose, whether it’s organic or inorganic, like we were talking earlier about your curtain holders. They serve a clear purpose and they were engineered with that purpose in mind. And growing up I had a lot of interest in seeing things, touching things, feeling things, and trying to really understand the root of how it was designed to serve that purpose. And obviously brain is just a fascinating organ that we all carry. It’s an infinitely powerful machine that has intelligence and cognition that arise from it. And we haven’t even scratched the surface in terms of how all of that occurs.
For me, I was always interested in understanding the purpose of things and how it was engineered to serve that purpose, whether it’s organic or inorganic, like we were talking earlier about your curtain holders. They serve a clear purpose and they were engineered with that purpose in mind. And growing up I had a lot of interest in seeing things, touching things, feeling things, and trying to really understand the root of how it was designed to serve that purpose. And obviously brain is just a fascinating organ that we all carry. It’s an infinitely powerful machine that has intelligence and cognition that arise from it. And we haven’t even scratched the surface in terms of how all of that occurs.
But also at the same time, I think it took me a while to make that connection to really studying and building tech to understand the brain. Not until graduate school. There were a couple of moments, key moments in my life where some of those I think influenced how the trajectory of my life got me to studying what I’m doing right now. One was growing up, both sides of my family, my grandparents had a very severe form of Alzheimer and it’s incredibly debilitating conditions. I mean, literally you’re seeing someone’s whole identity and their mind just losing over time. And I just remember thinking how both the power of the mind, but also how something like that could really lose your sense of identity.
Lex Fridman
It’s fascinating that that is one of the ways to reveal the power of a thing by watching it lose the power.
It’s fascinating that that is one of the ways to reveal the power of a thing by watching it lose the power.
DJ Seo
Yeah, a lot of what we know about the brain actually comes from these cases where there are trauma to the brain or some parts of the brain that led someone to lose certain abilities. And as a result there’s some correlation and understanding of that part of the tissue being critical for that function. And it’s an incredibly fragile organ, if you think about it that way. But also it’s incredibly plastic and incredibly resilient in many different ways.
Yeah, a lot of what we know about the brain actually comes from these cases where there are trauma to the brain or some parts of the brain that led someone to lose certain abilities. And as a result there’s some correlation and understanding of that part of the tissue being critical for that function. And it’s an incredibly fragile organ, if you think about it that way. But also it’s incredibly plastic and incredibly resilient in many different ways.
Lex Fridman
And by the way, the term plastic as we’ll use a bunch, means that it’s adaptable. So neuroplasticity refers to the adaptability of the human brain?
And by the way, the term plastic as we’ll use a bunch, means that it’s adaptable. So neuroplasticity refers to the adaptability of the human brain?
DJ Seo
Correct. Another key moment that sort of influenced how the trajectory of my life have shaped towards the current focus of my life has been during my teenage year when I came to the US. I didn’t speak a word of English. There was a huge language barrier and there was a lot of struggle to connect with my peers around me because I didn’t understand the artificial construct that we have created called language, specifically English in this case. And I remember feeling pretty isolated, not being able to connect with peers around me. So spent a lot of time just on my own reading books, watching movies, and I naturally sort of gravitated towards sci-fi books. I just found them really, really interesting. And also it was a great way for me to learn English.
Correct. Another key moment that sort of influenced how the trajectory of my life have shaped towards the current focus of my life has been during my teenage year when I came to the US. I didn’t speak a word of English. There was a huge language barrier and there was a lot of struggle to connect with my peers around me because I didn’t understand the artificial construct that we have created called language, specifically English in this case. And I remember feeling pretty isolated, not being able to connect with peers around me. So spent a lot of time just on my own reading books, watching movies, and I naturally sort of gravitated towards sci-fi books. I just found them really, really interesting. And also it was a great way for me to learn English.
Some of the first set of books that I picked up are Enders Game, the whole saga by Orson Scott Card and Neuromancer from William Gibson and Snow Crash from Neal Stephenson. And movies like Matrix, what’s coming out around that time point that really influenced how I think about the potential impact that technology can have for our lives in general.
So fast track to my college years, I was always fascinated by just physical stuff, building physical stuff and especially physical things that had some sort of intelligence. And I studied electrical engineering during undergrad and I started out my research in MEMS, so micro electromechanical systems and really building these tiny nano structures for temperature sensing. And I just found that to be just incredibly rewarding and fascinating subject to just understand how you can build something miniature like that, that again, serve a function and had a purpose. Then I spent large majority of my college years basically building millimeter wave circuits for next gen telecommunication systems for imaging. And it was just something that I found very, very intellectually interesting. Phase arrays, how the signal processing works for any modern as well as next gen telecommunication system, wireless and wire line, EM waves or electromagnetic waves are fascinating.
How do you design antennas that are most efficient in a small footprint that you have? How do you make these things energy efficient? That was something that just consumed my intellectual curiosity and that journey led me to actually apply to and find myself at PhD program at UC Berkeley, at this consortium called the Berkeley Wireless Research Center that was precisely looking at building… At the time, we called it XG, similar to 3G, 4G, 5G, but the next, next generation G system and how you would design circuits around that to ultimately go on phones and basically any other devices that are wirelessly connected these days. So I was just absolutely just fascinated by how that entire system works and that infrastructure works.
And then also during grad school, I had sort of the fortune of having a couple of research fellowships that led me to pursue whatever project that I want. And that’s one of the things that I really enjoyed about my graduate school career, where you got to kind of pursue your intellectual curiosity in the domain that may not matter at the end of the day, but is something that really allows you the opportunity to go as deeply as you want, as well as widely as you want. And at the time I was actually working on this project called the Smart Bandaid, and the idea was that when you get a wound, there’s a lot of other proliferation of signaling pathway that cells follow to close that wound. And there were hypotheses that when you apply external electric field, you can actually accelerate the closing of that field by having basically electro taxing of the cells around that wound site.
And specifically not just for a normal wound, there are chronic wounds that don’t heal. So we were interested in building some sort of a wearable patch that you could apply to facilitate that healing process. And that was in collaboration with Professor Michel Maharbiz, which was a great addition to my thesis committee and it really shaped the rest of my PhD career.
Lex Fridman
So this would be the first time you interacted with biology, I suppose?
So this would be the first time you interacted with biology, I suppose?
DJ Seo
Correct. I mean there were some peripheral end application of the wireless imaging and telecommunication system that I was using for security and bio imaging. But this was a very clear direct application to biology and biological system and understanding the constraints around that and really designing and engineering electrical solutions around that. So that was my first introduction and that’s also kind of how I got introduced to Michel. He’s sort of known for remote control of beetles in the early two thousands.
Correct. I mean there were some peripheral end application of the wireless imaging and telecommunication system that I was using for security and bio imaging. But this was a very clear direct application to biology and biological system and understanding the constraints around that and really designing and engineering electrical solutions around that. So that was my first introduction and that’s also kind of how I got introduced to Michel. He’s sort of known for remote control of beetles in the early two thousands.
Neural dust
And then around 2013, obviously the holy grail when it comes to implantable system is to understand how small of a thing you can make, and a lot of that is driven by how much energy or how much power you can supply to it and how you extract data from it. At the time at Berkeley, there was this desire to understand in the neural space what sort of system you can build to really miniaturize these implantable systems. And I distinctively remember this one particular meeting where Michel came in and he’s like, “Guys, I think I have a solution. The solution is ultrasound.” And then he proceeded to walk through why that is the case. And that really formed the basis for my thesis work called Neural dust system, that was looking at ways to use ultrasound as opposed to electromagnetic waves for powering as well as communication. I guess I should step back and say the initial goal of the project was to build these tiny, about a size of a neuron, implantable system that can be parked next to a neuron, being able to record its state and being able to ping that back to the outside world for doing something useful. And as I mentioned, the size of the implantable system is limited by how you power the thing and get the data off of it. And at the end of the day, fundamentally, if you look at a human body, we’re essentially bag of salt water with some interesting proteins and chemicals, but its mostly salt water that’s very, very well temperature regulated at 37 degrees Celsius.
And we’ll get into how, and later why that’s an extremely harsh environment for any electronics to survive. As I’m sure you’ve experienced or maybe not experienced, dropping cell phone in a salt water in an ocean, it will instantly kill the device. But anyways, just in general, electromagnetic waves don’t penetrate through this environment well and just the speed of light, it is what it is, we can’t change it. And based on the wavelength at which you are interfacing with the device, the device just needs to be big. These inductors needs to be quite big. And the general good rule of thumb is that you want the wavefront to be roughly on the order of the size of the thing that you’re interfacing with. So an implantable system that is around 10 to a hundred micron in dimension in a volume, which is about the size of a neuron that you see in a human body, you would have to operate at hundreds of gigahertz. Which number one, not only is it difficult to build electronics operating at those frequencies, but also the body just attenuates to that very, very significantly.
So the interesting kind of insight of this ultrasound was the fact that ultrasound just travels a lot more effectively in the human body tissue compared to electromagnetic waves. And this is something that you encounter, and I’m sure most people have encountered in their lives when you go to hospitals that are medical ultrasound sonograph. And they go into very, very deep depth without attenuating too much, too much of the signal. So all in all, ultrasound, the fact that it travels through the body extremely well and the mechanism to which it travels to the body really well is that just the wavefront is very different. Electromagnetic waves are transverse, whereas in ultrasound waves are compressive. It’s just a completely different mode of wavefront propagation. And as well as, speed of sound is orders and orders of magnitude less than speed of light, which means that even at 10 megahertz ultrasound wave, your wavefront ultimately is a very, very small wavelength.
So if you’re talking about interfacing with the 10 micron or a hundred micron type structure, you would have 150 micron wavefront at 10 megahertz. And building electronics at those frequencies are much, much easier and they’re a lot more efficient. So the basic idea was born out of using ultrasound as a mechanism for powering the device and then also getting data back. So now the question is how do you get the data back? The mechanism to which we landed on is what’s called backscattering. This is actually something that is very common and that we interface on a day-to-day basis with our RFID cards, radio frequency ID tags. Where there’s actually rarely in your ID a battery inside, there’s an antenna and there’s some sort of coil that has your serial identification ID, and then there’s an external device called the reader that then sends a wavefront and then you reflect back that wavefront with some sort of modulation that’s unique to your ID. That’s what’s called backscattering fundamentally.
So the tag itself actually doesn’t have to consume that much energy. That was the mechanism through which we were thinking about sending the data back. When you have an external ultrasonic transducer that’s sending ultrasonic wave to your implant, the neural dust implant, and it records some information about its environment, whether it’s a neuron firing or some other state of the tissue that it’s interfacing with. And then it just amplitude modulates the wavefront that comes back to the source.
Lex Fridman
And the recording step would be the only one that requires any energy. So what would require energy in that low step?
And the recording step would be the only one that requires any energy. So what would require energy in that low step?
DJ Seo
Correct. So it is that initial startup circuitry to get that recording, amplifying it, and then just modulating. And the mechanism to which that you can enable that is there is this specialized crystal called piezoelectric crystals that are able to convert sound energy into electrical energy and vice versa. So you can kind of have this interplay between the ultrasonic domain and electrical domain that is the biological tissue.
Correct. So it is that initial startup circuitry to get that recording, amplifying it, and then just modulating. And the mechanism to which that you can enable that is there is this specialized crystal called piezoelectric crystals that are able to convert sound energy into electrical energy and vice versa. So you can kind of have this interplay between the ultrasonic domain and electrical domain that is the biological tissue.
History of brain–computer interface
Lex Fridman
So on the theme of parking very small computational devices next to neurons, that’s the dream, the vision of brain computer interfaces. Maybe before we talk about Neuralink, can you give a sense of the history of the field of BCI? What has been maybe the continued dream and also some of the milestones along the way of the different approaches and the amazing work done at the various labs?
So on the theme of parking very small computational devices next to neurons, that’s the dream, the vision of brain computer interfaces. Maybe before we talk about Neuralink, can you give a sense of the history of the field of BCI? What has been maybe the continued dream and also some of the milestones along the way of the different approaches and the amazing work done at the various labs?
DJ Seo
I think a good starting point is going back to 1790s.
I think a good starting point is going back to 1790s.
Lex Fridman
I did not expect that.
I did not expect that.
DJ Seo
Where the concept of animal electricity or the fact that body’s electric was first discovered by Luigi Galvani, where he had this famous experiment where he connected set of electrodes to a frog leg and ran current through it, and then it started twitching and he said, “Oh my goodness, body’s electric.” So fast forward many, many years to 1920s where Hans Berger, who’s a German psychiatrist, discovered EEG or electroencephalography, which is still around. There are these electrode arrays that you wear outside the skull that gives you some sort of neural recording. That was a very, very big milestone that you can record some sort of activities about the human mind. And then in the 1940s there were these group of scientists, Renshaw, Forbes and Morison that inserted these glass micro electrodes into the cortex and recorded single neurons. The fact that there’s signal that are a bit more high resolution and high fidelity as you get closer to the source, let’s say. And in the 1950s, these two scientists, Hodgkin and Huxley showed up-
Where the concept of animal electricity or the fact that body’s electric was first discovered by Luigi Galvani, where he had this famous experiment where he connected set of electrodes to a frog leg and ran current through it, and then it started twitching and he said, “Oh my goodness, body’s electric.” So fast forward many, many years to 1920s where Hans Berger, who’s a German psychiatrist, discovered EEG or electroencephalography, which is still around. There are these electrode arrays that you wear outside the skull that gives you some sort of neural recording. That was a very, very big milestone that you can record some sort of activities about the human mind. And then in the 1940s there were these group of scientists, Renshaw, Forbes and Morison that inserted these glass micro electrodes into the cortex and recorded single neurons. The fact that there’s signal that are a bit more high resolution and high fidelity as you get closer to the source, let’s say. And in the 1950s, these two scientists, Hodgkin and Huxley showed up-
DJ Seo
These two scientists, Hodgkin and Huxley showed up and they built this beautiful, beautiful models of the cell membrane and the ionic mechanism, and had these circuit diagram. And as someone who’s an electrical engineer, it’s a beautiful model that’s built out of these partial differential equations, talking about flow of ions and how that really leads to how neurons communicate. And they won the Nobel Prize for that 10 years later in the 1960s.
These two scientists, Hodgkin and Huxley showed up and they built this beautiful, beautiful models of the cell membrane and the ionic mechanism, and had these circuit diagram. And as someone who’s an electrical engineer, it’s a beautiful model that’s built out of these partial differential equations, talking about flow of ions and how that really leads to how neurons communicate. And they won the Nobel Prize for that 10 years later in the 1960s.
So in 1969, Eb Fetz from University of Washington published this beautiful paper called Operant Conditioning of Cortical Unit Activity, where he was able to record a single unit neuron from a monkey and was able to have the monkey modulated based on its activity and reward system. So I would say this is the very, very first example, as far as I’m aware, of close loop brain computer interface or BCI.
Lex Fridman
The abstract reads, “The activity of single neurons in precentral cortex of unanesthetized monkeys was conditioned by reinforcing high rates of neuronal discharge with delivery of a food pellet. Auditory or visual feedback of unit firing rates was usually provided in addition to food reinforcement.” Cool. So they actually got it done.
The abstract reads, “The activity of single neurons in precentral cortex of unanesthetized monkeys was conditioned by reinforcing high rates of neuronal discharge with delivery of a food pellet. Auditory or visual feedback of unit firing rates was usually provided in addition to food reinforcement.” Cool. So they actually got it done.
DJ Seo
They got it done. This is back in 1969.
They got it done. This is back in 1969.
Lex Fridman
” After several training sessions, monkeys could increase the activity of newly isolated cells by 50 to 500% above rates before reinforcement.” Fascinating.
” After several training sessions, monkeys could increase the activity of newly isolated cells by 50 to 500% above rates before reinforcement.” Fascinating.
DJ Seo
Brain is very [inaudible 01:46:45].
Brain is very [inaudible 01:46:45].
Lex Fridman
And so from here, the number of experiments grew.
And so from here, the number of experiments grew.
DJ Seo
Yeah. Number of experiments, as well as set of tools to interface with the brain have just exploded. And also, just understanding the neural code and how some of the cortical layers and the functions are organized. So the other paper that is pretty seminal, especially in the motor decoding, was this paper in the 1980s from Georgopoulos that discovered that there’s this thing called motor tuning curve. So what are motor tuning curves? It’s the fact that there are neurons in the motor cortex of mammals, including humans, that have a preferential direction that causes them to fire. So what that means is, there are a set of neurons that would increase their spiking activities when you’re thinking about moving to the left, right, up, down, and any of those vectors. And based on that, you could start to think, well, if you can’t identify those essential eigenvectors, you can do a lot. And you can actually use that information for actually decoding someone’s intended movement from the cortex. So that was a very, very seminal paper that showed that there is some sort of code that you can extract, especially in the motor cortex.
Yeah. Number of experiments, as well as set of tools to interface with the brain have just exploded. And also, just understanding the neural code and how some of the cortical layers and the functions are organized. So the other paper that is pretty seminal, especially in the motor decoding, was this paper in the 1980s from Georgopoulos that discovered that there’s this thing called motor tuning curve. So what are motor tuning curves? It’s the fact that there are neurons in the motor cortex of mammals, including humans, that have a preferential direction that causes them to fire. So what that means is, there are a set of neurons that would increase their spiking activities when you’re thinking about moving to the left, right, up, down, and any of those vectors. And based on that, you could start to think, well, if you can’t identify those essential eigenvectors, you can do a lot. And you can actually use that information for actually decoding someone’s intended movement from the cortex. So that was a very, very seminal paper that showed that there is some sort of code that you can extract, especially in the motor cortex.
Lex Fridman
So there’s signal there. And if you measure the electrical signal from the brain that you could actually figure out what the intention was.
So there’s signal there. And if you measure the electrical signal from the brain that you could actually figure out what the intention was.
DJ Seo
Correct. Yeah, not only electrical signals, but electrical signals from the right set of neurons that give you these preferential direction.
Correct. Yeah, not only electrical signals, but electrical signals from the right set of neurons that give you these preferential direction.
Lex Fridman
Okay. So going slowly towards Neuralink, one interesting question is, what do we understand on the BCI front, on invasive versus non-invasive, from this line of work? How important is it to park next to the neuron? What does that get you?
Okay. So going slowly towards Neuralink, one interesting question is, what do we understand on the BCI front, on invasive versus non-invasive, from this line of work? How important is it to park next to the neuron? What does that get you?
DJ Seo
That answer fundamentally depends on what you want to do with it. There’s actually incredible amount of stuff that you can do with EEG and electrocortical graph, ECOG, which actually doesn’t penetrate the cortical layer or parenchyma, but you place a set of electrodes on the surface of the brain. So the thing that I’m personally very interested in is just actually understanding and being able to just really tap into the high resolution, high fidelity, understanding of the activities that are happening at the local level. And we can get into biophysics, but just to step back to use analogy, because analogy here can be useful, and sometimes it’s a little bit difficult to think about electricity. At the end of the day, we’re doing electrical recording that’s mediated by ionic currents, movements of these charged particles, which is really, really hard for most people to think about.
That answer fundamentally depends on what you want to do with it. There’s actually incredible amount of stuff that you can do with EEG and electrocortical graph, ECOG, which actually doesn’t penetrate the cortical layer or parenchyma, but you place a set of electrodes on the surface of the brain. So the thing that I’m personally very interested in is just actually understanding and being able to just really tap into the high resolution, high fidelity, understanding of the activities that are happening at the local level. And we can get into biophysics, but just to step back to use analogy, because analogy here can be useful, and sometimes it’s a little bit difficult to think about electricity. At the end of the day, we’re doing electrical recording that’s mediated by ionic currents, movements of these charged particles, which is really, really hard for most people to think about.
But turns out, a lot of the activities that are happening in the brain and the frequency bandwidth with which that’s happening, is actually very, very similar to sound waves and our normal conversation audible range. So the analogy that typically is used in the field is, if you have a football stadium, there’s a game going on. If you stand outside the stadium, you maybe get a sense of how the game is going based on the cheers and the boos of the home crowd, whether the team is winning or not. But you have absolutely no idea what the score is, you have absolutely no idea what individual audience or the players are talking or saying to each other, what the next play is, what the next goal is. So what you have to do is you have to drop the microphone into the stadium and then get near the source into the individual chatter. In this specific example, you would want to have it right next to where the huddle is happening.
So I think that’s kind of a good illustration of what we’re trying to do when we say invasive or minimally invasive or implanted brain computer interfaces versus non-invasive or non-implanted brain interfaces. It’s basically talking about where do you put that microphone and what can you do with that information.
Biophysics of neural interfaces
Lex Fridman
So what is the biophysics of the read and write communication that we’re talking about here as we now step into the efforts at Neuralink?
So what is the biophysics of the read and write communication that we’re talking about here as we now step into the efforts at Neuralink?
DJ Seo
Yeah. So brain is made up of these specialized cells called neurons. There’s billions of them, tens of billions, sometimes people call it a hundred billion, that are connected in this complex yet dynamic network that are constantly remodeling. They’re changing their synaptic weights, and that’s what we typically call neuroplasticity. And the neurons are also bathed in this charged environment that is latent with many charge molecules like potassium ions, sodium ions, chlorine ions. And those actually facilitate these, through ionic current, communication between these different networks.
Yeah. So brain is made up of these specialized cells called neurons. There’s billions of them, tens of billions, sometimes people call it a hundred billion, that are connected in this complex yet dynamic network that are constantly remodeling. They’re changing their synaptic weights, and that’s what we typically call neuroplasticity. And the neurons are also bathed in this charged environment that is latent with many charge molecules like potassium ions, sodium ions, chlorine ions. And those actually facilitate these, through ionic current, communication between these different networks.
And when you look at a neuron as well, they have these membrane with a beautiful, beautiful protein structure called the voltage selective ion channels, which in my opinion, is one of nature’s best inventions. In many ways, if you think about what they are, they’re doing the job of a modern day transistors. Transistors are nothing more, at the end of the day, than a voltage-gated conduction channel. And nature found a way to have that very, very early on in its evolution. And as we all know, with the transistor, you can have many, many computation and a lot of amazing things that we have access to today. So I think it’s one of those, just as a tangent, just a beautiful, beautiful invention that the nature came up with, these voltage-gated ion channels.
Lex Fridman
I suppose there’s, on the biological of it, every level of the complexity, of the hierarchy, of the organism, there’s going to be some mechanisms for storing information and for doing computation. And this is just one such way. But to do that with biological and chemical components is interesting. Plus, when neurons, it’s not just electricity, it’s chemical communication, it’s also mechanical. These are actual objects that vibrate, they move. It’s all of that.
I suppose there’s, on the biological of it, every level of the complexity, of the hierarchy, of the organism, there’s going to be some mechanisms for storing information and for doing computation. And this is just one such way. But to do that with biological and chemical components is interesting. Plus, when neurons, it’s not just electricity, it’s chemical communication, it’s also mechanical. These are actual objects that vibrate, they move. It’s all of that.
DJ Seo
Yeah, actually there’s a lot of really, really interesting physics that are involved in kind of going back to my work on ultrasound during grad school, there were groups and there are still groups looking at ways to cause neurons to actually fire an action potential using ultrasound wave. And the mechanism to which that’s happening is still unclear, as I understand. It may just be that you’re imparting some sort of thermal energy and that causes cells to depolarize in some interesting ways. But there are also these ion channels, or even membranes, that actually just open up as pore as they’re being mechanically shook, vibrated. There’s just a lot of elements of these, move particles, which again, that’s governed by diffusion physics, movements of particles. And there’s also a lot of interesting physics there.
Yeah, actually there’s a lot of really, really interesting physics that are involved in kind of going back to my work on ultrasound during grad school, there were groups and there are still groups looking at ways to cause neurons to actually fire an action potential using ultrasound wave. And the mechanism to which that’s happening is still unclear, as I understand. It may just be that you’re imparting some sort of thermal energy and that causes cells to depolarize in some interesting ways. But there are also these ion channels, or even membranes, that actually just open up as pore as they’re being mechanically shook, vibrated. There’s just a lot of elements of these, move particles, which again, that’s governed by diffusion physics, movements of particles. And there’s also a lot of interesting physics there.
Lex Fridman
Also, not to mention, as Roger Penrose talks about, there might be some beautiful weirdness in the quantum mechanical effects of all of this.
Also, not to mention, as Roger Penrose talks about, there might be some beautiful weirdness in the quantum mechanical effects of all of this.
DJ Seo
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Lex Fridman
And he actually believes that consciousness might emerge from the quantum mechanical effects there. So there’s physics, there’s chemistry, there’s biology, all of that is going on there.
And he actually believes that consciousness might emerge from the quantum mechanical effects there. So there’s physics, there’s chemistry, there’s biology, all of that is going on there.
DJ Seo
Oh, yeah. Yes, there’s a lot of levels of physics that you can dive into. But yeah, in the end, you have these membranes with these voltage-gated ion channels that selectively let these charged molecules that are in the extracellular matrix, in and out. And these neurons generally have these resting potential where there’s a voltage difference between inside the cell and outside the cell. And when there’s some sort of stimuli that changes the state such that they need to send information to the downstream network, you start to see these orchestration of these different molecules going in and out of these channels. They also open up. More of them open up once it reaches some threshold, to a point where you have a depolarizing cell that sends an action potential. So it’s just a very beautiful kind of orchestration of these molecules. And what we’re trying to do when we place an electrode or parking it next to a neuron is that you’re trying to measure these local changes in the potential. Again, mediated by the movements of the ions.
Oh, yeah. Yes, there’s a lot of levels of physics that you can dive into. But yeah, in the end, you have these membranes with these voltage-gated ion channels that selectively let these charged molecules that are in the extracellular matrix, in and out. And these neurons generally have these resting potential where there’s a voltage difference between inside the cell and outside the cell. And when there’s some sort of stimuli that changes the state such that they need to send information to the downstream network, you start to see these orchestration of these different molecules going in and out of these channels. They also open up. More of them open up once it reaches some threshold, to a point where you have a depolarizing cell that sends an action potential. So it’s just a very beautiful kind of orchestration of these molecules. And what we’re trying to do when we place an electrode or parking it next to a neuron is that you’re trying to measure these local changes in the potential. Again, mediated by the movements of the ions.
And what’s interesting, as I mentioned earlier, there’s a lot of physics involved. And the two dominant physics for this electrical recording domain is diffusion physics and electromagnetism. And where one dominates, where Maxwell’s equation dominates versus Fick’s law dominates depends on where your electrode is. If it’s close to the source, mostly electromagnetic-based. When you’re further away from it, it’s more diffusion-based. So essentially, when you’re able to park it next to it, you can listen in on those individual chatter and those local changes in the potential. And the type of signal that you get are these canonical textbook neural spiking waveform. The moment you’re further away, and based on some of the studies that people have done, Christof Koch’s lab, and others, once you’re away from that source by roughly around a hundred micron, which is about a width of a human hair, you no longer hear from that neuron. You’re no longer able to have the system sensitive enough to be able to record that particular local membrane potential change in that neuron.
And just to give you a sense of scale also, when you look at a hundred micron voxel, so a hundred micron by a hundred micron by a hundred micron box in a brain tissue, there’s roughly around 40 neurons, and whatever number of connections that they have. So there’s a lot in that volume of tissue. So the moment you’re outside of that, there’s just no hope that you’ll be able to detect that change from that one specific neuron that you may care about.
Lex Fridman
But as you’re moving about this space, you’ll be hearing other ones. So if you move another a hundred micron, you’ll be hearing chatter from another community.
But as you’re moving about this space, you’ll be hearing other ones. So if you move another a hundred micron, you’ll be hearing chatter from another community.
DJ Seo
Correct.
Correct.
Lex Fridman
And so the whole sense is, you want to place as many as possible electrodes, and then you’re listening to the chatter.
And so the whole sense is, you want to place as many as possible electrodes, and then you’re listening to the chatter.
DJ Seo
Yeah, you want to listen to the chatter. And at the end of the day, you also want to basically let the software do the job of decoding. And just to kind of go to why ECOG and EEG work at all. When you have these local changes, obviously it’s not just this one neuron that’s activating, there’s many, many other networks that are activating all the time. And you do see sort of a general change in the potential of this electrode, this charged medium, and that’s what you’re recording when you’re farther away. I mean, you still have some reference electrode that’s stable in the brain, that’s just electro- active organ, and you’re seeing some combination, aggregate action, potential changes, and then you can pick it up. It’s a much slower changing signals. But there are these canonical oscillations and waves like gamma waves, beta waves, when you sleep, that can be detected because there’s sort of a synchronized global effect of the brain that you can detect. And the physics of this go, if we really want to go down that rabbit hole, there’s a lot that goes on in terms of why diffusion physics at some point dominates when you’re further away from the source. It is just a charged medium. So similar to how when you have electromagnetic waves propagating in atmosphere or in a charged medium like a plasma, there’s this weird shielding that happens that actually further attenuates the signal as you move away from it. So yeah, you see, if you do a really, really deep dive on the signal attenuation over distance, you start to see one over R square in the beginning and then exponential drop off, and that’s the knee at which you go from electromagnetism dominating to diffusion physic dominating.
Yeah, you want to listen to the chatter. And at the end of the day, you also want to basically let the software do the job of decoding. And just to kind of go to why ECOG and EEG work at all. When you have these local changes, obviously it’s not just this one neuron that’s activating, there’s many, many other networks that are activating all the time. And you do see sort of a general change in the potential of this electrode, this charged medium, and that’s what you’re recording when you’re farther away. I mean, you still have some reference electrode that’s stable in the brain, that’s just electro- active organ, and you’re seeing some combination, aggregate action, potential changes, and then you can pick it up. It’s a much slower changing signals. But there are these canonical oscillations and waves like gamma waves, beta waves, when you sleep, that can be detected because there’s sort of a synchronized global effect of the brain that you can detect. And the physics of this go, if we really want to go down that rabbit hole, there’s a lot that goes on in terms of why diffusion physics at some point dominates when you’re further away from the source. It is just a charged medium. So similar to how when you have electromagnetic waves propagating in atmosphere or in a charged medium like a plasma, there’s this weird shielding that happens that actually further attenuates the signal as you move away from it. So yeah, you see, if you do a really, really deep dive on the signal attenuation over distance, you start to see one over R square in the beginning and then exponential drop off, and that’s the knee at which you go from electromagnetism dominating to diffusion physic dominating.
Lex Fridman
But once again, with the electrodes, the biophysics that you need to understand is not as deep because no matter where you’re placing it, you’re listening to a small crowd of local neurons.
But once again, with the electrodes, the biophysics that you need to understand is not as deep because no matter where you’re placing it, you’re listening to a small crowd of local neurons.
DJ Seo
Correct, yeah. So once you penetrate the brain, you’re in the arena, so to speak.
Correct, yeah. So once you penetrate the brain, you’re in the arena, so to speak.
Lex Fridman
And there’s a lot of neurons.
And there’s a lot of neurons.
DJ Seo
There are many, many of them.
There are many, many of them.
Lex Fridman
But then again, there’s a whole field of neuroscience that’s studying how the different groupings, the different sections of the seating in the arena, what they usually are responsible for, which is where the metaphor probably falls apart because the seating is not that organized in an arena.
But then again, there’s a whole field of neuroscience that’s studying how the different groupings, the different sections of the seating in the arena, what they usually are responsible for, which is where the metaphor probably falls apart because the seating is not that organized in an arena.
DJ Seo
Also, most of them are silent. They don’t really do much. Or their activities are… You have to hit it with just the right set of stimulus.
Also, most of them are silent. They don’t really do much. Or their activities are… You have to hit it with just the right set of stimulus.
Lex Fridman
So they’re usually quiet.
So they’re usually quiet.
DJ Seo
They’re usually very quiet. Similar to dark energy and dark matter, there’s dark neurons. What are they all doing? When you place these electrodes, again, within this hundred micron volume, you have 40 or so neurons. Why do you not see 40 neurons? Why do you see only a handful? What is happening there?
They’re usually very quiet. Similar to dark energy and dark matter, there’s dark neurons. What are they all doing? When you place these electrodes, again, within this hundred micron volume, you have 40 or so neurons. Why do you not see 40 neurons? Why do you see only a handful? What is happening there?
How Neuralink works
Lex Fridman
Well, they’re mostly quiet, but when they speak, they say profound shit. That’s the way I’d like to think about it. Anyway, before we zoom in even more, let’s zoom out. So how does Neuralink work from the surgery to the implant, to the signal and the decoding process, and the human being able to use the implant to actually affect the world outside? And all of this, I’m asking in the context of, there’s a gigantic historic milestone that Neuralink just accomplished in January of this year. Putting a Neuralink implant in the first human being, Noland. And there’s been a lot to talk about there about his experience because he’s able to describe all the nuance and the beauty and the fascinating complexity of that experience of everything involved. But on the technical level, how does Neuralink work?
Well, they’re mostly quiet, but when they speak, they say profound shit. That’s the way I’d like to think about it. Anyway, before we zoom in even more, let’s zoom out. So how does Neuralink work from the surgery to the implant, to the signal and the decoding process, and the human being able to use the implant to actually affect the world outside? And all of this, I’m asking in the context of, there’s a gigantic historic milestone that Neuralink just accomplished in January of this year. Putting a Neuralink implant in the first human being, Noland. And there’s been a lot to talk about there about his experience because he’s able to describe all the nuance and the beauty and the fascinating complexity of that experience of everything involved. But on the technical level, how does Neuralink work?
DJ Seo
So there are three major components to the technology that we’re building. One is the device, the thing that’s actually recording these neural chatters. We call it N1 Implant or The Link. And we have a surgical robot that’s actually doing an implantation of these tiny, tiny wires that we call threads that are smaller than human hair. And once everything is surgerized, you have these neural signals, these spiking neurons, that are coming out of the brain, and you need to have some sort of software to decode what the users intend to do with that. So there’s what’s called the Neuralink Application or B1 App that’s doing that translation. It’s running the very, very simple machine learning model that decodes these inputs that are neural signals and then convert it to a set of outputs that allows our first participant, Noland, to be able to control a cursor on the screen.
So there are three major components to the technology that we’re building. One is the device, the thing that’s actually recording these neural chatters. We call it N1 Implant or The Link. And we have a surgical robot that’s actually doing an implantation of these tiny, tiny wires that we call threads that are smaller than human hair. And once everything is surgerized, you have these neural signals, these spiking neurons, that are coming out of the brain, and you need to have some sort of software to decode what the users intend to do with that. So there’s what’s called the Neuralink Application or B1 App that’s doing that translation. It’s running the very, very simple machine learning model that decodes these inputs that are neural signals and then convert it to a set of outputs that allows our first participant, Noland, to be able to control a cursor on the screen.
Lex Fridman
And this is done wirelessly?
And this is done wirelessly?
DJ Seo
And this is done wirelessly. So our implant is actually a two-part. The link has these flexible tiny wires called threads that have multiple electrodes along its length. And they’re only inserted into the cortical layer, which is about three to five millimeters in a human brain, in the motor cortex region. That’s where the intention for movement lies in. And we have 64 of these threads, each thread having 16 electrodes along the span of three to four millimeters, separated by 200 microns. So you can actually record along the depth of the insertion. And based on that signal, there’s custom integrated circuit or ASIC that we built that amplifies the neural signals that you’re recording and then digitizing it and then has some mechanism for detecting whether there was an interesting event that is a spiking event, and decide to send that or not send that through Bluetooth to an external device, whether it’s a phone or a computer that’s running this Neuralink application.
And this is done wirelessly. So our implant is actually a two-part. The link has these flexible tiny wires called threads that have multiple electrodes along its length. And they’re only inserted into the cortical layer, which is about three to five millimeters in a human brain, in the motor cortex region. That’s where the intention for movement lies in. And we have 64 of these threads, each thread having 16 electrodes along the span of three to four millimeters, separated by 200 microns. So you can actually record along the depth of the insertion. And based on that signal, there’s custom integrated circuit or ASIC that we built that amplifies the neural signals that you’re recording and then digitizing it and then has some mechanism for detecting whether there was an interesting event that is a spiking event, and decide to send that or not send that through Bluetooth to an external device, whether it’s a phone or a computer that’s running this Neuralink application.
Lex Fridman
So there’s onboard signal processing already just to decide whether this is an interesting event or not. So there is some computational power on board in addition to the human brain?
So there’s onboard signal processing already just to decide whether this is an interesting event or not. So there is some computational power on board in addition to the human brain?
DJ Seo
Yeah. So it does the signal processing to really compress the amount of signal that you’re recording. So we have a total of thousand electrodes sampling at just under 20 kilohertz with 10 bit each. So that’s 200 megabits that’s coming through to the chip from thousand channel simultaneous neural recording. And that’s quite a bit of data, and there are technology available to send that off wirelessly. But being able to do that in a very, very thermally-constrained environment that is a brain. So there has to be some amount of compression that happens to send off only the interesting data that you need, which in this particular case for motor decoding is, occurrence of a spike or not. And then being able to use that to decode the intended cursor movement. So the implant itself processes it, figures out whether a spike happened or not with our spike detection algorithm, and then sends it off, packages it, sends it off through Bluetooth to an external device that then has the model to decode, okay, based on these spiking inputs, did Noland wish to go up, down, left, right, or click or right click or whatever.
Yeah. So it does the signal processing to really compress the amount of signal that you’re recording. So we have a total of thousand electrodes sampling at just under 20 kilohertz with 10 bit each. So that’s 200 megabits that’s coming through to the chip from thousand channel simultaneous neural recording. And that’s quite a bit of data, and there are technology available to send that off wirelessly. But being able to do that in a very, very thermally-constrained environment that is a brain. So there has to be some amount of compression that happens to send off only the interesting data that you need, which in this particular case for motor decoding is, occurrence of a spike or not. And then being able to use that to decode the intended cursor movement. So the implant itself processes it, figures out whether a spike happened or not with our spike detection algorithm, and then sends it off, packages it, sends it off through Bluetooth to an external device that then has the model to decode, okay, based on these spiking inputs, did Noland wish to go up, down, left, right, or click or right click or whatever.
Lex Fridman
All of this is really fascinating, but let’s stick on the N1 Implant itself. So the thing that’s in the brain. So I’m looking at a picture of it, there’s an enclosure, there’s a charging coil, so we didn’t talk about the charging, which is fascinating. The battery, the power electronics, the antenna. Then there’s the signal processing electronics. I wonder if there’s more kinds of signal processing you can do? That’s another question. And then there’s the threads themselves with the enclosure on the bottom. So maybe to ask about the charging. So there’s an external charging device?
All of this is really fascinating, but let’s stick on the N1 Implant itself. So the thing that’s in the brain. So I’m looking at a picture of it, there’s an enclosure, there’s a charging coil, so we didn’t talk about the charging, which is fascinating. The battery, the power electronics, the antenna. Then there’s the signal processing electronics. I wonder if there’s more kinds of signal processing you can do? That’s another question. And then there’s the threads themselves with the enclosure on the bottom. So maybe to ask about the charging. So there’s an external charging device?
Lex with Neuralink implant
DJ Seo
Yeah, there’s an external charging device. So yeah, the second part of the implant, the threads are the ones, again, just the last three to five millimeters are the ones that are actually penetrating the cortex. Rest of it is, actually most of the volume, is occupied by the battery, rechargeable battery, and it’s about a size of a quarter. I actually have a device here if you want to take a look at it. This is the flexible thread component of it, and then this is the implant. So it’s about a size of a US quarter. It’s about nine millimeters thick. So basically this implant, once you have the craniectomy and the directomy, threads are inserted, and the hole that you created, this craniectomy, gets replaced with that. So basically that thing plugs that hole, and you can screw in these self-drilling cranial screws to hold it in place. And at the end of the day, once you have the skin flap over, there’s only about two to three millimeters that’s obviously transitioning off of the top of the implant to where the screws are. And that’s the minor bump that you have.
Yeah, there’s an external charging device. So yeah, the second part of the implant, the threads are the ones, again, just the last three to five millimeters are the ones that are actually penetrating the cortex. Rest of it is, actually most of the volume, is occupied by the battery, rechargeable battery, and it’s about a size of a quarter. I actually have a device here if you want to take a look at it. This is the flexible thread component of it, and then this is the implant. So it’s about a size of a US quarter. It’s about nine millimeters thick. So basically this implant, once you have the craniectomy and the directomy, threads are inserted, and the hole that you created, this craniectomy, gets replaced with that. So basically that thing plugs that hole, and you can screw in these self-drilling cranial screws to hold it in place. And at the end of the day, once you have the skin flap over, there’s only about two to three millimeters that’s obviously transitioning off of the top of the implant to where the screws are. And that’s the minor bump that you have.
Lex Fridman
Those threads look tiny. That’s incredible. That is really incredible. That is really incredible. And also, you’re right, most of the actual volume is the battery. This is way smaller than I realized.
Those threads look tiny. That’s incredible. That is really incredible. That is really incredible. And also, you’re right, most of the actual volume is the battery. This is way smaller than I realized.
DJ Seo
Also, the threads themselves are quite strong.
Also, the threads themselves are quite strong.
Lex Fridman
They look strong.
They look strong.
DJ Seo
And the thread themselves also has a very interesting feature at the end of it called the loop. And that’s the mechanism to which the robot is able to interface and manipulate this tiny hair-like structure.
And the thread themselves also has a very interesting feature at the end of it called the loop. And that’s the mechanism to which the robot is able to interface and manipulate this tiny hair-like structure.
Lex Fridman
And they’re tiny. So what’s the width of a thread?
And they’re tiny. So what’s the width of a thread?
DJ Seo
So the width of a thread starts from 16 micron and then tapers out to about 84 micron. So average human hair is about 80 to 100 micron in width.
So the width of a thread starts from 16 micron and then tapers out to about 84 micron. So average human hair is about 80 to 100 micron in width.
Lex Fridman
This thing is amazing. This thing is amazing.
This thing is amazing. This thing is amazing.
DJ Seo
Yes, most of the volume is occupied by the battery, rechargeable lithium ion cell. And the charging is done through inductive charging, which is actually very commonly used. Your cell phone, most cell phones, have that. The biggest difference is that for us, usually when you have a phone and you want to charge it on the charging pad, you don’t really care how hot it gets. Whereas, in for us, it matters. There is a very strict regulation and good reasons to not actually increase the surrounding tissue temperature by two degrees Celsius. So there’s actually a lot of innovation that is packed into this to allow charging of this implant without causing that temperature threshold to reach.
Yes, most of the volume is occupied by the battery, rechargeable lithium ion cell. And the charging is done through inductive charging, which is actually very commonly used. Your cell phone, most cell phones, have that. The biggest difference is that for us, usually when you have a phone and you want to charge it on the charging pad, you don’t really care how hot it gets. Whereas, in for us, it matters. There is a very strict regulation and good reasons to not actually increase the surrounding tissue temperature by two degrees Celsius. So there’s actually a lot of innovation that is packed into this to allow charging of this implant without causing that temperature threshold to reach.
And even small things like, you see this charging coil and what’s called a ferrite shield. So without that ferrite shield, what you end up having when you have resonant inductive charging is that the battery itself is a metallic can, and you form these eddy currents from external charger and that causes heating, and that actually contributes to inefficiency in charging. So this ferrite shield, what it does, is that it actually concentrate that field line away from the battery and then around the coil that’s actually wrapped around it.
Lex Fridman
There’s a lot of really fascinating design here to make it, I mean, you’re integrating a computer into a biological, a complex biological system.
There’s a lot of really fascinating design here to make it, I mean, you’re integrating a computer into a biological, a complex biological system.
DJ Seo
Yeah, there’s a lot of innovation here. I would say that part of what enabled this was just the innovations in the wearable. There’s a lot of really, really powerful tiny, low-power microcontrollers, temperature sensors, or various different sensors and power electronics. A lot of innovation really came in the charging coil design, how this is packaged, and how do you enable charging such that you don’t really exceed that temperature limit, which is not a constraint for other devices out there.
Yeah, there’s a lot of innovation here. I would say that part of what enabled this was just the innovations in the wearable. There’s a lot of really, really powerful tiny, low-power microcontrollers, temperature sensors, or various different sensors and power electronics. A lot of innovation really came in the charging coil design, how this is packaged, and how do you enable charging such that you don’t really exceed that temperature limit, which is not a constraint for other devices out there.
Lex Fridman
So let’s talk about the threads themselves. Those tiny, tiny, tiny things. So how many of them are there? You mentioned a thousand electrodes. How many threads are there and what do the electrodes have to do with the threads?
So let’s talk about the threads themselves. Those tiny, tiny, tiny things. So how many of them are there? You mentioned a thousand electrodes. How many threads are there and what do the electrodes have to do with the threads?
DJ Seo
So the current instantiation of the device has 64 threads, and each thread has 16 electrodes for a total of 1,024 electrodes that are capable of both recording and stimulating. And the thread is basically this polymer-insulated wire. The metal conductor is the kind of a tiramisu cake of ti, plat, gold, plat, ti and they’re very, very tiny wires. Two micron in width. So two one-millionth of meter.
So the current instantiation of the device has 64 threads, and each thread has 16 electrodes for a total of 1,024 electrodes that are capable of both recording and stimulating. And the thread is basically this polymer-insulated wire. The metal conductor is the kind of a tiramisu cake of ti, plat, gold, plat, ti and they’re very, very tiny wires. Two micron in width. So two one-millionth of meter.
Lex Fridman
It’s crazy that that thing I’m looking at has the polymer-insulation, has the conducting material and has 16 electrodes at the end of it.
It’s crazy that that thing I’m looking at has the polymer-insulation, has the conducting material and has 16 electrodes at the end of it.
DJ Seo
On each of those thread.
On each of those thread.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, on each of those threads.
Yeah, on each of those threads.
DJ Seo
Correct.
Correct.
Lex Fridman
16, each one of those 64.
16, each one of those 64.
DJ Seo
Yes, you’re not going to be able to see it with naked eyes.
Yes, you’re not going to be able to see it with naked eyes.
Lex Fridman
And to state the obvious, or maybe for people who are just listening, they’re flexible?
And to state the obvious, or maybe for people who are just listening, they’re flexible?
DJ Seo
Yes, that’s also one element that was incredibly important for us. So each of these threads are now, as I mentioned, 16 micron in width, and then they taper to 84 micron, but in thickness they’re less than five micron. And in thickness it’s mostly a polyimide at the bottom and this metal track and then another polyimide. So two micron of polyimide, 400 nanometer of this metal stack and two micron of polyimide sandwiched together to protect it from the environment that is 37 degrees C bag of salt water.
Yes, that’s also one element that was incredibly important for us. So each of these threads are now, as I mentioned, 16 micron in width, and then they taper to 84 micron, but in thickness they’re less than five micron. And in thickness it’s mostly a polyimide at the bottom and this metal track and then another polyimide. So two micron of polyimide, 400 nanometer of this metal stack and two micron of polyimide sandwiched together to protect it from the environment that is 37 degrees C bag of salt water.
Lex Fridman
Maybe can you speak to some interesting aspects of the material design here? What does it take to design a thing like this and to be able to manufacture a thing like this? For people who don’t know anything about this kind of thing.
Maybe can you speak to some interesting aspects of the material design here? What does it take to design a thing like this and to be able to manufacture a thing like this? For people who don’t know anything about this kind of thing.
DJ Seo
So the material selection that we have is not, I don’t think it was particularly unique. There were other labs and there are other labs that are kind of looking at similar material stack. There’s kind of a fundamental question, and still needs to be answered, around the longevity and reliability of these microelectrodes that we call, compared to some of the other more conventional neural interfaces devices that are intracranial, so penetrating the cortex, that are more rigid, like the Utah Array. That are these four by four millimeter kind of silicon shank that have exposed recording site at the end of it. And that’s been kind of the innovation from Richard Normann back in 1997. It’s called the Utah Array because he was at University of Utah.
So the material selection that we have is not, I don’t think it was particularly unique. There were other labs and there are other labs that are kind of looking at similar material stack. There’s kind of a fundamental question, and still needs to be answered, around the longevity and reliability of these microelectrodes that we call, compared to some of the other more conventional neural interfaces devices that are intracranial, so penetrating the cortex, that are more rigid, like the Utah Array. That are these four by four millimeter kind of silicon shank that have exposed recording site at the end of it. And that’s been kind of the innovation from Richard Normann back in 1997. It’s called the Utah Array because he was at University of Utah.
Lex Fridman
And what does the Utah Array look like? So it’s a rigid type of [inaudible 02:14:41]?
And what does the Utah Array look like? So it’s a rigid type of [inaudible 02:14:41]?
DJ Seo
Yeah, so we can actually look it up. Yeah, so it’s a bed of needle. There’s-
Yeah, so we can actually look it up. Yeah, so it’s a bed of needle. There’s-
Lex Fridman
Okay, go ahead. I’m sorry.
Okay, go ahead. I’m sorry.
DJ Seo
Those are rigid shanks.
Those are rigid shanks.
Lex Fridman
Rigid, yeah, you weren’t kidding.
Rigid, yeah, you weren’t kidding.
DJ Seo
And the size and the number of shanks vary anywhere from 64 to 128. At the very tip of it, is an exposed electrode that actually records neural signal. The other thing that’s interesting to note is that unlike neural link threads that have recording electrodes that are actually exposed iridium oxide recording sites along the depth, this is only at a single depth. So these Utah Array spokes can be anywhere between 0.5 millimeters to 1.5 millimeter, and they also have designs that are slanted. So you can have it inserted at different depths, but that’s one of the other big differences. And then, the main key difference is the fact that there’s no active electronics. These are just electrodes, and then there’s a bundle of a wire that you’re seeing, and then that actually then exits the craniotomy that then has this port that you can connect to for any external electronic devices. They are working on, or have, the wireless telemetry device but it still requires a through-the-skin port, that actually is one of the biggest failure modes for infection for the system.
And the size and the number of shanks vary anywhere from 64 to 128. At the very tip of it, is an exposed electrode that actually records neural signal. The other thing that’s interesting to note is that unlike neural link threads that have recording electrodes that are actually exposed iridium oxide recording sites along the depth, this is only at a single depth. So these Utah Array spokes can be anywhere between 0.5 millimeters to 1.5 millimeter, and they also have designs that are slanted. So you can have it inserted at different depths, but that’s one of the other big differences. And then, the main key difference is the fact that there’s no active electronics. These are just electrodes, and then there’s a bundle of a wire that you’re seeing, and then that actually then exits the craniotomy that then has this port that you can connect to for any external electronic devices. They are working on, or have, the wireless telemetry device but it still requires a through-the-skin port, that actually is one of the biggest failure modes for infection for the system.
Lex Fridman
What are some of the challenges associated with flexible threads? Like for example, on the robotic side, R1, implanting those threads. How difficult is that task?
What are some of the challenges associated with flexible threads? Like for example, on the robotic side, R1, implanting those threads. How difficult is that task?
DJ Seo
Yeah, so as you mentioned, they’re very, very difficult to maneuver by hand. These Utah Arrays that you saw earlier, they’re actually inserted by a neurosurgeon actually positioning it near the site that they want. And then there’s a pneumatic hammer that actually pushes them in. So it’s a pretty simple process and they’re easy to maneuver. But for these thin-film arrays, they’re very, very tiny and flexible. So they’re very difficult to maneuver. So that’s why we built an entire robot to do that.
Yeah, so as you mentioned, they’re very, very difficult to maneuver by hand. These Utah Arrays that you saw earlier, they’re actually inserted by a neurosurgeon actually positioning it near the site that they want. And then there’s a pneumatic hammer that actually pushes them in. So it’s a pretty simple process and they’re easy to maneuver. But for these thin-film arrays, they’re very, very tiny and flexible. So they’re very difficult to maneuver. So that’s why we built an entire robot to do that.
There are other reasons for why we built the robot, and that is ultimately we want this to help millions and millions of people that can benefit from this. And there just aren’t that many neurosurgeons out there. And robots can be something that we hope can actually do large parts of the surgery. But the robot is this entire other sort of category of product that we’re working on. And it’s essentially this multi- axis gantry system that has the specialized robot head that has all of the optics and this kind of a needle-retracting mechanism that maneuvers these threads via this loop structure that you have on the thread.
Lex Fridman
So the thread already has a loop structure by which you can grab it?
So the thread already has a loop structure by which you can grab it?
DJ Seo
Correct.
Correct.
Lex Fridman
So this is fascinating. So you mentioned optics. So there’s a robot, R1, so for now, there’s a human that actually creates a hole in the skull. And then after that, there’s a computer vision component that’s finding a way to avoid the blood vessels. And then you’re grabbing it by the loop, each individual thread, and placing it in a particular location to avoid the blood vessels and also choosing the depth of placement, all that. So controlling every, the 3D geometry, of the placement?
So this is fascinating. So you mentioned optics. So there’s a robot, R1, so for now, there’s a human that actually creates a hole in the skull. And then after that, there’s a computer vision component that’s finding a way to avoid the blood vessels. And then you’re grabbing it by the loop, each individual thread, and placing it in a particular location to avoid the blood vessels and also choosing the depth of placement, all that. So controlling every, the 3D geometry, of the placement?
DJ Seo
Correct. So the aspect of this robot that is unique is that it’s not surgeon-assisted or human-assisted. It’s a semi-automatic or automatic robot. Obviously, there are human component to it, when you’re placing targets, you can always move it away from major vessels that you see. But we want to get to a point where one click and it just does the surgery within minutes.
Correct. So the aspect of this robot that is unique is that it’s not surgeon-assisted or human-assisted. It’s a semi-automatic or automatic robot. Obviously, there are human component to it, when you’re placing targets, you can always move it away from major vessels that you see. But we want to get to a point where one click and it just does the surgery within minutes.
Lex Fridman
So the computer vision component finds great targets, candidates, and the human approves them, and the robot does… Does it do one thread at a time? Or does it do them [inaudible 02:19:08]?
So the computer vision component finds great targets, candidates, and the human approves them, and the robot does… Does it do one thread at a time? Or does it do them [inaudible 02:19:08]?
DJ Seo
It does one thread at a time. And that’s actually also one thing that we are looking at ways to do multiple threads at a time. There’s nothing stopping from it. You can have multiple kind of engagement mechanisms. But right now, it’s one-by-one. And we also still do quite a bit of just kind of verification to make sure that it got inserted. If so, how deep? Did it actually match what was programmed in? And so on and so forth.
It does one thread at a time. And that’s actually also one thing that we are looking at ways to do multiple threads at a time. There’s nothing stopping from it. You can have multiple kind of engagement mechanisms. But right now, it’s one-by-one. And we also still do quite a bit of just kind of verification to make sure that it got inserted. If so, how deep? Did it actually match what was programmed in? And so on and so forth.
Lex Fridman
And the actual electrodes are placed at differing depths in the… I mean, it’s very small differences, but differences.
And the actual electrodes are placed at differing depths in the… I mean, it’s very small differences, but differences.
DJ Seo
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
And so there’s some reasoning behind that, as you mentioned, it gets more varied signal.
And so there’s some reasoning behind that, as you mentioned, it gets more varied signal.
DJ Seo
Yeah, we try to place them all around three or four millimeter from the surface.
Yeah, we try to place them all around three or four millimeter from the surface.
DJ Seo
… it’s three or four millimeter from the surface just because the span of the electrode, those 16 electrodes that we currently have in this version, spans roughly around three millimeters. So we want to get all of those in the brain.
… it’s three or four millimeter from the surface just because the span of the electrode, those 16 electrodes that we currently have in this version, spans roughly around three millimeters. So we want to get all of those in the brain.
Lex Fridman
This is fascinating. Okay, so there’s a million questions here. If we could zoom in specifically on the electrodes. What is your sense, how many neurons is each individual electrode listening to?
This is fascinating. Okay, so there’s a million questions here. If we could zoom in specifically on the electrodes. What is your sense, how many neurons is each individual electrode listening to?
DJ Seo
Yeah, each electrode can record from anywhere between zero to 40, as I mentioned earlier. But practically speaking, we only see about at most two to three, and you can actually distinguish which neuron it’s coming from by the shape of the spikes.
Yeah, each electrode can record from anywhere between zero to 40, as I mentioned earlier. But practically speaking, we only see about at most two to three, and you can actually distinguish which neuron it’s coming from by the shape of the spikes.
Lex Fridman
Oh, cool.
Oh, cool.
DJ Seo
I mentioned the spike detection algorithm that we have, it’s called BOSS algorithm, Buffer Online Spike Sorter.
I mentioned the spike detection algorithm that we have, it’s called BOSS algorithm, Buffer Online Spike Sorter.
Lex Fridman
Nice.
Nice.
DJ Seo
It actually outputs at the end of the day six unique values, which are the amplitude of these negative going hump, middle hump, positive going hump, and then also the time at which these happen. And from that, you can have a statistical probability estimation of, “Is that a spike? Is it not a spike?” And then based on that, you could also determine, “Oh, that spike looks different than that spike, it must come from a different neuron.”
It actually outputs at the end of the day six unique values, which are the amplitude of these negative going hump, middle hump, positive going hump, and then also the time at which these happen. And from that, you can have a statistical probability estimation of, “Is that a spike? Is it not a spike?” And then based on that, you could also determine, “Oh, that spike looks different than that spike, it must come from a different neuron.”
Lex Fridman
Okay. So that’s a nice signal processing step from which you can then make much better predictions about if there’s a spike, especially in this kind of context, where there could be multiple neurons screaming. And that that also results in you being able to compress the data better at the of the day.
Okay. So that’s a nice signal processing step from which you can then make much better predictions about if there’s a spike, especially in this kind of context, where there could be multiple neurons screaming. And that that also results in you being able to compress the data better at the of the day.
DJ Seo
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Okay, that’s-
Okay, that’s-
DJ Seo
And just to be clear, I mean, the labs do this what’s called spike sorting. Usually once you have the fully digitized signals and then you run a bunch of different set of algorithms to tease apart, it’s just all of this for us is done on the device.
And just to be clear, I mean, the labs do this what’s called spike sorting. Usually once you have the fully digitized signals and then you run a bunch of different set of algorithms to tease apart, it’s just all of this for us is done on the device.
Lex Fridman
On the device.
On the device.
DJ Seo
In a very low power, custom-built ASIC digital processing unit.
In a very low power, custom-built ASIC digital processing unit.
Lex Fridman
Highly heat constrained.
Highly heat constrained.
DJ Seo
Highly heat constrained. And the processing time from signal going in and giving you the output is less than a microsecond, which is a very, very short amount of time.
Highly heat constrained. And the processing time from signal going in and giving you the output is less than a microsecond, which is a very, very short amount of time.
Lex Fridman
Oh, yeah. So the latency has to be super short.
Oh, yeah. So the latency has to be super short.
DJ Seo
Correct.
Correct.
Lex Fridman
Oh, wow. Oh, that’s a pain in the ass. That’s really tough.
Oh, wow. Oh, that’s a pain in the ass. That’s really tough.
DJ Seo
Yeah, latency is this huge, huge thing that you have to deal with. Right now the biggest source of latency comes from the Bluetooth, the way in which their packetized and we bin them in a 15 millisecond time window.
Yeah, latency is this huge, huge thing that you have to deal with. Right now the biggest source of latency comes from the Bluetooth, the way in which their packetized and we bin them in a 15 millisecond time window.
Lex Fridman
Oh, interesting, so it’s communication constrained. Is there some potential innovation there on the protocol used?
Oh, interesting, so it’s communication constrained. Is there some potential innovation there on the protocol used?
DJ Seo
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Lex Fridman
Okay.
Okay.
DJ Seo
Yeah. Bluetooth is definitely not our final wireless communication protocol that we want to get to. It’s highly-
Yeah. Bluetooth is definitely not our final wireless communication protocol that we want to get to. It’s highly-
Lex Fridman
Hence, the N1 and the R1. I imagine that increases [inaudible 02:23:03].
Hence, the N1 and the R1. I imagine that increases [inaudible 02:23:03].
DJ Seo
Nx, Rx.
Nx, Rx.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, that’s the communication protocol because Bluetooth allows you to communicate, gets farther distances than you need to, so you can go much shorter.
Yeah, that’s the communication protocol because Bluetooth allows you to communicate, gets farther distances than you need to, so you can go much shorter.
DJ Seo
Yeah. The only, well, the primary motivation for choosing Bluetooth is that, I mean, everything has Bluetooth,
Yeah. The only, well, the primary motivation for choosing Bluetooth is that, I mean, everything has Bluetooth,
Lex Fridman
All right, so you can talk to any device.
All right, so you can talk to any device.
DJ Seo
Interoperability is just absolutely essential, especially in this early phase. And in many ways, if you can access a phone or a computer, you can do anything.
Interoperability is just absolutely essential, especially in this early phase. And in many ways, if you can access a phone or a computer, you can do anything.
Lex Fridman
It’ll be interesting to step back and actually look at, again, the same pipeline that you mentioned for Noland. What does this whole process look like from finding and selecting a human being, to the surgery, to the first time he’s able to use this thing?
It’ll be interesting to step back and actually look at, again, the same pipeline that you mentioned for Noland. What does this whole process look like from finding and selecting a human being, to the surgery, to the first time he’s able to use this thing?
DJ Seo
We have what’s called a patient registry that people can sign up to hear more about the updates. And that was a route to which Noland applied. And the process is that once the application comes in, it contains some medical records, and we … Based on their medical eligibility, there’s a lot of different inclusion/exclusion criteria for them to meet.
We have what’s called a patient registry that people can sign up to hear more about the updates. And that was a route to which Noland applied. And the process is that once the application comes in, it contains some medical records, and we … Based on their medical eligibility, there’s a lot of different inclusion/exclusion criteria for them to meet.
And we go through a prescreening interview process with someone from Neuralink, and at some point we also go out to their homes to do a BCI home audit. Because one of the most revolutionary part about having this in one system that is completely wireless, is that you can use it at home. You don’t actually have to go to the lab and go to the clinic to get connectedorized to these specialized equipment that you can’t take home with you.
So that’s one of the key elements of when we’re designing the system that we wanted to keep in mind, people hopefully would want to be able to use this every day in the comfort of their homes. And so part of our engagement and what we’re looking for during BCI home audit is to just understand their situation, what other assisted technology that they use.
Lex Fridman
And we should also step back and say that the estimate is 180,000 people live with quadriplegia in the United States, and each year an additional 18,000 suffer a paralyzing spinal cord injury. So these are folks who have a lot of challenges living a life in terms of accessibility, in terms of doing the things that many of us just take for granted day to day.
And we should also step back and say that the estimate is 180,000 people live with quadriplegia in the United States, and each year an additional 18,000 suffer a paralyzing spinal cord injury. So these are folks who have a lot of challenges living a life in terms of accessibility, in terms of doing the things that many of us just take for granted day to day.
And one of the things, one of the goals of this initial study is to enable them to have digital autonomy where they by themselves can interact with a digital device using just their mind, something that you’re calling telepathy, so digital telepathy. Where a quadriplegic can communicate with a digital device in all the ways that we’ve been talking about. Control the mouse cursor enough to be able to do all kinds of stuff, including play games and tweet and all that kind of stuff. And there’s a lot of people for whom life, the basics of life, are difficult because of the things that have happened to them.
DJ Seo
Yeah. I mean, movement is so fundamental to our existence. I mean, even speaking involves movement of mouth, lip, larynx. And without that, it’s extremely debilitating. And there are many, many people that we can help. I mean, especially if you start to look at other forms of movement disorders that are not just from spinal cord injury, but from a ALS, MS, or even stroke, or just aging, that leads you to lose some of that mobility, that independence, it’s extremely debilitating.
Yeah. I mean, movement is so fundamental to our existence. I mean, even speaking involves movement of mouth, lip, larynx. And without that, it’s extremely debilitating. And there are many, many people that we can help. I mean, especially if you start to look at other forms of movement disorders that are not just from spinal cord injury, but from a ALS, MS, or even stroke, or just aging, that leads you to lose some of that mobility, that independence, it’s extremely debilitating.
Lex Fridman
And all of these are opportunities to help people, to help alleviate suffering, to help improve the quality of life. But each of the things you mentioned is its own little puzzle that needs to have increasing levels of capability from a device like a Neuralink device.
And all of these are opportunities to help people, to help alleviate suffering, to help improve the quality of life. But each of the things you mentioned is its own little puzzle that needs to have increasing levels of capability from a device like a Neuralink device.
Digital telepathy
And so the first one you’re focusing on is, it’s just a beautiful word, telepathy. So being able to communicate using your mind wirelessly with a digital device. Can you just explain exactly what we’re talking about?
DJ Seo
Yeah, I mean, it’s exactly that. I mean, I think if you are able to control a cursor and able to click and be able to get access to a computer or a phone, I mean, the whole world opens up to you. And I mean, I guess the word “telepathy,” if you think about that as just definitionally being able to transfer information from my brain to your brain without using some of the physical faculties that we have, like voices.
Yeah, I mean, it’s exactly that. I mean, I think if you are able to control a cursor and able to click and be able to get access to a computer or a phone, I mean, the whole world opens up to you. And I mean, I guess the word “telepathy,” if you think about that as just definitionally being able to transfer information from my brain to your brain without using some of the physical faculties that we have, like voices.
Lex Fridman
But the interesting thing here is I think the thing that’s not obviously clear is how exactly it works. In order to move a cursor, there’s at least a couple of ways of doing that. One is you imagine yourself maybe moving a mouse with your hand, or you can then, which no one talked about, imagine moving the cursor with your mind.
But the interesting thing here is I think the thing that’s not obviously clear is how exactly it works. In order to move a cursor, there’s at least a couple of ways of doing that. One is you imagine yourself maybe moving a mouse with your hand, or you can then, which no one talked about, imagine moving the cursor with your mind.
But it’s like there is a cognitive step here that’s fascinating, because you have to use the brain and you have to learn how to use the brain, and you have to figure it out dynamically because you reward yourself if it works. I mean, there’s a step that … This is just a fascinating step because you have to get the brain to start firing in the right way. And you do that by imagining … Like fake it till you make it. And all of a sudden it creates the right kind of signal that, if decoded correctly, can create the effect. And then there’s noise around that that you have to figure all of that out. But on the human side, imagine the cursor moving is what you have to do.
DJ Seo
Yeah. He says using the force.
Yeah. He says using the force.
Lex Fridman
The force. I mean, isn’t that just fascinating to you that it works? To me, it’s like, holy shit, that actually works. You could move a cursor with your mind.
The force. I mean, isn’t that just fascinating to you that it works? To me, it’s like, holy shit, that actually works. You could move a cursor with your mind.
DJ Seo
As much as you’re learning to use that thing, that thing is also learning about you. Our model’s constantly updating the way to say, “Oh, if someone is thinking about this sophisticated forms of spiking patterns, that actually means to do this.”
As much as you’re learning to use that thing, that thing is also learning about you. Our model’s constantly updating the way to say, “Oh, if someone is thinking about this sophisticated forms of spiking patterns, that actually means to do this.”
Lex Fridman
So the machine is learning about the human and the human is learning about the machine, so there is a adaptability to the signal process and the decoding step, and then there’s the adaptation of Nolan, the human being. The same way, if you give me a new mouse and I move it, I learn very quickly about its sensitivity, so I learn to move it slower. And then there’s other signal drift and all that kind of stuff they have to adapt to, so both are adapting to each other.
So the machine is learning about the human and the human is learning about the machine, so there is a adaptability to the signal process and the decoding step, and then there’s the adaptation of Nolan, the human being. The same way, if you give me a new mouse and I move it, I learn very quickly about its sensitivity, so I learn to move it slower. And then there’s other signal drift and all that kind of stuff they have to adapt to, so both are adapting to each other.
DJ Seo
Correct.
Correct.
Lex Fridman
That’s a fascinating software challenge, on both sides. The software on both, on the human software and the [inaudible 02:30:41] software.
That’s a fascinating software challenge, on both sides. The software on both, on the human software and the [inaudible 02:30:41] software.
DJ Seo
The organic and the inorganic.
The organic and the inorganic.
Lex Fridman
The organic and the inorganic. Anyway. Sorry to rudely interrupt. So there’s the selection that Noland has passed with flying colors. Everything, including that it is a BCI-friendly home, all of that. So what is the process of the surgery, implantation, the first moment when he gets to use the system?
The organic and the inorganic. Anyway. Sorry to rudely interrupt. So there’s the selection that Noland has passed with flying colors. Everything, including that it is a BCI-friendly home, all of that. So what is the process of the surgery, implantation, the first moment when he gets to use the system?
DJ Seo
The end-to-end, we say patient end to patient out, is anywhere between two to four hours. In the particular case for Noland it was about three and a half hours, and there’s many steps leading to the actual robot insertion. So there’s anesthesia induction, and we do intra-op CT imaging to make sure that we’re drilling the hole in the right location. And this is also pre-planned beforehand.
The end-to-end, we say patient end to patient out, is anywhere between two to four hours. In the particular case for Noland it was about three and a half hours, and there’s many steps leading to the actual robot insertion. So there’s anesthesia induction, and we do intra-op CT imaging to make sure that we’re drilling the hole in the right location. And this is also pre-planned beforehand.
Someone like Noland would go through fMRI and then they can think about wiggling their hand. Obviously due to their injury it’s not going to actually lead to any sort of intended output, but it’s the same part of the brain that actually lights up when you’re imagining moving your finger to actually moving your finger. And that’s one of the ways in which we can actually know where to place our threads because we want to go into what’s called the hand knob area in the motor cortex. And as much as possible, densely put our electrode threads.
So we do intra-op CT imaging to make sure and double-check the location of the craniectomy. And the surgeon comes in, does their thing in terms of skin incision, craniectomy, so drilling of the skull, and then there’s many different layers of the brain. There’s what’s called a dura, which is a very, very thick layer that surrounds the brain. That gets actually resected in a process called [inaudible 02:32:38]. And that then expose the pia in the brain that you want to insert.
And by the time it’s been around anywhere between one to one and a half hours, robot comes in, does his thing, placement of the targets, inserting of the thread. That takes anywhere between 20 to 40 minutes. In the particular case for Noland, it was just under or just over 30 minutes. And then after that, the surgeon comes in, there’s a couple other steps of actually inserting the dural substitute layer to protect the thread as well as the brain. And then screw in the implant and then skin flap and then suture, and then you’re out.
Lex Fridman
So when Noland woke up, what was that like? What was the recovery like, and when was the first time he was able to use it?
So when Noland woke up, what was that like? What was the recovery like, and when was the first time he was able to use it?
DJ Seo
He was actually immediately after the surgery, like an hour after the surgery, as he was waking up, we did turn on the device, make sure that we are recording neural signals. And we actually did have couple signals that we noticed that he can actually modulate. And what I mean by modulate is that he can think about clenching his fist and you could see the spike disappear and appear.
He was actually immediately after the surgery, like an hour after the surgery, as he was waking up, we did turn on the device, make sure that we are recording neural signals. And we actually did have couple signals that we noticed that he can actually modulate. And what I mean by modulate is that he can think about clenching his fist and you could see the spike disappear and appear.
Lex Fridman
That’s awesome.
That’s awesome.
DJ Seo
And that was immediate, immediate after in the recovery room.
And that was immediate, immediate after in the recovery room.
Lex Fridman
How cool is that?
How cool is that?
DJ Seo
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, absolutely.
Lex Fridman
That’s a human being … I mean, what did that feel like for you? This device and a human being, a first step of a gigantic journey? I mean, it’s a historic moment, even just that spike, just to be able to modulate that.
That’s a human being … I mean, what did that feel like for you? This device and a human being, a first step of a gigantic journey? I mean, it’s a historic moment, even just that spike, just to be able to modulate that.
DJ Seo
Obviously there have been other, as you mentioned, pioneers that have participated in these groundbreaking BCI investigational early feasibility studies. So we’re obviously standing on the shoulders of the giants here, we’re not the first ones to actually put electrodes in a human brain.
Obviously there have been other, as you mentioned, pioneers that have participated in these groundbreaking BCI investigational early feasibility studies. So we’re obviously standing on the shoulders of the giants here, we’re not the first ones to actually put electrodes in a human brain.
But I mean, just leading up to the surgery, I definitely could not sleep. It’s the first time that you’re working in a completely new environment. We had a lot of confidence based on our benchtop testing or preclinical R&D studies that the mechanism, the threads, the insertion, all that stuff is very safe and that it’s obviously ready for doing this in a human. But there’s still a lot of unknown unknown about can the needle actually insert? I mean, we brought something like 40 needles just in case they break, and we ended up using only one. But I mean, that was the level of just complete unknown because it’s a very, very different environment. And I mean, that’s why we do clinical trial in the first place, to be able to test these things out.
So extreme nervousness and just many, many sleepless night leading up to the surgery, and definitely the day before the surgery. And it was an early morning surgery. We started at 7:00 in the morning, and by the time it was around 10:30 everything was done. But I mean, first time seeing that, well, number one, just huge relief that this thing is doing what it’s supposed to do. And two, I mean, just immense amount of gratitude for Noland and his family. And then many others that have applied and that we’ve spoken to and will speak to are true pioneers in every word. And I call them the neural astronauts or neuralnaut.
Lex Fridman
Neuralnaut, yeah.
Neuralnaut, yeah.
DJ Seo
Just like in the ’60s, these amazing just pioneers exploring the unknown outwards, in this case it’s inward, but an incredible amount of gratitude for them to just participate and play a part. And it’s a journey that we’re embarking on together.
Just like in the ’60s, these amazing just pioneers exploring the unknown outwards, in this case it’s inward, but an incredible amount of gratitude for them to just participate and play a part. And it’s a journey that we’re embarking on together.
But also, I think it was just a … That was a very, very important milestone, but our work was just starting. So a lot of just anticipation for, “Okay, what needs to happen next?” What are set of sequences of events that needs to happen for us to make it worthwhile for both Noland as well as us.
Lex Fridman
Just to linger on that, just a huge congratulations to you and the team for that milestone. I know there’s a lot of work left, but that’s really exciting to see. That’s a source of hope, it’s this first big step, opportunity, to help hundreds of thousands of people. And then maybe expand the realm of the possible for the human mind for millions of people in the future. So it’s really exciting. The opportunities are all ahead of us, and to do that safely and to do that effectively was really fun to see. As an engineer, just watching other engineers come together and do an epic thing, that was awesome. So huge congrats.
Just to linger on that, just a huge congratulations to you and the team for that milestone. I know there’s a lot of work left, but that’s really exciting to see. That’s a source of hope, it’s this first big step, opportunity, to help hundreds of thousands of people. And then maybe expand the realm of the possible for the human mind for millions of people in the future. So it’s really exciting. The opportunities are all ahead of us, and to do that safely and to do that effectively was really fun to see. As an engineer, just watching other engineers come together and do an epic thing, that was awesome. So huge congrats.
DJ Seo
Thank you, thank you. Yeah, could not have done it without the team. And yeah, I mean, that’s the other thing that I told the team as well of just this immense sense of optimism for the future. I mean, it’s a very important moment for the company, needless to say, as well as hopefully for many others out there that we can help.
Thank you, thank you. Yeah, could not have done it without the team. And yeah, I mean, that’s the other thing that I told the team as well of just this immense sense of optimism for the future. I mean, it’s a very important moment for the company, needless to say, as well as hopefully for many others out there that we can help.
Retracted threads
Lex Fridman
Speaking of challenges, Neuralink published a blog post describing that some of the threads retracted. And so the performance as measured by bits per second dropped at first, but then eventually it was regained. And the whole story of how it was regained is super interesting, that’s definitely something I’ll talk to Bliss and to Noland about.
Speaking of challenges, Neuralink published a blog post describing that some of the threads retracted. And so the performance as measured by bits per second dropped at first, but then eventually it was regained. And the whole story of how it was regained is super interesting, that’s definitely something I’ll talk to Bliss and to Noland about.
But in general, can you speak to this whole experience, how was the performance regained, and just the technical aspects of the threads being retracted and moving?
DJ Seo
The main takeaway is that in the end, the performance have come back and it’s actually gotten better than it was before. He’s actually just beat the world record yet again last week to 8.5 bps. I mean, he’s just cranking and he’s just improving.
The main takeaway is that in the end, the performance have come back and it’s actually gotten better than it was before. He’s actually just beat the world record yet again last week to 8.5 bps. I mean, he’s just cranking and he’s just improving.
Lex Fridman
The previous one that he said was eight.
The previous one that he said was eight.
DJ Seo
Correct.
Correct.
Lex Fridman
I think he said 8.5.
I think he said 8.5.
DJ Seo
Yeah. The previous world record in a human was 4.6, so it’s almost double. And his goal is to try to get to 10, which is roughly around the median neural linker using a mouse with a hand. So it’s getting there.
Yeah. The previous world record in a human was 4.6, so it’s almost double. And his goal is to try to get to 10, which is roughly around the median neural linker using a mouse with a hand. So it’s getting there.
Lex Fridman
So yeah, so the performance was regained.
So yeah, so the performance was regained.
DJ Seo
Yeah, better than before. That’s a story on its own of what took the BCI team to recover that performance. It was actually mostly on the signal processing. And so as I mentioned, we were looking at these spike outputs from our electrodes, and what happened is that four weeks into the surgery we noticed that the threads have solely come out of the brain. And the way in which we noticed this at first obviously is that, well, I think Noland was the first to notice, that his performance was degrading. And I think at the time we were also trying to do a bunch of different experimentation, different algorithms, different UI, UX. So it was expected that there will be variability in the performance, but we did see a steady decline.
Yeah, better than before. That’s a story on its own of what took the BCI team to recover that performance. It was actually mostly on the signal processing. And so as I mentioned, we were looking at these spike outputs from our electrodes, and what happened is that four weeks into the surgery we noticed that the threads have solely come out of the brain. And the way in which we noticed this at first obviously is that, well, I think Noland was the first to notice, that his performance was degrading. And I think at the time we were also trying to do a bunch of different experimentation, different algorithms, different UI, UX. So it was expected that there will be variability in the performance, but we did see a steady decline.
And then also the way in which we measure the health of the electrodes or whether they’re in the brain or not, is by measuring impedance of the electrode. So we look at the interfacial, the Randles circuit they say, the capacitance and the resistance between the electrode surface and the medium. And if that changes in some dramatic ways, we have some indication. Or if you’re not seeing spikes on those channels, you have some indications that something’s happening there.
And what we noticed is that looking at those impedance plot and spike rate plots, and also because we have those electrodes recording along the depth, you are seeing some sort of movement that indicated that threads were being pulled out. And that obviously will have an implication on the model side because if the number of inputs that are going into the model is changing because you have less of them, that model needs to get updated.
But there were still signals, and as I mentioned, similar to how even when you place the signals on the surface of the brain or farther away, like outside the skull, you still see some useful signals. What we started looking at is not just the spike occurrence through this BOSS algorithm that I mentioned, but we started looking at just the power of the frequency band that is interesting for Noland to be able to modulate. Once we changed the algorithm for the implant to not just give you the BOSS output, but also these spike band power output, that helped us refine the model with a new set of inputs. And that was the thing that really ultimately gave us the performance back. And obviously the thing that we want ultimately and the thing that we are working towards, is figuring out ways in which we can keep those threads intact for as long as possible so that we have many more channels going into the model. That’s by far the number one priority that the team is currently embarking on to understand how to prevent that from happening.
The thing that I will say also is that, as I mentioned, this is the first time ever that we’re putting these threads in the human brain. And a human brain, just for size reference, is 10 times that of the monkey brain or the sheep brain. And it’s just a very, very different environment. It moves a lot more. It’s actually moved a lot more than we expected when we did Noland’s surgery. And it’s just a very, very different environment than what we’re used to. And this is why we do clinical trial, we want to uncover some of these issues and failure modes earlier than later.
So in many ways, it’s provided us with this enormous amount of data and information to be able to solve this. And this is something that Neuralink is extremely good at, once we have set of clear objective and engineering problem, we have enormous amount of talents across many, many disciplines to be able to come together and fix the problem very, very quickly.
Vertical integration
Lex Fridman
But it sounds like one of the fascinating challenges here is for the system on the decoding side to be adaptable across different timescales. So whether it’s movement of threads or different aspects of signal drift, sort of on the software or the human brain, something changing, like Noland talks about cursor drift, they could be corrected. And there’s a whole UX challenge to how to do that. So it sounds like adaptability is a fundamental property that has to be engineered in.
But it sounds like one of the fascinating challenges here is for the system on the decoding side to be adaptable across different timescales. So whether it’s movement of threads or different aspects of signal drift, sort of on the software or the human brain, something changing, like Noland talks about cursor drift, they could be corrected. And there’s a whole UX challenge to how to do that. So it sounds like adaptability is a fundamental property that has to be engineered in.
DJ Seo
It is. I mean, as a company, we’re extremely vertically integrated. We make these thin-film arrays in our own microfab.
It is. I mean, as a company, we’re extremely vertically integrated. We make these thin-film arrays in our own microfab.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, there’s like you said, built in-house. This whole paragraph here from this blog post is pretty gangster.
Yeah, there’s like you said, built in-house. This whole paragraph here from this blog post is pretty gangster.
“Building the technologies described above has been no small feat,” and there’s a bunch of links here that I recommend people click on. “We constructed in-house microfabrication capabilities to rapidly produce various iterations of thin-film arrays that constitute our electrode threads. We created a custom femtosecond laser mill-“
DJ Seo
[inaudible 02:45:13].
[inaudible 02:45:13].
Lex Fridman
“… to manufacture components with micro level precision.” I think there’s a tweet associated with this.
“… to manufacture components with micro level precision.” I think there’s a tweet associated with this.
DJ Seo
That’s a whole thing that we can get into.
That’s a whole thing that we can get into.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. Okay. What are we looking at here, this thing? “In less than one minute, our custom-made femtosecond laser mill cuts this geometry in the tips of our needles.” So we’re looking at this weirdly shaped needle. “The tip is only 10 to 12 microns in width, only slightly larger than the diameter of a red blood cell. The small size allows threads to be inserted with minimal damage to the cortex.”
Yeah. Okay. What are we looking at here, this thing? “In less than one minute, our custom-made femtosecond laser mill cuts this geometry in the tips of our needles.” So we’re looking at this weirdly shaped needle. “The tip is only 10 to 12 microns in width, only slightly larger than the diameter of a red blood cell. The small size allows threads to be inserted with minimal damage to the cortex.”
Okay. So what’s interesting about this geometry? So we’re looking at this just geometry of a needle.
DJ Seo
This is the needle that’s engaging with the loops in the thread. They’re the ones that thread their loop, and then peel it from the silicon backing, and then this is the thing that gets inserted into the tissue. And then this pulls out, leaving the thread. And this kind of a notch or the shark tooth that we used to call, is the thing that actually is grasping the loop. And then it’s designed in such a way such that when you pull out, it leaves the loop.
This is the needle that’s engaging with the loops in the thread. They’re the ones that thread their loop, and then peel it from the silicon backing, and then this is the thing that gets inserted into the tissue. And then this pulls out, leaving the thread. And this kind of a notch or the shark tooth that we used to call, is the thing that actually is grasping the loop. And then it’s designed in such a way such that when you pull out, it leaves the loop.
Lex Fridman
And the robot is controlling this needle?
And the robot is controlling this needle?
DJ Seo
Correct. So this is actually housed in a cannula, and basically the robot has a lot of the optics that look for where the loop is. There’s actually a 405 nanometer light that actually causes the polyimide to fluoresce so that you can locate the location of the loop.
Correct. So this is actually housed in a cannula, and basically the robot has a lot of the optics that look for where the loop is. There’s actually a 405 nanometer light that actually causes the polyimide to fluoresce so that you can locate the location of the loop.
Lex Fridman
So the loop lights up, is [inaudible 02:46:50]?”
So the loop lights up, is [inaudible 02:46:50]?”
DJ Seo
Yeah, yeah, they do. It’s a micron precision process.
Yeah, yeah, they do. It’s a micron precision process.
Lex Fridman
What’s interesting about the robot that it takes to do that, that’s pretty crazy. That’s pretty crazy that robot is able to get this kind of precision.
What’s interesting about the robot that it takes to do that, that’s pretty crazy. That’s pretty crazy that robot is able to get this kind of precision.
DJ Seo
Yeah, our robot is quite heavy, our current version of it. I mean, it’s like a giant granite slab that weighs about a ton, because it needs to be sensitive to vibration, environmental vibration. And then as the head is moving at the speed that it’s moving, there’s a lot of motion control to make sure that you can achieve that level of precision. A lot of optics that zoom in on that. We’re working on next generation of the robot that is lighter, easier to transport. I mean, it is a feat to move the robot to the surgical suite.
Yeah, our robot is quite heavy, our current version of it. I mean, it’s like a giant granite slab that weighs about a ton, because it needs to be sensitive to vibration, environmental vibration. And then as the head is moving at the speed that it’s moving, there’s a lot of motion control to make sure that you can achieve that level of precision. A lot of optics that zoom in on that. We’re working on next generation of the robot that is lighter, easier to transport. I mean, it is a feat to move the robot to the surgical suite.
Lex Fridman
And it’s far superior to a human surgeon at this time, for this particular task.
And it’s far superior to a human surgeon at this time, for this particular task.
DJ Seo
Absolutely. I mean, let alone you try to actually thread a loop in a sewing kit. We’re talking fractions of human error. These things, it’s not visible.
Absolutely. I mean, let alone you try to actually thread a loop in a sewing kit. We’re talking fractions of human error. These things, it’s not visible.
Lex Fridman
So continuing the paragraph. “We developed novel hardware and software testing systems, such as our accelerated lifetime testing racks and simulated surgery environment,” which is pretty cool, “to stress test and validate the robustness of our technologies. We performed many rehearsals of our surgeries to refine our procedures and make them second nature.” This is pretty cool.
So continuing the paragraph. “We developed novel hardware and software testing systems, such as our accelerated lifetime testing racks and simulated surgery environment,” which is pretty cool, “to stress test and validate the robustness of our technologies. We performed many rehearsals of our surgeries to refine our procedures and make them second nature.” This is pretty cool.
“We practice surgeries on proxies with all the hardware and instruments needed in our mock or in the engineering space. This helps us rapidly test and measure.” So there’s like proxies?
DJ Seo
Yeah, this proxy is super cool actually. There’s a 3D printed skull from the images that is taken at [inaudible 02:48:34], as well as this hydrogel mix synthetic polymer thing that actually mimics the mechanical properties of the brain. It also has vasculature of the person.
Yeah, this proxy is super cool actually. There’s a 3D printed skull from the images that is taken at [inaudible 02:48:34], as well as this hydrogel mix synthetic polymer thing that actually mimics the mechanical properties of the brain. It also has vasculature of the person.
Basically what we’re talking about here, and there’s a lot of work that has gone into making this set proxy, that it’s about finding the right concentration of these different synthetic polymers to get the right set of consistency for the needle dynamics as they’re being inserted. But we practice this surgery with Noland’s basically physiology and brain many, many times prior to actually doing the surgery.
Lex Fridman
Every step, every step, every-
Every step, every step, every-
DJ Seo
Every step. Yeah. Like where does someone stand? I mean, what you’re looking at is the picture, this is in our office, of this corner of the robot engineering space that we have created this mock OR space that looks exactly like what they would experience, all the staff would during their actual surgery.
Every step. Yeah. Like where does someone stand? I mean, what you’re looking at is the picture, this is in our office, of this corner of the robot engineering space that we have created this mock OR space that looks exactly like what they would experience, all the staff would during their actual surgery.
I mean, it’s just like any dance rehearsal where exactly where you’re going to stand at what point, and you just practice that over and over and over again with an exact anatomy of someone that you’re going to surgerize. And it got to a point where a lot of our engineers, when we created a craniectomy, they’re like, “Oh, that looks very familiar. We’ve seen that before.”
Lex Fridman
Yeah. Man, there’s wisdom you can gain through doing the same thing over and over and over. It’s like Jiro Dreams of Sushi kind of thing because then … It’s like Olympic athletes visualize the Olympics and then once you actually show up, it feels easy. It feels like any other day. It feels almost boring winning the gold medal, because you visualized this so many times, you’ve practiced this so many times, that nothing about it is new. It’s boring. You win the gold medal, it’s boring. And the experience they talk about is mostly just relief, probably that they don’t have to visualize it anymore.
Yeah. Man, there’s wisdom you can gain through doing the same thing over and over and over. It’s like Jiro Dreams of Sushi kind of thing because then … It’s like Olympic athletes visualize the Olympics and then once you actually show up, it feels easy. It feels like any other day. It feels almost boring winning the gold medal, because you visualized this so many times, you’ve practiced this so many times, that nothing about it is new. It’s boring. You win the gold medal, it’s boring. And the experience they talk about is mostly just relief, probably that they don’t have to visualize it anymore.
DJ Seo
Yeah, the power of the mind to visualize and where … I mean, there’s a whole field that studies where muscle memory lies in cerebellum. Yeah, it’s incredible.
Yeah, the power of the mind to visualize and where … I mean, there’s a whole field that studies where muscle memory lies in cerebellum. Yeah, it’s incredible.
Safety
Lex Fridman
I think it’s a good place to actually ask the big question that people might have, is how do we know every aspect of this that you described is safe?
I think it’s a good place to actually ask the big question that people might have, is how do we know every aspect of this that you described is safe?
DJ Seo
At the end of the day, the gold standard is to look at the tissue. What sort of trauma did you cause the tissue, and does that correlate to whatever behavioral anomalies that you may have seen? And that’s the language to which we can communicate about the safety of inserting something into the brain and what type of trauma that you can cause.
At the end of the day, the gold standard is to look at the tissue. What sort of trauma did you cause the tissue, and does that correlate to whatever behavioral anomalies that you may have seen? And that’s the language to which we can communicate about the safety of inserting something into the brain and what type of trauma that you can cause.
We actually have an entire department, department of pathology, that looks at these tissue slices. There are many steps that are involved in doing this. Once you have studies that are launched with particular endpoints in mind, at some point you have to euthanize the animal, and then you go through necropsy to collect the brain tissue samples. You fix them in formalin, and you gross them, you section them, and you look at individual slices just to see what kind of reaction or lack thereof exists.
So that’s the language to which FDA speaks and as well for us to evaluate the safety of the insertion mechanism, as well as the threats at various different time points, both acute, so anywhere between zero to three months to beyond three months.
Lex Fridman
So those are the details of an extremely high standard of safety that has to be reached.
So those are the details of an extremely high standard of safety that has to be reached.
DJ Seo
Correct.
Correct.
Lex Fridman
The FDA supervises this, but there’s in general just a very high standard, in every aspect of this, including the surgery. I think Matthew MacDougall has mentioned that the standard is, let’s say how to put it politely, higher than maybe some other operations that we take for granted. So the standard for all the surgical stuff here is extremely high.
The FDA supervises this, but there’s in general just a very high standard, in every aspect of this, including the surgery. I think Matthew MacDougall has mentioned that the standard is, let’s say how to put it politely, higher than maybe some other operations that we take for granted. So the standard for all the surgical stuff here is extremely high.
DJ Seo
Very high. I mean, it’s a highly, highly regulated environment with the governing agencies that scrutinize every, every medical device that gets marketed. And I think it’s a good thing. It’s good to have those high standards, and we try to hold extremely high standards to understand what sort of damage, if any, these innovative emerging technologies and new technologies that we’re building are. And so far we have been extremely impressed by lack of immune response from these threads.
Very high. I mean, it’s a highly, highly regulated environment with the governing agencies that scrutinize every, every medical device that gets marketed. And I think it’s a good thing. It’s good to have those high standards, and we try to hold extremely high standards to understand what sort of damage, if any, these innovative emerging technologies and new technologies that we’re building are. And so far we have been extremely impressed by lack of immune response from these threads.
Lex Fridman
Speaking of which, you talked to me with excitement about the histology in some of the images that you’re able to share. Can you explain to me what we’re looking at?
Speaking of which, you talked to me with excitement about the histology in some of the images that you’re able to share. Can you explain to me what we’re looking at?
DJ Seo
Yeah, so what you’re looking at is a stained tissue image. This is a sectioned tissue slice from an animal that was implanted for seven months, so a chronic time point. And you’re seeing all these different colors, and each color indicates specific types of cell types. So purple and pink are astrocytes and microglia, respectably. They’re types of glial cells.
Yeah, so what you’re looking at is a stained tissue image. This is a sectioned tissue slice from an animal that was implanted for seven months, so a chronic time point. And you’re seeing all these different colors, and each color indicates specific types of cell types. So purple and pink are astrocytes and microglia, respectably. They’re types of glial cells.
And the other thing that people may not be aware of is your brain is not just made up of soup of neurons and axons. There are other cells, like glial cells, that actually is the glue and also react if there are any trauma or damage to the tissue.
Lex Fridman
With the brown or the neurons here?
With the brown or the neurons here?
DJ Seo
The brown are the neurons and the blue is nuclei.
The brown are the neurons and the blue is nuclei.
Lex Fridman
It’s a lot of neurons.
It’s a lot of neurons.
DJ Seo
The neuro nucle.
The neuro nucle.
Lex Fridman
So what you’re seeing is in this macro image, you’re seeing these circle highlighted in white, the insertion sites. And when you zoom into one of those, you see the threads. And then in this particular case, I think we’re seeing about the 16 wires that are going into the [inaudible 02:54:56]. And the incredible thing here is the fact that you have the neurons that are these brown structures or brown circular or elliptical thing-
So what you’re seeing is in this macro image, you’re seeing these circle highlighted in white, the insertion sites. And when you zoom into one of those, you see the threads. And then in this particular case, I think we’re seeing about the 16 wires that are going into the [inaudible 02:54:56]. And the incredible thing here is the fact that you have the neurons that are these brown structures or brown circular or elliptical thing-
DJ Seo
… are these brown structures or brown circular or elliptical thing that are actually touching and abutting the threads. So what this is saying is that there’s basically zero trauma that’s caused during this insertion. And with these neural interfaces, these micro electrons that you insert, that is one of the most common mode of failure. So when you insert these threads like the Utah Array, it causes neuronal death around the site because you’re inserting a foreign object.
… are these brown structures or brown circular or elliptical thing that are actually touching and abutting the threads. So what this is saying is that there’s basically zero trauma that’s caused during this insertion. And with these neural interfaces, these micro electrons that you insert, that is one of the most common mode of failure. So when you insert these threads like the Utah Array, it causes neuronal death around the site because you’re inserting a foreign object.
And that elicit these immune response through microglia and astrocytes, they form this protective layer around it. Oh, not only are you killing the neuron cells, but you’re also creating this protective layer that then basically prevents you from recording neural signals because you’re getting further and further away from the neurons that you’re trying to record. And that is the biggest mode of failure. And in this particular example, in that inside it’s about 50 micron with that scale bar, the neurons seem to be attracted to it.
Lex Fridman
And so there’s certainly no trauma. That’s such a beautiful image, by the way. So the brown at the neurons, and for some reason I can’t look away. It’s really cool.
And so there’s certainly no trauma. That’s such a beautiful image, by the way. So the brown at the neurons, and for some reason I can’t look away. It’s really cool.
DJ Seo
Yeah. And the way that these things… Tissues generally don’t have these beautiful colors. This is multiplex stain that uses these different proteins that are staining these at different colors. We use very standard set of staining techniques with H&E, EVA1 and NeuN and GFAB. So if you go to the next image, this is also kind of illustrates the second point because you can make an argument, and initially when we saw the previous image, we said, “Oh, are the threads just floating? What is happening here? Are we actually looking at the right thing?” So what we did is we did another stain, and this is all done in-house of this Masson’s tricrome stain, which is in blue that shows these collagen layer. So the blue, basically, you don’t want the blue around the implant threads. Because that means that there’s some sort of scarring that’s happened. And what you’re seeing if you look at individual threads is that you don’t see any of the blue. Which means that there has been absolutely, or very, very minimal to a point where it’s not detectable amount of trauma in these inserted threads.
Yeah. And the way that these things… Tissues generally don’t have these beautiful colors. This is multiplex stain that uses these different proteins that are staining these at different colors. We use very standard set of staining techniques with H&E, EVA1 and NeuN and GFAB. So if you go to the next image, this is also kind of illustrates the second point because you can make an argument, and initially when we saw the previous image, we said, “Oh, are the threads just floating? What is happening here? Are we actually looking at the right thing?” So what we did is we did another stain, and this is all done in-house of this Masson’s tricrome stain, which is in blue that shows these collagen layer. So the blue, basically, you don’t want the blue around the implant threads. Because that means that there’s some sort of scarring that’s happened. And what you’re seeing if you look at individual threads is that you don’t see any of the blue. Which means that there has been absolutely, or very, very minimal to a point where it’s not detectable amount of trauma in these inserted threads.
Lex Fridman
So that presumably is one of the big benefits of having this kind of flexible thread? This-
So that presumably is one of the big benefits of having this kind of flexible thread? This-
DJ Seo
Yeah. So we think this is primarily due to the size as well as the flexibility of the threads. Also, the fact that R1 is avoiding vasculature, so we’re not disrupting or we’re not causing damage to the vessels and not breaking any of the blood brain barrier, has basically caused the immune response to be muted.
Yeah. So we think this is primarily due to the size as well as the flexibility of the threads. Also, the fact that R1 is avoiding vasculature, so we’re not disrupting or we’re not causing damage to the vessels and not breaking any of the blood brain barrier, has basically caused the immune response to be muted.
Lex Fridman
But this is also a nice illustration of the size of things. So this is the tip of the thread?
But this is also a nice illustration of the size of things. So this is the tip of the thread?
DJ Seo
Yeah, those are neurons.
Yeah, those are neurons.
Lex Fridman
And they’re neurons. And this is the thread listening. And the electrodes are positioned how?
And they’re neurons. And this is the thread listening. And the electrodes are positioned how?
DJ Seo
Yeah. So what you’re looking at is not electrode themselves, those are the conductive wires. So each of those should probably be two micron in width. So what we’re looking at is, we’re looking at the coronal slice, so we’re looking at some slice of the tissue. So as you go deeper, you’ll obviously have less and less of the tapering of the thread. But yeah, the point basically being that there’s just cells around the inserter site, which is just an incredible thing to see. I’ve just never seen anything like this.
Yeah. So what you’re looking at is not electrode themselves, those are the conductive wires. So each of those should probably be two micron in width. So what we’re looking at is, we’re looking at the coronal slice, so we’re looking at some slice of the tissue. So as you go deeper, you’ll obviously have less and less of the tapering of the thread. But yeah, the point basically being that there’s just cells around the inserter site, which is just an incredible thing to see. I’ve just never seen anything like this.
Lex Fridman
How easy and safe is it to remove the implant?
How easy and safe is it to remove the implant?
DJ Seo
Yeah, so it depends on when. In the first three months or so after the surgery, there’s a lot of tissue modeling that’s happening. Similar to when you got a cut, you obviously start over first couple of weeks or depending on the size of the wound, scar tissue forming, there are these contractive, and then in the end they turn into scab and you can scab it off. The same thing happens in the brain. And it’s a very dynamic environment. And before the scar tissue or the neo membrane or the new membrane that forms, it’s quite easy to just pull them out. And there’s minimal trauma that’s caused during that.
Yeah, so it depends on when. In the first three months or so after the surgery, there’s a lot of tissue modeling that’s happening. Similar to when you got a cut, you obviously start over first couple of weeks or depending on the size of the wound, scar tissue forming, there are these contractive, and then in the end they turn into scab and you can scab it off. The same thing happens in the brain. And it’s a very dynamic environment. And before the scar tissue or the neo membrane or the new membrane that forms, it’s quite easy to just pull them out. And there’s minimal trauma that’s caused during that.
Once the scar tissue forms, and with Noland as well, we believe that that’s the thing that’s currently anchoring the threats. So we haven’t seen any more movements since then. So they’re quite stable. It gets harder to actually completely extract the threads. So our current method for removing the device is cutting the thread, leaving the tissue intact, and then unscrewing and taking the implant out. And that hole is now going to be plugged with either another Neuralink or just with a peak based, plastic based cap.
Lex Fridman
Is it okay to leave the threads in there forever?
Is it okay to leave the threads in there forever?
DJ Seo
Yeah, we think so. We’ve done studies where we left them there and one of the biggest concerns that we had is, do they migrate and do they get to a point where they should not be? We haven’t seen that. Again. Once the scar tissue forms, they get anchored in place. And I should also say that when we say upgrades, we’re not just talking in theory here, we’ve actually upgraded many, many times. Most of our monkeys or non-human primates, NHP, have been upgraded. Pager, who you saw playing mind pong has the latest version of the device since two years ago and is seemingly very happy and healthy and fat.
Yeah, we think so. We’ve done studies where we left them there and one of the biggest concerns that we had is, do they migrate and do they get to a point where they should not be? We haven’t seen that. Again. Once the scar tissue forms, they get anchored in place. And I should also say that when we say upgrades, we’re not just talking in theory here, we’ve actually upgraded many, many times. Most of our monkeys or non-human primates, NHP, have been upgraded. Pager, who you saw playing mind pong has the latest version of the device since two years ago and is seemingly very happy and healthy and fat.
Upgrades
Lex Fridman
So what’s designed for the future, the upgrade procedure? So maybe for Noland, what would the upgrade look like? It was essentially what you’re mentioning. Is there a way to upgrade the device internally where you take it apart and keep the capsule and upgrade the internals?
So what’s designed for the future, the upgrade procedure? So maybe for Noland, what would the upgrade look like? It was essentially what you’re mentioning. Is there a way to upgrade the device internally where you take it apart and keep the capsule and upgrade the internals?
DJ Seo
So there are a couple of different things here. So for Noland, if we were to upgrade, what we would have to do is either cut the threads or extract the threads depending on the situation there in terms of how they’re anchored or scarred in. If you were to remove them with the dual substitute, you have an intact brain, so you can reinsert different threads with the updated implant package. There are a couple of different other ways that we’re thinking about the future of what the upgradable system looks like. One is, at the moment we currently remove the dura, this kind of thick layer that protects the brain, but that actually is the thing that actually proliferates the scar tissue formation. So typically, the general rule of thumb is you want to leave the nature as is and not disrupt it as much. So looking at ways to insert the threats through the dura, which comes with different set of challenges such as, it’s a pretty thick layer, so how do you actually penetrate that without breaking the needle?
So there are a couple of different things here. So for Noland, if we were to upgrade, what we would have to do is either cut the threads or extract the threads depending on the situation there in terms of how they’re anchored or scarred in. If you were to remove them with the dual substitute, you have an intact brain, so you can reinsert different threads with the updated implant package. There are a couple of different other ways that we’re thinking about the future of what the upgradable system looks like. One is, at the moment we currently remove the dura, this kind of thick layer that protects the brain, but that actually is the thing that actually proliferates the scar tissue formation. So typically, the general rule of thumb is you want to leave the nature as is and not disrupt it as much. So looking at ways to insert the threats through the dura, which comes with different set of challenges such as, it’s a pretty thick layer, so how do you actually penetrate that without breaking the needle?
So we’re looking at different needle design for that as well as the kind of the loop engagement. The other biggest challenges are, it’s quite opaque, optically with white light illumination. So how do you avoid still this biggest advantage that we have of avoiding vasculature? How do you image through that? How do you actually still mediate that? So there are other imaging techniques that we’re looking at to enable that. But the goal, our hypothesis is that, and based on some of the early evidence that we have, doing through the dura insertion will cause minimal scarring that causes them to be much easier to extract over time. And the other thing that we’re also looking at, this is going to be a fundamental change in the implant architecture, is as at the moment, it’s a monolithic single implant that comes with a thread that’s bonded together.
So you can’t actually separate the thing out, but you can imagine having two part implant, bottom part that is the thread that are inserted that has the chips and maybe a radio and some power source. And then you have another implant that has more of the computational heavy load and the bigger battery. And then one can be under the dura, one can be above the dura being the plug for the skull. They can talk to each other, but the thing that you want to upgrade, the computer and not the thread, if you want to upgrade that, you just go in there, remove the screws, and then put in the next version. And you’re off the… It’s a very, very easy surgery too. You do a skin incision, slip this in, screw. Probably be able to do this in 10 minutes.
Lex Fridman
So that would allow you to reuse the thread sort of?
So that would allow you to reuse the thread sort of?
DJ Seo
Correct.
Correct.
Lex Fridman
So I mean, this leads to the natural question of what is the pathway to scaling the increase in the number of threads? Is that a priority? What’s the technical challenge there?
So I mean, this leads to the natural question of what is the pathway to scaling the increase in the number of threads? Is that a priority? What’s the technical challenge there?
DJ Seo
Yeah, that is a priority. So for next versions of the implant, the key metrics that we’re looking to improve are number of channels, just recording from more and more neurons. We have a pathway to actually go from currently 1000 to hopefully 3000, if not 6,000 by end of this year.
Yeah, that is a priority. So for next versions of the implant, the key metrics that we’re looking to improve are number of channels, just recording from more and more neurons. We have a pathway to actually go from currently 1000 to hopefully 3000, if not 6,000 by end of this year.
Lex Fridman
Wow.
Wow.
DJ Seo
And then end of next year we want to get to even more. 16,000.
And then end of next year we want to get to even more. 16,000.
Lex Fridman
Wow.
Wow.
DJ Seo
There’s a couple of limitations to that. One is, obviously being able to photolithographically, print those wires. As I mentioned, it’s two micron in width and spacing. Obviously, there are chips that are much more advanced than those types of resolution and we have some of the tools that we have brought in house to be able to do that. So traces will be narrower just so that you have to have more of the wires coming up into the chip. Chips also cannot linearly consume more energy as you have more and more channels. So there’s a lot of innovations in the circuit, and architecture as well as the circuit design topology to make them lower power. You need to also think about if you have all of these spikes, how do you send that off to the end application. So you need to think about bandwidth limitation there and potentially innovations and signal processing.
There’s a couple of limitations to that. One is, obviously being able to photolithographically, print those wires. As I mentioned, it’s two micron in width and spacing. Obviously, there are chips that are much more advanced than those types of resolution and we have some of the tools that we have brought in house to be able to do that. So traces will be narrower just so that you have to have more of the wires coming up into the chip. Chips also cannot linearly consume more energy as you have more and more channels. So there’s a lot of innovations in the circuit, and architecture as well as the circuit design topology to make them lower power. You need to also think about if you have all of these spikes, how do you send that off to the end application. So you need to think about bandwidth limitation there and potentially innovations and signal processing.
Physically, one of the biggest challenges is going to be the interface. It’s always the interface that breaks bonding this thin film array to the electronics. It starts to become very, very highly dense interconnects. So how you connectivise that? There’s a lot of innovations in the 3D integrations in the recent years that we can take advantage of. One of the biggest challenges that we do have is forming this hermetic barrier. This is an extremely harsh environment that we’re in, the brain. So how do you protect it from, yeah, the brain trying to kill your electronics, to also your electronics leaking things that you don’t want into the brain. And that forming that hermetic barrier is going to be a very, very big challenge that we, I think are actually well suited to tackle.
Lex Fridman
How do you test that? What’s the development environment to simulate that kind of harshness?
How do you test that? What’s the development environment to simulate that kind of harshness?
DJ Seo
Yeah, so this is where the accelerated life tester essentially is a brain in a vat. It literally is a vessel that is made up of, and again, for all intents and purpose for this particular type of test, your brain is a salt water. And you can also put some other set of chemicals like reactive oxygen species that get at these interfaces and trying to cause a reaction to pull it apart. But you could also increase the rate at which these interfaces are aging by just increasing temperature. So every 10 degrees Celsius that you increase, you’re basically accelerating time by two X.
Yeah, so this is where the accelerated life tester essentially is a brain in a vat. It literally is a vessel that is made up of, and again, for all intents and purpose for this particular type of test, your brain is a salt water. And you can also put some other set of chemicals like reactive oxygen species that get at these interfaces and trying to cause a reaction to pull it apart. But you could also increase the rate at which these interfaces are aging by just increasing temperature. So every 10 degrees Celsius that you increase, you’re basically accelerating time by two X.
And there’s limit as to how much temperature you want to increase because at some point there’s some other nonlinear dynamics that causes you to have other nasty gases to form that just is not realistic in an environment. So what we do is we increase in our ALT chamber by 20 degrees Celsius that increases the aging by four times. So essentially one day in ALT chamber is four day in calendar year, and we look at whether the implants still are intact, including the threats. And-
Lex Fridman
And operation and all of that.
And operation and all of that.
DJ Seo
… and operation and all of that. Obviously, is not an exact same environment as a brain because brain has mechanical other more biological groups that attack at it. But it is a good test environment, testing environment for at least the enclosure and the strength of the enclosure. And I mean, we’ve had implants, the current version of the implant that has been in there for close to two and a half years, which is equivalent to a decade and they seem to be fine.
… and operation and all of that. Obviously, is not an exact same environment as a brain because brain has mechanical other more biological groups that attack at it. But it is a good test environment, testing environment for at least the enclosure and the strength of the enclosure. And I mean, we’ve had implants, the current version of the implant that has been in there for close to two and a half years, which is equivalent to a decade and they seem to be fine.
Lex Fridman
So it’s interesting that basically close approximation is warm salt water, hot salt water is a good testing environment.
So it’s interesting that basically close approximation is warm salt water, hot salt water is a good testing environment.
DJ Seo
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
By the way, I’m drinking LMNT , which is basically salt water. Which is making me kind of… It doesn’t have computational power the way the brain does, but maybe in terms of other characteristics, it’s quite similar and I’m consuming it.
By the way, I’m drinking LMNT , which is basically salt water. Which is making me kind of… It doesn’t have computational power the way the brain does, but maybe in terms of other characteristics, it’s quite similar and I’m consuming it.
DJ Seo
Yeah. You have to get it in the right pH too.
Yeah. You have to get it in the right pH too.
Lex Fridman
And then consciousness will emerge. Yeah, no. All right.
And then consciousness will emerge. Yeah, no. All right.
DJ Seo
By the way, the other thing that also is interesting about our enclosure is, if you look at our implant, it’s not your common looking medical implant that usually is encased in a titanium can that’s laser welded. We use this polymer called PCTFE, polychlorotrifluoroethylene, which is actually commonly used in blister packs. So when you have a pill and you try to pop a pill, there’s kind of that plastic membrane. That’s what this is. No one’s actually ever used this except us. And the reason we wanted to do this is because electromagnetically transparent. So when we talked about the electromagnetic inductive charging, with titanium can usually if you want to do something like that, you have to have a sapphire window and it’s a very, very tough process to scale.
By the way, the other thing that also is interesting about our enclosure is, if you look at our implant, it’s not your common looking medical implant that usually is encased in a titanium can that’s laser welded. We use this polymer called PCTFE, polychlorotrifluoroethylene, which is actually commonly used in blister packs. So when you have a pill and you try to pop a pill, there’s kind of that plastic membrane. That’s what this is. No one’s actually ever used this except us. And the reason we wanted to do this is because electromagnetically transparent. So when we talked about the electromagnetic inductive charging, with titanium can usually if you want to do something like that, you have to have a sapphire window and it’s a very, very tough process to scale.
Lex Fridman
So you’re doing a lot of iteration here in every aspect of this. The materials, the software, all.
So you’re doing a lot of iteration here in every aspect of this. The materials, the software, all.
DJ Seo
The whole shebang.
The whole shebang.
Future capabilities
Lex Fridman
Okay. So you mentioned scaling. Is it possible to have multiple Neuralink devices as one of the ways of scaling? To have multiple Neuralink devices implanted?
Okay. So you mentioned scaling. Is it possible to have multiple Neuralink devices as one of the ways of scaling? To have multiple Neuralink devices implanted?
DJ Seo
That’s the goal. That’s the goal. Yeah. I mean, our monkeys have had two neural links, one in each hemisphere. And then we’re also looking at potential of having one in motor cortex, one in visual cortex and one in wherever other cortex.
That’s the goal. That’s the goal. Yeah. I mean, our monkeys have had two neural links, one in each hemisphere. And then we’re also looking at potential of having one in motor cortex, one in visual cortex and one in wherever other cortex.
Lex Fridman
So focusing on the particular function one Neuralink device.
So focusing on the particular function one Neuralink device.
DJ Seo
Correct.
Correct.
Lex Fridman
I mean, I wonder if there’s some level of customization that can be done on the compute side. So for the motor cortex-
I mean, I wonder if there’s some level of customization that can be done on the compute side. So for the motor cortex-
DJ Seo
Absolutely. That’s the goal. And we talk about at Neuralink building a generalized neural interface to the brain. And that also is strategically how we’re approaching this with marketing and also with regulatory, which is, hey, look, we have the robot and the robot can access any part of the cortex. Right now we’re focused on motor cortex with current version of the N1 that’s specialized for motor decoding tasks. But also at the end of the day, there’s a general compute available there. But typically if you want to really get down to hyperoptimizing for power and efficiency, you do need to get to some specialized function.
Absolutely. That’s the goal. And we talk about at Neuralink building a generalized neural interface to the brain. And that also is strategically how we’re approaching this with marketing and also with regulatory, which is, hey, look, we have the robot and the robot can access any part of the cortex. Right now we’re focused on motor cortex with current version of the N1 that’s specialized for motor decoding tasks. But also at the end of the day, there’s a general compute available there. But typically if you want to really get down to hyperoptimizing for power and efficiency, you do need to get to some specialized function.
But what we’re saying is that, hey, you are now used to this robotic insertion techniques, which took many, many years of showing data and conversation with the FDA and also internally convincing ourselves that this is safe. And now the difference is if we go to other parts of the brain, like visual cortex, which we’re interested in as our second product, obviously it’s a completely different environment, the cortex is laid out very, very differently. It’s going to be more stimulation focus rather than recording, just kind of creating visual percepts. But in the end, we’re using the same thin film array technology, we’re using the same robot insertion technology, we’re using the same packaging technology. Now it’s where the conversation is focused around what are the differences and what are the implication of those differences in safety and efficacy.
Lex Fridman
The way you said second product is both hilarious and awesome to me. That product being restoring sight for blind people. So can you speak to stimulating the visual cortex? I mean, the possibilities there are just incredible to be able to give that gift back to people who don’t have sight or even any aspect of that. Can you just speak to the challenges of… There’s challenges here-
The way you said second product is both hilarious and awesome to me. That product being restoring sight for blind people. So can you speak to stimulating the visual cortex? I mean, the possibilities there are just incredible to be able to give that gift back to people who don’t have sight or even any aspect of that. Can you just speak to the challenges of… There’s challenges here-
DJ Seo
Oh many.
Oh many.
Lex Fridman
One of which is like you said, from recording to stimulation. Just any aspect of that that you’re both excited and see the challenges of?
One of which is like you said, from recording to stimulation. Just any aspect of that that you’re both excited and see the challenges of?
DJ Seo
Yeah, I guess I’ll start by saying that we actually have been capable of stimulating through our thin film array as well as other electronics for years. We have actually demonstrated some of that capabilities for reanimating the limb in the spinal cord. Obviously, for the current EFS study, we’ve hardware disabled that. So that’s something that we wanted to embark as a separate journey. And obviously, there are many, many different ways to write information into the brain. The way in which we’re doing that is through electrical, passing electrical current, and kind of causing that to really change the local environment so that you can artificially cause the neurons to depolarize in nearby areas. For vision, specifically the way our visual system works, it’s both well understood. I mean, anything with kind of brain, there are aspects of it that’s well understood, but in the end, we don’t really know anything.
Yeah, I guess I’ll start by saying that we actually have been capable of stimulating through our thin film array as well as other electronics for years. We have actually demonstrated some of that capabilities for reanimating the limb in the spinal cord. Obviously, for the current EFS study, we’ve hardware disabled that. So that’s something that we wanted to embark as a separate journey. And obviously, there are many, many different ways to write information into the brain. The way in which we’re doing that is through electrical, passing electrical current, and kind of causing that to really change the local environment so that you can artificially cause the neurons to depolarize in nearby areas. For vision, specifically the way our visual system works, it’s both well understood. I mean, anything with kind of brain, there are aspects of it that’s well understood, but in the end, we don’t really know anything.
But the way visual system works is that you have photon hitting your eye, and in your eyes there are these specialized cells called photoreceptor cells that convert the photon energy into electrical signals. And then that then gets projected to your back of your head, your visual cortex. It goes through actually thalamic system called LGN that then projects it out. And then in the visual cortex there’s visual area one or V1, and then there’s a bunch of other higher level processing layers like V2, V3. And there are actually kind of interesting parallels. And when you study the behaviors of these convolutional neural networks, like what the different layers of the network is detecting, first they’re detecting these edges and they’re then detecting some more natural curves and then they start to detect objects.
Kind of similar thing happens in the brain. And a lot of that has been inspired and also it’s been kind of exciting to see some of the correlations there. But things like from there, where does cognition arise and where’s color encoded? There’s just not a lot of understanding, fundamental understanding there. So in terms of bringing sight back to those that are blind, there are many different forms of blindness. There’s actually million people, 1 million people in the US that are legally blind. That means certain score below in the visual tests. I think it’s something like if you can see something at 20 feet distance that normal people can see at 200 feet distance, if you’re worse than that, you’re legally blind.
Lex Fridman
So fundamental that means you can’t function effectively using sight in the world.
So fundamental that means you can’t function effectively using sight in the world.
DJ Seo
Like to navigate-
Like to navigate-
Lex Fridman
To navigate.
To navigate.
DJ Seo
… you’re environment. And yeah, there are different forms of blindness. There are forms of blindness where there’s some degeneration of your retina is photoreceptor cells and rest of your visual processing that I described is intact. And for those types of individuals, you may not need to maybe stick electrodes into the visual cortex. You can actually build retinal prosthetic devices that actually just replaces the function of that retinal cells that are degenerated. And there are many companies that are working on that, but that’s a very small slice albeit significance, those smaller slice of folks that are legally blind.
… you’re environment. And yeah, there are different forms of blindness. There are forms of blindness where there’s some degeneration of your retina is photoreceptor cells and rest of your visual processing that I described is intact. And for those types of individuals, you may not need to maybe stick electrodes into the visual cortex. You can actually build retinal prosthetic devices that actually just replaces the function of that retinal cells that are degenerated. And there are many companies that are working on that, but that’s a very small slice albeit significance, those smaller slice of folks that are legally blind.
If there’s any damage along that circuitry, whether it’s in the optic nerve or just the LGN circuitry or any break in that circuit, that’s not going to work for you. And the source of where you need to actually cause that visual percepts to happen because your biological mechanism not doing that is by placing electrodes in the visual cortex in the back of your head. And the way in which this would work is that you would have an external camera, whether it’s something as unsophisticated as a GoPro or some sort of wearable Ray- Ban type glasses that meta is working on that captures a scene. And that scene is then converted to a set of electrical impulses or stimulation pulses that you would activate in your visual cortex through these thin film arrays. And by playing some a concerted kind of orchestra of these stimulation patterns, you can create what’s called phosphenes, which are these kind of white yellowish dots that you can also create by just pressing your eyes. You can actually create those percepts by stimulating the visual cortex.
And the name of the game is really have many of those and have those percepts, be the phosphenes, be as small as possible so that you can start to tell apart they’re the individual pixels of the screen. So if you have many, many of those potentially you’ll be able to, in the long term, be able to actually get naturalistic vision. But in the short term to maybe midterm, being able to at least, be able to have object detection algorithms run on your glasses, the pre-processing units, and then being able to at least see the edges of things so you don’t bump into stuff.
Lex Fridman
This is incredible. This is really incredible. So you basically would be adding pixels and your brain would start to figure out what those pixels mean with different kinds of assistant signal processing on all fronts.
This is incredible. This is really incredible. So you basically would be adding pixels and your brain would start to figure out what those pixels mean with different kinds of assistant signal processing on all fronts.
DJ Seo
Yeah. The thing that actually… So a couple of things. One is obviously if you’re blind from birth, the way brain works, especially in the early age, neuroplasticity is really nothing other than your brain and different parts of your brain fighting for the limited territory. And I mean very, very quickly you see cases where people that are… I mean, you also hear about people who are blind that have heightened sense of hearing or some other senses. And the reason for that is because that cortex that’s not used just gets taken over by these different parts of the cortex. So for those types of individuals, I mean I guess they’re going to have to now map some other parts of their senses into what they call vision, but it’s going to be obviously a very, very different conscious experience.
Yeah. The thing that actually… So a couple of things. One is obviously if you’re blind from birth, the way brain works, especially in the early age, neuroplasticity is really nothing other than your brain and different parts of your brain fighting for the limited territory. And I mean very, very quickly you see cases where people that are… I mean, you also hear about people who are blind that have heightened sense of hearing or some other senses. And the reason for that is because that cortex that’s not used just gets taken over by these different parts of the cortex. So for those types of individuals, I mean I guess they’re going to have to now map some other parts of their senses into what they call vision, but it’s going to be obviously a very, very different conscious experience.
Before… So I think that’s an interesting caveat. The other thing that also is important to highlight is that, we’re currently limited by our biology in terms of the wavelength that we can see. There’s a very, very small wavelength that is a visible light wavelength that we can see with our eyes. But when you have an external camera with this BCI system, you’re not limited to that. You can have infrared, you can have UV, you can have whatever other spectrum that you want to see. And whether that gets matched to some sort of weird conscious experience, I’ve no idea. But oftentimes I talk to people about the goal of Neuralink being going beyond the limits of our biology. That’s sort of what I mean.
Lex Fridman
And if you’re able to control the kind of raw signal, is that when we use our site, we’re getting the photons and there’s not much processing on it. If you’re being able to control that signal, maybe you can do some kind of processing, maybe you do object detection ahead of time. You’re doing some kind of pre-processing and there’s a lot of possibilities to explore that. So it’s not just increasing thermal imaging, that kind of stuff, but it’s also just doing some kind of interesting processing.
And if you’re able to control the kind of raw signal, is that when we use our site, we’re getting the photons and there’s not much processing on it. If you’re being able to control that signal, maybe you can do some kind of processing, maybe you do object detection ahead of time. You’re doing some kind of pre-processing and there’s a lot of possibilities to explore that. So it’s not just increasing thermal imaging, that kind of stuff, but it’s also just doing some kind of interesting processing.
DJ Seo
Correct. Yeah. I mean, my theory of how visual system works also is that, I mean, there’s just so many things happening in the world and there’s a lot of photons that are going into your eye. And it’s unclear exactly where some of the pre-processing steps are happening. But I mean, I actually think that just from a fundamental perspective, there’s just so much the reality that we’re in, if it’s a reality, so there’s so much data and I think humans are just unable to actually eat enough, actually to process all that information. So there’s some sort of filtering that does happen, whether that happens in the retina, whether that happens in different layers of the visual cortex, unclear. But the analogy that I sometimes think about is, if your brain is a CCD camera and all of the information in the world is a sun, and when you try to actually look at the sun with the CCD camera, it’s just going to saturate the sensors because it’s an enormous amount of energy.
Correct. Yeah. I mean, my theory of how visual system works also is that, I mean, there’s just so many things happening in the world and there’s a lot of photons that are going into your eye. And it’s unclear exactly where some of the pre-processing steps are happening. But I mean, I actually think that just from a fundamental perspective, there’s just so much the reality that we’re in, if it’s a reality, so there’s so much data and I think humans are just unable to actually eat enough, actually to process all that information. So there’s some sort of filtering that does happen, whether that happens in the retina, whether that happens in different layers of the visual cortex, unclear. But the analogy that I sometimes think about is, if your brain is a CCD camera and all of the information in the world is a sun, and when you try to actually look at the sun with the CCD camera, it’s just going to saturate the sensors because it’s an enormous amount of energy.
So what you do is you end up adding these filters to just kind of narrow the information that’s coming to you and being captured. And I think things like our experiences or our drugs like propofol, anesthetics drug or psychedelics, what they’re doing is they’re kind of swapping out these filters and putting in new ones or removing older ones and kind of controlling our conscious experience.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, man, not to distract from the topic, but I just took a very high dose of ayahuasca in the Amazon jungle. So yes, it’s a nice way to think about it. You’re swapping out different experiences and with Neuralink being able to control that, primarily at first to improve function, not for entertainment purposes or enjoyment purposes, but-
Yeah, man, not to distract from the topic, but I just took a very high dose of ayahuasca in the Amazon jungle. So yes, it’s a nice way to think about it. You’re swapping out different experiences and with Neuralink being able to control that, primarily at first to improve function, not for entertainment purposes or enjoyment purposes, but-
DJ Seo
Yeah, giving back loss functions.
Yeah, giving back loss functions.
Lex Fridman
Giving back loss functions. And there, especially when the function is completely lost, anything is a huge help. Would you implant a Neuralink device in your own brain?
Giving back loss functions. And there, especially when the function is completely lost, anything is a huge help. Would you implant a Neuralink device in your own brain?
DJ Seo
Absolutely. I mean, maybe not right now, but absolutely.
Absolutely. I mean, maybe not right now, but absolutely.
Lex Fridman
What kind of capability once reached you start getting real curious and almost get a little antsy, jealous of people as you watch them get implanted?
What kind of capability once reached you start getting real curious and almost get a little antsy, jealous of people as you watch them get implanted?
DJ Seo
Yeah, I think even with our early participants, if they start to do things that I can’t do, which I think is in the realm of possibility for them to be able to get 15, 20 if not like a hundred BPS. There’s nothing that fundamentally stops us from being able to achieve that type of performance. I mean, I would certainly get jealous that they can do that.
Yeah, I think even with our early participants, if they start to do things that I can’t do, which I think is in the realm of possibility for them to be able to get 15, 20 if not like a hundred BPS. There’s nothing that fundamentally stops us from being able to achieve that type of performance. I mean, I would certainly get jealous that they can do that.
Lex Fridman
I should say that watching Noland, I get a little jealous having so much fun, and it seems like such a chill way to play video games.
I should say that watching Noland, I get a little jealous having so much fun, and it seems like such a chill way to play video games.
DJ Seo
Yeah. I mean the thing that also is hard to appreciate sometimes is that, he’s doing these things while talking. And I mean, it’s multitasking, so it’s clearly, it’s obviously cognitively intensive. But similar to how when we talk, we move our hands. These are multitasking. I mean, he’s able to do that. And you won’t be able to do that with other assistive technology. As far as I am aware, if you’re obviously using an eye tracking device, you’re very much fixated on that thing that you’re trying to do. And if you’re using voice control, I mean if you say some other stuff, you don’t get to use that.
Yeah. I mean the thing that also is hard to appreciate sometimes is that, he’s doing these things while talking. And I mean, it’s multitasking, so it’s clearly, it’s obviously cognitively intensive. But similar to how when we talk, we move our hands. These are multitasking. I mean, he’s able to do that. And you won’t be able to do that with other assistive technology. As far as I am aware, if you’re obviously using an eye tracking device, you’re very much fixated on that thing that you’re trying to do. And if you’re using voice control, I mean if you say some other stuff, you don’t get to use that.
Lex Fridman
The multitasking aspect of that is really interesting. So it’s not just the BPS for the primary task, it’s the parallelization of multiple tasks. If you measure the BPS for the entirety of the human organism. So you’re talking and doing a thing with your mind and looking around also, I mean, there’s just a lot of parallelization that can be happening.
The multitasking aspect of that is really interesting. So it’s not just the BPS for the primary task, it’s the parallelization of multiple tasks. If you measure the BPS for the entirety of the human organism. So you’re talking and doing a thing with your mind and looking around also, I mean, there’s just a lot of parallelization that can be happening.
DJ Seo
But I mean, I think at some point for him, if he wants to really achieve those high level BPS, it does require a full attention. And that’s a separate circuitry that is a big mystery, how attention works and…
But I mean, I think at some point for him, if he wants to really achieve those high level BPS, it does require a full attention. And that’s a separate circuitry that is a big mystery, how attention works and…
Lex Fridman
Yeah, attention, cognitive load. I’ve read a lot of literature on people doing two tasks. You have your primary task and a secondary task, and the secondary task is a source of distraction. And how does that affect the performance of the primary task? And depending on the tasks, because there’s a lot of interesting… I mean, this is an interesting computational device, and I think there’s-
Yeah, attention, cognitive load. I’ve read a lot of literature on people doing two tasks. You have your primary task and a secondary task, and the secondary task is a source of distraction. And how does that affect the performance of the primary task? And depending on the tasks, because there’s a lot of interesting… I mean, this is an interesting computational device, and I think there’s-
DJ Seo
To say the least.
To say the least.
Lex Fridman
… a lot of novel insights that can be gained from everything. I mean, I personally am surprised that no one’s able to do such incredible control of the cursor while talking. And also being nervous at the same time because he’s talking like all of us are if you’re talking in front of the camera, you get nervous. So all of those are coming into play and he’s able to still achieve high performance. Surprising. I mean, all of this is really amazing. And I think just after researching this really in depth, I kind of want a Neuralink.
… a lot of novel insights that can be gained from everything. I mean, I personally am surprised that no one’s able to do such incredible control of the cursor while talking. And also being nervous at the same time because he’s talking like all of us are if you’re talking in front of the camera, you get nervous. So all of those are coming into play and he’s able to still achieve high performance. Surprising. I mean, all of this is really amazing. And I think just after researching this really in depth, I kind of want a Neuralink.
DJ Seo
Get in the line.
Get in the line.
Lex Fridman
And also the safety get in line. Well, we should say the registry is for people who have quadriplegia and all that kind of stuff, so.
And also the safety get in line. Well, we should say the registry is for people who have quadriplegia and all that kind of stuff, so.
DJ Seo
Correct.
Correct.
Lex Fridman
That’d be a separate line for people. They’re just curious like myself. So now that Noland, patient P1 is part of the ongoing prime study, what’s the high level vision for P2, P3, P4, P5, and just the expansion into other human beings that are getting to experience this implant?
That’d be a separate line for people. They’re just curious like myself. So now that Noland, patient P1 is part of the ongoing prime study, what’s the high level vision for P2, P3, P4, P5, and just the expansion into other human beings that are getting to experience this implant?
DJ Seo
Yeah, I mean the primary goal is for our study in the first place is to achieve safety endpoints. Just understand safety of this device as well as the implantation process. And also at the same time understand the efficacy and the impact that it could have on the potential user’s lives. And Just because you have, you’re living with tetraplegia, it doesn’t mean your situation is same as another person living with tetraplegia. It’s wildly, wildly varying. And it’s something that we’re hoping to also understand how our technology can serve not just a very small slice of those individuals, but broader group of individuals and being able to get the feedback to just really build just the best product for them.
Yeah, I mean the primary goal is for our study in the first place is to achieve safety endpoints. Just understand safety of this device as well as the implantation process. And also at the same time understand the efficacy and the impact that it could have on the potential user’s lives. And Just because you have, you’re living with tetraplegia, it doesn’t mean your situation is same as another person living with tetraplegia. It’s wildly, wildly varying. And it’s something that we’re hoping to also understand how our technology can serve not just a very small slice of those individuals, but broader group of individuals and being able to get the feedback to just really build just the best product for them.
So there’s obviously, also goals that we have. And the primary purpose of the early feasibility study is to learn from each and every participant to improve the device, improve the surgery before we embark on what’s called a pivotal study. That then is a much larger trial that starts to look at statistical significance of your endpoints and that’s required before you can then market the device. And that’s how it works in the US and just generally around the world. That’s the process you follow.
So our goal is to really just understand from people like Noland, P2, P3, future participants, what aspects of our device needs to improve. If it turns out that people are like, “I really don’t like the fact that it lasts only six hours. I want to be able to use this computer for 24 hours.” I mean, that is a user needs and user requirements, which we can only find out from just being able to engage with them.
Lex Fridman
So before the pivotal study, there’s kind of a rapid innovation based on individual experiences. You’re learning from individual people, how they use it, the high resolution details in terms of cursor control and signal and all that kind of stuff, life experience.
So before the pivotal study, there’s kind of a rapid innovation based on individual experiences. You’re learning from individual people, how they use it, the high resolution details in terms of cursor control and signal and all that kind of stuff, life experience.
DJ Seo
So there’s hardware changes, but also just firmware updates. So even when we had that sort of recovery event for Noland, he now has the new firmware that he has been updated with, and similar to how your phones get updated all the time with new firmware for security patches, whatever, new functionality, UI. And that’s something that is possible with our implant. It’s not a static one-time device that can only do…
So there’s hardware changes, but also just firmware updates. So even when we had that sort of recovery event for Noland, he now has the new firmware that he has been updated with, and similar to how your phones get updated all the time with new firmware for security patches, whatever, new functionality, UI. And that’s something that is possible with our implant. It’s not a static one-time device that can only do…
DJ Seo
It’s not a static one-time device that can only do the thing that it said it can do. I mean, it’s similar to Tesla, you can do over-the-air firmware updates, and now you have completely new user interface and all these bells and whistles and improvements on everything, like the latest. Right? When we say generalized platform, that’s what we’re talking about.
It’s not a static one-time device that can only do the thing that it said it can do. I mean, it’s similar to Tesla, you can do over-the-air firmware updates, and now you have completely new user interface and all these bells and whistles and improvements on everything, like the latest. Right? When we say generalized platform, that’s what we’re talking about.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. It’s really cool how the app that Noland is using, there’s calibration, all that kind of stuff, and then there’s update. You just click and get an update.
Yeah. It’s really cool how the app that Noland is using, there’s calibration, all that kind of stuff, and then there’s update. You just click and get an update.
What other future capabilities are you looking to? You said vision. That’s a fascinating one. What about accelerated typing or speech, or this kind of stuff? And what else is there?
DJ Seo
Yeah. Those are still in the realm of movement program. So, largely speaking, we have two programs. We have the movement program and we have the vision program. The movement program currently is focused around the digital freedom. As you can easily guess, if you can control 2D cursor in the digital space, you could move anything in the physical space. So, robotic arms, wheelchair, your environment, or even really, whether it’s through the phone or just directly to those interfaces, to those machines.
Yeah. Those are still in the realm of movement program. So, largely speaking, we have two programs. We have the movement program and we have the vision program. The movement program currently is focused around the digital freedom. As you can easily guess, if you can control 2D cursor in the digital space, you could move anything in the physical space. So, robotic arms, wheelchair, your environment, or even really, whether it’s through the phone or just directly to those interfaces, to those machines.
So, we’re looking at ways to expand those types of capability, even for Noland. That requires conversation with the FDA and showing safety data for if there’s a robotic arm or a wheelchair, that we can guarantee that they’re not going to hurt themselves accidentally. Right? It’s very different if you’re moving stuff in the digital domain versus in the physical space, you can actually potentially cause harm to the participants. So, we’re working through that right now.
Speech does involve different areas of the brain. Speech prosthetic is very, very fascinating and there’s actually been a lot of really amazing work that’s been happening in academia. Sergey Stavisky at UC Davis, Jaimie Henderson and late Krishna Shenoy at Stanford, are doing just some incredible amount of work in improving speech neuro-prosthetics. And those are actually looking more at parts of the motor cortex that are controlling these vocal articulators, and being able to, even by mouthing the word or imagine speech, you can pick up those signals.
The more sophisticated higher level processing areas like the Broca’s area or Wernicke’s area, those are still very, very big mystery in terms of the underlying mechanism of how all that stuff works. But I mean, I think Neuralink’s eventual goal is to understand those things and be able to provide a platform and tools to be able to understand that and study that.
Lex Fridman
This is where I get to the pothead questions. Do you think we can start getting insight into things like thought? So, speech, there’s a muscular component, like you said, there’s the act of producing sounds, but then what about the internal things like cognition, like low-level thoughts and high-level thoughts? Do you think we’ll start noticing signals that could be picked up, they could be understood, that could be maybe used in order to interact with the outside world?
This is where I get to the pothead questions. Do you think we can start getting insight into things like thought? So, speech, there’s a muscular component, like you said, there’s the act of producing sounds, but then what about the internal things like cognition, like low-level thoughts and high-level thoughts? Do you think we’ll start noticing signals that could be picked up, they could be understood, that could be maybe used in order to interact with the outside world?
DJ Seo
In some ways, I guess, this starts to kind of get into the hard problem of consciousness. And I mean, on one hand, all of these are at some point, set of electrical signals that from there maybe it in itself is giving you the cognition or the meaning, or somehow human mind is an incredibly amazing storytelling machine. So, we’re telling ourselves and fooling ourselves that there’s some interesting meaning here.
In some ways, I guess, this starts to kind of get into the hard problem of consciousness. And I mean, on one hand, all of these are at some point, set of electrical signals that from there maybe it in itself is giving you the cognition or the meaning, or somehow human mind is an incredibly amazing storytelling machine. So, we’re telling ourselves and fooling ourselves that there’s some interesting meaning here.
But I mean, I certainly think that BCI … Really, BCI, at the end of the day is a set of tools that help you study the underlying mechanisms in a both local but also broader sense, and whether there’s some interesting patterns of electrical signal that means you’re thinking this versus … And you can either learn from many, many sets of data to correlate some of that and be able to do mind reading or not. I’m not sure.
I certainly would not rule that out as a possibility, but I think BCI alone probably can’t do that. There’s probably additional set of tools and framework and also just hard problem of consciousness, at the end of the day, is rooted in this philosophical question of what is the meaning of it all? What’s the nature of our existence? Where’s the mind emerged from this complex network?
Lex Fridman
Yeah. How does the subjective experience emerge from just a bunch of spikes, electrical spikes?
Yeah. How does the subjective experience emerge from just a bunch of spikes, electrical spikes?
DJ Seo
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we do really think about BCI and what we’re building as a tool for understanding the mind, the brain. The only question that matters.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we do really think about BCI and what we’re building as a tool for understanding the mind, the brain. The only question that matters.
There actually is some biological existence proof of what it would take to kind of start to form some of these experiences that may be unique. If you actually look at every one of our brains, there are two hemispheres. There’s a left-sided brain, there’s a right-sided brain. And unless you have some other conditions, you normally don’t feel like left legs or right legs, you just feel like one legs, right? So, what is happening there? Right?
If you actually look at the two hemispheres, there’s a structure that kind of connectorized the two, called the corpus callosum, that is supposed to have around 200 to 300 million connections or axons. So, whether that means that’s the number of interface and electrodes that we need to create some sort of mind meld or from that whatever new conscious experience that you can experience. But I do think that there’s kind of an interesting existence proof that we all have.
Lex Fridman
And that threshold is unknown at this time?
And that threshold is unknown at this time?
DJ Seo
Oh, yeah. Everything in this domain is speculation. Right?
Oh, yeah. Everything in this domain is speculation. Right?
Lex Fridman
And then, you’d be continuously pleasantly surprised. Do you see a world where there is millions of people, like tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people walking around with a Neuralink device or multiple Neuralink devices in their brain?
And then, you’d be continuously pleasantly surprised. Do you see a world where there is millions of people, like tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people walking around with a Neuralink device or multiple Neuralink devices in their brain?
DJ Seo
I do. First of all, there are, if you look at worldwide, people suffering from movement disorders and visual deficits, I mean, that’s in the tens if not hundreds of millions of people. So, that alone, I think there’s a lot of benefit and potential good that we can do with this type of technology. And once you start to get into psychiatric application, depression, anxiety, hunger or obesity, right? Mood, control of appetite. I mean, that starts to become very real to everyone.
I do. First of all, there are, if you look at worldwide, people suffering from movement disorders and visual deficits, I mean, that’s in the tens if not hundreds of millions of people. So, that alone, I think there’s a lot of benefit and potential good that we can do with this type of technology. And once you start to get into psychiatric application, depression, anxiety, hunger or obesity, right? Mood, control of appetite. I mean, that starts to become very real to everyone.
Lex Fridman
Not to mention that most people on Earth have a smartphone, and once BCI starts competing with a smartphone as a preferred methodology of interacting with the digital world, that also becomes an interesting thing.
Not to mention that most people on Earth have a smartphone, and once BCI starts competing with a smartphone as a preferred methodology of interacting with the digital world, that also becomes an interesting thing.
DJ Seo
Oh yeah, this is even before going to that, right? There’s almost, I mean, the entire world that could benefit from these types of things. And then, if we’re talking about next generation of how we interface with machines or even ourselves, in many ways, I think BCI can play a role in that. And some of the things that I also talk about is, I do think that there is a real possibility that you could see 8 billion people walking around with Neuralink.
Oh yeah, this is even before going to that, right? There’s almost, I mean, the entire world that could benefit from these types of things. And then, if we’re talking about next generation of how we interface with machines or even ourselves, in many ways, I think BCI can play a role in that. And some of the things that I also talk about is, I do think that there is a real possibility that you could see 8 billion people walking around with Neuralink.
Lex Fridman
Well, thank you so much for pushing ahead. And I look forward to that exciting future.
Well, thank you so much for pushing ahead. And I look forward to that exciting future.
DJ Seo
Thanks for having me.
Thanks for having me.
Matthew MacDougall
Lex Fridman
Thanks for listening to this conversation with DJ Seo. And now, dear friends, here’s Matthew MacDougall, the head neurosurgeon at Neuralink.
Thanks for listening to this conversation with DJ Seo. And now, dear friends, here’s Matthew MacDougall, the head neurosurgeon at Neuralink.
When did you first become fascinated with the human brain?
Matthew MacDougall
Since forever. As far back as I can remember, I’ve been interested in the human brain. I mean, I was a thoughtful kid and a bit of an outsider, and you sit there thinking about what the most important things in the world are in your little tiny adolescent brain. And the answer that I came to, that I converged on was that all of the things you can possibly conceive of as things that are important for human beings to care about are literally contained in the skull. Both the perception of them and their relative values and the solutions to all our problems, and all of our problems, are all contained in the skull. And if we knew more about how that worked, how the brain encodes information and generates desires and generates agony and suffering, we could do more about it.
Since forever. As far back as I can remember, I’ve been interested in the human brain. I mean, I was a thoughtful kid and a bit of an outsider, and you sit there thinking about what the most important things in the world are in your little tiny adolescent brain. And the answer that I came to, that I converged on was that all of the things you can possibly conceive of as things that are important for human beings to care about are literally contained in the skull. Both the perception of them and their relative values and the solutions to all our problems, and all of our problems, are all contained in the skull. And if we knew more about how that worked, how the brain encodes information and generates desires and generates agony and suffering, we could do more about it.
You think about all the really great triumphs in human history. You think about all the really horrific tragedies. You think about the Holocaust, you think about any prison full of human stories, and all of those problems boil down to neurochemistry. So, if you get a little bit of control over that, you provide people the option to do better. In the way I read history, the way people have dealt with having better tools is that they most often, in the end, do better, with huge asterisks. But I think it’s an interesting, a worthy, a noble pursuit to give people more options, more tools.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, that’s a fascinating way to look at human history. You just imagine all these neurobiological mechanisms, Stalin, Hitler, Genghis Khan, all of them just had a brain, just a bunch of neurons, few times of billions of neurons gaining a bunch of information over a period of time. They have a set of modules that does language and memory and all that. And from there, in the case of those people, they’re able to murder millions of people. And all that coming from … There’s not some glorified notion of a dictator of this enormous mind or something like this. It’s just the brain.
Yeah, that’s a fascinating way to look at human history. You just imagine all these neurobiological mechanisms, Stalin, Hitler, Genghis Khan, all of them just had a brain, just a bunch of neurons, few times of billions of neurons gaining a bunch of information over a period of time. They have a set of modules that does language and memory and all that. And from there, in the case of those people, they’re able to murder millions of people. And all that coming from … There’s not some glorified notion of a dictator of this enormous mind or something like this. It’s just the brain.
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, a lot of that has to do with how well people like that can organize those around them.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, a lot of that has to do with how well people like that can organize those around them.
Lex Fridman
Other brains.
Other brains.
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah. And so, I always find it interesting to look to primatology, look to our closest non-human relatives for clues as to how humans are going to behave and what particular humans are able to achieve. And so, you look at chimpanzees and bonobos, and they’re similar but different in their social structures particularly. And I went to Emory in Atlanta and studied under the great Frans de Waal, who was kind of the leading primatologist, who recently died. And his work looking at chimps through the lens of how you would watch an episode of Friends and understand the motivations of the characters interacting with each other. He would look at a chimp colony and basically apply that lens. I’m massively oversimplifying it.
Yeah. And so, I always find it interesting to look to primatology, look to our closest non-human relatives for clues as to how humans are going to behave and what particular humans are able to achieve. And so, you look at chimpanzees and bonobos, and they’re similar but different in their social structures particularly. And I went to Emory in Atlanta and studied under the great Frans de Waal, who was kind of the leading primatologist, who recently died. And his work looking at chimps through the lens of how you would watch an episode of Friends and understand the motivations of the characters interacting with each other. He would look at a chimp colony and basically apply that lens. I’m massively oversimplifying it.
If you do that, instead of just saying, “Subject 473 threw his feces at subject 471.” You talk about them in terms of their human struggles, accord them the dignity of themselves as actors with understandable goals and drives, what they want out of life. And primarily, it’s the things we want out of life, food, sex, companionship, power. You can understand chimp and bonobo behavior in the same lights much more easily. And I think doing so gives you the tools you need to reduce human behavior from the kind of false complexity that we layer onto it with language, and look at it in terms of, oh, well, these humans are looking for companionship, sex, food, power. And I think that that’s a pretty powerful tool to have in understanding human behavior.
Lex Fridman
And I just went to the Amazon jungle for a few weeks and it’s a very visceral reminder that a lot of life on Earth is just trying to get laid. They’re all screaming at each other. I saw a lot of monkeys and they’re just trying to impress each other, or maybe if there’s a battle for power, but a lot of the battle for power has to do with them getting laid.
And I just went to the Amazon jungle for a few weeks and it’s a very visceral reminder that a lot of life on Earth is just trying to get laid. They’re all screaming at each other. I saw a lot of monkeys and they’re just trying to impress each other, or maybe if there’s a battle for power, but a lot of the battle for power has to do with them getting laid.
Matthew MacDougall
Right. Breeding rights often go with alpha status. And so, if you can get a piece of that, then you’re going to do okay.
Right. Breeding rights often go with alpha status. And so, if you can get a piece of that, then you’re going to do okay.
Lex Fridman
And we’d like to think that we’re somehow fundamentally different, and especially when it comes to primates, we really aren’t. We can use fancier poetic language, but maybe some of the underlying drives and motivators are similar.
And we’d like to think that we’re somehow fundamentally different, and especially when it comes to primates, we really aren’t. We can use fancier poetic language, but maybe some of the underlying drives and motivators are similar.
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah, I think that’s true.
Yeah, I think that’s true.
Neuroscience
Lex Fridman
And all of that is coming from this, the brain.
And all of that is coming from this, the brain.
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
So, when did you first start studying the brain as the biological mechanism?
So, when did you first start studying the brain as the biological mechanism?
Matthew MacDougall
Basically, the moment I got to college, I started looking around for labs that I could do neuroscience work in. I originally approached that from the angle of looking at interactions between the brain and the immune system, which isn’t the most obvious place to start, but I had this idea at the time that the contents of your thoughts would have a direct impact, maybe a powerful one, on non-conscious systems in your body. The systems we think of as homeostatic automatic mechanisms, like fighting off a virus, like repairing a wound. And sure enough, there are big crossovers between the two.
Basically, the moment I got to college, I started looking around for labs that I could do neuroscience work in. I originally approached that from the angle of looking at interactions between the brain and the immune system, which isn’t the most obvious place to start, but I had this idea at the time that the contents of your thoughts would have a direct impact, maybe a powerful one, on non-conscious systems in your body. The systems we think of as homeostatic automatic mechanisms, like fighting off a virus, like repairing a wound. And sure enough, there are big crossovers between the two.
I mean, it gets to kind of a key point that I think goes under-recognized. One of the things people don’t recognize or appreciate about the human brain enough, and that is that it basically controls or has a huge role in almost everything that your body does. You try to name an example of something in your body that isn’t directly controlled or massively influenced by the brain, and it’s pretty hard. I mean, you might say like bone healing or something. But even those systems, the hypothalamus and pituitary end up playing a role in coordinating the endocrine system, that does have a direct influence on say, the calcium level in your blood, that goes to bone healing. So, non-obvious connections between those things implicate the brain as really a potent prime mover in all of health.
Lex Fridman
One of the things I realized in the other direction too, how most of the systems in the body are integrated with the human brain, they affect the brain also, like the immune system. I think there’s just, people who study Alzheimer’s and those kinds of things, it’s just surprising how much you can understand of that from the immune system, from the other systems that don’t obviously seem to have anything to do with the nervous system. They all play together.
One of the things I realized in the other direction too, how most of the systems in the body are integrated with the human brain, they affect the brain also, like the immune system. I think there’s just, people who study Alzheimer’s and those kinds of things, it’s just surprising how much you can understand of that from the immune system, from the other systems that don’t obviously seem to have anything to do with the nervous system. They all play together.
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah, you could understand how that would be driven by evolution too. Just in some simple examples, if you get sick, if you get a communicable disease, you get the flu, it’s pretty advantageous for your immune system to tell your brain, “Hey, now be antisocial for a few days. Don’t go be the life of the party tonight. In fact, maybe just cuddle up somewhere warm, under a blanket, and just stay there for a day or two.” And sure enough, that tends to be the behavior that you see both in animals and in humans. If you get sick, elevated levels of interleukins in your blood and TNF-alpha in your blood, ask the brain to cut back on social activity and even moving around, you have lower locomotor activity in animals that are infected with viruses.
Yeah, you could understand how that would be driven by evolution too. Just in some simple examples, if you get sick, if you get a communicable disease, you get the flu, it’s pretty advantageous for your immune system to tell your brain, “Hey, now be antisocial for a few days. Don’t go be the life of the party tonight. In fact, maybe just cuddle up somewhere warm, under a blanket, and just stay there for a day or two.” And sure enough, that tends to be the behavior that you see both in animals and in humans. If you get sick, elevated levels of interleukins in your blood and TNF-alpha in your blood, ask the brain to cut back on social activity and even moving around, you have lower locomotor activity in animals that are infected with viruses.
Lex Fridman
So, from there, the early days in neuroscience to surgery, when did that step happen? Which is a leap.
So, from there, the early days in neuroscience to surgery, when did that step happen? Which is a leap.
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah. It was sort of an evolution of thought. I wanted to study the brain. I started studying the brain in undergrad in this neuroimmunology lab. I, from there, realized at some point that I didn’t want to just generate knowledge. I wanted to affect real changes in the actual world, in actual people’s lives. And so, after having not really thought about going into medical school, I was on a track to go into a PhD program. I said, “Well, I’d like that option. I’d like to actually potentially help tangible people in front of me.”
Yeah. It was sort of an evolution of thought. I wanted to study the brain. I started studying the brain in undergrad in this neuroimmunology lab. I, from there, realized at some point that I didn’t want to just generate knowledge. I wanted to affect real changes in the actual world, in actual people’s lives. And so, after having not really thought about going into medical school, I was on a track to go into a PhD program. I said, “Well, I’d like that option. I’d like to actually potentially help tangible people in front of me.”
And doing a little digging, found that there exists these MD-PhD programs where you can choose not to choose between them and do both. And so, I went to USC for medical school and had a joint PhD program with Caltech, where I actually chose that program particularly because of a researcher at Caltech named Richard Andersen, who’s one of the godfathers of primate neuroscience, and has a macaque lab where Utah arrays and other electrodes were being inserted into the brains of monkeys to try to understand how intentions were being encoded in the brain.
So, I ended up there with the idea that maybe I would be a neurologist and study the brain on the side. And then discovered that neurology … Again, I’m going to make enemies by saying this, but neurology predominantly and distressingly to me, is the practice of diagnosing a thing and then saying, “Good luck with that. There’s not much we can do.” And neurosurgery, very differently, it’s a powerful lever on taking people that are headed in a bad direction and changing their course in the sense of brain tumors that are potentially treatable or curable with surgery. Even aneurysms in the brain, blood vessels that are going to rupture, you can save lives, really, is at the end of the day what mattered to me.
And so, I was at USC, as I mentioned, that happens to be one of the great neurosurgery programs. And so, I met these truly epic neurosurgeons, Alex Khalessi, and Mike Apuzzo, and Steve Giannotta, and Marty Weiss, these epic people that were just human beings in front of me. And so, it kind of changed my thinking from neurosurgeons are distant gods that live on another planet and occasionally come and visit us, to these are humans that have problems and are people, and there’s nothing fundamentally preventing me from being one of them. And so, at the last minute in medical school, I changed gears from going into a different specialty and switched into neurosurgery, which cost me a year. I had to do another year of research because I was so far along in the process that to switch into neurosurgery, the deadlines had already passed. So, it was a decision that cost time, but absolutely worth it.
Neurosurgery
Lex Fridman
What was the hardest part of the training on the neurosurgeon track?
What was the hardest part of the training on the neurosurgeon track?
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah, two things, I think, that residency in neurosurgery is sort of a competition of pain, of how much pain can you eat and smile? And so, there’s work hour restrictions that are not really … They’re viewed, I think, internally among the residents as weakness. And so, most neurosurgery residents try to work as hard as they can, and that, I think necessarily means working long hours and sometimes over the work hour limits.
Yeah, two things, I think, that residency in neurosurgery is sort of a competition of pain, of how much pain can you eat and smile? And so, there’s work hour restrictions that are not really … They’re viewed, I think, internally among the residents as weakness. And so, most neurosurgery residents try to work as hard as they can, and that, I think necessarily means working long hours and sometimes over the work hour limits.
We care about being compliant with whatever regulations are in front of us, but I think more important than that, people want to give their all in becoming a better neurosurgeon because the stakes are so high. And so, it’s a real fight to get residents to say, go home at the end of their shift and not stay and do more surgery.
Lex Fridman
Are you seriously saying one of the hardest things is literally forcing them to get sleep and rest and all this kind of stuff?
Are you seriously saying one of the hardest things is literally forcing them to get sleep and rest and all this kind of stuff?
Matthew MacDougall
Historically that was the case.
Historically that was the case.
Lex Fridman
That’s hilarious. And that’s awesome.
That’s hilarious. And that’s awesome.
Matthew MacDougall
I think the next generation is more compliant and more self-care-
I think the next generation is more compliant and more self-care-
Lex Fridman
Weaker is what you mean. All right. I’m just kidding. I’m just kidding.
Weaker is what you mean. All right. I’m just kidding. I’m just kidding.
Matthew MacDougall
I didn’t say it.
I didn’t say it.
Lex Fridman
Now I’m making enemies.
Now I’m making enemies.
Matthew MacDougall
No.
No.
Lex Fridman
Okay, I get it. Wow, that’s fascinating. So, what was the second thing?
Okay, I get it. Wow, that’s fascinating. So, what was the second thing?
Matthew MacDougall
The personalities. And maybe the two are connected.
The personalities. And maybe the two are connected.
Lex Fridman
So, was it pretty competitive?
So, was it pretty competitive?
Matthew MacDougall
It’s competitive, and it’s also, as we touched on earlier, primates like power. And I think neurosurgery has long had this aura of mystique and excellence and whatever about it. And so, it’s an invitation, I think, for people that are cloaked in that authority. A board certified neurosurgeon is basically a walking fallacious appeal to authority. Right? You have license to walk into any room and act like you’re an expert on whatever. And fighting that tendency is not something that most neurosurgeons do well. Humility isn’t the forte.
It’s competitive, and it’s also, as we touched on earlier, primates like power. And I think neurosurgery has long had this aura of mystique and excellence and whatever about it. And so, it’s an invitation, I think, for people that are cloaked in that authority. A board certified neurosurgeon is basically a walking fallacious appeal to authority. Right? You have license to walk into any room and act like you’re an expert on whatever. And fighting that tendency is not something that most neurosurgeons do well. Humility isn’t the forte.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. I have friends who know you and whenever they speak about you that you have the surprising quality for a neurosurgeon of humility, which I think indicates that it’s not as common as perhaps in other professions, because there is a kind of gigantic sort of heroic aspect to neurosurgery, and I think it gets to people’s head a little bit.
Yeah. I have friends who know you and whenever they speak about you that you have the surprising quality for a neurosurgeon of humility, which I think indicates that it’s not as common as perhaps in other professions, because there is a kind of gigantic sort of heroic aspect to neurosurgery, and I think it gets to people’s head a little bit.
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah. Well, I think that allows me to play well at an Elon company because Elon, one of his strengths, I think, is to just instantly see through fallacy from authority. So, nobody walks into a room that he’s in and says, “Well, goddammit, you have to trust me. I’m the guy that built the last 10 rockets,” or something. And he says, “Well, you did it wrong and we can do it better.” Or, “I’m the guy that kept Ford alive for the last 50 years. You listen to me on how to build cars.” And he says, “No.”
Yeah. Well, I think that allows me to play well at an Elon company because Elon, one of his strengths, I think, is to just instantly see through fallacy from authority. So, nobody walks into a room that he’s in and says, “Well, goddammit, you have to trust me. I’m the guy that built the last 10 rockets,” or something. And he says, “Well, you did it wrong and we can do it better.” Or, “I’m the guy that kept Ford alive for the last 50 years. You listen to me on how to build cars.” And he says, “No.”
And so, you don’t walk into a room that he’s in and say, “Well, I’m a neurosurgeon. Let me tell you how to do it.” He’s going to say, “Well, I’m a human being that has a brain. I can think from first principles myself. Thank you very much. And here’s how I think it ought to be done. Let’s go try it and see who’s right.” And that’s proven, I think over and over in his case, to be a very powerful approach.
Lex Fridman
If we just take that tangent, there’s a fascinating interdisciplinary team at Neuralink that you get to interact with, including Elon. What do you think is the secret to a successful team? What have you learned from just getting to observe these folks, world experts in different disciplines work together?
If we just take that tangent, there’s a fascinating interdisciplinary team at Neuralink that you get to interact with, including Elon. What do you think is the secret to a successful team? What have you learned from just getting to observe these folks, world experts in different disciplines work together?
Matthew MacDougall
There’s a sweet spot where people disagree and forcefully speak their mind and passionately defend their position, and yet, are still able to accept information from others and change their ideas when they’re wrong. And so, I like the analogy of how you polish rocks. You put hard things in a hard container and spin it. People bash against each other, and out comes a more refined product. And so, to make a good team at Neuralink, we’ve tried to find people that are not afraid to defend their ideas passionately and occasionally strongly disagree with people that they’re working with, and have the best idea come out on top.
There’s a sweet spot where people disagree and forcefully speak their mind and passionately defend their position, and yet, are still able to accept information from others and change their ideas when they’re wrong. And so, I like the analogy of how you polish rocks. You put hard things in a hard container and spin it. People bash against each other, and out comes a more refined product. And so, to make a good team at Neuralink, we’ve tried to find people that are not afraid to defend their ideas passionately and occasionally strongly disagree with people that they’re working with, and have the best idea come out on top.
It’s not an easy balance. Again, to refer back to the primate brain. It’s not something that is inherently built into the primate brain to say, “I passionately put all my chips on this position, and now I’m just going to walk away from it and admit you are right.” Part of our brains tell us that that is a power loss, that is a loss of face, a loss of standing in the community, and now you’re a zeta chump because your idea got trounced. And you just have to recognize that that little voice in the back of your head is maladaptive and it’s not helping the team win.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, you have to have the confidence to be able to walk away from an idea that you hold on to. Yeah.
Yeah, you have to have the confidence to be able to walk away from an idea that you hold on to. Yeah.
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
And if you do that often enough, you’re actually going to become the best in the world at your thing. I mean, that rapid iteration.
And if you do that often enough, you’re actually going to become the best in the world at your thing. I mean, that rapid iteration.
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah, you’ll at least be a member of a winning team.
Yeah, you’ll at least be a member of a winning team.
Lex Fridman
Ride the wave. What did you learn … You mentioned there’s a lot of amazing neurosurgeons at USC. What lessons about surgery and life have you learned from those folks?
Ride the wave. What did you learn … You mentioned there’s a lot of amazing neurosurgeons at USC. What lessons about surgery and life have you learned from those folks?
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah. I think working your ass off, working hard while functioning as a member of a team, getting a job done that is incredibly difficult, working incredibly long hours, being up all night, taking care of someone that you think probably won’t survive no matter what you do. Working hard to make people that you passionately dislike look good the next morning.
Yeah. I think working your ass off, working hard while functioning as a member of a team, getting a job done that is incredibly difficult, working incredibly long hours, being up all night, taking care of someone that you think probably won’t survive no matter what you do. Working hard to make people that you passionately dislike look good the next morning.
These folks were relentless in their pursuit of excellent neurosurgical technique, decade over decade, and I think were well-recognized for that excellence. So, especially Marty Weiss, Steve Giannotta, Mike Apuzzo, they made huge contributions not only to surgical technique, but they built training programs that trained dozens or hundreds of amazing neurosurgeons. I was just lucky to be in their wake.
Lex Fridman
What’s that like … You mentioned doing a surgery where the person is likely not to survive. Does that wear on you?
What’s that like … You mentioned doing a surgery where the person is likely not to survive. Does that wear on you?
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah. It’s especially challenging when you … With all respect to our elders, it doesn’t hit so much when you’re taking care of an 80-year-old, and something was going to get them pretty soon anyway. And so, you lose a patient like that, and it was part of the natural course of what is expected of them in the coming years, regardless.
Yeah. It’s especially challenging when you … With all respect to our elders, it doesn’t hit so much when you’re taking care of an 80-year-old, and something was going to get them pretty soon anyway. And so, you lose a patient like that, and it was part of the natural course of what is expected of them in the coming years, regardless.
Taking care of a father of two or three, four young kids, someone in their 30s that didn’t have it coming, and they show up in your ER having their first seizure of their life, and lo and behold, they’ve got a huge malignant inoperable or incurable brain tumor. You can only do that, I think, a handful of times before it really starts eating away at your armor. Or, a young mother that shows up that has a giant hemorrhage in her brain that she’s not going to survive from. And they bring her four-year-old daughter in to say goodbye one last time before they turn the ventilator off. The great Henry Marsh is an English neurosurgeon who said it best, I think. He says, “Every neurosurgeon carries with them a private graveyard.” And I definitely feel that, especially with young parents, that kills me. They had a lot more to give. The loss of those people specifically has a knock-on effect that’s going to make the world worse for people for a long time. And it’s just hard to feel powerless in the face of that. And that’s where I think you have to be borderline evil to fight against a company like Neuralink or to constantly be taking pot shots at us, because what we’re doing is to try to fix that stuff. We’re trying to give people options to reduce suffering. We’re trying to take the pain out of life that broken brains brings in. And yeah, this is just our little way that we’re fighting back against entropy, I guess.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. The amount of suffering that’s endured when some of the things that we take for granted that our brain is able to do is taken away, is immense. And to be able to restore some of that functionality is a real gift.
Yeah. The amount of suffering that’s endured when some of the things that we take for granted that our brain is able to do is taken away, is immense. And to be able to restore some of that functionality is a real gift.
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah. We’re just starting. We’re going to do so much more.
Yeah. We’re just starting. We’re going to do so much more.
Neuralink surgery
Lex Fridman
Well, can you take me through the full procedure for implanting, say, the N1 chip in Neuralink?
Well, can you take me through the full procedure for implanting, say, the N1 chip in Neuralink?
Matthew MacDougall
Sure. Yeah. It’s a really simple, straightforward procedure. The human part of the surgery that I do is dead simple. It’s one of the most basic neurosurgery procedures imaginable. And I think there’s evidence that some version of it has been done for thousands of years. That there are examples, I think, from ancient Egypt of healed or partially healed trepanations, and from Peru or ancient times in South America where these proto-surgeons would drill holes in people’s skulls, presumably to let out the evil spirits, but maybe to drain blood clots. And there’s evidence of bone healing around the edge, meaning the people at least survived some months after a procedure.
Sure. Yeah. It’s a really simple, straightforward procedure. The human part of the surgery that I do is dead simple. It’s one of the most basic neurosurgery procedures imaginable. And I think there’s evidence that some version of it has been done for thousands of years. That there are examples, I think, from ancient Egypt of healed or partially healed trepanations, and from Peru or ancient times in South America where these proto-surgeons would drill holes in people’s skulls, presumably to let out the evil spirits, but maybe to drain blood clots. And there’s evidence of bone healing around the edge, meaning the people at least survived some months after a procedure.
And so, what we’re doing is that. We are making a cut in the skin on the top of the head over the area of the brain that is the most potent representation of hand intentions. And so, if you are an expert concert pianist, this part of your brain is lighting up the entire time you’re playing. We call it the hand knob.
Lex Fridman
The hand knob. So, it’s all the finger movements, all of that is just firing away.
The hand knob. So, it’s all the finger movements, all of that is just firing away.
Matthew MacDougall
Yep. There’s a little squiggle in the cortex right there. One of the folds in the brain is kind of doubly folded right on that spot. And so, you can look at it on an MRI and say, “That’s the hand knob.” And then you do a functional test and a special kind of MRI called a functional MRI, fMRI. And this part of the brain lights up when-
Yep. There’s a little squiggle in the cortex right there. One of the folds in the brain is kind of doubly folded right on that spot. And so, you can look at it on an MRI and say, “That’s the hand knob.” And then you do a functional test and a special kind of MRI called a functional MRI, fMRI. And this part of the brain lights up when-
Matthew MacDougall
MRI, fMRI, and this part of the brain lights up when people, even quadriplegic people whose brains aren’t connected to their finger movements anymore, they imagine finger movements and this part of the brain still lights up. So we can ID that part of the brain in anyone who’s preparing to enter our trial and say, okay, that part of the brain we confirm is your hand intention area. And so I’ll make a little cut in the skin, we’ll flap the skin open, just like kind of opening the hood of a car, only a lot smaller, make a perfectly round one inch diameter hole in the skull, remove that bit of skull, open the lining of the brain, the covering of the brain, it’s like a little bag of water that the brain floats in, and then show that part of the brain to our robot. And then this is where the robot shines.
MRI, fMRI, and this part of the brain lights up when people, even quadriplegic people whose brains aren’t connected to their finger movements anymore, they imagine finger movements and this part of the brain still lights up. So we can ID that part of the brain in anyone who’s preparing to enter our trial and say, okay, that part of the brain we confirm is your hand intention area. And so I’ll make a little cut in the skin, we’ll flap the skin open, just like kind of opening the hood of a car, only a lot smaller, make a perfectly round one inch diameter hole in the skull, remove that bit of skull, open the lining of the brain, the covering of the brain, it’s like a little bag of water that the brain floats in, and then show that part of the brain to our robot. And then this is where the robot shines.
It can come in and take these tiny, much smaller than human hair, electrodes and precisely insert them into the cortex, into the surface of the brain to a very precise depth, in a very precise spot that avoids all the blood vessels that are coating the surface of the brain. And after the robot’s done with its part, then the human comes back in and puts the implant into that hole in the skull and covers it up, screwing it down to the skull and sewing the skin back together. So the whole thing is a few hours long. It’s extremely low risk compared to the average neurosurgery involving the brain that might, say, open up a deeper part of the brain or manipulate blood vessels in the brain. This opening on the surface of the brain with only cortical micro- insertions carries significantly less risk than a lot of the tumor or aneurysm surgeries that are routinely done.
Lex Fridman
So cortical micro-insertions that are via robot and computer vision are designed to avoid the blood vessels.
So cortical micro-insertions that are via robot and computer vision are designed to avoid the blood vessels.
Matthew MacDougall
Exactly.
Exactly.
Lex Fridman
So I know you’re a bit biased here, but let’s compare human and machine. So what are human surgeons able to do well and what are robot surgeons able to do well at this stage of our human civilization and development?
So I know you’re a bit biased here, but let’s compare human and machine. So what are human surgeons able to do well and what are robot surgeons able to do well at this stage of our human civilization and development?
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah. Yeah, that’s a good question. Humans are general purpose machines. We’re able to adapt to unusual situations. We’re able to change the plan on the fly. I remember well a surgery that I was doing many years ago down in San Diego where the plan was to open a small hole behind the ear and go reposition a blood vessel that had come to lay on the facial nerve, the trigeminal nerve, the nerve that goes to the face. When that blood vessel lays on the nerve, it can cause just intolerable, horrific shooting pain that people describe like being zapped with a cattle prod. And so the beautiful, elegant surgery is to go move this blood vessel off the nerve. The surgery team, we went in there and started moving this blood vessel and then found that there was a giant aneurysm on that blood vessel that was not easily visible on the pre-op scans. And so the plan had to dynamically change and that the human surgeons had no problem with that, were trained for all those things.
Yeah. Yeah, that’s a good question. Humans are general purpose machines. We’re able to adapt to unusual situations. We’re able to change the plan on the fly. I remember well a surgery that I was doing many years ago down in San Diego where the plan was to open a small hole behind the ear and go reposition a blood vessel that had come to lay on the facial nerve, the trigeminal nerve, the nerve that goes to the face. When that blood vessel lays on the nerve, it can cause just intolerable, horrific shooting pain that people describe like being zapped with a cattle prod. And so the beautiful, elegant surgery is to go move this blood vessel off the nerve. The surgery team, we went in there and started moving this blood vessel and then found that there was a giant aneurysm on that blood vessel that was not easily visible on the pre-op scans. And so the plan had to dynamically change and that the human surgeons had no problem with that, were trained for all those things.
Robots wouldn’t do so well in that situation, at least in their current incarnation, fully robotic surgery, like the electrode insertion portion of the neural link surgery, it goes according to a set plan. And so the humans can interrupt the flow and change the plan, but the robot can’t really change the plan midway through. It operates according to how it was programmed and how it was asked to run. It does its job very precisely, but not with a wide degree of latitude in how to react to changing conditions.
Lex Fridman
So there could be just a very large number of ways that you could be surprised as a surgeon? When you enter a situation, there could be subtle things that you have to dynamically adjust to.
So there could be just a very large number of ways that you could be surprised as a surgeon? When you enter a situation, there could be subtle things that you have to dynamically adjust to.
Matthew MacDougall
Correct.
Correct.
Lex Fridman
And robots are not good at that.
And robots are not good at that.
Matthew MacDougall
Currently.
Currently.
Lex Fridman
Currently.
Currently.
Matthew MacDougall
I think we are at the dawn of a new era with AI of the parameters for robot responsiveness to be dramatically broadened, right? I mean, you can’t look at a self-driving car and say that it’s operating under very narrow parameters. If a chicken runs across the road, it wasn’t necessarily programmed to deal with that specifically, but a Waymo or a self-driving Tesla would have no problem reacting to that appropriately. And so surgical robots aren’t there yet, but give it time.
I think we are at the dawn of a new era with AI of the parameters for robot responsiveness to be dramatically broadened, right? I mean, you can’t look at a self-driving car and say that it’s operating under very narrow parameters. If a chicken runs across the road, it wasn’t necessarily programmed to deal with that specifically, but a Waymo or a self-driving Tesla would have no problem reacting to that appropriately. And so surgical robots aren’t there yet, but give it time.
Lex Fridman
And then there could be a lot of semi-autonomous possibilities of maybe a robotic surgeon could say this situation is perfectly familiar, or this situation is not familiar, and in the not familiar case, a human could take over, but basically be very conservative in saying, okay, this for sure has no issues, no surprises, and let the humans deal with the surprises with the edge cases and all that. That’s one possibility. So you think eventually you’ll be out of the job? Well, you being neurosurgeon, your job being a neurosurgeon. Humans, there will not be many neurosurgeons left on this earth.
And then there could be a lot of semi-autonomous possibilities of maybe a robotic surgeon could say this situation is perfectly familiar, or this situation is not familiar, and in the not familiar case, a human could take over, but basically be very conservative in saying, okay, this for sure has no issues, no surprises, and let the humans deal with the surprises with the edge cases and all that. That’s one possibility. So you think eventually you’ll be out of the job? Well, you being neurosurgeon, your job being a neurosurgeon. Humans, there will not be many neurosurgeons left on this earth.
Matthew MacDougall
I’m not worried about my job in the course of my professional life. I think I would tell my kids not necessarily to go in this line of work depending on how things look in 20 years.
I’m not worried about my job in the course of my professional life. I think I would tell my kids not necessarily to go in this line of work depending on how things look in 20 years.
Lex Fridman
It’s so fascinating because if I have a line of work, I would say it’s programming. And if you ask me, for the last, I don’t know, 20 years, what I would recommend for people, I would tell them, yeah, you’ll always have a job if you’re a programmer because there’s more and more computers and all this kind of stuff and it pays well. But then you realize these large language models come along and they’re really damn good at generating code. So overnight you could be surprised like, wow, what is the contribution of the human really? But then you start to think, okay, it does seem that humans have ability, like you said, to deal with novel situations. In the case of programming, it’s the ability to come up with novel ideas to solve problems. It seems like machines aren’t quite yet able to do that. And when the stakes are very high, when it’s life critical as it is in surgery, especially in neurosurgery, then the stakes are very high for a robot to actually replace a human. But it’s fascinating that in this case of Neuralink, there’s a human robot collaboration.
It’s so fascinating because if I have a line of work, I would say it’s programming. And if you ask me, for the last, I don’t know, 20 years, what I would recommend for people, I would tell them, yeah, you’ll always have a job if you’re a programmer because there’s more and more computers and all this kind of stuff and it pays well. But then you realize these large language models come along and they’re really damn good at generating code. So overnight you could be surprised like, wow, what is the contribution of the human really? But then you start to think, okay, it does seem that humans have ability, like you said, to deal with novel situations. In the case of programming, it’s the ability to come up with novel ideas to solve problems. It seems like machines aren’t quite yet able to do that. And when the stakes are very high, when it’s life critical as it is in surgery, especially in neurosurgery, then the stakes are very high for a robot to actually replace a human. But it’s fascinating that in this case of Neuralink, there’s a human robot collaboration.
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah, yeah. I do the parts it can’t do and it does the parts I can’t do, and we are friends.
Yeah, yeah. I do the parts it can’t do and it does the parts I can’t do, and we are friends.
Lex Fridman
I saw that there’s a lot of practice going on. I mean everything in Neuralink is tested extremely rigorously, but one of the things I saw that there’s a proxy on which the surgeries are performed. So this is both for the robot and for the human, for everybody involved in the entire pipeline. What’s that like, practicing the surgery?
I saw that there’s a lot of practice going on. I mean everything in Neuralink is tested extremely rigorously, but one of the things I saw that there’s a proxy on which the surgeries are performed. So this is both for the robot and for the human, for everybody involved in the entire pipeline. What’s that like, practicing the surgery?
Matthew MacDougall
It’s pretty intense. So there’s no analog to this in human surgery. Human surgery is sort of this artisanal craft that’s handed down directly from master to pupil over the generations. I mean, literally the way you learn to be a surgeon on humans is by doing surgery on humans. I mean, first you watch your professors do a bunch of surgery, and then finally they put the trivial parts of the surgery into your hands, and then the more complex parts, and as your understanding of the point and the purposes of the surgery increases, you get more responsibility in the perfect condition. Doesn’t always go well. In Neuralink’s case, the approach is a bit different. We, of course, practiced as far as we could on animals. We did hundreds of animal surgeries. And when it came time to do the first human, we had just an amazing team of engineers build incredibly lifelike models. One of the engineers, Fran Romano in particular, built a pulsating brain in a custom 3-D printed skull that matches exactly the patient’s anatomy, including their face and scalp characteristics.
It’s pretty intense. So there’s no analog to this in human surgery. Human surgery is sort of this artisanal craft that’s handed down directly from master to pupil over the generations. I mean, literally the way you learn to be a surgeon on humans is by doing surgery on humans. I mean, first you watch your professors do a bunch of surgery, and then finally they put the trivial parts of the surgery into your hands, and then the more complex parts, and as your understanding of the point and the purposes of the surgery increases, you get more responsibility in the perfect condition. Doesn’t always go well. In Neuralink’s case, the approach is a bit different. We, of course, practiced as far as we could on animals. We did hundreds of animal surgeries. And when it came time to do the first human, we had just an amazing team of engineers build incredibly lifelike models. One of the engineers, Fran Romano in particular, built a pulsating brain in a custom 3-D printed skull that matches exactly the patient’s anatomy, including their face and scalp characteristics.
And so when I was able to practice that, it’s as close as it really reasonably should get to being the real thing in all the details, including having a mannequin body attached to this custom head. And so when we were doing the practice surgeries, we’d wheel that body into the CT scanner and take a mock CT scan and wheel it back in and conduct all the normal safety checks, verbally, “Stop. This patient we’re confirming his identification is mannequin number…” Blah, blah, blah. And then opening the brain in exactly the right spot using standard operative neuro-navigation equipment, standard surgical drills in the same OR that we do all of our practice surgeries in at Neuralink and having the skull open and have the brain pulse, which adds a degree of difficulty for the robot to perfectly precisely plan and insert those electrodes to the right depth and location. And so we kind of broke new ground on how extensively we practiced for this surgery.
Lex Fridman
So there was a historic moment, a big milestone for Neuralink, in part for humanity, with the first human getting a Neuralink implant in January of this year. Take me through the surgery on Noland. What did it feel like to be part of this?
So there was a historic moment, a big milestone for Neuralink, in part for humanity, with the first human getting a Neuralink implant in January of this year. Take me through the surgery on Noland. What did it feel like to be part of this?
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah. Well, we are lucky to have just incredible partners at the Barrow Neurologic Institute. They are, I think, the premier neurosurgical hospital in the world. They made everything as easy as possible for the trial to get going and helped us immensely with their expertise on how to arrange the details. It was a much more high pressure surgery in some ways. I mean, even though the outcome wasn’t particularly in question in terms of our participant’s safety, the number of observers, the number of people, there’s conference rooms full of people watching live streams in the hospital rooting for this to go perfectly, and that just adds pressure that is not typical for even the most intense production neurosurgery, say, removing a tumor or placing deep brain stimulation electrodes, and it had never been done on a human before. There were unknown unknowns.
Yeah. Well, we are lucky to have just incredible partners at the Barrow Neurologic Institute. They are, I think, the premier neurosurgical hospital in the world. They made everything as easy as possible for the trial to get going and helped us immensely with their expertise on how to arrange the details. It was a much more high pressure surgery in some ways. I mean, even though the outcome wasn’t particularly in question in terms of our participant’s safety, the number of observers, the number of people, there’s conference rooms full of people watching live streams in the hospital rooting for this to go perfectly, and that just adds pressure that is not typical for even the most intense production neurosurgery, say, removing a tumor or placing deep brain stimulation electrodes, and it had never been done on a human before. There were unknown unknowns.
And so definitely a moderate pucker factor there for the whole team not knowing if we were going to encounter, say, a degree of brain movement that was unanticipated or a degree of brain sag that took the brain far away from the skull and made it difficult to insert or some other unknown unknown problem. Fortunately everything went well and that surgery is one of the smoothest outcomes we could have imagined.
Lex Fridman
Were you nervous?
Were you nervous?
Matthew MacDougall
Extremely.
Extremely.
Lex Fridman
I mean, you’re a bit of a quarterback in the Super Bowl kind of situation.
I mean, you’re a bit of a quarterback in the Super Bowl kind of situation.
Matthew MacDougall
Extremely nervous. Extremely. I was very pleased when it went well and when it was over. Looking forward to number two.
Extremely nervous. Extremely. I was very pleased when it went well and when it was over. Looking forward to number two.
Lex Fridman
Even with all that practice, all of that, you’ve never been in a situation that’s so high stakes in terms of people watching. And we should also probably mention, given how the media works, a lot of people may be in a dark kind of way hoping it doesn’t go well.
Even with all that practice, all of that, you’ve never been in a situation that’s so high stakes in terms of people watching. And we should also probably mention, given how the media works, a lot of people may be in a dark kind of way hoping it doesn’t go well.
Matthew MacDougall
I think wealth is easy to hate or envy or whatever, and I think there’s a whole industry around driving clicks and bad news is great for clicks, and so any way to take an event and turn it into bad news is going to be really good for clicks.
I think wealth is easy to hate or envy or whatever, and I think there’s a whole industry around driving clicks and bad news is great for clicks, and so any way to take an event and turn it into bad news is going to be really good for clicks.
Lex Fridman
It just sucks because I think it puts pressure on people. It discourages people from trying to solve really hard problems because to solve hard problems, you have to go into the unknown. You have to do things that haven’t been done before and you have to take risks, calculated risks, you have to do all kinds of safety precautions, but risks nevertheless. I just wish there would be more celebration of that, of the risk taking versus people just waiting on the sidelines waiting for failure and then pointing out the failure. Yeah, it sucks. But in this case, it’s really great that everything went just flawlessly, but it’s unnecessary pressure, I would say.
It just sucks because I think it puts pressure on people. It discourages people from trying to solve really hard problems because to solve hard problems, you have to go into the unknown. You have to do things that haven’t been done before and you have to take risks, calculated risks, you have to do all kinds of safety precautions, but risks nevertheless. I just wish there would be more celebration of that, of the risk taking versus people just waiting on the sidelines waiting for failure and then pointing out the failure. Yeah, it sucks. But in this case, it’s really great that everything went just flawlessly, but it’s unnecessary pressure, I would say.
Matthew MacDougall
Now that there’s a human with literal skin in the game, there’s a participant whose well-being rides on this doing well. You have to be a pretty person to be rooting for that to go wrong. And so hopefully people look in the mirror and realize that at some point.
Now that there’s a human with literal skin in the game, there’s a participant whose well-being rides on this doing well. You have to be a pretty person to be rooting for that to go wrong. And so hopefully people look in the mirror and realize that at some point.
Lex Fridman
So did you get to actually front row seat, watch the robot work? You get to see the whole thing?
So did you get to actually front row seat, watch the robot work? You get to see the whole thing?
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah, because an MD needs to be in charge of all of the medical decision-making throughout the process, I unscrubbed from the surgery after exposing the brain and presenting it to the robot and placed the targets on the robot software interface that tells the robot where it’s going to insert each thread. That was done with my hand on the mouse, for whatever that’s worth.
Yeah, because an MD needs to be in charge of all of the medical decision-making throughout the process, I unscrubbed from the surgery after exposing the brain and presenting it to the robot and placed the targets on the robot software interface that tells the robot where it’s going to insert each thread. That was done with my hand on the mouse, for whatever that’s worth.
Lex Fridman
So you were the one placing the targets?
So you were the one placing the targets?
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Oh, cool. So the robot with a computer vision provides a bunch of candidates and you kind of finalize the decision.
Oh, cool. So the robot with a computer vision provides a bunch of candidates and you kind of finalize the decision.
Matthew MacDougall
Right. The software engineers are amazing on this team, and so they actually provided an interface where you can essentially use a lasso tool and select a prime area of brain real estate, and it will automatically avoid the blood vessels in that region and automatically place a bunch of targets. That allows the human robot operator to select really good areas of brain and make dense applications of targets in those regions, the regions we think are going to have the most high fidelity representations of finger movements and arm movement intentions.
Right. The software engineers are amazing on this team, and so they actually provided an interface where you can essentially use a lasso tool and select a prime area of brain real estate, and it will automatically avoid the blood vessels in that region and automatically place a bunch of targets. That allows the human robot operator to select really good areas of brain and make dense applications of targets in those regions, the regions we think are going to have the most high fidelity representations of finger movements and arm movement intentions.
Lex Fridman
I’ve seen images of this and for me with OCD, for some reason, are really pleasant. I think there’s a Subreddit called Oddly Satisfying.
I’ve seen images of this and for me with OCD, for some reason, are really pleasant. I think there’s a Subreddit called Oddly Satisfying.
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah, love that Subreddit.
Yeah, love that Subreddit.
Lex Fridman
It’s oddly satisfying to see the different target sites avoiding the blood vessels and also maximizing the usefulness of those locations for the signal. It just feels good. It’s like, ah.
It’s oddly satisfying to see the different target sites avoiding the blood vessels and also maximizing the usefulness of those locations for the signal. It just feels good. It’s like, ah.
Matthew MacDougall
As a person who has a visceral reaction to the brain bleeding, I can tell you it’s extremely satisfying watching the electrodes themselves go into the brain and not cause bleeding.
As a person who has a visceral reaction to the brain bleeding, I can tell you it’s extremely satisfying watching the electrodes themselves go into the brain and not cause bleeding.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. Yeah. So you said the feeling was of relief when everything went perfectly?
Yeah. Yeah. So you said the feeling was of relief when everything went perfectly?
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah.
Yeah.
Brain surgery details
Lex Fridman
How deep in the brain can you currently go and eventually go, let’s say on the Neuralink side. It seems the deeper you go in the brain, the more challenging it becomes.
How deep in the brain can you currently go and eventually go, let’s say on the Neuralink side. It seems the deeper you go in the brain, the more challenging it becomes.
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah. So talking broadly about neurosurgery, we can get anywhere. It’s routine for me to put deep brain stimulating electrodes near the very bottom of the brain, entering from the top and passing about a two millimeter wire all the way into the bottom of the brain. And that’s not revolutionary, a lot of people do that, and we can do that with very high precision. I use a robot from Globus to do that surgery several times a month. It’s pretty routine.
Yeah. So talking broadly about neurosurgery, we can get anywhere. It’s routine for me to put deep brain stimulating electrodes near the very bottom of the brain, entering from the top and passing about a two millimeter wire all the way into the bottom of the brain. And that’s not revolutionary, a lot of people do that, and we can do that with very high precision. I use a robot from Globus to do that surgery several times a month. It’s pretty routine.
Lex Fridman
What are your eyes in that situation? What are you seeing? What kind of technology can you use to visualize where you are to light your way?
What are your eyes in that situation? What are you seeing? What kind of technology can you use to visualize where you are to light your way?
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah, so it’s a cool process on the software side. You take a preoperative MRI that’s extremely high resolution, data of the entire brain, you put the patient to sleep, put their head in a frame that holds the skull very rigidly, and then you take a CT scan of their head while they’re asleep with that frame on and then merge the MRI and the CT in software. You have a plan based on the MRI where you can see these nuclei deep in the brain. You can’t see them on CT, but if you trust the merging of the two images, then you indirectly know on the CT where that is, and therefore indirectly know where in reference to the titanium frame screwed to their head those targets are. And so this is sixties technology to manually compute trajectories given the entry point and target and dial in some goofy looking titanium manual actuators with little tick marks on them.
Yeah, so it’s a cool process on the software side. You take a preoperative MRI that’s extremely high resolution, data of the entire brain, you put the patient to sleep, put their head in a frame that holds the skull very rigidly, and then you take a CT scan of their head while they’re asleep with that frame on and then merge the MRI and the CT in software. You have a plan based on the MRI where you can see these nuclei deep in the brain. You can’t see them on CT, but if you trust the merging of the two images, then you indirectly know on the CT where that is, and therefore indirectly know where in reference to the titanium frame screwed to their head those targets are. And so this is sixties technology to manually compute trajectories given the entry point and target and dial in some goofy looking titanium manual actuators with little tick marks on them.
The modern version of that is to use a robot. Just like a little Kuka arm you might see building cars at the Tesla factory, this small robot arm can show you the trajectory that you intended from the pre-op MRI and establish a very rigid holder through which you can drill a small hole in the skull and pass a small rigid wire deep into that area of the brain that’s hollow, and put your electrode through that hollow wire and then remove all of that except the electrode. So you end up with the electrode very, very precisely placed far from the skull surface. Now, that’s standard technology that’s already been out in the world for a while. Neuralink right now is focused entirely on cortical targets, surface targets because there’s no trivial way to get, say, hundreds of wires deep inside the brain without doing a lot of damage. So your question, what do you see? Well, I see an MRI on a screen. I can’t see everything that DBS electrode is passing through on its way to that deep target.
And so it’s accepted with this approach that there’s going to be about one in a hundred patients who have a bleed somewhere in the brain as a result of passing that wire blindly into the deep part of the brain. That’s not an acceptable safety profile for Neuralink. We start from the position that we want this to be dramatically maybe two or three orders of magnitude safer than that, safe enough, really, that you or I, without a profound medical problem, might on our lunch break someday say, “Yeah, sure, I’ll get that. I’d been meaning to upgrade to the latest version.” And so the safety constraints given that are high, and so we haven’t settled on a final solution for arbitrarily approaching deep targets in the brain.
Lex Fridman
It’s interesting because you have to avoid blood vessels somehow, and you have to… Maybe there’s creative ways of doing the same thing, like mapping out high resolution geometry of blood vessels, and then you can go in blind, but how do you map out that in a way that’s super stable? There’s a lot of interesting challenges there, right?
It’s interesting because you have to avoid blood vessels somehow, and you have to… Maybe there’s creative ways of doing the same thing, like mapping out high resolution geometry of blood vessels, and then you can go in blind, but how do you map out that in a way that’s super stable? There’s a lot of interesting challenges there, right?
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
But there’s a lot to do on the surface.
But there’s a lot to do on the surface.
Matthew MacDougall
Exactly. So we’ve got vision on the surface. We actually have made a huge amount of progress sewing electrodes into the spinal cord as a potential workaround for a spinal cord injury that would allow a brain mounted implant to translate motor intentions to a spine mounted implant that can affect muscle contractions in previously paralyzed arms and legs.
Exactly. So we’ve got vision on the surface. We actually have made a huge amount of progress sewing electrodes into the spinal cord as a potential workaround for a spinal cord injury that would allow a brain mounted implant to translate motor intentions to a spine mounted implant that can affect muscle contractions in previously paralyzed arms and legs.
Lex Fridman
That’s mind blowing. That’s just incredible. So the effort there is to try to bridge the brain to the spinal cord to the peripheral in your nervous… So how hard is that to do?
That’s mind blowing. That’s just incredible. So the effort there is to try to bridge the brain to the spinal cord to the peripheral in your nervous… So how hard is that to do?
Matthew MacDougall
We have that working in very crude forms in animals.
We have that working in very crude forms in animals.
Lex Fridman
That’s amazing.
That’s amazing.
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah, we’ve done…
Yeah, we’ve done…
Lex Fridman
So similar to with Noland where he’s able to digitally move the cursor. Here you’re doing the same kind of communication, but with the effectors that you have.
So similar to with Noland where he’s able to digitally move the cursor. Here you’re doing the same kind of communication, but with the effectors that you have.
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
That’s fascinating.
That’s fascinating.
Matthew MacDougall
So we have anesthetized animals doing grasp and moving their legs in a sort of walking pattern. Again, early days, but the future is bright for this kind of thing, and people with paralysis should look forward to that bright future. They’re going to have options.
So we have anesthetized animals doing grasp and moving their legs in a sort of walking pattern. Again, early days, but the future is bright for this kind of thing, and people with paralysis should look forward to that bright future. They’re going to have options.
Lex Fridman
And there’s a lot of sort of intermediate or extra options where you take an optimist robot like the arm, and to be able to control the arm, the fingers and hands of the arm as a prosthetic.
And there’s a lot of sort of intermediate or extra options where you take an optimist robot like the arm, and to be able to control the arm, the fingers and hands of the arm as a prosthetic.
Matthew MacDougall
Exoskeletons are getting better too.
Exoskeletons are getting better too.
Lex Fridman
Exoskeletons. So that goes hand in hand. Although I didn’t quite understand until thinking about it deeply and doing more research about Neuralink how much you can do on the digital side. So this digital telepathy. I didn’t quite understand that you can really map the intention, as you described in the hand knob area, that you can map the intention. Just imagine it. Think about it. That intention can be mapped to actual action in the digital world, and now more and more, so much can be done in the digital world that it can reconnect you to the outside world. It can allow you to have freedom, have independence if you’re a quadriplegic. That’s really powerful. You can go really far with that.
Exoskeletons. So that goes hand in hand. Although I didn’t quite understand until thinking about it deeply and doing more research about Neuralink how much you can do on the digital side. So this digital telepathy. I didn’t quite understand that you can really map the intention, as you described in the hand knob area, that you can map the intention. Just imagine it. Think about it. That intention can be mapped to actual action in the digital world, and now more and more, so much can be done in the digital world that it can reconnect you to the outside world. It can allow you to have freedom, have independence if you’re a quadriplegic. That’s really powerful. You can go really far with that.
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah, our first participant is… He’s incredible. He’s breaking world records left and right.
Yeah, our first participant is… He’s incredible. He’s breaking world records left and right.
Lex Fridman
And he’s having fun with it. It’s great. Just going back to the surgery. Your whole journey, you mentioned to me offline you have surgery on Monday, so like you’re doing surgery all the time. Yeah. Maybe the ridiculous question, what does it take to get good at surgery?
And he’s having fun with it. It’s great. Just going back to the surgery. Your whole journey, you mentioned to me offline you have surgery on Monday, so like you’re doing surgery all the time. Yeah. Maybe the ridiculous question, what does it take to get good at surgery?
Matthew MacDougall
Practice, repetitions. Same with anything else. There’s a million ways of people saying the same thing and selling books saying it, but you call it 10,000 hours, you call it spend some chunk of your life, some percentage of your life focusing on this, obsessing about getting better at it. Repetitions, humility, recognizing that you aren’t perfect at any stage along the way, recognizing you’ve got improvements to make in your technique, being open to feedback and coaching from people with a different perspective on how to do it, and then just the constant will to do better. That, fortunately, if you’re not a sociopath, I think your patients bring that with them to the office visits every day. They force you to want to do better all the time.
Practice, repetitions. Same with anything else. There’s a million ways of people saying the same thing and selling books saying it, but you call it 10,000 hours, you call it spend some chunk of your life, some percentage of your life focusing on this, obsessing about getting better at it. Repetitions, humility, recognizing that you aren’t perfect at any stage along the way, recognizing you’ve got improvements to make in your technique, being open to feedback and coaching from people with a different perspective on how to do it, and then just the constant will to do better. That, fortunately, if you’re not a sociopath, I think your patients bring that with them to the office visits every day. They force you to want to do better all the time.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, just step up. I mean, it’s a real human being, a real human being that you can help.
Yeah, just step up. I mean, it’s a real human being, a real human being that you can help.
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
So every surgery, even if it’s the same exact surgery, is there a lot of variability between that surgery in a different person?
So every surgery, even if it’s the same exact surgery, is there a lot of variability between that surgery in a different person?
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah. A fair bit. A good example for us is the angle of the skull relative to the normal plane of the body axis of the skull over hand knob is pretty wide variation. Some people have really flat skulls and some people have really steeply angled skulls over that area, and that has consequences for how their head can be fixed in sort of the frame that we use and how the robot has to approach the skull. Yeah, people’s bodies are built as differently as the people you see walking down the street, as much variability and body shape and size as you see there. We see in brain anatomy and skull anatomy, there are some people who we’ve had to exclude from our trial for having skulls that are too thick or too thin or scalp that’s too thick or too thin. I think we have the middle 97% or so of people, but you can’t account for all human anatomy variability.
Yeah. A fair bit. A good example for us is the angle of the skull relative to the normal plane of the body axis of the skull over hand knob is pretty wide variation. Some people have really flat skulls and some people have really steeply angled skulls over that area, and that has consequences for how their head can be fixed in sort of the frame that we use and how the robot has to approach the skull. Yeah, people’s bodies are built as differently as the people you see walking down the street, as much variability and body shape and size as you see there. We see in brain anatomy and skull anatomy, there are some people who we’ve had to exclude from our trial for having skulls that are too thick or too thin or scalp that’s too thick or too thin. I think we have the middle 97% or so of people, but you can’t account for all human anatomy variability.
Lex Fridman
How much mushiness and mess is there? Because taking biology classes, the diagrams are always really clean and crisp. Neuroscience, the pictures of neurons are always really nice and [inaudible 04:32:44], but whenever I look at pictures of real brains, they’re all… I don’t know what is going on. So how much our biological systems in reality, how hard is it to figure out what’s going on?
How much mushiness and mess is there? Because taking biology classes, the diagrams are always really clean and crisp. Neuroscience, the pictures of neurons are always really nice and [inaudible 04:32:44], but whenever I look at pictures of real brains, they’re all… I don’t know what is going on. So how much our biological systems in reality, how hard is it to figure out what’s going on?
Matthew MacDougall
Not too bad. Once you really get used to this, that’s where experience and skill and education really come into play is if you stare at a thousand brains, it becomes easier to kind of mentally peel back the, say, for instance, blood vessels that are obscuring the sulci and gyri, know kind of the wrinkle pattern of the surface of the brain. Occasionally when you’re first starting to do this and you open the skull, it doesn’t match what you thought you were going to see based on the MRI. And with more experience, you learn to kind of peel back that layer of blood vessels and see the underlying pattern of wrinkles in the brain and use that as a landmark for where you are.
Not too bad. Once you really get used to this, that’s where experience and skill and education really come into play is if you stare at a thousand brains, it becomes easier to kind of mentally peel back the, say, for instance, blood vessels that are obscuring the sulci and gyri, know kind of the wrinkle pattern of the surface of the brain. Occasionally when you’re first starting to do this and you open the skull, it doesn’t match what you thought you were going to see based on the MRI. And with more experience, you learn to kind of peel back that layer of blood vessels and see the underlying pattern of wrinkles in the brain and use that as a landmark for where you are.
Lex Fridman
The wrinkles are a landmark?
The wrinkles are a landmark?
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah. So I was describing hand knob earlier. That’s a pattern of the wrinkles in the brain. It’s sort of this Greek letter, omega shaped area of the brain.
Yeah. So I was describing hand knob earlier. That’s a pattern of the wrinkles in the brain. It’s sort of this Greek letter, omega shaped area of the brain.
Lex Fridman
So you could recognize the hand knob area. If I show you a thousand brains and give you one minute with each, you’d be like, “Yep, that’s that.”
So you could recognize the hand knob area. If I show you a thousand brains and give you one minute with each, you’d be like, “Yep, that’s that.”
Matthew MacDougall
Sure.
Sure.
Lex Fridman
And so there is some uniqueness to that area of the brain in terms of the geometry, the topology of the thing.
And so there is some uniqueness to that area of the brain in terms of the geometry, the topology of the thing.
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Where is it about in the…
Where is it about in the…
Matthew MacDougall
So you have this strip of brain running down the top called the primary motor area, and I’m sure you’ve seen this picture of the homunculus laid over the surface of the brain, the weird little guy with huge lips and giant hands. That guy sort of lays with his legs up at the top of the brain and face arm areas farther down, and then some kind of mouth, lip, tongue areas farther down. And so the hand is right in there, and then the areas that control speech, at least on the left side of the brain in most people are just below that. And so any muscle that you voluntarily move in your body, the vast majority of that references that strip or those intentions come from that strip of brain, and the wrinkle for hand knob is right in the middle of that.
So you have this strip of brain running down the top called the primary motor area, and I’m sure you’ve seen this picture of the homunculus laid over the surface of the brain, the weird little guy with huge lips and giant hands. That guy sort of lays with his legs up at the top of the brain and face arm areas farther down, and then some kind of mouth, lip, tongue areas farther down. And so the hand is right in there, and then the areas that control speech, at least on the left side of the brain in most people are just below that. And so any muscle that you voluntarily move in your body, the vast majority of that references that strip or those intentions come from that strip of brain, and the wrinkle for hand knob is right in the middle of that.
Lex Fridman
And vision is back here?
And vision is back here?
Matthew MacDougall
Yep.
Yep.
Lex Fridman
Also close to the surface.
Also close to the surface.
Matthew MacDougall
Vision’s a little deeper. And so this gets to your question about how deep can you get. To do vision, we can’t just do the surface of the brain. We have to be able to go in, not as deep as we’d have to go for DBS, but maybe a centimeter deeper than we’re used to for hand insertions. And so that’s work in progress. That’s a new set of challenges to overcome.
Vision’s a little deeper. And so this gets to your question about how deep can you get. To do vision, we can’t just do the surface of the brain. We have to be able to go in, not as deep as we’d have to go for DBS, but maybe a centimeter deeper than we’re used to for hand insertions. And so that’s work in progress. That’s a new set of challenges to overcome.
Lex Fridman
By the way, you mentioned the Utah Array and I just saw a picture of that and that thing looks terrifying.
By the way, you mentioned the Utah Array and I just saw a picture of that and that thing looks terrifying.
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah. The nails.
Yeah. The nails.
Lex Fridman
It’s because it’s rigid and then if you look at the threads, they’re flexible. What can you say that’s interesting to you about that kind of approach of the flexible threads to deliver the electrodes next to the neurons?
It’s because it’s rigid and then if you look at the threads, they’re flexible. What can you say that’s interesting to you about that kind of approach of the flexible threads to deliver the electrodes next to the neurons?
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah. I mean, the goal there comes from experience. I mean, we stand on the shoulders of people that made Utah Arrays and used Utah Arrays for decades before we ever even came along. Neuralink arose, partly this approach to technology arose out of a need recognized after Utah Arrays would fail routinely because the rigid electrodes, those spikes that are literally hammered using an air hammer into the brain, those spikes generate a bad immune response that encapsulates the electrode spikes in scar tissue essentially. And so one of the projects that was being worked on in the Anderson Lab at Caltech when I got there was to see if you could use chemotherapy to prevent the formation of scars. Things are pretty bad when you’re jamming a bed of nails into the brain, and then treating that with chemotherapy to try to prevent scar tissue, it’s like, maybe we’ve gotten off track here, guys. Maybe there’s a fundamental redesign necessary.
Yeah. I mean, the goal there comes from experience. I mean, we stand on the shoulders of people that made Utah Arrays and used Utah Arrays for decades before we ever even came along. Neuralink arose, partly this approach to technology arose out of a need recognized after Utah Arrays would fail routinely because the rigid electrodes, those spikes that are literally hammered using an air hammer into the brain, those spikes generate a bad immune response that encapsulates the electrode spikes in scar tissue essentially. And so one of the projects that was being worked on in the Anderson Lab at Caltech when I got there was to see if you could use chemotherapy to prevent the formation of scars. Things are pretty bad when you’re jamming a bed of nails into the brain, and then treating that with chemotherapy to try to prevent scar tissue, it’s like, maybe we’ve gotten off track here, guys. Maybe there’s a fundamental redesign necessary.
And so Neuralink’s approach of using highly flexible, tiny electrodes avoids a lot of the bleeding, avoids a lot of the immune response that ends up happening when rigid electrodes are pounded into the brain. And so what we see is our electrode longevity and functionality and the health of the brain tissue immediately surrounding the electrode is excellent. I mean, it goes on for years now in our animal models.
Implanting Neuralink on self
Lex Fridman
What do most people not understand about the biology of the brain? We will mention the vasculature. That’s really interesting.
What do most people not understand about the biology of the brain? We will mention the vasculature. That’s really interesting.
Matthew MacDougall
I think the most interesting maybe underappreciated fact is that it really does control almost everything. I don’t know, for an out of the blue example, imagine you want a lever on fertility. You want to be able to turn fertility on and off. There are legitimate targets in the brain itself to modulate fertility, say blood pressure. You want to modulate blood pressure, there are legitimate targets in the brain for doing that. Things that aren’t immediately obvious as brain problems are potentially solvable in the brain. And so I think it’s an under-explored area for primary treatments of all the things that bother people.
I think the most interesting maybe underappreciated fact is that it really does control almost everything. I don’t know, for an out of the blue example, imagine you want a lever on fertility. You want to be able to turn fertility on and off. There are legitimate targets in the brain itself to modulate fertility, say blood pressure. You want to modulate blood pressure, there are legitimate targets in the brain for doing that. Things that aren’t immediately obvious as brain problems are potentially solvable in the brain. And so I think it’s an under-explored area for primary treatments of all the things that bother people.
Lex Fridman
That’s a really fascinating way to look at it. There’s a lot of conditions we might think have nothing to do with the brain, but they might just be symptoms of something that actually started in the brain. The actual source of the problem, the primary source is something in the brain.
That’s a really fascinating way to look at it. There’s a lot of conditions we might think have nothing to do with the brain, but they might just be symptoms of something that actually started in the brain. The actual source of the problem, the primary source is something in the brain.
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah. Not always. I mean, kidney disease is real, but there are levers you can pull in the brain that affect all of these systems.
Yeah. Not always. I mean, kidney disease is real, but there are levers you can pull in the brain that affect all of these systems.
Lex Fridman
There’s knobs.
There’s knobs.
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
On-off switches and knobs in the brain from which this all originates. Would you have a Neuralink chip implanted in your brain?
On-off switches and knobs in the brain from which this all originates. Would you have a Neuralink chip implanted in your brain?
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah. I think use case right now is use a mouse, right? I can already do that, and so there’s no value proposition. On safety grounds alone, sure. I’ll do it tomorrow.
Yeah. I think use case right now is use a mouse, right? I can already do that, and so there’s no value proposition. On safety grounds alone, sure. I’ll do it tomorrow.
Lex Fridman
You know, when you say the use case of the mouse, is it…
You know, when you say the use case of the mouse, is it…
Lex Fridman
The use case of the mouse is after researching all this and part of it’s just watching Nolan have so much fun. If you can get that bits per second look really high with the mouse, being able to interact, because if you think about the way on the smartphone, the way you swipe, that was transformational. How we interact with the thing, it’s subtle, you don’t realize it, but to be able to touch a phone and to scroll with your finger, that changed everything. People were sure you need a keyboard to type. There’s a lot of HCI aspects to that that changed how we interact with computers, so there could be a certain rate of speed with the mouse that would change everything. You might be able to just click around a screen extremely fast. I can’t see myself getting a Neuralink for much more rapid interaction with the digital devices.
The use case of the mouse is after researching all this and part of it’s just watching Nolan have so much fun. If you can get that bits per second look really high with the mouse, being able to interact, because if you think about the way on the smartphone, the way you swipe, that was transformational. How we interact with the thing, it’s subtle, you don’t realize it, but to be able to touch a phone and to scroll with your finger, that changed everything. People were sure you need a keyboard to type. There’s a lot of HCI aspects to that that changed how we interact with computers, so there could be a certain rate of speed with the mouse that would change everything. You might be able to just click around a screen extremely fast. I can’t see myself getting a Neuralink for much more rapid interaction with the digital devices.
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah, I think recording speech intentions from the brain might change things as well, the value proposition for the average person. A keyboard is a pretty clunky human interface, requires a lot of training. It’s highly variable in the maximum performance that the average person can achieve. I think taking that out of the equation and just having a natural word to computer interface might change things for a lot of people.
Yeah, I think recording speech intentions from the brain might change things as well, the value proposition for the average person. A keyboard is a pretty clunky human interface, requires a lot of training. It’s highly variable in the maximum performance that the average person can achieve. I think taking that out of the equation and just having a natural word to computer interface might change things for a lot of people.
Lex Fridman
It’d be hilarious if that is the reason people do it. Even if you have speech to text, that’s extremely accurate. It currently isn’t, but it’d say you’ve gotten super accurate. It’d be hilarious if people went for Neuralink. Just so you avoid the embarrassing aspect of speaking, looking like a douchebag speaking to your phone in public, which is a real, that’s a real constraint.
It’d be hilarious if that is the reason people do it. Even if you have speech to text, that’s extremely accurate. It currently isn’t, but it’d say you’ve gotten super accurate. It’d be hilarious if people went for Neuralink. Just so you avoid the embarrassing aspect of speaking, looking like a douchebag speaking to your phone in public, which is a real, that’s a real constraint.
Matthew MacDougall
I mean with a bone conducting case, that can be an invisible headphone, say, and the ability to think words into software and have it respond to you. That starts to sound sort of like embedded super intelligence. If you can silently ask for the Wikipedia article on any subject and have it read to you without any observable change happening in the outside world. For one thing, standardized testing is obsolete.
I mean with a bone conducting case, that can be an invisible headphone, say, and the ability to think words into software and have it respond to you. That starts to sound sort of like embedded super intelligence. If you can silently ask for the Wikipedia article on any subject and have it read to you without any observable change happening in the outside world. For one thing, standardized testing is obsolete.
Lex Fridman
If it’s done well in the UX side, it could change, I don’t know if it transforms society, but it really can create a kind of shift in the way we interact with digital devices in the way that a smartphone did. Just having to look into the safety of everything involved, I would totally try it. So it doesn’t have to go to some incredible thing where you have, it connects your vision or to some other, it connects all over your brain. That could be just connecting to the hand knob. You might have a lot of interesting interaction, human computer interaction possibilities. That’s really interesting.
If it’s done well in the UX side, it could change, I don’t know if it transforms society, but it really can create a kind of shift in the way we interact with digital devices in the way that a smartphone did. Just having to look into the safety of everything involved, I would totally try it. So it doesn’t have to go to some incredible thing where you have, it connects your vision or to some other, it connects all over your brain. That could be just connecting to the hand knob. You might have a lot of interesting interaction, human computer interaction possibilities. That’s really interesting.
Matthew MacDougall
And the technology on the academic side is progressing at light speed here. There was a really amazing paper out of UC Davis at Sergey Stavisky’s lab that basically made an initial solve of speech decode. It was something like 125,000 words that they were getting with very high accuracy, which is-
And the technology on the academic side is progressing at light speed here. There was a really amazing paper out of UC Davis at Sergey Stavisky’s lab that basically made an initial solve of speech decode. It was something like 125,000 words that they were getting with very high accuracy, which is-
Lex Fridman
So you’re just thinking the word?
So you’re just thinking the word?
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Thinking the word and you’re able to get it?
Thinking the word and you’re able to get it?
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Oh, boy. You have to have the intention of speaking it. So do the inner voice. Man, it’s so amazing to me that you can do the intention, the signal mapping. All you have to do is just imagine yourself doing it. And if you get the feedback that it actually worked, you can get really good at that. Your brain will first of all adjust and you develop, like any other skill, like touch typing. You develop in that same kind of way.
Oh, boy. You have to have the intention of speaking it. So do the inner voice. Man, it’s so amazing to me that you can do the intention, the signal mapping. All you have to do is just imagine yourself doing it. And if you get the feedback that it actually worked, you can get really good at that. Your brain will first of all adjust and you develop, like any other skill, like touch typing. You develop in that same kind of way.
To me, it’s just really fascinating to be able to even to play with that, honestly, I would get a Neuralink just to be able to play with that, just to play with the capacity, the capability of my mind to learn this skill. It’s like learning the skill of typing and learning the skill of moving a mouse. It’s another skill of moving the mouse, not with my physical body, but with my mind.
Matthew MacDougall
I can’t wait to see what people do with it. I feel like we’re cavemen right now. We’re banging rocks with a stick and thinking that we’re making music. At some point when these are more widespread, there’s going to be the equivalent of a piano that someone can make art with their brain in a way that we didn’t even anticipate. Looking forward to it.
I can’t wait to see what people do with it. I feel like we’re cavemen right now. We’re banging rocks with a stick and thinking that we’re making music. At some point when these are more widespread, there’s going to be the equivalent of a piano that someone can make art with their brain in a way that we didn’t even anticipate. Looking forward to it.
Lex Fridman
Give it to a teenager. Anytime I think I’m good at something I’ll always go to… I don’t know. Even with the bits per second and playing a video game, you realize you give it to a teenager, you give a Neuralink to a teenager. Just a large number of them, the kind of stuff they get good at stuff, they’re going to get hundreds of bits per second. Even just with the current technology.
Give it to a teenager. Anytime I think I’m good at something I’ll always go to… I don’t know. Even with the bits per second and playing a video game, you realize you give it to a teenager, you give a Neuralink to a teenager. Just a large number of them, the kind of stuff they get good at stuff, they’re going to get hundreds of bits per second. Even just with the current technology.
Matthew MacDougall
Probably. Probably.
Probably. Probably.
Lex Fridman
Because it’s also addicting, the number go up aspect of it of improving and training. It is almost like a skill and plus there’s the software on the other end that adapts to you, and especially if the adapting procedure algorithm becomes better and better and better. You’re like learning together.
Because it’s also addicting, the number go up aspect of it of improving and training. It is almost like a skill and plus there’s the software on the other end that adapts to you, and especially if the adapting procedure algorithm becomes better and better and better. You’re like learning together.
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah, we’re scratching the surface on that right now. There’s so much more to do.
Yeah, we’re scratching the surface on that right now. There’s so much more to do.
Lex Fridman
So on the complete other side of it, you have an RFID chip implanted in you?
So on the complete other side of it, you have an RFID chip implanted in you?
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
So I hear.
So I hear.
Matthew MacDougall
Nice.
Nice.
Lex Fridman
So this is-
So this is-
Matthew MacDougall
Little subtle thing.
Little subtle thing.
Lex Fridman
It’s a passive device that you use for unlocking a safe with top secrets or what do you use it for? What’s the story behind it?
It’s a passive device that you use for unlocking a safe with top secrets or what do you use it for? What’s the story behind it?
Matthew MacDougall
I’m not the first one. There’s this whole community of weirdo biohackers that have done this stuff, and I think one of the early use cases was storing private crypto wallet keys and whatever. I dabbled in that a bit and had some fun with it.
I’m not the first one. There’s this whole community of weirdo biohackers that have done this stuff, and I think one of the early use cases was storing private crypto wallet keys and whatever. I dabbled in that a bit and had some fun with it.
Lex Fridman
You have some Bitcoin implanted in your body somewhere. You can’t tell where. Yeah, yeah.
You have some Bitcoin implanted in your body somewhere. You can’t tell where. Yeah, yeah.
Matthew MacDougall
Actually, yeah. It was the modern day equivalent of finding change in the sofa cushions after I put some orphaned crypto on there that I thought was worthless and forgot about it for a few years. Went back and found that some community of people loved it and had propped up the value of it, and so it had gone up fifty-fold, so there was a lot of change in those cushions.
Actually, yeah. It was the modern day equivalent of finding change in the sofa cushions after I put some orphaned crypto on there that I thought was worthless and forgot about it for a few years. Went back and found that some community of people loved it and had propped up the value of it, and so it had gone up fifty-fold, so there was a lot of change in those cushions.
Lex Fridman
That’s hilarious.
That’s hilarious.
Matthew MacDougall
But the primary use case is mostly as a tech demonstrator. It has my business card on it. You can scan that in by touching it to your phone. It opens the front door to my house, whatever, simple stuff.
But the primary use case is mostly as a tech demonstrator. It has my business card on it. You can scan that in by touching it to your phone. It opens the front door to my house, whatever, simple stuff.
Lex Fridman
It’s a cool step. It’s a cool leap to implant something in your body. I mean, perhaps it’s a similar leap to a Neuralink because for a lot of people, that kind of notion of putting something inside your body, something electronic inside a biological system is a big leap.
It’s a cool step. It’s a cool leap to implant something in your body. I mean, perhaps it’s a similar leap to a Neuralink because for a lot of people, that kind of notion of putting something inside your body, something electronic inside a biological system is a big leap.
Matthew MacDougall
We have a kind of mysticism around the barrier of our skin. We’re completely fine with knee replacements, hip replacements, dental implants, but there’s a mysticism still around the inviolable barrier that the skull represents, and I think that needs to be treated like any other pragmatic barrier. The question isn’t how incredible is it to open the skull? The question is what benefit can we provide?
We have a kind of mysticism around the barrier of our skin. We’re completely fine with knee replacements, hip replacements, dental implants, but there’s a mysticism still around the inviolable barrier that the skull represents, and I think that needs to be treated like any other pragmatic barrier. The question isn’t how incredible is it to open the skull? The question is what benefit can we provide?
Lex Fridman
So from all the surgeries you’ve done, from everything you understand the brain, how much does neuroplasticity come into play? How adaptable is the brain? For example, just even in the case of healing from surgery or adapting to the post-surgery situation.
So from all the surgeries you’ve done, from everything you understand the brain, how much does neuroplasticity come into play? How adaptable is the brain? For example, just even in the case of healing from surgery or adapting to the post-surgery situation.
Matthew MacDougall
The answer that is sad for me and other people of my demographic is that plasticity decreases with age. Healing decreases with age. I have too much gray hair to be optimistic about that. There are theoretical ways to increase plasticity using electrical stimulation. Nothing that is totally proven out as a robust enough mechanism to offer widely to people.
The answer that is sad for me and other people of my demographic is that plasticity decreases with age. Healing decreases with age. I have too much gray hair to be optimistic about that. There are theoretical ways to increase plasticity using electrical stimulation. Nothing that is totally proven out as a robust enough mechanism to offer widely to people.
But yeah, I think there’s cause for optimism that we might find something useful in terms of say, an implanted electrode that improves learning. Certainly there’s been some really amazing work recently from Nicholas Schiff, Jonathan Baker and others who have a cohort of patients with moderate traumatic brain injury who have had electrodes placed in the deep nucleus in the brain called the central median nucleus or just near central median nucleus, and when they apply small amounts of electricity to that part of the brain, it’s almost like electronic caffeine.
They’re able to improve people’s attention and focus. They’re able to improve how well people can perform a task. I think in one case, someone who was unable to work, after the device was turned on, they were able to get a job. And that’s sort of one of the holy grails for me with Neuralink and other technologies like this is from a purely utilitarian standpoint, can we make people able to take care of themselves and their families economically again? Can we make it so someone who’s fully dependent and even maybe requires a lot of caregiver resources, can we put them in a position to be fully independent, taking care of themselves, giving back to their communities? I think that’s a very compelling proposition and what motivates a lot of what I do and what a lot of the people at Neuralink are working for.
Lex Fridman
It’s just a cool possibility that if you put a Neuralink in there, that the brain adapts the other part of the brain adapts too and integrates it. The capacity of the brain to do that is really interesting. Probably unknown to the degree to which you can do that, but you’re now connecting an external thing to it, especially once it’s doing stimulation. The biological brain and the electronic brain outside of it working together, the possibilities there are really interesting. It’s still unknown, but interesting. It feels like the brain is really good at adapting to whatever, but of course it is a system that by itself is already, everything serves a purpose and so you don’t want to mess with it too much.
It’s just a cool possibility that if you put a Neuralink in there, that the brain adapts the other part of the brain adapts too and integrates it. The capacity of the brain to do that is really interesting. Probably unknown to the degree to which you can do that, but you’re now connecting an external thing to it, especially once it’s doing stimulation. The biological brain and the electronic brain outside of it working together, the possibilities there are really interesting. It’s still unknown, but interesting. It feels like the brain is really good at adapting to whatever, but of course it is a system that by itself is already, everything serves a purpose and so you don’t want to mess with it too much.
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah, it’s like eliminating a species from an ecology. You don’t know what the delicate interconnections and dependencies are. The brain is certainly a delicate, complex beast, and we don’t know every potential downstream consequence of a single change that we make.
Yeah, it’s like eliminating a species from an ecology. You don’t know what the delicate interconnections and dependencies are. The brain is certainly a delicate, complex beast, and we don’t know every potential downstream consequence of a single change that we make.
Lex Fridman
Do you see yourself doing, so you mentioned P1, surgeries of P2, P3, P4, P5? Just more and more and more humans.
Do you see yourself doing, so you mentioned P1, surgeries of P2, P3, P4, P5? Just more and more and more humans.
Matthew MacDougall
I think it’s a certain kind of brittleness or a failure on the company’s side if we need me to do all the surgeries. I think something that I would very much like to work towards is a process that is so simple and so robust on the surgery side that literally anyone could do it. We want to get away from requiring intense expertise or intense experience to have this done and make it as simple and translatable as possible. I mean, I would love it if every neurosurgeon on the planet had no problem doing this. I think we’re probably far from a regulatory environment that would allow people that aren’t neurosurgeons to do this, but not impossible.
I think it’s a certain kind of brittleness or a failure on the company’s side if we need me to do all the surgeries. I think something that I would very much like to work towards is a process that is so simple and so robust on the surgery side that literally anyone could do it. We want to get away from requiring intense expertise or intense experience to have this done and make it as simple and translatable as possible. I mean, I would love it if every neurosurgeon on the planet had no problem doing this. I think we’re probably far from a regulatory environment that would allow people that aren’t neurosurgeons to do this, but not impossible.
Lex Fridman
All right, I’ll sign up for that. Did you ever anthropomorphize the robot R1? Do you give it a name? Do you see it as a friend as working together with you?
All right, I’ll sign up for that. Did you ever anthropomorphize the robot R1? Do you give it a name? Do you see it as a friend as working together with you?
Matthew MacDougall
I mean, to a certain degree it’s-
I mean, to a certain degree it’s-
Lex Fridman
Or an enemy who’s going to take your job?
Or an enemy who’s going to take your job?
Matthew MacDougall
To a certain degree, yeah. It’s complex relationship.
To a certain degree, yeah. It’s complex relationship.
Lex Fridman
All the good relationships are.
All the good relationships are.
Matthew MacDougall
It’s funny when in the middle of the surgery, there’s a part of it where I stand basically shoulder to shoulder with the robot, and so if you’re in the room reading the body language, it’s my brother in arms there. We’re working together on the same problem. Yeah, I’m not threatened by it.
It’s funny when in the middle of the surgery, there’s a part of it where I stand basically shoulder to shoulder with the robot, and so if you’re in the room reading the body language, it’s my brother in arms there. We’re working together on the same problem. Yeah, I’m not threatened by it.
Life and death
Lex Fridman
Keep telling yourself that. How have all the surgeries that you’ve done over the years, the people you’ve helped and the stakes, the high stakes that you’ve mentioned, how has that changed your understanding of life and death?
Keep telling yourself that. How have all the surgeries that you’ve done over the years, the people you’ve helped and the stakes, the high stakes that you’ve mentioned, how has that changed your understanding of life and death?
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah, it gives you a very visceral sense, and this may sound trite, but it gives you a very visceral sense that death is inevitable. On one hand, as a neurosurgeon, you’re deeply involved in these, just hard to fathom tragedies, young parents dying, leaving a four-year-old behind, say. And on the other hand, it takes the sting out of it a bit because you see how just mind-numbingly universal death is. There’s zero chance that I’m going to avoid it. I know techno-optimists right now and longevity buffs right now would disagree on that 0.000% estimate, but I don’t see any chance that our generation is going to avoid it. Entropy is a powerful force and we are very ornate, delicate, brittle, DNA machines that aren’t up to the cosmic ray bombardment that we’re subjected to.
Yeah, it gives you a very visceral sense, and this may sound trite, but it gives you a very visceral sense that death is inevitable. On one hand, as a neurosurgeon, you’re deeply involved in these, just hard to fathom tragedies, young parents dying, leaving a four-year-old behind, say. And on the other hand, it takes the sting out of it a bit because you see how just mind-numbingly universal death is. There’s zero chance that I’m going to avoid it. I know techno-optimists right now and longevity buffs right now would disagree on that 0.000% estimate, but I don’t see any chance that our generation is going to avoid it. Entropy is a powerful force and we are very ornate, delicate, brittle, DNA machines that aren’t up to the cosmic ray bombardment that we’re subjected to.
So on the one hand, every human that has ever lived died or will die. On the other hand, it’s just one of the hardest things to imagine inflicting on anyone that you love is having them gone. I mean, I’m sure you’ve had friends that aren’t living anymore and it’s hard to even think about them. And so I wish I had arrived at the point of nirvana where death doesn’t have a sting, I’m not worried about it. But I can at least say that I’m comfortable with the certainty of it, if not having found out how to take the tragedy out of it. When I think about my kids either not having me or me not having them or my wife.
Lex Fridman
Maybe I’ve come to accept the intellectual certainty of it, but it may be the pain that comes with losing the people you love. But I don’t think I’ve come to understand the existential aspect of it, that this is going to end, and I don’t mean in some trite way. I mean, it certainly feels like it’s not going to end. You live life like it’s not going to end. And the fact that this light that’s shining, this consciousness is going to no longer be in one moment, maybe today. It fills me when I really am able to load all that in with Ernest Becker’s terror. It is a real fear.
Maybe I’ve come to accept the intellectual certainty of it, but it may be the pain that comes with losing the people you love. But I don’t think I’ve come to understand the existential aspect of it, that this is going to end, and I don’t mean in some trite way. I mean, it certainly feels like it’s not going to end. You live life like it’s not going to end. And the fact that this light that’s shining, this consciousness is going to no longer be in one moment, maybe today. It fills me when I really am able to load all that in with Ernest Becker’s terror. It is a real fear.
I think people aren’t always honest with how terrifying it is. I think the more you are able to really think through it, the more terrifying it is. It’s not such a simple thing, “Oh, well, it’s the way life is.” If you really can load that in, it’s hard, but I think that’s why the Stoics did it, because it helps you get your shit together and be like, “The moment, every single moment you’re alive is just beautiful” and it’s terrifying that it’s going to end, and it’s almost like you’re shivering in the cold, a child helpless. This kind of feeling,
And then it makes you, when you have warmth, when you have the safety, when you have the love to really appreciate it. I feel like sometimes in your position when you mentioned armor just to see death, it might make you not be able to see that, the finiteness of life because if you kept looking at that, it might break you. So it is good to know that you’re kind of still struggling with that. There’s the neurosurgeon and then there’s a human, and the human is still able to struggle with that and feel the fear of that and the pain of that.
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah, it definitely makes you ask the question of how many of these can you see and not say, “I can’t do this anymore”? But I mean you said it well, I think it gives you an opportunity to just appreciate that you’re alive today and I’ve got three kids and an amazing wife, and I am really happy. Things are good. I get to help on a project that I think matters. I think it moves us forward. I’m a very lucky person.
Yeah, it definitely makes you ask the question of how many of these can you see and not say, “I can’t do this anymore”? But I mean you said it well, I think it gives you an opportunity to just appreciate that you’re alive today and I’ve got three kids and an amazing wife, and I am really happy. Things are good. I get to help on a project that I think matters. I think it moves us forward. I’m a very lucky person.
Lex Fridman
It’s the early steps of a potentially gigantic leap for humanity. It’s a really interesting one. And it’s cool because you read about all this stuff in history where it’s like the early days. I’ve been reading, before going to the Amazon, I would read about explorers that would go and explore even the Amazon jungle for the first time. It’s just those are the early steps or early steps into space, early steps in any discipline in physics and mathematics, and it’s cool because on the grand scale, these are the early steps into delving deep into the human brain, so not just observing the brain but be able to interact with the human brain. It’s going to help a lot of people, but it also might help us understand what the hell’s going on in there.
It’s the early steps of a potentially gigantic leap for humanity. It’s a really interesting one. And it’s cool because you read about all this stuff in history where it’s like the early days. I’ve been reading, before going to the Amazon, I would read about explorers that would go and explore even the Amazon jungle for the first time. It’s just those are the early steps or early steps into space, early steps in any discipline in physics and mathematics, and it’s cool because on the grand scale, these are the early steps into delving deep into the human brain, so not just observing the brain but be able to interact with the human brain. It’s going to help a lot of people, but it also might help us understand what the hell’s going on in there.
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah. I think ultimately we want to give people more levers that they can pull. You want to give people options. If you can give someone a dial that they can turn on how happy they are, I think that makes people really uncomfortable. But now talk about major depressive disorder. Talk about people that are committing suicide at an alarming rate in this country, and try to justify that queasiness in that light of, you can give people a knob to take away suicidal ideation, suicidal intention. I would give them that knob. I don’t know how you justify not doing that.
Yeah. I think ultimately we want to give people more levers that they can pull. You want to give people options. If you can give someone a dial that they can turn on how happy they are, I think that makes people really uncomfortable. But now talk about major depressive disorder. Talk about people that are committing suicide at an alarming rate in this country, and try to justify that queasiness in that light of, you can give people a knob to take away suicidal ideation, suicidal intention. I would give them that knob. I don’t know how you justify not doing that.
Lex Fridman
You can think about all the suffering that’s going on in the world, every single human being that’s suffering right now. It’ll be a glowing red dot. The more suffering, the more it’s glowing, and you just see the map of human suffering and any technology that allows you to dim that light of suffering on a grand scale is pretty exciting. Because there’s a lot of people suffering and most of them suffer quietly, and we look away too often, and we should remember those are suffering because once again, most of them are suffering quietly.
You can think about all the suffering that’s going on in the world, every single human being that’s suffering right now. It’ll be a glowing red dot. The more suffering, the more it’s glowing, and you just see the map of human suffering and any technology that allows you to dim that light of suffering on a grand scale is pretty exciting. Because there’s a lot of people suffering and most of them suffer quietly, and we look away too often, and we should remember those are suffering because once again, most of them are suffering quietly.
Matthew MacDougall
Well, and on a grander scale, the fabric of society. People have a lot of complaints about how our social fabric is working or not working, how our politics is working or not working. Those things are made of neurochemistry too in aggregate, right? Our politics is composed of individuals with human brains, and the way it works or doesn’t work is potentially tunable in the sense that, I don’t know, say remove our addictive behaviors or tune our addictive behaviors for social media or our addiction to outrage, our addiction to sharing the most angry political tweet we can find. I don’t think that leads to a functional society, and if you had options for people to moderate that maladaptive behavior, there could be huge benefits to society. Maybe we could all work together a little more harmoniously toward useful ends.
Well, and on a grander scale, the fabric of society. People have a lot of complaints about how our social fabric is working or not working, how our politics is working or not working. Those things are made of neurochemistry too in aggregate, right? Our politics is composed of individuals with human brains, and the way it works or doesn’t work is potentially tunable in the sense that, I don’t know, say remove our addictive behaviors or tune our addictive behaviors for social media or our addiction to outrage, our addiction to sharing the most angry political tweet we can find. I don’t think that leads to a functional society, and if you had options for people to moderate that maladaptive behavior, there could be huge benefits to society. Maybe we could all work together a little more harmoniously toward useful ends.
Lex Fridman
There’s a sweet spot, like you mentioned. You don’t want to completely remove all the dark sides of human nature. Those are somehow necessary to make the whole thing work, but there’s a sweet spot.
There’s a sweet spot, like you mentioned. You don’t want to completely remove all the dark sides of human nature. Those are somehow necessary to make the whole thing work, but there’s a sweet spot.
Matthew MacDougall
Yeah, I agree. You got to suffer a little, just not so much that you lose hope.
Yeah, I agree. You got to suffer a little, just not so much that you lose hope.
Consciousness
Lex Fridman
Yeah. When you, all the surgeries you’ve done, have you seen consciousness in there ever? Was there a glowing light?
Yeah. When you, all the surgeries you’ve done, have you seen consciousness in there ever? Was there a glowing light?
Matthew MacDougall
I have this sense that I never found it, never removed it like a Dementor in Harry Potter. I have this sense that consciousness is a lot less magical than our instincts want to claim it is. It seems to me like a useful analog for about what consciousness is in the brain is that we have a really good intuitive understanding of what it means to say, touch your skin and know what’s being touched. And I think consciousness is just that level of sensory mapping applied to the thought processes in the brain itself.
I have this sense that I never found it, never removed it like a Dementor in Harry Potter. I have this sense that consciousness is a lot less magical than our instincts want to claim it is. It seems to me like a useful analog for about what consciousness is in the brain is that we have a really good intuitive understanding of what it means to say, touch your skin and know what’s being touched. And I think consciousness is just that level of sensory mapping applied to the thought processes in the brain itself.
So what I’m saying is, consciousness is the sensation of some part of your brain being active, so you feel it working. You feel the part of your brain that thinks of red things or winged creatures or the taste of coffee. You feel those parts of your brain being active, the way that I’m feeling my palm being touched, and that sensory system that feels the brain working is consciousness.
Lex Fridman
That’s so brilliant. It’s the same way. It’s the sensation of touch when you’re touching a thing. Consciousness is the sensation of you feeling your brain working, your brain thinking, your brain perceiving.
That’s so brilliant. It’s the same way. It’s the sensation of touch when you’re touching a thing. Consciousness is the sensation of you feeling your brain working, your brain thinking, your brain perceiving.
Matthew MacDougall
Which isn’t like a warping of space-time or some quantum field effect, right? It’s nothing magical. People always want to ascribe to consciousness something truly different, and there’s this awesome long history of people looking at whatever the latest discovery in physics is to explain consciousness because it’s the most magical, the most out there thing that you can think of, and people always want to do that with consciousness. I don’t think that’s necessary. It’s just a very useful and gratifying way of feeling your brain work.
Which isn’t like a warping of space-time or some quantum field effect, right? It’s nothing magical. People always want to ascribe to consciousness something truly different, and there’s this awesome long history of people looking at whatever the latest discovery in physics is to explain consciousness because it’s the most magical, the most out there thing that you can think of, and people always want to do that with consciousness. I don’t think that’s necessary. It’s just a very useful and gratifying way of feeling your brain work.
Lex Fridman
And as we said, it’s one heck of a brain. Everything we see around us, everything we love, everything that’s beautiful came from brains like these.
And as we said, it’s one heck of a brain. Everything we see around us, everything we love, everything that’s beautiful came from brains like these.
Matthew MacDougall
It’s all electrical activity happening inside your skull.
It’s all electrical activity happening inside your skull.
Lex Fridman
And I, for one, am grateful there’s people like you that are exploring all the ways that it works and all the ways it can be made better.
And I, for one, am grateful there’s people like you that are exploring all the ways that it works and all the ways it can be made better.
Matthew MacDougall
Thanks, Lex.
Thanks, Lex.
Lex Fridman
Thank you so much for talking today.
Thank you so much for talking today.
Matthew MacDougall
It’s been a joy.
It’s been a joy.
Bliss Chapman
Lex Fridman
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Matthew MacDougall. Now, dear friends, here’s Bliss Chapman, brain interface software lead at Neuralink. You told me that you’ve met hundreds of people with spinal cord injuries or with ALS, and that your motivation for helping at Neuralink is grounded in wanting to help them. Can you describe this motivation?
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Matthew MacDougall. Now, dear friends, here’s Bliss Chapman, brain interface software lead at Neuralink. You told me that you’ve met hundreds of people with spinal cord injuries or with ALS, and that your motivation for helping at Neuralink is grounded in wanting to help them. Can you describe this motivation?
Bliss Chapman
Yeah. First, just a thank you to all the people I’ve gotten a chance to speak with for sharing their stories with me. I don’t think there’s any world really in which I can share their stories as powerful way as they can, but just I think to summarize at a very high level, what I hear over and over again is that people with ALS or severe spinal cord injury in a place where they basically can’t move physically anymore, really at the end of the day are looking for independence. And that can mean different things for different people.
Yeah. First, just a thank you to all the people I’ve gotten a chance to speak with for sharing their stories with me. I don’t think there’s any world really in which I can share their stories as powerful way as they can, but just I think to summarize at a very high level, what I hear over and over again is that people with ALS or severe spinal cord injury in a place where they basically can’t move physically anymore, really at the end of the day are looking for independence. And that can mean different things for different people.
For some folks, it can mean the ability just to be able to communicate again independently without needing to wear something on their face, without needing a caretaker to be able to put something in their mouth. For some folks, it can mean independence to be able to work again, to be able to navigate a computer digitally, efficiently enough to be able to get a job, to be able to support themselves, to be able to move out and ultimately be able to support themselves after their family maybe isn’t there anymore to take care of them.
And for some folks, it’s as simple as just being able to respond to their kid in time before they run away or get interested in something else. And these are deeply personal and very human problems. And what strikes me again and again when talking with these folks is that this is actually an engineering problem. This is a problem that with the right resources, with the right team, can make a lot of progress on. And at the end of the day, I think that’s a deeply inspiring message and something that makes me excited to get up every day.
Lex Fridman
So it’s both an engineering problem in terms of a BCI, for example, that can give them capabilities where they can interact with the world, but also on the other side, it’s an engineering problem for the rest of the world to make it more accessible for people living with quadriplegia?
So it’s both an engineering problem in terms of a BCI, for example, that can give them capabilities where they can interact with the world, but also on the other side, it’s an engineering problem for the rest of the world to make it more accessible for people living with quadriplegia?
Bliss Chapman
Yeah. And actually, I’ll take a broad view lens on this for a second. I think I’m very in favor of anyone working in this problem space. So beyond BCI, I’m happy and excited and willing to support any way I can, folks working on eye tracking systems, working on speech to text systems, working on head trackers or mouse sticks or quad sticks. And I’ve met many engineers and folks in the community that do exactly those things.
Yeah. And actually, I’ll take a broad view lens on this for a second. I think I’m very in favor of anyone working in this problem space. So beyond BCI, I’m happy and excited and willing to support any way I can, folks working on eye tracking systems, working on speech to text systems, working on head trackers or mouse sticks or quad sticks. And I’ve met many engineers and folks in the community that do exactly those things.
And I think for the people we’re trying to help, it doesn’t matter what the complexity of the solution is as long as the problem is solved. And I want to emphasize that there can be many solutions out there that can help with these problems. And BCI is one of a collection of such solutions. So BCI in particular, I think offers several advantages here. And I think the folks that recognize this immediately are usually the people who have spinal cord injury or some form of paralysis.
Usually you don’t have to explain to them why this might be something that could be helpful. It’s usually pretty self-evident, but for the rest of us folks that don’t live with severe spinal cord injury or who don’t know somebody with ALS, it’s not often obvious why you would want a brain implant to be able to connect and navigate a computer.
And it’s surprisingly nuanced, and to the degree that I’ve learned a huge amount just working with Noland in the first Neuralink clinical trial and understanding from him and his words why this device is impactful for him, and it’s a nuanced topic. It can be the case that even if you can achieve the same thing, for example, with a mouse stick when navigating a computer, he doesn’t have access to that mouse stick every single minute of the day. He only has access when someone is available to put it in front of him. And so a BCI can really offer a level of independence and autonomy that, if it wasn’t literally physically part of your body, it’d be hard to achieve in any other way.
Lex Fridman
So there’s a lot of fascinating aspects to what it takes to get Noland to be able to control a cursor on the screen with his mind. You texted me something that I just love. You said, “I was part of the team that interviewed and selected P1, I was in the operating room during the first human surgery monitoring live signals coming out of the brain. I work with the user basically every day to develop new UX paradigms, decoding strategies, and I was part of the team that figured out how to recover useful BCI to new world record levels when the signal quality degraded.” We’ll talk about, I think every aspect of that, but just zooming out, what was it like to be a part of that team and part of that historic, I would say, historic first?
So there’s a lot of fascinating aspects to what it takes to get Noland to be able to control a cursor on the screen with his mind. You texted me something that I just love. You said, “I was part of the team that interviewed and selected P1, I was in the operating room during the first human surgery monitoring live signals coming out of the brain. I work with the user basically every day to develop new UX paradigms, decoding strategies, and I was part of the team that figured out how to recover useful BCI to new world record levels when the signal quality degraded.” We’ll talk about, I think every aspect of that, but just zooming out, what was it like to be a part of that team and part of that historic, I would say, historic first?
Bliss Chapman
Yeah. I think for me, this is something I’ve been excited about for close to 10 years now. And so to be able to be even just some small part of making it a reality is extremely exciting. A couple maybe special moments during that whole process that I’ll never really truly forget. One of them is entering the actual surgery. At that point in time, I know Noland quite well. I know his family. And so I think the initial reaction when Noland is rolled into the operating room is just an “Oh, shit” kind of reaction. But at that point, muscle memory kicks in and you sort of go into, you let your body just do all the talking.
Yeah. I think for me, this is something I’ve been excited about for close to 10 years now. And so to be able to be even just some small part of making it a reality is extremely exciting. A couple maybe special moments during that whole process that I’ll never really truly forget. One of them is entering the actual surgery. At that point in time, I know Noland quite well. I know his family. And so I think the initial reaction when Noland is rolled into the operating room is just an “Oh, shit” kind of reaction. But at that point, muscle memory kicks in and you sort of go into, you let your body just do all the talking.
And I have the lucky job in that particular procedure to just be in charge of monitoring the implant. So my job is to sit there, to look at the signals coming off the implant, to look at the live brain data streaming off the device as threads are being inserted into the brain and just to basically observe and make sure that nothing is going wrong or that there’s no red flags or fault conditions that we need to go and investigate or pause the surgery to debug.
And because I had that sort of spectator view of the surgery, I had a slightly removed perspective than I think most folks in the room. I got to sit there and think to myself, “Wow, that brain is moving a lot.” When you look inside the craniectomy that we stick the threads in, one thing that most people don’t realize is the brain moves. The brain moves a lot when you breathe, your heart beats, and you can see it visibly. So that’s something that I think was a surprise to me and very, very exciting to be able to see someone’s brain who you physically know and have talked with that length, actually pausing and moving inside their skull.
Lex Fridman
And they used that brain to talk to you previously, and now it’s right there moving.
And they used that brain to talk to you previously, and now it’s right there moving.
Bliss Chapman
Yep.
Yep.
Lex Fridman
Actually, I didn’t realize that in terms of the thread sending, so the Neuralink implant is active during surgery and one thread at a time, you’re able to start seeing the signal?
Actually, I didn’t realize that in terms of the thread sending, so the Neuralink implant is active during surgery and one thread at a time, you’re able to start seeing the signal?
Bliss Chapman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
So that’s part of the way you test that the thing is working?
So that’s part of the way you test that the thing is working?
Bliss Chapman
Yeah. So actually in the operating room, right after we sort of finished all the thread insertions, I started collecting what’s called broadband data. So broadband is basically the most raw form of signal you can collect from a Neuralink electrode. It’s essentially a measurement of the local fuel potential or the voltage essentially measured by that electrode. And we have a certain mode in our application that allows us to visualize where detected spikes are. So it visualizes where in the broadband signal and it’s very, very raw form of the data, a neuron is actually spiking. And so one of these moments that I’ll never forget as part of this whole clinical trial is seeing live in the operating room while he’s still under anesthesia, beautiful spikes being shown in the application, just streaming live to a device I’m holding in my hand.
Yeah. So actually in the operating room, right after we sort of finished all the thread insertions, I started collecting what’s called broadband data. So broadband is basically the most raw form of signal you can collect from a Neuralink electrode. It’s essentially a measurement of the local fuel potential or the voltage essentially measured by that electrode. And we have a certain mode in our application that allows us to visualize where detected spikes are. So it visualizes where in the broadband signal and it’s very, very raw form of the data, a neuron is actually spiking. And so one of these moments that I’ll never forget as part of this whole clinical trial is seeing live in the operating room while he’s still under anesthesia, beautiful spikes being shown in the application, just streaming live to a device I’m holding in my hand.
Lex Fridman
So this is no signal processing the raw data, and then the signals processing is on top of it, you’re seeing the spikes detected?
So this is no signal processing the raw data, and then the signals processing is on top of it, you’re seeing the spikes detected?
Bliss Chapman
Right.
Right.
Lex Fridman
And that’s a UX too, that looks beautiful as well.
And that’s a UX too, that looks beautiful as well.
Bliss Chapman
During that procedure, there was actually a lot of cameramen in the room, so they also were curious and wanted to see, there’s several neurosurgeons in the room who were all just excited to see robots taking their job, and they were all crowded around a small little iPhone watching this live brain data stream out of his brain.
During that procedure, there was actually a lot of cameramen in the room, so they also were curious and wanted to see, there’s several neurosurgeons in the room who were all just excited to see robots taking their job, and they were all crowded around a small little iPhone watching this live brain data stream out of his brain.
Lex Fridman
What was that like seeing the robot do some of the surgery? So the computer vision aspect where it detects all the spots that avoid the blood vessels, and then obviously with the human supervision, then actually doing the really high precision connection of the threads to the brain?
What was that like seeing the robot do some of the surgery? So the computer vision aspect where it detects all the spots that avoid the blood vessels, and then obviously with the human supervision, then actually doing the really high precision connection of the threads to the brain?
Bliss Chapman
That’s a good question. My answer is going to be pretty lame here, but it was boring. I’ve seen it so many times.
That’s a good question. My answer is going to be pretty lame here, but it was boring. I’ve seen it so many times.
Lex Fridman
The way you want it to be.
The way you want it to be.
Bliss Chapman
Yeah, that’s exactly how you want surgery to be. You want it to be boring. I’ve seen it so many times. I’ve seen the robot do the surgery literally hundreds of times, and so it was just one more time.
Yeah, that’s exactly how you want surgery to be. You want it to be boring. I’ve seen it so many times. I’ve seen the robot do the surgery literally hundreds of times, and so it was just one more time.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, all the practice surgeries and the proxies, and this is just another day.
Yeah, all the practice surgeries and the proxies, and this is just another day.
Bliss Chapman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
So what about when Noland woke up? Do you remember a moment where he was able to move the cursor, not move the cursor, but get signal from the brain such that it was able to show that there’s a connection?
So what about when Noland woke up? Do you remember a moment where he was able to move the cursor, not move the cursor, but get signal from the brain such that it was able to show that there’s a connection?
Bliss Chapman
Yeah. Yeah. So we are quite excited to move as quickly as we can, and Noland was really, really excited to get started. He wanted to get started, actually the day of surgery, but we waited until the next morning very patiently. It’s a long night.
Yeah. Yeah. So we are quite excited to move as quickly as we can, and Noland was really, really excited to get started. He wanted to get started, actually the day of surgery, but we waited until the next morning very patiently. It’s a long night.
Bliss Chapman
… we waited until the next morning very patiently. So a long night. And the next morning in the ICU where he was recovering, he wanted to get started and actually start to understand what kind of signal we can measure from his brain. And maybe for folks who are not familiar with the Neuralink system, we implant the Neuralink system or the Neuralink implant in the motor cortex. So the motor cortex is responsible for representing things like motor intent. If you imagine closing and opening your hand, that kind of signal representation would be present in the motor cortex.
… we waited until the next morning very patiently. So a long night. And the next morning in the ICU where he was recovering, he wanted to get started and actually start to understand what kind of signal we can measure from his brain. And maybe for folks who are not familiar with the Neuralink system, we implant the Neuralink system or the Neuralink implant in the motor cortex. So the motor cortex is responsible for representing things like motor intent. If you imagine closing and opening your hand, that kind of signal representation would be present in the motor cortex.
If you imagine moving your arm back and forth or wiggling a pinky, this sort of signal can be present in the motor cortex. So one of the ways we start to map out what kind of signal do we actually have access to, in any particular individual’s brain, is through this task called body mapping. And body mapping is where you essentially present a visual to the user and you say, “Hey, imagine doing this,” and their visual is a 3D hand opening, closing or index finger modulating up and down.
And you ask the user to imagine that, and obviously you can’t see them do this, because they’re paralyzed, so you can’t see them actually move their arm. But while they do this task, you can record neural activity and you can basically offline model and check, “Can I predict, or can I detect the modulation corresponding with those different actions?” And so we did that task and we realized, “Hey, there’s actually some modulation associated with some of his hand motion,” which was a first indication that, “okay, we can potentially use that modulation to do useful things in the world.” For example, control a computer cursor.
And he started playing with it, the first time we showed him it. And we actually just took the same live view of his brain activity and put it in front of him and we said, “Hey, you tell us what’s going on? We’re not you. You’re able to imagine different things, and we know that it’s modulating some of these neurons, so you figure out for us, what that is actually representing.” And so he played with it for a bit. He was like, “I don’t quite get it yet.” He played for a bit longer and he said, “Oh, when I move this finger, I see this particular neuron start to fire more.”
And I said, “Okay, prove it. Do it again.” And so he said, “Okay, three, two, one,” boom. And the minute he moved, you can see instantaneously this neuron is firing, single neuron. I can tell you the exact channel number if you’re interested. It’s stuck in my brain now forever. But that single channel firing was a beautiful indication that it was behaved really modulated, neural activity, that could then be used for downstreaming tasks, like decoding a computer cursor.
Lex Fridman
And when you say single channel, is that associated with a single electrode?
And when you say single channel, is that associated with a single electrode?
Bliss Chapman
Yeah. Channel and electrode are interchangeable.
Yeah. Channel and electrode are interchangeable.
Lex Fridman
And there’s a 1,024 of those?
And there’s a 1,024 of those?
Bliss Chapman
1,024. Yeah.
1,024. Yeah.
Lex Fridman
That’s incredible that, that works. When I was learning about all this and loading it in, it was just blowing my mind that the intention, you can visualize yourself moving the finger. That can turn into a signal, and the fact that you can then skip that step and visualize the cursor moving, or have the intention of the cursor moving. And that leading to a signal that can then be used to move the cursor? There is so many exciting things there to learn about the brain, about the way the brain works, the very fact of there existing signal that can be used, is really powerful.
That’s incredible that, that works. When I was learning about all this and loading it in, it was just blowing my mind that the intention, you can visualize yourself moving the finger. That can turn into a signal, and the fact that you can then skip that step and visualize the cursor moving, or have the intention of the cursor moving. And that leading to a signal that can then be used to move the cursor? There is so many exciting things there to learn about the brain, about the way the brain works, the very fact of there existing signal that can be used, is really powerful.
Bliss Chapman
Yep.
Yep.
Lex Fridman
But it feels like that’s just the beginning of figuring out how that signal could be used really, really effectively? I should also just, there’s so many fascinating details here, but you mentioned the body mapping step. At least in the version I saw, that Noland was showing off, there’s a super nice interface, a graphical interface, but it just felt like I was in the future.
But it feels like that’s just the beginning of figuring out how that signal could be used really, really effectively? I should also just, there’s so many fascinating details here, but you mentioned the body mapping step. At least in the version I saw, that Noland was showing off, there’s a super nice interface, a graphical interface, but it just felt like I was in the future.
I guess it visualizes you moving the hand, and there’s a very sexy polished interface that, “Hello,” I don’t know if there’s a voice component, but it just felt like when you wake up in a really nice video game, and this is the tutorial at the beginning of that video game. This is what you’re supposed to do. It’s cool.
Bliss Chapman
No, I mean the future should feel like the future.
No, I mean the future should feel like the future.
Lex Fridman
But it’s not easy to pull that off. I mean, it needs to be simple, but not too simple.
But it’s not easy to pull that off. I mean, it needs to be simple, but not too simple.
Bliss Chapman
Yeah. And I think the UX design component here is underrated for BCI development in general. There’s a whole interaction effect between the ways in which you visualize an instruction to the user, and the kinds of signal you can get back. And that quality of your behavioral alignment to the neural signal, is a function of how good you are at expressing to the user what you want them to do. And so yeah, we spend a lot of time thinking about the UX, of how we build our applications, of how the decoder actually functions, the control surfaces it provides to the user. All these little details matter a lot.
Yeah. And I think the UX design component here is underrated for BCI development in general. There’s a whole interaction effect between the ways in which you visualize an instruction to the user, and the kinds of signal you can get back. And that quality of your behavioral alignment to the neural signal, is a function of how good you are at expressing to the user what you want them to do. And so yeah, we spend a lot of time thinking about the UX, of how we build our applications, of how the decoder actually functions, the control surfaces it provides to the user. All these little details matter a lot.
Neural signal
Lex Fridman
So maybe it’d be nice to get into a little bit more detail of what the signal looks like, and what the decoding looks like?
So maybe it’d be nice to get into a little bit more detail of what the signal looks like, and what the decoding looks like?
Bliss Chapman
Yep.
Yep.
Lex Fridman
So there’s a N1 implant that has, like we mentioned, 1,024 electrodes, and that’s collecting raw data, raw signal. What does that signal look like? And what are the different steps along the way before it’s transmitted, and what is transmitted? All that kind of stuff.
So there’s a N1 implant that has, like we mentioned, 1,024 electrodes, and that’s collecting raw data, raw signal. What does that signal look like? And what are the different steps along the way before it’s transmitted, and what is transmitted? All that kind of stuff.
Bliss Chapman
Yep. This is going to be a fun one. Grab the [inaudible 05:19:58].
Yep. This is going to be a fun one. Grab the [inaudible 05:19:58].
Lex Fridman
Let’s go.
Let’s go.
Bliss Chapman
So maybe before diving into what we do, it’s worth understanding what we’re trying to measure, because that dictates a lot of the requirements for the system that we build. And what we’re trying to measure is really individual neurons, producing action potentials. And action potential is, you can think of it like a little electrical impulse that you can detect, if you’re close enough. And by being close enough, I mean within let’s say 100 microns of that cell. And 100 microns is a very, very tiny distance. And so the number of neurons that you’re going to pick up with any given electrode, is just a small radius around that electrode.
So maybe before diving into what we do, it’s worth understanding what we’re trying to measure, because that dictates a lot of the requirements for the system that we build. And what we’re trying to measure is really individual neurons, producing action potentials. And action potential is, you can think of it like a little electrical impulse that you can detect, if you’re close enough. And by being close enough, I mean within let’s say 100 microns of that cell. And 100 microns is a very, very tiny distance. And so the number of neurons that you’re going to pick up with any given electrode, is just a small radius around that electrode.
And the other thing worth understanding about the underlying biology here, is that when neurons produce an action potential, the width of that action potential is about one millisecond. So from the start of the spike, to the end of the spike, that whole width of that characteristic feature, of a neuron firing, is one millisecond wide. And if you want to detect that an individual spike is occurring or not, you need to sample that signal, or sample the local fuel potential nearby that a neuron… Much more frequently than once a millisecond. You need to sample many, many times per millisecond, to be able to detect that this is actually the characteristic waveform of a neuron producing an action potential.
And so we sample across all 1,024 electrodes, about 20,000 times a second. 20,000 times a second means for any given one millisecond window, we have about 20 samples that tell us what that exact shape of that actual potential looks like. And once we’ve sort of sampled at super high rate the underlying electrical field nearby these cells, we can process that signal into just where do we detect a spike, or where do we not? Sort of a binary signal, one or zero. Do we detect a spike in this one millisecond or not?
And we do that because the actual information carrying subspace of neural activity, is just when our spikes occurring. Essentially everything that we care about for decoding can be captured or represented in the frequency characteristics of spike trains. Meaning, how often are spikes firing in any given window of time. And so that allows us to do sort of a crazy amount of compression, from this very rich high-density signal, to something that’s much, much more sparse and compressible, that can be sent out over a wireless radio. Like a Bluetooth communication for example.
Lex Fridman
Quick tangents here. You mentioned electrode neuron, there’s a local neighborhood of neurons nearby. How difficult is it to isolate from where the spike came from?
Quick tangents here. You mentioned electrode neuron, there’s a local neighborhood of neurons nearby. How difficult is it to isolate from where the spike came from?
Bliss Chapman
So there’s a whole field of academic neuroscience work on exactly this problem, of basically given a single electrode, or given a set of electrodes measuring a set of neurons. How can you sort, spike sort, which spikes are coming from what neuron? And this is a problem that’s pursued in academic work, because you care about it for understanding what’s going on in the underlying neuroscience of the brain. If you care about understanding how the brain’s representing information, how that’s evolving through time, then that’s a very, very important question to understand.
So there’s a whole field of academic neuroscience work on exactly this problem, of basically given a single electrode, or given a set of electrodes measuring a set of neurons. How can you sort, spike sort, which spikes are coming from what neuron? And this is a problem that’s pursued in academic work, because you care about it for understanding what’s going on in the underlying neuroscience of the brain. If you care about understanding how the brain’s representing information, how that’s evolving through time, then that’s a very, very important question to understand.
For the engineering side of things, at least at the current scale, if the number of neurons per electrode is relatively small, you can get away with basically ignoring that problem completely. You can think of it like a random projection of neurons to electrodes, and there may be in some cases more than one neuron per electrode. But if that number is small enough, those signals can be thought of as sort of a union of the two.
And for many applications, that’s a totally reasonable trade-off to make, and can simplify the problem a lot. And as you sort of scale out channel count, the relevance of distinguishing individual neurons becomes less important. Because you have more overall signal, and you can start to rely on correlations or covariate structure in the data to help understand when that channel is firing… What does that actually represent? Because you know that when that channel’s firing in concert with these other 50 channels, that means move left. But when that same channel’s firing with concert with these other 10 channels, that means move right.
Lex Fridman
Okay. So you have to do this kind of spike detection onboard, and you have to do that super efficiently? So fast, and not use too much power, because you don’t want to be generating too much heat, so it’d have to be a super simple signal processing step?
Okay. So you have to do this kind of spike detection onboard, and you have to do that super efficiently? So fast, and not use too much power, because you don’t want to be generating too much heat, so it’d have to be a super simple signal processing step?
Bliss Chapman
Yep.
Yep.
Lex Fridman
Is there some wisdom you can share about what it takes to overcome that challenge?
Is there some wisdom you can share about what it takes to overcome that challenge?
Bliss Chapman
Yeah. So we’ve tried many different versions of basically turning this raw signal into a feature that you might want to send off the device. And I’ll say that I don’t think we’re at the final step of this process, this is a long journey. We have something that works clearly today, but there can be many approaches that we find in the future that are much better than what we do right now. So some versions of what we do right now, and there’s a lot of academic heritage to these ideas, so I don’t want to claim that these are original Neuralink ideas or anything like that.
Yeah. So we’ve tried many different versions of basically turning this raw signal into a feature that you might want to send off the device. And I’ll say that I don’t think we’re at the final step of this process, this is a long journey. We have something that works clearly today, but there can be many approaches that we find in the future that are much better than what we do right now. So some versions of what we do right now, and there’s a lot of academic heritage to these ideas, so I don’t want to claim that these are original Neuralink ideas or anything like that.
But one of these ideas is basically to build sort of like a convolutional filter almost, if you will. That slides across the signal and looks for a certain template to be matched. That template consists of how deep the spike modulates, how much it recovers, and what the duration and window of time is for that, the whole process takes. And if you can see in the signal that, that template is matched within certain bounds, then you can say, “Okay, that’s a spike.” One reason that approach is super convenient, is that you can actually implement that extremely efficiently in hardware. Which means that you can run it in low power across 1,024 channels all at once.
Another approach that we’ve recently started exploring, and this can be combined with the spike detection approach, is something called spike band power. And the benefits of that approach are that you may be able to pick up some signal from neurons that are maybe too far away to be detected as a spike, because the farther away you are from an electrode, the weaker that actual spike waveform will look like on that electrode. So you might be able to pick up population level activity of things that are maybe slightly outside the normal recording radius… What neuroscientists sometimes refer to as the hash of activity, the other stuff that’s going on. And you can look at across many channels how that background noise is behaving, and you might be able to get more juice out of the signal that way.
But it comes at a cost. That signal is now a floating point representation, which means it’s more expensive to send out over a power. It means you have to find different ways to compress it, that are different than what you can apply to binary signals. So there’s a lot of different challenges associated with these different modalities.
Lex Fridman
So also in terms of communication, you’re limited by the amount of data you can send?
So also in terms of communication, you’re limited by the amount of data you can send?
Latency
Bliss Chapman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
And also because you’re currently using the Bluetooth protocol, you have to batch stuff together? But you have to also do this, keeping the latency crazy low? Crazy low? Anything to say about the latency?
And also because you’re currently using the Bluetooth protocol, you have to batch stuff together? But you have to also do this, keeping the latency crazy low? Crazy low? Anything to say about the latency?
Bliss Chapman
Yeah. This is a passion project of mine. So I want to build the best mouse in the world. I don’t want to build the Chevrolet Spark or whatever of electric cars. I want to build the Tesla Roadster version of a mouse. And I really do think it’s quite possible that within five to 10 years that most eSports competitions are dominated by people with paralysis.
Yeah. This is a passion project of mine. So I want to build the best mouse in the world. I don’t want to build the Chevrolet Spark or whatever of electric cars. I want to build the Tesla Roadster version of a mouse. And I really do think it’s quite possible that within five to 10 years that most eSports competitions are dominated by people with paralysis.
This is a very real possibility for a number of reasons. One is that they’ll have access to the best technology to play video games effectively. The second is they have the time to do so. So those two factors together are particularly potent for eSport competitors.
Lex Fridman
Unless, people without paralysis are also allowed to implant N1?
Unless, people without paralysis are also allowed to implant N1?
Bliss Chapman
Right.
Right.
Lex Fridman
Which, it is another way to interact with a digital device, and there’s something to that, if it’s a fundamentally different experience, more efficient experience? Even if it’s not like some kind of full-on high bandwidth communication, if it’s just the ability to move the mouse 10X faster, like the bits per second? If I can achieve a bits per second at 10X what I can do with a mouse, that’s a really interesting possibility of what that can do? Especially as you get really good at it. With training.
Which, it is another way to interact with a digital device, and there’s something to that, if it’s a fundamentally different experience, more efficient experience? Even if it’s not like some kind of full-on high bandwidth communication, if it’s just the ability to move the mouse 10X faster, like the bits per second? If I can achieve a bits per second at 10X what I can do with a mouse, that’s a really interesting possibility of what that can do? Especially as you get really good at it. With training.
Bliss Chapman
It’s definitely the case that you have a higher ceiling performance, because you don’t have to buffer your intention through your arm, through your muscle. You get just by nature of having a brain implant at all, like 75 millisecond lead time on any action that you’re actually trying to take. And there’s some nuance to this, there’s evidence that the motor cortex, you can sort of plan out sequences of actions, so you may not get that whole benefit all the time. But for reaction time style games, where you just want to… Somebody’s over here, snipe them, that kind of thing? You actually do have just an inherent advantage, because you don’t need to go through muscle.
It’s definitely the case that you have a higher ceiling performance, because you don’t have to buffer your intention through your arm, through your muscle. You get just by nature of having a brain implant at all, like 75 millisecond lead time on any action that you’re actually trying to take. And there’s some nuance to this, there’s evidence that the motor cortex, you can sort of plan out sequences of actions, so you may not get that whole benefit all the time. But for reaction time style games, where you just want to… Somebody’s over here, snipe them, that kind of thing? You actually do have just an inherent advantage, because you don’t need to go through muscle.
So the question is, just how much faster can you make it? And we’re already faster than what you would do if you’re going through muscle from a latency point of view, and we’re in the early stages of that. I think we can push it. So our end to end latency right now from brain spike to cursor movement, it’s about 22 milliseconds. If you think about the best mice in the world, the best gaming mice, that’s about five milliseconds ish of latency, depending on how you measure, depending how fast your screen refreshes, there’s a lot of characteristics that matter there. And the rough time for a neuron in the brain to actually impact your command of your hand is about 75 milliseconds.
So if you look at those numbers, you can see that we’re already competitive and slightly faster than what you’d get by actually moving your hand. And this is something that if you ask Noland about it, when he moved the cursor for the first time… We asked him about this, it was something I was super curious about. “What does it feel like when you’re modulating a click intention, or when you’re trying to just move the cursor to the right?” He said it moves before he is actually intending it to. Which is kind of a surreal thing, and something that I would love to experience myself one day, what is that like to have the thing just be so immediate, so fluid, that it feels like it’s happening before you’re actually intending it to move?
Lex Fridman
Yeah. I suppose we’ve gotten used to that latency, that natural latency that happens. So is currently the bottleneck, the communication? So the Bluetooth communication? What’s the actual bottleneck? I mean there’s always going to be a bottleneck, what’s the current bottleneck?
Yeah. I suppose we’ve gotten used to that latency, that natural latency that happens. So is currently the bottleneck, the communication? So the Bluetooth communication? What’s the actual bottleneck? I mean there’s always going to be a bottleneck, what’s the current bottleneck?
Bliss Chapman
Yeah. A couple things. So kind of hilariously, Bluetooth low- energy protocol has some restrictions on how fast you can communicate. So the protocol itself establishes a standard of the most frequent sort of updates you can send, are on the order of 7.5 milliseconds. And as we push latency down to the level of individual spikes impacting control, that level of resolution, that kind of protocol is going to become a limiting factor at some scale.
Yeah. A couple things. So kind of hilariously, Bluetooth low- energy protocol has some restrictions on how fast you can communicate. So the protocol itself establishes a standard of the most frequent sort of updates you can send, are on the order of 7.5 milliseconds. And as we push latency down to the level of individual spikes impacting control, that level of resolution, that kind of protocol is going to become a limiting factor at some scale.
Another sort of important nuance to this, is that it’s not just the Neuralink itself that’s part of this equation. If you start pushing latency below the level of how fast you’re going to refresh, then you have another problem. You need your whole system to be able to be as reactive as the limits of what the technology can offer.
Lex Fridman
Yes.
Yes.
Bliss Chapman
120 hertz just doesn’t work anymore, if you’re trying to have something respond at something that’s at the level of one millisecond.
120 hertz just doesn’t work anymore, if you’re trying to have something respond at something that’s at the level of one millisecond.
Lex Fridman
That’s a really cool challenge. I also like that for a T-shirt, the best mouse in the world. Tell me on the receiving end, so the decoding step? Now we figured out what the spikes are, we’ve got them all together, now we’re sending that over to the app. What’s the decoding step look like?
That’s a really cool challenge. I also like that for a T-shirt, the best mouse in the world. Tell me on the receiving end, so the decoding step? Now we figured out what the spikes are, we’ve got them all together, now we’re sending that over to the app. What’s the decoding step look like?
Bliss Chapman
Yeah. So maybe first, what is decoding? I think there’s probably a lot of folks listening that just have no clue what it means to decode brain activity.
Yeah. So maybe first, what is decoding? I think there’s probably a lot of folks listening that just have no clue what it means to decode brain activity.
Neuralink app
Lex Fridman
Actually, even if we zoom out beyond that, what is the app? So there’s an implant that’s wirelessly communicating with any digital device that has an app installed.
Actually, even if we zoom out beyond that, what is the app? So there’s an implant that’s wirelessly communicating with any digital device that has an app installed.
Bliss Chapman
Yep.
Yep.
Lex Fridman
So maybe can you tell me at high-level what the app is, what the software is outside of the brain?
So maybe can you tell me at high-level what the app is, what the software is outside of the brain?
Bliss Chapman
So maybe working backwards from the goal. The goal is to help someone with paralysis. In this case, Noland. Be able to navigate his computer independently. And we think the best way to do that, is to offer them the same tools that we have to navigate our software. Because we don’t want to have to rebuild an entire software ecosystem for the brain, at least not yet. Maybe someday you can imagine there’s UXs that are built natively for BCI, but in terms of what’s useful for people today, I think most people would prefer to be able to just control mouse and keyboard inputs, to all the applications that they want to use for their daily jobs, for communicating with their friends, et cetera.
So maybe working backwards from the goal. The goal is to help someone with paralysis. In this case, Noland. Be able to navigate his computer independently. And we think the best way to do that, is to offer them the same tools that we have to navigate our software. Because we don’t want to have to rebuild an entire software ecosystem for the brain, at least not yet. Maybe someday you can imagine there’s UXs that are built natively for BCI, but in terms of what’s useful for people today, I think most people would prefer to be able to just control mouse and keyboard inputs, to all the applications that they want to use for their daily jobs, for communicating with their friends, et cetera.
And so the job of the application is really to translate this wireless stream of brain data, coming off the implant, into control of the computer. And we do that by essentially building a mapping from brain activity to sort of the HID inputs, to the actual hardware. So HID is just the protocol for communicating like input device events, so for example, move mouse to this position or press this key down. And so that mapping is fundamentally what the app is responsible for. But there’s a lot of nuance of how that mapping works, and we spent a lot of time to try to get it right, and we’re still in the early stages of a long journey to figure out how to do that optimally.
So one part of that process is decoding. So decoding is this process of taking the statistical patterns of brain data, that’s being channeled across this Bluetooth connection to the application. And turning it into, for example, a mouse movement. And that decoding step, you can think of it in a couple of different parts. So similar to any machine learning problem, there’s a training step, and there’s an [inaudible 05:32:39] step. The training step in our case is a very intricate behavioral process where the user has to imagine doing different actions. So for example, they’ll be presented a screen with a cursor on it, and they’ll be asked to push that cursor to the right. Then imagine pushing that cursor to the left, push it up, push it down. And we can basically build up a pattern or using any sort of modern ML method of mapping of given this brain data, and then imagine behavior, map one to the other.
And then at test time you take that same pattern matching system. In our case it’s a deep neural network, and you run it and you take the live stream of brain data coming off their implant, you decode it by pattern matching to what you saw at calibration time, and you use that for a control of the computer. Now a couple sort of rabbit holes that I think are quite interesting. One of them has to do with how you build that best template matching system. Because there’s a variety of behavioral challenges and also debugging challenges when you’re working with someone who’s paralyzed.
Because again, fundamentally you don’t observe what they’re trying to do, you can’t see them attempt to move their hand. And so you have to figure out a way to instruct the user to do something, and validate that they’re doing it correctly, such that then you can downstream, build with confidence, the mapping between the neural spikes and the intended action.
And by doing the action correctly, what I really mean is, at this level of resolution of what neurons are doing. So if, in ideal world, you could get a signal of behavioral intent that is ground truth accurate at the scale of one millisecond resolution, then with high confidence, I could build a mapping from my neural spikes, to that behavioral intention. But the challenge is again, that you don’t observe what they’re actually doing. And so there’s a lot of nuance to how you build user experiences, that give you more than just a course on average correct representation of what the user’s intending to do.
If you want to build the world’s best mouse, you really want it to be as responsive as possible. You want it to be able to do exactly what the user’s intending, at every step along the way, not just on average be correct, when you’re trying to move it from left to right. And building a behavioral calibration game, or our software experience, that gives you that level of resolution, is what we spend a lot of time working on.
Lex Fridman
So the calibration process, the interface, has to encourage precision. Meaning whatever it does, it should be super intuitive that the next thing the human is going to likely do, is exactly that intention that you need, and only that intention?
So the calibration process, the interface, has to encourage precision. Meaning whatever it does, it should be super intuitive that the next thing the human is going to likely do, is exactly that intention that you need, and only that intention?
Bliss Chapman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
And you don’t have any feedback except that may be speaking to you afterwards, what they actually did, you can’t… Oh, yeah.
And you don’t have any feedback except that may be speaking to you afterwards, what they actually did, you can’t… Oh, yeah.
Bliss Chapman
Right.
Right.
Lex Fridman
So that’s fundamentally, that is a really exciting UX challenge. Because that’s all on the UX, it’s not just about being friendly or nice or usable.
So that’s fundamentally, that is a really exciting UX challenge. Because that’s all on the UX, it’s not just about being friendly or nice or usable.
Bliss Chapman
Yep.
Yep.
Lex Fridman
It’s like-
It’s like-
Bliss Chapman
User experience is how it works.
User experience is how it works.
Lex Fridman
… it’s how it works, for the calibration. And calibration, at least at this stage of Neuralink is fundamental to the operation of the thing? And not just calibration, but continued calibration essentially?
… it’s how it works, for the calibration. And calibration, at least at this stage of Neuralink is fundamental to the operation of the thing? And not just calibration, but continued calibration essentially?
Bliss Chapman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Intention vs action
Lex Fridman
Wow, yeah.
Wow, yeah.
Bliss Chapman
You said something that I think is worth exploring there a little bit. You said it’s primarily a UX challenge, and I think a large component of it is, but there is also a very interesting machine learning challenge here. Which is given some dataset, including some on average correct behavior, of asking the user to move up, or move down, move right, move left, and given a dataset of neural spikes. Is there a way to infer, in some kind of semi-supervised, or entirely unsupervised way, what that high resolution version of their intention is?
You said something that I think is worth exploring there a little bit. You said it’s primarily a UX challenge, and I think a large component of it is, but there is also a very interesting machine learning challenge here. Which is given some dataset, including some on average correct behavior, of asking the user to move up, or move down, move right, move left, and given a dataset of neural spikes. Is there a way to infer, in some kind of semi-supervised, or entirely unsupervised way, what that high resolution version of their intention is?
And if you think about it, there probably is, because there are enough data points in the dataset, enough constraints on your model. That there should be a way with the right sort of formulation, to let the model figure out itself, for example… At this millisecond, this is exactly how hard they’re pushing upwards, and at this millisecond, this is how hard they’re trying to push upwards.
Lex Fridman
It’s really important to have very clean labels, yes? So the problem becomes much harder from the machine learning perspective if the labels are noisy?
It’s really important to have very clean labels, yes? So the problem becomes much harder from the machine learning perspective if the labels are noisy?
Bliss Chapman
That’s correct.
That’s correct.
Lex Fridman
And then to get the clean labels, that’s a UX challenge?
And then to get the clean labels, that’s a UX challenge?
Bliss Chapman
Correct. Although clean labels, I think maybe it’s worth exploring what that exactly means. I think any given labeling strategy will have some number of assumption to make, about what the user is attempting to do. Those assumptions can be formulated in a loss function, or they can be formulated in terms of heuristics that you might use, to just try to estimate or guesstimate what the user’s trying to do. And what really matters is, how accurate are those assumptions? For example, you might say, “Hey, user, push upwards and follow the speed of this cursor.” And your heuristic might be that they’re trying to do exactly what that cursor is trying to do.
Correct. Although clean labels, I think maybe it’s worth exploring what that exactly means. I think any given labeling strategy will have some number of assumption to make, about what the user is attempting to do. Those assumptions can be formulated in a loss function, or they can be formulated in terms of heuristics that you might use, to just try to estimate or guesstimate what the user’s trying to do. And what really matters is, how accurate are those assumptions? For example, you might say, “Hey, user, push upwards and follow the speed of this cursor.” And your heuristic might be that they’re trying to do exactly what that cursor is trying to do.
Another competing heuristic might be, they’re actually trying to go slightly faster at the beginning of the movement and slightly slower at the end. And those competing heuristics may or may not be accurate reflections of what the user is trying to do. Another version of the task might be, “Hey, user, imagine moving this cursor a fixed offset.” So rather than follow the cursor, just try to move it exactly 200 pixels to the right. So here’s the cursor, here’s the target, okay, cursor disappears, try to move that now invisible cursor, 200 pixels to the right. And the assumption in that case would be that the user can’t actually modulate correctly that position offset.
But that position offset assumption might be a weaker assumption, and therefore potentially, you can make it more accurate, than these heuristics that are trying to guesstimate at each millisecond what the user’s trying to do. So you can imagine different tasks that make different assumptions about the nature of the user intention. And those assumptions being correct is what I would think of as a clean label.
Lex Fridman
For that step, what are we supposed to be visualizing? There’s a cursor, and you want to move that cursor to the right, or the left, or up and down, or maybe move them by a certain offset. So that’s one way. Is that the best way to do calibration?
For that step, what are we supposed to be visualizing? There’s a cursor, and you want to move that cursor to the right, or the left, or up and down, or maybe move them by a certain offset. So that’s one way. Is that the best way to do calibration?
So for example, an alternative crazy way that probably is playing a role here, is a game like WEG Grid. Where you’re just getting a very large amount of data, the person playing a game. Where if they’re in a state of flow, maybe you can get clean signal as a side effect?
Bliss Chapman
Yep.
Yep.
Lex Fridman
Or is that not an effective way for initial calibration?
Or is that not an effective way for initial calibration?
Bliss Chapman
Yeah. Great question. There’s a lot to unpack there. So the first thing I would draw a distinction between is, open loop versus closed loop. So open loop, what I mean by that is, the user is sort of going from zero to one. They have no model at all, and they’re trying to get to the place where they have some level of control, at all. In that setup, you really need to have some task that gives the user a hint of what you want them to do, such that you can build its mapping again, from brain data to output. Then once they have a model, you could imagine them using that model and actually adapting to it, and figuring out the right way to use it themself. And then retraining on that data to give you sort of a boost in performance.
Yeah. Great question. There’s a lot to unpack there. So the first thing I would draw a distinction between is, open loop versus closed loop. So open loop, what I mean by that is, the user is sort of going from zero to one. They have no model at all, and they’re trying to get to the place where they have some level of control, at all. In that setup, you really need to have some task that gives the user a hint of what you want them to do, such that you can build its mapping again, from brain data to output. Then once they have a model, you could imagine them using that model and actually adapting to it, and figuring out the right way to use it themself. And then retraining on that data to give you sort of a boost in performance.
There’s a lot of challenges associated with both of these techniques, and we can rabbit hole into both of them if you’re interested. But the sort of challenge with the open loop task is that the user themself doesn’t get proprioceptive feedback about what they’re doing. They don’t necessarily perceive themself or feel the mouse under their hand, when they’re trying to do an open loop calibration. They’re being asked to perform something… Imagine if you sort of had your whole right arm numbed, and you stuck it in a box and you couldn’t see it, so you had no visual feedback and you had no proprioceptive feedback, about what the position or activity of your arm was.
And now you’re asked, “Okay, given this thing on the screen, that’s moving from left to right, match that speed?” And you basically can try your best to invoke whatever that imagined action is in your brain, that’s moving the cursor from left to right. But in any situation, you’re going to be inaccurate and maybe inconsistent in how you do that task. And so that’s sort of the fundamental challenge of open loop. The challenge with closed loop is that once the user’s given a model, and they’re able to start moving the mouse on their own, they’re going to very naturally adapt to that model. And that coadaptation between the model learning what they’re doing, and the user learning how to use the model, may not find you the best sort of global minima.
And maybe that your first model was noisy in some ways, or maybe just had some quirk. There’s some part of the data distribution, it didn’t cover super well, and the user now figures out, because they’re a brilliant user like Noland, they figure out the right sequence of imagined motions, or the right angle they have to hold their hand at to get it to work. And they’ll get it to work great, but then the next day they come back to their device, and maybe they don’t remember exactly all the tricks that they used the previous day. And so there’s a complicated sort of feedback cycle here that can emerge, and can make it a very, very difficulty debugging process.
Lex Fridman
Okay. There’s a lot of really fascinating things there. Actually, just to stay on the closed loop… I’ve seen situations, this actually happened watching psychology grad students. They used a piece of software and they don’t know how to program themselves. They used a piece of software that somebody else wrote, and it has a bunch of bugs, and they’ve been using it for years. They figure out ways to walk around, “Oh, that just happens.” Nobody considers, “Maybe we should fix this.” They just adapt. And that’s a really interesting notion, that we’re really good at it adapting, but that might not be the optimal?
Okay. There’s a lot of really fascinating things there. Actually, just to stay on the closed loop… I’ve seen situations, this actually happened watching psychology grad students. They used a piece of software and they don’t know how to program themselves. They used a piece of software that somebody else wrote, and it has a bunch of bugs, and they’ve been using it for years. They figure out ways to walk around, “Oh, that just happens.” Nobody considers, “Maybe we should fix this.” They just adapt. And that’s a really interesting notion, that we’re really good at it adapting, but that might not be the optimal?
Bliss Chapman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Okay. So how do you solve that problem? Do you have to restart from scratch every once in a while, kind of thing?
Okay. So how do you solve that problem? Do you have to restart from scratch every once in a while, kind of thing?
Bliss Chapman
Yeah. It’s a good question. First and foremost, I would say this is not a solve problem. And for anyone who’s listening in academia who works on BCIs, I would also say this is not a problem that’s solved by simply scaling channel count. So maybe that can help, and you can get sort of richer covariant structures that you can use to exploit, when trying to come up with good labeling strategies. But if you’re interested in problems that aren’t going to be solved inherently by scaling channel count, this is one of them.
Yeah. It’s a good question. First and foremost, I would say this is not a solve problem. And for anyone who’s listening in academia who works on BCIs, I would also say this is not a problem that’s solved by simply scaling channel count. So maybe that can help, and you can get sort of richer covariant structures that you can use to exploit, when trying to come up with good labeling strategies. But if you’re interested in problems that aren’t going to be solved inherently by scaling channel count, this is one of them.
Yeah. So how do you solve it? It’s not a solve problem. That’s the first thing I want to make sure it gets across. The second thing is, any solution that involves closed loop is going to become a very difficult debugging problem. And one of my general heuristics for choosing what prompts to tackle is, that you want to choose the one that’s going to be the easiest to debug. Because if you can do that, even if the ceiling is lower, you’re going to be able to move faster, because you have a tighter iteration loop debugging the problem.
In the open loop setting, there’s not a feedback cycle to debug with the user in the loop. And so there’s some reason to think that, that should be an easier debugging problem. The other thing that’s worth understanding is that even in the closed loop setting, there’s no special software magic of how to infer what the user is truly attempting to do. In the closed loop setting, although they’re moving the cursor on the screen, they may be attempting something different than what your model is outputting. So what the model is outputting is not a signal that you can use to retrain if you want to be able to improve the model further. You still have this very complicated guestimation, or unsupervised problem of figuring out what is the true user intention underlying that signal?
And so the open loop problem has the nice property of being easy to debug, and the second nice property of, it has all the same information and content as the closed loop scenario. Another thing I want to mention and call out, is that this problem doesn’t need to be solved in order to give useful control to people. Even today with the solutions we have now, and that academia has built up over decades, the level of control that can be given to a user today, is quite useful. It doesn’t need to be solved to get to that level of control.
But again, I want to build the world’s best mouse. I want to make it so good that it’s not even a question that you want it. And to build the world’s best mouse, the superhuman version, you really need to nail that problem. And a couple maybe details of previous studies that we’ve done internally, that I think are very interesting to understand, when thinking about how to solve this problem. The first is that even when you have ground-truth data of what the user’s trying to do, and you can get this with an able-bodied monkey, a monkey that has a Neuralink device implanted, and moving a mouse to control a computer. Even with that ground-truth dataset, it turns out that the optimal thing to predict to produce high performance BCI, is not just the direct control of the mouse.
You can imagine building a dataset of what’s going on in the brain, and what is the mouse exactly doing on the table? And it turns out that if you build the mapping from neurospikes to predict exactly what the mouse is doing, that model will perform worse, than a model that is trained to predict higher level assumptions about what the user might be trying to do. For example, assuming that the monkey is trying to go in a straight line to the target, it turns out that making those assumptions is actually more effective in producing a model, than actually predicting the underlying hand movement.
Lex Fridman
So the intention, not the physical movement, or whatever?
So the intention, not the physical movement, or whatever?
Bliss Chapman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
There’s obviously a really strong correlation between the two, but the intention is a more powerful thing to be chasing?
There’s obviously a really strong correlation between the two, but the intention is a more powerful thing to be chasing?
Bliss Chapman
Right.
Right.
Lex Fridman
Well, that’s also super interesting. I mean, the intention itself is fascinating because yes, with the BCI here in this case with the digital telepathy, you’re acting on the intention, not the action. Which is why there’s an experience of feeling like it’s happening before you meant for it to happen? That is so cool. And that is why you could achieve superhuman performance problem, in terms of the control of the mouse? So for open loop, just to clarify, so whenever the person is tasked to move the mouse to the right, you said there’s not feedback, so they don’t get to get that satisfaction of actually getting it to move? Right?
Well, that’s also super interesting. I mean, the intention itself is fascinating because yes, with the BCI here in this case with the digital telepathy, you’re acting on the intention, not the action. Which is why there’s an experience of feeling like it’s happening before you meant for it to happen? That is so cool. And that is why you could achieve superhuman performance problem, in terms of the control of the mouse? So for open loop, just to clarify, so whenever the person is tasked to move the mouse to the right, you said there’s not feedback, so they don’t get to get that satisfaction of actually getting it to move? Right?
Bliss Chapman
So you could imagine giving the user feedback on a screen, but it’s difficult, because at this point you don’t know what they’re attempting to do. So what can you show them that would basically give them a signal of, “I’m doing this correctly or not correctly?” So let’s take a very specific example. Maybe your calibration task looks like you’re trying to move the cursor, a certain position offset. So your instructions to the user are, “Hey, the cursor’s here. Now when the cursor disappears, imagine you’re moving it 200 pixels from where it was, to the right to be over this target.”
So you could imagine giving the user feedback on a screen, but it’s difficult, because at this point you don’t know what they’re attempting to do. So what can you show them that would basically give them a signal of, “I’m doing this correctly or not correctly?” So let’s take a very specific example. Maybe your calibration task looks like you’re trying to move the cursor, a certain position offset. So your instructions to the user are, “Hey, the cursor’s here. Now when the cursor disappears, imagine you’re moving it 200 pixels from where it was, to the right to be over this target.”
In that kind of scenario, you could imagine coming up with some sort of consistency metric that you could display to the user of, “Okay, I know what the spike trend looks like on average when you do this action to the right. Maybe I can produce some sort of probabilistic estimate of how likely is that to be the action you took, given the latest trial or trajectory that you imagined?” And that could give the user some sort of feedback of how consistent are they, across different trials.
You could also imagine that if the user is prompted with that kind of consistency metric, that maybe they just become more behaviorally engaged to begin with, because the task is kind of boring when you don’t have any feedback at all. And so there may be benefits to the user experience of showing something on the screen, even if it’s not accurate. Just because it keeps the user motivated to try to increase that number, or push it upwards.
Lex Fridman
So there’s this psychology element here?
So there’s this psychology element here?
Bliss Chapman
Yeah. Absolutely.
Yeah. Absolutely.
Calibration
Lex Fridman
And again, all of that is UX challenge? How much signal drift is there hour-to-hour, day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month? How often do you have to recalibrate because of the signal drift?
And again, all of that is UX challenge? How much signal drift is there hour-to-hour, day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month? How often do you have to recalibrate because of the signal drift?
Bliss Chapman
Yeah. So this is a problem we’ve worked on both with NHP, non-human primates, before our clinical trial, and then also with Noland during the clinical trial. Maybe the first thing that’s worth stating is what the goal is here. So the goal is really to enable the user to have a plug and play experience… Well, I guess they don’t have to plug anything in, but a play experience where they can use the device whenever they wanted, however they want to. And that’s really what we’re aiming for. And so there can be a set of solutions that get to that state without considering this non-stationary problem.
Yeah. So this is a problem we’ve worked on both with NHP, non-human primates, before our clinical trial, and then also with Noland during the clinical trial. Maybe the first thing that’s worth stating is what the goal is here. So the goal is really to enable the user to have a plug and play experience… Well, I guess they don’t have to plug anything in, but a play experience where they can use the device whenever they wanted, however they want to. And that’s really what we’re aiming for. And so there can be a set of solutions that get to that state without considering this non-stationary problem.
So maybe the first solution here that’s important, is that they can recalibrate whenever they want. This is something that Noland has the ability to do today, so he can recalibrate the system at 2:00 AM, in the middle of the night without his caretaker, or parents or friends around, to help push a button for him. The other important part of the solution is that when you have a good model calibrated, that you can continue using that without needing to recalibrate it. So how often he has to do this recalibration to-date, depends really on his appetite for performance.
We observe sort of a degradation through time, of how well any individual model works, but this can be mitigated behaviorally by the user adapting their control strategy. It can also be mitigated through a combination of software features that we provide to the user. For example, we let the user adjust exactly how fast the cursor is moving. We call that the gain, for example, the gain of how fast the cursor reacts to any given input intention.
They can also adjust the smoothing, how smooth the output of that cursor intention actually is. That can also adjust the friction, which is how easy is it to stop and hold still? And all these software tools allow the user a great deal of flexibility and troubleshooting mechanisms to be able to solve this problem for themselves.
Lex Fridman
By the way, all of this is done by looking to the right side of the screen, selecting the mixer. And the mixer you have, it’s-
By the way, all of this is done by looking to the right side of the screen, selecting the mixer. And the mixer you have, it’s-
Bliss Chapman
Like DJ mode. DJ mode for your BCI.
Like DJ mode. DJ mode for your BCI.
Lex Fridman
I mean, it’s a really well done interface. It’s really, really well done. And so there’s that bias that there’s a cursor drift that Noland talked about in a stream. Although he said that you guys were just playing around with it with him, and then constantly improving. So that could have been just a snapshot of that particular moment, a particular day, where he said that there was this cursor drift and this bias that could be removed by him. I guess, looking to the right side of the screen, or left side of the screen, to adjust the bias?
I mean, it’s a really well done interface. It’s really, really well done. And so there’s that bias that there’s a cursor drift that Noland talked about in a stream. Although he said that you guys were just playing around with it with him, and then constantly improving. So that could have been just a snapshot of that particular moment, a particular day, where he said that there was this cursor drift and this bias that could be removed by him. I guess, looking to the right side of the screen, or left side of the screen, to adjust the bias?
Bliss Chapman
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Lex Fridman
That’s one interface action, I guess, to adjust the bias?
That’s one interface action, I guess, to adjust the bias?
Bliss Chapman
Yeah. So this is actually an idea that comes out of academia. There is some prior work with BrainGate clinical trial participants where they pioneered this idea of bias correction. The way we’ve done it, I think is, it’s very prioritized, very beautiful user experience. Where the user can essentially flash the cursor over to the side of the screen, and it opens up a window, where they can actually adjust or tune exactly the bias of the cursor. So bias, maybe for people who aren’t familiar, is just sort of what is the default motion of the cursor, if you’re imagining nothing? And it turns out that, that’s one of the first sort-
Yeah. So this is actually an idea that comes out of academia. There is some prior work with BrainGate clinical trial participants where they pioneered this idea of bias correction. The way we’ve done it, I think is, it’s very prioritized, very beautiful user experience. Where the user can essentially flash the cursor over to the side of the screen, and it opens up a window, where they can actually adjust or tune exactly the bias of the cursor. So bias, maybe for people who aren’t familiar, is just sort of what is the default motion of the cursor, if you’re imagining nothing? And it turns out that, that’s one of the first sort-
Bliss Chapman
… and it turns out that that’s one of the first qualia of the cursor control experience that’s impacted by neuron [inaudible 05:50:07]
… and it turns out that that’s one of the first qualia of the cursor control experience that’s impacted by neuron [inaudible 05:50:07]
Lex Fridman
Qualia of the cursor experience.
Qualia of the cursor experience.
Bliss Chapman
I mean, I don’t know how else to describe it. I’m not the guy moving thing.
I mean, I don’t know how else to describe it. I’m not the guy moving thing.
Lex Fridman
It’s very poetic. I love it. The qualia of the cursor experience. Yeah, I mean it sounds poetic, but it is deeply true. There is an experience. When it works well, it is a joyful… A really pleasant experience. And when it doesn’t work well, it’s a very frustrating experience. That’s actually the art of UX, you have the possibility to frustrate people, or the possibility to give them joy.
It’s very poetic. I love it. The qualia of the cursor experience. Yeah, I mean it sounds poetic, but it is deeply true. There is an experience. When it works well, it is a joyful… A really pleasant experience. And when it doesn’t work well, it’s a very frustrating experience. That’s actually the art of UX, you have the possibility to frustrate people, or the possibility to give them joy.
Bliss Chapman
And at the end of the day, it really is truly the case that UX is how the thing works. And so it’s not just what’s showing on the screen, it’s also, what control surfaces does a decoder provide the user? We want them to feel like they’re in the F1 car, not like some minivan. And that really truly is how we think about it. Noland himself is an F1 fan. We refer to ourself as a pit crew, he really is truly the F1 driver. And there’s different control surfaces that different kinds of cars and airplanes provide the user, and we take a lot of inspiration from that when designing how the cursor should behave.
And at the end of the day, it really is truly the case that UX is how the thing works. And so it’s not just what’s showing on the screen, it’s also, what control surfaces does a decoder provide the user? We want them to feel like they’re in the F1 car, not like some minivan. And that really truly is how we think about it. Noland himself is an F1 fan. We refer to ourself as a pit crew, he really is truly the F1 driver. And there’s different control surfaces that different kinds of cars and airplanes provide the user, and we take a lot of inspiration from that when designing how the cursor should behave.
And maybe one nuance of this is, even details like when you move a mouse on a MacBook trackpad, the sort of response curve of how that input that you give the trackpad translates to cursor movement is different than how it works with a mouse. When you move on the trackpad, there’s a different response function, a different curve to how much a movement translates to input to the computer than when you do it physically with a mouse. And that’s because somebody sat down a long time ago, when they’re designing the initial input systems to any computer, and they thought through exactly how it feels to use these different systems. And now we’re designing the next generation of this, input system to a computer, which is entirely done via the brain, and there’s no proprioceptive feedback, again, you don’t feel the mouse in your hand, you don’t feel the keys under your fingertips, and you want a control surface that still makes it easy and intuitive for the user to understand the state of the system, and how to achieve what they want to achieve. And ultimately the end goal is that that UX is completely… It fades in the background, it becomes something that’s so natural and intuitive that it’s subconscious to the user, and they just should feel like they have basically direct control over the cursor, just does what they want it to do. They’re not thinking about the implementation of how to make it do what they want it to do, it’s just doing what they want it to do.
Lex Fridman
Is there some kind of things along the lines of like Fitt’s Law, where you should move the mouse in a certain kind of way that maximizes your chance to hit the target? I don’t even know what I’m asking, but I’m hoping the intention of my question will land on a profound answer. No. Is there some kind of understanding of the laws of UX when it comes to the context of somebody using their brain to control it that’s different than with a mouse?
Is there some kind of things along the lines of like Fitt’s Law, where you should move the mouse in a certain kind of way that maximizes your chance to hit the target? I don’t even know what I’m asking, but I’m hoping the intention of my question will land on a profound answer. No. Is there some kind of understanding of the laws of UX when it comes to the context of somebody using their brain to control it that’s different than with a mouse?
Bliss Chapman
I think we’re in the early stages of discovering those laws, so I wouldn’t claim to have solved that problem yet, but there’s definitely some things we’ve learned that make it easier for the user to get stuff done. And it’s pretty straightforward when you verbalize it, but it takes a while to actually get to that point, when you’re in the process of debugging the stuff in the trenches.
I think we’re in the early stages of discovering those laws, so I wouldn’t claim to have solved that problem yet, but there’s definitely some things we’ve learned that make it easier for the user to get stuff done. And it’s pretty straightforward when you verbalize it, but it takes a while to actually get to that point, when you’re in the process of debugging the stuff in the trenches.
One of those things is that any machine learning system that you build has some number of errors, and it matters how those errors translate to the downstream user experience. For example, if you’re developing a search algorithm in your photos, if you search for your friend, Joe, and it pulls up a photo of your friend, Josephine, maybe that’s not a big deal, because the cost of an error is not that high. In a different scenario, where you’re trying to detect insurance fraud or something like this, and you’re directly sending someone to court because of some machine learning model output, then the errors make a lot more sense to be careful about, you want to be very thoughtful about how those errors translate to downstream effects.
The same is true in BCI. So for example, if you’re building a model that’s decoding a velocity output from the brain, versus an output where you’re trying to modulate the left click for example, these have sort of different trade-offs of how precise you need to be before it becomes useful to the end user. For velocity, it’s okay to be on average correct, because the output of the model is integrated through time. So if the user’s trying to click at position A, and they’re currently position B, they’re trying to navigate over time to get between those two points. And as long as the output of the model is on average correct, they can sort of steer it through time, with the user control loop in the mix, they can get to the point they want to get to.
The same is not true of a click. For a click, you’re performing it almost instantly, at the scale of neurons firing. And so you want to be very sure that that click is correct, because a false click can be very destructive to the user. They might accidentally close the tab that they’re trying to do something in, and lose all their progress. They might accidentally hit some send button on some text that there’s only half composed and reads funny after. So there’s different sort of cost functions associated with errors in this space, and part of the UX design is understanding how to build a solution that is, when it’s wrong, still useful to the end user.
Lex Fridman
It’s so fascinating, assigning cost to every action when an error occurs. So every action, if an error occurs, has a certain cost, and incorporating that into how you interpret the intention, mapping it to the action is really important. I didn’t quite, until you said it, realize there’s a cost to sending the text early. It’s a very expensive cost.
It’s so fascinating, assigning cost to every action when an error occurs. So every action, if an error occurs, has a certain cost, and incorporating that into how you interpret the intention, mapping it to the action is really important. I didn’t quite, until you said it, realize there’s a cost to sending the text early. It’s a very expensive cost.
Bliss Chapman
Yeah, it’s super annoying if you accidentally… Imagine if your cursor misclicked every once in a while. That’s super obnoxious. And the worst part of it is, usually when the user’s trying to click, they’re also holding still, because they’re over the target they want to hit, and they’re getting ready to click, which means that in the datasets that we build, on average is the case that sort of low speeds, or desire to hold still, is correlated with when the user’s attempting to click.
Yeah, it’s super annoying if you accidentally… Imagine if your cursor misclicked every once in a while. That’s super obnoxious. And the worst part of it is, usually when the user’s trying to click, they’re also holding still, because they’re over the target they want to hit, and they’re getting ready to click, which means that in the datasets that we build, on average is the case that sort of low speeds, or desire to hold still, is correlated with when the user’s attempting to click.
Lex Fridman
Wow, that is really fascinating.
Wow, that is really fascinating.
Bliss Chapman
People think that, “Oh, a click is a binary signal, this must be super easy to decode.” Well, yes, it is, but the bar is so much higher for it to become a useful thing for the user. And there’s ways to solve this. I mean, you can sort of take the compound approach of, “Well, let’s take five seconds to click. Let’s take a huge window of time, so we can be very confident about the answer.” But again, world’s best mouse. The world’s best mouse doesn’t take a second to click, or 500 milliseconds to click, it takes five milliseconds to click or less. And so if you’re aiming for that kind of high bar, then you really want to solve the underlying problem.
People think that, “Oh, a click is a binary signal, this must be super easy to decode.” Well, yes, it is, but the bar is so much higher for it to become a useful thing for the user. And there’s ways to solve this. I mean, you can sort of take the compound approach of, “Well, let’s take five seconds to click. Let’s take a huge window of time, so we can be very confident about the answer.” But again, world’s best mouse. The world’s best mouse doesn’t take a second to click, or 500 milliseconds to click, it takes five milliseconds to click or less. And so if you’re aiming for that kind of high bar, then you really want to solve the underlying problem.
Webgrid
Lex Fridman
So maybe this is a good place to ask about how to measure performance, this whole bits per second. Can you explain what you mean by that? Maybe a good place to start is to talk about Webgrid as a game, as a good illustration of the measurement of performance.
So maybe this is a good place to ask about how to measure performance, this whole bits per second. Can you explain what you mean by that? Maybe a good place to start is to talk about Webgrid as a game, as a good illustration of the measurement of performance.
Bliss Chapman
Yeah. Maybe I’ll take one zoom out step there, which is just explaining why we care to measure this at all. So again, our goal is to provide the user the ability to control the computer as well as I can, and hopefully better. And that means that they can do it at the same speed as what I can do, it means that they have access to all the same functionality that I have, including all those little details like command tab, command space, all this stuff, they need to be able to do it with their brain, and with the same level of reliability as what I can do with my muscles. And that’s a high bar, and so we intend to measure and quantify every aspect of that to understand how we’re progressing towards that goal.
Yeah. Maybe I’ll take one zoom out step there, which is just explaining why we care to measure this at all. So again, our goal is to provide the user the ability to control the computer as well as I can, and hopefully better. And that means that they can do it at the same speed as what I can do, it means that they have access to all the same functionality that I have, including all those little details like command tab, command space, all this stuff, they need to be able to do it with their brain, and with the same level of reliability as what I can do with my muscles. And that’s a high bar, and so we intend to measure and quantify every aspect of that to understand how we’re progressing towards that goal.
There’s many ways to measure BPS by the way, this isn’t the only way, but we present the user a grid of targets, and basically we compute a score which is dependent on how fast and accurate they can select, and then how small are the targets. And the more targets that are on the screen, the smaller they are, the more information you present per click. And so if you think about it from information theory point of view, you can communicate across different information theoretic channels, and one such channel is a typing interface, you can imagine, that’s built out of a grid, just like a software keyboard on the screen.
And bits per second is a measure that’s computed by taking the log of the number of targets on the screen. You can subtract one if you care to model a keyboard, because you have to subtract one for the delete key on the keyboard. But log of the number of targets on the screen, times the number of correct selections, minus incorrect, divided by some time window, for example, 60 seconds. And that’s sort of the standard way to measure a cursor control task in academia. And all credit in the world goes to this great professor, Dr. Shenoy of Stanford who came up with that task, and he’s also one of my inspirations for being in the field. So all the credit in the world to him for coming up with a standardized metric to facilitate this kind of bragging rights that we have now to say that Noland is the best in the world at this task with this BCI. It’s very important for progress that you have standardized metrics that people can compare across. Different techniques and approaches, how well does this do? So big kudos to him and to all the team at Stanford.
Yeah, so for Noland, and for me playing this task, there’s also different modes that you can configure this task. So the Webgrid task can be presented as just sort of a left click on the screen, or you could have targets that you just dwell over, or you could have targets that you left, right click on, you could have targets that are left, right click, middle click, scrolling, clicking and dragging. You can do all sorts of things within this general framework, but the simplest, purest form is just blue targets show up on the screen, blue means left click. That’s the simplest form of the game.
And the sort of prior records here in academic work and at Neuralink internally with NHPs have all been matched or beaten by Noland with his Neuralink device. So prior to Neuralink, the world record for a human using device is somewhere between 4.2 to 4.6 BPS, depending on exactly what paper you read and how you interpret it. Noland’s current record is 8.5 BPS. and again, this sort of median Neuralinker performance is 10 BPS. So you can think of it roughly as, he’s 85% the level of control of a median Neuralinker using their cursor to select blue targets on the screen.
I think there’s a very interesting journey ahead to get us to that same level of 10 BPS performance. It’s not the case that the tricks that got us from 4 to 6 BPS, and then 6 to 8 BPS are going to be the ones that get us from 8 to 10. And in my view, the core challenge here is really the labeling problem. It’s how do you understand, at a very, very fine resolution, what the user’s attempting to do? And I highly encourage folks in academia to work on this problem.
Lex Fridman
What’s the journey with Noland on that quest of increasing the BPS on Webgrid? In March, you said that he selected 89,285 targets in Webgrid. So he loves this game, he’s really serious about improving his performance in this game. So what is that journey of trying to figure out how to improve that performance? How much can that be done on the decoding side? How much can that be done on the calibration side? How much can that be done on the Noland side of figuring out how to convey his intention more cleanly?
What’s the journey with Noland on that quest of increasing the BPS on Webgrid? In March, you said that he selected 89,285 targets in Webgrid. So he loves this game, he’s really serious about improving his performance in this game. So what is that journey of trying to figure out how to improve that performance? How much can that be done on the decoding side? How much can that be done on the calibration side? How much can that be done on the Noland side of figuring out how to convey his intention more cleanly?
Bliss Chapman
Yeah. No, this is a great question. So in my view, one of the primary reasons why Noland’s performance is so good is because of Noland. Noland is extremely focused and very energetic. He’ll play Webgrid sometimes for four hours in the middle of the night. From 2:00 A.M. To 6:00 A.M. he’ll be playing Webgrid, just because he wants to push it to the limits of what he can do. This is not us asking him to do that, I want to be clear. We’re not saying, ” Hey, you should play Webgrid tonight.” We just gave him the game as part of our research, and he is able to play it independently, and practice whenever he wants, and he really pushes hard to push it, the technology’s absolute limit. And he views that as his job, really, to make us be the bottleneck. And boy, has he done that well.
Yeah. No, this is a great question. So in my view, one of the primary reasons why Noland’s performance is so good is because of Noland. Noland is extremely focused and very energetic. He’ll play Webgrid sometimes for four hours in the middle of the night. From 2:00 A.M. To 6:00 A.M. he’ll be playing Webgrid, just because he wants to push it to the limits of what he can do. This is not us asking him to do that, I want to be clear. We’re not saying, ” Hey, you should play Webgrid tonight.” We just gave him the game as part of our research, and he is able to play it independently, and practice whenever he wants, and he really pushes hard to push it, the technology’s absolute limit. And he views that as his job, really, to make us be the bottleneck. And boy, has he done that well.
And so the first thing to acknowledge is that he’s extremely motivated to make this work. I’ve also had the privilege to meet other clinical trial participants from BrainGate and other trials, and they very much shared the same attitude of, they viewed this as their life’s work to advance the technology as much as they can. And if that means selecting targets on the screen for four hours from 2:00 A.M. to 6:00 A.M., then so be it. And there’s something extremely admirable about that that’s worth calling out.
Okay, so then how do you get from where he started, which is no cursor control to eight BPS? I mean, when he started, there’s a huge amount of learning to do on his side and our side to figure out what’s the most intuitive control for him. And the most intuitive control for him is, you have to find the set intersection of, “Do we have the signal to decode?” So we don’t pick up every single neuron in the motor cortex, which means we don’t have representation for every part of the body. So there may be some signals that we have better decode performance on than others. For example, on his left hand, we have a lot of difficulty distinguishing his left ring finger from his left middle finger, but on his right hand, we have a good control and good modulation detected from the neurons that were able to record for his pinky, and his thumb, and his index finger. So you can imagine how these different subspaces of modulated activity intersect with what’s the most intuitive for him.
And this has evolved over time, so once we gave him the ability to calibrate models on his own, he was able to go and explore various different ways to imagine controlling the cursor. For example, he can imagine controlling the cursor by wiggling his wrist side to side, or by moving his entire arm, by… I think at one point he did his feet. He tried a whole bunch of stuff to explore the space of what is the most natural way for him to control the cursor, that at the same time, it’s easy for us to decode-
Lex Fridman
Just to clarify, it’s through the body mapping procedure there, you’re able to figure out which finger he can move?
Just to clarify, it’s through the body mapping procedure there, you’re able to figure out which finger he can move?
Bliss Chapman
Yes. Yeah, that’s one way to do it. Maybe one nuance of the… When he’s doing it, he can imagine many more things than we represent in that visual on the screen. So we show him, sort of abstractly, “Here’s a cursor. You figure out what works the best for you.” And we obviously have hints about what will work best from that body mapping procedure, of, “We know that this particular action we can represent well.” But it’s really up to him to go and explore and figure out what works the best.
Yes. Yeah, that’s one way to do it. Maybe one nuance of the… When he’s doing it, he can imagine many more things than we represent in that visual on the screen. So we show him, sort of abstractly, “Here’s a cursor. You figure out what works the best for you.” And we obviously have hints about what will work best from that body mapping procedure, of, “We know that this particular action we can represent well.” But it’s really up to him to go and explore and figure out what works the best.
Lex Fridman
But at which point does he no longer visualize the movement of his body, and is just visualizing the movement of the cursor?
But at which point does he no longer visualize the movement of his body, and is just visualizing the movement of the cursor?
Bliss Chapman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
How quickly does he get there?
How quickly does he get there?
Bliss Chapman
So this happened on a Tuesday. I remember this day very clearly, because at some point during the day, it looked like he wasn’t doing super well, it looked like the model wasn’t performing super well, and he was getting distracted, but actually, it wasn’t the case. What actually happened was, he was trying something new, where he was just controlling the cursor, so he wasn’t imagining moving his hand anymore, he was just imagining… I don’t know what it is, some abstract intention to move the cursor on the screen, and I cannot tell you what the difference between those two things are, I truly cannot. He’s tried to explain it to me before, I cannot give a first-person account of what that’s like. But the expletives that he uttered in that moment were enough to suggest that it was a very qualitatively different experience for him to just have direct neural control over a cursor.
So this happened on a Tuesday. I remember this day very clearly, because at some point during the day, it looked like he wasn’t doing super well, it looked like the model wasn’t performing super well, and he was getting distracted, but actually, it wasn’t the case. What actually happened was, he was trying something new, where he was just controlling the cursor, so he wasn’t imagining moving his hand anymore, he was just imagining… I don’t know what it is, some abstract intention to move the cursor on the screen, and I cannot tell you what the difference between those two things are, I truly cannot. He’s tried to explain it to me before, I cannot give a first-person account of what that’s like. But the expletives that he uttered in that moment were enough to suggest that it was a very qualitatively different experience for him to just have direct neural control over a cursor.
Lex Fridman
I wonder if there’s a way through UX to encourage a human being to discover that, because he discovered it… Like you said to me, that he’s a pioneer. So he discovered that on his own through all of this, the process of trying to move the cursor with different kinds of intentions. But that is clearly a really powerful thing to arrive at, which is to let go of trying to control the fingers and the hand, and control the actual digital device with your mind.
I wonder if there’s a way through UX to encourage a human being to discover that, because he discovered it… Like you said to me, that he’s a pioneer. So he discovered that on his own through all of this, the process of trying to move the cursor with different kinds of intentions. But that is clearly a really powerful thing to arrive at, which is to let go of trying to control the fingers and the hand, and control the actual digital device with your mind.
Bliss Chapman
That’s right. UX is how it works. And the ideal UX is one that the user doesn’t have to think about what they need to do in order to get it done, it just does it.
That’s right. UX is how it works. And the ideal UX is one that the user doesn’t have to think about what they need to do in order to get it done, it just does it.
Lex Fridman
That is so fascinating. But I wonder, on the biological side, how long it takes for the brain to adapt. So is it just simply learning high level software, or is there a neuroplasticity component where the brain is adjusting slowly?
That is so fascinating. But I wonder, on the biological side, how long it takes for the brain to adapt. So is it just simply learning high level software, or is there a neuroplasticity component where the brain is adjusting slowly?
Bliss Chapman
Yeah. The truth is, I don’t know. I’m very excited to see with sort of the second participant that I implant, what the journey is like for them, because we’ll have learned a lot more, potentially, we can help them understand and explore that direction more quickly. This wasn’t me prompting Noland to go try this, he was just exploring how to use his device and figured it out himself. But now that we know that that’s a possibility, that maybe there’s a way to, for example, hint the user, “Don’t try super hard during calibration, just do something that feels natural.” Or, “Just directly control the cursor. Don’t imagine explicit action.” And from there, we should be able to hopefully understand how this is for somebody who has not experienced that before. Maybe that’s the default mode of operation for them, you don’t have to go through this intermediate phase of explicit motions.
Yeah. The truth is, I don’t know. I’m very excited to see with sort of the second participant that I implant, what the journey is like for them, because we’ll have learned a lot more, potentially, we can help them understand and explore that direction more quickly. This wasn’t me prompting Noland to go try this, he was just exploring how to use his device and figured it out himself. But now that we know that that’s a possibility, that maybe there’s a way to, for example, hint the user, “Don’t try super hard during calibration, just do something that feels natural.” Or, “Just directly control the cursor. Don’t imagine explicit action.” And from there, we should be able to hopefully understand how this is for somebody who has not experienced that before. Maybe that’s the default mode of operation for them, you don’t have to go through this intermediate phase of explicit motions.
Lex Fridman
Or maybe if that naturally happens for people, you can just occasionally encourage them to allow themselves to move the cursor.
Or maybe if that naturally happens for people, you can just occasionally encourage them to allow themselves to move the cursor.
Bliss Chapman
Right.
Right.
Lex Fridman
Actually, sometimes, just like with a four-minute mile, just the knowledge that that’s possible-
Actually, sometimes, just like with a four-minute mile, just the knowledge that that’s possible-
Bliss Chapman
Yes, pushes you to do it.
Yes, pushes you to do it.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Bliss Chapman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Enables you to do it, and then it becomes trivial. And then it also makes you wonder, this is the cool thing about humans, once there’s a lot more human participants, they will discover things that are possible.
Enables you to do it, and then it becomes trivial. And then it also makes you wonder, this is the cool thing about humans, once there’s a lot more human participants, they will discover things that are possible.
Bliss Chapman
Yes. And share their experiences probably with each other.
Yes. And share their experiences probably with each other.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, and share. And that because of them sharing it, they’ll be able to do it. All of a sudden that’s unlocked for everybody, because just the knowledge sometimes is the thing that enables you to do it.
Yeah, and share. And that because of them sharing it, they’ll be able to do it. All of a sudden that’s unlocked for everybody, because just the knowledge sometimes is the thing that enables you to do it.
Bliss Chapman
Yeah. Just to comment on that too, we’ve probably tried 1,000 different ways to do various aspects of decoding, and now we know what the right subspace is to continue exploring further. Again, thanks to Noland and the many hours he’s put into this. And so even just that, help constraints, or the beam search of different approaches that we could explore really helps accelerate for the next person the set of things that we’ll get to try on day one, how fast we hopefully get them to use for control, how fast we can enable them to use it independently, and to get value out of the system. So massive hats off to Noland and all the participants that came before to make this technology a reality.
Yeah. Just to comment on that too, we’ve probably tried 1,000 different ways to do various aspects of decoding, and now we know what the right subspace is to continue exploring further. Again, thanks to Noland and the many hours he’s put into this. And so even just that, help constraints, or the beam search of different approaches that we could explore really helps accelerate for the next person the set of things that we’ll get to try on day one, how fast we hopefully get them to use for control, how fast we can enable them to use it independently, and to get value out of the system. So massive hats off to Noland and all the participants that came before to make this technology a reality.
Lex Fridman
So how often are the updates to the decoder? ‘Cause Noland mentioned, “Okay, there’s a new update that we’re working on.” In the stream he said he plays the snake game, because it’s super hard, it’s a good way for him to test how good the update is. And he says sometimes the update is a step backwards, it’s a constant iteration. What does the update entail? Is it mostly on the decoder side?
So how often are the updates to the decoder? ‘Cause Noland mentioned, “Okay, there’s a new update that we’re working on.” In the stream he said he plays the snake game, because it’s super hard, it’s a good way for him to test how good the update is. And he says sometimes the update is a step backwards, it’s a constant iteration. What does the update entail? Is it mostly on the decoder side?
Bliss Chapman
Yeah. Couple of comments. So, one, it’s probably worth drawing distinction between research sessions where we’re actively trying different things to understand what the best approach is, versus independent use, where we wanted to have ability to just go use the device how anybody would want to use their MacBook. So what he’s referring to is, I think, usually in the context of a research session, where we’re trying many, many different approaches to… Even unsupervised approaches, like we talked about earlier, to try to come up with better ways to estimate his true intention, and more accurately decoded.
Yeah. Couple of comments. So, one, it’s probably worth drawing distinction between research sessions where we’re actively trying different things to understand what the best approach is, versus independent use, where we wanted to have ability to just go use the device how anybody would want to use their MacBook. So what he’s referring to is, I think, usually in the context of a research session, where we’re trying many, many different approaches to… Even unsupervised approaches, like we talked about earlier, to try to come up with better ways to estimate his true intention, and more accurately decoded.
And in those scenarios, we try, in any given session… He’ll sometimes work for eight hours a day, and so that can be hundreds of different models that we would try in that day. A lot of different things. Now, it’s also worth noting that we update the application he uses quite frequently, I think sometimes up to 4 or 5 times a day, we’ll update his application with different features, or bug fixes, or feedback that he’s given us.
He’s a very articulate person who is part of the solution, he’s not a complaining person, he says, “Hey, here’s this thing that I’ve discovered is not optimal in my flow. Here’s some ideas how to fix it. Let me know what your thoughts are, let’s figure out how to solve it.” And it often happens that those things are addressed within a couple of hours of him giving us his feedback, that’s the kind of iteration cycle we’ll have. And so sometimes at the beginning of the session, he’ll give us feedback, and at the end of the session he’s giving us feedback on the next iteration of that process or that setup.
Lex Fridman
That’s fascinating, ’cause one of the things you mentioned that there was 271 pages of notes taken from the BCI sessions, and this was just in March. So one of the amazing things about human beings that they can provide… Especially ones who are smart, and excited, and all positive and good vibes like Noland, that they can provide feedback, continuous feedback.
That’s fascinating, ’cause one of the things you mentioned that there was 271 pages of notes taken from the BCI sessions, and this was just in March. So one of the amazing things about human beings that they can provide… Especially ones who are smart, and excited, and all positive and good vibes like Noland, that they can provide feedback, continuous feedback.
Bliss Chapman
Yeah. Just to brag on the team a little bit, I work with a lot of exceptional people, and it requires the team being absolutely laser-focused on the user, and what will be the best for them. And it requires a level of commitment of, “Okay, this is what the user feedback was. I have all these meetings, we’re going to skip that today, and we’re going to do this.” That level of focus and commitment is, I would say, underappreciated in the world. And also, you obviously have to have the talent to be able to execute on these things effectively, and we have that in loads.
Yeah. Just to brag on the team a little bit, I work with a lot of exceptional people, and it requires the team being absolutely laser-focused on the user, and what will be the best for them. And it requires a level of commitment of, “Okay, this is what the user feedback was. I have all these meetings, we’re going to skip that today, and we’re going to do this.” That level of focus and commitment is, I would say, underappreciated in the world. And also, you obviously have to have the talent to be able to execute on these things effectively, and we have that in loads.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, and this is such an interesting space of UX design, because there’s so many unknowns here. And I can tell UX is difficult because of how many people do it poorly. It’s just not a trivial thing.
Yeah, and this is such an interesting space of UX design, because there’s so many unknowns here. And I can tell UX is difficult because of how many people do it poorly. It’s just not a trivial thing.
Bliss Chapman
Yeah. UX is not something that you can always solve by just constant iterating on different things. Sometimes you really need to step back and think globally, “Am I even in the right sort of minima to be chasing down for a solution?” There’s a lot of problems in which sort of fast iteration cycle is the predictor of how successful you’ll be. As a good example, like in an RL simulation for example, the more frequently you get reward, the faster you can progress. It’s just an easier learning problem the more frequently you get feedback. But UX is not that way, I mean, users are actually quite often wrong about what the right solution is, and it requires a deep understanding of the technical system, and what’s possible, combined with what the problem is you’re trying to solve. Not just how the user expressed it, but what the true underlying problem is to actually get to the right place.
Yeah. UX is not something that you can always solve by just constant iterating on different things. Sometimes you really need to step back and think globally, “Am I even in the right sort of minima to be chasing down for a solution?” There’s a lot of problems in which sort of fast iteration cycle is the predictor of how successful you’ll be. As a good example, like in an RL simulation for example, the more frequently you get reward, the faster you can progress. It’s just an easier learning problem the more frequently you get feedback. But UX is not that way, I mean, users are actually quite often wrong about what the right solution is, and it requires a deep understanding of the technical system, and what’s possible, combined with what the problem is you’re trying to solve. Not just how the user expressed it, but what the true underlying problem is to actually get to the right place.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, that’s the old stories of Steve Jobs rolling in there, like, “Yeah, the user is a useful signal, but it’s not a perfect signal, and sometimes you have to remove the floppy disc drive.” Or whatever the… I forgot all the crazy stories of Steve Jobs making wild design decisions. But there, some of it is aesthetic, that some of it is about the love you put into the design, which is very much a Steve Jobs, Johnny Ive type thing, but when you have a human being using their brain to interact with it, it also is deeply about function, it’s not just aesthetic. And that, you have to empathize with a human being before you, while not always listening to them directly. You have to deeply empathize. It’s fascinating. It’s really, really fascinating. And at the same time, iterate, but not iterate in small ways, sometimes a complete… Like rebuilding the design. Noland said in the early days the UX sucked, but you improved quickly. What was that journey like?
Yeah, that’s the old stories of Steve Jobs rolling in there, like, “Yeah, the user is a useful signal, but it’s not a perfect signal, and sometimes you have to remove the floppy disc drive.” Or whatever the… I forgot all the crazy stories of Steve Jobs making wild design decisions. But there, some of it is aesthetic, that some of it is about the love you put into the design, which is very much a Steve Jobs, Johnny Ive type thing, but when you have a human being using their brain to interact with it, it also is deeply about function, it’s not just aesthetic. And that, you have to empathize with a human being before you, while not always listening to them directly. You have to deeply empathize. It’s fascinating. It’s really, really fascinating. And at the same time, iterate, but not iterate in small ways, sometimes a complete… Like rebuilding the design. Noland said in the early days the UX sucked, but you improved quickly. What was that journey like?
Bliss Chapman
Yeah, I mean, I’ll give you one concrete example. So he really wanted to be able to read manga. This is something that he… I mean, it sounds like a simple thing, but it’s actually a really big deal for him, and he couldn’t do it with his mouse stick. It wasn’t accessible, you can’t scroll with the mouse stick on his iPad on the website that he wanted to be able to use to read the newest manga, and so-
Yeah, I mean, I’ll give you one concrete example. So he really wanted to be able to read manga. This is something that he… I mean, it sounds like a simple thing, but it’s actually a really big deal for him, and he couldn’t do it with his mouse stick. It wasn’t accessible, you can’t scroll with the mouse stick on his iPad on the website that he wanted to be able to use to read the newest manga, and so-
Lex Fridman
Might be a good quick pause to say the mouth stick is the thing he’s using. Holding a stick in his mouth to scroll on a tablet.
Might be a good quick pause to say the mouth stick is the thing he’s using. Holding a stick in his mouth to scroll on a tablet.
Bliss Chapman
Right. Yeah. You can imagine it’s a stylus that you hold between your teeth. Yeah, it’s basically a very long stylus.
Right. Yeah. You can imagine it’s a stylus that you hold between your teeth. Yeah, it’s basically a very long stylus.
Lex Fridman
It’s exhausting, it hurts, and it’s inefficient.
It’s exhausting, it hurts, and it’s inefficient.
Bliss Chapman
Yeah. And maybe it’s also worth calling out, there are other alternative assisted technologies, but the particular situation Noland’s in, and this is not uncommon, and I think it’s also not well-understood by folks, is that he’s relatively spastic, so he’ll have muscle spasms from time to time. And so any assistive technology that requires him to be positioned directly in front of a camera, for example, an eye tracker, or anything that requires him to put something in his mouth just is a no-go, ’cause he’ll either be shifted out of frame when he has a spasm, or if he has something in his mouth, it’ll stab him in the face if he spasms too hard. So these kinds of considerations are important when thinking about what advantages a BCI has in someone’s life. If it fits ergonomically into your life in a way that you can use it independently when your caretakers not there, wherever you want to, either in the bed or in the chair, depending on your comfort level and your desire to have pressure source, all these factors matter a lot in how good the solution is in that user’s life.
Yeah. And maybe it’s also worth calling out, there are other alternative assisted technologies, but the particular situation Noland’s in, and this is not uncommon, and I think it’s also not well-understood by folks, is that he’s relatively spastic, so he’ll have muscle spasms from time to time. And so any assistive technology that requires him to be positioned directly in front of a camera, for example, an eye tracker, or anything that requires him to put something in his mouth just is a no-go, ’cause he’ll either be shifted out of frame when he has a spasm, or if he has something in his mouth, it’ll stab him in the face if he spasms too hard. So these kinds of considerations are important when thinking about what advantages a BCI has in someone’s life. If it fits ergonomically into your life in a way that you can use it independently when your caretakers not there, wherever you want to, either in the bed or in the chair, depending on your comfort level and your desire to have pressure source, all these factors matter a lot in how good the solution is in that user’s life.
So one of these very fun examples is scroll. So, again, manga is something he wanted to be able to read, and there’s many ways to do scroll with a BCI. You can imagine different gestures, for example, the user could do that would move the page. But scroll is a very fascinating control surface, because it’s a huge thing on the screen in front of you. So any sort of jitter in the model output, any sort of air in the model output causes an earthquake on the screen. You really don’t want to have your mango page that you’re trying to read be shifted up and down a few pixels just because your scroll decoder is not completely accurate.
And so this was an example where we had to figure out how to formulate the problem in a way that the errors of the system, whenever they do occur, and we’ll do our best to minimize them, but whenever those errors do occur, that it doesn’t interrupt the qualia, again, of the experience that the user is having. It doesn’t interrupt their flow of reading their book. And so what we ended up building is this really brilliant feature. This is a teammate named Bruce who worked on this really brilliant work called Quick Scroll. And Quick Scroll basically looks at the screen, and it identifies where on the screen are scroll bars. And it does this by deeply integrated with macOS to understand where are the scroll bars actively present on the screen, using the sort of accessibility tree that’s available to macOS apps. And we identified where those scroll bars are, and we provided a BCI scroll bar, and the BCI scroll bar looks similar to a normal scroll bar, but it behaves very differently, in that once you move over to it, your cursor sort of morphs onto it, it sort of attaches or latches onto it. And then once you push up or down, in the same way that you’d use a push to control the normal cursor, it actually moves the screen for you. So it’s basically like remapping the velocity to a scroll action.
And the reason that feels so natural and intuitive is that when you move over to attach to it feels like magnetic, so you’re sort of stuck onto it, and then it’s one continuous action, you don’t have to switch your imagined movement, you sort of snap onto it, and then you’re good to go. You just immediately can start pulling the page down or pushing it up. And even once you get that right, there’s so many little nuances of how the scroll behavior works to make it natural and intuitive. So one example is momentum. When you scroll a page with your fingers on the screen, you actually have some flow, it doesn’t just stop right when you lift your finger up. The same is true with BCI scroll, so we had to spend some time to figure out, “What are the right nuances when you don’t feel the screen under your fingertip anymore? What is the right sort of dynamic, or what’s the right amount of page give, if you will, when you push it to make it flow the right amount for the user to have a natural experience reading their book?”
I could tell you there’s so many little minutia of how exactly that scroll works, that we spent probably a month getting right, to make that feel extremely natural and easy for the user to navigate.
Lex Fridman
I mean, even the scroll on a smartphone with your finger feels extremely natural and pleasant, and it probably takes an extremely long time to get that right. And actually, the same kind of visionary UX design that we were talking about, don’t always listen to the users, but also listen to them, and also have visionary, big, like throw everything out, think from first principles, but also not. Yeah, yeah. By the way, it just makes me think that scroll bars on the desktop probably have stagnated, and never taken that… ‘Cause the snap, same as snap to grid, snap to scroll bar action you’re talking about is something that could potentially be extremely useful in the desktop setting, even just for users to just improve the experience. ‘Cause the current scroll bar experience in the desktop is horrible.
I mean, even the scroll on a smartphone with your finger feels extremely natural and pleasant, and it probably takes an extremely long time to get that right. And actually, the same kind of visionary UX design that we were talking about, don’t always listen to the users, but also listen to them, and also have visionary, big, like throw everything out, think from first principles, but also not. Yeah, yeah. By the way, it just makes me think that scroll bars on the desktop probably have stagnated, and never taken that… ‘Cause the snap, same as snap to grid, snap to scroll bar action you’re talking about is something that could potentially be extremely useful in the desktop setting, even just for users to just improve the experience. ‘Cause the current scroll bar experience in the desktop is horrible.
Bliss Chapman
Yep. Agreed.
Yep. Agreed.
Lex Fridman
It’s hard to find, hard to control, there’s not a momentum, there’s… And the intention should be clear, when I start moving towards a scroll bar, there should be a snapping to the scroll bar action, but of course… Maybe I’m okay paying that cost, but there’s hundreds of millions of people paying that cost non-stop, but anyway. But in this case, this is necessary, because there’s an extra cost paid by Noland for the jitteriness, so you have to switch between the scrolling and the reading. There has to be a face shift between the two, like when you’re scrolling, you’re scrolling.
It’s hard to find, hard to control, there’s not a momentum, there’s… And the intention should be clear, when I start moving towards a scroll bar, there should be a snapping to the scroll bar action, but of course… Maybe I’m okay paying that cost, but there’s hundreds of millions of people paying that cost non-stop, but anyway. But in this case, this is necessary, because there’s an extra cost paid by Noland for the jitteriness, so you have to switch between the scrolling and the reading. There has to be a face shift between the two, like when you’re scrolling, you’re scrolling.
Bliss Chapman
Right, right. So that is one drawback of the current approach. Maybe one other just sort of case study here. So, again, UX is how it works, and we think about that holistically, from the… Even the feature detection level of what we detect in the brain, to how we design the decoder, what we choose to decode, to then how it works once it’s being used by the user. So another good example in that sort of how it works once they’re actually using the decoder, the output that’s displayed on the screen is not just what the decoder says, it’s also a function of what’s going on on the screen.
Right, right. So that is one drawback of the current approach. Maybe one other just sort of case study here. So, again, UX is how it works, and we think about that holistically, from the… Even the feature detection level of what we detect in the brain, to how we design the decoder, what we choose to decode, to then how it works once it’s being used by the user. So another good example in that sort of how it works once they’re actually using the decoder, the output that’s displayed on the screen is not just what the decoder says, it’s also a function of what’s going on on the screen.
So we can understand, for example, that when you’re trying to close a tab, that very small, stupid little X that’s extremely tiny, which is hard to get precisely hit, if you’re dealing with a noisy output of the decoder, we can understand that that is a small little X you might be trying to hit, and actually make it a bigger target for you. Similar to how when you’re typing on your phone, if you are used to the iOS keyboard for example, it actually adapts to target size of individual keys based on an underlying language model. So it’ll actually understand if I’m typing, “Hey, I’m going to see L.” It’ll make the E key bigger because it knows Lex is the person I’m going to go see. And so that kind of predictiveness can make the experience much more smooth, even without improvements to the underlying decoder or feature detection part of the stack.
So we do that with a feature called magnetic targets, we actually index the screen, and we understand, “Okay, these are the places that are very small targets that might be difficult to hit. Here’s the kind of cursor dynamics around that location that might be indicative of the user trying to select it. Let’s make it easier. Let’s blow up the size of it in a way that makes it easier for the user to sort of snap onto that target.” So all these little details, they matter a lot in helping the user be independent in their day-to-day living.
Neural decoder
Lex Fridman
So how much of the work on the decoder is generalizable to P2, P3, P4, P5 PM? How do you improve the decoder in a way that’s generalizable?
So how much of the work on the decoder is generalizable to P2, P3, P4, P5 PM? How do you improve the decoder in a way that’s generalizable?
Bliss Chapman
Yeah, great question. So the underlying signal we’re trying to decode is going to look very different in P2 than in P1. For example, channel number 345 is going to mean something different in user one than it will in user two, just because that electrode that corresponds with channel 345 is going to be next to a different neuron in user one to person user two. But the approach is the methods, the user experience of how do you get the right behavioral pattern from the user to associate with that neural signal. We hope that will translate over multiple generations of users.
Yeah, great question. So the underlying signal we’re trying to decode is going to look very different in P2 than in P1. For example, channel number 345 is going to mean something different in user one than it will in user two, just because that electrode that corresponds with channel 345 is going to be next to a different neuron in user one to person user two. But the approach is the methods, the user experience of how do you get the right behavioral pattern from the user to associate with that neural signal. We hope that will translate over multiple generations of users.
And beyond that, it’s very, very possible, in fact, quite likely that we’ve overfit to Noland’s user experience, desires and preferences. And so what I hope to see is that when we get a second, third, fourth participant, that we find what the right wide minimums are that cover all the cases that make it more intuitive for everyone. And hopefully, there’s a crosspollination of things, where, “Oh, we didn’t think about that with this user because they can speak. But with this user who just can fundamentally not speak at all, this user experience is not optimal.” Those improvements that we make there should hopefully translate then to even people who can speak but don’t feel comfortable doing so because we’re in a public setting, like their doctor’s office.
Lex Fridman
So the actual mechanism of open-loop labeling, and then closed-loop labeling would be the same, and hopefully can generalize across the different users-
So the actual mechanism of open-loop labeling, and then closed-loop labeling would be the same, and hopefully can generalize across the different users-
Bliss Chapman
Correct.
Correct.
Lex Fridman
… as they’re doing the calibration step? And the calibration step is pretty cool. I mean, that in itself. The interesting thing about Webgrid, which is closed-loop, it’s fun. I love it when there’s… They used to be kind of idea of human computation, which is using actions a human would want to do anyway to get a lot of signal from. And Webgrid is that, a nice video game that also serves as great calibration.
… as they’re doing the calibration step? And the calibration step is pretty cool. I mean, that in itself. The interesting thing about Webgrid, which is closed-loop, it’s fun. I love it when there’s… They used to be kind of idea of human computation, which is using actions a human would want to do anyway to get a lot of signal from. And Webgrid is that, a nice video game that also serves as great calibration.
Bliss Chapman
It’s so funny, I’ve heard this reaction so many times. Before the first user was implanted, we had an internal perception that the first user would not find this fun. And so we thought really quite a bit actually about, “Should we build other games that are more interesting for the user, so we can get this kind of data and help facilitate research that’s for long duration and stuff like this?” Turns out that people love this game. I always loved it, but I didn’t know that that was a shared perception.
It’s so funny, I’ve heard this reaction so many times. Before the first user was implanted, we had an internal perception that the first user would not find this fun. And so we thought really quite a bit actually about, “Should we build other games that are more interesting for the user, so we can get this kind of data and help facilitate research that’s for long duration and stuff like this?” Turns out that people love this game. I always loved it, but I didn’t know that that was a shared perception.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. And just in case it’s not clear, Webgrid is… There’s a grid of let’s say 35 by 35 cells and one of them lights up blue and you have to move your mouse over that and click on it. And if you miss it, it’s red, and…
Yeah. And just in case it’s not clear, Webgrid is… There’s a grid of let’s say 35 by 35 cells and one of them lights up blue and you have to move your mouse over that and click on it. And if you miss it, it’s red, and…
Bliss Chapman
I’ve played this game for so many hours, so many hours.
I’ve played this game for so many hours, so many hours.
Lex Fridman
And what’s your record you said?
And what’s your record you said?
Bliss Chapman
I think I have the highest at Neuralink right now. My record’s 17 BPS.
I think I have the highest at Neuralink right now. My record’s 17 BPS.
Lex Fridman
17 BPS?
17 BPS?
Bliss Chapman
If you imagine that 35 by 35 grid, you’re hitting about 100 trials per minute. So 100 correct selections in that one minute window. So you’re averaging about between 500, 600 milliseconds per selection.
If you imagine that 35 by 35 grid, you’re hitting about 100 trials per minute. So 100 correct selections in that one minute window. So you’re averaging about between 500, 600 milliseconds per selection.
Lex Fridman
So one of the reasons I think I struggle with that game is I’m such a keyboard person, so everything is done with via keyboard. If I can avoid touching the mouse, it’s great. So how can you explain your high performance?
So one of the reasons I think I struggle with that game is I’m such a keyboard person, so everything is done with via keyboard. If I can avoid touching the mouse, it’s great. So how can you explain your high performance?
Bliss Chapman
I have a whole ritual I go through when I play Webgrid. There’s actually like a diet plan associated with this. It’s a whole thing.
I have a whole ritual I go through when I play Webgrid. There’s actually like a diet plan associated with this. It’s a whole thing.
Lex Fridman
That’s great.
That’s great.
Bliss Chapman
The first thing is-
The first thing is-
Lex Fridman
“I have to fast for five days, I have to go up to the mountains.”
“I have to fast for five days, I have to go up to the mountains.”
Bliss Chapman
I mean, the fasting thing is important. So this is like-
I mean, the fasting thing is important. So this is like-
Lex Fridman
Focuses the mind, yeah. It’s true, it’s true.
Focuses the mind, yeah. It’s true, it’s true.
Bliss Chapman
So what I do is, I… Actually, I don’t eat for a little bit beforehand, and then I’ll actually eat a ton of peanut butter right before I play, and I get-
So what I do is, I… Actually, I don’t eat for a little bit beforehand, and then I’ll actually eat a ton of peanut butter right before I play, and I get-
Lex Fridman
This is a real thing?
This is a real thing?
Bliss Chapman
This is a real thing, yeah. And then it has to be really late at night, this is, again, a night owl thing I think we share, but it has to be midnight, 2:00 A.M. kind of time window. And I have a very specific physical position I’ll sit in, which is… I was homeschooled growing up, and so I did most of my work on the floor, just in my bedroom or whatever. And so I have a very specific situation-
This is a real thing, yeah. And then it has to be really late at night, this is, again, a night owl thing I think we share, but it has to be midnight, 2:00 A.M. kind of time window. And I have a very specific physical position I’ll sit in, which is… I was homeschooled growing up, and so I did most of my work on the floor, just in my bedroom or whatever. And so I have a very specific situation-
Lex Fridman
On the floor?
On the floor?
Bliss Chapman
… on the floor, that I sit and play. And then you have to make sure there’s not a lot of weight on your elbow when you’re playing so you can move quickly. And then I turn the gain of the cursor, so the speed of the cursor way, way up, so it’s small motions that actually move the cursor.
… on the floor, that I sit and play. And then you have to make sure there’s not a lot of weight on your elbow when you’re playing so you can move quickly. And then I turn the gain of the cursor, so the speed of the cursor way, way up, so it’s small motions that actually move the cursor.
Lex Fridman
Are you moving with your wrist, or you’re… You’re never-
Are you moving with your wrist, or you’re… You’re never-
Bliss Chapman
I move with my fingers. So my wrist is almost completely still, I’m just moving my fingers.
I move with my fingers. So my wrist is almost completely still, I’m just moving my fingers.
Lex Fridman
You know those… Just on a small tangent-
You know those… Just on a small tangent-
Bliss Chapman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
… the… which I’ve been meaning to go down this rabbit hole of people that set the world record in Tetris. Those folks, they’re playing… There’s a way to… Did you see this?
… the… which I’ve been meaning to go down this rabbit hole of people that set the world record in Tetris. Those folks, they’re playing… There’s a way to… Did you see this?
Bliss Chapman
I’ve seen it. All the fingers are moving?
I’ve seen it. All the fingers are moving?
Lex Fridman
Yeah, you could find a way to do it where it’s using a loophole, like a bug that you can do some incredibly fast stuff. So it’s along that line, but not quite. But you do realize there’ll be a few programmers right now listening to this who’ll fast and eat peanut butter, and be like-
Yeah, you could find a way to do it where it’s using a loophole, like a bug that you can do some incredibly fast stuff. So it’s along that line, but not quite. But you do realize there’ll be a few programmers right now listening to this who’ll fast and eat peanut butter, and be like-
Bliss Chapman
Yeah, please track my record. I mean, the reason I did this literally was just because I wanted the bar to be high for the team. The number that we aim for should not be the median performance, it should be able to beat all of us at least, that should be the minimum bar.
Yeah, please track my record. I mean, the reason I did this literally was just because I wanted the bar to be high for the team. The number that we aim for should not be the median performance, it should be able to beat all of us at least, that should be the minimum bar.
Lex Fridman
What do you think is possible, like 20?
What do you think is possible, like 20?
Bliss Chapman
Yeah, I don’t know what the limits… I mean, the limits, you can calculate just in terms of screen refresh rate and cursor immediately jumping to the next target. I mean, I’m sure there’s limits before that with just sort of reaction time, and visual perception, and things like this. I would guess it’s below 40, but above 20, somewhere in there is probably the right… That I’d never to be thinking about. It also matters how difficult the task is. You can imagine some people might be able to do 10,000 targets on the screen, and maybe they can do better that way. So there’s some task optimizations you could do to try to boost your performance as well.
Yeah, I don’t know what the limits… I mean, the limits, you can calculate just in terms of screen refresh rate and cursor immediately jumping to the next target. I mean, I’m sure there’s limits before that with just sort of reaction time, and visual perception, and things like this. I would guess it’s below 40, but above 20, somewhere in there is probably the right… That I’d never to be thinking about. It also matters how difficult the task is. You can imagine some people might be able to do 10,000 targets on the screen, and maybe they can do better that way. So there’s some task optimizations you could do to try to boost your performance as well.
Lex Fridman
What do you think it takes for Noland to be able to do above 8.5, to keep increasing that number? You said every increase in the number…
What do you think it takes for Noland to be able to do above 8.5, to keep increasing that number? You said every increase in the number…
Lex Fridman
… to keep increasing that number. You said every increase in the number might require different improvements in the system.
… to keep increasing that number. You said every increase in the number might require different improvements in the system.
Bliss Chapman
Yeah. The first answer that’s important to say is, I don’t know. This is edge of the research so, again, nobody’s gotten to that number before, so what’s next is going to be a heuristic guess from my part. What we’ve seen historically is that different parts of the stack can compile next to different time points. So when I first joined Neuralink, three years ago or so, one of the major problems was just the latency of the Bluetooth connection. The radio in the device wasn’t super good, it was an early revision of the implant. And it just, no matter how good your decoder was, if your thing is updating every 30 milliseconds or 50 milliseconds, it’s just going to be choppy. And no matter how good you are, that’s going to be frustrating and lead to challenges. So at that point, it was very clear that the main challenge is just get the data off the device in a very reliable way such that you can enable the next challenge to be tackled.
Yeah. The first answer that’s important to say is, I don’t know. This is edge of the research so, again, nobody’s gotten to that number before, so what’s next is going to be a heuristic guess from my part. What we’ve seen historically is that different parts of the stack can compile next to different time points. So when I first joined Neuralink, three years ago or so, one of the major problems was just the latency of the Bluetooth connection. The radio in the device wasn’t super good, it was an early revision of the implant. And it just, no matter how good your decoder was, if your thing is updating every 30 milliseconds or 50 milliseconds, it’s just going to be choppy. And no matter how good you are, that’s going to be frustrating and lead to challenges. So at that point, it was very clear that the main challenge is just get the data off the device in a very reliable way such that you can enable the next challenge to be tackled.
And then at some point it was actually the modeling challenge of how do you just build a good mapping, like the supervised learning problem of, you have a bunch of data and you have a label you’re trying to predict, just what is the right neural decoder architecture and hyperparameters to optimize that? And that was the problem for a bit, and once you solve that, it became a different bottleneck. I think the next bottleneck after that was actually just software stability and reliability. If you have widely varying inference latency in your system or your app just lags out every once in a while, it decreases your ability to maintain and get in a state of flow, and it basically just disrupts your control experience. And so there’s a variety of different software bugs and improvements we made that basically increased the performance of the system, made it much more reliable, much more stable and led to a state where we could reliably collect data to build better models with.
So that was a bottleneck for a while, it was just the software stack itself. If I were to guess right now, there’s two major directions you could think about for improving VPS further. The first major direction is labeling. So labeling is, again, this fundamental challenge of given a window of time where the user is expressing some behavioral intent, what are they really trying to do at the granularity of every millisecond? And that again, is a task design problem, it’s a UX problem, it’s a machine learning problem, it’s a software problem. It touches all those different domains. The second thing you can think about to improve BPS further is either completely changing the thing you’re decoding or just extending the number of things that you’re decoding. So this is serving the direction of functionality, basically, you can imagine giving more clicks.
For example, a left click, a right click, a middle click, different actions like click-and-drag for example, and that can improve the effective bit rate of your communication processes. If you’re trying to allow the user to express themselves through any given communication channel, you can measure that with bits per second. But what actually is measured at the end of the day is how effective are they at navigating their computer? So from the perspective of the downstream tasks that you care about, functionality and extending functionality is something we’re very interested in, because not only can it improve the number of BPS, but it can also improve the downstream independence that the user has and the skill and efficiency with which they can operate their computer.
Lex Fridman
Would the number of threads increasing also potentially help?
Would the number of threads increasing also potentially help?
Bliss Chapman
Yes. Short answer is yes. It’s a bit nuanced how that manifests in the numbers. So what you’ll see is that if you plot a curve of number of channels that you’re using for decode versus either the offline metric of how good you are at decoding or the online metric of in practice how good is the user at using this device, you see roughly a log curve. So as you move further out in number of channels, you get a corresponding logarithmic improvement in control quality and offline validation metrics. The important nuance here is that each channel corresponds with a specific represented intention in the brain. So for example, if you have a channel 254, it might correspond with moving to the right. Channel 256, might mean move to the left. If you want to expand the number of functions you want to control, you really want to have a broader set of channels that covers a broader set of imagined movements. You can think of it like Mr. Potato Man actually, if you had a bunch of different imagined movements you could do, how would you map those imagined movements to input to a computer? You could imagine handwriting to output characters on the screen. You could imagine just typing with your fingers and have that output text on the screen. You could imagine different finger modulations for different clicks. You can imagine wiggling your big nose for opening some menu or wiggling your big toe to have command tab occur or something like this. So it’s really the amount of different actions you can take in the world depends on how many channels you have on the information content that they carry.
Yes. Short answer is yes. It’s a bit nuanced how that manifests in the numbers. So what you’ll see is that if you plot a curve of number of channels that you’re using for decode versus either the offline metric of how good you are at decoding or the online metric of in practice how good is the user at using this device, you see roughly a log curve. So as you move further out in number of channels, you get a corresponding logarithmic improvement in control quality and offline validation metrics. The important nuance here is that each channel corresponds with a specific represented intention in the brain. So for example, if you have a channel 254, it might correspond with moving to the right. Channel 256, might mean move to the left. If you want to expand the number of functions you want to control, you really want to have a broader set of channels that covers a broader set of imagined movements. You can think of it like Mr. Potato Man actually, if you had a bunch of different imagined movements you could do, how would you map those imagined movements to input to a computer? You could imagine handwriting to output characters on the screen. You could imagine just typing with your fingers and have that output text on the screen. You could imagine different finger modulations for different clicks. You can imagine wiggling your big nose for opening some menu or wiggling your big toe to have command tab occur or something like this. So it’s really the amount of different actions you can take in the world depends on how many channels you have on the information content that they carry.
Lex Fridman
Right, so that’s more about the number of actions. So actually as you increase the number of threads, that’s more about increasing the number of actions you’re able to perform.
Right, so that’s more about the number of actions. So actually as you increase the number of threads, that’s more about increasing the number of actions you’re able to perform.
Bliss Chapman
But one other nuance there that is worth mentioning. So again, our goal is really to enable a user with paralyzes to control the computer as fast as I can, so that’s BPS, with all the same functionality I have, which is what we just talked about, but then also as reliably as I can. And that last point is very related to channel account discussion. So as you scale out number of channels, the relative importance of any particular feature of your model input to the output control of the user diminishes, which means that if the neural non-stationarity effect is per channel, or if the noise is independent such that more channels means on average less output effect, then your reliability of your system will improve. So one core thesis that at least I have is that scaling channel account should improve the reliability system without any work on the decoder itself.
But one other nuance there that is worth mentioning. So again, our goal is really to enable a user with paralyzes to control the computer as fast as I can, so that’s BPS, with all the same functionality I have, which is what we just talked about, but then also as reliably as I can. And that last point is very related to channel account discussion. So as you scale out number of channels, the relative importance of any particular feature of your model input to the output control of the user diminishes, which means that if the neural non-stationarity effect is per channel, or if the noise is independent such that more channels means on average less output effect, then your reliability of your system will improve. So one core thesis that at least I have is that scaling channel account should improve the reliability system without any work on the decoder itself.
Lex Fridman
Can you linger on the reliability here? So first of all, when you say non-stationarity of the signal, which aspect are you referring to?
Can you linger on the reliability here? So first of all, when you say non-stationarity of the signal, which aspect are you referring to?
Bliss Chapman
Yeah, so maybe let’s talk briefly what the actual underlying signal looks like. So again, I spoke very briefly at the beginning about how when you imagine moving to the right or imagine moving to the left, neurons might fire more or less, and the frequency content that signal, at least in the motor cortex, it’s very correlated with the output intention, the behavioral task that the user is doing. You can imagine actually this is not obvious that rate coding, which is the name of that phenomenon, is the only way the brain could represent information. You can imagine many different ways in which the brain could encode intention, and there’s actually evidence in bats for example, that there’s temporal codes. So timing codes of exactly when particular neurons fire is the mechanism of information representation. But at least in the motor cortex, there’s substantial evidence that it’s rate coding or at least first order of effect is that it’s rate coding.
Yeah, so maybe let’s talk briefly what the actual underlying signal looks like. So again, I spoke very briefly at the beginning about how when you imagine moving to the right or imagine moving to the left, neurons might fire more or less, and the frequency content that signal, at least in the motor cortex, it’s very correlated with the output intention, the behavioral task that the user is doing. You can imagine actually this is not obvious that rate coding, which is the name of that phenomenon, is the only way the brain could represent information. You can imagine many different ways in which the brain could encode intention, and there’s actually evidence in bats for example, that there’s temporal codes. So timing codes of exactly when particular neurons fire is the mechanism of information representation. But at least in the motor cortex, there’s substantial evidence that it’s rate coding or at least first order of effect is that it’s rate coding.
So then if the brain is representing information by changing the frequency of a neuron firing, what really matters is the delta between the baseline state of the neuron and what it looks like when it’s modulated. And what we’ve observed and what has also been observed in academic work is that that baseline rate, if you’re to target the scale, if you imagine that analogy for measuring flour or something when you’re baking, that baseline state of how much the pot weighs is actually different day to day. So if what you’re trying to measure is how much rice is in the pot, you’re going to get a different measurement different days because you’re measuring with different pots. So that baseline rate shifting is really the thing that at least from a first order description of the problem is what’s causing this downstream bias. There can be other effects, not linear effects on top of that, but at least at a very first order description of the problem. That’s what we observed day to day is that the baseline firing rate of any particular neuron or observed on a particular channel is changing.
Lex Fridman
So can you just adjust to the baseline to make it relative to the baseline nonstop?
So can you just adjust to the baseline to make it relative to the baseline nonstop?
Bliss Chapman
Yeah, this is a great question. So with monkeys, we have found various ways to do this. One example way to do this is you ask them to do some behavioral tasks like play the game with a joystick, you measure what’s going on in the brain. You compute some mean of what’s going on across all the input features, and you subtract that on the input when you’re doing your BCI session, works super well. For whatever reason, that doesn’t work super well with Noland. I actually don’t know the full reason why, but I can imagine several explanations.
Yeah, this is a great question. So with monkeys, we have found various ways to do this. One example way to do this is you ask them to do some behavioral tasks like play the game with a joystick, you measure what’s going on in the brain. You compute some mean of what’s going on across all the input features, and you subtract that on the input when you’re doing your BCI session, works super well. For whatever reason, that doesn’t work super well with Noland. I actually don’t know the full reason why, but I can imagine several explanations.
One such explanation could be that the context effect difference between some open-loop task and some closed-loop task is much more significant with Noland than it is with the monkey. Maybe in this open-loop task, he’s watching the Lex Fridman Podcast while he’s doing the task or he’s whistling and listening to music and talking with his friend and ask his mom what’s for dinner while he’s doing this task. So the exact difference in context between those two states may be much larger and thus lead to a bigger generalization gap between the features that you’re normalizing at open-loop time and what you’re trying to use at closed-loop time.
Lex Fridman
That’s interesting. Just on that point, it’s incredible to watch Noland be able to multitask, to do multiple tasks at the same time, to be able to move the mouse cursor effectively while talking and while being nervous because he’s talking in front of [inaudible 06:33:45]
That’s interesting. Just on that point, it’s incredible to watch Noland be able to multitask, to do multiple tasks at the same time, to be able to move the mouse cursor effectively while talking and while being nervous because he’s talking in front of [inaudible 06:33:45]
Bliss Chapman
Kicking my ass and chest too, yeah.
Kicking my ass and chest too, yeah.
Lex Fridman
Kicking your ass and talk trash while doing it-
Kicking your ass and talk trash while doing it-
Bliss Chapman
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
… so all at the same time. And yes, if you are trying to normalize to the baseline, that might throw everything off. Boy, is that interesting?
… so all at the same time. And yes, if you are trying to normalize to the baseline, that might throw everything off. Boy, is that interesting?
Bliss Chapman
Maybe one comment on that too. For folks that aren’t familiar with assistive technology, I think there’s a common belief that, well, why can’t you just use an eye tracker or something like this for helping somebody move a mouse on the screen? It’s really a fair question and one that I actually was not confident before Sir Noland that this was going to be a profoundly transformative technology for people like him. And I’m very confident now that it will be, but the reasons are subtle. It really has to do with ergonomically how it fits into their life, even if you can just offer the same level of control as what they would have with an eye tracker or with a mouse stick, but you don’t need to have that thing in your face. You don’t need to be positioned a certain way.
Maybe one comment on that too. For folks that aren’t familiar with assistive technology, I think there’s a common belief that, well, why can’t you just use an eye tracker or something like this for helping somebody move a mouse on the screen? It’s really a fair question and one that I actually was not confident before Sir Noland that this was going to be a profoundly transformative technology for people like him. And I’m very confident now that it will be, but the reasons are subtle. It really has to do with ergonomically how it fits into their life, even if you can just offer the same level of control as what they would have with an eye tracker or with a mouse stick, but you don’t need to have that thing in your face. You don’t need to be positioned a certain way.
You don’t need your caretaker to be around to set it up for you. You can activate it when you want, how you want, wherever you want. That level of independence is so game-changing for people. It means that they can text a friend at night privately without their mom needing to be in the loop. It means that they can open up and browse the internet at 2:00 AM when nobody’s around to set their iPad up for them. This is a profoundly game-changing thing for folks in that situation, and this is even before we start talking about folks that may not be able to communicate at all or ask for help when they want to. This can be potentially the only link that they have to the outside world. And yeah, that one doesn’t, I think, need explanation of why that’s so impactful.
Lex Fridman
You mentioned NeuroDecodeR. How much machine learning is in the decoder, how much magic, how much science, how much art? How difficult is it to come up with a decoder that figures out what these sequence of spikes mean?
You mentioned NeuroDecodeR. How much machine learning is in the decoder, how much magic, how much science, how much art? How difficult is it to come up with a decoder that figures out what these sequence of spikes mean?
Bliss Chapman
Yeah, good question. There’s a couple of different ways to answer this, so maybe I’ll zoom out briefly first and then I’ll go down one of the rabbit holes. So the zoomed out view is that building the decoder is really the process of building the dataset plus compiling it into the weights, and each of those steps is important. The direction I think of further improvement is primarily going to be in the dataset side of how do you construct the optimal labels for the model. But there’s an entirely separate challenge of then how do you compile the best model? And so I’ll go briefly down the second rabbit hole. One of the main challenges with designing the optimal model for BCI is that offline metrics don’t necessarily correspond to online metrics. It’s fundamentally a control problem. The user is trying to control something on the screen and the exact user experience of how you output the intention impacts their ability to control. So for example, if you just look at validation loss as predicted by your model, there can be multiple ways to achieve the same validation loss.
Yeah, good question. There’s a couple of different ways to answer this, so maybe I’ll zoom out briefly first and then I’ll go down one of the rabbit holes. So the zoomed out view is that building the decoder is really the process of building the dataset plus compiling it into the weights, and each of those steps is important. The direction I think of further improvement is primarily going to be in the dataset side of how do you construct the optimal labels for the model. But there’s an entirely separate challenge of then how do you compile the best model? And so I’ll go briefly down the second rabbit hole. One of the main challenges with designing the optimal model for BCI is that offline metrics don’t necessarily correspond to online metrics. It’s fundamentally a control problem. The user is trying to control something on the screen and the exact user experience of how you output the intention impacts their ability to control. So for example, if you just look at validation loss as predicted by your model, there can be multiple ways to achieve the same validation loss.
Not all of them are equally controllable by the end user. And so it might be as simple as saying, oh, you could just add auxiliary loss terms that help you capture the thing that actually matters. But this is a very complex nuanced process. So how you turn the labels into the model is more of a nuanced process than just a standard supervised learning problem. One very fascinating anecdote here, we’ve tried many different neural network architectures that translate brain data to velocity outputs, for example. And one example that’s stuck in my brain from a couple of years ago now is at one point, we were using just fully-connected networks to decode the brain activity. We tried A-B test where we were measuring the relative performance in online control sessions of one deconvolution over the input signal. So if you imagine per channel you have a sliding window that’s producing some convolved feature, for each of those input sequences for every single channel simultaneously, you can actually get better validation metrics, meaning you’re fitting the data better and it’s generalizing better in offline data if you use this convolutional architecture. You’re reducing parameters. It’s a standard procedure when you’re dealing with time series data. Now it turns out that when using that model online, the controllability was worse, was far worse, even though the offline metrics were better, and there can be many ways to interpret that. But what that taught me at least was that, hey, it’s at least the case right now that if you were to just throw a bunch of compute at this problem and you were trying to hyperparameter optimize or let some GPT model hard code or come up with or invent many different solutions, if you were just optimizing for loss, it would not be sufficient, which means that there’s still some inherent modeling gap here. There’s still some artistry left to be uncovered here of how to get your model to scale with more compute, and that may be fundamentally a labeling problem, but there may be other components to this as well.
Lex Fridman
Is it data constraint at this time, which is what it sounds like? How do you get a lot of good labels?
Is it data constraint at this time, which is what it sounds like? How do you get a lot of good labels?
Bliss Chapman
Yeah, I think it’s data quality constrained, not necessarily data quantity constrained.
Yeah, I think it’s data quality constrained, not necessarily data quantity constrained.
Lex Fridman
But even just the quantity ’cause it has to be trained on the interactions. I guess there’s not that many interactions.
But even just the quantity ’cause it has to be trained on the interactions. I guess there’s not that many interactions.
Bliss Chapman
Yeah, so it depends what version of this you’re talking about. So if you’re talking about, let’s say, the simplest example of just 2D velocity, then I think, yeah, data quality is the main thing. If you’re talking about how to build a multi-function output that lets you do all the inputs the computer that you and I can do, then it’s actually a much more sophisticated nuanced modeling challenge because now you need to think about not just when the users are left clicking, but when you’re building the left click model, you also need to be thinking about how to make sure it doesn’t fire when they’re trying to right click or when they’re trying to move the mouse.
Yeah, so it depends what version of this you’re talking about. So if you’re talking about, let’s say, the simplest example of just 2D velocity, then I think, yeah, data quality is the main thing. If you’re talking about how to build a multi-function output that lets you do all the inputs the computer that you and I can do, then it’s actually a much more sophisticated nuanced modeling challenge because now you need to think about not just when the users are left clicking, but when you’re building the left click model, you also need to be thinking about how to make sure it doesn’t fire when they’re trying to right click or when they’re trying to move the mouse.
So one example of an interesting bug from week one of BCI with Noland was when he moved the mouse, the click signal dropped off a cliff and when he stopped, the click signal went up. So again, there’s a contamination between the two inputs. Another good example was at one point he was trying to do a left click and drag, and the minute he started moving, the left click signal dropped off a cliff. So again, ’cause some contamination between the two signals, you need to come up with some way to either in the dataset or in the model build robustness against this kind of, you think of it like overfitting, but really it’s just that the model has not seen this kind of variability before. So you need to find some way to help the model with that.
Lex Fridman
This is super cool ’cause it feels like all of this is very solvable, but it’s hard.
This is super cool ’cause it feels like all of this is very solvable, but it’s hard.
Bliss Chapman
Yes, it is fundamentally an engineering challenge. This is important to emphasize, and it’s also important to emphasize that it may need fundamentally new techniques, which means that people who work on let’s say unsupervised speech classification using CTC loss for example, with internal to Siri, they could potentially have very applicable skills to this.
Yes, it is fundamentally an engineering challenge. This is important to emphasize, and it’s also important to emphasize that it may need fundamentally new techniques, which means that people who work on let’s say unsupervised speech classification using CTC loss for example, with internal to Siri, they could potentially have very applicable skills to this.
Future improvements
Lex Fridman
So what things are you excited about in the future development of the software stack on Neuralink? So everything we’ve been talking about, the decoding, the UX?
So what things are you excited about in the future development of the software stack on Neuralink? So everything we’ve been talking about, the decoding, the UX?
Bliss Chapman
I think there’s something I’m excited about from the technology side and some I’m excited about for understanding how this technology is going to be best situated for entering the world, so I’ll work backwards. On the technology entering the world side of things, I’m really excited to understand how this device works for folks that cannot speak at all, that have no ability to bootstrap themselves into useful control by voice command, for example, and are extremely limited in their current capabilities. I think that will be an incredibly useful signal for us to understand really, what is an existential threat for all startups, which is product market fit. Does this device have the capacity and potential to transform people’s lives in the current state? And if not, what are the gaps? And if there are gaps, how do we solve them most efficiently?
I think there’s something I’m excited about from the technology side and some I’m excited about for understanding how this technology is going to be best situated for entering the world, so I’ll work backwards. On the technology entering the world side of things, I’m really excited to understand how this device works for folks that cannot speak at all, that have no ability to bootstrap themselves into useful control by voice command, for example, and are extremely limited in their current capabilities. I think that will be an incredibly useful signal for us to understand really, what is an existential threat for all startups, which is product market fit. Does this device have the capacity and potential to transform people’s lives in the current state? And if not, what are the gaps? And if there are gaps, how do we solve them most efficiently?
So that’s what I’m very excited about for the next year or so of clinical trial operations. On the technology side, I’m quite excited about basically everything we’re doing. I think it’s going to be awesome. The most prominent one I would say is scaling channel account. So right now we have a 1,000-channel device. The next version we’ll have between 3 and 6,000 channels, and I would expect that curve to continue in the future. And it’s unclear what set of problems will just disappear completely at that scale and what set of problems will remain and require for their focus. And so I’m excited about the clarity of gradient that gives us in terms of the user experiences we choose to focus our time and resources on. And then also in terms of even things as simple as non-stationarity, does that problem just completely go away at that scale? Or do we need to come up with new creative UXes still even at that point?
And also when we get to that time point, when we start expanding out dramatically the set of functions that you can output from one brain how to deal with all the nuances of both the user experience of not being able to feel the different keys under your fingertips, but still needing to be able to modulate all of them in synchrony to achieve the thing you want. And again, you don’t have that appropriate set of feedback loop, so how can you make that intuitive for a user to control a high dimensional control surface without feeling the thing physically? I think that’s going to be a super interesting problem. I’m also quite excited to understand do these scaling laws continue? As you scale channel count, how much further out do you go before that saturation point is truly hit?
And it’s not obvious today. I think we only know what’s in the interpolation space. We only know what’s between 0 and 1,024, but we don’t know what’s beyond that. And then there’s a whole range of interesting neuroscience and brain questions, which is, when you stick more stuff in the brain in more places, you get to learn much more quickly about what those brain regions represent. And so I’m excited about that fundamental neuroscience learning, which is also important for figuring out how to most efficiently insert electrodes in the future. So yeah, I think all those dimensions I’m really, really excited about. And that doesn’t even get close to touching the software stack that we work on every single day and what we’re working on right now.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, it seems virtually impossible to me that 1,000 electrodes is where it saturates. It feels like this would be one of those silly notions in the future where obviously you should have millions of electrodes and this is where the true breakthroughs happen. You tweeted, “Some thoughts are most precisely described in poetry.” Why do you think that is?
Yeah, it seems virtually impossible to me that 1,000 electrodes is where it saturates. It feels like this would be one of those silly notions in the future where obviously you should have millions of electrodes and this is where the true breakthroughs happen. You tweeted, “Some thoughts are most precisely described in poetry.” Why do you think that is?
Bliss Chapman
I think it’s because the information bottleneck of language is pretty steep, and yet you’re able to reconstruct on the other person’s brain more effectively without being literal. If you can express a sentiment such that in their brain they can reconstruct the actual true underlying meaning and beauty of the thing that you’re trying to get across, the generator function in their brain is more powerful than what language can express. And so the mechanism of poetry is really just to feed or seed that generator function.
I think it’s because the information bottleneck of language is pretty steep, and yet you’re able to reconstruct on the other person’s brain more effectively without being literal. If you can express a sentiment such that in their brain they can reconstruct the actual true underlying meaning and beauty of the thing that you’re trying to get across, the generator function in their brain is more powerful than what language can express. And so the mechanism of poetry is really just to feed or seed that generator function.
Lex Fridman
So being literal sometimes is a suboptimal compression for the thing you’re trying to convey.
So being literal sometimes is a suboptimal compression for the thing you’re trying to convey.
Bliss Chapman
That right. And it’s actually in the process of the user going through that generation that they understand what you mean. That’s the beautiful part. It’s also like when you look at a beautiful painting, it’s not the pixels of the painting that are beautiful, it’s the thought process that occurs when you see that, the experience of that, that actually is the thing that matters.
That right. And it’s actually in the process of the user going through that generation that they understand what you mean. That’s the beautiful part. It’s also like when you look at a beautiful painting, it’s not the pixels of the painting that are beautiful, it’s the thought process that occurs when you see that, the experience of that, that actually is the thing that matters.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, it’s resonating with some deep thing within you that the artist also experienced and was able to convey that through the pixels.
Yeah, it’s resonating with some deep thing within you that the artist also experienced and was able to convey that through the pixels.
Bliss Chapman
Right. Right.
Right. Right.
Lex Fridman
And that’s actually going to be relevant for full-on telepathy. It’s like if you just read the poetry literally, that doesn’t say much of anything interesting. It requires a human to interpret it. So it’s the combination of the human mind and all the experiences that a human being has within the context of the collective intelligence of the human species that makes that poem make sense and they load that in. So in that same way, the signal that carries from human to human meaning may seem trivial, but may actually carry a lot of power because of the complexity of the human mind and the receiving end. Yeah, that’s interesting. Who was it? I think Joscha Bach [inaudible 06:45:24] said something about all the people that think we’ve achieved AGI explain why humans like music.
And that’s actually going to be relevant for full-on telepathy. It’s like if you just read the poetry literally, that doesn’t say much of anything interesting. It requires a human to interpret it. So it’s the combination of the human mind and all the experiences that a human being has within the context of the collective intelligence of the human species that makes that poem make sense and they load that in. So in that same way, the signal that carries from human to human meaning may seem trivial, but may actually carry a lot of power because of the complexity of the human mind and the receiving end. Yeah, that’s interesting. Who was it? I think Joscha Bach [inaudible 06:45:24] said something about all the people that think we’ve achieved AGI explain why humans like music.
Bliss Chapman
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Lex Fridman
And until the AGI likes music, you haven’t achieved AGI or something like this.
And until the AGI likes music, you haven’t achieved AGI or something like this.
Bliss Chapman
Do you not think that’s some next token entropy surprise kind of thing going on there?
Do you not think that’s some next token entropy surprise kind of thing going on there?
Lex Fridman
I don’t know.
I don’t know.
Bliss Chapman
I don’t know either. I listen to a lot of classical music and also read a lot of poetry and yeah, I do wonder if there is some element of the next token surprise factor going on there.
I don’t know either. I listen to a lot of classical music and also read a lot of poetry and yeah, I do wonder if there is some element of the next token surprise factor going on there.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, maybe.
Yeah, maybe.
Bliss Chapman
Cause a lot of the tricks in both poetry and music are basically you have some repeated structure and then you do a twist. It’s like, okay, clause 1, 2, 3 is one thing and then clause four is like, “Okay, now we’re onto the next theme,” and they play with exactly when the surprise happens and the expectation of the user. And that’s even true through history as musicians evolve in music, they take some known structure that people are familiar with and they just tweak it a little bit. They tweak it and add a surprising element. This is especially true in classical music heritage, but that’s what I’m wondering. Is it all just entropy?
Cause a lot of the tricks in both poetry and music are basically you have some repeated structure and then you do a twist. It’s like, okay, clause 1, 2, 3 is one thing and then clause four is like, “Okay, now we’re onto the next theme,” and they play with exactly when the surprise happens and the expectation of the user. And that’s even true through history as musicians evolve in music, they take some known structure that people are familiar with and they just tweak it a little bit. They tweak it and add a surprising element. This is especially true in classical music heritage, but that’s what I’m wondering. Is it all just entropy?
Lex Fridman
So breaking structure or breaking symmetry is something that humans seem to like. Maybe it’s as simple as that.
So breaking structure or breaking symmetry is something that humans seem to like. Maybe it’s as simple as that.
Bliss Chapman
Yeah, and great artists copy and knowing which rules to break is the important part, and fundamentally, it must be about the listener of the piece. Which rule is the right one to break? It’s about the audience member perceiving that as interesting.
Yeah, and great artists copy and knowing which rules to break is the important part, and fundamentally, it must be about the listener of the piece. Which rule is the right one to break? It’s about the audience member perceiving that as interesting.
Lex Fridman
What do you think is the meaning of human existence?
What do you think is the meaning of human existence?
Bliss Chapman
There’s a TV show I really like called The West Wing, and in The West Wing there’s a character, he’s the President of the United States who’s having a discussion about the Bible with one of their colleagues. And the colleague says something about the Bible says X, Y, and Z, and the President says, “Yeah, but it also says A, B, C.” The person says, “Well, do you believe the Bible to be literally true?” And the President says, “Yes, but I also think that neither of us are smart enough to understand it.” I think the analogy here for the meaning of life is that largely we don’t know the right question to ask.
There’s a TV show I really like called The West Wing, and in The West Wing there’s a character, he’s the President of the United States who’s having a discussion about the Bible with one of their colleagues. And the colleague says something about the Bible says X, Y, and Z, and the President says, “Yeah, but it also says A, B, C.” The person says, “Well, do you believe the Bible to be literally true?” And the President says, “Yes, but I also think that neither of us are smart enough to understand it.” I think the analogy here for the meaning of life is that largely we don’t know the right question to ask.
So I think I’m very aligned with the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy version of this question, which is basically, if we can ask the right questions, it’s much more likely we find the meaning of human existence. So in the short term as a heuristic in the search policy space, we should try to increase the diversity of people asking such questions or generally of consciousness and conscious beings asking such questions. So again, I think I will take the I don’t know card here, but say I do think there are meaningful things we can do that improve the likelihood of answering that question.
Lex Fridman
It’s interesting how much value you assign to the task of asking the right questions. That’s the main thing, it’s not the answers, it’s the questions.
It’s interesting how much value you assign to the task of asking the right questions. That’s the main thing, it’s not the answers, it’s the questions.
Bliss Chapman
This point, by the way, is driven home in a very painful way when you try to communicate with someone who cannot speak, because a lot of the time, the last thing to go is they have the ability to somehow wiggle a lip or move something that allows them to say yes or no. And in that situation, it’s very obvious that what matters is, are you asking them the right question to be able to say yes or no to?
This point, by the way, is driven home in a very painful way when you try to communicate with someone who cannot speak, because a lot of the time, the last thing to go is they have the ability to somehow wiggle a lip or move something that allows them to say yes or no. And in that situation, it’s very obvious that what matters is, are you asking them the right question to be able to say yes or no to?
Lex Fridman
Wow, that’s powerful. Well, Bliss, thank you for everything you do, and thank you for being you, and thank you for talking today.
Wow, that’s powerful. Well, Bliss, thank you for everything you do, and thank you for being you, and thank you for talking today.
Bliss Chapman
Thank you.
Thank you.
Noland Arbaugh
Lex Fridman
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Bliss Chapman. And now, dear friends, here’s Noland Arbaugh, the first human being to have a Neuralink device implanted in his brain. You had a diving accident in 2016 that left you paralyzed with no feeling from the shoulders down. How did that accident change your life?
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Bliss Chapman. And now, dear friends, here’s Noland Arbaugh, the first human being to have a Neuralink device implanted in his brain. You had a diving accident in 2016 that left you paralyzed with no feeling from the shoulders down. How did that accident change your life?
Becoming paralyzed
Noland Arbaugh
It was a freak thing that happened. Imagine you’re running into the ocean, although this is a lake, but you’re running into the ocean and you get to about waist high, and then you dive in, take the rest of the plunge under the wave or something. That’s what I did, and then I just never came back up. Not sure what happened. I did it running into the water with a couple of guys, and so my idea of what happened is really just that I took a stray fist, elbow, knee, foot, something to the side of my head. The left side of my head was sore for about a month afterwards, so I must’ve taken a pretty big knock, and then they both came up and I didn’t. And so I was face down in the water for a while. I was conscious, and then eventually just realized I couldn’t hold my breath any longer and I keep saying took a big drink.
It was a freak thing that happened. Imagine you’re running into the ocean, although this is a lake, but you’re running into the ocean and you get to about waist high, and then you dive in, take the rest of the plunge under the wave or something. That’s what I did, and then I just never came back up. Not sure what happened. I did it running into the water with a couple of guys, and so my idea of what happened is really just that I took a stray fist, elbow, knee, foot, something to the side of my head. The left side of my head was sore for about a month afterwards, so I must’ve taken a pretty big knock, and then they both came up and I didn’t. And so I was face down in the water for a while. I was conscious, and then eventually just realized I couldn’t hold my breath any longer and I keep saying took a big drink.
People, I don’t know if they like that I say that. It seems like I’m making light of it all, but it’s just how I am, and I don’t know. I am a very relaxed stress-free person. I rolled with the punches for a lot of this. I took it in stride. It’s like, “All right, well, what can I do next? How can I improve my life even a little bit on a day-to-day basis?” At first, just trying to find some way to heal as much of my body as possible to try to get healed, to try to get off a ventilator, learn as much as I could so I could somehow survive once I left the hospital. And then thank God I had my family around me. If I didn’t have my parents, my siblings, then I would’ve never made it this far.
They’ve done so much for me, more than I can ever thank them for, honestly, and a lot of people don’t have that. A lot of people in my situation, their families either aren’t capable of providing for them or honestly just don’t want to, and so they get placed somewhere in some sort of home. So thankfully, I had my family. I have a great group of friends, a great group of buddies from college who have all rallied around me, and we’re all still incredibly close. People always say if you’re lucky, you’ll end up with one or two friends from high school that you keep throughout your life. I have about 10 or 12 from high school that have all stuck around, and we still get together, all of us twice a year. We call it the spring series and the fall series. This last one we all did, we dressed up X-Men, so I did a-
Lex Fridman
Nice.
Nice.
Noland Arbaugh
… Professor Xavier, and it was freaking awesome. It was so good. So yeah, I have such a great support system around me, and so being a quadriplegic isn’t that bad. I get waited on all the time. People bring me food and drinks, and I get to sit around and watch as much TV and movies and anime as I want. I get to read as much as I want. It’s great.
… Professor Xavier, and it was freaking awesome. It was so good. So yeah, I have such a great support system around me, and so being a quadriplegic isn’t that bad. I get waited on all the time. People bring me food and drinks, and I get to sit around and watch as much TV and movies and anime as I want. I get to read as much as I want. It’s great.
Lex Fridman
It’s beautiful to see that you see the silver lining in all of this. Just going back, do you remember the moment when you first realized you were paralyzed from the neck down?
It’s beautiful to see that you see the silver lining in all of this. Just going back, do you remember the moment when you first realized you were paralyzed from the neck down?
Noland Arbaugh
Yep. I was face down in the water when I… whatever, something hit my head. I tried to get up and I realized I couldn’t move, and it just clicked. I’m like, “All right, I’m paralyzed, can’t move. What do I do? If I can’t get up? I can’t flip over, can’t do anything, then I’m going to drown eventually.” And I knew I couldn’t hold my breath forever, so I just held my breath and thought about it for maybe 10, 15 seconds. I’ve heard from other people that on lookers, I guess the two girls that pulled me out of the water were two of my best friends. They were lifeguards, and one of them said that it looked like my body was shaking in the water like I was trying to flip over and stuff, but I knew. I knew immediately, and I realized that that’s what my situation was from here on out.
Yep. I was face down in the water when I… whatever, something hit my head. I tried to get up and I realized I couldn’t move, and it just clicked. I’m like, “All right, I’m paralyzed, can’t move. What do I do? If I can’t get up? I can’t flip over, can’t do anything, then I’m going to drown eventually.” And I knew I couldn’t hold my breath forever, so I just held my breath and thought about it for maybe 10, 15 seconds. I’ve heard from other people that on lookers, I guess the two girls that pulled me out of the water were two of my best friends. They were lifeguards, and one of them said that it looked like my body was shaking in the water like I was trying to flip over and stuff, but I knew. I knew immediately, and I realized that that’s what my situation was from here on out.
Maybe if I got to the hospital, they’d be able to do something.When I was in the hospital right before surgery, I was trying to calm one of my friends down. I had brought her with me from college to camp, and she was just bawling over me, and I was like, “Hey, it’s going to be fine. Don’t worry.” I was cracking some jokes to try to lighten the mood. The nurse had called my mom, and I was like, “Don’t tell my mom. She’s just going to be stressed out. Call her after I’m out of surgery ’cause at least she’ll have some answers then, whether I live or not, really.” And I didn’t want her to be stressed through the whole thing, but I knew.
And then when I first woke up after surgery, I was super drugged up. They had me on fentanyl three ways, which was awesome. I don’t recommend it, but I saw some crazy stuff on that fentanyl, and it was still the best I’ve ever felt on drugs, medication, sorry, on medication. I remember the first time I saw my mom in the hospital, I was just bawling. I had ventilator in. I couldn’t talk or anything, and I just started crying because it was more like seeing her… The whole situation obviously was pretty rough, but it was just seeing her face for the first time was pretty hard. But yeah, I never had a moment of, “Man, I’m paralyzed. This sucks. I don’t want to be around anymore.” It was always just, “I hate that I have to do this, but sitting here and wallowing isn’t going to help.”
Lex Fridman
So immediate acceptance.
So immediate acceptance.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Has there been low points along the way?
Has there been low points along the way?
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, yeah, sure. There are days when I don’t really feel like doing anything. Not so much anymore. Not for the last couple of years I don’t really feel that way. I’ve more so just wanted to try to do anything possible to make my life better at this point. But at the beginning, there were some ups and downs. There were some really hard things to adjust to. First off, just the first couple months, the amount of pain I was in was really, really hard. I remember screaming at the top of my lungs in the hospital because I thought my legs were on fire, and obviously I can’t feel anything, but it’s all nerve pain. And so that was a really hard night. I asked them to give me as much pain meds as possible, but they’re like, “You’ve had as much as you can have, so just deal with it. Go to a happy place,” sort of thing. So that was a pretty low point.
Yeah, yeah, sure. There are days when I don’t really feel like doing anything. Not so much anymore. Not for the last couple of years I don’t really feel that way. I’ve more so just wanted to try to do anything possible to make my life better at this point. But at the beginning, there were some ups and downs. There were some really hard things to adjust to. First off, just the first couple months, the amount of pain I was in was really, really hard. I remember screaming at the top of my lungs in the hospital because I thought my legs were on fire, and obviously I can’t feel anything, but it’s all nerve pain. And so that was a really hard night. I asked them to give me as much pain meds as possible, but they’re like, “You’ve had as much as you can have, so just deal with it. Go to a happy place,” sort of thing. So that was a pretty low point.
And then every now and again, it’s hard realizing things that I wanted to do in my life that I won’t be able to do anymore. I always wanted to be a husband and father, and I just don’t think that I could do it now as a quadriplegic. Maybe it’s possible, but I’m not sure I would ever put someone I love through that, having to take care of me and stuff. Not being able to go out and play sports, I was a huge athlete growing up, so that was pretty hard. Little things too, when I realized I can’t do them anymore. There’s something really special about being able to hold a book and smell a book, the feel, the texture, the smell as you turn the pages, I just love it and I can’t do it anymore, and it’s little things like that.
The two-year mark was pretty rough. Two years is when they say you will get back basically as much as you’re ever going to get back as far as movement and sensation goes. And so for the first two years, that was the only thing on my mind was try as much as I can to move my fingers, my hands, my feet, everything possible to try to get sensation and movement back. And then when the two-year mark hit, so June 30, 2018, I was really sad that that’s where I was, and then just randomly here and there, but I was never depressed for long periods of time. Just it never seemed worthwhile to me.
Lex Fridman
What gave you strength?
What gave you strength?
Noland Arbaugh
My faith. My faith in God was a big one. My understanding that it was all for purpose, and even if that purpose wasn’t anything involving Neuralink, even if that purpose was… There’s a story in the Bible about Job, and I think it’s a really, really popular story about how Job has all of these terrible things happen to him, and he praises God throughout the whole situation. I thought, and I think a lot of people think for most of their lives that they are Job, that they’re the ones going through something terrible, and they just need to praise God through the whole thing and everything will work out.
My faith. My faith in God was a big one. My understanding that it was all for purpose, and even if that purpose wasn’t anything involving Neuralink, even if that purpose was… There’s a story in the Bible about Job, and I think it’s a really, really popular story about how Job has all of these terrible things happen to him, and he praises God throughout the whole situation. I thought, and I think a lot of people think for most of their lives that they are Job, that they’re the ones going through something terrible, and they just need to praise God through the whole thing and everything will work out.
At some point after my accident, I realized that I might not be Job, that I might be one of his children that gets killed or kidnapped or taken from him. And so it’s about terrible things that happen to those around you who you love. So maybe in this case, my mom would be Job and she has to get through something extraordinarily hard, and I just need to try and make it as best as possible for her because she’s the one that’s really going through this massive trial.
Noland Arbaugh
… she’s the one that’s really going through this massive trial and that gave me a lot of strength, and obviously my family. My family and my friends, they give me all the strength that I need on a day-to-day basis. So it makes things a lot easier having that great support system around me.
… she’s the one that’s really going through this massive trial and that gave me a lot of strength, and obviously my family. My family and my friends, they give me all the strength that I need on a day-to-day basis. So it makes things a lot easier having that great support system around me.
Lex Fridman
From everything I’ve seen of you online, your streams and the way you are today, I really admire, let’s say your unwavering positive outlook on life. Has that always been this way?
From everything I’ve seen of you online, your streams and the way you are today, I really admire, let’s say your unwavering positive outlook on life. Has that always been this way?
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I’ve just always thought I could do anything I ever wanted to do. There was never anything too big. Whatever I set my mind to, I felt like I could do it. I didn’t want to do a lot. I wanted to travel around and be sort of like a gypsy and go work odd jobs. I had this dream of traveling around Europe and being like, I don’t know, a shepherd in Wales or Ireland, and then going and being a fisherman in Italy, doing all of these things for a year. It’s such cliche things, but I just thought it would be so much fun to go and travel and do different things.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I’ve just always thought I could do anything I ever wanted to do. There was never anything too big. Whatever I set my mind to, I felt like I could do it. I didn’t want to do a lot. I wanted to travel around and be sort of like a gypsy and go work odd jobs. I had this dream of traveling around Europe and being like, I don’t know, a shepherd in Wales or Ireland, and then going and being a fisherman in Italy, doing all of these things for a year. It’s such cliche things, but I just thought it would be so much fun to go and travel and do different things.
And so I’ve always just seen the best in people around me too, and I’ve always tried to be good to people. And growing up with my mom too, she’s like the most positive energetic person in the world, and we’re all just people people. I just get along great with people. I really enjoy meeting new people, and so I just wanted to do everything. This is kind of just how I’ve been.
Lex Fridman
It’s just great to see that cynicism didn’t take over given everything you’ve been through.
It’s just great to see that cynicism didn’t take over given everything you’ve been through.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Was that a deliberate choice you made, that you’re not going to let this keep you down?
Was that a deliberate choice you made, that you’re not going to let this keep you down?
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, a bit. Also, it’s just kind of how I am. I just, like I said, I roll with the punches with everything. I always used to tell people I don’t stress about things much, and whenever I’d see people getting stressed, I would just say, “It’s not hard just don’t stress about it and that’s all you need to do. And they’re like, “That’s not how that works.” I’m like, “It works for me. Just don’t stress and everything will be fine. Everything will work out.” Obviously not everything always goes well, and it’s not like it all works out for the best all the time, but I just don’t think stress has had any place in my life since I was a kid.
Yeah, a bit. Also, it’s just kind of how I am. I just, like I said, I roll with the punches with everything. I always used to tell people I don’t stress about things much, and whenever I’d see people getting stressed, I would just say, “It’s not hard just don’t stress about it and that’s all you need to do. And they’re like, “That’s not how that works.” I’m like, “It works for me. Just don’t stress and everything will be fine. Everything will work out.” Obviously not everything always goes well, and it’s not like it all works out for the best all the time, but I just don’t think stress has had any place in my life since I was a kid.
First Neuralink human participant
Lex Fridman
What was the experience like of you being selected to be the first human being to have a Neuralink device implanted in your brain? Were you scared? Excited?
What was the experience like of you being selected to be the first human being to have a Neuralink device implanted in your brain? Were you scared? Excited?
Noland Arbaugh
No, no. It was cool. I was never afraid of it. I had to think through a lot. Should I do this? Be the first person? I could wait until number two or three and get a better version of the Neuralink. The first one might not work. Maybe it’s actually going to kind of suck. It’s going to be the worst version ever in a person, so why would I do the first one? I’ve already kind of been selected? I could just tell them, “Okay, find someone else, and then I’ll do number two or three.” I’m sure they would let me, they’re looking for a few people anyways, but ultimately I was like, I don’t know? There’s something about being the first one to do something. It’s pretty cool. I always thought that if I had the chance that I would like to do something for the first time, this seemed like a pretty good opportunity. And I was never scared.
No, no. It was cool. I was never afraid of it. I had to think through a lot. Should I do this? Be the first person? I could wait until number two or three and get a better version of the Neuralink. The first one might not work. Maybe it’s actually going to kind of suck. It’s going to be the worst version ever in a person, so why would I do the first one? I’ve already kind of been selected? I could just tell them, “Okay, find someone else, and then I’ll do number two or three.” I’m sure they would let me, they’re looking for a few people anyways, but ultimately I was like, I don’t know? There’s something about being the first one to do something. It’s pretty cool. I always thought that if I had the chance that I would like to do something for the first time, this seemed like a pretty good opportunity. And I was never scared.
I think my faith had a huge part in that. I always felt like God was preparing me for something. I almost wish it wasn’t this, because I had many conversations with God about not wanting to do any of this as a quadriplegic. I told Him, “I’ll go out and talk to people. I’ll go out and travel the world and talk to stadiums, thousands of people, give my testimony. I’ll do all of it, but heal me first. Don’t make me do all of this in a chair. That sucks.” And I guess He won that argument. I didn’t really have much of a choice. I always felt like there was something going on. And to see how, I guess easily I made it through the interview process and how quickly everything happened, how the stars sort of aligned with all of this. It just told me as the surgery was getting closer, it just told me that it was all meant to happen.
It was all meant to be, and so I shouldn’t be afraid of anything that’s to come. And so I wasn’t. I kept telling myself like, “You say that now, but as soon as the surgery comes, you’re probably going to be freaking out. You’re about to have brain surgery.” And brain surgery is a big deal for a lot of people, but it’s an even bigger deal for me. It’s all I have left. The amount of times I’ve been like, “Thank You, God, that you didn’t take my brain and my personality and my ability to think, my love of learning, my character, everything. Thank You so much. As long as You left me that, then I think I can get by.” And I was about to let people go root around in there like, “Hey, we’re going to go put some stuff in your brain. Hopefully it works out.” And so it was something that gave me pause, but like I said, how smoothly everything went.
I never expected for a second that anything would go wrong. Plus the more people I met on the Barrow side and on the Neuralink side, they’re just the most impressive people in the world. I can’t speak enough to how much I trust these people with my life and how impressed I am with all of them. And to see the excitement on their faces, to walk into a room and, roll into a room and see all of these people looking at me like, “We’re so excited. We’ve been working so hard on this and it’s finally happening.” It’s super infectious and it just makes me want to do it even more. And to help them achieve their dreams, I don’t know, it’s so rewarding and I’m so happy for all of them, honestly.
Day of surgery
Lex Fridman
What was the day of surgery like? When did you wake up? What’d you feel? Minute-by-minute. Were you freaking out?
What was the day of surgery like? When did you wake up? What’d you feel? Minute-by-minute. Were you freaking out?
Noland Arbaugh
No, no. I thought I was going to, but as surgery approached the night before, the morning of, I was just excited. I was like, “Let’s make this happen.” I think I said that, something like that to Elon on the phone. Beforehand we were FaceTiming, and I was like, “Let’s rock and roll.” And he’s like, “Let’s do it.” I don’t know. I wasn’t scared. So we woke up. I think we had to be at the hospital at 5:30 AM. I think surgery was at 7:00 AM So we woke up pretty early. I’m not sure much of us slept that night. Got to the hospital 5:30, went through all the pre-op stuff. Everyone was super nice. Elon was supposed to be there in the morning, but something went wrong with his plane, so we ended up FaceTiming. That was cool. I had one of the greatest one-liners of my life after that phone call. Hung up with him. There were 20 people around me and I was like, “I just hope he wasn’t too starstruck talking to me.”
No, no. I thought I was going to, but as surgery approached the night before, the morning of, I was just excited. I was like, “Let’s make this happen.” I think I said that, something like that to Elon on the phone. Beforehand we were FaceTiming, and I was like, “Let’s rock and roll.” And he’s like, “Let’s do it.” I don’t know. I wasn’t scared. So we woke up. I think we had to be at the hospital at 5:30 AM. I think surgery was at 7:00 AM So we woke up pretty early. I’m not sure much of us slept that night. Got to the hospital 5:30, went through all the pre-op stuff. Everyone was super nice. Elon was supposed to be there in the morning, but something went wrong with his plane, so we ended up FaceTiming. That was cool. I had one of the greatest one-liners of my life after that phone call. Hung up with him. There were 20 people around me and I was like, “I just hope he wasn’t too starstruck talking to me.”
Lex Fridman
Nice.
Nice.
Noland Arbaugh
And yeah, it was good.
And yeah, it was good.
Lex Fridman
Well done. Well done. Did you write that ahead of time it just came to you?
Well done. Well done. Did you write that ahead of time it just came to you?
Noland Arbaugh
No. No, it just came to me. I was like, “This seems right.” Went into surgery. I asked if I could pray right beforehand, so I prayed over the room. I asked God if He would be with my mom in case anything happened to me and just to calm her nerves out there. Woke up, played a bit of a prank on my mom. I don’t know if you’ve heard about it?
No. No, it just came to me. I was like, “This seems right.” Went into surgery. I asked if I could pray right beforehand, so I prayed over the room. I asked God if He would be with my mom in case anything happened to me and just to calm her nerves out there. Woke up, played a bit of a prank on my mom. I don’t know if you’ve heard about it?
Lex Fridman
Yeah, I read about it.
Yeah, I read about it.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, she was not happy.
Yeah, she was not happy.
Lex Fridman
Can you take me through the prank?
Can you take me through the prank?
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah. This is something-
Yeah. This is something-
Lex Fridman
Do you regret doing that now?
Do you regret doing that now?
Noland Arbaugh
… No, no, not one bit. It was something I had talked about ahead of time with my buddy Bane. I was like, “I would really like to play a prank on my mom.” Very specifically, my mom. She’s very gullible. I think she had knee surgery once even, and after she came out of knee surgery, she was super groggy. She’s like, “I can’t feel my legs.” And my dad looked at her. He was like, “You don’t have any legs. They had to amputate both your legs.” And we just do very mean things to her all the time. I’m so surprised that she still loves us.
… No, no, not one bit. It was something I had talked about ahead of time with my buddy Bane. I was like, “I would really like to play a prank on my mom.” Very specifically, my mom. She’s very gullible. I think she had knee surgery once even, and after she came out of knee surgery, she was super groggy. She’s like, “I can’t feel my legs.” And my dad looked at her. He was like, “You don’t have any legs. They had to amputate both your legs.” And we just do very mean things to her all the time. I’m so surprised that she still loves us.
But right after surgery, I was really worried that I was going to be too groggy, not all there. I had had anesthesia once before and it messed me up. I could not function for a while afterwards. And I said a lot of things that… I was really worried that I was going to start, I don’t know, dropping some bombs and I wouldn’t even know. I wouldn’t remember. So I was like, “Please God, don’t let that happen, and please let me be there enough to do this to my mom.”
And so she walked in after surgery. It was the first time they had been able to see me after surgery, and she just looked at me. She said, “Hi, how are you? How are you doing? How do you feel?” And I looked at her and this very, I think the anesthesia helped, very groggy, sort of confused look on my face. It’s like, “Who are you?” And she just started looking around the room at the surgeons, at the doctors like, “What did you do to my son? You need to fix this right now.” Tears started streaming. I saw how much she was freaking out. I was like, “I can’t let this go on.” And so I was like, “Mom, mom, I’m fine. It’s all right.” And still, she was not happy about it. She still says she’s going to get me back someday, but I mean, I don’t know. I don’t know what that’s going to look like.
Lex Fridman
It’s a lifelong battle, man.
It’s a lifelong battle, man.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, but it was good.
Yeah, but it was good.
Lex Fridman
In some sense it was a demonstration that you still got… Still had a sense of humor.
In some sense it was a demonstration that you still got… Still had a sense of humor.
Noland Arbaugh
That’s all I wanted it to be. That’s all I wanted it to be. And I knew that doing something super mean to her like that would show her.
That’s all I wanted it to be. That’s all I wanted it to be. And I knew that doing something super mean to her like that would show her.
Lex Fridman
To show that you’re still there, that you love her.
To show that you’re still there, that you love her.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Lex Fridman
It’s a dark way to do it, but I love it.
It’s a dark way to do it, but I love it.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
What was the first time you were able to feel that you can use the Neuralink device to affect the world around you?
What was the first time you were able to feel that you can use the Neuralink device to affect the world around you?
Noland Arbaugh
The first little taste I got of it was actually not too long after surgery. Some of the Neuralink team had brought in a little iPad, a little tablet screen, and they had put up eight different channels that were recording some of my neuron spikes and they put it in front of me. They’re like, “This is real time your brain firing.” I was like, “That’s super cool.” My first thought was, “I mean, if they’re firing now, let’s see if I can affect them in some way.”
The first little taste I got of it was actually not too long after surgery. Some of the Neuralink team had brought in a little iPad, a little tablet screen, and they had put up eight different channels that were recording some of my neuron spikes and they put it in front of me. They’re like, “This is real time your brain firing.” I was like, “That’s super cool.” My first thought was, “I mean, if they’re firing now, let’s see if I can affect them in some way.”
So I started trying to wiggle my fingers and I just started scanning through the channels, and one of the things I was doing was moving my index finger up and down, and I just saw this yellow spike on top row, third box over or something. I saw this yellow spike every time I did it, and I was like, “Oh, that’s cool.” And everyone around me was just like, “What are you seeing?” I was like, “Look at this one. Look at this top row, third box over this yellow spike. That’s me right there, there, there.” And everyone was freaking out. They started clapping. I was like, “That’s super unnecessary.” This is what’s supposed to happen, right?
Lex Fridman
So you’re imagining yourself moving each individual finger one at a time, and then seeing that you can notice something. And then when you did the index finger, you’re like, “Oh, cool.”
So you’re imagining yourself moving each individual finger one at a time, and then seeing that you can notice something. And then when you did the index finger, you’re like, “Oh, cool.”
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, I was wiggling all of my fingers to see if anything would happen. There was a lot of other things going on, but that big yellow spike was the one that stood out to me. I’m sure that if I would’ve stared at it long enough, I could have mapped out maybe a hundred different things. But the big yellow spike was the one that I noticed.
Yeah, I was wiggling all of my fingers to see if anything would happen. There was a lot of other things going on, but that big yellow spike was the one that stood out to me. I’m sure that if I would’ve stared at it long enough, I could have mapped out maybe a hundred different things. But the big yellow spike was the one that I noticed.
Lex Fridman
Maybe you could speak to what it’s like to wiggle your fingers, to imagine the cognitive effort required to wiggle your index finger, for example. How easy is that to do?
Maybe you could speak to what it’s like to wiggle your fingers, to imagine the cognitive effort required to wiggle your index finger, for example. How easy is that to do?
Noland Arbaugh
Pretty easy for me. It’s something that at the very beginning, after my accident, they told me to try and move my body as much as possible. Even if you can’t, just keep trying because that’s going to create new neural pathways or pathways in my spinal cord to reconnect these things to hopefully regain some movement someday.
Pretty easy for me. It’s something that at the very beginning, after my accident, they told me to try and move my body as much as possible. Even if you can’t, just keep trying because that’s going to create new neural pathways or pathways in my spinal cord to reconnect these things to hopefully regain some movement someday.
Lex Fridman
That’s fascinating.
That’s fascinating.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, I know. It’s bizarre.
Yeah, I know. It’s bizarre.
Lex Fridman
That’s part of the recovery process is to keep trying to move your body.
That’s part of the recovery process is to keep trying to move your body.
Noland Arbaugh
Yep. Every day as much as you can.
Yep. Every day as much as you can.
Lex Fridman
And the nervous system does its thing. It starts reconnecting.
And the nervous system does its thing. It starts reconnecting.
Noland Arbaugh
It’ll start reconnecting for some people, some people it never works. Some people they’ll do it. For me, I got some bicep control back, and that’s about it. If I try enough, I can wiggle some of my fingers, not on command. It’s more like if I try to move, say my right pinky, and I just keep trying to move it, after a few seconds it’ll wiggle. So I know there’s stuff there. I know, and that happens with a few different of my fingers and stuff. But yeah, that’s what they tell you to do. One of the people at the time when I was in the hospital came in and told me for one guy who had recovered most of his control, what he thought about every day was actually walking, like the act of walking just over and over again. So I tried that for years. I tried just imagining walking, which is, it’s hard. It’s hard to imagine all of the steps that go into, well, taking a step. All of the things that have to move, all of the activations that have to happen along your leg in order for one step to occur.
It’ll start reconnecting for some people, some people it never works. Some people they’ll do it. For me, I got some bicep control back, and that’s about it. If I try enough, I can wiggle some of my fingers, not on command. It’s more like if I try to move, say my right pinky, and I just keep trying to move it, after a few seconds it’ll wiggle. So I know there’s stuff there. I know, and that happens with a few different of my fingers and stuff. But yeah, that’s what they tell you to do. One of the people at the time when I was in the hospital came in and told me for one guy who had recovered most of his control, what he thought about every day was actually walking, like the act of walking just over and over again. So I tried that for years. I tried just imagining walking, which is, it’s hard. It’s hard to imagine all of the steps that go into, well, taking a step. All of the things that have to move, all of the activations that have to happen along your leg in order for one step to occur.
Lex Fridman
But you’re not just imagining, you’re doing it, right?
But you’re not just imagining, you’re doing it, right?
Noland Arbaugh
I’m trying. Yeah. So it’s imagining over again what I had to do to take a step, because it’s not something any of us think about. We just, you want to walk and you take a step. You don’t think about all of the different things that are going on in your body. So I had to recreate that in my head as much as I could, and then I practice it over, and over, and over again.
I’m trying. Yeah. So it’s imagining over again what I had to do to take a step, because it’s not something any of us think about. We just, you want to walk and you take a step. You don’t think about all of the different things that are going on in your body. So I had to recreate that in my head as much as I could, and then I practice it over, and over, and over again.
Lex Fridman
So it’s not like a third person perspective, it’s a first person perspective. It’s not like you’re imagining yourself walking. You’re literally doing everything, all the same stuff as if you’re walking.
So it’s not like a third person perspective, it’s a first person perspective. It’s not like you’re imagining yourself walking. You’re literally doing everything, all the same stuff as if you’re walking.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, which was hard. It was hard at the beginning.
Yeah, which was hard. It was hard at the beginning.
Lex Fridman
Frustrating hard, or actually cognitively hard, which way?
Frustrating hard, or actually cognitively hard, which way?
Noland Arbaugh
It was both. There’s a scene in one of the Kill Bill movies, actually, oddly enough, where she is paralyzed, I don’t know, from a drug that was in her system. And then she finds some way to get into the back of a truck or something, and she stares at her toe and she says, “Move,” like move your big toe. And after a few seconds on screen, she does it. And she did that with every one of her body parts until she can move again. I did that for years, just stared at my body and said, “Move your index finger, move your big toe.” Sometimes vocalizing it out loud, sometimes just thinking it. I tried every different way to do this to try to get some movement back. And it’s hard because it actually is taxing, physically taxing on my body, which is something I would’ve never expected.
It was both. There’s a scene in one of the Kill Bill movies, actually, oddly enough, where she is paralyzed, I don’t know, from a drug that was in her system. And then she finds some way to get into the back of a truck or something, and she stares at her toe and she says, “Move,” like move your big toe. And after a few seconds on screen, she does it. And she did that with every one of her body parts until she can move again. I did that for years, just stared at my body and said, “Move your index finger, move your big toe.” Sometimes vocalizing it out loud, sometimes just thinking it. I tried every different way to do this to try to get some movement back. And it’s hard because it actually is taxing, physically taxing on my body, which is something I would’ve never expected.
It’s not like I’m moving, but it feels like there’s a buildup of, the only way I can describe it is there are signals that aren’t getting through from my brain down, because there’s that gap in my spinal cord, so brain down, and then from my hand back up to the brain. And so it feels like those signals get stuck in whatever body part that I’m trying to move, and they just build up, and build up, and build up until they burst. And then once they burst, I get this really weird sensation of everything dissipating back out to level, and then I do it again.
It’s also just a fatigue thing, like a muscle fatigue, but without actually moving your muscles. It’s very, very bizarre. And then if you try to stare at a body part or think about a body part and move for two, three, four, sometimes eight hours, it’s very taxing on your mind. It takes a lot of focus. It was a lot easier at the beginning because I wasn’t able to control a TV in my room or anything. I wasn’t able to control any of my environment. So for the first few years, a lot of what I was doing was staring at walls. And so, obviously I did a lot of thinking and I tried to move a lot just over, and over, and over again.
Lex Fridman
So you never gave up hope there?
So you never gave up hope there?
Noland Arbaugh
No.
No.
Lex Fridman
Just training hard [inaudible 07:18:38].
Just training hard [inaudible 07:18:38].
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah. And I still do it. I do it subconsciously, and I think that that helped a lot with things with Neuralink, honestly. It’s something that I talked about the other day at the All Hands that I did at Neuralink’s Austin facility.
Yeah. And I still do it. I do it subconsciously, and I think that that helped a lot with things with Neuralink, honestly. It’s something that I talked about the other day at the All Hands that I did at Neuralink’s Austin facility.
Lex Fridman
Welcome to Austin, by the way.
Welcome to Austin, by the way.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah. Hey, thanks man. I went to school-
Yeah. Hey, thanks man. I went to school-
Lex Fridman
Nice hat.
Nice hat.
Noland Arbaugh
… Hey, thanks. Thanks, man. The Gigafactory was super cool. I went to school at [inaudible 07:19:01], so I’ve been around before.
… Hey, thanks. Thanks, man. The Gigafactory was super cool. I went to school at [inaudible 07:19:01], so I’ve been around before.
Lex Fridman
So you should be saying welcome to me. Welcome to Texas, Lex.
So you should be saying welcome to me. Welcome to Texas, Lex.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
I get you.
I get you.
Noland Arbaugh
But yeah, I was talking about how a lot of what they’ve had me do, especially at the beginning, well, I still do it now, is body mapping. So there will be a visualization of a hand or an arm on the screen, and I have to do that motion, and that’s how they train the algorithm to understand what I’m trying to do. And so it made things very seamless for me I think.
But yeah, I was talking about how a lot of what they’ve had me do, especially at the beginning, well, I still do it now, is body mapping. So there will be a visualization of a hand or an arm on the screen, and I have to do that motion, and that’s how they train the algorithm to understand what I’m trying to do. And so it made things very seamless for me I think.
Lex Fridman
That’s really, really cool. So it’s amazing to know. I’ve learned a lot about the body mapping procedure with the interface and everything like that. It’s cool to know that you’ve been essentially training to be world-class at that task.
That’s really, really cool. So it’s amazing to know. I’ve learned a lot about the body mapping procedure with the interface and everything like that. It’s cool to know that you’ve been essentially training to be world-class at that task.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know if other quadriplegics, other paralyzed people give up. I hope they don’t. I hope they keep trying, because I’ve heard other paralyzed people say, “Don’t ever stop.” They tell you two years, but you just never know. The human body’s capable of amazing things. So I’ve heard other people say, “Don’t give up.” I think one girl had spoken to me through some family members and said that she had been paralyzed for 18 years, and she’d been trying to wiggle her index finger for all that time, and she finally got it back 18 years later. So I know that it’s possible, and I’ll never give up doing it. I do it when I’m lying down watching TV. I’ll find myself doing it just almost on its own. It’s just something I’ve gotten so used to doing that I don’t know. I don’t think I’ll ever stop.
Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know if other quadriplegics, other paralyzed people give up. I hope they don’t. I hope they keep trying, because I’ve heard other paralyzed people say, “Don’t ever stop.” They tell you two years, but you just never know. The human body’s capable of amazing things. So I’ve heard other people say, “Don’t give up.” I think one girl had spoken to me through some family members and said that she had been paralyzed for 18 years, and she’d been trying to wiggle her index finger for all that time, and she finally got it back 18 years later. So I know that it’s possible, and I’ll never give up doing it. I do it when I’m lying down watching TV. I’ll find myself doing it just almost on its own. It’s just something I’ve gotten so used to doing that I don’t know. I don’t think I’ll ever stop.
Lex Fridman
That’s really awesome to hear. I think it’s one of those things that can really pay off in the long term. It is training. You’re not visibly seeing the results of that training at the moment, but there’s that Olympic level nervous system getting ready for something.
That’s really awesome to hear. I think it’s one of those things that can really pay off in the long term. It is training. You’re not visibly seeing the results of that training at the moment, but there’s that Olympic level nervous system getting ready for something.
Noland Arbaugh
Which honestly was something that I think Neuralink gave me that I can’t thank them enough for. I can’t show my appreciation for it enough, was being able to visually see that what I’m doing is actually having some effect. It’s a huge part of the reason why I know now that I’m going to keep doing it forever. Because before Neuralink, I was doing it every day and I was just assuming that things were happening. It’s not like I knew. I wasn’t getting back any mobility or sensation or anything. So I could have been running up against a brick wall for all I knew. And with Neuralink, I get to see all the signals happening real time, and I get to see that what I’m doing can actually be mapped. When we started doing click calibrations and stuff, when I go to click my index finger for a left click, that it actually recognizes that. It changed how I think about what’s possible with retraining my body to move. And so yeah, I’ll never give up now.
Which honestly was something that I think Neuralink gave me that I can’t thank them enough for. I can’t show my appreciation for it enough, was being able to visually see that what I’m doing is actually having some effect. It’s a huge part of the reason why I know now that I’m going to keep doing it forever. Because before Neuralink, I was doing it every day and I was just assuming that things were happening. It’s not like I knew. I wasn’t getting back any mobility or sensation or anything. So I could have been running up against a brick wall for all I knew. And with Neuralink, I get to see all the signals happening real time, and I get to see that what I’m doing can actually be mapped. When we started doing click calibrations and stuff, when I go to click my index finger for a left click, that it actually recognizes that. It changed how I think about what’s possible with retraining my body to move. And so yeah, I’ll never give up now.
Lex Fridman
And also just the signal that there’s still a powerhouse of a brain there that’s like, and as the technology develops, that brain is, I mean, that’s the most important thing about the human body is the brain, and it can do a lot of the control. So what did it feel like when you first could wiggle the index finger and saw the environment respond? That little thing, whatever [inaudible 07:22:49] just being way too dramatic according to you?
And also just the signal that there’s still a powerhouse of a brain there that’s like, and as the technology develops, that brain is, I mean, that’s the most important thing about the human body is the brain, and it can do a lot of the control. So what did it feel like when you first could wiggle the index finger and saw the environment respond? That little thing, whatever [inaudible 07:22:49] just being way too dramatic according to you?
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, it was very cool. I mean, it was cool, but I keep telling this to people. It made sense to me. It made sense that there are signals still happening in my brain, and that as long as you had something near it that could measure those, that could record those, then you should be able to visualize it in some way. See it happen. And so that was not very surprising to me. I was just like, “Oh, cool. We found one, we found something that works.”
Yeah, it was very cool. I mean, it was cool, but I keep telling this to people. It made sense to me. It made sense that there are signals still happening in my brain, and that as long as you had something near it that could measure those, that could record those, then you should be able to visualize it in some way. See it happen. And so that was not very surprising to me. I was just like, “Oh, cool. We found one, we found something that works.”
It was cool to see that their technology worked and that everything that they had worked so hard for was going to pay off. But I hadn’t moved a cursor or anything at that point. I hadn’t interacted with a computer or anything at that point. So it just made sense. It was cool. I didn’t really know much about BCI at that point either, so I didn’t know what sort of step this was actually making. I didn’t know if this was a huge deal, or if this was just like, “Okay, this is, it’s cool that we got this far, but we’re actually hoping for something much better down the road.” It’s like, “Okay.” I just thought that they knew that it turned on. So I was like, “Cool, this is cool.”
Lex Fridman
Well, did you read up on the specs of the hardware you get installed, the number of threads, all this kind of stuff.
Well, did you read up on the specs of the hardware you get installed, the number of threads, all this kind of stuff.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, I knew all of that, but it’s all Greek to me. I was like, “Okay, 64 threads, 16 electrodes, 1,024 channels. Okay, that math checks out.”
Yeah, I knew all of that, but it’s all Greek to me. I was like, “Okay, 64 threads, 16 electrodes, 1,024 channels. Okay, that math checks out.”
Lex Fridman
Sounds right.
Sounds right.
Moving mouse with brain
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
When was the first time you were able to move a mouse cursor?
When was the first time you were able to move a mouse cursor?
Noland Arbaugh
I know it must have been within the first maybe week, a week or two weeks that I was able to first move the cursor. And again, it kind of made sense to me. It didn’t seem like that big of a deal. It was like, okay, well, how do I explain this? When everyone around you starts clapping for something that you’ve done, it’s easy to say, “Okay, I did something cool.”
I know it must have been within the first maybe week, a week or two weeks that I was able to first move the cursor. And again, it kind of made sense to me. It didn’t seem like that big of a deal. It was like, okay, well, how do I explain this? When everyone around you starts clapping for something that you’ve done, it’s easy to say, “Okay, I did something cool.”
That was impressive in some way. What exactly that meant, what it was hadn’t really set in for me. So again, I knew that me trying to move a body part and then that being mapped in some sort of machine learning algorithm to be able to identify my brain signals and then take that and give me cursor control, that all kind of made sense to me. I don’t know all the ins and outs of it, but I was like, “There are still signals in my brain firing. They just can’t get through because there’s a gap in my spinal cord, and so they can’t get all the way down and back up, but they’re still there.” So when I moved the cursor for the first time, I was like, “That’s cool, but I expected that that should happen.” It made sense to me. When I moved the cursor for the first time with just my mind, without physically trying to move. So I guess I can get into that just a little bit. The difference between attempted movement, and imagine movement.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, that’s a fascinating difference [inaudible 07:26:18] from one to the other.
Yeah, that’s a fascinating difference [inaudible 07:26:18] from one to the other.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So attempted movement is me physically trying to attempt to move, say my hand. I try to attempt to move my hand to the right, to the left, forward and back. And that’s all attempted. Attempt to lift my finger up and down, attempt to kick or something. I’m physically trying to do all of those things, even if you can’t see it. This would be me attempting to shrug my shoulders or something. That’s all attempted movement. That’s what I was doing for the first couple of weeks when they were going to give me cursor control. When I was doing body mapping, it was attempt to do this, attempt to do that. When Nir was telling me to imagine doing it, it kind of made sense to me, but it’s not something that people practice. If you started school as a child and they said, “Okay, write your name with this pencil,” and so you do that. Like, “Okay, now imagine writing your name with that pencil.”
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So attempted movement is me physically trying to attempt to move, say my hand. I try to attempt to move my hand to the right, to the left, forward and back. And that’s all attempted. Attempt to lift my finger up and down, attempt to kick or something. I’m physically trying to do all of those things, even if you can’t see it. This would be me attempting to shrug my shoulders or something. That’s all attempted movement. That’s what I was doing for the first couple of weeks when they were going to give me cursor control. When I was doing body mapping, it was attempt to do this, attempt to do that. When Nir was telling me to imagine doing it, it kind of made sense to me, but it’s not something that people practice. If you started school as a child and they said, “Okay, write your name with this pencil,” and so you do that. Like, “Okay, now imagine writing your name with that pencil.”
Kids would think, “Uh, I guess that kind of makes sense,” and they would do it. But that’s not something we’re taught, it’s all how to do things physically. We think about thought experiments and things, but that’s not a physical action of doing things. It’s more what you would do in certain situations. So imagine movement, it never really connected with me. I guess you could maybe describe it as a professional athlete swinging a baseball bat or swinging a golf club. Imagine what you’re supposed to do. But then you go right to that and physically do it. Then you get a bat in your hand, and then you do what you’ve been imagining.
And so I don’t have that connection. So telling me to imagine something versus attempting it, there wasn’t a lot that I could do there mentally. I just kind of had to accept what was going on and try. But the attempted moving thing, it all made sense to me. If I try to move, then there’s a signal being sent in my brain, and as long as they can pick that up, then they should be able to map it to what I’m trying to do. And so when I first moved the cursor like that, it was just like, “Yes, this should happen. I’m not surprised by that.”
Lex Fridman
But can you clarify, is there supposed to be a difference between imagine movement and attempted movement?
But can you clarify, is there supposed to be a difference between imagine movement and attempted movement?
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, just that in imagine movement, you’re not attempting to move at all. So it’s-
Yeah, just that in imagine movement, you’re not attempting to move at all. So it’s-
Lex Fridman
You’re visualizing what you’re doing.
You’re visualizing what you’re doing.
Noland Arbaugh
… Visualizing.
… Visualizing.
Lex Fridman
… And then theoretically, is that supposed to be a different part of the brain that lights up in those two different situations?
… And then theoretically, is that supposed to be a different part of the brain that lights up in those two different situations?
Bliss Chapman
Yeah, not necessarily. I think all these signals can still be represented in motor cortex, but the difference I think, has to do with the naturalness of imagining something versus-
Yeah, not necessarily. I think all these signals can still be represented in motor cortex, but the difference I think, has to do with the naturalness of imagining something versus-
Lex Fridman
Got it.
Got it.
Bliss Chapman
… attempting it. The fatigue of that over time.
… attempting it. The fatigue of that over time.
Lex Fridman
And by the way, on the mic is Bliss. So this is just different ways to prompt you to kind of get to the thing that you arrived at.
And by the way, on the mic is Bliss. So this is just different ways to prompt you to kind of get to the thing that you arrived at.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Lex Fridman
Attempted movement does sound like the right thing. Try.
Attempted movement does sound like the right thing. Try.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah. I mean, it makes sense to me.
Yeah. I mean, it makes sense to me.
Lex Fridman
Because imagine, for me, I would start visualizing, in my mind, visualizing. Attempted I would actually start trying to… I did combat sports my whole life, like wrestling. When I’m imagining a move, see, I’m moving my muscle.
Because imagine, for me, I would start visualizing, in my mind, visualizing. Attempted I would actually start trying to… I did combat sports my whole life, like wrestling. When I’m imagining a move, see, I’m moving my muscle.
Noland Arbaugh
Exactly.
Exactly.
Lex Fridman
There is a bit of an activation almost versus visualizing yourself, like a picture doing it.
There is a bit of an activation almost versus visualizing yourself, like a picture doing it.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah. It’s something that I feel like naturally anyone would do. If you try to tell someone to imagine doing something, they might close their eyes and then start physically doing it, but it just-
Yeah. It’s something that I feel like naturally anyone would do. If you try to tell someone to imagine doing something, they might close their eyes and then start physically doing it, but it just-
Lex Fridman
Just didn’t click.
Just didn’t click.
Noland Arbaugh
… Yeah, it’s hard. It was very hard at the beginning.
… Yeah, it’s hard. It was very hard at the beginning.
Lex Fridman
But attempted worked.
But attempted worked.
Noland Arbaugh
Attempted worked. It worked just like it should. Worked like a charm.
Attempted worked. It worked just like it should. Worked like a charm.
Bliss Chapman
Remember there was one Tuesday we were messing around and I think, I forget what swear word you used, but there’s a swear word that came out of your mouth when you figured out you could just do the direct cursor control.
Remember there was one Tuesday we were messing around and I think, I forget what swear word you used, but there’s a swear word that came out of your mouth when you figured out you could just do the direct cursor control.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, it blew my mind, no pun intended. Blew my mind when I first moved the cursor just with my thoughts and not attempting to move. It’s something that I found over the couple of weeks building up to that, that as I get better cursor controls, the model gets better, then it gets easier for me to… I don’t have to attempt as much to move it. And part of that is something that I’d even talked with them about when I was watching the signals of my brain one day. I was watching when I attempted to move to the right and I watched the screen as I saw the spikes. I was seeing the spike, the signal was being sent before I was actually attempting to move. I imagine just because when you go to say, move your hand or any body part, that signal gets sent before you’re actually moving, has to make it all the way down and back up before you actually do any sort of movement.
Yeah, it blew my mind, no pun intended. Blew my mind when I first moved the cursor just with my thoughts and not attempting to move. It’s something that I found over the couple of weeks building up to that, that as I get better cursor controls, the model gets better, then it gets easier for me to… I don’t have to attempt as much to move it. And part of that is something that I’d even talked with them about when I was watching the signals of my brain one day. I was watching when I attempted to move to the right and I watched the screen as I saw the spikes. I was seeing the spike, the signal was being sent before I was actually attempting to move. I imagine just because when you go to say, move your hand or any body part, that signal gets sent before you’re actually moving, has to make it all the way down and back up before you actually do any sort of movement.
So there’s a delay there. And I noticed that there was something going on in my brain before I was actually attempting to move that my brain was anticipating what I wanted to do, and that all started sort of, I don’t know, percolating in my brain. It was just there always in the back like, “That’s so weird that it could do that. It kind of makes sense, but I wonder what that means as far as using the Neuralink.”
And then as I was playing around with the attempted movement and playing around with the cursor, and I saw that as the cursor control got better, that it was anticipating my movements and what I wanted it to do, like cursor movements, what I wanted it to do a bit better and a bit better. And then one day I just randomly, as I was playing Webgrid, I looked at a target before I had started attempting to move, I was just trying to get over, train my eyes to start looking ahead, like, “Okay, this is the target I’m on, but if I look over here to this target, I know I can maybe be a bit quicker getting there.”
And I looked over and the cursor just shot over. It was wild. I had to take a step back. I was like, “This should not be happening.” All day I was just smiling. I was so giddy. I was like, “Guys, do you know that this works? I can just think it and it happens.” Which they’d all been saying this entire time like, “I can’t believe you’re doing all this with your mind.” I’m like, “Yeah, but is it really with my mind. I’m attempting to move and it’s just picking that up so it doesn’t feel like it’s with my mind.” But when I moved it for the first time like that, it was, oh man. It made me think that this technology, that what I’m doing is actually way, way more impressive than I ever thought. It was way cooler than I ever thought, and it just opened up a whole new world of possibilities of what could possibly happen with this technology and what I might be able to be capable of with it.
Lex Fridman
Because you had felt for the first time like this was digital telepathy. You’re controlling a digital device with your mind.
Because you had felt for the first time like this was digital telepathy. You’re controlling a digital device with your mind.
Noland Arbaugh
Yep.
Yep.
Lex Fridman
I mean, that’s a real moment of discovery. That’s really cool. You’ve discovered something. I’ve seen scientists talk about a big aha moment, like Nobel Prize winning. They’ll have this like, “Holy crap.” Like, “Whoa.”
I mean, that’s a real moment of discovery. That’s really cool. You’ve discovered something. I’ve seen scientists talk about a big aha moment, like Nobel Prize winning. They’ll have this like, “Holy crap.” Like, “Whoa.”
Noland Arbaugh
That’s what it felt like. I felt like I had discovered something, but for me, maybe not necessarily for the world-at-large or this field-at-large, it just felt like an aha moment for me. Like, “Oh, this works.” Obviously it works. And so that’s what I do all the time now. I kind of intermix the attempted movement and imagine movement. I do it all together because I’ve found that…
That’s what it felt like. I felt like I had discovered something, but for me, maybe not necessarily for the world-at-large or this field-at-large, it just felt like an aha moment for me. Like, “Oh, this works.” Obviously it works. And so that’s what I do all the time now. I kind of intermix the attempted movement and imagine movement. I do it all together because I’ve found that…
Noland Arbaugh
I do it all together because I’ve found that there is some interplay with it that maximizes efficiency with the cursor. So it’s not all one or the other. It’s not all just, I only use attempted or I only use imagined movements. It’s more I use them in parallel and I can do one or the other. I can just completely think about whatever I’m doing, but I don’t know, I like to play around with it. I also like to just experiment with these things. Every now and again, I’ll get this idea in my head, I wonder if this works and I’ll just start doing it, and then afterwards I’ll tell them, “By the way, I wasn’t doing that like you guys wanted me to. I thought of something and I wanted to try it and so I did. It seems like it works, so maybe we should explore that a little bit.”
I do it all together because I’ve found that there is some interplay with it that maximizes efficiency with the cursor. So it’s not all one or the other. It’s not all just, I only use attempted or I only use imagined movements. It’s more I use them in parallel and I can do one or the other. I can just completely think about whatever I’m doing, but I don’t know, I like to play around with it. I also like to just experiment with these things. Every now and again, I’ll get this idea in my head, I wonder if this works and I’ll just start doing it, and then afterwards I’ll tell them, “By the way, I wasn’t doing that like you guys wanted me to. I thought of something and I wanted to try it and so I did. It seems like it works, so maybe we should explore that a little bit.”
Lex Fridman
So I think that discovery’s not just for you, at least from my perspective. That’s a discovery for everyone else who ever uses a Neuralink that this is possible. I don’t think that’s an obvious thing that this is even possible. It’s like I was saying to Bliss earlier, it’s like the four-minute mile. People thought it was impossible to run a mile in four minutes and once the first person did it, then everyone just started doing it. So just to show that it’s possible, that paves the way to anyone can now do it. That’s the thing that’s actually possible. You don’t need to do the attempted movement, you can just go direct.
So I think that discovery’s not just for you, at least from my perspective. That’s a discovery for everyone else who ever uses a Neuralink that this is possible. I don’t think that’s an obvious thing that this is even possible. It’s like I was saying to Bliss earlier, it’s like the four-minute mile. People thought it was impossible to run a mile in four minutes and once the first person did it, then everyone just started doing it. So just to show that it’s possible, that paves the way to anyone can now do it. That’s the thing that’s actually possible. You don’t need to do the attempted movement, you can just go direct.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Lex Fridman
That’s crazy.
That’s crazy.
Noland Arbaugh
It is crazy. It is crazy, yeah.
It is crazy. It is crazy, yeah.
Lex Fridman
For people who don’t know, can you explain how the Link app works? You have an amazing stream on the topic. Your first stream, I think, on X describing, the app. Can you just describe how it works?
For people who don’t know, can you explain how the Link app works? You have an amazing stream on the topic. Your first stream, I think, on X describing, the app. Can you just describe how it works?
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, so it’s just an app that Neuralink created to help me interact with the computer. So on the Link app there are a few different settings, and different modes, and things I can do on it. So there’s the body mapping, which we kind of touched on. There’s a calibration. Calibration is how I actually get cursor control, so calibrating what’s going on in my brain to translate that into cursor control. So it will pop out models. What they use, I think, is time. So it would be five minutes and calibration will give me so good of a model, and then if I’m in it for 10 minutes and 15 minutes, the models will progressively get better. And so the longer I’m in it, generally, the better the models will get.
Yeah, so it’s just an app that Neuralink created to help me interact with the computer. So on the Link app there are a few different settings, and different modes, and things I can do on it. So there’s the body mapping, which we kind of touched on. There’s a calibration. Calibration is how I actually get cursor control, so calibrating what’s going on in my brain to translate that into cursor control. So it will pop out models. What they use, I think, is time. So it would be five minutes and calibration will give me so good of a model, and then if I’m in it for 10 minutes and 15 minutes, the models will progressively get better. And so the longer I’m in it, generally, the better the models will get.
Lex Fridman
That’s really cool because you often refer to the models. So the model’s the thing that’s constructed once you go through the calibration step.
That’s really cool because you often refer to the models. So the model’s the thing that’s constructed once you go through the calibration step.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
And then you also talked about sometimes you’ll play a really difficult game like Snake just to see how good the model is.
And then you also talked about sometimes you’ll play a really difficult game like Snake just to see how good the model is.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah. Yeah, so Snake is kind of like my litmus test for models. If I can control a snake decently well then I know I have a pretty good model. So yeah, the Link app has all of those. It has Webgrid in it now. It’s also how I connect to the computer just in general. So they’ve given me a lot of voice controls with it at this point. So I can say, “Connect,” or, “Implant disconnect,” and as long as I have that charger handy, then I can connect to it. So the charger is also how I connect to the Link app to connect to the computer. I have to have the implant charger over my head when I want to connect, to have it wake up, because the implant’s in hibernation mode always when I’m not using it. I think there’s a setting to wake it up every so long, so we could set it to half an hour, or five hours, or something, if I just want it to wake up periodically.
Yeah. Yeah, so Snake is kind of like my litmus test for models. If I can control a snake decently well then I know I have a pretty good model. So yeah, the Link app has all of those. It has Webgrid in it now. It’s also how I connect to the computer just in general. So they’ve given me a lot of voice controls with it at this point. So I can say, “Connect,” or, “Implant disconnect,” and as long as I have that charger handy, then I can connect to it. So the charger is also how I connect to the Link app to connect to the computer. I have to have the implant charger over my head when I want to connect, to have it wake up, because the implant’s in hibernation mode always when I’m not using it. I think there’s a setting to wake it up every so long, so we could set it to half an hour, or five hours, or something, if I just want it to wake up periodically.
So yeah, I’ll connect to the Link app and then go through all sorts of things, calibration for the day, maybe body mapping. I made them give me a little homework tab because I am very forgetful and I forget to do things a lot. So I have a lot of data collection things that they want me to do.
Lex Fridman
Is the body mapping part of the data collection or is that also part of the calibration?
Is the body mapping part of the data collection or is that also part of the calibration?
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, it is. It’s something that they want me to do daily, which I’ve been slacking on because I’ve been doing so much media and traveling so much. So I’ve been [inaudible 07:39:30]-
Yeah, it is. It’s something that they want me to do daily, which I’ve been slacking on because I’ve been doing so much media and traveling so much. So I’ve been [inaudible 07:39:30]-
Lex Fridman
You’ve gotten super famous.
You’ve gotten super famous.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, I’ve been a terrible first candidate for how much I’ve been slacking on my homework. But yeah, it’s just something that they want me to do every day to track how well the Neuralink is performing over time and to have something to give, I imagine, to give to the FDA to create all sorts of fancy charts and stuff, and show like, hey, this is what the Neuralink… This is how it’s performing day one, versus day 90, versus day 180, and things like that.
Yeah, I’ve been a terrible first candidate for how much I’ve been slacking on my homework. But yeah, it’s just something that they want me to do every day to track how well the Neuralink is performing over time and to have something to give, I imagine, to give to the FDA to create all sorts of fancy charts and stuff, and show like, hey, this is what the Neuralink… This is how it’s performing day one, versus day 90, versus day 180, and things like that.
Lex Fridman
What’s the calibration step like? Is it move left, move right?
What’s the calibration step like? Is it move left, move right?
Noland Arbaugh
It’s a bubble game. So there will be yellow bubbles that pop up on the screen. At first, it is open loop. So open loop, this is something that I still don’t fully understand, the open loop and closed loop thing.
It’s a bubble game. So there will be yellow bubbles that pop up on the screen. At first, it is open loop. So open loop, this is something that I still don’t fully understand, the open loop and closed loop thing.
Lex Fridman
The me and Bliss talked for a long time about the difference between the two on the technical side.
The me and Bliss talked for a long time about the difference between the two on the technical side.
Noland Arbaugh
Okay, yeah.
Okay, yeah.
Lex Fridman
So it’d be great to hear your-
So it’d be great to hear your-
Noland Arbaugh
Okay, so open-
Okay, so open-
Lex Fridman
… your side of the story.
… your side of the story.
Noland Arbaugh
Open loop is basically I have no control over the cursor. The cursor will be moving on its own across the screen and I am following, by intention, the cursor to different bubbles. And then the algorithm is training off of what the signals it’s getting are as I’m doing this. There are a couple of different ways that they’ve done it. They call it center-out targets. So there will be a bubble in the middle and then eight bubbles around that, and the cursor will go from the middle to one side. So say, middle to left, back to middle, to up, to middle, up, right, and they’ll do that all the way around the circle. And I will follow that cursor the whole time, and then it will train off of my intentions, what it is expecting my intentions to be throughout the whole process.
Open loop is basically I have no control over the cursor. The cursor will be moving on its own across the screen and I am following, by intention, the cursor to different bubbles. And then the algorithm is training off of what the signals it’s getting are as I’m doing this. There are a couple of different ways that they’ve done it. They call it center-out targets. So there will be a bubble in the middle and then eight bubbles around that, and the cursor will go from the middle to one side. So say, middle to left, back to middle, to up, to middle, up, right, and they’ll do that all the way around the circle. And I will follow that cursor the whole time, and then it will train off of my intentions, what it is expecting my intentions to be throughout the whole process.
Lex Fridman
Can you actually speak to, when you say follow-
Can you actually speak to, when you say follow-
Noland Arbaugh
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
… you don’t mean with your eyes, you mean with your intentions?
… you don’t mean with your eyes, you mean with your intentions?
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, so generally for calibration, I’m doing attempted movements because I think it works better. I think the better models, as I progress through calibration, make it easier to use imagined movements.
Yeah, so generally for calibration, I’m doing attempted movements because I think it works better. I think the better models, as I progress through calibration, make it easier to use imagined movements.
Lex Fridman
Wait. Wait, wait, wait. So calibrated on attempted movement will create a model that makes it really effective for you to then use the force.
Wait. Wait, wait, wait. So calibrated on attempted movement will create a model that makes it really effective for you to then use the force.
Noland Arbaugh
Yes. I’ve tried doing calibration with imagined movement and it just doesn’t work as well for some reason. So that was the center-out targets. There’s also one where a random target will pop up on the screen and it’s the same. I just move, I follow along wherever the cursor is, to that target all across the screen. I’ve tried those with imagined movement and for some reason the models just don’t, they don’t give as high level as quality when we get into closed loop. I haven’t played around with it a ton, so maybe the different ways that we’re doing calibration now might make it a bit better. But what I’ve found is there will be a point in calibration where I can use imagined movement. Before that point, it doesn’t really work.
Yes. I’ve tried doing calibration with imagined movement and it just doesn’t work as well for some reason. So that was the center-out targets. There’s also one where a random target will pop up on the screen and it’s the same. I just move, I follow along wherever the cursor is, to that target all across the screen. I’ve tried those with imagined movement and for some reason the models just don’t, they don’t give as high level as quality when we get into closed loop. I haven’t played around with it a ton, so maybe the different ways that we’re doing calibration now might make it a bit better. But what I’ve found is there will be a point in calibration where I can use imagined movement. Before that point, it doesn’t really work.
So if I do calibration for 45 minutes, the first 15 minutes, I can’t use imagined movement. It just doesn’t work for some reason. And after a certain point, I can just feel it, I can tell. It moves different. That’s the best way I can describe it. It’s almost as if it is anticipating what I am going to do again, before I go to do it. And so using attempted movement for 15 minutes, at some point, I can tell when I move my eyes to the next target that the cursor is starting to pick up. It’s starting to understand, it’s learning what I’m going to do.
Lex Fridman
So first of all, it’s really cool that, you are a true pioneer in all of this. You’re exploring how to do every aspect of this most effectively and there’s just, I imagine, so many lessons learned from this. So thank you for being a pioneer in all these kinds of different super technical ways. And it’s also cool to hear that there’s a different feeling to the experience when it’s calibrated in different ways because I imagine your brain is doing something different and that’s why there’s a different feeling to it. And then trying to find the words and the measurements to those feelings would be also interesting. But at the end of the day, you can also measure your actual performance, on whether it’s Snake or Webgrid, you could see what actually works well. And you’re saying, for the open loop calibration, the attempted movement works best for now.
So first of all, it’s really cool that, you are a true pioneer in all of this. You’re exploring how to do every aspect of this most effectively and there’s just, I imagine, so many lessons learned from this. So thank you for being a pioneer in all these kinds of different super technical ways. And it’s also cool to hear that there’s a different feeling to the experience when it’s calibrated in different ways because I imagine your brain is doing something different and that’s why there’s a different feeling to it. And then trying to find the words and the measurements to those feelings would be also interesting. But at the end of the day, you can also measure your actual performance, on whether it’s Snake or Webgrid, you could see what actually works well. And you’re saying, for the open loop calibration, the attempted movement works best for now.
Noland Arbaugh
Yep. Yep.
Yep. Yep.
Lex Fridman
So the open loop, you don’t get the feedback that you did something.
So the open loop, you don’t get the feedback that you did something.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah. I just-
Yeah. I just-
Lex Fridman
Is that frustrating? [inaudible 07:44:43]-
Is that frustrating? [inaudible 07:44:43]-
Noland Arbaugh
No, no, it makes sense to me. We’ve done it with a cursor and without a cursor in open loop. So sometimes it’s just, say for the center out, you’ll start calibration with a bubble lighting up and I push towards that bubble, and then when it’s pushed towards that bubble for, say, three seconds, a bubble will pop and then I come back to the middle. So I’m doing it all just by my intentions. That’s what it’s learning anyway. So it makes sense that as long as I follow what they want me to do, follow the yellow brick road, that it’ll all work out.
No, no, it makes sense to me. We’ve done it with a cursor and without a cursor in open loop. So sometimes it’s just, say for the center out, you’ll start calibration with a bubble lighting up and I push towards that bubble, and then when it’s pushed towards that bubble for, say, three seconds, a bubble will pop and then I come back to the middle. So I’m doing it all just by my intentions. That’s what it’s learning anyway. So it makes sense that as long as I follow what they want me to do, follow the yellow brick road, that it’ll all work out.
Lex Fridman
You’re full of great references. Is the bubble game fun?
You’re full of great references. Is the bubble game fun?
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, they always feel so bad making me do calibration like, oh, we’re about to do a 40-minute calibration. I’m like, “All right, do you guys want to do two of them?” I’m always asking to… Whatever they need, I’m more than happy to do. And it’s not bad. I get to lie there or sit in my chair and do these things with some great people. I get to have great conversations. I can give them feedback. I can talk about all sorts of things. I could throw something on, on my TV in the background, and split my attention between them. It’s not bad at all. I don’t mind it.
Yeah, they always feel so bad making me do calibration like, oh, we’re about to do a 40-minute calibration. I’m like, “All right, do you guys want to do two of them?” I’m always asking to… Whatever they need, I’m more than happy to do. And it’s not bad. I get to lie there or sit in my chair and do these things with some great people. I get to have great conversations. I can give them feedback. I can talk about all sorts of things. I could throw something on, on my TV in the background, and split my attention between them. It’s not bad at all. I don’t mind it.
Lex Fridman
Is there a score that you get?
Is there a score that you get?
Noland Arbaugh
No.
No.
Lex Fridman
Can you do better on a bubble game?
Can you do better on a bubble game?
Noland Arbaugh
No, I would love that.
No, I would love that.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, I would love a-
Yeah, I would love a-
Lex Fridman
Writing down suggestions from Noland.
Writing down suggestions from Noland.
Noland Arbaugh
That-
That-
Lex Fridman
Make it more fun, gamified.
Make it more fun, gamified.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, that’s one thing that I really, really enjoy about Webgrid is because I’m so competitive. The higher the BPS, the higher the score, I know the better I’m doing, and so if I… I think I’ve asked at one point, one of the guys, if he could give me some sort of numerical feedback for calibration. I would like to know what they’re looking at. Like, oh, we see this number while you’re doing calibration, and that means, at least on our end, that we think calibration is going well. And I would love that because I would like to know if what I’m doing is going well or not. But then they’ve also told me, yeah, not necessarily one to one. It doesn’t actually mean that calibration is going well in some ways. So it’s not like a hundred percent and they don’t want to skew what I’m experiencing or want me to change things based on that, if that number isn’t always accurate to how the model will turn out or the end result,. That’s at least what I got from it.
Yeah, that’s one thing that I really, really enjoy about Webgrid is because I’m so competitive. The higher the BPS, the higher the score, I know the better I’m doing, and so if I… I think I’ve asked at one point, one of the guys, if he could give me some sort of numerical feedback for calibration. I would like to know what they’re looking at. Like, oh, we see this number while you’re doing calibration, and that means, at least on our end, that we think calibration is going well. And I would love that because I would like to know if what I’m doing is going well or not. But then they’ve also told me, yeah, not necessarily one to one. It doesn’t actually mean that calibration is going well in some ways. So it’s not like a hundred percent and they don’t want to skew what I’m experiencing or want me to change things based on that, if that number isn’t always accurate to how the model will turn out or the end result,. That’s at least what I got from it.
One thing I have asked them, and something that I really enjoy striving for, is towards the end of calibration, there is a time between targets. And so I like to keep, at the end, that number as low as possible. So at the beginning it can be four or five, six seconds between me popping bubbles, but towards the end I like to keep it below 1.5 or if I could get it to one second between bubbles. Because in my mind, that translates really nicely to something like Webgrid, where I know if I can hit a target, one every second, that I’m doing real, real well.
Lex Fridman
There you go. That’s a way to get a score on the calibrations, like the speed. How quickly can you get from bubble to bubble?
There you go. That’s a way to get a score on the calibrations, like the speed. How quickly can you get from bubble to bubble?
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
So there’s the open loop and then it goes to the closed loop.
So there’s the open loop and then it goes to the closed loop.
Noland Arbaugh
Closed loop.
Closed loop.
Lex Fridman
And the closed loop can already start giving you a sense because you’re getting feedback of how good the model is.
And the closed loop can already start giving you a sense because you’re getting feedback of how good the model is.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah. Yeah. So closed loop is when I first get cursor control, and how they’ve described it to me, someone who does not understand this stuff, I am the dumbest person in the room every time I’m with any of those guys.
Yeah. Yeah. So closed loop is when I first get cursor control, and how they’ve described it to me, someone who does not understand this stuff, I am the dumbest person in the room every time I’m with any of those guys.
Lex Fridman
I love the humility. I appreciate it.
I love the humility. I appreciate it.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, is that I am closing the loop. So I am actually now the one that is finishing the loop of whatever this loop is. I don’t even know what the loop is. They’ve never told me. They just say there is a loop and at one point it’s open and I can’t control, and then I get control and it’s closed. So I’m finishing the loop.
Yeah, is that I am closing the loop. So I am actually now the one that is finishing the loop of whatever this loop is. I don’t even know what the loop is. They’ve never told me. They just say there is a loop and at one point it’s open and I can’t control, and then I get control and it’s closed. So I’m finishing the loop.
Lex Fridman
So how long the calibration usually take? You said 10, 15 minutes, [inaudible 07:48:52]-
So how long the calibration usually take? You said 10, 15 minutes, [inaudible 07:48:52]-
Noland Arbaugh
Well, yeah, they’re trying to get that number down pretty low. That’s what we’ve been working on a lot recently, is getting that down is low as possible. So that way, if this is something that people need to do on a daily basis or if some people need to do on a every-other-day basis or once a week, they don’t want people to be sitting in calibration for long periods of time. I think they’ve wanted to get it down seven minutes or below, at least where we’re at right now. It’d be nice if you never had to do calibration. So we’ll get there at some point, I’m sure, the more we learn about the brain, and I think that’s the dream. I think right now, for me to get really, really good models, I’m in calibration 40 or 45 minutes. And I don’t mind, like I said, they always feel really bad, but if it’s going to get me a model that can break these records on Webgrid, I’ll stay in it for flipping two hours.
Well, yeah, they’re trying to get that number down pretty low. That’s what we’ve been working on a lot recently, is getting that down is low as possible. So that way, if this is something that people need to do on a daily basis or if some people need to do on a every-other-day basis or once a week, they don’t want people to be sitting in calibration for long periods of time. I think they’ve wanted to get it down seven minutes or below, at least where we’re at right now. It’d be nice if you never had to do calibration. So we’ll get there at some point, I’m sure, the more we learn about the brain, and I think that’s the dream. I think right now, for me to get really, really good models, I’m in calibration 40 or 45 minutes. And I don’t mind, like I said, they always feel really bad, but if it’s going to get me a model that can break these records on Webgrid, I’ll stay in it for flipping two hours.
Webgrid
Lex Fridman
Let’s talk business. So Webgrid, I saw a presentation where Bliss said by March you selected 89,000 targets in Webgrid. Can you explain this game? What is Webgrid and what does it take to be a world-class performer in Webgrid, as you continue to break world records?
Let’s talk business. So Webgrid, I saw a presentation where Bliss said by March you selected 89,000 targets in Webgrid. Can you explain this game? What is Webgrid and what does it take to be a world-class performer in Webgrid, as you continue to break world records?
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
It’s like a gold medalist talk. Well, where do I begin?
It’s like a gold medalist talk. Well, where do I begin?
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, I’d like thank-
Yeah, I’d like thank-
Lex Fridman
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, exactly.
Noland Arbaugh
… everyone who’s helped me get here, my coaches, my parents, for driving me to practice every day at 5:00 in the morning. I like to thank God and just overall my dedication to my craft. [inaudible 07:50:29].
… everyone who’s helped me get here, my coaches, my parents, for driving me to practice every day at 5:00 in the morning. I like to thank God and just overall my dedication to my craft. [inaudible 07:50:29].
Lex Fridman
Yeah, the interviews with athletes, they’re always like that exact-
Yeah, the interviews with athletes, they’re always like that exact-
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
It’s that template.
It’s that template.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, so-
Yeah, so-
Lex Fridman
So Webgrid, is a-
So Webgrid, is a-
Noland Arbaugh
Webgrid is a-
Webgrid is a-
Lex Fridman
… grid of cells.
… grid of cells.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, it’s literally just a grid. They can make it as big or small as you can make a grid. A single box on that grid will light up and you go and click it. And it is a way for them to benchmark how good a BCI is. So it’s pretty straightforward. You just click targets.
Yeah, it’s literally just a grid. They can make it as big or small as you can make a grid. A single box on that grid will light up and you go and click it. And it is a way for them to benchmark how good a BCI is. So it’s pretty straightforward. You just click targets.
Lex Fridman
Only one blue cell appears and you’re supposed to move the mouse to there and click on it.
Only one blue cell appears and you’re supposed to move the mouse to there and click on it.
Noland Arbaugh
Yep. So I like playing on bigger grids because the bigger the grid, the more BPS, it’s bits per second, that you get every time you click one. So I’ll say I’ll play on a 35 by 35 grid, and then one of those little squares, a cell, you can call it, target, whatever, will light up. And you move the cursor there, and you click it, and then you do that forever.
Yep. So I like playing on bigger grids because the bigger the grid, the more BPS, it’s bits per second, that you get every time you click one. So I’ll say I’ll play on a 35 by 35 grid, and then one of those little squares, a cell, you can call it, target, whatever, will light up. And you move the cursor there, and you click it, and then you do that forever.
Lex Fridman
And you’ve been able to achieve, at first, eight bits per second, then you’ve recently broke that.
And you’ve been able to achieve, at first, eight bits per second, then you’ve recently broke that.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah. Yeah, I’m at 8.5 right now. I would’ve beaten that literally the day before I came to Austin. But I had a, I don’t know, a five-second lag right at the end, and I just had to wait until the latency calmed down, and then I kept clicking. But I was at 8.01, and then five seconds of lag, and then the next three targets I clicked all stayed at 8.01. So if I would’ve been able to click during that time of lag, I probably would’ve hit, I don’t know, I might’ve hit nine. So I’m there. I’m really close, and then this whole Austin trip has really gotten in the way of my Webgrid playing ability.
Yeah. Yeah, I’m at 8.5 right now. I would’ve beaten that literally the day before I came to Austin. But I had a, I don’t know, a five-second lag right at the end, and I just had to wait until the latency calmed down, and then I kept clicking. But I was at 8.01, and then five seconds of lag, and then the next three targets I clicked all stayed at 8.01. So if I would’ve been able to click during that time of lag, I probably would’ve hit, I don’t know, I might’ve hit nine. So I’m there. I’m really close, and then this whole Austin trip has really gotten in the way of my Webgrid playing ability.
Lex Fridman
It’s frustrating.
It’s frustrating.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, it’s-
Yeah, it’s-
Lex Fridman
So that’s all-
So that’s all-
Noland Arbaugh
I’ve been itching.
I’ve been itching.
Lex Fridman
… you’ve thinking about right now?
… you’ve thinking about right now?
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, I know. I just want to do better.
Yeah, I know. I just want to do better.
Lex Fridman
At nine.
At nine.
Noland Arbaugh
I want to do better. I want to hit nine, I think, well, I know nine is very, very achievable. I’m right there. I think 10 I could hit, maybe in the next month. I could do it probably in the next few weeks if I really push.
I want to do better. I want to hit nine, I think, well, I know nine is very, very achievable. I’m right there. I think 10 I could hit, maybe in the next month. I could do it probably in the next few weeks if I really push.
Lex Fridman
I think you and Elon are basically the same person because last time I did a podcast with him, he came in extremely frustrated that he can’t beat Uber Lilith as a Druid.
I think you and Elon are basically the same person because last time I did a podcast with him, he came in extremely frustrated that he can’t beat Uber Lilith as a Druid.
Noland Arbaugh
[inaudible 07:52:51].
[inaudible 07:52:51].
Lex Fridman
That was a year ago, I think, I forget, solo. And I could just tell there’s some percentage of his brain, the entire time was thinking, “I wish I was right now attempting.” [inaudible 07:53:01]-
That was a year ago, I think, I forget, solo. And I could just tell there’s some percentage of his brain, the entire time was thinking, “I wish I was right now attempting.” [inaudible 07:53:01]-
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah. I think he did it that night.
Yeah. I think he did it that night.
Lex Fridman
He did it that night. He stayed up and did it that night, which is crazy to me. In a fundamental way, it’s really inspiring and what you’re doing is inspiring in that way because it’s not just about the game. Everything you’re doing there has impact. By striving to do well on Webgrid, you’re helping everybody figure out how to create the system all along the decoding, the software, the hardware, the calibration, all of it. How to make all of that work so you can do everything else really well.
He did it that night. He stayed up and did it that night, which is crazy to me. In a fundamental way, it’s really inspiring and what you’re doing is inspiring in that way because it’s not just about the game. Everything you’re doing there has impact. By striving to do well on Webgrid, you’re helping everybody figure out how to create the system all along the decoding, the software, the hardware, the calibration, all of it. How to make all of that work so you can do everything else really well.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, it’s just really fun.
Yeah, it’s just really fun.
Lex Fridman
Well, that’s also, that’s part of the thing, is that making it fun.
Well, that’s also, that’s part of the thing, is that making it fun.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, it’s a addicting. I’ve joked about what they actually did when they went in and put this thing in my brain. They must’ve flipped a switch to make me more susceptible to these kinds of games, to make me addicted to Webgrid or something.
Yeah, it’s a addicting. I’ve joked about what they actually did when they went in and put this thing in my brain. They must’ve flipped a switch to make me more susceptible to these kinds of games, to make me addicted to Webgrid or something.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Noland Arbaugh
Do you know Bliss’s high score?
Do you know Bliss’s high score?
Lex Fridman
Yeah, he said like 14 or something.
Yeah, he said like 14 or something.
Noland Arbaugh
17.
17.
Lex Fridman
Oh, boy.
Oh, boy.
Noland Arbaugh
17.1 or something. 17.01?
17.1 or something. 17.01?
Bliss Chapman
17 on the dot.
17 on the dot.
Noland Arbaugh
17-
17-
Bliss Chapman
17.01.
17.01.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
He told me he does it on the floor with peanut butter and he fasts. It’s weird. That sounds like cheating. Sounds like performance enhancing-
He told me he does it on the floor with peanut butter and he fasts. It’s weird. That sounds like cheating. Sounds like performance enhancing-
Bliss Chapman
Noland, the first time Noland played this game, he asked how good are we at this game? And I think you told me right then, you’re going to try to beat me [inaudible 07:54:24]-
Noland, the first time Noland played this game, he asked how good are we at this game? And I think you told me right then, you’re going to try to beat me [inaudible 07:54:24]-
Noland Arbaugh
I’m going to get there someday.
I’m going to get there someday.
Bliss Chapman
Yeah, I fully believe you.
Yeah, I fully believe you.
Noland Arbaugh
I think I can. I think I can. I think-
I think I can. I think I can. I think-
Bliss Chapman
I’m excited for that.
I’m excited for that.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah. So I’ve been playing, first off, with the dwell cursor, which really hampers my Webgrid playing ability. Basically I have to wait 0.3 seconds for every click.
Yeah. So I’ve been playing, first off, with the dwell cursor, which really hampers my Webgrid playing ability. Basically I have to wait 0.3 seconds for every click.
Lex Fridman
Oh, so you can’t do the click. So you click by dwelling, you said 0.3.
Oh, so you can’t do the click. So you click by dwelling, you said 0.3.
Noland Arbaugh
0.3 seconds, which sucks. It really slows down how high I’m able to get. I still hit 50, I think I hit 50-something net trials per minute in that, which was pretty good because I’m able to… One of the settings is also how slow you need to be moving in order to initiate a click, to start a click. So I can tell, sort of, when I’m on that threshold, to start initiating a click just a bit early. So I’m not fully stopped over the target when I go to click, I’m doing it on my way to the targets a little, to try to time it just right.
0.3 seconds, which sucks. It really slows down how high I’m able to get. I still hit 50, I think I hit 50-something net trials per minute in that, which was pretty good because I’m able to… One of the settings is also how slow you need to be moving in order to initiate a click, to start a click. So I can tell, sort of, when I’m on that threshold, to start initiating a click just a bit early. So I’m not fully stopped over the target when I go to click, I’m doing it on my way to the targets a little, to try to time it just right.
Lex Fridman
Oh, wow.
Oh, wow.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
So you’re slowing down.
So you’re slowing down.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, just a hair, right before the targets.
Yeah, just a hair, right before the targets.
Lex Fridman
This is like elite performance. Okay, but that’s still, it sucks that there’s a ceiling of the 0.3.
This is like elite performance. Okay, but that’s still, it sucks that there’s a ceiling of the 0.3.
Noland Arbaugh
Well, I can get down to 0.2 and 0.1. 0.1’s what I’ve-
Well, I can get down to 0.2 and 0.1. 0.1’s what I’ve-
Lex Fridman
[inaudible 07:55:45].
[inaudible 07:55:45].
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, and I’ve played with that a little bit too. I have to adjust a ton of different parameters in order to play with 0.1, and I don’t have control over all of that on my end yet. It also changes how the models are trained. If I train a model, like in Webgrid, I bootstrap on a model, which basically is them training models as I’m playing Webgrid based off of the Webgrid data that I’m… So if I play Webgrid for 10 minutes, they can train off that data specifically in order to get me a better model. If I do that with 0.3 versus 0.1, the models come out different. The way that they interact, it’s just much, much different. So I have to be really careful. I found that doing it with 0.3 is actually better in some ways. Unless I can do it with 0.1 and change all of the different parameters, then that’s more ideal, because obviously 0.3 is faster than 0.1. So I could get there. I can get there.
Yeah, and I’ve played with that a little bit too. I have to adjust a ton of different parameters in order to play with 0.1, and I don’t have control over all of that on my end yet. It also changes how the models are trained. If I train a model, like in Webgrid, I bootstrap on a model, which basically is them training models as I’m playing Webgrid based off of the Webgrid data that I’m… So if I play Webgrid for 10 minutes, they can train off that data specifically in order to get me a better model. If I do that with 0.3 versus 0.1, the models come out different. The way that they interact, it’s just much, much different. So I have to be really careful. I found that doing it with 0.3 is actually better in some ways. Unless I can do it with 0.1 and change all of the different parameters, then that’s more ideal, because obviously 0.3 is faster than 0.1. So I could get there. I can get there.
Lex Fridman
Can you click using your brain?
Can you click using your brain?
Noland Arbaugh
For right now, it’s the hover clicking with the dwell cursor. Before all the thread retraction stuff happened, we were calibrating clicks, left click, right click. That was my previous ceiling, before I broke the record again with the dwell cursor, was I think on a 35 by 35 grid with left and right click. And you get more BPS, more bits per second, using multiple clicks because it’s more difficult.
For right now, it’s the hover clicking with the dwell cursor. Before all the thread retraction stuff happened, we were calibrating clicks, left click, right click. That was my previous ceiling, before I broke the record again with the dwell cursor, was I think on a 35 by 35 grid with left and right click. And you get more BPS, more bits per second, using multiple clicks because it’s more difficult.
Lex Fridman
Oh, because what is it, you’re supposed to do either a left click or a right click?
Oh, because what is it, you’re supposed to do either a left click or a right click?
Noland Arbaugh
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
Is a different colors, something like this?
Is a different colors, something like this?
Noland Arbaugh
Different colors.
Different colors.
Lex Fridman
Cool. Cool.
Cool. Cool.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, blue targets for left click, orange targets for right click is what they had done.
Yeah, blue targets for left click, orange targets for right click is what they had done.
Lex Fridman
Got it.
Got it.
Noland Arbaugh
So my previous record of 7.5-
So my previous record of 7.5-
Lex Fridman
Was with the two clicks.
Was with the two clicks.
Noland Arbaugh
… was with the blue and the orange targets, yeah, which I think if I went back to that now, doing the click calibration, I would be able to… And being able to initiate clicks on my own, I think I would break that 10 ceiling in a couple days, max.
… was with the blue and the orange targets, yeah, which I think if I went back to that now, doing the click calibration, I would be able to… And being able to initiate clicks on my own, I think I would break that 10 ceiling in a couple days, max.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, you would start making Bliss nervous about his 17.
Yeah, you would start making Bliss nervous about his 17.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, he should be.
Yeah, he should be.
Bliss Chapman
Why do you think we haven’t given him the-
Why do you think we haven’t given him the-
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah.
Yeah.
Retracted threads
Lex Fridman
Exactly. Exactly. So what did it feel like with the retractions, that some of the threads are retracted?
Exactly. Exactly. So what did it feel like with the retractions, that some of the threads are retracted?
Noland Arbaugh
It sucked. It was really, really hard. The day they told me was the day of my big Neuralink tour at their Fremont facility. They told me right before we went over there. It was really hard to hear. My initial reaction was, all right, go in, fix it. Go in, take it out and fix it. The first surgery was so easy. I went to sleep, a couple hours later I woke up and here we are. I didn’t feel any pain, didn’t take any pain pills or anything. So I just knew that if they wanted to, they could go in and put in a new one next day if that’s what it took because I wanted it to be better and I wanted not to lose the capability. I had so much fun playing with it for a few weeks, for a month. It had opened up so many doors for me. It had opened up so many more possibilities that I didn’t want to lose it after a month.
It sucked. It was really, really hard. The day they told me was the day of my big Neuralink tour at their Fremont facility. They told me right before we went over there. It was really hard to hear. My initial reaction was, all right, go in, fix it. Go in, take it out and fix it. The first surgery was so easy. I went to sleep, a couple hours later I woke up and here we are. I didn’t feel any pain, didn’t take any pain pills or anything. So I just knew that if they wanted to, they could go in and put in a new one next day if that’s what it took because I wanted it to be better and I wanted not to lose the capability. I had so much fun playing with it for a few weeks, for a month. It had opened up so many doors for me. It had opened up so many more possibilities that I didn’t want to lose it after a month.
I thought it would’ve been a cruel twist of fate if I had gotten to see the view from the top of this mountain and then have it all come crashing down after a month. And I knew, I say the top of the mountain, but how I saw it was I was just now starting to climb the mountain and there was so much more that I knew was possible. And so to have all of that be taken away was really, really hard. But then on the drive over to the facility, I don’t know, five minute drive, whatever it is, I talked with my parents about it. I prayed about it. I was just like, I’m not going to let this ruin my day. I’m not going to let this ruin this amazing tour that they have set up for me. I want to go show everyone how much I appreciate all the work they’re doing.
I want to go meet all of the people who have made this possible, and I want to go have one of the best days of my life, and I did. And it was amazing, and it absolutely was one of the best days I’ve ever been privileged to experience. And then for a few days I was pretty down in the dumps, but for the first few days afterwards, I didn’t know if it was ever going to work again. And then I made the decision that, even if I lost the ability to use the Neuralink, even if I lost out on everything to come, if I could keep giving them data in any way, then I would do that.
If I needed to just do some of the data collection every day or body mapping every day for a year, then I would do it because I know that everything I’m doing helps everyone to come after me, and that’s all I wanted. Just the whole reason that I did this was to help people, and I knew that anything I could do to help, I would continue to do, even if I never got to use the cursor again, then I was just happy to be a part of it. And everything that I had done was just a perk. It was something that I got to experience, and I know how amazing it’s going to be for everyone to come after me. So might as well just keep trucking along.
Lex Fridman
Well, that said, you were able to get to work your way up, to get the performance back. So this is like going from Rocky I to Rocky II. So when did you first realize that this is possible, and what gave you the strength, the motivation, the determination to do it, to increase back up and beat your previous record?
Well, that said, you were able to get to work your way up, to get the performance back. So this is like going from Rocky I to Rocky II. So when did you first realize that this is possible, and what gave you the strength, the motivation, the determination to do it, to increase back up and beat your previous record?
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, it was within a couple weeks, [inaudible 08:01:44]-
Yeah, it was within a couple weeks, [inaudible 08:01:44]-
Lex Fridman
Again, this feels like I’m interviewing an athlete. This is great. I’d like thank my parents.
Again, this feels like I’m interviewing an athlete. This is great. I’d like thank my parents.
Noland Arbaugh
The road back was long and hard-
The road back was long and hard-
Lex Fridman
[inaudible 08:01:53] like a movie.
[inaudible 08:01:53] like a movie.
Noland Arbaugh
… fraught with many difficulties. There were dark days. It was a couple weeks, I think, and then there was just a turning point. I think they had switched how they were measuring the neuron spikes in my brain, the… Bliss help me out.
… fraught with many difficulties. There were dark days. It was a couple weeks, I think, and then there was just a turning point. I think they had switched how they were measuring the neuron spikes in my brain, the… Bliss help me out.
Bliss Chapman
Yeah, the way in which we were measuring the behavior of individual neurons.
Yeah, the way in which we were measuring the behavior of individual neurons.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah.
Yeah.
Bliss Chapman
So we’re switching from individual spike detection to something called spike band power, which if you watch the previous segments with either me or DJ, you probably have some [inaudible 08:02:26]-
So we’re switching from individual spike detection to something called spike band power, which if you watch the previous segments with either me or DJ, you probably have some [inaudible 08:02:26]-
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, okay.
Yeah, okay.
Lex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Noland Arbaugh
So when they did that, it was like a light over the head, light bulb moment, like, oh, this works and this seems like we can run with this. And I saw the uptick in performance immediately. I could feel it when they switched over. I was like, “This is better. This is good. Everything up until this point,” for the last few weeks, last, whatever, three or four weeks because it was before they even told me, “Everything before this sucked. Let’s keep doing what we’re doing now.” And at that point it was not like, oh, I know I’m still only at, say in Webgrid terms, four or five BPS compared to my 7.5 before, but I know that if we keep doing this, then I can get back there. And then they gave me the dwell cursor and the dwell cursor sucked at first. It’s obviously not what I want, but it gave me a path forward to be able to continue using it and hopefully to continue to help out. And so I just ran with it, never looked back. Like I said, I’m just kind of person, I roll with the punches anyway. So-
So when they did that, it was like a light over the head, light bulb moment, like, oh, this works and this seems like we can run with this. And I saw the uptick in performance immediately. I could feel it when they switched over. I was like, “This is better. This is good. Everything up until this point,” for the last few weeks, last, whatever, three or four weeks because it was before they even told me, “Everything before this sucked. Let’s keep doing what we’re doing now.” And at that point it was not like, oh, I know I’m still only at, say in Webgrid terms, four or five BPS compared to my 7.5 before, but I know that if we keep doing this, then I can get back there. And then they gave me the dwell cursor and the dwell cursor sucked at first. It’s obviously not what I want, but it gave me a path forward to be able to continue using it and hopefully to continue to help out. And so I just ran with it, never looked back. Like I said, I’m just kind of person, I roll with the punches anyway. So-
Lex Fridman
What was the process? What was the feedback loop on the figuring out how to do the spike detection in a way that would actually work well for Noland?
What was the process? What was the feedback loop on the figuring out how to do the spike detection in a way that would actually work well for Noland?
Bliss Chapman
Yeah, it’s a great question. So maybe just to describe first how the actual update worked. It was basically an update to your implant. So we just did an over-the-air software update to his implants, same way you’d update your Tesla or your iPhone. And that firmware change enabled us to record averages of populations of neurons nearby individual electrodes. So we have less resolution about which individual neuron is doing what, but we have a broader picture of what’s going on nearby an electrode overall. And that feedback loop, basically as Noland described it, it was immediate when we flipped that switch. I think the first day we did that, you had three or four BPS right out of the box, and that was a light bulb moment for, okay, this is the right path to go down. And from there, there’s a lot of feedback around how to make this useful for independent use.
Yeah, it’s a great question. So maybe just to describe first how the actual update worked. It was basically an update to your implant. So we just did an over-the-air software update to his implants, same way you’d update your Tesla or your iPhone. And that firmware change enabled us to record averages of populations of neurons nearby individual electrodes. So we have less resolution about which individual neuron is doing what, but we have a broader picture of what’s going on nearby an electrode overall. And that feedback loop, basically as Noland described it, it was immediate when we flipped that switch. I think the first day we did that, you had three or four BPS right out of the box, and that was a light bulb moment for, okay, this is the right path to go down. And from there, there’s a lot of feedback around how to make this useful for independent use.
So what we care about ultimately is that you can use it independently to do whatever you want. And to get to that point, it required us to re-engineer the UX, as you talked about with the dwell cursor, to make it something that you can use independently without us needing to be involved all the time. And yeah, this is obviously the start of this journey still. Hopefully we get back to the places where you’re doing multiple clicks and using that to control, much more fluidly, everything, and much more naturally the applications that you’re trying to interface with.
Lex Fridman
And most importantly, get that Webgrid number up.
And most importantly, get that Webgrid number up.
Noland Arbaugh
Yep.
Yep.
Speaker 1
Yes. [inaudible 08:04:57].
Yes. [inaudible 08:04:57].
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
So how is, on the hover click, do you accidentally click stuff sometimes?
So how is, on the hover click, do you accidentally click stuff sometimes?
Noland Arbaugh
Yep.
Yep.
Lex Fridman
How hard is it to avoid accidentally clicking?
How hard is it to avoid accidentally clicking?
Noland Arbaugh
I have to continuously keep it moving, basically. So like I said, there’s a threshold where it will initiate a click. So if I ever drop below that, it’ll start and I have 0.3 seconds to move it before it clicks anything.
I have to continuously keep it moving, basically. So like I said, there’s a threshold where it will initiate a click. So if I ever drop below that, it’ll start and I have 0.3 seconds to move it before it clicks anything.
Lex Fridman
[inaudible 08:05:21].
[inaudible 08:05:21].
Noland Arbaugh
And if I don’t want it to ever get there, I just keep it moving at a certain speed and just constantly doing circles on screen, moving it back and forth, to keep it from clicking stuff. I actually noticed, a couple weeks back, that when I was not using the implant, I was just moving my hand back and forth or in circles. I was trying to keep the cursor from clicking and I was just doing it while I was trying to go to sleep. And I was like, “Okay, this is a problem.” [inaudible 08:05:52].
And if I don’t want it to ever get there, I just keep it moving at a certain speed and just constantly doing circles on screen, moving it back and forth, to keep it from clicking stuff. I actually noticed, a couple weeks back, that when I was not using the implant, I was just moving my hand back and forth or in circles. I was trying to keep the cursor from clicking and I was just doing it while I was trying to go to sleep. And I was like, “Okay, this is a problem.” [inaudible 08:05:52].
Speaker 1
[inaudible 08:05:51].
[inaudible 08:05:51].
Lex Fridman
To avoid the clicking. I guess, does that create problems when you’re gaming, accidentally click a thing? Like-
To avoid the clicking. I guess, does that create problems when you’re gaming, accidentally click a thing? Like-
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah. Yeah. It happens in chess.
Yeah. Yeah. It happens in chess.
Lex Fridman
Accidental, yeah.
Accidental, yeah.
Noland Arbaugh
I’ve lost a number of games because I’ll accidentally click something.
I’ve lost a number of games because I’ll accidentally click something.
Bliss Chapman
I think the first time I ever beat you was because of an accidental click.
I think the first time I ever beat you was because of an accidental click.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, a misclick. Yeah.
Yeah, a misclick. Yeah.
Lex Fridman
It’s a nice excuse, right? You can always-
It’s a nice excuse, right? You can always-
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, [inaudible 08:06:12] it’s great. It’s perfect.
Yeah, [inaudible 08:06:12] it’s great. It’s perfect.
Lex Fridman
… anytime you lose, you could just say, “That was accidental.”
… anytime you lose, you could just say, “That was accidental.”
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
App improvements
Lex Fridman
You said the app improved a lot from version one when you first started using it. It was very different. So can you just talk about the trial and error that you went through with the team? 200 plus pages of notes. What’s that process like of going back and forth and working together to improve the thing?
You said the app improved a lot from version one when you first started using it. It was very different. So can you just talk about the trial and error that you went through with the team? 200 plus pages of notes. What’s that process like of going back and forth and working together to improve the thing?
Noland Arbaugh
It’s a lot of me just using it day in and day out and saying, “Hey, can you guys do this for me? Give me this. I want to be able to do that. I need this.” I think a lot of it just doesn’t occur to them maybe, until someone is actually using the app, using the implant. It’s just something that they just never would’ve thought of or it’s very specific to even me, maybe what I want. It’s something I’m a little worried about with the next people that come is maybe they will want things much different than how I’ve set it up or what the advice I’ve given the team, and they’re going to look at some of the things they’ve added for me. [inaudible 08:07:26] like, “That’s a dumb idea. Why would he ask for that?” And so I’m really looking forward to get the next people on because I guarantee that they’re going to think of things that I’ve never thought of.
It’s a lot of me just using it day in and day out and saying, “Hey, can you guys do this for me? Give me this. I want to be able to do that. I need this.” I think a lot of it just doesn’t occur to them maybe, until someone is actually using the app, using the implant. It’s just something that they just never would’ve thought of or it’s very specific to even me, maybe what I want. It’s something I’m a little worried about with the next people that come is maybe they will want things much different than how I’ve set it up or what the advice I’ve given the team, and they’re going to look at some of the things they’ve added for me. [inaudible 08:07:26] like, “That’s a dumb idea. Why would he ask for that?” And so I’m really looking forward to get the next people on because I guarantee that they’re going to think of things that I’ve never thought of.
They’re going to think of improvements something like, wow, that’s a really good idea. I wish I would’ve thought of that. And then they’re also going to give me some pushback about, yeah, what you are asking them to do here, that’s a bad idea. Let’s do it this way. And I’m more than happy to have that happen, but it’s just a lot of different interactions with different games or applications, the internet, just with the computer in general. There’s tons of bugs that end up popping up, left, right, center.
So it’s just me trying to use it as much as possible and showing them what works and what doesn’t work, and what I would like to be better. And then they take that feedback and they usually create amazing things for me. They solve these problems in ways I would’ve never imagined. They’re so good at everything they do, and so I’m just really thankful that I’m able to give them feedback and they can make something of it, because a lot of my feedback is really dumb. It’s just like, “I want this, please do something about it,” and it’ll come back, super well-thought-out, and it’s way better than anything I could have ever thought of or implemented myself. So they’re just great. They’re really, really cool.
Lex Fridman
As the BCI community grows, would you like to hang out with the other folks with Neuralinks? What relationship, if any, would you want to have with them? Because you said they might have a different set of ideas of how to use the thing.
As the BCI community grows, would you like to hang out with the other folks with Neuralinks? What relationship, if any, would you want to have with them? Because you said they might have a different set of ideas of how to use the thing.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Would you be intimidated by their Webgrid performance?
Would you be intimidated by their Webgrid performance?
Noland Arbaugh
No. No. I hope-
No. No. I hope-
Lex Fridman
Compete.
Compete.
Noland Arbaugh
I hope, day one, they wipe the floor with me. I hope they beat it and they crush it, double it if they can, just because on one hand it’s only going to push me to be better because I’m super competitive. I want other people to push me. I think that is important for anyone trying to achieve greatness is they need other people around them who are going to push them to be better. And I even made a joke about it on X once, once the next people get chosen, cue buddy cop music. I’m just excited to have other people to do this with and to share experiences with. I’m more than happy to interact with them as much as they want, more than happy to give them advice. I don’t know what kind of advice I could give them, but if they have-
I hope, day one, they wipe the floor with me. I hope they beat it and they crush it, double it if they can, just because on one hand it’s only going to push me to be better because I’m super competitive. I want other people to push me. I think that is important for anyone trying to achieve greatness is they need other people around them who are going to push them to be better. And I even made a joke about it on X once, once the next people get chosen, cue buddy cop music. I’m just excited to have other people to do this with and to share experiences with. I’m more than happy to interact with them as much as they want, more than happy to give them advice. I don’t know what kind of advice I could give them, but if they have-
Noland Arbaugh
… give them advice. I don’t know what advice I could give them, but if they have questions, I’m more than happy.
… give them advice. I don’t know what advice I could give them, but if they have questions, I’m more than happy.
Lex Fridman
What advice would you have for the next participant in the clinical trial?
What advice would you have for the next participant in the clinical trial?
Noland Arbaugh
That they should have fun with this, because it is a lot of fun, and that I hope they work really, really hard because it’s not just for us, it’s for everyone that comes after us. And come to me if they need anything. And to go to Neuralink if they need anything. Man, Neuralink moves mountains. They do absolutely anything for me that they can, and it’s an amazing support system to have. It puts my mind at ease for so many things that I have had questions about or so many things I want to do, and they’re always there, and that’s really, really nice. And so I would tell them not to be afraid to go to Neuralink with any questions that they have, any concerns, anything that they’re looking to do with this. And any help that Neuralink is capable of providing, I know they will. And I don’t know. I don’t know. Just work your ass off because it’s really important that we try to give our all to this.
That they should have fun with this, because it is a lot of fun, and that I hope they work really, really hard because it’s not just for us, it’s for everyone that comes after us. And come to me if they need anything. And to go to Neuralink if they need anything. Man, Neuralink moves mountains. They do absolutely anything for me that they can, and it’s an amazing support system to have. It puts my mind at ease for so many things that I have had questions about or so many things I want to do, and they’re always there, and that’s really, really nice. And so I would tell them not to be afraid to go to Neuralink with any questions that they have, any concerns, anything that they’re looking to do with this. And any help that Neuralink is capable of providing, I know they will. And I don’t know. I don’t know. Just work your ass off because it’s really important that we try to give our all to this.
Lex Fridman
So have fun and work hard.
So have fun and work hard.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah. Yeah. There we go. Maybe that’s what I’ll just start saying to people. Have fun, work hard.
Yeah. Yeah. There we go. Maybe that’s what I’ll just start saying to people. Have fun, work hard.
Lex Fridman
Now you’re a real pro athlete. Just keep it short. Maybe it’s good to talk about what you’ve been able to do now that you have a Neurolink implant, the freedom you gain from this way of interacting with the outside world. You play video games all night and you do that by yourself, and that’s the freedom. Can you speak to that freedom that you gain?
Now you’re a real pro athlete. Just keep it short. Maybe it’s good to talk about what you’ve been able to do now that you have a Neurolink implant, the freedom you gain from this way of interacting with the outside world. You play video games all night and you do that by yourself, and that’s the freedom. Can you speak to that freedom that you gain?
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah. It’s what all… I don’t know, people in my position want. They just want more independence. The more load that I can take away from people around me, the better. If I’m able to interact with the world without using my family, without going through any of my friends, needing them to help me with things, the better. If I’m able to sit up on my computer all night and not need someone to sit me up, say, on my iPad, in a position where I can use it, and then have to have them wait up for me all night until I’m ready to be done using it, it takes a load off of all of us and it’s really all I can ask for. It’s something that I could never thank Neuralink enough for, and I know my family feels the same way. Just being able to have the freedom to do things on my own at any hour of the day or night, it means the world to me and… I don’t know.
Yeah. It’s what all… I don’t know, people in my position want. They just want more independence. The more load that I can take away from people around me, the better. If I’m able to interact with the world without using my family, without going through any of my friends, needing them to help me with things, the better. If I’m able to sit up on my computer all night and not need someone to sit me up, say, on my iPad, in a position where I can use it, and then have to have them wait up for me all night until I’m ready to be done using it, it takes a load off of all of us and it’s really all I can ask for. It’s something that I could never thank Neuralink enough for, and I know my family feels the same way. Just being able to have the freedom to do things on my own at any hour of the day or night, it means the world to me and… I don’t know.
Gaming
Lex Fridman
When you’re up at 2:00 AM playing Webgrid by yourself, I just imagine it’s darkness and there’s just a light glowing and you’re just focused. What’s going through your mind? Or you were in a state of flow where it’s like the mind is empty like those Zen masters.
When you’re up at 2:00 AM playing Webgrid by yourself, I just imagine it’s darkness and there’s just a light glowing and you’re just focused. What’s going through your mind? Or you were in a state of flow where it’s like the mind is empty like those Zen masters.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah. Generally, it is me playing music of some sort. I have a massive playlist, and so I’m just rocking out to music. And then it’s also just a race against time, because I’m constantly looking at how much battery percentage I have left on my implant, like, “All right. I have 30%, which equates to X amount of time, which means I have to break this record in the next hour and a half or else it’s not happening tonight.” And so it’s a little stressful when that happens. When it’s above 50%, I’m like, “Okay, I got time.” It starts getting down to 30, and then 20 it’s like, “All right, 10%, a little popup is going to pop up right here, and it’s going to really screw my Webgrid flow. It’s going to tell me that… The low battery popup comes up and I’m like, “It’s really going to screw me over. So if I’m going to break this record, I have to do it in the next 30 seconds,” or else that popup is going to get in the way, cover my Webgrid.
Yeah. Generally, it is me playing music of some sort. I have a massive playlist, and so I’m just rocking out to music. And then it’s also just a race against time, because I’m constantly looking at how much battery percentage I have left on my implant, like, “All right. I have 30%, which equates to X amount of time, which means I have to break this record in the next hour and a half or else it’s not happening tonight.” And so it’s a little stressful when that happens. When it’s above 50%, I’m like, “Okay, I got time.” It starts getting down to 30, and then 20 it’s like, “All right, 10%, a little popup is going to pop up right here, and it’s going to really screw my Webgrid flow. It’s going to tell me that… The low battery popup comes up and I’m like, “It’s really going to screw me over. So if I’m going to break this record, I have to do it in the next 30 seconds,” or else that popup is going to get in the way, cover my Webgrid.
And then after that, I go click on it, go back into Webgrid, and I’m like, “All right, that means I have 10 minutes left before this thing’s dead.” That’s what’s going on in my head, generally. That and whatever song’s playing. And I want to break those records so bad. It’s all I want when I’m playing Webgrid. It has become less of like, “Oh, this is just a leisurely activity. I just enjoy doing this because it just feels so nice and it puts me at ease.” It is, “No. Once I’m in Webgrid, you better break this record or you’re going to waste five hours of your life right now.” And I don’t know. It’s just fun. It’s fun, man.
Lex Fridman
Have you ever tried Webgrid with two targets and three targets? Can you get higher BPS with that?
Have you ever tried Webgrid with two targets and three targets? Can you get higher BPS with that?
Noland Arbaugh
Can you do that?
Can you do that?
Bliss Chapman
You mean different colored targets or you mean-
You mean different colored targets or you mean-
Lex Fridman
Oh, multiple targets. Does that change the thing?
Oh, multiple targets. Does that change the thing?
Bliss Chapman
Yeah. So BPS is a log of number of targets times correct minus incorrect, divided by time. And so you can think of different clicks as basically double the number of active targets.
Yeah. So BPS is a log of number of targets times correct minus incorrect, divided by time. And so you can think of different clicks as basically double the number of active targets.
Lex Fridman
Got it.
Got it.
Bliss Chapman
So basically higher BPS, the more options there are, the more difficult the task. And there’s also Zen mode you’ve played in before, which is infinite-
So basically higher BPS, the more options there are, the more difficult the task. And there’s also Zen mode you’ve played in before, which is infinite-
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah. Yeah. It covers the whole screen with a grid and… I don’t know-
Yeah. Yeah. It covers the whole screen with a grid and… I don’t know-
Lex Fridman
And so you can go… That’s insane.
And so you can go… That’s insane.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah.
Yeah.
Bliss Chapman
He doesn’t like it because it didn’t show BPS, so-
He doesn’t like it because it didn’t show BPS, so-
Noland Arbaugh
I had them put in a giant BPS in the background, so now it’s the opposite of Zen mode. It’s super hard mode, just metal mode. If it’s just a giant number in the back [inaudible 08:16:01].
I had them put in a giant BPS in the background, so now it’s the opposite of Zen mode. It’s super hard mode, just metal mode. If it’s just a giant number in the back [inaudible 08:16:01].
Bliss Chapman
We should renamed that. Metal mode is a much better [inaudible 08:16:03].
We should renamed that. Metal mode is a much better [inaudible 08:16:03].
Lex Fridman
So you also play Civilization VI.
So you also play Civilization VI.
Noland Arbaugh
I love Civ VI. Yeah.
I love Civ VI. Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Usually go with Korea, you said?
Usually go with Korea, you said?
Noland Arbaugh
I do. Yeah. So the great part about Korea is they focus on science tech victories, which was not planned. I’ve been playing Korea for years, and then all of the [inaudible 08:16:23] stuff happened, so it aligns. But what I’ve noticed with tech victories is if you can just rush tech, rush science, then you can do anything. At one point in the game, you’ll be so far ahead of everyone technologically that you’ll have musket men, infantrymen, planes sometimes, and people will still be fighting with bows and arrows. And so if you want to win a domination victory, you just get to a certain point with the science, and then go and wipe out the rest of the world. Or you can just take science all the way and win that way, and you’re going to be so far ahead of everyone because you’re producing so much science that it’s not even close. I’ve accidentally won in different ways just by focusing on science.
I do. Yeah. So the great part about Korea is they focus on science tech victories, which was not planned. I’ve been playing Korea for years, and then all of the [inaudible 08:16:23] stuff happened, so it aligns. But what I’ve noticed with tech victories is if you can just rush tech, rush science, then you can do anything. At one point in the game, you’ll be so far ahead of everyone technologically that you’ll have musket men, infantrymen, planes sometimes, and people will still be fighting with bows and arrows. And so if you want to win a domination victory, you just get to a certain point with the science, and then go and wipe out the rest of the world. Or you can just take science all the way and win that way, and you’re going to be so far ahead of everyone because you’re producing so much science that it’s not even close. I’ve accidentally won in different ways just by focusing on science.
Lex Fridman
Accidentally won by focusing on science-
Accidentally won by focusing on science-
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah. I was playing only science, obviously. Just science all the way, just tech. And I was trying to get every tech in the tech tree and stuff, and then I accidentally won through a diplomatic victory, and I was so mad. I was so mad because it just ends the game one turn. It was like, “Oh, you won. You’re so diplomatic.” I’m like, “I don’t want to do this. I should have declared war on more people or something.” It was terrible. But you don’t need giant civilizations with tech, especially with Korea. You can keep it pretty small. So I generally just get to a certain military unit and put them all around my border to keep everyone out, and then I will just build up. So very isolationist.
Yeah. I was playing only science, obviously. Just science all the way, just tech. And I was trying to get every tech in the tech tree and stuff, and then I accidentally won through a diplomatic victory, and I was so mad. I was so mad because it just ends the game one turn. It was like, “Oh, you won. You’re so diplomatic.” I’m like, “I don’t want to do this. I should have declared war on more people or something.” It was terrible. But you don’t need giant civilizations with tech, especially with Korea. You can keep it pretty small. So I generally just get to a certain military unit and put them all around my border to keep everyone out, and then I will just build up. So very isolationist.
Lex Fridman
Nice.
Nice.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Just work on the science and the tech.
Just work on the science and the tech.
Noland Arbaugh
Yep, that’s it.
Yep, that’s it.
Lex Fridman
You’re making it sound so fun.
You’re making it sound so fun.
Noland Arbaugh
It’s so much fun.
It’s so much fun.
Lex Fridman
And I also saw a Civilization VII trailer.
And I also saw a Civilization VII trailer.
Noland Arbaugh
Oh, man. I’m so pumped.
Oh, man. I’m so pumped.
Lex Fridman
And that’s probably coming out-
And that’s probably coming out-
Noland Arbaugh
Come on Civ VII, hit me up. All alpha, beta tests, whatever.
Come on Civ VII, hit me up. All alpha, beta tests, whatever.
Lex Fridman
Wait, when is it coming out?
Wait, when is it coming out?
Noland Arbaugh
2025.
2025.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, yeah, next year. Yeah. What other stuff would you like to see improved about the Neuralink app and just the entire experience?
Yeah, yeah, next year. Yeah. What other stuff would you like to see improved about the Neuralink app and just the entire experience?
Noland Arbaugh
I would like to, like I said, get back to the click on demand, the regular clicks. That would be great. I would like to be able to connect to more devices. Right now, it’s just the computer. I’d like to be able to use it on my phone or use it on different consoles, different platforms. I’d like to be able to control as much stuff as possible, honestly. An Optimus robot would be pretty cool. That would be sick if I could control an Optimus robot. The Link app itself, it seems like we are getting pretty dialed in to what it might look like down the road. It seems like we’ve gotten through a lot of what I want from it, at least. The only other thing I would say is more control over all the parameters that I can tweak with my cursor and stuff. There’s a lot of things that go into how the cursor moves in certain ways, and I have… I don’t know. Three or four of those parameters, and there might-
I would like to, like I said, get back to the click on demand, the regular clicks. That would be great. I would like to be able to connect to more devices. Right now, it’s just the computer. I’d like to be able to use it on my phone or use it on different consoles, different platforms. I’d like to be able to control as much stuff as possible, honestly. An Optimus robot would be pretty cool. That would be sick if I could control an Optimus robot. The Link app itself, it seems like we are getting pretty dialed in to what it might look like down the road. It seems like we’ve gotten through a lot of what I want from it, at least. The only other thing I would say is more control over all the parameters that I can tweak with my cursor and stuff. There’s a lot of things that go into how the cursor moves in certain ways, and I have… I don’t know. Three or four of those parameters, and there might-
Lex Fridman
Gain and friction and all that.
Gain and friction and all that.
Noland Arbaugh
Gain and friction, yeah. And there’s maybe double the amount of those with just velocity and then with the actual [inaudible 08:19:51] cursor. So I would like all of it. I want as much control over my environment as possible, especially-
Gain and friction, yeah. And there’s maybe double the amount of those with just velocity and then with the actual [inaudible 08:19:51] cursor. So I would like all of it. I want as much control over my environment as possible, especially-
Lex Fridman
So you want advanced mode. There’s usually this basic mode, and you’re one of those folks, the power-user, advanced-
So you want advanced mode. There’s usually this basic mode, and you’re one of those folks, the power-user, advanced-
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Got it.
Got it.
Noland Arbaugh
That’s what I want. I want as much control over this as possible. So, yeah, that’s really all I can ask for. Just give me everything.
That’s what I want. I want as much control over this as possible. So, yeah, that’s really all I can ask for. Just give me everything.
Lex Fridman
Has speech been useful? Just being able to talk also in addition to everything else?
Has speech been useful? Just being able to talk also in addition to everything else?
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, you mean while I’m using it?
Yeah, you mean while I’m using it?
Lex Fridman
While you’re using it? Speech-to-text?
While you’re using it? Speech-to-text?
Noland Arbaugh
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Lex Fridman
Or do you type… Because there’s also a keyboard-
Or do you type… Because there’s also a keyboard-
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there’s a virtual keyboard. That’s another thing I would like to work more on is finding some way to type or text in a different way. Right now, it is a dictation basically and a virtual keyboard that I can use with the cursor, but we’ve played around with finger spelling, sign language finger spelling, and that seems really promising. So I have this thought in my head that it’s going to be a very similar learning curve that I had with the cursor where I went from attempted movement to imagine movement at one point. I have a feeling, this is just my intuition, that at some point, I’m going to be doing finger spelling and I won’t need to actually attempt to finger spell anymore, that I’ll just be able to think the letter that I want and it’ll pop up.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there’s a virtual keyboard. That’s another thing I would like to work more on is finding some way to type or text in a different way. Right now, it is a dictation basically and a virtual keyboard that I can use with the cursor, but we’ve played around with finger spelling, sign language finger spelling, and that seems really promising. So I have this thought in my head that it’s going to be a very similar learning curve that I had with the cursor where I went from attempted movement to imagine movement at one point. I have a feeling, this is just my intuition, that at some point, I’m going to be doing finger spelling and I won’t need to actually attempt to finger spell anymore, that I’ll just be able to think the letter that I want and it’ll pop up.
Lex Fridman
That would be epic. That’s challenging. That’s hard. That’s a lot of work for you to take that leap, but that would be awesome.
That would be epic. That’s challenging. That’s hard. That’s a lot of work for you to take that leap, but that would be awesome.
Noland Arbaugh
And then going from letters to words is another step. Right now, it’s finger spelling of just the sign language alphabet, but if it’s able to pick that up, then it should be able to pick up the whole sign language language, and so then if I could do something along those lines, or just the sign language spelled word, if I can spell it at a reasonable speed and it can pick that up, then I would just be able to think that through and it would do the same thing. After what I saw with the cursor control, I don’t see why it wouldn’t work, but we’d have to play around with it more.
And then going from letters to words is another step. Right now, it’s finger spelling of just the sign language alphabet, but if it’s able to pick that up, then it should be able to pick up the whole sign language language, and so then if I could do something along those lines, or just the sign language spelled word, if I can spell it at a reasonable speed and it can pick that up, then I would just be able to think that through and it would do the same thing. After what I saw with the cursor control, I don’t see why it wouldn’t work, but we’d have to play around with it more.
Lex Fridman
What was the process in terms of training yourself to go from attempted movement to imagined movement? How long did that take? So how long would this process take?
What was the process in terms of training yourself to go from attempted movement to imagined movement? How long did that take? So how long would this process take?
Noland Arbaugh
Well, it was a couple weeks before it just happened upon me. But now that I know that that was possible, I think I could make it happen with other things. I think it would be much, much simpler.
Well, it was a couple weeks before it just happened upon me. But now that I know that that was possible, I think I could make it happen with other things. I think it would be much, much simpler.
Lex Fridman
Would you get an upgraded implant device?
Would you get an upgraded implant device?
Noland Arbaugh
Sure, absolutely. Whenever they’ll let me.
Sure, absolutely. Whenever they’ll let me.
Lex Fridman
So you don’t have any concerns for you with the surgery experience? All of it was no regrets?
So you don’t have any concerns for you with the surgery experience? All of it was no regrets?
Noland Arbaugh
No.
No.
Lex Fridman
So everything’s been good so far?
So everything’s been good so far?
Noland Arbaugh
Yep.
Yep.
Lex Fridman
You just keep getting upgrades.
You just keep getting upgrades.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah. I mean, why not? I’ve seen how much it’s impacted my life already, and I know that everything from here on out, it’s just going to get better and better. So I would love to get the upgrade.
Yeah. I mean, why not? I’ve seen how much it’s impacted my life already, and I know that everything from here on out, it’s just going to get better and better. So I would love to get the upgrade.
Lex Fridman
What future capabilities are you excited about? So beyond this telepathy, is vision interesting? So for folks, for example, who are blind, so Neuralink enabling people to see, or for speech.
What future capabilities are you excited about? So beyond this telepathy, is vision interesting? So for folks, for example, who are blind, so Neuralink enabling people to see, or for speech.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, there’s a lot that’s very, very cool about this. I mean, we’re talking about the brain, so this is just motor cortex stuff. There’s so much more that can be done. The vision one is fascinating to me. I think that is going to be very, very cool. To give someone the ability to see for the first time in their life would just be… I mean, it might be more amazing than even helping someone like me. That just sounds incredible. The speech thing is really interesting. Being able to have some real-time translation and cut away that language barrier would be really cool. Any actual impairments that it could solve with speech would be very, very cool.
Yeah, there’s a lot that’s very, very cool about this. I mean, we’re talking about the brain, so this is just motor cortex stuff. There’s so much more that can be done. The vision one is fascinating to me. I think that is going to be very, very cool. To give someone the ability to see for the first time in their life would just be… I mean, it might be more amazing than even helping someone like me. That just sounds incredible. The speech thing is really interesting. Being able to have some real-time translation and cut away that language barrier would be really cool. Any actual impairments that it could solve with speech would be very, very cool.
Future Neuralink capabilities
And then also, there are a lot of different disabilities that all originate in the brain, and you would be able to hopefully be able to solve a lot of those. I know there’s already stuff to help people with seizures that can be implanted in the brain. I imagine the same thing. And so you could do something like that. I know that even someone like Joe Rogan has talked about the possibilities with being able to stimulate the brain in different ways. I’m not sure how ethical a lot of that would be. That’s beyond me, honestly. But I know that there is a lot that can be done when we’re talking about the brain and being able to go in and physically make changes to help people or to improve their lives. So I’m really looking forward to everything that comes from this. And I don’t think it’s all that far off. I think a lot of this can be implemented within my lifetime, assuming that I live a long life.
Lex Fridman
What you were referring to is things like people suffering from depression or things of that nature, potentially getting help.
What you were referring to is things like people suffering from depression or things of that nature, potentially getting help.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, flip a switch like that, make someone happy. I think Joe has talked about it more in terms of you want to experience what a drug trip feels like. You want to experience what it’d be like to be on mushrooms or something like that, DMT. You can just flip that switch in the brain. My buddy, Bain, has talked about being able to wipe parts of your memory and re-experience things for the first time, like your favorite movie or your favorite book, just wipe that out real quick, and then re-fall in love with Harry Potter or something. I told him, I was like, “I don’t know how I feel about people being able to just wipe parts of your memory. That seems a little sketchy to me.” He’s like, “They’re already doing it.”
Yeah, flip a switch like that, make someone happy. I think Joe has talked about it more in terms of you want to experience what a drug trip feels like. You want to experience what it’d be like to be on mushrooms or something like that, DMT. You can just flip that switch in the brain. My buddy, Bain, has talked about being able to wipe parts of your memory and re-experience things for the first time, like your favorite movie or your favorite book, just wipe that out real quick, and then re-fall in love with Harry Potter or something. I told him, I was like, “I don’t know how I feel about people being able to just wipe parts of your memory. That seems a little sketchy to me.” He’s like, “They’re already doing it.”
Lex Fridman
Sounds legit. I would love memory replay. Just actually high resolution, replay of old memories.
Sounds legit. I would love memory replay. Just actually high resolution, replay of old memories.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah. I saw an episode of Black Mirror about that once, so I don’t think I want it.
Yeah. I saw an episode of Black Mirror about that once, so I don’t think I want it.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, so Black Mirror always considers the worst case, which is important. I think people don’t consider the best case or the average case enough. I don’t know what it is about us humans. We want to think about the worst possible thing. We love drama. It’s like how is this new technology going to kill everybody? We just love that. Again like, “Yes, let’s watch.”
Yeah, so Black Mirror always considers the worst case, which is important. I think people don’t consider the best case or the average case enough. I don’t know what it is about us humans. We want to think about the worst possible thing. We love drama. It’s like how is this new technology going to kill everybody? We just love that. Again like, “Yes, let’s watch.”
Noland Arbaugh
Hopefully people don’t think about that too much with me. It’ll ruin a lot of my plans.
Hopefully people don’t think about that too much with me. It’ll ruin a lot of my plans.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, I assume you’re going to have to take over the world. I mean, I love your Twitter. You tweeted, “I’d like to make jokes about hearing voices in my head since getting the Neuralink, but I feel like people would take it the wrong way. Plus the voices in my head told me not to.”
Yeah, I assume you’re going to have to take over the world. I mean, I love your Twitter. You tweeted, “I’d like to make jokes about hearing voices in my head since getting the Neuralink, but I feel like people would take it the wrong way. Plus the voices in my head told me not to.”
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah.
Yeah.
Controlling Optimus robot
Lex Fridman
Please never stop. So you were talking about Optimus. Is that something you would love to be able to do to control the robotic arm or the entirety of Optimus?
Please never stop. So you were talking about Optimus. Is that something you would love to be able to do to control the robotic arm or the entirety of Optimus?
Noland Arbaugh
Oh, yeah, for sure. For sure. Absolutely.
Oh, yeah, for sure. For sure. Absolutely.
Lex Fridman
You think there’s something fundamentally different about just being able to physically interact with the world?
You think there’s something fundamentally different about just being able to physically interact with the world?
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah. Oh, 100%. I know another thing with being able to give people the ability to feel sensation and stuff too, by going in with the brain and having a Neuralink maybe do that, that could be something that could be transferred through the Optimus as well. There’s all sorts of really cool interplay between that. And then also, like you said, just physically interacting. I mean, 99% of the things that I can’t do myself, obviously, I need a caretaker for, someone to physically do things for me. If an Optimus robot could do that, I could live an incredibly independent life and not be such a burden on those around me, and it would change the way people like me live, at least until whatever this is gets cured.
Yeah. Oh, 100%. I know another thing with being able to give people the ability to feel sensation and stuff too, by going in with the brain and having a Neuralink maybe do that, that could be something that could be transferred through the Optimus as well. There’s all sorts of really cool interplay between that. And then also, like you said, just physically interacting. I mean, 99% of the things that I can’t do myself, obviously, I need a caretaker for, someone to physically do things for me. If an Optimus robot could do that, I could live an incredibly independent life and not be such a burden on those around me, and it would change the way people like me live, at least until whatever this is gets cured.
But being able to interact with the world physically, that would just be amazing. And not just for having it be a caretaker or something, but something like I talked about. Just being able to read a book. Imagine an Optimus robot just being able to hold a book open in front of me. I get that smell again. I might not be able to feel it at that point, or maybe I could, again, with the sensation and stuff. But there’s something different about reading a physical book than staring at a screen or listening to an audiobook. I actually don’t like audiobooks. I’ve listened to a ton of them at this point, but I don’t really like them. I would much rather read a physical copy.
Lex Fridman
So one of the things you would love to be able to experience is opening the book, bringing it up to you, and to feel the touch of the paper.
So one of the things you would love to be able to experience is opening the book, bringing it up to you, and to feel the touch of the paper.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah. Oh, man. The touch, the smell. I mean, it’s just something about the words on the page. And they’ve replicated that page color on the Kindle and stuff. Yeah, it’s just not the same. Yeah. So just something as simple as that.
Yeah. Oh, man. The touch, the smell. I mean, it’s just something about the words on the page. And they’ve replicated that page color on the Kindle and stuff. Yeah, it’s just not the same. Yeah. So just something as simple as that.
Lex Fridman
So one of the things you miss is touch?
So one of the things you miss is touch?
Noland Arbaugh
I do. Yeah. A lot of things that I interact with in the world, like clothes or literally any physical thing that I interact within the world, a lot of times what people around me will do is they’ll just come rub it on my face. They’ll lay something on me so I can feel the weight. They will rub a shirt on me so I can feel fabric. There’s something very profound about touch, and it’s something that I miss a lot and something I would love to do again. We’ll see.
I do. Yeah. A lot of things that I interact with in the world, like clothes or literally any physical thing that I interact within the world, a lot of times what people around me will do is they’ll just come rub it on my face. They’ll lay something on me so I can feel the weight. They will rub a shirt on me so I can feel fabric. There’s something very profound about touch, and it’s something that I miss a lot and something I would love to do again. We’ll see.
Lex Fridman
What would be the first thing you do with a hand that can touch? Give your mom a hug after that, right?
What would be the first thing you do with a hand that can touch? Give your mom a hug after that, right?
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah. I know. It’s one thing that I’ve asked God for basically every day since my accident was just being able to one day move, even if it was only my hand, so that way, I could squeeze my mom’s hand or something just to show her how much I care and how much I love her and everything. Something along those lines. Being able to just interact with the people around me. Handshake, give someone a hug. I don’t know. Anything like that. Being able to help me eat. I’d probably get really fat, which would be a terrible, terrible thing.
Yeah. I know. It’s one thing that I’ve asked God for basically every day since my accident was just being able to one day move, even if it was only my hand, so that way, I could squeeze my mom’s hand or something just to show her how much I care and how much I love her and everything. Something along those lines. Being able to just interact with the people around me. Handshake, give someone a hug. I don’t know. Anything like that. Being able to help me eat. I’d probably get really fat, which would be a terrible, terrible thing.
Lex Fridman
Also, beat Bliss in chess on a physical board.
Also, beat Bliss in chess on a physical board.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there were just so many upsides. And any way to find some way to feel like I’m bringing Bliss down to my level because he’s just such an amazing guy, and everything about him is just so above and beyond, that anything I can do to take him down a notch, I’m more than happy-
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there were just so many upsides. And any way to find some way to feel like I’m bringing Bliss down to my level because he’s just such an amazing guy, and everything about him is just so above and beyond, that anything I can do to take him down a notch, I’m more than happy-
Lex Fridman
Yeah. Yeah, humble him a bit. He needs it.
Yeah. Yeah, humble him a bit. He needs it.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah.
Yeah.
God
Lex Fridman
Okay. As he’s sitting next to me. Did you ever make sense of why God puts good people through such hardship?
Okay. As he’s sitting next to me. Did you ever make sense of why God puts good people through such hardship?
Noland Arbaugh
Oh, man. I think it’s all about understanding how much we need God. And I don’t think that there’s any light without the dark. I think that if all of us were happy all the time, there would be no reason to turn to God ever. I feel like there would be no concept of good or bad, and I think that as much of the darkness and the evil that’s in the world, it makes us all appreciate the good and the things we have so much more. And I think when I had my accident, one of the first things I said to one of my best friends was… And this was within the first month or two after my accident, I said, “Everything about this accident has just made me understand and believe that God is real and that there really is a God, basically. And that my interactions with him have all been real and worthwhile.”
Oh, man. I think it’s all about understanding how much we need God. And I don’t think that there’s any light without the dark. I think that if all of us were happy all the time, there would be no reason to turn to God ever. I feel like there would be no concept of good or bad, and I think that as much of the darkness and the evil that’s in the world, it makes us all appreciate the good and the things we have so much more. And I think when I had my accident, one of the first things I said to one of my best friends was… And this was within the first month or two after my accident, I said, “Everything about this accident has just made me understand and believe that God is real and that there really is a God, basically. And that my interactions with him have all been real and worthwhile.”
And he said, if anything, seeing me go through this accident, he believes that there isn’t a God. And it’s a very different reaction, but I believe that it is a way for God to test us, to build our character, to send us through trials and tribulations, to make sure that we understand how precious He is and the things that He’s given us and the time that He’s given us, and then to hopefully grow from all of that. I think that’s a huge part of being here, is to not just have an easy life and do everything that’s easy, but to step out of our comfort zones and really challenge ourselves because I think that’s how we grow.
Hope
Lex Fridman
What gives you hope about this whole thing we have going on human civilization?
What gives you hope about this whole thing we have going on human civilization?
Noland Arbaugh
Oh, man. I think people are my biggest inspiration. Even just being at Neuralink for a few months, looking people in the eyes and hearing their motivations for why they’re doing this, it’s so inspiring. And I know that they could be other places, at cushier jobs, working somewhere else, doing X, Y, or Z, that doesn’t really mean that much. But instead, they’re here and they want to better humanity, and they want to better just the people around them. The people that they’ve interacted with in their life, they want to make better lives for their own family members who might have disabilities, or they look at someone like me and they say, “I can do something about that. So I’m going to.” And it’s always been what I’ve connected with most in the world are people.
Oh, man. I think people are my biggest inspiration. Even just being at Neuralink for a few months, looking people in the eyes and hearing their motivations for why they’re doing this, it’s so inspiring. And I know that they could be other places, at cushier jobs, working somewhere else, doing X, Y, or Z, that doesn’t really mean that much. But instead, they’re here and they want to better humanity, and they want to better just the people around them. The people that they’ve interacted with in their life, they want to make better lives for their own family members who might have disabilities, or they look at someone like me and they say, “I can do something about that. So I’m going to.” And it’s always been what I’ve connected with most in the world are people.
I’ve always been a people person and I love learning about people, and I love learning how people developed and where they came from, and to see how much people are willing to do for someone like me when they don’t have to, and they’re going out of their way to make my life better. It gives me a lot of hope for just humanity in general, how much we care and how much we’re capable of when we all get together and try to make a difference. And I know there’s a lot of bad out there in the world, but there always has been and there always will be. And I think that that is… It shows human resiliency and it shows what we’re able to endure and how much we just want to be there and help each other, and how much satisfaction we get from that, because I think that’s one of the reasons that we’re here is just to help each other, and… I don’t know. That always gives me hope, is just realizing that there are people out there who still care and who want to help.
Lex Fridman
And thank you for being one such human being and continuing to be a great human being through everything you’ve been through and being an inspiration to many people, to myself, for many reasons, including your epic, unbelievably great performance on Webgrid. I’ll be training all night tonight to try to catch up.
And thank you for being one such human being and continuing to be a great human being through everything you’ve been through and being an inspiration to many people, to myself, for many reasons, including your epic, unbelievably great performance on Webgrid. I’ll be training all night tonight to try to catch up.
Noland Arbaugh
Hey, man. You can do it. You can do it.
Hey, man. You can do it. You can do it.
Lex Fridman
And I believe in you that once you come back… So sorry to interrupt with the Austin trip, once you come back, eventually beat Bliss.
And I believe in you that once you come back… So sorry to interrupt with the Austin trip, once you come back, eventually beat Bliss.
Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Absolutely.
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Absolutely.
Lex Fridman
I’m rooting for you, though. The whole world is rooting for you.
I’m rooting for you, though. The whole world is rooting for you.
Noland Arbaugh
Thank you.
Thank you.
Lex Fridman
Thank you for everything you’ve done, man.
Thank you for everything you’ve done, man.
Noland Arbaugh
Thanks. Thanks, man.
Thanks. Thanks, man.
Lex Fridman
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Nolan Arbaugh, and before that, with Elon Musk, DJ Seo, Matthew McDougall, and Bliss Chapman. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, let me leave you with some words from Aldous Huxley in The Doors of Perception. “We live together. We act on and react to one another. But always, and in all circumstances, we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena. They are crucified alone. Embrace the lovers desperately tried to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence in vain. But it’s very nature, every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy its solitude, sensations, feelings, insights, fancies, all these are private, and except through symbols and a secondhand incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes.” Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Nolan Arbaugh, and before that, with Elon Musk, DJ Seo, Matthew McDougall, and Bliss Chapman. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, let me leave you with some words from Aldous Huxley in The Doors of Perception. “We live together. We act on and react to one another. But always, and in all circumstances, we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena. They are crucified alone. Embrace the lovers desperately tried to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence in vain. But it’s very nature, every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy its solitude, sensations, feelings, insights, fancies, all these are private, and except through symbols and a secondhand incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes.” Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
Transcript for Sean Carroll: General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Black Holes & Aliens | Lex Fridman Podcast #428
This is a transcript of Lex Fridman Podcast #428 with Sean Carroll.
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And lifting in objects feels good. It feels good to train like a lazy bear and just lift heavy objects. But I’ve also started training with lighter weights and higher repetitions and for three month cycles, and it gives your joints a rest. Yeah, so I think it also is interesting to see how training differently changes your cognition. That’s probably hormone related, hormones downstream of training heavy versus hormones downstream of training a little bit lighter. I think my cognition is better when I’m doing more cardio and when the repetition ranges are a little bit or higher, which is not to say that people who lift heavy are dumb, but there is a… Because there’s real value in lifting heavy.
So I’ve been playing around with walking recently for two hours and thinking because I know a lot of smart people throughout history, I have walked and thought, and you have to play with things that have worked for others, not just to exercise, but to integrate this very light kind of prolonged exercise into a productive life. So they do all their thinking while they walk. It’s like a meditative type of walking, and it’s really interesting. It really works.
And he walks in, voice dictates his papers. And now with Rev or these other, maybe there are better ones than Rev, where you can convert audio files into text very quickly and then edit from there. So I will often voice dictate first drafts and things like that. And I totally agree on the long runs, the walks, the integrating that with cognitive work, harder to do with sprints and then the gym. You weight train?
And then two or three bad experiences later, I’m able to say, “Ah, every single time there was a signal from the body informing my mind, this is not good.” Now the reverse has also been true that there’ve been a number of instances in which I feel there sort of immediate delight, and there’s this almost astonishingly simple experience of feeling comfortable with somebody or at peace with something or delighted at an experience. And it turns out literally all of those experiences and people turned out to be experiences and people that are still in my life and that I still delight in every day. In other words, what’s great about getting older is that you stop questioning the signals that come from, I think deeper recesses of your nervous system to say, “Hey, this is not good,” or, “Hey, this is great, more of this.” Whereas I think in my teens, my twenties, my thirties, I’m almost 48, I’ll be 48 next month.
I didn’t trust, I didn’t listen. I actually put a lot of work into overriding those signals and learning to fight through them, thinking that somehow that was making me tougher or somehow that was making me smarter. When in fact, in the end, those people that you meet that are difficult or there are other names for it, like in the end, you’re like, “That person’s a piece of shit,” or, “This person is amazing and they’re really wonderful.” And I felt that from the go.
So some of my friends early on gave me some bad ideas, but most of the time my bad ideas came from overriding the signals that I knew that my body, and I would say my body and brain were telling me to obey, and I say body and brain is that there’s this brain region, the insula, which does many things, but it represents our sense of internal sensation and interoception. And I was talking to Paul Conte about this, who as you know, I respect tremendously. I think he’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. I think for different reasons. He and Marc Andreessen are some of the smartest people I’ve ever met. But Paul’s level of insight into the human psyche is absolutely astounding. And he says the opposite of what most people say about the brain, which is most people say, “Oh, the supercomputer of the brain is the forebrain.”
It’s like a monkey brain with a extra real estate put on there. And the forebrain is what makes us human and gives us our superpowers. Paul has said, and he’s done a whole series on mental health that’s coming out from our podcast in September, so this is not an attempt to plug that, but he’ll elaborate on [inaudible 00:13:08].
This is self-exploration that is rooted in psychiatry, it’s rooted in neuroscience, and I don’t think this information exists anywhere else. I’m not aware that it exists anywhere else. And he essentially distills it all down to one eight and a half by 11 sheet, which we provide for people. And he says there, I don’t want to give too much away because I would detract from what he does so beautifully, but if I tried and I wouldn’t have accomplish it anyway.
But he said, and I believe that the subconscious is the supercomputer of the brain. All the stuff working underneath our conscious awareness that’s driving our feelings and what we think are the decisions that we’ve thought through so carefully. And that only by exploring the subconscious and understanding it a little bit, can we actually improve ourselves over time and I agree. I think that so the mistake is to think that thinking can override it all. It’s a certain style of introspection and thinking that allows us to read the signals from our body, read the signals from our brain, integrate the knowledge that we’re collecting about ourselves, and to use all that in ways that are really adaptive and generative for us.
I’m somebody who’s drawn to goodness and to light and to joy and all those things like anybody else. But I think maybe it was part of how I grew up. Maybe it was the crowd I was with, but then again, even when I started spending more time with academics and scientists, I mean you see shadows in other ways, right? You see pure ambition with no passion. I recall a colleague in San Diego who it was very clear to me did not actually care about understanding the brain, but understanding the brain was just his avenue to exercise ambition. And if you gave him something else to work on, he’d work on that.
In fact, he did. He left and he worked on something else, and I realized he has no passion for understanding the brain like I assumed all scientists do, certainly why I went into it. But some people, it’s just raw ambition. It’s about winning. It doesn’t even matter what they win, which to me is crazy. But I think that’s a shadow that some people explore, not one I’ve explored. I think the shadow parts of us are very important to come to understand and look better to understand them and know that they’re there and work with them than to not acknowledge their presence and have them surface in the form of addictions or behaviors that damage us in other people.
But with no disrespect to psychiatrists, there are some excellent psychiatrists out there. There are also a lot of terrible psychiatrists out there because unless all of their patients commit suicide or half commit suicide, they can treat for a long time without it becoming visible that they’re not so good at their craft. Now, he’s superb at his craft, and I think he would say that yes, exploring some shadows, but also just understanding the self, really understanding like, “Who am I? And what’s important? What are my ambitions? What are my strivings?” Again, I’m lifting from some of the things that he’ll describe exactly how to do this. People do not spend enough time addressing those questions, and as a consequence, they discover what resides in their subconscious through the sometimes bad, hopefully also good, but manifestations of their actions.
We are driven by this huge 90% of our real estate that is not visible to our conscious awareness. And we need to understand that. I’ve talked about this before. I’ve done therapy twice a week since I was a kid. I had to as a condition of being let back in school. I found a way to either through insurance or even when I didn’t have insurance, I took an extra job writing for Thrasher Magazine when I was a postdoc so I could pay for therapy at a discount because I didn’t make much money as a postdoc.
I mean, I think for me, it’s as important as going to the gym and people think it’s just ruminating on problems, or getting… No, no, no. If you work with somebody really good, they’re forcing you to ask questions about who you really are, what you really want. It’s not just about support, but there should be support. There should be rapport, but then it’s also, there should be insight, right? Most people who get therapy, they’re getting support, there’s rapport, but insight is not easy to arrive at, and a really good psychologist or psychiatrist can help you arrive at deep insights that transform your entire life.
I oscillate between being really grateful and really self-critical. But then you have to figure out what is it? Maybe there’s a deeper root thing. Maybe there’s an insecurity in there somewhere that has to do with childhood and then you’re trying to prove something to somebody from your childhood, this kind of thing.
I don’t think we can rewire our deep preferences and what we find despicable or joyful. I do think that it’s really a question of what allows us peace. Can you be at peace with the fact that you’re very self-critical? And enjoy that, get some distance from it, have a sense of humor about it, or is it driving you in a way that’s keeping you awake at night and forcing you back to the table to do work in a way that feels self-flagellating and doesn’t feel good?
Can you get that humility and awareness of your one’s flaws? And I think that that can create, this word space sounds very new, edgy, like get space from it. You can have a sense of humor about how neurotic we can all be. I mean, neurotic isn’t actually a bad term in the classic sense of the psychologists and psychiatrists, the freudians. So that the best case is to be neurotic, to actually see one’s own issues and work with them. Whereas psychotic is the other way to be, which is obviously not good. So I think the question whether or not to work on something or to just accept it as part of ourselves, I think really depends if we feel like it’s holding us back or not. And I think you’re asking perhaps the most profound question about being a human, which is what do you do with your body? What do you do with your mind?
I mean, it’s also a question. We started off talking about fitness a little bit just for whatever reason. Do I need to run an ultra marathon? I don’t feel like I need to. David Goggins does and does a whole lot more than that. So that for him, that’s important. For me, it’s not important to do that. I don’t think he does it just so he can run the ultras. There’s clearly something else in there for him. And guys like Cam Hanes and tremendous respect for what they do and how they do it. Does one need to make their body more muscular, stronger, more endurance, more flexibility? Do you need to read harder books? I think doing hard things feels good. I know it feels good. I know that the worst I feel, the worst way to feel is when I’m procrastinating and I don’t do something.
And then whenever I do something and I complete it and I break through that point where it was hard and then I’m doing it at the end, I actually feel like I was infused with some sort of super chemical. And who knows if it’s probably a cocktail of endogenously made chemicals. But I think it is good to do hard things, but you have to be careful not to destroy your body, your mind in the process. And I think it’s about whether or not you can achieve peace. Can you sleep well at night?
Stress isn’t bad if you can sleep well at night, you can be stressed all day, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. And it’ll optimize your focus. But can you fall asleep and stay deeply asleep at night? Being in a hard relationship. Some people say that’s not good. Other people like can you be at peace in that? And I think we all have different RPM. We all kind of idle at different RPM and some people are big mellow Costello and others need more friction in order to feel at peace. But I think ultimately what we want is to feel at peace.
And then my graduate advisor, who I was working for at that time, who I loved and adored, was really like a mother to me. I knew her when she was pregnant with her two kids, died at 50, breast cancer. And then my postdoc advisor, first day of work at Stanford as a faculty member sitting across the table like this from him, had a heart attack right in front of me, died of pancreatic cancer at the end of 2017. And I remember just thinking, going back to that song there over and over and where people would… Yeah, I haven’t had many betrayals in life. I’ve had a few. But just thinking or seeing something or learning something about something, you just say you can’t believe it. And I mentioned that lyric off, that first song, Indestructible on that album because it’s just the raw emotion of like, “I can’t believe this. What I just saw is so disturbing, but I have to just keep going forward.”
There are certain things that we really do need to push not just into our periphery, but off into the gutter and keep going. And that’s a hard thing to learn how to do. But if you’re going to be functional in life, you have to. And actually just to get at this issue of do I change or do I embrace this aspect of self? About six months, it was April of this last year, I did some intense work around some things that were really challenging to me. And I did it alone, and it may have involved some medicine, and I expected to get peace through this. I was like, “I’m going to let go of it.” And I spent 11 hours just getting more and more frustrated and angry about this thing that I was trying to resolve.
And I was so unbelievably disappointed that I couldn’t get that relief. And I was like, “What is this? This is not how this is supposed to work. I’m supposed to feel peace. The clouds are supposed to lift.” And so a week went by and then another half week went by, and then someone whose opinion I trust very much. I explained this to them because I was getting a little concerned like, “What’s going on? This is worse, not better.” And they said, ” This is very simple. You have a giant blind spot, which is your sense of justice, Andrew, and your sense of anger are linked like an iron rod and you need to relax it.” And as they said that, I felt the anger dissipate. And so there was something that I think it is true. I have a very strong sense of justice and my sense of anger then at least was very strongly linked to it.
So it’s great to have a sense of justice, right? I hate to see people wrong. I absolutely do. And I’m human. I’m sure I’ve wronged people in my life. I know I have. They’ve told me, I’ve tried to apologize and reconcile where possible. Still have a lot of work to do. But where I see injustice, it draws in my sense of anger in a way that I think is just eating me up. But it was only in hearing that link that I wasn’t aware of before. It was in my subconscious, obviously. Did I feel the relaxation? There’s no amount of plant medicine or MDMA or any kind of chemical you can take that’s naturally just going to dissipate what’s hard for oneself if one embraces that or if one chooses to do it through just talk therapy or journaling or friends or introspection or all of the above. There needs to be an awareness of the things that we’re just not aware of.
So I think the answer to your question, do you embrace or do you fight these aspects of self is? I think you get in your subconscious through good work with somebody skilled. And sometimes that involves the tools I just mentioned in various combinations and you figure it out. You figure out if it’s serving you. Obviously it was not bringing me peace. My sense of justice was undermining my sense of peace. And so in understanding this link… Now, I would say, in understanding this link between justice and anger, now I think it’s a little bit more of you know, it’s not like a Twizzler stick bendy, but at least it’s not like an iron rod. When I see somebody wronged, I mean it used to just… Like immediately.
So this is this historic place that sheds so much blood, so much fear, so much anticipation of battle, all of this. So he loves this kind of spectacle and also, the meme of it, the hilarious absurdity of it. The two tech CEOs are battling it out on sand in a place where gladiators fought to the death and then bears and lions ate prisoners as part of the execution process.
I got hit. I hit some guys and definitely got hit back. I’d spar on Wednesday nights when I lived on San Diego. And when you spar with somebody, even if they hurt you, especially if they hurt you, you see that person afterwards and there’s an intimacy, right? It was in that book, Fighter’s Heart, where he explains, you’re exchanging bodily fluids with a stranger and you’re in your primitive mind and so there’s an intimacy there that persists so-
Go to graduate school, I’m working for somebody, and decide that working in her laboratory wasn’t quite right for me. So I’m literally sneaking into the laboratory next door and working for the woman next door because I liked the relationships that she had to a certain set of questions and she was a quirky person. So drawn to drama but drawn to… I like characters. I like people that have texture. And I’m not drawn to raw ambition, I’m drawn to people that seem to have a real passion for what they do and a uniqueness to them that I… Not kind of, I’ll just say how it is. I can feel their heart for what they do and I’m drawn to that and that can be good.
It’s the same reason I went to work for Ben Barris as a post-doc. It wasn’t because he was the first transgender member of the National Academy of Sciences, that was just a feature of who he was. I loved how he loved glial. He would talk about these cells like they were the most enchanting things that he’d ever seen in his life. And I was like, “This is the biggest nerd I’ve ever met and I love him.” I think I’m drawn to that.
This is another thing that Conti elaborates on quite a bit more in the series on mental health coming out. But there are different drives within us, there are aggressive drives. Not always for fighting but for intense interaction. I mean, look at Twitter. Look at some of the… People clearly have an aggressive drive. There’s also a pleasure drive. Some people also have a strong pleasure drive. They want to experience pleasure through food, through sex, through friendship, through adventure. But I think the Shakespearean drama is the drama of the different drives in different ratios in different people.
I know somebody and she’s incredibly kind. Has an extremely high pleasure drive, loves taking great care of herself and people around her through food and through retreats and through all these things and makes spaces beautiful everywhere she goes. And gifts these things that are just so unbelievably feminine and incredible. These gifts to people and then kind and thoughtful about what they like. And then.. But I would say, very little aggressive drive from my read.
And then, I know other people who just have a ton of aggressive drive and very little pressure drive and I think… So there’s this alchemy that exists where people have these things in different ratios. And then, you blend in the differences in the chromosomes and differences in hormones and differences in personal history and what you end up with is a species that creates incredible recipes of drama but also peace, also relief from drama, contentment.
I mean, I realize this isn’t the exact topic of the question. But someone I know very dearly, actually an ex-girlfriend of mine, long- term partner of mine, sent me something recently and I think it hit the nail on the head. Which is that ideally for a man, they eventually settle where they find and feel peace, where they feel peaceful, where they can be themselves and feel peaceful. Now, I’m sure there’s an equivalent or mirror image of that for women but this particular post that she sent was about men and I totally agree.
And so, it isn’t always that we’re seeking friction. But for periods of our life, we seek friction, drama, adventure, excitement, fights, and doing hard, hard things. And then I think at some point, I’m certainly coming to this point now where it’s like, “Yeah. That’s all great and checked a lot of boxes.” But I had a lot of close calls, flew really close to the sun on a lot of things with life and limb and heart and spirit and some people close to us didn’t make it. And sometimes, not making it means the career they wanted went off a cliff or their health went off a cliff or their life went off a cliff. But I think that there’s also the Shakespearean drama of the characters that exit the play and are living their lives happily in the backdrop. It just doesn’t make for as much entertainment.
I say the first one, “I’m an animal,” because I have to remember that I have a body that needs care like any of us. I need sleep, I need food, I need hydration, I need… That I’m human, that the brain of a human is marvelously complex but also marvelously self-defeating at times. And so, I’m thinking about these things in the context of the different roles. And the whole thing takes about four or five minutes and I just find it brings me a certain amount of clarity that then allows me to ratchet into the day.
The prayer piece, I think I’ve been reluctant to talk about until now because I don’t believe in pushing religion on people. And I think that… And I’m not, it’s a highly individual thing and I do believe that one can be an atheist and still pray or agnostic and still pray. But for me, it really came about through understanding that there are certain aspects of myself that I just couldn’t resolve on my own. And no matter how much therapy, no matter how much… And I haven’t done a lot of it. But no matter how much plant medicine or other forms of medicine or exercise or podcasting or science or friendship or any of that, I was just not going to resolve.
And so, I started this because a male friend said, “Prayer is powerful,” and I said, “Well, how?” And he said, “I don’t know how but it can allow you to get outside yourself. Let you give up control and at the same time, take control.” I don’t even like saying take control. But the whole notion is that… And again, forgive me, but there’s no other way to say it. The whole notion is that God works through us. Whatever God is to you, he, him, her, life force, nature, whatever it is to you, that it works through us.
And so, I do a prayer. I’ll just describe it where I make an ask to help remove my character defects. I pray to God to help remove my character defects so that I can show up better in all the roles of my life and do good work which for me is learning and teaching. And so you might say, “Well, how is that different than a meditation?” Well, I’m acknowledging that there is something bigger than me, bigger than nature as I understand it, that I cannot understand or control nor do I want to, and I’m just giving over to that. And does that make me less of a scientist? I sure as hell hope not. I certainly know… There’s the head of our neurosciences at Stanford until recently. You should talk to him directly about it. Bill Newsome has talked about his religious life.
For me, it’s really a way of getting outside myself and then understanding how I fit into this bigger picture. And the character defects part is real, right? I’m a human. I have defects. I got a lot of flaws in me like anybody and trying to acknowledge them and asking for help in removing them. Not magically but through right action, through my right action. So I do that every morning.
And I have to say that it’s helped. It’s helped a lot. It’s helped me be better to myself, be better to other people. I still make mistakes but it’s becoming a bigger part of my life. And I never thought I’d talk like this but I think it’s clear to me that if we don’t believe in something… Again, it doesn’t have to be traditional, standardized religion, but if we don’t believe in something bigger than ourselves, we, at some level, will self-destruct. I really think so.
And it’s powerful in a way that all the other stuff, meditation and all the tools, is not because it’s really operating at a much deeper and bigger level. Yeah. I think that’s all I can talk about it. Mostly because I’m still working out. The scientists in me wants to understand how it works and I want to understand. And the point is to just go, for lack of a better language for it, “There’s a higher power than me and what I can control. I’m giving up control on certain things.” And somehow, that restores a sense of agency for right action and better action.
But when things weren’t right, I couldn’t make sense of them, I would secretly pray. But I felt ashamed of that for whatever reason. And then, it was once in college, I distinctly remember I was having a hard time with a number of things and I took a run down to SAN Speech. It was at UC Santa Barbara. And I remember I was like, “I don’t know if I even have the right to do this but I’m just praying,” and I just prayed for the ability to be as brutally honest with myself and with other people as I possibly could be about a particular situation I was in at that time.
I mean, I think now it’s probably safe to say I’d gone off to college because of a high school girlfriend. Essentially, she was my family. Frankly, more than my biological family was at a certain stage of life and we’d reached a point where we were diverging and it was incredibly painful. It was like losing everything I had. And it was like, “What do I do? How do I manage this?” I was ready to quit and join the fire service just to support us so that we could move forward and it was just…
But praying, just saying, “I can’t figure this out on my own.” It’s like, “I can’t figure this out on my own,” and how frustrating that no number of friends could tell me and inner wisdom couldn’t tell me. And eventually, it led me to the right answers. She and I are friendly friends to this day. She’s happily married with a child and we’re on good terms. But I think it’s a scary thing but it’s the best thing when you just, “I can’t control all of this.” And asking for help, I think is also the piece. You’re not asking for some magic hand to come down and take care of it but you’re asking for the help to come through you so that your body is used to do these right works, right action.
And when my body would break down or I’d get sick a lot, I don’t get sick much anymore. Occasionally, about once every 18 months to two years, I’ll get something. But I used to break my foot skateboarding all the time, I couldn’t understand. What’s wrong with my body? I’m getting injured. I can’t do what everyone else can. Now, I developed more slowly. I had a long arc of puberty so that was part of it. I was still developing.
But how to get your body stronger, how to build endurance, no one told me. The information wasn’t there. So a lot of what I put out there is the information that I wish I had. Because once I had it, I was like, “Wow.” A, this stuff really works. B, it’s grounded in something real. Sometimes, certain protocols are a combination of animal and human studies, sometimes clinical trials. Sometimes there’s some mechanistic conjecture for some, not all, I always make clear which. But in the end, figuring out how things work so that we can be happier, healthier, more productive, suffer less, reduce the suffering of the world. And I think that… Well, I’ll just say thank you for asking about the prayer piece. Again, I’m not pushing or even encouraging it on anyone. I’ve just found it to be tremendously useful for me.
And I think that as we grow older, we learn to cover that stuff up. We wear masks and we have to, to be functional. I don’t think we all want to go around just being completely raw. But as you said, as you get older, you get to this point where you go, “Eh. What are we really trying to protect anyway?”
I mean, I have this theory that certainly my experience has taught me that a lot of people but I’ll talk about men because that’s what I know best, whether or not they show up strong or not, that they’re really afraid of being weak. They’re just afraid… Sometimes, the strength is even a way to try and not be weak which is different than being strong for its own sake. I’m not just talking about physical strength. I’m talking about intellectual strength. I’m talking about money. I’m talking about expressing drive. I’ve been watching this series a little bit of Chimp Empire.
So now, they start using that prefrontal cortex to do some interesting things. So in primate world, if a male is friendly with another male, wants to affiliate with him and say, “Hey, I’m backing you,” they’ll go over and they’ll pick off the little parasites and eat them. And so, the grooming is extremely important. In fact, if they want to ostracize or kill one of the members of their troop, they will just leave it alone. No one will groom it. And then, there’s actually a really disturbing sequence in that show of then the parasites start to eat away on their skin. They get infections. They have issues. No one will mate with them. They have other issues as well and can potentially die.
So the interesting thing is Number 2 and 3 start to line up a strategy to groom this guy but they are actually thinking about overtaking the entire troop setting in a new alpha. But the current alpha did that to get where he is so he knows that they’re doing this grooming thing, but they might not be sincere about the grooming. So what does he do? He takes the whole troop on a raid to another troop and sees who will fight for him and who won’t.
This is advanced contracting of behavior for a species that normally we don’t think of as sophisticated as us. So it’s very interesting and it gets to something that I hope we’ll have an opportunity to talk about because it’s something that I’m obsessed with lately, is this notion of overt versus covert contracts, right? There are overt contracts where you exchange work for money or you exchange any number of things in an overt way. But then, there are covert contracts, and those take on a very different form and always lead to, in my belief, bad things.
But now, okay. So overt contract would be we both want to do some work together, we’re going to make some money, you get X percentage, I get X percentage. It’s overt. Covert contract which is, in my opinion, always bad, would be we’re going to do some work together, you’re going to get a percentage of money, I’m going to get a percentage of money. Could look just like the overt contract but secretly, I’m resentful that I got the percentage that I got. So what I start doing is covertly taking something else. What do I take? Maybe I take the opportunity to jab you verbally every once in a while. Maybe I take the opportunity to show up late. Maybe I take the opportunity to get to know one of your coworkers so that I might start a business with them. That’s covert contracting.
And you see this sometimes in romantic relationships. One person, we won’t set the male or female in any direction here and just say it’s, “I’ll make you feel powerful if you make me feel desired.” Okay. Great. There’s nothing explicitly wrong about that contract if they both know and they both agree. But what if it’s, “I’ll do that but I’ll have kids with you so you feel powerful. You’ll have kids with me so I feel desired. But secretly, I don’t want to do that,” or one person says, “I don’t want to do that,” or both don’t. So what they end up doing is saying, “Okay. So I expect something else. I expect you to do certain things for me,” or, “I expect you to pay for certain things for me.”
Covert contracts are the signature of everything bad. Overt contracts are the signature of all things good. And I think about this a lot because I’ve seen a lot of examples of this. I’ve… Like anyone, we participate in these things whether or not we want to or not and the thing that gets transacted the most is… Well, I should say the things that get transacted the most are the overt things. You’ll see money, time, sex, property, whatever it happens to be, information. But what ends up happening is that when people, I believe, don’t feel safe, they feel threatened in some way, like they don’t feel safe in a certain interaction, what they do is they start taking something else while still engaging in the exchange. And I’ll tell you, if there’s one thing about human nature that’s bad, it’s that feature.
Why that feature? Or, “Is it a bug or a feature?” as you engineers like to say. I think it’s because we were allocated a certain extra amount of prefrontal cortex that makes us more sophisticated than a dog, more sophisticated than a chimpanzee, but they do it too. And it’s because it’s often harder, in the short term, to deal with the real sense of, “This is scary. This feels threatening,” than it is to play out all the iterations. It takes a lot of brain work. You’re playing chess and go simultaneously trying to figure out where things are going to end up and we just don’t know.
So it’s a way, I think, of creating a false sense of certainty. But I’ll tell you, covert contracts, the only certainty is that it’s going to end badly. The question is, how badly? Conversely, overt contracts always end well, always. The problem with overt contracts is that you can’t be certain that the other person is not engaging in a covert contract. You can only take responsibility for your own contracting.
Okay, this has to do with eyespots. This was during a government shutdown period where the ghost shrimp that they normally feed eat on, that we would ship in from the gulf down here, weren’t available to us. So we had to get different shrimp. And what we noticed was the cuttlefish normally would just sneak up on the shrimp. We learned this by data collection. And if the shrimp was facing them, they would do this thing with their tentacles of enchanting the shrimp. And if the shrimp wasn’t facing them, they wouldn’t do it and they would ballistically grab it and eat them.
Well, when we got these new shrimp, the new shrimp had eyespots on their tails and then the cuttlefish would do this attempt to enchant, regardless of the position of the ghost shrimp. So what does that mean? Okay, well, it means that there’s some sort of algorithm in the cuttlefish’s mind that says, “Okay, if you see two spots, move your tentacles.” So it can be, as you pointed out, it can be a fairly simple operation, but it looks diabolical. It looks cunning, but all it is strategy B.
This is something people don’t often understand about genetics, is that it only takes a few generations to devolve a trait, make it worse, but it takes a long time to evolve an adaptive trait. There are exceptions to that, but most often that’s true. So a species needs a lot of generations. We are hopefully still evolving as a species. And it takes a long time, to evolve more adaptive traits, but doesn’t take long to devolve adaptive traits, so that you’re getting sicker or you’re not functioning as well. So choose your mate wisely, and that’s perhaps the good segue into sexual selection in humans.
Earlier we were talking about peace, and I think that that sense of peace comes from knowing that the person you’re in friendship with, or that you’re in romantic relationship, or ideally both, because let’s assume the best romantic relationship includes a friendship component with that person. It’s like you just really delight in their presence, even if it’s a quiet presence. And you delight in seeing them delight in things, that’s clear.
But I think that there seems to be a history of people close to me getting into great relationships, where they were friends for a while first or maybe didn’t sleep together right away, that they actually intentionally deferred on that. This has not been my habit or my experience. I’ve gone the more, I think typical, like, oh, there’s an attraction, like this person, there’s an interest. You explore all dimensions of relationship really quickly except perhaps the moving in part and the having kids part, which because it’s a bigger step, harder to undo without more severe consequences. But I think that whole take it slow thing, I don’t think is about getting to know someone slowly, I think it’s about that physical piece, because that does change the nature of the relationship. And I think it’s because it gets right into the more hardwired, primitive circuitry around our feelings of safety, vulnerability.
There’s something about romantic and sexual interactions, where it’s almost like it’s assets and liabilities, right?
I’ll tell you where I’ve gone badly wrong and where I see other people going badly wrong. There is no rule that says that you have to be attracted to all attractive people, by any means. It’s very important to develop a sense of taste in romantic attractions, I believe. What you really like, in terms of a certain style, a certain way of being, and of course that includes sexuality and sex itself, the verb. But I think it also includes their just general way of being. And when you really adore somebody, you like the way they answer the phone, and when they don’t answer the phone that way, you know something’s off and you want to know. And so I think that the more you can tune up your powers of observation, not looking for things that you like, and the more that stuff just washes over you, the more likely you are to, “Fall in love.” As a mutual friend of ours said to me, “Listen, when it comes to romantic relationships, if it’s not a hundred percent in you, it ain’t happening.”
And I’ve never seen a violation of that statement, where it’s like, yeah, it’s mostly good and they’re this and this, likes the negotiations. Well, already it’s doomed. And that doesn’t mean someone has to be perfect, the relationship has to be perfect, but it’s got to feel hundred percent inside.
Okay, the data on position is very interesting, but let me just say a few things. There are a few clinics now, in particular some out of the United States, that are spinning down sperm and finding that they can separate out fractions, as they’re called. They can spin the sperm down at a given speed, and that they’ll separate out at different depths within the test tube, that allow them to pull out the sperm on top or below and bias the probability towards male or female births. It’s not perfect. It’s not a hundred percent. It’s a very costly procedure. It’s still very controversial.
Now with in vitro fertilization, they can extract eggs. You can introduce a sperm, directly by pipette, it’s a process called ICSI. Or you can set up a sperm race in a dish. And if you get a number of different embryos, meaning the eggs get fertilized, duplicate and start form a blastocyst, which is a ball of cells, early embryo, then you can do karyotyping. So you can do look for XX or XY, select the XY, which then would give rise to a male offspring, and then implant that one. So there is that kind of sex selection.
With respect to position, there’s a lot of lore that if the woman is on top or the woman’s on the bottom, or whether or not the penetration is from behind, whether or not it’s going to be male or female offspring. And frankly, the data are not great, as you can imagine, because those-
But others that I sought out, and not specifically for this answer, but for researching that episode, said that, “Yeah, what you’re talking about is trying to get the maximum number of sperm and it’s contained in semen. And yes, the semen can leak out. And so keeping the pelvis tilted for about 15 degrees for about 15 minutes, obviously tilted in the direction that would have things running upstream, not downstream, so to speak.”
And in the podcast, we did talk about both male and female orgasm. We talked a lot about sexual function and dysfunction. We talked a lot about pelvic floor. One interesting factoid is that only 3% of sexual dysfunction is hormonal, endocrine, in nature. It’s more often related to some pelvic floor or vasculature, blood flow related or other issue. And then when Eisenberg came on the podcast, he said that far less sexual dysfunction is psychogenic in origin than people believe. That far more of it is pelvic floor, neuro and vascular. It’s not saying that psychogenic dysfunction doesn’t exist, but that a lot of the sexual dysfunction that people assume is related to hormones or that is related to psychogenic issues are related to vascular or neural issues. And the good news is that there are great remedies for those. And so both those episodes detail some of the more salient points around what those remedies are and could be.
One of the, again, factoids, but it was interesting that a lot of people have pelvic floor issues and they think that their pelvic floors are, quote, unquote, messed up. So they go on the internet, they learn about Kegels. And it turns out that some people need Kegels, they need to strengthen their pelvic floor. Guess what? A huge number of people with sexual and urologic dysfunction have pelvic floors that are too tight and Kegels are going to make them far worse, and they actually need to learn to relax their pelvic floor. And so seeing a pelvic floor specialist is important.
I think in the next five, 10 years, we’re going to see a dramatic shift towards more discussion about sexual and reproductive health in a way that acknowledges that, yeah, the clitoris comes from the same origin tissue as the penis. And in many ways the neural innervation of the two, while clearly different, has some overlapping features that there’s going to be discussion around anatomy and hormones and pelvic floors in a way that’s going to erode some of the cloaking of these topics because they’ve been cloaked for a long time and there’s a lot of… Well, let’s just call it what it is. There’s a lot of bullshit out there about what’s what.
Now, the hormonal issues, by the way, just to clarify, can impact desire. So a lot of people who have lack of desire as opposed to lack of anatomical function, this could be male or female that can originate with either things like SSRIs or hormonal issues. And so we talk about that as well. So it’s a pretty vast topic.
And then I’m looking for papers that establish a thoroughness of understanding. That are interesting, obviously. It’s fun to get occasionally look at some of the odder or more progressive papers that are what’s new in a field and then where there are actionable takeaways to really export those with a lot of thoughtfulness.
Going back to the productivity thing I do, I get up, I look at the sun. I don’t stare at the sun, but I get my sunshine. It all starts with a really good night’s sleep. I think that’s really important to understand. So much so that if I wake up and I don’t feel rested enough, I’ll often do a non-sleep deep rest yoga nidra, or go back to sleep for a little bit, get up, really prioritize the big block of work for the thing that I’m researching. I think a little bit of anxiety and a little bit of concern about deadline helps. Turning the phone off helps, realizing that those peak hours, whenever they are for you, you do not allow those hours to be invaded, unless a nuclear bomb goes off. And nuclear bomb is just a phraseology for, family crisis would be good justification. If there’s an emergency, obviously.
But it’s all about focus. It’s all about focus in the moment. It’s not even so much about how many hours you log. It’s really about focus in the moment. How much total focus can you give to something? And then I like to take walks and think about things and sometimes talk about them in my voice recorder. So I’m just always churning on it, all the time. And then of course, learning to turn it off and engage with people socially and not be podcasting 24 hours a day in your head is key. But I think I love learning and researching and finding those papers and the information, and I love teaching it.
And these days I use a whiteboard before I start. I don’t have any notes, no teleprompter. Then the whiteboard that I use beforehand is to really sculpt out the different elements and the flow, get the flow right and move things around. The whiteboard is such a valuable tool. Then take a couple pictures of that when I’m happy with it, put it down on the desk and these are just bullet points and then just churn through and just churn through. And nothing feels better than researching and sharing information. And I, as you did, grew up writing papers and it’s hard. And I like the friction of, “Uh, can’t. I want to get up. I want to use the bathroom.”
When I was in college, I was trying to make up deficiencies from my lack of attendance in high school, so much so that I would set a timer. I wouldn’t let myself get up to use the bathroom even. Never had an accident. I listened to music, classical music, Rancid, a few other things. Some Bob Dylan maybe thrown in there and just study and just… And then you’d hit the two-hour mark and you’re in pain and then you get up, use the bathroom. You’re like, “That felt so good.” There’s something about the human brain that likes these kind of friction points and working through them and you just have to work through them.
So yeah, I’m productive and my life has arranged around it, and that’s been a bit of a barrier to personal life at times. But my life’s been arranged around it. I’ve set up everything so that I can learn more, teach more, including some of my home life. But I do still watch Chimp Empire. I still got time to watch Chimp Empire. Look, the great Joe Strummer, Clash, they were my favorite Mescaleros. He said, this famous Strummer quote, “No input, no output.” So you need experience. You need outside things in order to foster the process.
But yeah, just nose to the grindstone man, I don’t know. And that’s what I’m happy to do with my life. I don’t think anyone should do that just because. But this is how I’m showing up. And if you don’t like me, then scroll… What do they say? Swipe left, swipe right. I don’t know. I’m not on the apps, the dating apps. So that’s the other thing. I keep waiting for when, “Listens to Lex Fridman podcast,” is a checkbox on Hinge or Bumble or whatever it is. But I don’t even know. Are those their field? I don’t know. What are the apps now?
And then as we’ve gotten into topics that are a little bit further away from my home knowledge, I still get super excited about it. This music in the brain episode I’ve been researching for a while now, I’m just so hyped about it. It’s so, so interesting. There’s so many facets. Singing versus improvisational music versus, “I’m listening to music,” versus learning music. It just goes on and on. There’s just so much that’s so interesting. I just can’t get enough. And I think, I don’t know, you put a camera in front of me, I sort of forget about it and I’m just trying to just teach.
But yeah, just tap into that energy of learning and loving it. And people are along for the ride. I get accused of being long-winded, but things get taken out of context, that leads to greater misunderstanding. And also, listen, I come from a lineage of three dead advisors. Three. All three. So I don’t know when the reaper’s coming for me. I’m doing my best to stay alive a long time. But whether or not it’s a bullet or a bus or cancer or whatever, or just old age, I’m trying to get it all out there as best I can. And if it means you have to hit pause and come back a day or two later, that seems like a reasonable compromise to me. I’m not going to go longer than I need to and I’m trying to shorten them up. But again, that’s kind of how I show up.
It’s like Tim Armstrong would say about writing songs. I asked him, “How often do you write?” Every day. Every day. Does Rick ever stop creating? No. Has Joe ever stopped preparing for comedy? Are you ever stopping to think about world issues and technology and who you can talk to? It seems to me you’ve always got a plan in sight. The thing I love about your podcast the most, to be honest these days, is the surprise of I don’t know who the hell’s going to be there. It’s almost like I get a little nervously excited about when a new episode comes out. I have no idea. No idea. I have some guesses based on what you told me during the break. You’ve got some people where it’s just like, “Whoa, Lex went there? Awesome. Can’t wait.” Click. I think that’s really cool. You’re constantly surprising people. So you’re doing it so well. It’s such a high level and I think it’s also important for people to understand that what you’re doing Lex, there’s no precedent for it. Sure. There’ve been interviews before, there have been podcasts before. There are discussions before. How many of your peers can you look to find out how best to do the content like yours? Zero. There’s one peer: you. And so that should give you great peace and great excitement because you’re a pioneer. You’re literally the tip of the spear.
I don’t want to take an unnecessary tangent, but I think this might thread together two of the things that we’ve been talking about, which are, I think of pretty key importance. One is romantic relationships, and the other is creative process and work. And this again, is something I learned from Rick, but that he and I have gone back and forth on. And that I think is worth elaborating on, which is earlier we were saying the best relationship is going to be one where it brings you peace. I think peace also can be translated to, among other things, lack of distraction. So when you’re with your partner, can you really focus on them and the relationship? Can you not be distracted by things that you’re upset about from their past or from your past with them? And of course the same is true for them, right? They ideally will feel that way towards you too. They can really focus.
Also, when you’re not with them, can you focus on your work? Can you not be worried about whether or not they’re okay because you trust that they’re an adult and they can handle things or they will reach out if they need things? They’re going to communicate their needs like an adult. Not creating messes just to get attention and things like that, or disappearing for that matter. So peace and focus are intimately related, and distraction is the enemy of peace and focus.
So there’s something there, I believe, because with people that have the strong generative drive and want to be productive in their home life, in the sense have a rich family life, partner life, whatever that is, and in their work life, the ability to really drop into the work and you might have that sense like, “I hope they’re okay,” or, “need to check my phone or something,” but just know we’re good.
And the craziest thing happened, Lex. It was unbelievable. I’ve never had an experience like this. I expected my heart to break, and I’ve felt a broken heart before. I felt it, frankly, when my parents split, I felt it when Harry shot himself. I felt it when Barbara died and felt it when Ben went as well. And so many friends, way too many friends. The end of 2017, my friend Aaron King, Johnny Fair, John Eikleberry, stomach cancer, suicide, fentanyl. I was like, “Whoa. All in a fricking week.” And I just remember thinking, “What the…?” And it’s just heartbreak and you just carry that and it’s like, “Uh.” And that’s just a short list. And I don’t say that for sob stories. It’s just for a guy that wasn’t in the military or didn’t grow up in the inner city, it’s an unusual number of deaths, close people.
When Costello went, the craziest thing happened. My heart warmed up, it heated up. And I wasn’t on MDMA. The moment he went, it just went whoosh. And I was like, “What the hell is this?” And it was a supernatural experience to me. I just never had that. I put my grandfather on the ground, I was a pallbearer at the funeral. I’ve done that more times than I’d like to have ever done it. And it just heated up with Costello and I thought, “What the fuck is this?”
And it was almost like, and we make up these stories about what it is, but it was almost like he was like, “All right,” I have to be careful because I will cry here and I don’t want to. It was almost like he was like all that effort, because I had been putting so much effort into him, it was like, “All right, you get that back.” It was like the giant freaking, “Thank you.” And it was incredible. And I’m not embarrassed to shed a tear or two about it if I have to.
I was like, “Holy shit.” That’s how close I was to that animal.
When I think about Barbara especially, I well up and it’s hard for me, but I talked to her before she died and that was a brutal conversation, saying goodbye to someone, especially with kids. And that was hard. I think that really flipped a switch in me where I’m like, I always knew I wanted kids. I’d say, “I want kids. I want a lot of kids.” That flipped a switch in me. I was like, “I want kids. I want my own kids.”
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Andrew Huberman to support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from Albert Camus. “In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.” Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
Click link to jump approximately to that part in the transcript:
- 0:00 – Introduction
- 1:31 – Exercise routine
- 7:42 – Advice to younger self
- 14:56 – Jungian shadow
- 19:42 – Betrayal and loyalty
- 39:52 – Drama
- 57:31 – Chimp Empire
- 1:02:24 – Overt vs covert contracts
- 1:08:31 – Age and health
- 1:14:39 – Sexual selection
- 1:25:15 – Relationships
- 1:37:49 – Fertility
- 1:48:15 – Productivity
- 2:05:02 – Family
Introduction
Andrew Huberman
Listen, when it comes to romantic relationships, if it’s not a 100% in you, it ain’t happening. And I’ve never seen a violation of that statement where it’s like, “Yeah, it’s mostly good.” And this is like the negotiations, already it’s doomed. And that doesn’t mean someone has to be perfect. The relationship has to be perfect, but it’s got to feel a 100% inside, like yes, yes, and yes.
Listen, when it comes to romantic relationships, if it’s not a 100% in you, it ain’t happening. And I’ve never seen a violation of that statement where it’s like, “Yeah, it’s mostly good.” And this is like the negotiations, already it’s doomed. And that doesn’t mean someone has to be perfect. The relationship has to be perfect, but it’s got to feel a 100% inside, like yes, yes, and yes.
Lex Fridman
The following is a conversation with my dear friend Andrew Huberman, his fourth time on this podcast. It’s my birthday, so this is a special birthday episode of sorts. Andrew flew down to Austin just to wish me a happy birthday, and we decided to do a podcast last second. We literally talked for hours beforehand and a long time after late into the night. He’s one of my favorite human beings, brilliant scientists, incredible teacher, and a loyal friend. I’m grateful for Andrew. I’m grateful for good friends, for all the support and love I’ve gotten over the past few years. I’m truly grateful for this life, for the years, the days, the minutes, the seconds I’ve gotten to live on this beautiful earth of ours. I really don’t want to leave just yet. I think I’d really like to stick around. I love you all. This is the Lex Fridman podcast. And now, dear friends, here’s Andrew Huberman.
The following is a conversation with my dear friend Andrew Huberman, his fourth time on this podcast. It’s my birthday, so this is a special birthday episode of sorts. Andrew flew down to Austin just to wish me a happy birthday, and we decided to do a podcast last second. We literally talked for hours beforehand and a long time after late into the night. He’s one of my favorite human beings, brilliant scientists, incredible teacher, and a loyal friend. I’m grateful for Andrew. I’m grateful for good friends, for all the support and love I’ve gotten over the past few years. I’m truly grateful for this life, for the years, the days, the minutes, the seconds I’ve gotten to live on this beautiful earth of ours. I really don’t want to leave just yet. I think I’d really like to stick around. I love you all. This is the Lex Fridman podcast. And now, dear friends, here’s Andrew Huberman.
Exercise routine
Andrew Huberman
I’m trying to run a little bit more.
I’m trying to run a little bit more.
Lex Fridman
Are you losing weight?
Are you losing weight?
Andrew Huberman
I’m not trying to lose weight, but I always do the same fitness routine after 30 years. Basically lift three days a week, run three days a week, but one of the runs is the long run, one of them is medium, one of them is a sprint type thing. So what I’ve decided to do this year was just extend the duration of the long run. And I like being mobile. I never want to be so heavy that I can’t move. I want to be able to go out and run 10 miles if I have to so sometimes I do. And I want to be able to sprint if I have to. So sometimes I do.
I’m not trying to lose weight, but I always do the same fitness routine after 30 years. Basically lift three days a week, run three days a week, but one of the runs is the long run, one of them is medium, one of them is a sprint type thing. So what I’ve decided to do this year was just extend the duration of the long run. And I like being mobile. I never want to be so heavy that I can’t move. I want to be able to go out and run 10 miles if I have to so sometimes I do. And I want to be able to sprint if I have to. So sometimes I do.
And lifting in objects feels good. It feels good to train like a lazy bear and just lift heavy objects. But I’ve also started training with lighter weights and higher repetitions and for three month cycles, and it gives your joints a rest. Yeah, so I think it also is interesting to see how training differently changes your cognition. That’s probably hormone related, hormones downstream of training heavy versus hormones downstream of training a little bit lighter. I think my cognition is better when I’m doing more cardio and when the repetition ranges are a little bit or higher, which is not to say that people who lift heavy are dumb, but there is a… Because there’s real value in lifting heavy.
Lex Fridman
There’s a lot of angry people listening to this right now.
There’s a lot of angry people listening to this right now.
Andrew Huberman
No, no, no. But lifting heavy and then taking three to five minutes rest is far and away a different challenge than running hard for 90 minutes. That’s a tough thing, just like getting in an ice bath. People say, “Oh, well, how is that any different than working out?” Well, there are a lot of differences, but one of them is that it’s very acute stress, within one second you’re stressed. So I think subjecting the body to a bunch of different types of stressors in space and time is really valuable. So yeah, I’ve been playing with the variables in a pre systematic way.
No, no, no. But lifting heavy and then taking three to five minutes rest is far and away a different challenge than running hard for 90 minutes. That’s a tough thing, just like getting in an ice bath. People say, “Oh, well, how is that any different than working out?” Well, there are a lot of differences, but one of them is that it’s very acute stress, within one second you’re stressed. So I think subjecting the body to a bunch of different types of stressors in space and time is really valuable. So yeah, I’ve been playing with the variables in a pre systematic way.
Lex Fridman
Well, I like long and slow like you said, the impact it has on my cognition.
Well, I like long and slow like you said, the impact it has on my cognition.
Andrew Huberman
Yeah, the wordlessness of it, the way it seems to clean out the clutter.
Yeah, the wordlessness of it, the way it seems to clean out the clutter.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Andrew Huberman
It can take away that hyperfocus and put you more in a relaxed focus for sure.
It can take away that hyperfocus and put you more in a relaxed focus for sure.
Lex Fridman
Well, for me, it brings the clutter to the surface at first. Like all these thoughts come in there, and then they dissipate. I got knee barred pretty hard. That’s when somebody tries to break your knee.
Well, for me, it brings the clutter to the surface at first. Like all these thoughts come in there, and then they dissipate. I got knee barred pretty hard. That’s when somebody tries to break your knee.
Andrew Huberman
What a knee bar? They try and break your knee?
What a knee bar? They try and break your knee?
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Andrew Huberman
Oh, so you tap so they-
Oh, so you tap so they-
Lex Fridman
Yeah. Yeah. So it’s hyperextend the knee in that direction, they got knee barred pretty hard. So in ways I don’t understand, it kind of hurts to run. I don’t understand what’s happening behind there. I need to investigate this. Basically the hamstringing flex, like curling, your leg hurts a little bit, and that results in this weird, dull, but sometimes extremely sharp pain in the back of the knee. So I’m working through this anyway, but walking doesn’t hurt.
Yeah. Yeah. So it’s hyperextend the knee in that direction, they got knee barred pretty hard. So in ways I don’t understand, it kind of hurts to run. I don’t understand what’s happening behind there. I need to investigate this. Basically the hamstringing flex, like curling, your leg hurts a little bit, and that results in this weird, dull, but sometimes extremely sharp pain in the back of the knee. So I’m working through this anyway, but walking doesn’t hurt.
So I’ve been playing around with walking recently for two hours and thinking because I know a lot of smart people throughout history, I have walked and thought, and you have to play with things that have worked for others, not just to exercise, but to integrate this very light kind of prolonged exercise into a productive life. So they do all their thinking while they walk. It’s like a meditative type of walking, and it’s really interesting. It really works.
Andrew Huberman
Yeah. The practice I’ve been doing a lot more of lately is I walk while reading a book in the yard. I’ll just pace back and forth or walk in a circle.
Yeah. The practice I’ve been doing a lot more of lately is I walk while reading a book in the yard. I’ll just pace back and forth or walk in a circle.
Lex Fridman
Audiobook, or are you talking about anything-
Audiobook, or are you talking about anything-
Andrew Huberman
No hard copy.
No hard copy.
Lex Fridman
Well, you just holding.
Well, you just holding.
Andrew Huberman
I’m holding the book and I’m walking and I’m reading, and I usually have a pen and I’m underlining. I have this whole system like underlining, stars, exclamation points, goes back to university of what things I’ll go back to which things I export to notes and that kind of thing. But from the beginning when I opened my lab at that time in San Diego before I moved back to Stanford, I would have meetings with my students or postdocs by just walking in the field behind the lab. And I’d bring my bulldog Costello, bulldog Mastiff at the time, and he was a slow walker. So these were slow walks, but I can think much more clearly that way. There’s a Nobel Prize winning professor at Columbia University School of Medicine, Richard Axel, who won the Nobel Prize, co-won Nobel Prize with Linda Buck for the discovery of the molecular basis of olfaction.
I’m holding the book and I’m walking and I’m reading, and I usually have a pen and I’m underlining. I have this whole system like underlining, stars, exclamation points, goes back to university of what things I’ll go back to which things I export to notes and that kind of thing. But from the beginning when I opened my lab at that time in San Diego before I moved back to Stanford, I would have meetings with my students or postdocs by just walking in the field behind the lab. And I’d bring my bulldog Costello, bulldog Mastiff at the time, and he was a slow walker. So these were slow walks, but I can think much more clearly that way. There’s a Nobel Prize winning professor at Columbia University School of Medicine, Richard Axel, who won the Nobel Prize, co-won Nobel Prize with Linda Buck for the discovery of the molecular basis of olfaction.
And he walks in, voice dictates his papers. And now with Rev or these other, maybe there are better ones than Rev, where you can convert audio files into text very quickly and then edit from there. So I will often voice dictate first drafts and things like that. And I totally agree on the long runs, the walks, the integrating that with cognitive work, harder to do with sprints and then the gym. You weight train?
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Andrew Huberman
You just seem naturally strong and thicker jointed. It’s true, it’s true.
You just seem naturally strong and thicker jointed. It’s true, it’s true.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Andrew Huberman
I mean, we did the one very beginner because I’m a very beginner of jiu jitsu class together, and as I mentioned then, but if people missed it, Lexus freakishly strong.
I mean, we did the one very beginner because I’m a very beginner of jiu jitsu class together, and as I mentioned then, but if people missed it, Lexus freakishly strong.
Lex Fridman
I think I was born genetically to hug people.
I think I was born genetically to hug people.
Andrew Huberman
Oh, like Costello.
Oh, like Costello.
Lex Fridman
Exactly.
Exactly.
Andrew Huberman
You guys have a certain similarity. He had wrists like it’s like you know. You and Jocko and Costello have these wrists and elbows that are super thick. And then when you look around, you see tremendous variation. Some people have the wrist width of a Whippet or Woody Allen, and then other people like you or Jocko. There’s this one Jocko video or thing on GQ or something. Have you seen the comments on Jocko, These are the Best?
You guys have a certain similarity. He had wrists like it’s like you know. You and Jocko and Costello have these wrists and elbows that are super thick. And then when you look around, you see tremendous variation. Some people have the wrist width of a Whippet or Woody Allen, and then other people like you or Jocko. There’s this one Jocko video or thing on GQ or something. Have you seen the comments on Jocko, These are the Best?
Lex Fridman
No.
No.
Andrew Huberman
The comments, I love the comments on YouTube because occasionally they’re funny because. The best is when Jocko was born, the doctor looked at his parents and said, “It’s a man.”
The comments, I love the comments on YouTube because occasionally they’re funny because. The best is when Jocko was born, the doctor looked at his parents and said, “It’s a man.”
Lex Fridman
It’s like Chuck Norris type comments.
It’s like Chuck Norris type comments.
Andrew Huberman
Oh yeah. Those are great. That’s what I miss about Rogan being on YouTube with the full-length episode. Oh, that comment.
Oh yeah. Those are great. That’s what I miss about Rogan being on YouTube with the full-length episode. Oh, that comment.
Advice to younger self
Lex Fridman
So this is technically a birthday podcast. What do you love most about getting older?
So this is technically a birthday podcast. What do you love most about getting older?
Andrew Huberman
It’s like the confirmation that comes from getting more and more data, which basically says, ” Yeah, the first time you thought that thing, it was actually right because the second, third and fourth and fifth time, it turned out the exact same way.” In other words, there have been a few times in my life where I did not feel easy about something. I felt a signal for my body, “This is not good.” And I didn’t trust it early on, but I knew it was there.
It’s like the confirmation that comes from getting more and more data, which basically says, ” Yeah, the first time you thought that thing, it was actually right because the second, third and fourth and fifth time, it turned out the exact same way.” In other words, there have been a few times in my life where I did not feel easy about something. I felt a signal for my body, “This is not good.” And I didn’t trust it early on, but I knew it was there.
And then two or three bad experiences later, I’m able to say, “Ah, every single time there was a signal from the body informing my mind, this is not good.” Now the reverse has also been true that there’ve been a number of instances in which I feel there sort of immediate delight, and there’s this almost astonishingly simple experience of feeling comfortable with somebody or at peace with something or delighted at an experience. And it turns out literally all of those experiences and people turned out to be experiences and people that are still in my life and that I still delight in every day. In other words, what’s great about getting older is that you stop questioning the signals that come from, I think deeper recesses of your nervous system to say, “Hey, this is not good,” or, “Hey, this is great, more of this.” Whereas I think in my teens, my twenties, my thirties, I’m almost 48, I’ll be 48 next month.
I didn’t trust, I didn’t listen. I actually put a lot of work into overriding those signals and learning to fight through them, thinking that somehow that was making me tougher or somehow that was making me smarter. When in fact, in the end, those people that you meet that are difficult or there are other names for it, like in the end, you’re like, “That person’s a piece of shit,” or, “This person is amazing and they’re really wonderful.” And I felt that from the go.
Lex Fridman
So you’ve learned to trust your gut versus the influences of other people’s opinions?
So you’ve learned to trust your gut versus the influences of other people’s opinions?
Andrew Huberman
I’ve learned to trust my gut versus the forebrain over analysis, overriding the gut. Other people often in my life have had great optics. I’ve benefited tremendously from an early age of being in a large community. It’s been mostly guys, but I have some close female friends and always have as well who will tell me, “That’s a bad decision,” or, “This person not so good,” or, “Be careful,” or, “They’re great,” or, “That’s great.” So oftentimes my community and the people around me have been more aligned with the correct choice than not.
I’ve learned to trust my gut versus the forebrain over analysis, overriding the gut. Other people often in my life have had great optics. I’ve benefited tremendously from an early age of being in a large community. It’s been mostly guys, but I have some close female friends and always have as well who will tell me, “That’s a bad decision,” or, “This person not so good,” or, “Be careful,” or, “They’re great,” or, “That’s great.” So oftentimes my community and the people around me have been more aligned with the correct choice than not.
Lex Fridman
Is it really?
Is it really?
Andrew Huberman
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
Really? When you were younger like friends, parents and so on.
Really? When you were younger like friends, parents and so on.
Andrew Huberman
I don’t recall ever really listening to my parents that much. I grew up in… We don’t have to go back to my childhood thing-
I don’t recall ever really listening to my parents that much. I grew up in… We don’t have to go back to my childhood thing-
Lex Fridman
My fault Andrew.
My fault Andrew.
Andrew Huberman
… but my sense was that… Thank you. I learned that recently in a psilocybin journey, my first high dose psilocybin journey, which was-
… but my sense was that… Thank you. I learned that recently in a psilocybin journey, my first high dose psilocybin journey, which was-
Lex Fridman
Welcome back.
Welcome back.
Andrew Huberman
… done with a clinician. Thank you very much. Thank you. I was worried there for a second at one point. “Am I not coming back?” But in any event, yeah, I grew up with some wild kids. I would say about a third of my friends from childhood are dead or in jail, about a third have gone on to do tremendously impressive things, start companies, excellent athletes, academics, scientists, and clinicians. And then about a third are living their lives as more typical. I just mean that they are happy family people with jobs that they mainly serve the function to make money. They’re not into their career for career’s sake.
… done with a clinician. Thank you very much. Thank you. I was worried there for a second at one point. “Am I not coming back?” But in any event, yeah, I grew up with some wild kids. I would say about a third of my friends from childhood are dead or in jail, about a third have gone on to do tremendously impressive things, start companies, excellent athletes, academics, scientists, and clinicians. And then about a third are living their lives as more typical. I just mean that they are happy family people with jobs that they mainly serve the function to make money. They’re not into their career for career’s sake.
So some of my friends early on gave me some bad ideas, but most of the time my bad ideas came from overriding the signals that I knew that my body, and I would say my body and brain were telling me to obey, and I say body and brain is that there’s this brain region, the insula, which does many things, but it represents our sense of internal sensation and interoception. And I was talking to Paul Conte about this, who as you know, I respect tremendously. I think he’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. I think for different reasons. He and Marc Andreessen are some of the smartest people I’ve ever met. But Paul’s level of insight into the human psyche is absolutely astounding. And he says the opposite of what most people say about the brain, which is most people say, “Oh, the supercomputer of the brain is the forebrain.”
It’s like a monkey brain with a extra real estate put on there. And the forebrain is what makes us human and gives us our superpowers. Paul has said, and he’s done a whole series on mental health that’s coming out from our podcast in September, so this is not an attempt to plug that, but he’ll elaborate on [inaudible 00:13:08].
Lex Fridman
Wait, you’re doing a thing with Paul?
Wait, you’re doing a thing with Paul?
Andrew Huberman
We already did. Yeah.
We already did. Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Oh, nice.
Oh, nice.
Andrew Huberman
So Paul Conte, he and I sat down, he did a four episode series on mental health. This is not mental illness mental health, about how to explore one’s own subconscious, explore the self, build and cultivate the generative drive. You’ll learn more about what that is from him. He’s far more eloquent and clearer than I am, and he provides essentially a set of steps to explore the self that does not require that you work with a therapist.
So Paul Conte, he and I sat down, he did a four episode series on mental health. This is not mental illness mental health, about how to explore one’s own subconscious, explore the self, build and cultivate the generative drive. You’ll learn more about what that is from him. He’s far more eloquent and clearer than I am, and he provides essentially a set of steps to explore the self that does not require that you work with a therapist.
This is self-exploration that is rooted in psychiatry, it’s rooted in neuroscience, and I don’t think this information exists anywhere else. I’m not aware that it exists anywhere else. And he essentially distills it all down to one eight and a half by 11 sheet, which we provide for people. And he says there, I don’t want to give too much away because I would detract from what he does so beautifully, but if I tried and I wouldn’t have accomplish it anyway.
But he said, and I believe that the subconscious is the supercomputer of the brain. All the stuff working underneath our conscious awareness that’s driving our feelings and what we think are the decisions that we’ve thought through so carefully. And that only by exploring the subconscious and understanding it a little bit, can we actually improve ourselves over time and I agree. I think that so the mistake is to think that thinking can override it all. It’s a certain style of introspection and thinking that allows us to read the signals from our body, read the signals from our brain, integrate the knowledge that we’re collecting about ourselves, and to use all that in ways that are really adaptive and generative for us.
Jungian shadow
Lex Fridman
What do you think is there in that subconscious? What do you think of the Jungian and shadow? What’s there?
What do you think is there in that subconscious? What do you think of the Jungian and shadow? What’s there?
Andrew Huberman
There’s this idea, as you’re familiar with too. I’m sure that this Jungian idea that we all have all things inside of us, that all of us have the capacity to be evil, to be good, et cetera, but that some people express one or the other to a greater extent. But he also mentioned that there’s a unique category of people, maybe 2 to 5% of people that don’t just have all things inside of them, but they actually spend a lot of time exploring a lot of those things. The darker recesses, the shadows, their own shadows.
There’s this idea, as you’re familiar with too. I’m sure that this Jungian idea that we all have all things inside of us, that all of us have the capacity to be evil, to be good, et cetera, but that some people express one or the other to a greater extent. But he also mentioned that there’s a unique category of people, maybe 2 to 5% of people that don’t just have all things inside of them, but they actually spend a lot of time exploring a lot of those things. The darker recesses, the shadows, their own shadows.
I’m somebody who’s drawn to goodness and to light and to joy and all those things like anybody else. But I think maybe it was part of how I grew up. Maybe it was the crowd I was with, but then again, even when I started spending more time with academics and scientists, I mean you see shadows in other ways, right? You see pure ambition with no passion. I recall a colleague in San Diego who it was very clear to me did not actually care about understanding the brain, but understanding the brain was just his avenue to exercise ambition. And if you gave him something else to work on, he’d work on that.
In fact, he did. He left and he worked on something else, and I realized he has no passion for understanding the brain like I assumed all scientists do, certainly why I went into it. But some people, it’s just raw ambition. It’s about winning. It doesn’t even matter what they win, which to me is crazy. But I think that’s a shadow that some people explore, not one I’ve explored. I think the shadow parts of us are very important to come to understand and look better to understand them and know that they’re there and work with them than to not acknowledge their presence and have them surface in the form of addictions or behaviors that damage us in other people.
Lex Fridman
So one of the processes for achieving mental health is to bring those things to the surface. So fish the subconscious mind.
So one of the processes for achieving mental health is to bring those things to the surface. So fish the subconscious mind.
Andrew Huberman
Yes, and Paul describes 10 cupboards that one can look into for exploring the self. There’s the structure of self and the function of self. Again, this will all be spelled out in this series in a lot of detail. Also in terms of its relational aspect between people, how to pick good partners and good relationship. It gets really into this from a very different perspective. Yeah, fascinating stuff. I was just sitting there. I will say this, that four episode series with Paul is at least to date, the most important work I’ve ever been involved in in all of my career because it’s very clear that we are not taught how to explore our subconscious and that very few people actually understand how to do that. Even most psychiatrists, he mentioned something about psychiatrists. If you’re a cardiothoracic surgeon or something like that and 50% of your patients die, you’re considered a bad cardiothoracic surgeon.
Yes, and Paul describes 10 cupboards that one can look into for exploring the self. There’s the structure of self and the function of self. Again, this will all be spelled out in this series in a lot of detail. Also in terms of its relational aspect between people, how to pick good partners and good relationship. It gets really into this from a very different perspective. Yeah, fascinating stuff. I was just sitting there. I will say this, that four episode series with Paul is at least to date, the most important work I’ve ever been involved in in all of my career because it’s very clear that we are not taught how to explore our subconscious and that very few people actually understand how to do that. Even most psychiatrists, he mentioned something about psychiatrists. If you’re a cardiothoracic surgeon or something like that and 50% of your patients die, you’re considered a bad cardiothoracic surgeon.
But with no disrespect to psychiatrists, there are some excellent psychiatrists out there. There are also a lot of terrible psychiatrists out there because unless all of their patients commit suicide or half commit suicide, they can treat for a long time without it becoming visible that they’re not so good at their craft. Now, he’s superb at his craft, and I think he would say that yes, exploring some shadows, but also just understanding the self, really understanding like, “Who am I? And what’s important? What are my ambitions? What are my strivings?” Again, I’m lifting from some of the things that he’ll describe exactly how to do this. People do not spend enough time addressing those questions, and as a consequence, they discover what resides in their subconscious through the sometimes bad, hopefully also good, but manifestations of their actions.
We are driven by this huge 90% of our real estate that is not visible to our conscious awareness. And we need to understand that. I’ve talked about this before. I’ve done therapy twice a week since I was a kid. I had to as a condition of being let back in school. I found a way to either through insurance or even when I didn’t have insurance, I took an extra job writing for Thrasher Magazine when I was a postdoc so I could pay for therapy at a discount because I didn’t make much money as a postdoc.
I mean, I think for me, it’s as important as going to the gym and people think it’s just ruminating on problems, or getting… No, no, no. If you work with somebody really good, they’re forcing you to ask questions about who you really are, what you really want. It’s not just about support, but there should be support. There should be rapport, but then it’s also, there should be insight, right? Most people who get therapy, they’re getting support, there’s rapport, but insight is not easy to arrive at, and a really good psychologist or psychiatrist can help you arrive at deep insights that transform your entire life.
Betrayal and loyalty
Lex Fridman
Well, sometimes when I look inside and I do this often exploring who you truly are, you come to this question, do I accept… Once you see parts, do I accept this or do I fix this? Is this who you are fundamentally, and it will always be this way, or is this a problem to be fixed? For example, one of the things, especially recently, but in general over time I’ve discovered about myself probably has roots in childhood, probably has roots in a lot of things, is I deeply value loyalty maybe more than the average person. And so when there’s disloyalty, it can be painful to me. And so this is who I am, and so do I have to relax a bit? Do I have to fix this part or is this who you are? And there’s a million, that’s one little…
Well, sometimes when I look inside and I do this often exploring who you truly are, you come to this question, do I accept… Once you see parts, do I accept this or do I fix this? Is this who you are fundamentally, and it will always be this way, or is this a problem to be fixed? For example, one of the things, especially recently, but in general over time I’ve discovered about myself probably has roots in childhood, probably has roots in a lot of things, is I deeply value loyalty maybe more than the average person. And so when there’s disloyalty, it can be painful to me. And so this is who I am, and so do I have to relax a bit? Do I have to fix this part or is this who you are? And there’s a million, that’s one little…
Andrew Huberman
I think loyalty is a good thing to cling to, provided that when loyalty is broken, that it doesn’t disrupt too many other areas of your life. But it depends also on whose disrupting that loyalty, if it’s a coworker versus a romantic partner versus your exclusive romantic partner, depending on the structure of your romantic partner life. I mean, I have always experienced extreme joy and feelings of safety and trust in my friendships. Again, mostly male friendships, but female friendships too, which is only to say that they were mostly male friendships. The female friendships have also been very loyal. So getting backstabbed is not something I’m familiar with. And yeah, I love being crewed up.
I think loyalty is a good thing to cling to, provided that when loyalty is broken, that it doesn’t disrupt too many other areas of your life. But it depends also on whose disrupting that loyalty, if it’s a coworker versus a romantic partner versus your exclusive romantic partner, depending on the structure of your romantic partner life. I mean, I have always experienced extreme joy and feelings of safety and trust in my friendships. Again, mostly male friendships, but female friendships too, which is only to say that they were mostly male friendships. The female friendships have also been very loyal. So getting backstabbed is not something I’m familiar with. And yeah, I love being crewed up.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. No, for sure. And I’m with you and you and I very much have the same values on this, but that’s one little thing. And then there’s many other things like I’m extremely self-critical and I look at myself as I’m regularly very self-critical, a self-critical engine in my brain. And I talked to actually Paul about this, I think on the podcast quite a bit. And he’s saying, “This is a really bad thing. You need to fix this. You need to be able to be regularly very positive about yourself.” And I kept disagreeing with him, “No, this is who I am,” and he seems to work. Don’t mess with a thing that seems to be working. It’s fine.
Yeah. No, for sure. And I’m with you and you and I very much have the same values on this, but that’s one little thing. And then there’s many other things like I’m extremely self-critical and I look at myself as I’m regularly very self-critical, a self-critical engine in my brain. And I talked to actually Paul about this, I think on the podcast quite a bit. And he’s saying, “This is a really bad thing. You need to fix this. You need to be able to be regularly very positive about yourself.” And I kept disagreeing with him, “No, this is who I am,” and he seems to work. Don’t mess with a thing that seems to be working. It’s fine.
I oscillate between being really grateful and really self-critical. But then you have to figure out what is it? Maybe there’s a deeper root thing. Maybe there’s an insecurity in there somewhere that has to do with childhood and then you’re trying to prove something to somebody from your childhood, this kind of thing.
Andrew Huberman
Well, a couple of things that I think are hopefully valuable for people here. One is one way to destroy your life is to spend time trying to control your or somebody else’s past. So much of our destructive behavior and thinking comes from wanting something that we saw or did or heard to not be true, rather than really working with that and getting close to what it really was. Sometimes those things are even traumatic, and we need to really get close to them and for them to move through us. And there are a bunch of different ways to do that with support from others and hopefully, but sometimes on our own as well.
Well, a couple of things that I think are hopefully valuable for people here. One is one way to destroy your life is to spend time trying to control your or somebody else’s past. So much of our destructive behavior and thinking comes from wanting something that we saw or did or heard to not be true, rather than really working with that and getting close to what it really was. Sometimes those things are even traumatic, and we need to really get close to them and for them to move through us. And there are a bunch of different ways to do that with support from others and hopefully, but sometimes on our own as well.
I don’t think we can rewire our deep preferences and what we find despicable or joyful. I do think that it’s really a question of what allows us peace. Can you be at peace with the fact that you’re very self-critical? And enjoy that, get some distance from it, have a sense of humor about it, or is it driving you in a way that’s keeping you awake at night and forcing you back to the table to do work in a way that feels self-flagellating and doesn’t feel good?
Can you get that humility and awareness of your one’s flaws? And I think that that can create, this word space sounds very new, edgy, like get space from it. You can have a sense of humor about how neurotic we can all be. I mean, neurotic isn’t actually a bad term in the classic sense of the psychologists and psychiatrists, the freudians. So that the best case is to be neurotic, to actually see one’s own issues and work with them. Whereas psychotic is the other way to be, which is obviously not good. So I think the question whether or not to work on something or to just accept it as part of ourselves, I think really depends if we feel like it’s holding us back or not. And I think you’re asking perhaps the most profound question about being a human, which is what do you do with your body? What do you do with your mind?
I mean, it’s also a question. We started off talking about fitness a little bit just for whatever reason. Do I need to run an ultra marathon? I don’t feel like I need to. David Goggins does and does a whole lot more than that. So that for him, that’s important. For me, it’s not important to do that. I don’t think he does it just so he can run the ultras. There’s clearly something else in there for him. And guys like Cam Hanes and tremendous respect for what they do and how they do it. Does one need to make their body more muscular, stronger, more endurance, more flexibility? Do you need to read harder books? I think doing hard things feels good. I know it feels good. I know that the worst I feel, the worst way to feel is when I’m procrastinating and I don’t do something.
And then whenever I do something and I complete it and I break through that point where it was hard and then I’m doing it at the end, I actually feel like I was infused with some sort of super chemical. And who knows if it’s probably a cocktail of endogenously made chemicals. But I think it is good to do hard things, but you have to be careful not to destroy your body, your mind in the process. And I think it’s about whether or not you can achieve peace. Can you sleep well at night?
Stress isn’t bad if you can sleep well at night, you can be stressed all day, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. And it’ll optimize your focus. But can you fall asleep and stay deeply asleep at night? Being in a hard relationship. Some people say that’s not good. Other people like can you be at peace in that? And I think we all have different RPM. We all kind of idle at different RPM and some people are big mellow Costello and others need more friction in order to feel at peace. But I think ultimately what we want is to feel at peace.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, I’ve been through some really low points over the past couple of years, and I think the reason could be boiled down to the fact that I haven’t been able to find a place of peace, a place or people or moments that give deep inner peace. And I think you put it really beautifully. You have to figure out, given who you are, the various characteristics of your mind, all the things, all the contents of the cupboards, how to get space from it. And ultimately one good representation of that is to be able to laugh at all of it, whatever’s going on inside your mind to be able to step back and just kind of chuckle at the beauty and the absurdity of the whole thing.
Yeah, I’ve been through some really low points over the past couple of years, and I think the reason could be boiled down to the fact that I haven’t been able to find a place of peace, a place or people or moments that give deep inner peace. And I think you put it really beautifully. You have to figure out, given who you are, the various characteristics of your mind, all the things, all the contents of the cupboards, how to get space from it. And ultimately one good representation of that is to be able to laugh at all of it, whatever’s going on inside your mind to be able to step back and just kind of chuckle at the beauty and the absurdity of the whole thing.
Andrew Huberman
Yeah, and keep going. There’s this beautiful, as I mentioned, it seems like every podcast lately. I’m a huge Rancid fan. Mostly I just think Tim Armstrong’s writing is pure poetry and whether or not you like the music or not. And he’s written music for a lot of other people too. He doesn’t advertise that much because he’s humble but-
Yeah, and keep going. There’s this beautiful, as I mentioned, it seems like every podcast lately. I’m a huge Rancid fan. Mostly I just think Tim Armstrong’s writing is pure poetry and whether or not you like the music or not. And he’s written music for a lot of other people too. He doesn’t advertise that much because he’s humble but-
Lex Fridman
By the way, I went to a show of theirs like 20 years ago.
By the way, I went to a show of theirs like 20 years ago.
Andrew Huberman
Oh, yeah. I’m going to see them in Boston, September 18th. I’m literally flying there for… Where I’ll take the train up from New York. I’m going to meet a friend of mine named Jim Thiebaud, who’s a guy who owns a lot of companies, the skateboard industry. We’re meeting there, a couple of little kids to go see them play amazing, amazing people, amazing music.
Oh, yeah. I’m going to see them in Boston, September 18th. I’m literally flying there for… Where I’ll take the train up from New York. I’m going to meet a friend of mine named Jim Thiebaud, who’s a guy who owns a lot of companies, the skateboard industry. We’re meeting there, a couple of little kids to go see them play amazing, amazing people, amazing music.
Lex Fridman
Very intense.
Very intense.
Andrew Huberman
Very intense, but embodies all the different emotions. That’s why I love it. They have some love songs, they have some hate songs, they have some in. But going back to what you said, I think there’s a song, the first song on Indestructible album. I think he’s just talking about shock and disbelief of discovering things about people that were close to you. And I won’t sing it, but nor I wouldn’t dare. But there’s this one lyric that’s really stuck in my mind ever since that album came out in 2003, which is that, “Nothing’s what it seems so I just sit here laughing. I’m going to keep going on. I can’t get distracted.” There is this piece of like, you got to learn how to push out the disturbing stuff sometimes and go forward. And I remember hearing that lyric and then writing it down. And that was a time where my undergraduate advisor, who was a mentor and a father to me, blew his head off in the bathtub like three weeks before.
Very intense, but embodies all the different emotions. That’s why I love it. They have some love songs, they have some hate songs, they have some in. But going back to what you said, I think there’s a song, the first song on Indestructible album. I think he’s just talking about shock and disbelief of discovering things about people that were close to you. And I won’t sing it, but nor I wouldn’t dare. But there’s this one lyric that’s really stuck in my mind ever since that album came out in 2003, which is that, “Nothing’s what it seems so I just sit here laughing. I’m going to keep going on. I can’t get distracted.” There is this piece of like, you got to learn how to push out the disturbing stuff sometimes and go forward. And I remember hearing that lyric and then writing it down. And that was a time where my undergraduate advisor, who was a mentor and a father to me, blew his head off in the bathtub like three weeks before.
And then my graduate advisor, who I was working for at that time, who I loved and adored, was really like a mother to me. I knew her when she was pregnant with her two kids, died at 50, breast cancer. And then my postdoc advisor, first day of work at Stanford as a faculty member sitting across the table like this from him, had a heart attack right in front of me, died of pancreatic cancer at the end of 2017. And I remember just thinking, going back to that song there over and over and where people would… Yeah, I haven’t had many betrayals in life. I’ve had a few. But just thinking or seeing something or learning something about something, you just say you can’t believe it. And I mentioned that lyric off, that first song, Indestructible on that album because it’s just the raw emotion of like, “I can’t believe this. What I just saw is so disturbing, but I have to just keep going forward.”
There are certain things that we really do need to push not just into our periphery, but off into the gutter and keep going. And that’s a hard thing to learn how to do. But if you’re going to be functional in life, you have to. And actually just to get at this issue of do I change or do I embrace this aspect of self? About six months, it was April of this last year, I did some intense work around some things that were really challenging to me. And I did it alone, and it may have involved some medicine, and I expected to get peace through this. I was like, “I’m going to let go of it.” And I spent 11 hours just getting more and more frustrated and angry about this thing that I was trying to resolve.
And I was so unbelievably disappointed that I couldn’t get that relief. And I was like, “What is this? This is not how this is supposed to work. I’m supposed to feel peace. The clouds are supposed to lift.” And so a week went by and then another half week went by, and then someone whose opinion I trust very much. I explained this to them because I was getting a little concerned like, “What’s going on? This is worse, not better.” And they said, ” This is very simple. You have a giant blind spot, which is your sense of justice, Andrew, and your sense of anger are linked like an iron rod and you need to relax it.” And as they said that, I felt the anger dissipate. And so there was something that I think it is true. I have a very strong sense of justice and my sense of anger then at least was very strongly linked to it.
So it’s great to have a sense of justice, right? I hate to see people wrong. I absolutely do. And I’m human. I’m sure I’ve wronged people in my life. I know I have. They’ve told me, I’ve tried to apologize and reconcile where possible. Still have a lot of work to do. But where I see injustice, it draws in my sense of anger in a way that I think is just eating me up. But it was only in hearing that link that I wasn’t aware of before. It was in my subconscious, obviously. Did I feel the relaxation? There’s no amount of plant medicine or MDMA or any kind of chemical you can take that’s naturally just going to dissipate what’s hard for oneself if one embraces that or if one chooses to do it through just talk therapy or journaling or friends or introspection or all of the above. There needs to be an awareness of the things that we’re just not aware of.
So I think the answer to your question, do you embrace or do you fight these aspects of self is? I think you get in your subconscious through good work with somebody skilled. And sometimes that involves the tools I just mentioned in various combinations and you figure it out. You figure out if it’s serving you. Obviously it was not bringing me peace. My sense of justice was undermining my sense of peace. And so in understanding this link… Now, I would say, in understanding this link between justice and anger, now I think it’s a little bit more of you know, it’s not like a Twizzler stick bendy, but at least it’s not like an iron rod. When I see somebody wronged, I mean it used to just… Like immediately.
Lex Fridman
But you’re able to step back now. To me, the ultimate place to reach is laughter.
But you’re able to step back now. To me, the ultimate place to reach is laughter.
Andrew Huberman
I just sit here laughing. Exactly. That’s the lyric. I can’t believe it. “So I just sit here laughing. Can’t get distracted,” Just at some point but the problem I think in just laughing at something like that gives you distance, but the question is, do you stop engaging with it at that point? I experienced this…
I just sit here laughing. Exactly. That’s the lyric. I can’t believe it. “So I just sit here laughing. Can’t get distracted,” Just at some point but the problem I think in just laughing at something like that gives you distance, but the question is, do you stop engaging with it at that point? I experienced this…
Andrew Huberman
… to stop engaging with it at that point. I experienced this… I mean, recently I got to see how sometimes I’ll see something that’s just like, “What? This is crazy,” so I just laugh. But then, I continue to engage in it and it’s taking me off course. And so, there is a place where… I mean, I realize this is probably a kid show too so I want to keep it G-rated. But at some point, for certain things, it makes sense to go, “Fuck that.”
… to stop engaging with it at that point. I experienced this… I mean, recently I got to see how sometimes I’ll see something that’s just like, “What? This is crazy,” so I just laugh. But then, I continue to engage in it and it’s taking me off course. And so, there is a place where… I mean, I realize this is probably a kid show too so I want to keep it G-rated. But at some point, for certain things, it makes sense to go, “Fuck that.”
Lex Fridman
But also, laugh at yourself for saying, “Fuck that.”
But also, laugh at yourself for saying, “Fuck that.”
Andrew Huberman
Yeah. And then, move on. So the question is do you get stuck or do you move on?
Yeah. And then, move on. So the question is do you get stuck or do you move on?
Lex Fridman
Sure, sure. But there’s a lightness of being that comes with laughter. I mean, I’ve gotten-
Sure, sure. But there’s a lightness of being that comes with laughter. I mean, I’ve gotten-
Andrew Huberman
Sure.
Sure.
Lex Fridman
As you know, I spent the day with Elon today. He just gave me this burnt hair. Do you know what this is?
As you know, I spent the day with Elon today. He just gave me this burnt hair. Do you know what this is?
Andrew Huberman
I have no idea.
I have no idea.
Lex Fridman
I’m sure there’s actually… There should be a Huberman Lab episode on this. It’s a cologne that’s burnt hair and it’s supposedly a really intense smell and it is.
I’m sure there’s actually… There should be a Huberman Lab episode on this. It’s a cologne that’s burnt hair and it’s supposedly a really intense smell and it is.
Andrew Huberman
Give me a smell.
Give me a smell.
Lex Fridman
Please, it’s not going to leave your nose.
Please, it’s not going to leave your nose.
Andrew Huberman
That’s okay. Well, that’s okay. I’ll whiff it as if I were working a chemical in the lab-
That’s okay. Well, that’s okay. I’ll whiff it as if I were working a chemical in the lab-
Lex Fridman
You have to actually spray it on yourself because I don’t know if you can-
You have to actually spray it on yourself because I don’t know if you can-
Andrew Huberman
So I’m reading an amazing book called An Immense World by Ed Yong. He won a Pulitzer for We Contain Multitudes or something like that, I think is the title of the other book. And the first chapter is all about olfaction and the incredible power that olfaction has. That smells terrible. I don’t even-
So I’m reading an amazing book called An Immense World by Ed Yong. He won a Pulitzer for We Contain Multitudes or something like that, I think is the title of the other book. And the first chapter is all about olfaction and the incredible power that olfaction has. That smells terrible. I don’t even-
Lex Fridman
And it doesn’t leave you. For those listening, it doesn’t quite smell terrible. It’s just intense and it stays with you. This, to me, represents just laughing at the absurdity of it all so-
And it doesn’t leave you. For those listening, it doesn’t quite smell terrible. It’s just intense and it stays with you. This, to me, represents just laughing at the absurdity of it all so-
Andrew Huberman
I have to ask, so you were rolling jiu jitsu?
I have to ask, so you were rolling jiu jitsu?
Lex Fridman
Yeah. We’re training. Yeah.
Yeah. We’re training. Yeah.
Andrew Huberman
So is that fight between Elon and Zuck actually going to happen?
So is that fight between Elon and Zuck actually going to happen?
Lex Fridman
I think Elon is a huge believer of this idea of the most entertaining outcome is the most likely and there is almost the sense that there’s not a free will. And the universe has a deterministic gravitational field pulling towards the most fun and he’s just a player in that game. So from that perspective, I think it seems like something like that is inevitable.
I think Elon is a huge believer of this idea of the most entertaining outcome is the most likely and there is almost the sense that there’s not a free will. And the universe has a deterministic gravitational field pulling towards the most fun and he’s just a player in that game. So from that perspective, I think it seems like something like that is inevitable.
Andrew Huberman
Like a little scrap in the parking lot of Facebook or something like that?
Like a little scrap in the parking lot of Facebook or something like that?
Lex Fridman
Exactly.
Exactly.
Andrew Huberman
Sorry, Meta. But it looks like they’re training for real and Zuck has competed, right, in jiu jitsu?
Sorry, Meta. But it looks like they’re training for real and Zuck has competed, right, in jiu jitsu?
Lex Fridman
So I think he is approaching it as a sport, Elon is approaching it as a spectacle. And I mean, the way he talks about it, he’s a huge fan of history. He talks about all the warriors that have fought throughout history. Look, he wants to really do it at the Coliseum. And the Coliseum is for 400 years, there’s so much great writing about this, I think over 400,000 people have died in the Coliseum, gladiators.
So I think he is approaching it as a sport, Elon is approaching it as a spectacle. And I mean, the way he talks about it, he’s a huge fan of history. He talks about all the warriors that have fought throughout history. Look, he wants to really do it at the Coliseum. And the Coliseum is for 400 years, there’s so much great writing about this, I think over 400,000 people have died in the Coliseum, gladiators.
So this is this historic place that sheds so much blood, so much fear, so much anticipation of battle, all of this. So he loves this kind of spectacle and also, the meme of it, the hilarious absurdity of it. The two tech CEOs are battling it out on sand in a place where gladiators fought to the death and then bears and lions ate prisoners as part of the execution process.
Andrew Huberman
Well, it’s also going to be an instance where Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk exchange bodily fluids. They bleed. That’s one of the things about fighting. I think it was in that book. It’s a great book. Fighter’s Heart, where he talks about the sort of the intimacy of sparring. I only rolled jiu jitsu with you once but there was a period of time where I boxed which I don’t recommend.
Well, it’s also going to be an instance where Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk exchange bodily fluids. They bleed. That’s one of the things about fighting. I think it was in that book. It’s a great book. Fighter’s Heart, where he talks about the sort of the intimacy of sparring. I only rolled jiu jitsu with you once but there was a period of time where I boxed which I don’t recommend.
I got hit. I hit some guys and definitely got hit back. I’d spar on Wednesday nights when I lived on San Diego. And when you spar with somebody, even if they hurt you, especially if they hurt you, you see that person afterwards and there’s an intimacy, right? It was in that book, Fighter’s Heart, where he explains, you’re exchanging bodily fluids with a stranger and you’re in your primitive mind and so there’s an intimacy there that persists so-
Lex Fridman
Well, you go together through a process of fear, anxiety like-
Well, you go together through a process of fear, anxiety like-
Andrew Huberman
Yeah. When they get you, you nod. I mean, you watch somebody catch somebody. Not so much in professional fighting, but if people are sparring, they catch you, you acknowledge that they caught you like, “He got me there.”
Yeah. When they get you, you nod. I mean, you watch somebody catch somebody. Not so much in professional fighting, but if people are sparring, they catch you, you acknowledge that they caught you like, “He got me there.”
Lex Fridman
And on the flip side of that, so we trained and then after that, we played Diablo 4.
And on the flip side of that, so we trained and then after that, we played Diablo 4.
Andrew Huberman
I don’t know what that is. I don’t play video games. I’m sorry.
I don’t know what that is. I don’t play video games. I’m sorry.
Lex Fridman
But it’s a video game, so it’s a pretty intense combat in the video… You’re fighting demons and dragons-
But it’s a video game, so it’s a pretty intense combat in the video… You’re fighting demons and dragons-
Andrew Huberman
Oh, okay. Last video game I played was Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!
Oh, okay. Last video game I played was Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!
Lex Fridman
There you go. That’s pretty close.
There you go. That’s pretty close.
Andrew Huberman
I met him recently. I went on his podcast.
I met him recently. I went on his podcast.
Lex Fridman
You went… Wait.
You went… Wait.
Andrew Huberman
It hasn’t come out yet.
It hasn’t come out yet.
Lex Fridman
Oh, it hasn’t come out? Okay.
Oh, it hasn’t come out? Okay.
Andrew Huberman
Yeah. I asked Mike… His kids are great. They came in there. They’re super smart kids. Goodness gracious. They ask great questions. I asked Mike what he did with the piece of Evander’s ear that he bit off.
Yeah. I asked Mike… His kids are great. They came in there. They’re super smart kids. Goodness gracious. They ask great questions. I asked Mike what he did with the piece of Evander’s ear that he bit off.
Lex Fridman
Did he remember?
Did he remember?
Andrew Huberman
Yeah. He’s like, “I gave it back to him.”
Yeah. He’s like, “I gave it back to him.”
Lex Fridman
Here you go. Sorry about that.
Here you go. Sorry about that.
Andrew Huberman
He sells edibles that are in the shape of ears with a little bite out of it. Yeah. His life has been incredible. He’s intimate. Yeah. His family, you get the sense that they’re really a great family. They’re really-
He sells edibles that are in the shape of ears with a little bite out of it. Yeah. His life has been incredible. He’s intimate. Yeah. His family, you get the sense that they’re really a great family. They’re really-
Lex Fridman
Mike Tyson?
Mike Tyson?
Andrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Lex Fridman
That’s a heck of a journey right there of a man.
That’s a heck of a journey right there of a man.
Andrew Huberman
Yeah. My now friend, Tim Armstrong, like I said, lead singer from Rancid. He put it best. He said that Mike Tyson’s life is Shakespearean, down, up, down, up and just that the arcs of his life are just… Sort of an only in America kind of tale too, right?
Yeah. My now friend, Tim Armstrong, like I said, lead singer from Rancid. He put it best. He said that Mike Tyson’s life is Shakespearean, down, up, down, up and just that the arcs of his life are just… Sort of an only in America kind of tale too, right?
Drama
Lex Fridman
So speaking of Shakespeare, I’ve recently gotten to know Neri Oxman who’s this incredible scientist that works at the intersection of nature and engineering and she reminded me of this Anna Akhmatova line. This is this great Soviet poet that I really love from over a century ago that each of our lives is a Shakespearean drama raised to the thousand degree. So I have to ask, why do you think humans are attracted to this kind of Shakespearean drama? Is there some aspect we’ve been talking about the subconscious mind that pulls us towards the drama, even though the place of mental health is peace?
So speaking of Shakespeare, I’ve recently gotten to know Neri Oxman who’s this incredible scientist that works at the intersection of nature and engineering and she reminded me of this Anna Akhmatova line. This is this great Soviet poet that I really love from over a century ago that each of our lives is a Shakespearean drama raised to the thousand degree. So I have to ask, why do you think humans are attracted to this kind of Shakespearean drama? Is there some aspect we’ve been talking about the subconscious mind that pulls us towards the drama, even though the place of mental health is peace?
Andrew Huberman
Yes and yes.
Yes and yes.
Lex Fridman
Do you have some of that?
Do you have some of that?
Andrew Huberman
Draw towards-
Draw towards-
Lex Fridman
Drama?
Drama?
Andrew Huberman
Drama? Yeah.
Drama? Yeah.
Lex Fridman
If you look at the empirical data.
If you look at the empirical data.
Andrew Huberman
Yes, I mean… Right. If I look at the empirical data, I mean, I think about who I chose to work for as an undergraduate, right? I was a… Barely finished high school, finally get to college, barely… This is really embarrassing and not something to aspire to. I was thrown out of the dorms for fighting-
Yes, I mean… Right. If I look at the empirical data, I mean, I think about who I chose to work for as an undergraduate, right? I was a… Barely finished high school, finally get to college, barely… This is really embarrassing and not something to aspire to. I was thrown out of the dorms for fighting-
Lex Fridman
Nice.
Nice.
Andrew Huberman
Barely passed my classes. The girlfriend and I split up. I mean, I was living in a squat, got into a big fight. I was getting in trouble with the law. I eventually got my act together, go back to school, start working for somebody. Who do I choose to work for? A guy who’s an ex-navy guy who smokes cigarettes in the fume hood, drinks coffee, and we’re injecting rats with MDMA. And I was drawn to the personality, his energy, but I also… He was a great scientist, worked out a lot on a thermal regulation in the brain and more.
Barely passed my classes. The girlfriend and I split up. I mean, I was living in a squat, got into a big fight. I was getting in trouble with the law. I eventually got my act together, go back to school, start working for somebody. Who do I choose to work for? A guy who’s an ex-navy guy who smokes cigarettes in the fume hood, drinks coffee, and we’re injecting rats with MDMA. And I was drawn to the personality, his energy, but I also… He was a great scientist, worked out a lot on a thermal regulation in the brain and more.
Go to graduate school, I’m working for somebody, and decide that working in her laboratory wasn’t quite right for me. So I’m literally sneaking into the laboratory next door and working for the woman next door because I liked the relationships that she had to a certain set of questions and she was a quirky person. So drawn to drama but drawn to… I like characters. I like people that have texture. And I’m not drawn to raw ambition, I’m drawn to people that seem to have a real passion for what they do and a uniqueness to them that I… Not kind of, I’ll just say how it is. I can feel their heart for what they do and I’m drawn to that and that can be good.
It’s the same reason I went to work for Ben Barris as a post-doc. It wasn’t because he was the first transgender member of the National Academy of Sciences, that was just a feature of who he was. I loved how he loved glial. He would talk about these cells like they were the most enchanting things that he’d ever seen in his life. And I was like, “This is the biggest nerd I’ve ever met and I love him.” I think I’m drawn to that.
This is another thing that Conti elaborates on quite a bit more in the series on mental health coming out. But there are different drives within us, there are aggressive drives. Not always for fighting but for intense interaction. I mean, look at Twitter. Look at some of the… People clearly have an aggressive drive. There’s also a pleasure drive. Some people also have a strong pleasure drive. They want to experience pleasure through food, through sex, through friendship, through adventure. But I think the Shakespearean drama is the drama of the different drives in different ratios in different people.
I know somebody and she’s incredibly kind. Has an extremely high pleasure drive, loves taking great care of herself and people around her through food and through retreats and through all these things and makes spaces beautiful everywhere she goes. And gifts these things that are just so unbelievably feminine and incredible. These gifts to people and then kind and thoughtful about what they like. And then.. But I would say, very little aggressive drive from my read.
And then, I know other people who just have a ton of aggressive drive and very little pressure drive and I think… So there’s this alchemy that exists where people have these things in different ratios. And then, you blend in the differences in the chromosomes and differences in hormones and differences in personal history and what you end up with is a species that creates incredible recipes of drama but also peace, also relief from drama, contentment.
I mean, I realize this isn’t the exact topic of the question. But someone I know very dearly, actually an ex-girlfriend of mine, long- term partner of mine, sent me something recently and I think it hit the nail on the head. Which is that ideally for a man, they eventually settle where they find and feel peace, where they feel peaceful, where they can be themselves and feel peaceful. Now, I’m sure there’s an equivalent or mirror image of that for women but this particular post that she sent was about men and I totally agree.
And so, it isn’t always that we’re seeking friction. But for periods of our life, we seek friction, drama, adventure, excitement, fights, and doing hard, hard things. And then I think at some point, I’m certainly coming to this point now where it’s like, “Yeah. That’s all great and checked a lot of boxes.” But I had a lot of close calls, flew really close to the sun on a lot of things with life and limb and heart and spirit and some people close to us didn’t make it. And sometimes, not making it means the career they wanted went off a cliff or their health went off a cliff or their life went off a cliff. But I think that there’s also the Shakespearean drama of the characters that exit the play and are living their lives happily in the backdrop. It just doesn’t make for as much entertainment.
Lex Fridman
That’s one other thing, you could say, is the benefit of getting older is finding the Shakespearean drama less appealing or finding the joy in the peace.
That’s one other thing, you could say, is the benefit of getting older is finding the Shakespearean drama less appealing or finding the joy in the peace.
Andrew Huberman
Yeah. Definitely. I mean, I think there’s real peace with age. I think the other thing is this notion of checking boxes is a real thing, for me anyway. I have a morning meditation that I do. Well, I wake up now, I get my sunlight, I hydrate, I use the bathroom. I do all the things that I talk about. I’ve started a practice of prayer in the last year which is new-ish for me which is we could talk about-
Yeah. Definitely. I mean, I think there’s real peace with age. I think the other thing is this notion of checking boxes is a real thing, for me anyway. I have a morning meditation that I do. Well, I wake up now, I get my sunlight, I hydrate, I use the bathroom. I do all the things that I talk about. I’ve started a practice of prayer in the last year which is new-ish for me which is we could talk about-
Lex Fridman
In the morning?
In the morning?
Andrew Huberman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Can you talk about it a little bit?
Can you talk about it a little bit?
Andrew Huberman
Sure. Yeah. And then, I have a meditation that I do that actually is where I think through with the different roles that I play. So I start very basic. I say, “Okay. I’m an animal,” like we are biologically animals, human. “I’m a man. I’m a scientist. I’m a teacher. I’m a friend. I’m a brother. I’m a son,” I have this list and I think about the different roles that I have and the roles that I still want in my life going forward that I haven’t yet fulfilled. It just takes me… It’s an inventory of where I’ve been, where I’m at, and where I’m going as they say. And I don’t know why I do it but I started doing it this last year, I think, because it helps me understand just how many different contexts I have to exist in and remind myself that there’s still more that I haven’t done that I’m excited about.
Sure. Yeah. And then, I have a meditation that I do that actually is where I think through with the different roles that I play. So I start very basic. I say, “Okay. I’m an animal,” like we are biologically animals, human. “I’m a man. I’m a scientist. I’m a teacher. I’m a friend. I’m a brother. I’m a son,” I have this list and I think about the different roles that I have and the roles that I still want in my life going forward that I haven’t yet fulfilled. It just takes me… It’s an inventory of where I’ve been, where I’m at, and where I’m going as they say. And I don’t know why I do it but I started doing it this last year, I think, because it helps me understand just how many different contexts I have to exist in and remind myself that there’s still more that I haven’t done that I’m excited about.
Lex Fridman
So within each of those contexts, there’s things that you want to accomplish to define that.
So within each of those contexts, there’s things that you want to accomplish to define that.
Andrew Huberman
Yeah, and I’m ambitious so I think… I’m a brother. I have an older sister and I love her tremendously and I think, “I want to be the best brother I can be to her,” which means maybe a call, maybe just we do an annual trip together for our birthdays. Our birthdays are close together. We always go to New York for our birthdays and we’ve gone for the last three, four years. It’s like really reminding myself of that role not because I’ll forget, but because I have all these other roles I’ll get pulled into.
Yeah, and I’m ambitious so I think… I’m a brother. I have an older sister and I love her tremendously and I think, “I want to be the best brother I can be to her,” which means maybe a call, maybe just we do an annual trip together for our birthdays. Our birthdays are close together. We always go to New York for our birthdays and we’ve gone for the last three, four years. It’s like really reminding myself of that role not because I’ll forget, but because I have all these other roles I’ll get pulled into.
I say the first one, “I’m an animal,” because I have to remember that I have a body that needs care like any of us. I need sleep, I need food, I need hydration, I need… That I’m human, that the brain of a human is marvelously complex but also marvelously self-defeating at times. And so, I’m thinking about these things in the context of the different roles. And the whole thing takes about four or five minutes and I just find it brings me a certain amount of clarity that then allows me to ratchet into the day.
The prayer piece, I think I’ve been reluctant to talk about until now because I don’t believe in pushing religion on people. And I think that… And I’m not, it’s a highly individual thing and I do believe that one can be an atheist and still pray or agnostic and still pray. But for me, it really came about through understanding that there are certain aspects of myself that I just couldn’t resolve on my own. And no matter how much therapy, no matter how much… And I haven’t done a lot of it. But no matter how much plant medicine or other forms of medicine or exercise or podcasting or science or friendship or any of that, I was just not going to resolve.
And so, I started this because a male friend said, “Prayer is powerful,” and I said, “Well, how?” And he said, “I don’t know how but it can allow you to get outside yourself. Let you give up control and at the same time, take control.” I don’t even like saying take control. But the whole notion is that… And again, forgive me, but there’s no other way to say it. The whole notion is that God works through us. Whatever God is to you, he, him, her, life force, nature, whatever it is to you, that it works through us.
And so, I do a prayer. I’ll just describe it where I make an ask to help remove my character defects. I pray to God to help remove my character defects so that I can show up better in all the roles of my life and do good work which for me is learning and teaching. And so you might say, “Well, how is that different than a meditation?” Well, I’m acknowledging that there is something bigger than me, bigger than nature as I understand it, that I cannot understand or control nor do I want to, and I’m just giving over to that. And does that make me less of a scientist? I sure as hell hope not. I certainly know… There’s the head of our neurosciences at Stanford until recently. You should talk to him directly about it. Bill Newsome has talked about his religious life.
For me, it’s really a way of getting outside myself and then understanding how I fit into this bigger picture. And the character defects part is real, right? I’m a human. I have defects. I got a lot of flaws in me like anybody and trying to acknowledge them and asking for help in removing them. Not magically but through right action, through my right action. So I do that every morning.
And I have to say that it’s helped. It’s helped a lot. It’s helped me be better to myself, be better to other people. I still make mistakes but it’s becoming a bigger part of my life. And I never thought I’d talk like this but I think it’s clear to me that if we don’t believe in something… Again, it doesn’t have to be traditional, standardized religion, but if we don’t believe in something bigger than ourselves, we, at some level, will self-destruct. I really think so.
And it’s powerful in a way that all the other stuff, meditation and all the tools, is not because it’s really operating at a much deeper and bigger level. Yeah. I think that’s all I can talk about it. Mostly because I’m still working out. The scientists in me wants to understand how it works and I want to understand. And the point is to just go, for lack of a better language for it, “There’s a higher power than me and what I can control. I’m giving up control on certain things.” And somehow, that restores a sense of agency for right action and better action.
Lex Fridman
I think perhaps a part of that is just the humility that comes with acknowledging there’s something bigger and more powerful than you.
I think perhaps a part of that is just the humility that comes with acknowledging there’s something bigger and more powerful than you.
Andrew Huberman
And that you can’t control everything. I mean, you go through life as a hard driving person, forward center of mass. I remember being that way since I was little. It’s like in Legos. I’m like, “I’m going to make all the Legos.” I was like, on the weekends, learning about medieval weapons and then giving lectures about it in class when I was five or six years old or learning about tropical fish and cataloging all of them at the store. And then, organizing it and making my dad drive me or my mom drive me in some fish store and then spending all my time there until they throw me out. All of that. But I also remember my entire life, I would secretly pray when things were good and things weren’t good. But mostly, when things weren’t good because it’s important to pray. For me, it’s important to pray each morning regardless.
And that you can’t control everything. I mean, you go through life as a hard driving person, forward center of mass. I remember being that way since I was little. It’s like in Legos. I’m like, “I’m going to make all the Legos.” I was like, on the weekends, learning about medieval weapons and then giving lectures about it in class when I was five or six years old or learning about tropical fish and cataloging all of them at the store. And then, organizing it and making my dad drive me or my mom drive me in some fish store and then spending all my time there until they throw me out. All of that. But I also remember my entire life, I would secretly pray when things were good and things weren’t good. But mostly, when things weren’t good because it’s important to pray. For me, it’s important to pray each morning regardless.
But when things weren’t right, I couldn’t make sense of them, I would secretly pray. But I felt ashamed of that for whatever reason. And then, it was once in college, I distinctly remember I was having a hard time with a number of things and I took a run down to SAN Speech. It was at UC Santa Barbara. And I remember I was like, “I don’t know if I even have the right to do this but I’m just praying,” and I just prayed for the ability to be as brutally honest with myself and with other people as I possibly could be about a particular situation I was in at that time.
I mean, I think now it’s probably safe to say I’d gone off to college because of a high school girlfriend. Essentially, she was my family. Frankly, more than my biological family was at a certain stage of life and we’d reached a point where we were diverging and it was incredibly painful. It was like losing everything I had. And it was like, “What do I do? How do I manage this?” I was ready to quit and join the fire service just to support us so that we could move forward and it was just…
But praying, just saying, “I can’t figure this out on my own.” It’s like, “I can’t figure this out on my own,” and how frustrating that no number of friends could tell me and inner wisdom couldn’t tell me. And eventually, it led me to the right answers. She and I are friendly friends to this day. She’s happily married with a child and we’re on good terms. But I think it’s a scary thing but it’s the best thing when you just, “I can’t control all of this.” And asking for help, I think is also the piece. You’re not asking for some magic hand to come down and take care of it but you’re asking for the help to come through you so that your body is used to do these right works, right action.
Lex Fridman
Isn’t it interesting that this secret thing that you’re almost embarrassed by, that you did as a child is something you… It’s another thing you do as you get older, is you realize those things are part of you and it’s actually a beautiful thing.
Isn’t it interesting that this secret thing that you’re almost embarrassed by, that you did as a child is something you… It’s another thing you do as you get older, is you realize those things are part of you and it’s actually a beautiful thing.
Andrew Huberman
Yeah. A lot of the content of the podcast is deep academic content and we talk about everything from eating disorders to bipolar disorder to depression, a lot of different topics. But the tools or the protocols, as we say, the sunlight viewing and all the rest, a lot of that stuff is just stuff I wish I had known when I was in graduate school. If I’d known to go outside every once in a while and get some sunlight, not just stay in the lab, I might not have hit a really tough round of depression when I was a post-doc and working twice as hard.
Yeah. A lot of the content of the podcast is deep academic content and we talk about everything from eating disorders to bipolar disorder to depression, a lot of different topics. But the tools or the protocols, as we say, the sunlight viewing and all the rest, a lot of that stuff is just stuff I wish I had known when I was in graduate school. If I’d known to go outside every once in a while and get some sunlight, not just stay in the lab, I might not have hit a really tough round of depression when I was a post-doc and working twice as hard.
And when my body would break down or I’d get sick a lot, I don’t get sick much anymore. Occasionally, about once every 18 months to two years, I’ll get something. But I used to break my foot skateboarding all the time, I couldn’t understand. What’s wrong with my body? I’m getting injured. I can’t do what everyone else can. Now, I developed more slowly. I had a long arc of puberty so that was part of it. I was still developing.
But how to get your body stronger, how to build endurance, no one told me. The information wasn’t there. So a lot of what I put out there is the information that I wish I had. Because once I had it, I was like, “Wow.” A, this stuff really works. B, it’s grounded in something real. Sometimes, certain protocols are a combination of animal and human studies, sometimes clinical trials. Sometimes there’s some mechanistic conjecture for some, not all, I always make clear which. But in the end, figuring out how things work so that we can be happier, healthier, more productive, suffer less, reduce the suffering of the world. And I think that… Well, I’ll just say thank you for asking about the prayer piece. Again, I’m not pushing or even encouraging it on anyone. I’ve just found it to be tremendously useful for me.
Chimp Empire
Lex Fridman
I mean, about prayer in general. You said information and figuring out how to get stronger, healthier, smarter, all those kinds of things. A part of me believes that deeply. You can gain a lot of knowledge and wisdom through learning. But a part of me believes that all the wisdom I need was there when I was 11 and 12 years old.
I mean, about prayer in general. You said information and figuring out how to get stronger, healthier, smarter, all those kinds of things. A part of me believes that deeply. You can gain a lot of knowledge and wisdom through learning. But a part of me believes that all the wisdom I need was there when I was 11 and 12 years old.
Andrew Huberman
And then, it got cluttered over. Well, listen, I can’t wait for you and Conti to talk again. Because when he gets going about the subconscious and the amount of this that sits below the surface like an iceberg. And the fact that when we’re kids, we’re not obscuring a lot of that subconscious as much. And sometimes, that can look a little more primitive. I mean, a kid that’s disappointed will let you know. A kid that’s excited will let you know and you feel that raw exuberance or that raw dismayal.
And then, it got cluttered over. Well, listen, I can’t wait for you and Conti to talk again. Because when he gets going about the subconscious and the amount of this that sits below the surface like an iceberg. And the fact that when we’re kids, we’re not obscuring a lot of that subconscious as much. And sometimes, that can look a little more primitive. I mean, a kid that’s disappointed will let you know. A kid that’s excited will let you know and you feel that raw exuberance or that raw dismayal.
And I think that as we grow older, we learn to cover that stuff up. We wear masks and we have to, to be functional. I don’t think we all want to go around just being completely raw. But as you said, as you get older, you get to this point where you go, “Eh. What are we really trying to protect anyway?”
I mean, I have this theory that certainly my experience has taught me that a lot of people but I’ll talk about men because that’s what I know best, whether or not they show up strong or not, that they’re really afraid of being weak. They’re just afraid… Sometimes, the strength is even a way to try and not be weak which is different than being strong for its own sake. I’m not just talking about physical strength. I’m talking about intellectual strength. I’m talking about money. I’m talking about expressing drive. I’ve been watching this series a little bit of Chimp Empire.
Lex Fridman
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Andrew Huberman
So Chimp Empire is amazing, right? They have the head chimp. He’s not the head chimp but the alpha in the group and he’s getting older. And so, what does he do? Every once in a while, he goes on these vigor displays. He goes and he grabs a branch. He starts breaking them. He starts thrashing them. And he’s incredibly strong and they’re all watching. I mean, I immediately think of people like they’re deadlifting on Instagram and I just think, “Displays of vigor.” This is just the primate showing displays of vigor. Now, what’s interesting is that he’s doing that specifically to say, “Hey, I still have what it takes to lead this troop.” Then there are the ones that are subordinate to him but not so far behind-
So Chimp Empire is amazing, right? They have the head chimp. He’s not the head chimp but the alpha in the group and he’s getting older. And so, what does he do? Every once in a while, he goes on these vigor displays. He goes and he grabs a branch. He starts breaking them. He starts thrashing them. And he’s incredibly strong and they’re all watching. I mean, I immediately think of people like they’re deadlifting on Instagram and I just think, “Displays of vigor.” This is just the primate showing displays of vigor. Now, what’s interesting is that he’s doing that specifically to say, “Hey, I still have what it takes to lead this troop.” Then there are the ones that are subordinate to him but not so far behind-
Lex Fridman
It seems to be that there’s a very clear numerical ranking.
It seems to be that there’s a very clear numerical ranking.
Andrew Huberman
There is.
There is.
Lex Fridman
Like it’s clear who’s the Number 2, Number 3-
Like it’s clear who’s the Number 2, Number 3-
Andrew Huberman
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Lex Fridman
I mean, probably-
I mean, probably-
Andrew Huberman
Who gets to mate first, who gets to eat first, this exists in other animal societies too but Bob Sapolsky would be a great person to talk about this with because he knows obviously tremendous amount about it and I know just the top contour. But yeah, so Number 2, 3, and 4 males are aware that he’s doing these vigor displays. But they’re also aware because in primate evolution, they got some extra forebrain too. Not as much as us but they got some. And they’re aware that the vigor displays are displays that… Because they’ve done them as well in a different context, might not just be displays of vigor but might also be an insurance policy against people seeing weakness.
Who gets to mate first, who gets to eat first, this exists in other animal societies too but Bob Sapolsky would be a great person to talk about this with because he knows obviously tremendous amount about it and I know just the top contour. But yeah, so Number 2, 3, and 4 males are aware that he’s doing these vigor displays. But they’re also aware because in primate evolution, they got some extra forebrain too. Not as much as us but they got some. And they’re aware that the vigor displays are displays that… Because they’ve done them as well in a different context, might not just be displays of vigor but might also be an insurance policy against people seeing weakness.
So now, they start using that prefrontal cortex to do some interesting things. So in primate world, if a male is friendly with another male, wants to affiliate with him and say, “Hey, I’m backing you,” they’ll go over and they’ll pick off the little parasites and eat them. And so, the grooming is extremely important. In fact, if they want to ostracize or kill one of the members of their troop, they will just leave it alone. No one will groom it. And then, there’s actually a really disturbing sequence in that show of then the parasites start to eat away on their skin. They get infections. They have issues. No one will mate with them. They have other issues as well and can potentially die.
So the interesting thing is Number 2 and 3 start to line up a strategy to groom this guy but they are actually thinking about overtaking the entire troop setting in a new alpha. But the current alpha did that to get where he is so he knows that they’re doing this grooming thing, but they might not be sincere about the grooming. So what does he do? He takes the whole troop on a raid to another troop and sees who will fight for him and who won’t.
Overt vs covert contracts
This is advanced contracting of behavior for a species that normally we don’t think of as sophisticated as us. So it’s very interesting and it gets to something that I hope we’ll have an opportunity to talk about because it’s something that I’m obsessed with lately, is this notion of overt versus covert contracts, right? There are overt contracts where you exchange work for money or you exchange any number of things in an overt way. But then, there are covert contracts, and those take on a very different form and always lead to, in my belief, bad things.
Lex Fridman
Well, how much of human and chimp relationships are overt versus covert?
Well, how much of human and chimp relationships are overt versus covert?
Andrew Huberman
Well, here’s one thing that we know is true. Dogs and humans, the dog to human relationship is 100% overt. They don’t manipulate you. Now, you could say they do in the sense that they learn that if they look a certain way or roll on their back, they get food. But there’s no banking of that behavior for a future date where then they’re going to undermine you and take your position so in that sense. Dogs can be a little bit manipulative in some sense.
Well, here’s one thing that we know is true. Dogs and humans, the dog to human relationship is 100% overt. They don’t manipulate you. Now, you could say they do in the sense that they learn that if they look a certain way or roll on their back, they get food. But there’s no banking of that behavior for a future date where then they’re going to undermine you and take your position so in that sense. Dogs can be a little bit manipulative in some sense.
But now, okay. So overt contract would be we both want to do some work together, we’re going to make some money, you get X percentage, I get X percentage. It’s overt. Covert contract which is, in my opinion, always bad, would be we’re going to do some work together, you’re going to get a percentage of money, I’m going to get a percentage of money. Could look just like the overt contract but secretly, I’m resentful that I got the percentage that I got. So what I start doing is covertly taking something else. What do I take? Maybe I take the opportunity to jab you verbally every once in a while. Maybe I take the opportunity to show up late. Maybe I take the opportunity to get to know one of your coworkers so that I might start a business with them. That’s covert contracting.
And you see this sometimes in romantic relationships. One person, we won’t set the male or female in any direction here and just say it’s, “I’ll make you feel powerful if you make me feel desired.” Okay. Great. There’s nothing explicitly wrong about that contract if they both know and they both agree. But what if it’s, “I’ll do that but I’ll have kids with you so you feel powerful. You’ll have kids with me so I feel desired. But secretly, I don’t want to do that,” or one person says, “I don’t want to do that,” or both don’t. So what they end up doing is saying, “Okay. So I expect something else. I expect you to do certain things for me,” or, “I expect you to pay for certain things for me.”
Covert contracts are the signature of everything bad. Overt contracts are the signature of all things good. And I think about this a lot because I’ve seen a lot of examples of this. I’ve… Like anyone, we participate in these things whether or not we want to or not and the thing that gets transacted the most is… Well, I should say the things that get transacted the most are the overt things. You’ll see money, time, sex, property, whatever it happens to be, information. But what ends up happening is that when people, I believe, don’t feel safe, they feel threatened in some way, like they don’t feel safe in a certain interaction, what they do is they start taking something else while still engaging in the exchange. And I’ll tell you, if there’s one thing about human nature that’s bad, it’s that feature.
Why that feature? Or, “Is it a bug or a feature?” as you engineers like to say. I think it’s because we were allocated a certain extra amount of prefrontal cortex that makes us more sophisticated than a dog, more sophisticated than a chimpanzee, but they do it too. And it’s because it’s often harder, in the short term, to deal with the real sense of, “This is scary. This feels threatening,” than it is to play out all the iterations. It takes a lot of brain work. You’re playing chess and go simultaneously trying to figure out where things are going to end up and we just don’t know.
So it’s a way, I think, of creating a false sense of certainty. But I’ll tell you, covert contracts, the only certainty is that it’s going to end badly. The question is, how badly? Conversely, overt contracts always end well, always. The problem with overt contracts is that you can’t be certain that the other person is not engaging in a covert contract. You can only take responsibility for your own contracting.
Lex Fridman
Well, one of the challenges of being human is looking at another human being and figuring out their way of being, their behavior, which of the two types of contracts it represents because they look awfully the same on the surface. And one of the challenges of being human, the decision we all make is, are you somebody that takes a leap of trust and trust other humans and are willing to take the hurt or are you going to be cynical and skeptical and avoid most interactions until they, over a long period of time, prove your trust?
Well, one of the challenges of being human is looking at another human being and figuring out their way of being, their behavior, which of the two types of contracts it represents because they look awfully the same on the surface. And one of the challenges of being human, the decision we all make is, are you somebody that takes a leap of trust and trust other humans and are willing to take the hurt or are you going to be cynical and skeptical and avoid most interactions until they, over a long period of time, prove your trust?
Andrew Huberman
Yeah. I never liked the phrase history repeats itself when it comes to humans because it doesn’t apply if the people or the person is actively working to resolve their own flaws. I do think that if people are willing to do dedicated, introspective work, go into their subconscious, do the hard work, have hard conversations, and get better at hard conversations, something that I’m-
Yeah. I never liked the phrase history repeats itself when it comes to humans because it doesn’t apply if the people or the person is actively working to resolve their own flaws. I do think that if people are willing to do dedicated, introspective work, go into their subconscious, do the hard work, have hard conversations, and get better at hard conversations, something that I’m-
Andrew Huberman
Have hard conversations and get better at hard conversations, something that I’m constantly trying to get better at. I think people can change, but they have to want to change.
Have hard conversations and get better at hard conversations, something that I’m constantly trying to get better at. I think people can change, but they have to want to change.
Lex Fridman
It does seem like, deep down, we all can tell the difference between overt and covert. We have a good sense. I think one of the benefits of having this characteristic of mine, where I value loyalty, I’ve been extremely fortunate to spend most of my life in overt relationships and I think that creates a really fulfilling life.
It does seem like, deep down, we all can tell the difference between overt and covert. We have a good sense. I think one of the benefits of having this characteristic of mine, where I value loyalty, I’ve been extremely fortunate to spend most of my life in overt relationships and I think that creates a really fulfilling life.
Age and health
Andrew Huberman
But there’s also this thing that maybe we’re in this portion of the podcast now, but I’ve experienced this-
But there’s also this thing that maybe we’re in this portion of the podcast now, but I’ve experienced this-
Lex Fridman
I should say that this is late at night, we’re talking about.
I should say that this is late at night, we’re talking about.
Andrew Huberman
That’s right, certainly late for me, but I’m two hours… I came in today on… I’m still in California time.
That’s right, certainly late for me, but I’m two hours… I came in today on… I’m still in California time.
Lex Fridman
And we should also say that you came here to wish me a happy birthday. [inaudible 01:08:46].
And we should also say that you came here to wish me a happy birthday. [inaudible 01:08:46].
Andrew Huberman
I did. I did and-
I did. I did and-
Lex Fridman
And the podcast is just a fun, last-minute thing I suggested.
And the podcast is just a fun, last-minute thing I suggested.
Andrew Huberman
Yeah, some close friends of yours have arranged a dinner that I’m really looking forward to. I won’t say which night, but it’s the next couple of nights. Your circadian clock is one of the most robust features of your biology. I know you can be nocturnal or you can be diurnal. We know you’re mostly nocturnal, certain times of the year Lex, but there are very, very few people can get away with no sleep. Very few people can get away with a chaotic sleep-wake schedule. So you have to obey a 24-hour, AKA circadian, rhythm if you want to remain healthy of mind and body. We also have to acknowledge that aging is in linear, right? So-
Yeah, some close friends of yours have arranged a dinner that I’m really looking forward to. I won’t say which night, but it’s the next couple of nights. Your circadian clock is one of the most robust features of your biology. I know you can be nocturnal or you can be diurnal. We know you’re mostly nocturnal, certain times of the year Lex, but there are very, very few people can get away with no sleep. Very few people can get away with a chaotic sleep-wake schedule. So you have to obey a 24-hour, AKA circadian, rhythm if you want to remain healthy of mind and body. We also have to acknowledge that aging is in linear, right? So-
Lex Fridman
What do you mean?
What do you mean?
Andrew Huberman
Well, the degree of change between years 35 and 40, is not going to be the degree of change between 40 and 45. But I will say this, I’m 48 and I feel better in every aspect of my psychology and biology now, than I did when I was in my twenties. Yeah, quality of thought, time spent, physically, I can do what I did then, which probably says more about what I could do then than what I can do now. But if you keep training, you can continue to get better. The key is to not get injured, and I’ve never trained super hard. I’ve trained hard, but I’ve been cautious to not, for instance, weight train more than two days in a row. I do a split which is basically three days a week, and the other day’s a run, take one full day off, take a week off every 12 to 16 weeks. I’ve not been the guy hurling the heaviest weights or running the furthest distance, but I have been the guy who’s continuing to do it when a lot of my friends are talking about knee injuries, talking about-
Well, the degree of change between years 35 and 40, is not going to be the degree of change between 40 and 45. But I will say this, I’m 48 and I feel better in every aspect of my psychology and biology now, than I did when I was in my twenties. Yeah, quality of thought, time spent, physically, I can do what I did then, which probably says more about what I could do then than what I can do now. But if you keep training, you can continue to get better. The key is to not get injured, and I’ve never trained super hard. I’ve trained hard, but I’ve been cautious to not, for instance, weight train more than two days in a row. I do a split which is basically three days a week, and the other day’s a run, take one full day off, take a week off every 12 to 16 weeks. I’ve not been the guy hurling the heaviest weights or running the furthest distance, but I have been the guy who’s continuing to do it when a lot of my friends are talking about knee injuries, talking about-
Lex Fridman
Hey. Hey. Hey, hey.
Hey. Hey. Hey, hey.
Andrew Huberman
I’m just…
I’m just…
Lex Fridman
[inaudible 01:10:37], I-
[inaudible 01:10:37], I-
Andrew Huberman
But of course, with sport you can’t account for everything the same way you can with fitness, and I have to acknowledge that. Unless one is powerlifting, weightlifting and running, you can get hurt, but it’s not like skateboarding where, if you’re going for it, you’re going to get hurt. That’s just, you’re landing on concrete and with jujitsu, people are trying to hurt you so that you say stop.
But of course, with sport you can’t account for everything the same way you can with fitness, and I have to acknowledge that. Unless one is powerlifting, weightlifting and running, you can get hurt, but it’s not like skateboarding where, if you’re going for it, you’re going to get hurt. That’s just, you’re landing on concrete and with jujitsu, people are trying to hurt you so that you say stop.
Lex Fridman
No, but [inaudible 01:11:04]-
No, but [inaudible 01:11:04]-
Andrew Huberman
So with a sport it’s different, and these days, I don’t really do a sport any longer. I work out to stay fit. I used to continue to do sports, but I kept getting hurt and frankly now, a rolled ankle… I may put out a little small skateboard part in 2024 because people have been saying, “We want to see the kickflip.” Then I’ll just say, “Well, I’ll do a heel flip instead, but okay.” I might put out a little part because some of the guys that work on our podcast are from DC. I think by now, I should at least do it just to show I’m not making it up, and I probably will. But I think doing a sport is different. That’s how you get hurt-
So with a sport it’s different, and these days, I don’t really do a sport any longer. I work out to stay fit. I used to continue to do sports, but I kept getting hurt and frankly now, a rolled ankle… I may put out a little small skateboard part in 2024 because people have been saying, “We want to see the kickflip.” Then I’ll just say, “Well, I’ll do a heel flip instead, but okay.” I might put out a little part because some of the guys that work on our podcast are from DC. I think by now, I should at least do it just to show I’m not making it up, and I probably will. But I think doing a sport is different. That’s how you get hurt-
Lex Fridman
[inaudible 01:11:46].
[inaudible 01:11:46].
Andrew Huberman
Overuse and doing an actual sport, and so hat tip to those who do an actual sport.
Overuse and doing an actual sport, and so hat tip to those who do an actual sport.
Lex Fridman
And that’s a difficult decision a lot of people have to make. I have to make with jiujitsu, for example, if you just look empirically. I’ve trained really hard from all my life, in grappling sports and fighting sports and all this kind of stuff, and I’ve avoided injury for the most part. And I would say, I would attribute that to training a lot. Sounds counterintuitive, but training well and safely and correctly, keeping good form saying, “No,” when I need to say no, but training a lot, and taking it seriously. Now when it’s training, it’s really a side thing, I find that the injuries becomes a higher and higher probability.
And that’s a difficult decision a lot of people have to make. I have to make with jiujitsu, for example, if you just look empirically. I’ve trained really hard from all my life, in grappling sports and fighting sports and all this kind of stuff, and I’ve avoided injury for the most part. And I would say, I would attribute that to training a lot. Sounds counterintuitive, but training well and safely and correctly, keeping good form saying, “No,” when I need to say no, but training a lot, and taking it seriously. Now when it’s training, it’s really a side thing, I find that the injuries becomes a higher and higher probability.
Andrew Huberman
But when you’re just doing it every once in a while?
But when you’re just doing it every once in a while?
Lex Fridman
Every once in a while.
Every once in a while.
Andrew Huberman
Yeah. I think you said something really important, the saying, “No.” The times I have gotten hurt training, is when someone’s like, “Hey, let’s hop on this workout together,” and it becomes, let’s challenge each other to do something outrageous. Sometimes that can be fun though. I went up to Cam Hanes’ gym and he does these very high repetition weight workouts that are in circuit form. I was sore for two weeks, but I learned a lot and didn’t get injured, and yes, we ate bow-hunted elk afterwards.
Yeah. I think you said something really important, the saying, “No.” The times I have gotten hurt training, is when someone’s like, “Hey, let’s hop on this workout together,” and it becomes, let’s challenge each other to do something outrageous. Sometimes that can be fun though. I went up to Cam Hanes’ gym and he does these very high repetition weight workouts that are in circuit form. I was sore for two weeks, but I learned a lot and didn’t get injured, and yes, we ate bow-hunted elk afterwards.
Lex Fridman
Nice.
Nice.
Andrew Huberman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
But the injury has been a really difficult psychological thing for me because… So I’ve injured my pinky finger, I’ve injured my knee.
But the injury has been a really difficult psychological thing for me because… So I’ve injured my pinky finger, I’ve injured my knee.
Andrew Huberman
Yeah, your kitchen is filled with splints.
Yeah, your kitchen is filled with splints.
Lex Fridman
Splints. I’m trying to figure out-
Splints. I’m trying to figure out-
Andrew Huberman
It’s like if you look in Lex’s kitchen, there’s some really good snacks, I had some right before. He’s very good about keeping cold drinks in the fridge and all the water has element in it, which is great.
It’s like if you look in Lex’s kitchen, there’s some really good snacks, I had some right before. He’s very good about keeping cold drinks in the fridge and all the water has element in it, which is great.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Andrew Huberman
I love that. But then there’s a whole hospital’s worth of splints.
I love that. But then there’s a whole hospital’s worth of splints.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, I’m trying to figure it out. So here’s the thing, you… The finger pop out like this, right? Pinky finger. I’m trying to figure out how do I splint in such a way that I can still program, still play guitar, but protect this torque motion that creates a huge amount of pain. And so [inaudible 01:13:58]-
Yeah, I’m trying to figure it out. So here’s the thing, you… The finger pop out like this, right? Pinky finger. I’m trying to figure out how do I splint in such a way that I can still program, still play guitar, but protect this torque motion that creates a huge amount of pain. And so [inaudible 01:13:58]-
Andrew Huberman
[inaudible 01:13:58] you have a jiujitsu injury.
[inaudible 01:13:58] you have a jiujitsu injury.
Lex Fridman
Jiujitsu, but it’s probably more like a skateboarding-style injury, which is, it’s unexpected in a silly-
Jiujitsu, but it’s probably more like a skateboarding-style injury, which is, it’s unexpected in a silly-
Andrew Huberman
It’s a thing that happens in a second. I didn’t break my foot doing anything important.
It’s a thing that happens in a second. I didn’t break my foot doing anything important.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Andrew Huberman
I broke my fifth metatarpal stepping off a curb.
I broke my fifth metatarpal stepping off a curb.
Lex Fridman
Yep.
Yep.
Andrew Huberman
So that’s why they’re called accidents. If you get hurt doing something awesome, that’s a trophy that you have to work through. It’s part of your payment to the universe. If you get hurt stepping off a curb or doing something stupid, it’s called a stupid accident.
So that’s why they’re called accidents. If you get hurt doing something awesome, that’s a trophy that you have to work through. It’s part of your payment to the universe. If you get hurt stepping off a curb or doing something stupid, it’s called a stupid accident.
Sexual selection
Lex Fridman
Since we brought up Chimp Empire, let me ask you about relationships. I think we’ve talked about relationships.
Since we brought up Chimp Empire, let me ask you about relationships. I think we’ve talked about relationships.
Andrew Huberman
Yeah, I only date Homo sapiens.
Yeah, I only date Homo sapiens.
Lex Fridman
Homo sapiens.
Homo sapiens.
Andrew Huberman
It’s the morning meditation.
It’s the morning meditation.
Lex Fridman
The night is still young. You are human. No, but you are also animal. Don’t sell yourself short.
The night is still young. You are human. No, but you are also animal. Don’t sell yourself short.
Andrew Huberman
No, I always say listen, any discussion on the Huberman Lab Podcast, about sexual health or anything, will always the critical fours: consensual, age appropriate, context appropriate, species appropriate.
No, I always say listen, any discussion on the Huberman Lab Podcast, about sexual health or anything, will always the critical fours: consensual, age appropriate, context appropriate, species appropriate.
Lex Fridman
Species appropriate, wow. Can I just tell you about sexual selection? I’ve been watching Life in Color: With David Attenborough. I’ve been watching a lot of nature documentaries. Talking about inner peace, it brings me so much peace to watch nature, at its worst and at its best. So Life in Color is a series on Netflix where it presents some of the most colorful animals on earth, and tells their story of how they got there through natural selection. So you have the peacock with the feathers and it’s just such incredible colors. The peacock has these tail feathers, the male, that are gigantic and they’re super colorful and they’re these eyes on it. It’s not eyes, it’s eye-like areas. And they wiggle their ass to show the tail, they wiggle the tails.
Species appropriate, wow. Can I just tell you about sexual selection? I’ve been watching Life in Color: With David Attenborough. I’ve been watching a lot of nature documentaries. Talking about inner peace, it brings me so much peace to watch nature, at its worst and at its best. So Life in Color is a series on Netflix where it presents some of the most colorful animals on earth, and tells their story of how they got there through natural selection. So you have the peacock with the feathers and it’s just such incredible colors. The peacock has these tail feathers, the male, that are gigantic and they’re super colorful and they’re these eyes on it. It’s not eyes, it’s eye-like areas. And they wiggle their ass to show the tail, they wiggle the tails.
Andrew Huberman
The eyespots, they’re called.
The eyespots, they’re called.
Lex Fridman
The eyespots, yes. Thank you. You know this probably way better than me, I’m just quoting David Attenborough.
The eyespots, yes. Thank you. You know this probably way better than me, I’m just quoting David Attenborough.
Andrew Huberman
No, no, please continue.
No, no, please continue.
Lex Fridman
But it’s just, I’m watching this and then the female is as boring looking as… She has no colors or nothing, but she’s standing there bored, just seeing this entire display. And I’m just wondering the entirety of life on earth… Well, not the entirety. Post bacteria, is like, at least in part, maybe in large part, can be described through this process of natural selection, of sexual selection. So dudes fighting and then women selecting. It seems like, just the entirety of that series shows some incredible birds and insects and shrimp. They’re all beautiful and colorful, and just-
But it’s just, I’m watching this and then the female is as boring looking as… She has no colors or nothing, but she’s standing there bored, just seeing this entire display. And I’m just wondering the entirety of life on earth… Well, not the entirety. Post bacteria, is like, at least in part, maybe in large part, can be described through this process of natural selection, of sexual selection. So dudes fighting and then women selecting. It seems like, just the entirety of that series shows some incredible birds and insects and shrimp. They’re all beautiful and colorful, and just-
Andrew Huberman
Mantis shrimp.
Mantis shrimp.
Lex Fridman
Mantis shrimp. They’re incredible, and it’s all about getting laid. It’s fascinating. There’s nothing like watching that and Chimp Empire to make you realize, we humans, that’s the same thing. That’s all we’re doing. And all the beautiful variety, all the bridges and the buildings and the rockets and the internet, all of that is, at least in part, a product of this kind of showing off for each other. And all the wars and all of this… Anyway, I’m not sure wat I’m asking. Oh, relationships.
Mantis shrimp. They’re incredible, and it’s all about getting laid. It’s fascinating. There’s nothing like watching that and Chimp Empire to make you realize, we humans, that’s the same thing. That’s all we’re doing. And all the beautiful variety, all the bridges and the buildings and the rockets and the internet, all of that is, at least in part, a product of this kind of showing off for each other. And all the wars and all of this… Anyway, I’m not sure wat I’m asking. Oh, relationships.
Andrew Huberman
Well, right, before you ask about relationships, I think what’s clear is that every species, it seems, animal species, wants to make more of itself and protect its young.
Well, right, before you ask about relationships, I think what’s clear is that every species, it seems, animal species, wants to make more of itself and protect its young.
Lex Fridman
Well, the protect its young, is non-obvious.
Well, the protect its young, is non-obvious.
Andrew Huberman
So not destroy enough of itself that it can’t get more to reproductive competent age. I think that we healthy people have a natural reflex to protect children.
So not destroy enough of itself that it can’t get more to reproductive competent age. I think that we healthy people have a natural reflex to protect children.
Lex Fridman
Well, I don’t know that-
Well, I don’t know that-
Andrew Huberman
And those that can’t-
And those that can’t-
Lex Fridman
Wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait a minute. I’ve seen enough animals that are murdering the children of some other-
Wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait a minute. I’ve seen enough animals that are murdering the children of some other-
Andrew Huberman
Sure, there’s even siblicide. First of all, I just want to say that I was delighted in your delight, around animal kingdom stuff, because this is a favorite theme of mine as well. But there’s, for instance, some fascinating data on, for instance, for those that grew up on farms, they’ll be familiar with freemartins. You know about freemartins? They’re cows that have multiple calves inside them, and there’s a situation in which the calves will, if there’s more than one inside, will secrete chemicals that will hormonally castrate the calf next to them, so they can’t reproduce. So already in the womb they are fighting for future resources. That’s how early this stuff can start. So it’s chemical warfare in the womb, against the siblings. Sometimes there’s outright siblicide. Siblings are born, they kill one another. This also becomes biblical stories, right? There are instances of cuttlefish, beautiful cephalopods like octopuses, and that is the plural as we made clear.
Sure, there’s even siblicide. First of all, I just want to say that I was delighted in your delight, around animal kingdom stuff, because this is a favorite theme of mine as well. But there’s, for instance, some fascinating data on, for instance, for those that grew up on farms, they’ll be familiar with freemartins. You know about freemartins? They’re cows that have multiple calves inside them, and there’s a situation in which the calves will, if there’s more than one inside, will secrete chemicals that will hormonally castrate the calf next to them, so they can’t reproduce. So already in the womb they are fighting for future resources. That’s how early this stuff can start. So it’s chemical warfare in the womb, against the siblings. Sometimes there’s outright siblicide. Siblings are born, they kill one another. This also becomes biblical stories, right? There are instances of cuttlefish, beautiful cephalopods like octopuses, and that is the plural as we made clear.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, it’s a meme on the internet.
Yeah, it’s a meme on the internet.
Andrew Huberman
Oh, yeah? That became a meme, our little discussion two years ago.
Oh, yeah? That became a meme, our little discussion two years ago.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, it spread pretty quick.
Yeah, it spread pretty quick.
Andrew Huberman
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Lex Fridman
And now we just resurfaced it. [inaudible 01:19:22].
And now we just resurfaced it. [inaudible 01:19:22].
Andrew Huberman
The dismay in your voice is so amusing. In any event, the male cuttlefish will disguise themselves as female cuttlefish, infiltrate the female cuttlefish group, and then mate with them, all sorts of types of covert operations.
The dismay in your voice is so amusing. In any event, the male cuttlefish will disguise themselves as female cuttlefish, infiltrate the female cuttlefish group, and then mate with them, all sorts of types of covert operations.
Lex Fridman
Yep, there we go.
Yep, there we go.
Andrew Huberman
So I think that…
So I think that…
Lex Fridman
Callbacks.
Callbacks.
Andrew Huberman
It’s like a drinking game, where every time we say covert contract, in this episode, you have to take a shot of espresso. Please don’t do that. You’d be dead by the end. [inaudible 01:19:56].
It’s like a drinking game, where every time we say covert contract, in this episode, you have to take a shot of espresso. Please don’t do that. You’d be dead by the end. [inaudible 01:19:56].
Lex Fridman
So it actually is just a small tangent, it does make me wonder how much intelligence covert contracts require. It seems like not much. If you can do it in the animal kingdom, there’s some kind of instinctual… It is based perhaps in fear.
So it actually is just a small tangent, it does make me wonder how much intelligence covert contracts require. It seems like not much. If you can do it in the animal kingdom, there’s some kind of instinctual… It is based perhaps in fear.
Andrew Huberman
Yeah, it could be simple algorithm. If there’s some ambiguity about numbers and I’m not with these guys, and then flip to the alternate strategy. I actually have a story about this that I think is relevant. I used to have cuttlefish in my lab in San Diego. We went and got them from a guy out in the desert. We put them in the lab. It was amazing. And they had a postdoc who was studying prey capture in cuttlefish. They have a very ballistic, extremely rapid strike and grab of the shrimp, and we were using high-speed cameras to characterize all this. Looking at binocular, they normally have their eyes on the side of their head, when they see something they want to eat the eyes translocate to the front, which allows them stereopsis death perception, allows them to strike. We were doing some unilateral eye removals they would miss, et cetera.
Yeah, it could be simple algorithm. If there’s some ambiguity about numbers and I’m not with these guys, and then flip to the alternate strategy. I actually have a story about this that I think is relevant. I used to have cuttlefish in my lab in San Diego. We went and got them from a guy out in the desert. We put them in the lab. It was amazing. And they had a postdoc who was studying prey capture in cuttlefish. They have a very ballistic, extremely rapid strike and grab of the shrimp, and we were using high-speed cameras to characterize all this. Looking at binocular, they normally have their eyes on the side of their head, when they see something they want to eat the eyes translocate to the front, which allows them stereopsis death perception, allows them to strike. We were doing some unilateral eye removals they would miss, et cetera.
Okay, this has to do with eyespots. This was during a government shutdown period where the ghost shrimp that they normally feed eat on, that we would ship in from the gulf down here, weren’t available to us. So we had to get different shrimp. And what we noticed was the cuttlefish normally would just sneak up on the shrimp. We learned this by data collection. And if the shrimp was facing them, they would do this thing with their tentacles of enchanting the shrimp. And if the shrimp wasn’t facing them, they wouldn’t do it and they would ballistically grab it and eat them.
Well, when we got these new shrimp, the new shrimp had eyespots on their tails and then the cuttlefish would do this attempt to enchant, regardless of the position of the ghost shrimp. So what does that mean? Okay, well, it means that there’s some sort of algorithm in the cuttlefish’s mind that says, “Okay, if you see two spots, move your tentacles.” So it can be, as you pointed out, it can be a fairly simple operation, but it looks diabolical. It looks cunning, but all it is strategy B.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, but it’s still somehow emerged. I don’t think that-
Yeah, but it’s still somehow emerged. I don’t think that-
Andrew Huberman
Success-
Success-
Lex Fridman
… calling it an algorithm doesn’t… I feel like-
… calling it an algorithm doesn’t… I feel like-
Andrew Huberman
Well, there’s a circuit there that gets implemented in a certain context, but that circuit had to evolve.
Well, there’s a circuit there that gets implemented in a certain context, but that circuit had to evolve.
Lex Fridman
You do realize, super intelligent AI will look at us humans and we’ll say the exact thing. There’s a circuit in there that evolved to do this, the algorithm A and algorithm B, and it’s trivial. And to us humans, it’s fancy and beautiful, and we write poetry about it, but it’s just trivial.
You do realize, super intelligent AI will look at us humans and we’ll say the exact thing. There’s a circuit in there that evolved to do this, the algorithm A and algorithm B, and it’s trivial. And to us humans, it’s fancy and beautiful, and we write poetry about it, but it’s just trivial.
Andrew Huberman
Because we don’t understand the subconscious. Because that AI algorithm cannot see into what it can’t see. It doesn’t understand the under workings of what allows all of this conversation stuff to manifest. And we can’t even see it, how could AI see it? Maybe it will, maybe AI will solve and give us access to our subconscious. Maybe your AI friend or coach, like I think Andreessen and others are arguing is going to happen at some point, is going to say, “Hey Lex, you’re making decisions lately that are not good for you, but it’s because of this algorithm that you picked up in childhood, that if you don’t state your explicit needs upfront, you’re not going to get what you want. So why do it? From now on, you need to actually make a list of every absolutely outrageous thing that you want, no matter how outrageous, and communicate that immediately, and that will work.”
Because we don’t understand the subconscious. Because that AI algorithm cannot see into what it can’t see. It doesn’t understand the under workings of what allows all of this conversation stuff to manifest. And we can’t even see it, how could AI see it? Maybe it will, maybe AI will solve and give us access to our subconscious. Maybe your AI friend or coach, like I think Andreessen and others are arguing is going to happen at some point, is going to say, “Hey Lex, you’re making decisions lately that are not good for you, but it’s because of this algorithm that you picked up in childhood, that if you don’t state your explicit needs upfront, you’re not going to get what you want. So why do it? From now on, you need to actually make a list of every absolutely outrageous thing that you want, no matter how outrageous, and communicate that immediately, and that will work.”
Lex Fridman
We’re talking about cuttlefish and sexual selection, and then we went into some… Where did we go? Then you said you were excited.
We’re talking about cuttlefish and sexual selection, and then we went into some… Where did we go? Then you said you were excited.
Andrew Huberman
Well, I was excited… Well, you were just saying what about these covert contracts, [inaudible 01:23:43] animals do them.
Well, I was excited… Well, you were just saying what about these covert contracts, [inaudible 01:23:43] animals do them.
Lex Fridman
Yes, [inaudible 01:23:44].
Yes, [inaudible 01:23:44].
Andrew Huberman
I think it’s simple contextual engagement of a neural circuit, which is not just nerd speak for saying they do a different strategy. It’s saying that there has to be a circuit there, hardwired circuit, maybe learned, but probably hardwired, that can be engaged, right? You can’t build neural machinery in a moment, you need to build that circuit over time. What is building it over time? You select for it. The cuttlefish that did not have that alternate context-driven circuit, didn’t survive when all the shrimp that they normally eat disappear, and the eyespotted shrimp showed up. And there were a couple that had some miswiring. This is why mutation… Right, X-Men stuff is real. They had a mutation that had some alternate wiring and that wiring got selected for, it became a mutation that was adaptive as opposed to maladaptive.
I think it’s simple contextual engagement of a neural circuit, which is not just nerd speak for saying they do a different strategy. It’s saying that there has to be a circuit there, hardwired circuit, maybe learned, but probably hardwired, that can be engaged, right? You can’t build neural machinery in a moment, you need to build that circuit over time. What is building it over time? You select for it. The cuttlefish that did not have that alternate context-driven circuit, didn’t survive when all the shrimp that they normally eat disappear, and the eyespotted shrimp showed up. And there were a couple that had some miswiring. This is why mutation… Right, X-Men stuff is real. They had a mutation that had some alternate wiring and that wiring got selected for, it became a mutation that was adaptive as opposed to maladaptive.
This is something people don’t often understand about genetics, is that it only takes a few generations to devolve a trait, make it worse, but it takes a long time to evolve an adaptive trait. There are exceptions to that, but most often that’s true. So a species needs a lot of generations. We are hopefully still evolving as a species. And it takes a long time, to evolve more adaptive traits, but doesn’t take long to devolve adaptive traits, so that you’re getting sicker or you’re not functioning as well. So choose your mate wisely, and that’s perhaps the good segue into sexual selection in humans.
Relationships
Lex Fridman
[inaudible 01:25:13]. I could tell you you’re good at this. Why did I bring up sexual selection, is good relationships, so sexual selection in humans. I don’t think you’ve done an episode on relationships.
[inaudible 01:25:13]. I could tell you you’re good at this. Why did I bring up sexual selection, is good relationships, so sexual selection in humans. I don’t think you’ve done an episode on relationships.
Andrew Huberman
No, I did an episode on attachment but not on relationships.
No, I did an episode on attachment but not on relationships.
Lex Fridman
Right.
Right.
Andrew Huberman
The series with Conti includes one episode of the four that’s all about relational understanding, and how to select a mate based on matching of drives and-
The series with Conti includes one episode of the four that’s all about relational understanding, and how to select a mate based on matching of drives and-
Lex Fridman
All the demons inside the subconscious, how to match demons that they dance well together or what?
All the demons inside the subconscious, how to match demons that they dance well together or what?
Andrew Huberman
And how generative two people are.
And how generative two people are.
Lex Fridman
What does that mean?
What does that mean?
Andrew Huberman
Means how… The way he explains it is, how devoted to creating growth within the context of the family, the relationship, with work.
Means how… The way he explains it is, how devoted to creating growth within the context of the family, the relationship, with work.
Lex Fridman
Well, let me ask you about mating rituals and how to find such a relationship. You’re really big on friendships, on the value of friendships.
Well, let me ask you about mating rituals and how to find such a relationship. You’re really big on friendships, on the value of friendships.
Andrew Huberman
I am.
I am.
Lex Fridman
And that I think extends itself into one of the deepest kinds of friendships you can have, which is a romantic relationship. What mistakes, successes and wisdom can you impart?
And that I think extends itself into one of the deepest kinds of friendships you can have, which is a romantic relationship. What mistakes, successes and wisdom can you impart?
Andrew Huberman
Well, I’ve certainly made some mistakes. I’ve also made some good choices in this realm. First of all, we have to define what sort of relationship we’re talking about. If one is looking for a life partner, potentially somebody to establish family with, with or without kids, with or without pets, right? Families can take different forms. I certainly experienced being a family in a prior relationship, where it was the two of us and our two dogs, and it was family. We had our little family. I think, based on my experience, and based on input from friends, who themselves have very successful relationships, I must say, I’ve got friends who are in long-term, monogamous, very happy relationships, where there seems to be a lot of love, a lot of laughter, a lot of challenge and a lot of growth. And both people, it seems, really want to be there and enjoy being there.
Well, I’ve certainly made some mistakes. I’ve also made some good choices in this realm. First of all, we have to define what sort of relationship we’re talking about. If one is looking for a life partner, potentially somebody to establish family with, with or without kids, with or without pets, right? Families can take different forms. I certainly experienced being a family in a prior relationship, where it was the two of us and our two dogs, and it was family. We had our little family. I think, based on my experience, and based on input from friends, who themselves have very successful relationships, I must say, I’ve got friends who are in long-term, monogamous, very happy relationships, where there seems to be a lot of love, a lot of laughter, a lot of challenge and a lot of growth. And both people, it seems, really want to be there and enjoy being there.
Lex Fridman
Just to pause on that, one thing to do, I think, by way of advice, is listen to people who are in long-term successful relationships. That seems dumb, but we both know and are friends with Joe Rogan, who’s been in a long-term, really great relationship and he’s been an inspiration to me. So you take advice from that guy.
Just to pause on that, one thing to do, I think, by way of advice, is listen to people who are in long-term successful relationships. That seems dumb, but we both know and are friends with Joe Rogan, who’s been in a long-term, really great relationship and he’s been an inspiration to me. So you take advice from that guy.
Andrew Huberman
Definitely, and several members of my podcast team are in excellent relationships. I think one of the things that rings true, over and over again, in the advice and in my experience, is find someone who’s really a great friend, build a really great friendship with that person. Now obviously not just a friend, if we’re talking romantic relationship, and of course sex is super important, but it should be a part of that particular relationship, alongside or meshed with, the friendship. Can it be a majority of the positive exchange? I suppose it could, but I think the friendship piece is extremely important, because what’s required in a successful relationship, clearly is joy in being together, trust, a desire to share experience, both mundane and more adventurous, support each other, acceptance, a real, maybe even admiration, but certainly delight, in being with the person.
Definitely, and several members of my podcast team are in excellent relationships. I think one of the things that rings true, over and over again, in the advice and in my experience, is find someone who’s really a great friend, build a really great friendship with that person. Now obviously not just a friend, if we’re talking romantic relationship, and of course sex is super important, but it should be a part of that particular relationship, alongside or meshed with, the friendship. Can it be a majority of the positive exchange? I suppose it could, but I think the friendship piece is extremely important, because what’s required in a successful relationship, clearly is joy in being together, trust, a desire to share experience, both mundane and more adventurous, support each other, acceptance, a real, maybe even admiration, but certainly delight, in being with the person.
Earlier we were talking about peace, and I think that that sense of peace comes from knowing that the person you’re in friendship with, or that you’re in romantic relationship, or ideally both, because let’s assume the best romantic relationship includes a friendship component with that person. It’s like you just really delight in their presence, even if it’s a quiet presence. And you delight in seeing them delight in things, that’s clear.
Lex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Huberman
The trust piece is huge and that’s where people start, we don’t want to focus on what works, not what doesn’t work, but that’s where, I think, people start engaging in these covert contracts. They’re afraid of being betrayed, so they betray. They’re afraid of giving up too much vulnerability, so they hide their vulnerability, or in the worst cases, they feign vulnerability.
The trust piece is huge and that’s where people start, we don’t want to focus on what works, not what doesn’t work, but that’s where, I think, people start engaging in these covert contracts. They’re afraid of being betrayed, so they betray. They’re afraid of giving up too much vulnerability, so they hide their vulnerability, or in the worst cases, they feign vulnerability.
Lex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Huberman
Again, that’s a covert contract that just simply undermines everything. It becomes one plus one equals two minus one to infinity. Conversely, I think if people can have really hard conversations, this is something I’ve had to work really hard on in recent years, that I’m still working hard on. But the friendship piece seems to be the thing that rises to the top, when I talk to friends who are in these great relationships, it’s like they have so much respect and love and joy in being with their friend. It’s the person that they want to spend as much of their non-working, non-platonic friendship time with, and the person that they want to experience things with and share things with. And it sounds so canned and cliche nowadays, but I think if you step back and examine how most people go about finding a relationship, like, oh, am I attracted? Of course physical attraction is important and other forms of attraction too, and they enter through that portal, which makes sense. That’s the mating dance, that’s the peacock situation. That’s hopefully not the cuttlefish situation.
Again, that’s a covert contract that just simply undermines everything. It becomes one plus one equals two minus one to infinity. Conversely, I think if people can have really hard conversations, this is something I’ve had to work really hard on in recent years, that I’m still working hard on. But the friendship piece seems to be the thing that rises to the top, when I talk to friends who are in these great relationships, it’s like they have so much respect and love and joy in being with their friend. It’s the person that they want to spend as much of their non-working, non-platonic friendship time with, and the person that they want to experience things with and share things with. And it sounds so canned and cliche nowadays, but I think if you step back and examine how most people go about finding a relationship, like, oh, am I attracted? Of course physical attraction is important and other forms of attraction too, and they enter through that portal, which makes sense. That’s the mating dance, that’s the peacock situation. That’s hopefully not the cuttlefish situation.
But I think that there seems to be a history of people close to me getting into great relationships, where they were friends for a while first or maybe didn’t sleep together right away, that they actually intentionally deferred on that. This has not been my habit or my experience. I’ve gone the more, I think typical, like, oh, there’s an attraction, like this person, there’s an interest. You explore all dimensions of relationship really quickly except perhaps the moving in part and the having kids part, which because it’s a bigger step, harder to undo without more severe consequences. But I think that whole take it slow thing, I don’t think is about getting to know someone slowly, I think it’s about that physical piece, because that does change the nature of the relationship. And I think it’s because it gets right into the more hardwired, primitive circuitry around our feelings of safety, vulnerability.
There’s something about romantic and sexual interactions, where it’s almost like it’s assets and liabilities, right?
Lex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Huberman
Where people are trying to figure out how much to engage their time and their energy and multiple people. I’m talking about from both sides, male, female or whatever sides, but where it’s like assets and liabilities. And that’s where it starts getting into those complicated contracts early on, I think. And so maybe that’s why if a really great friendship and admiration is established first, even if people are romantically and sexually attracted to one another, then that piece can be added in a little bit later, in a way that really just seals up the whole thing, and then who knows, maybe they spend 90% of their time having sex. I don’t know. That’s not for me to say or decide obviously, but there’s something there, about staying out of a certain amount of risk of having to engage covert contract in order to protect oneself.
Where people are trying to figure out how much to engage their time and their energy and multiple people. I’m talking about from both sides, male, female or whatever sides, but where it’s like assets and liabilities. And that’s where it starts getting into those complicated contracts early on, I think. And so maybe that’s why if a really great friendship and admiration is established first, even if people are romantically and sexually attracted to one another, then that piece can be added in a little bit later, in a way that really just seals up the whole thing, and then who knows, maybe they spend 90% of their time having sex. I don’t know. That’s not for me to say or decide obviously, but there’s something there, about staying out of a certain amount of risk of having to engage covert contract in order to protect oneself.
Lex Fridman
But I do think love at first sight, this kind of idea is, in part, realizing very quickly that you are great friends. I’ve had that experience of friendship recently. It’s not really friendship, but like, oh, you get each other. With humans, not in a romantic setting.
But I do think love at first sight, this kind of idea is, in part, realizing very quickly that you are great friends. I’ve had that experience of friendship recently. It’s not really friendship, but like, oh, you get each other. With humans, not in a romantic setting.
Andrew Huberman
Right, friendship?
Right, friendship?
Lex Fridman
Yeah, just friendship. [inaudible 01:33:54].
Yeah, just friendship. [inaudible 01:33:54].
Andrew Huberman
Well, dare I say, I felt that way about you when we met, right?
Well, dare I say, I felt that way about you when we met, right?
Lex Fridman
Yeah, but we also-
Yeah, but we also-
Andrew Huberman
I was like, “This dude’s cool, and he’s smart, and he’s funny, and he’s driven, and he’s giving, and he’s got an edge, and I want to learn from him. I want to hang out with him.” That was the beginning of our friendship, was essentially that set of internal realizations.
I was like, “This dude’s cool, and he’s smart, and he’s funny, and he’s driven, and he’s giving, and he’s got an edge, and I want to learn from him. I want to hang out with him.” That was the beginning of our friendship, was essentially that set of internal realizations.
Lex Fridman
Just keep going, just keep going, [inaudible 01:34:18] keep going with these compliments.
Just keep going, just keep going, [inaudible 01:34:18] keep going with these compliments.
Andrew Huberman
And a sharp dresser, [inaudible 01:34:20].
And a sharp dresser, [inaudible 01:34:20].
Lex Fridman
Yeah, yeah, just looks great shirtless on horseback. Yes.
Yeah, yeah, just looks great shirtless on horseback. Yes.
Andrew Huberman
No. No, no, listen, despite what some people might see on the internet, it’s a purely platonic friendship.
No. No, no, listen, despite what some people might see on the internet, it’s a purely platonic friendship.
Lex Fridman
Somebody asked if Andrew Huberman has a girlfriend, and somebody says, “I think so.” And the third comment was, “This really breaks my heart that Lex and Andrew are not an item.”
Somebody asked if Andrew Huberman has a girlfriend, and somebody says, “I think so.” And the third comment was, “This really breaks my heart that Lex and Andrew are not an item.”
Andrew Huberman
We are great friends, but we are not an item.
We are great friends, but we are not an item.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, well-
Yeah, well-
Andrew Huberman
It’s true, it’s official. I hear, over and over again, from friends that have made great choices in awesome partners, and have these fantastic relationships for long periods of time, that seem to continue to thrive, at least that’s what they tell me, and that’s what I observe, establish the friendship first and give it a bit of time before sex. And so I think that’s the feeling. That’s the feeling and we’re talking micro features and macro features. And this isn’t about perfection, it’s actually about the imperfections, which is kind of cool. I like quirky people. I like characters.
It’s true, it’s official. I hear, over and over again, from friends that have made great choices in awesome partners, and have these fantastic relationships for long periods of time, that seem to continue to thrive, at least that’s what they tell me, and that’s what I observe, establish the friendship first and give it a bit of time before sex. And so I think that’s the feeling. That’s the feeling and we’re talking micro features and macro features. And this isn’t about perfection, it’s actually about the imperfections, which is kind of cool. I like quirky people. I like characters.
I’ll tell you where I’ve gone badly wrong and where I see other people going badly wrong. There is no rule that says that you have to be attracted to all attractive people, by any means. It’s very important to develop a sense of taste in romantic attractions, I believe. What you really like, in terms of a certain style, a certain way of being, and of course that includes sexuality and sex itself, the verb. But I think it also includes their just general way of being. And when you really adore somebody, you like the way they answer the phone, and when they don’t answer the phone that way, you know something’s off and you want to know. And so I think that the more you can tune up your powers of observation, not looking for things that you like, and the more that stuff just washes over you, the more likely you are to, “Fall in love.” As a mutual friend of ours said to me, “Listen, when it comes to romantic relationships, if it’s not a hundred percent in you, it ain’t happening.”
And I’ve never seen a violation of that statement, where it’s like, yeah, it’s mostly good and they’re this and this, likes the negotiations. Well, already it’s doomed. And that doesn’t mean someone has to be perfect, the relationship has to be perfect, but it’s got to feel hundred percent inside.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Andrew Huberman
Like yes, yes, and yes. I think Deisseroth, when he was on here, your podcast, mentioned something that, I think the words were… Or maybe it was in his book, I don’t recall. But that love is one of these things that we story into with somebody. We create this idea of ourselves in the future and we look at our past time together and then you story into it.
Like yes, yes, and yes. I think Deisseroth, when he was on here, your podcast, mentioned something that, I think the words were… Or maybe it was in his book, I don’t recall. But that love is one of these things that we story into with somebody. We create this idea of ourselves in the future and we look at our past time together and then you story into it.
Lex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Huberman
There’re very few things like that. I can’t story into building flying cars. I have to actually go do something. And love is also retroactively constructed. Anyone who’s gone through a breakup understands the grief of knowing, oh, this is something I really shouldn’t be in, for whatever reason, because it only takes one. If the other person doesn’t want to be in it, then you shouldn’t be in it. But then missing so many things, and that’s just the attachment machinery, really, at work.
There’re very few things like that. I can’t story into building flying cars. I have to actually go do something. And love is also retroactively constructed. Anyone who’s gone through a breakup understands the grief of knowing, oh, this is something I really shouldn’t be in, for whatever reason, because it only takes one. If the other person doesn’t want to be in it, then you shouldn’t be in it. But then missing so many things, and that’s just the attachment machinery, really, at work.
Fertility
Lex Fridman
I have to ask you a question that somebody in our amazing team wanted to ask. He’s happily married. Another, like you mentioned, incredible relationship.
I have to ask you a question that somebody in our amazing team wanted to ask. He’s happily married. Another, like you mentioned, incredible relationship.
Andrew Huberman
Are they good friends?
Are they good friends?
Lex Fridman
They’re amazing friends.
They’re amazing friends.
Andrew Huberman
There you go.
There you go.
Lex Fridman
But, I’m just going to say, I’m not saying who it is. So I can say some stuff, which is, it started out as a great sexual connection.
But, I’m just going to say, I’m not saying who it is. So I can say some stuff, which is, it started out as a great sexual connection.
Andrew Huberman
Oh, well, there you go.
Oh, well, there you go.
Lex Fridman
But then became very close friends after that.
But then became very close friends after that.
Andrew Huberman
Okay, listen-
Okay, listen-
Lex Fridman
There you go. So speaking of sex-
There you go. So speaking of sex-
Andrew Huberman
There are many paths to Rome.
There are many paths to Rome.
Lex Fridman
He has a wonderful son and he is wanting to have a second kid, and he wanted to ask the great Andrew Huberman, is there sexual positions or any kind of thing that can help maximize the chance that they have a girl versus a boy? Because they had a wonderful boy.
He has a wonderful son and he is wanting to have a second kid, and he wanted to ask the great Andrew Huberman, is there sexual positions or any kind of thing that can help maximize the chance that they have a girl versus a boy? Because they had a wonderful boy.
Andrew Huberman
Do they want a girl?
Do they want a girl?
Lex Fridman
They want to a girl.
They want to a girl.
Andrew Huberman
Okay.
Okay.
Lex Fridman
Is there a way to control the gender? [inaudible 01:38:39].
Is there a way to control the gender? [inaudible 01:38:39].
Andrew Huberman
Well, this has been debated for a long time, and I did a four and a half hour episode on fertility. And the reason I did a four and a half hour episode on fertility is that, first of all, I find that reproductive biology be fascinating. And I wanted a resource for people that at were thinking about, or struggling with having kids for whatever reason, and it felt important to me to combine the male and female components in the same episode. It’s all timestamped, so you don’t have to listen to the whole thing. We talk about IVF, in vitro fertilization, we talk about natural pregnancy.
Well, this has been debated for a long time, and I did a four and a half hour episode on fertility. And the reason I did a four and a half hour episode on fertility is that, first of all, I find that reproductive biology be fascinating. And I wanted a resource for people that at were thinking about, or struggling with having kids for whatever reason, and it felt important to me to combine the male and female components in the same episode. It’s all timestamped, so you don’t have to listen to the whole thing. We talk about IVF, in vitro fertilization, we talk about natural pregnancy.
Okay, the data on position is very interesting, but let me just say a few things. There are a few clinics now, in particular some out of the United States, that are spinning down sperm and finding that they can separate out fractions, as they’re called. They can spin the sperm down at a given speed, and that they’ll separate out at different depths within the test tube, that allow them to pull out the sperm on top or below and bias the probability towards male or female births. It’s not perfect. It’s not a hundred percent. It’s a very costly procedure. It’s still very controversial.
Now with in vitro fertilization, they can extract eggs. You can introduce a sperm, directly by pipette, it’s a process called ICSI. Or you can set up a sperm race in a dish. And if you get a number of different embryos, meaning the eggs get fertilized, duplicate and start form a blastocyst, which is a ball of cells, early embryo, then you can do karyotyping. So you can do look for XX or XY, select the XY, which then would give rise to a male offspring, and then implant that one. So there is that kind of sex selection.
With respect to position, there’s a lot of lore that if the woman is on top or the woman’s on the bottom, or whether or not the penetration is from behind, whether or not it’s going to be male or female offspring. And frankly, the data are not great, as you can imagine, because those-
Lex Fridman
[inaudible 01:40:39].
[inaudible 01:40:39].
Andrew Huberman
… those would be interesting studies to run, perhaps.
… those would be interesting studies to run, perhaps.
Lex Fridman
But there is studies, there is papers.
But there is studies, there is papers.
Andrew Huberman
There are some-
There are some-
Lex Fridman
But they’re not, I guess-
But they’re not, I guess-
Andrew Huberman
Yeah, it’s-
Yeah, it’s-
Lex Fridman
There’s more lore than science says.
There’s more lore than science says.
Andrew Huberman
And there are a lot of other variables that are hard to control. So for instance, if it’s during intermission, during sex penetration, et cetera, then you can’t measure, for instance, sperm volume as opposed to when it’s IVF, and they can actually measure how many milliliters, how many forward motile sperm. It’s hard to control for certain things. And it just can vary between individuals and even from one ejaculation to the next and… Okay, so there’s too many variables; however, the position thing is interesting in the following way, and then I’ll answer whether or not you can bias us towards a female. As long as we’re talking about sexual-
And there are a lot of other variables that are hard to control. So for instance, if it’s during intermission, during sex penetration, et cetera, then you can’t measure, for instance, sperm volume as opposed to when it’s IVF, and they can actually measure how many milliliters, how many forward motile sperm. It’s hard to control for certain things. And it just can vary between individuals and even from one ejaculation to the next and… Okay, so there’s too many variables; however, the position thing is interesting in the following way, and then I’ll answer whether or not you can bias us towards a female. As long as we’re talking about sexual-
Lex Fridman
I have other questions about sex [inaudible 01:41:28].
I have other questions about sex [inaudible 01:41:28].
Andrew Huberman
But as long as we’re talking about sexual position,-
But as long as we’re talking about sexual position,-
Lex Fridman
All right.
All right.
Andrew Huberman
… there are data that support the idea that, in order to increase the probability of successful fertilization, that indeed, the woman should not stand upright after sex and should-
… there are data that support the idea that, in order to increase the probability of successful fertilization, that indeed, the woman should not stand upright after sex and should-
Lex Fridman
[inaudible 01:41:49].
[inaudible 01:41:49].
Andrew Huberman
Right after the man has ejaculated inside her, and should adjust her pelvis, say, 15 degrees upwards. Some of the fertility experts, MDs, will say that’s crazy, but others-
Right after the man has ejaculated inside her, and should adjust her pelvis, say, 15 degrees upwards. Some of the fertility experts, MDs, will say that’s crazy, but others-
Andrew Huberman
MDs will say, “That’s crazy.”
MDs will say, “That’s crazy.”
But others that I sought out, and not specifically for this answer, but for researching that episode, said that, “Yeah, what you’re talking about is trying to get the maximum number of sperm and it’s contained in semen. And yes, the semen can leak out. And so keeping the pelvis tilted for about 15 degrees for about 15 minutes, obviously tilted in the direction that would have things running upstream, not downstream, so to speak.”
Lex Fridman
Gravity.
Gravity.
Andrew Huberman
Gravity, it’s real. So for maximizing fertilization, the doctors I spoke to just said, “Look, given that if people are trying to get pregnant, what is spending 15 minutes on their back?” This sort of thing. Okay. So then with respect to getting a female offspring or XX female offspring, selectively, there is the idea that as fathers get older, they’re more likely to have daughters as opposed to sons. That’s, from the papers I’ve read, is a significant but still mildly significant result. So with each passing year, this person increases the probability they’re going to have a daughter, not a son. So that’s interesting.
Gravity, it’s real. So for maximizing fertilization, the doctors I spoke to just said, “Look, given that if people are trying to get pregnant, what is spending 15 minutes on their back?” This sort of thing. Okay. So then with respect to getting a female offspring or XX female offspring, selectively, there is the idea that as fathers get older, they’re more likely to have daughters as opposed to sons. That’s, from the papers I’ve read, is a significant but still mildly significant result. So with each passing year, this person increases the probability they’re going to have a daughter, not a son. So that’s interesting.
Lex Fridman
But the probability differences are probably tiny as you said.
But the probability differences are probably tiny as you said.
Andrew Huberman
It’s not trivial. It’s not a trivial difference. But if they want to ensure having a daughter, then they should do IVF and select an XX embryo. And when you go through IVF, they genetically screen them for karyotype, which is XX, XY, and they look at mutations, genotypic mutations for things like trisomies and aneuploidies, all the stuff you don’t want.
It’s not trivial. It’s not a trivial difference. But if they want to ensure having a daughter, then they should do IVF and select an XX embryo. And when you go through IVF, they genetically screen them for karyotype, which is XX, XY, and they look at mutations, genotypic mutations for things like trisomies and aneuploidies, all the stuff you don’t want.
Lex Fridman
But there is a lot of lore if you look on the internet.
But there is a lot of lore if you look on the internet.
Andrew Huberman
Sure. Different foods.
Sure. Different foods.
Lex Fridman
So there are a lot of variables.
So there are a lot of variables.
Andrew Huberman
There’s a lot of variable, but there haven’t been systematic studies. So I think probably the best thing to do, unless they’re going to do IVF, is just roll the dice. And I think with each passing year, they increase the probability of getting a female offspring. But of course, with each passing year, the egg and sperm quality degrade, so get after it soon.
There’s a lot of variable, but there haven’t been systematic studies. So I think probably the best thing to do, unless they’re going to do IVF, is just roll the dice. And I think with each passing year, they increase the probability of getting a female offspring. But of course, with each passing year, the egg and sperm quality degrade, so get after it soon.
Lex Fridman
So I went down a rabbit hole. Sexology, there’s journals on sex.
So I went down a rabbit hole. Sexology, there’s journals on sex.
Andrew Huberman
Oh, yeah. Sure. And some of them, not all, quite reputable and some of them really pioneering in the sense that they’ve taken on topics that are considered outside the main frame of what people talk about, but they’re very important. We have episodes coming out soon with, for instance, the Head of Male Urology, Sexual Health and Reproductive Health at Stanford, Michael Eisenberg. But also one with a female urologist, sexual health, reproductive health, Dr. Rena Malik, who has a quite active YouTube presence. She does these really dry, scientific presentation, but very nice. She has a lovely voice. But she’ll be talking about erections or squirting. She does very internet-type content, but she’s a legitimate urologist, reproductive health expert.
Oh, yeah. Sure. And some of them, not all, quite reputable and some of them really pioneering in the sense that they’ve taken on topics that are considered outside the main frame of what people talk about, but they’re very important. We have episodes coming out soon with, for instance, the Head of Male Urology, Sexual Health and Reproductive Health at Stanford, Michael Eisenberg. But also one with a female urologist, sexual health, reproductive health, Dr. Rena Malik, who has a quite active YouTube presence. She does these really dry, scientific presentation, but very nice. She has a lovely voice. But she’ll be talking about erections or squirting. She does very internet-type content, but she’s a legitimate urologist, reproductive health expert.
And in the podcast, we did talk about both male and female orgasm. We talked a lot about sexual function and dysfunction. We talked a lot about pelvic floor. One interesting factoid is that only 3% of sexual dysfunction is hormonal, endocrine, in nature. It’s more often related to some pelvic floor or vasculature, blood flow related or other issue. And then when Eisenberg came on the podcast, he said that far less sexual dysfunction is psychogenic in origin than people believe. That far more of it is pelvic floor, neuro and vascular. It’s not saying that psychogenic dysfunction doesn’t exist, but that a lot of the sexual dysfunction that people assume is related to hormones or that is related to psychogenic issues are related to vascular or neural issues. And the good news is that there are great remedies for those. And so both those episodes detail some of the more salient points around what those remedies are and could be.
One of the, again, factoids, but it was interesting that a lot of people have pelvic floor issues and they think that their pelvic floors are, quote, unquote, messed up. So they go on the internet, they learn about Kegels. And it turns out that some people need Kegels, they need to strengthen their pelvic floor. Guess what? A huge number of people with sexual and urologic dysfunction have pelvic floors that are too tight and Kegels are going to make them far worse, and they actually need to learn to relax their pelvic floor. And so seeing a pelvic floor specialist is important.
I think in the next five, 10 years, we’re going to see a dramatic shift towards more discussion about sexual and reproductive health in a way that acknowledges that, yeah, the clitoris comes from the same origin tissue as the penis. And in many ways the neural innervation of the two, while clearly different, has some overlapping features that there’s going to be discussion around anatomy and hormones and pelvic floors in a way that’s going to erode some of the cloaking of these topics because they’ve been cloaked for a long time and there’s a lot of… Well, let’s just call it what it is. There’s a lot of bullshit out there about what’s what.
Now, the hormonal issues, by the way, just to clarify, can impact desire. So a lot of people who have lack of desire as opposed to lack of anatomical function, this could be male or female that can originate with either things like SSRIs or hormonal issues. And so we talk about that as well. So it’s a pretty vast topic.
Productivity
Lex Fridman
Okay. You’re one of the most productive people I know. What’s the secret to your productivity? How do you maximize the number of productive hours in a day? You’re a scientist, you’re a teacher, you’re a very prolific educator.
Okay. You’re one of the most productive people I know. What’s the secret to your productivity? How do you maximize the number of productive hours in a day? You’re a scientist, you’re a teacher, you’re a very prolific educator.
Andrew Huberman
Well, thanks for the kind words. I struggle like everybody else, but I am pretty relentless about meeting deadlines. I miss them sometimes, but sometimes that means cramming. Sometimes that means starting early. But-
Well, thanks for the kind words. I struggle like everybody else, but I am pretty relentless about meeting deadlines. I miss them sometimes, but sometimes that means cramming. Sometimes that means starting early. But-
Lex Fridman
Has that been hard, sorry to interrupt, with the podcast? There’s certain episodes, you’re taking just incredibly difficult topics and you know there’s going to be a lot of really good scientists listening to those with a very skeptical and careful eye. Do you struggle meeting that deadline sometimes?
Has that been hard, sorry to interrupt, with the podcast? There’s certain episodes, you’re taking just incredibly difficult topics and you know there’s going to be a lot of really good scientists listening to those with a very skeptical and careful eye. Do you struggle meeting that deadline sometimes?
Andrew Huberman
Yes. We’ve pushed out episodes because I want more time with them. I also, I haven’t advertised this, but I have another fully tenured professor that’s started checking my podcasts and helping me find papers. He’s a close friend of mine. He’s an incredible expert in neuroplasticity and that’s been helpful. But I do all the primary research for the episodes myself. Although my niece has been doing a summer internship with me and finding amazing papers. She did last summer as well. She’s really good at it. Just sick that kid on the internet and she gets great stuff.
Yes. We’ve pushed out episodes because I want more time with them. I also, I haven’t advertised this, but I have another fully tenured professor that’s started checking my podcasts and helping me find papers. He’s a close friend of mine. He’s an incredible expert in neuroplasticity and that’s been helpful. But I do all the primary research for the episodes myself. Although my niece has been doing a summer internship with me and finding amazing papers. She did last summer as well. She’s really good at it. Just sick that kid on the internet and she gets great stuff.
Lex Fridman
Can I ask you, just going on tangents here, what’s the hardest, finding the papers or understanding what a paper is saying?
Can I ask you, just going on tangents here, what’s the hardest, finding the papers or understanding what a paper is saying?
Andrew Huberman
Finding them. Finding the best papers. Yeah. Because you have to read a bunch of reviews, figure out who’s getting cited, call people in a field, make sure that this is the stuff. I did this episode recently on ketamine. About ketamine, I wasn’t on ketamine. And there’s this whole debate about S versus R ketamine, and SR ketamine. And I called two clinical experts at Stanford. I had a researcher at UCLA help me. Even then, a few people had gripes about it that I don’t think they understood a section that I perhaps could have been clearer about. But yeah, you’re always concerned that people either won’t get it or I won’t be clear. So the researching is mainly about finding the best papers.
Finding them. Finding the best papers. Yeah. Because you have to read a bunch of reviews, figure out who’s getting cited, call people in a field, make sure that this is the stuff. I did this episode recently on ketamine. About ketamine, I wasn’t on ketamine. And there’s this whole debate about S versus R ketamine, and SR ketamine. And I called two clinical experts at Stanford. I had a researcher at UCLA help me. Even then, a few people had gripes about it that I don’t think they understood a section that I perhaps could have been clearer about. But yeah, you’re always concerned that people either won’t get it or I won’t be clear. So the researching is mainly about finding the best papers.
And then I’m looking for papers that establish a thoroughness of understanding. That are interesting, obviously. It’s fun to get occasionally look at some of the odder or more progressive papers that are what’s new in a field and then where there are actionable takeaways to really export those with a lot of thoughtfulness.
Going back to the productivity thing I do, I get up, I look at the sun. I don’t stare at the sun, but I get my sunshine. It all starts with a really good night’s sleep. I think that’s really important to understand. So much so that if I wake up and I don’t feel rested enough, I’ll often do a non-sleep deep rest yoga nidra, or go back to sleep for a little bit, get up, really prioritize the big block of work for the thing that I’m researching. I think a little bit of anxiety and a little bit of concern about deadline helps. Turning the phone off helps, realizing that those peak hours, whenever they are for you, you do not allow those hours to be invaded, unless a nuclear bomb goes off. And nuclear bomb is just a phraseology for, family crisis would be good justification. If there’s an emergency, obviously.
But it’s all about focus. It’s all about focus in the moment. It’s not even so much about how many hours you log. It’s really about focus in the moment. How much total focus can you give to something? And then I like to take walks and think about things and sometimes talk about them in my voice recorder. So I’m just always churning on it, all the time. And then of course, learning to turn it off and engage with people socially and not be podcasting 24 hours a day in your head is key. But I think I love learning and researching and finding those papers and the information, and I love teaching it.
And these days I use a whiteboard before I start. I don’t have any notes, no teleprompter. Then the whiteboard that I use beforehand is to really sculpt out the different elements and the flow, get the flow right and move things around. The whiteboard is such a valuable tool. Then take a couple pictures of that when I’m happy with it, put it down on the desk and these are just bullet points and then just churn through and just churn through. And nothing feels better than researching and sharing information. And I, as you did, grew up writing papers and it’s hard. And I like the friction of, “Uh, can’t. I want to get up. I want to use the bathroom.”
When I was in college, I was trying to make up deficiencies from my lack of attendance in high school, so much so that I would set a timer. I wouldn’t let myself get up to use the bathroom even. Never had an accident. I listened to music, classical music, Rancid, a few other things. Some Bob Dylan maybe thrown in there and just study and just… And then you’d hit the two-hour mark and you’re in pain and then you get up, use the bathroom. You’re like, “That felt so good.” There’s something about the human brain that likes these kind of friction points and working through them and you just have to work through them.
So yeah, I’m productive and my life has arranged around it, and that’s been a bit of a barrier to personal life at times. But my life’s been arranged around it. I’ve set up everything so that I can learn more, teach more, including some of my home life. But I do still watch Chimp Empire. I still got time to watch Chimp Empire. Look, the great Joe Strummer, Clash, they were my favorite Mescaleros. He said, this famous Strummer quote, “No input, no output.” So you need experience. You need outside things in order to foster the process.
But yeah, just nose to the grindstone man, I don’t know. And that’s what I’m happy to do with my life. I don’t think anyone should do that just because. But this is how I’m showing up. And if you don’t like me, then scroll… What do they say? Swipe left, swipe right. I don’t know. I’m not on the apps, the dating apps. So that’s the other thing. I keep waiting for when, “Listens to Lex Fridman podcast,” is a checkbox on Hinge or Bumble or whatever it is. But I don’t even know. Are those their field? I don’t know. What are the apps now?
Lex Fridman
Well, I’ve never used an app and I always found troublesome how little information is provided on apps.
Well, I’ve never used an app and I always found troublesome how little information is provided on apps.
Andrew Huberman
Well, they’re the ones that are like a stocked lake, like Raya. Companies will actually fill them with people that look a certain way.
Well, they’re the ones that are like a stocked lake, like Raya. Companies will actually fill them with people that look a certain way.
Lex Fridman
Well, soon it’ll be filled with AI.
Well, soon it’ll be filled with AI.
Andrew Huberman
Oh.
Oh.
Lex Fridman
The way you said, “Oh.”
The way you said, “Oh.”
Andrew Huberman
Yeah. That’s interesting.
Yeah. That’s interesting.
Lex Fridman
The heartbreak within that.
The heartbreak within that.
Andrew Huberman
Well, I am guilty of liking real human interaction.
Well, I am guilty of liking real human interaction.
Lex Fridman
Have you tried AI interaction?
Have you tried AI interaction?
Andrew Huberman
No, but I have a feeling you’re going to convince me to.
No, but I have a feeling you’re going to convince me to.
Lex Fridman
One day. I’ve also struggled finishing projects that are new. That are something new. For example, one of the things I’ve really struggled finishing is something that’s in Russian that requires translation and overdub and all that kind of stuff. The other project, I’ve been working on for at least a year off and on, but trying to finish is something we’ve talked about in the past. I’m still on it, project on Hitler in World War II. I’ve written so much about it and I just don’t know why I can’t finish it. I have trouble really… I think I’m terrified being in front of the camera.
One day. I’ve also struggled finishing projects that are new. That are something new. For example, one of the things I’ve really struggled finishing is something that’s in Russian that requires translation and overdub and all that kind of stuff. The other project, I’ve been working on for at least a year off and on, but trying to finish is something we’ve talked about in the past. I’m still on it, project on Hitler in World War II. I’ve written so much about it and I just don’t know why I can’t finish it. I have trouble really… I think I’m terrified being in front of the camera.
Andrew Huberman
Like this?
Like this?
Lex Fridman
Like this.
Like this.
Andrew Huberman
Or solo?
Or solo?
Lex Fridman
No, no, no. Solo.
No, no, no. Solo.
Andrew Huberman
Well, if ever you want to do solo and seriously, because done this before, our clandestine study missions, I’m happy to sit in the corner and work on my book or do something if it feels good to just have someone in the room.
Well, if ever you want to do solo and seriously, because done this before, our clandestine study missions, I’m happy to sit in the corner and work on my book or do something if it feels good to just have someone in the room.
Lex Fridman
Just for the feeling of somebody else?
Just for the feeling of somebody else?
Andrew Huberman
Definitely.
Definitely.
Lex Fridman
You seem to have been fearless to just sit in front of the camera by yourself to do the episode.
You seem to have been fearless to just sit in front of the camera by yourself to do the episode.
Andrew Huberman
Yeah, it was weird. The first year of the podcast, it just spilled out of me. I had all that stuff I was so excited about. I’d been talking to everyone who would listen and even when they’d run away, I’d keep talking before there was ever a camera, wasn’t on social media. 2019, I posted a little bit. 2020, as you know, I started going on podcasts. But yeah, the zest and delight in this stuff. I was like, “Circadian rhythms, I’m going to tell you about this stuff.” I just felt like, here’s the opportunity and just let it burst.
Yeah, it was weird. The first year of the podcast, it just spilled out of me. I had all that stuff I was so excited about. I’d been talking to everyone who would listen and even when they’d run away, I’d keep talking before there was ever a camera, wasn’t on social media. 2019, I posted a little bit. 2020, as you know, I started going on podcasts. But yeah, the zest and delight in this stuff. I was like, “Circadian rhythms, I’m going to tell you about this stuff.” I just felt like, here’s the opportunity and just let it burst.
And then as we’ve gotten into topics that are a little bit further away from my home knowledge, I still get super excited about it. This music in the brain episode I’ve been researching for a while now, I’m just so hyped about it. It’s so, so interesting. There’s so many facets. Singing versus improvisational music versus, “I’m listening to music,” versus learning music. It just goes on and on. There’s just so much that’s so interesting. I just can’t get enough. And I think, I don’t know, you put a camera in front of me, I sort of forget about it and I’m just trying to just teach.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, so that’s the difference. That’s interesting.
Yeah, so that’s the difference. That’s interesting.
Andrew Huberman
Forget the camera.
Forget the camera.
Lex Fridman
Maybe I need to find that joy as well. But for me, a lot of the joy is in the writing. And the camera, there’s something-
Maybe I need to find that joy as well. But for me, a lot of the joy is in the writing. And the camera, there’s something-
Andrew Huberman
Well, the best lecturers, as you know, and you’re a phenomenal lecturer, so you embody this as well, but when I teach at Stanford, I was directing this course in neuroanatomy and neuroscience for medical students. And I noticed that the best lecturers would come in and they’re teaching the material from a place of deep understanding, but they’re also experiencing it as a first time learner at the same time. So it’s just sort of embodying the delight of it, but also the authority over the… Not authority, but the mastery of the material. And it’s really the delight in it that the students are linking onto. And of course they need and deserve the best accurate material, so they have to know what they’re talking about.
Well, the best lecturers, as you know, and you’re a phenomenal lecturer, so you embody this as well, but when I teach at Stanford, I was directing this course in neuroanatomy and neuroscience for medical students. And I noticed that the best lecturers would come in and they’re teaching the material from a place of deep understanding, but they’re also experiencing it as a first time learner at the same time. So it’s just sort of embodying the delight of it, but also the authority over the… Not authority, but the mastery of the material. And it’s really the delight in it that the students are linking onto. And of course they need and deserve the best accurate material, so they have to know what they’re talking about.
But yeah, just tap into that energy of learning and loving it. And people are along for the ride. I get accused of being long-winded, but things get taken out of context, that leads to greater misunderstanding. And also, listen, I come from a lineage of three dead advisors. Three. All three. So I don’t know when the reaper’s coming for me. I’m doing my best to stay alive a long time. But whether or not it’s a bullet or a bus or cancer or whatever, or just old age, I’m trying to get it all out there as best I can. And if it means you have to hit pause and come back a day or two later, that seems like a reasonable compromise to me. I’m not going to go longer than I need to and I’m trying to shorten them up. But again, that’s kind of how I show up.
It’s like Tim Armstrong would say about writing songs. I asked him, “How often do you write?” Every day. Every day. Does Rick ever stop creating? No. Has Joe ever stopped preparing for comedy? Are you ever stopping to think about world issues and technology and who you can talk to? It seems to me you’ve always got a plan in sight. The thing I love about your podcast the most, to be honest these days, is the surprise of I don’t know who the hell’s going to be there. It’s almost like I get a little nervously excited about when a new episode comes out. I have no idea. No idea. I have some guesses based on what you told me during the break. You’ve got some people where it’s just like, “Whoa, Lex went there? Awesome. Can’t wait.” Click. I think that’s really cool. You’re constantly surprising people. So you’re doing it so well. It’s such a high level and I think it’s also important for people to understand that what you’re doing Lex, there’s no precedent for it. Sure. There’ve been interviews before, there have been podcasts before. There are discussions before. How many of your peers can you look to find out how best to do the content like yours? Zero. There’s one peer: you. And so that should give you great peace and great excitement because you’re a pioneer. You’re literally the tip of the spear.
I don’t want to take an unnecessary tangent, but I think this might thread together two of the things that we’ve been talking about, which are, I think of pretty key importance. One is romantic relationships, and the other is creative process and work. And this again, is something I learned from Rick, but that he and I have gone back and forth on. And that I think is worth elaborating on, which is earlier we were saying the best relationship is going to be one where it brings you peace. I think peace also can be translated to, among other things, lack of distraction. So when you’re with your partner, can you really focus on them and the relationship? Can you not be distracted by things that you’re upset about from their past or from your past with them? And of course the same is true for them, right? They ideally will feel that way towards you too. They can really focus.
Also, when you’re not with them, can you focus on your work? Can you not be worried about whether or not they’re okay because you trust that they’re an adult and they can handle things or they will reach out if they need things? They’re going to communicate their needs like an adult. Not creating messes just to get attention and things like that, or disappearing for that matter. So peace and focus are intimately related, and distraction is the enemy of peace and focus.
So there’s something there, I believe, because with people that have the strong generative drive and want to be productive in their home life, in the sense have a rich family life, partner life, whatever that is, and in their work life, the ability to really drop into the work and you might have that sense like, “I hope they’re okay,” or, “need to check my phone or something,” but just know we’re good.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. Everything’s okay.
Yeah. Everything’s okay.
Andrew Huberman
So peace and focus, I think and being present are so key. And it’s key at every level of romantic relationship, from certainly presence and focus. Everything from sex to listening to raising a family, to tending to the house and in work, it’s absolutely critical. So I think that those things are mirror images of the same thing. And they’re both important reflections of the other. And when work is not going well, then the focus on relationship can suffer and vice versa.
So peace and focus, I think and being present are so key. And it’s key at every level of romantic relationship, from certainly presence and focus. Everything from sex to listening to raising a family, to tending to the house and in work, it’s absolutely critical. So I think that those things are mirror images of the same thing. And they’re both important reflections of the other. And when work is not going well, then the focus on relationship can suffer and vice versa.
Lex Fridman
And it’s crazy how important that is.
And it’s crazy how important that is.
Andrew Huberman
Peace.
Peace.
Lex Fridman
How incredibly wonderful it could be to have a person in your life that enables that creative focus.
How incredibly wonderful it could be to have a person in your life that enables that creative focus.
Andrew Huberman
Yeah. And you supply the peace and focus for their endeavors, whatever those might be. That symmetry there. Because clearly people have different needs and the need to just really trust, when Lex is working, he’s in his generative mode and I know he’s good. And so then they feel, sure, they’ve contributed to that. But then also what you’re doing is supporting them in whatever way happens to be. And I think that sometimes you’ll see that. People will pair up along creative-creative or musical-musical or computer scientists. But I think, again, going back to this Conti episode on relationships is that the superficial labels are less important, it seems, than just the desire to create that kind of home life and relationship together. And as a consequence, the work mode. And for some people, both people aren’t working and sometimes they are. But I think that’s the good stuff. And I think that’s the big learning in all of it, is that the further along I go, with each birthday, I guarantee you’re going to be like, “What I want is simpler and simpler and harder and harder to create. But oh, so worth it.”
Yeah. And you supply the peace and focus for their endeavors, whatever those might be. That symmetry there. Because clearly people have different needs and the need to just really trust, when Lex is working, he’s in his generative mode and I know he’s good. And so then they feel, sure, they’ve contributed to that. But then also what you’re doing is supporting them in whatever way happens to be. And I think that sometimes you’ll see that. People will pair up along creative-creative or musical-musical or computer scientists. But I think, again, going back to this Conti episode on relationships is that the superficial labels are less important, it seems, than just the desire to create that kind of home life and relationship together. And as a consequence, the work mode. And for some people, both people aren’t working and sometimes they are. But I think that’s the good stuff. And I think that’s the big learning in all of it, is that the further along I go, with each birthday, I guarantee you’re going to be like, “What I want is simpler and simpler and harder and harder to create. But oh, so worth it.”
Family
Lex Fridman
The inner and the outer peace. It’s been over two years, I think, since Costello passed away.
The inner and the outer peace. It’s been over two years, I think, since Costello passed away.
Andrew Huberman
It still tears me up. I cried about him today. I cried about him today.
It still tears me up. I cried about him today. I cried about him today.
Lex Fridman
[inaudible 02:05:17]. Fuck.
[inaudible 02:05:17]. Fuck.
Andrew Huberman
It’s proportional to the love. But yeah, I’ll cry about it right now if I think about it. It wasn’t putting him down, it wasn’t the act of him dying, any of that. Actually, that was a beautiful experience. I didn’t expect it to be, but it was in my place when I was living in Topanga during the pandemic where we launched the podcast and I did it at home and he hated the vet so I did it at home. And he gave out this huge, “Ugh,” right at the end. And I could just tell he had been in not a lot pain, fortunately. But he had just been working so hard just to move at all.
It’s proportional to the love. But yeah, I’ll cry about it right now if I think about it. It wasn’t putting him down, it wasn’t the act of him dying, any of that. Actually, that was a beautiful experience. I didn’t expect it to be, but it was in my place when I was living in Topanga during the pandemic where we launched the podcast and I did it at home and he hated the vet so I did it at home. And he gave out this huge, “Ugh,” right at the end. And I could just tell he had been in not a lot pain, fortunately. But he had just been working so hard just to move at all.
And the craziest thing happened, Lex. It was unbelievable. I’ve never had an experience like this. I expected my heart to break, and I’ve felt a broken heart before. I felt it, frankly, when my parents split, I felt it when Harry shot himself. I felt it when Barbara died and felt it when Ben went as well. And so many friends, way too many friends. The end of 2017, my friend Aaron King, Johnny Fair, John Eikleberry, stomach cancer, suicide, fentanyl. I was like, “Whoa. All in a fricking week.” And I just remember thinking, “What the…?” And it’s just heartbreak and you just carry that and it’s like, “Uh.” And that’s just a short list. And I don’t say that for sob stories. It’s just for a guy that wasn’t in the military or didn’t grow up in the inner city, it’s an unusual number of deaths, close people.
When Costello went, the craziest thing happened. My heart warmed up, it heated up. And I wasn’t on MDMA. The moment he went, it just went whoosh. And I was like, “What the hell is this?” And it was a supernatural experience to me. I just never had that. I put my grandfather on the ground, I was a pallbearer at the funeral. I’ve done that more times than I’d like to have ever done it. And it just heated up with Costello and I thought, “What the fuck is this?”
And it was almost like, and we make up these stories about what it is, but it was almost like he was like, “All right,” I have to be careful because I will cry here and I don’t want to. It was almost like he was like all that effort, because I had been putting so much effort into him, it was like, “All right, you get that back.” It was like the giant freaking, “Thank you.” And it was incredible. And I’m not embarrassed to shed a tear or two about it if I have to.
I was like, “Holy shit.” That’s how close I was to that animal.
Lex Fridman
Where do you think can find that kind of love again?
Where do you think can find that kind of love again?
Andrew Huberman
Man, I don’t know. And excuse me for welling up. I mean, it’s a freaking dog, right? I get it. But for me, it was the first real home I ever had. But when Costello went, it was like we had had this home in Topanga. We had set it up and he was just so happy there. And I think, I don’t know, it was this weird victory slash massive loss. We did it. 11 years. Freaking did everything, everything, to make him as comfortable as possible. And he was super loyal, beautiful animal, but also just funny and fun. And I was like, “I did it.” I gave as much of myself to this being as I felt I could without detracting from the rest of my life. And so I don’t know.
Man, I don’t know. And excuse me for welling up. I mean, it’s a freaking dog, right? I get it. But for me, it was the first real home I ever had. But when Costello went, it was like we had had this home in Topanga. We had set it up and he was just so happy there. And I think, I don’t know, it was this weird victory slash massive loss. We did it. 11 years. Freaking did everything, everything, to make him as comfortable as possible. And he was super loyal, beautiful animal, but also just funny and fun. And I was like, “I did it.” I gave as much of myself to this being as I felt I could without detracting from the rest of my life. And so I don’t know.
When I think about Barbara especially, I well up and it’s hard for me, but I talked to her before she died and that was a brutal conversation, saying goodbye to someone, especially with kids. And that was hard. I think that really flipped a switch in me where I’m like, I always knew I wanted kids. I’d say, “I want kids. I want a lot of kids.” That flipped a switch in me. I was like, “I want kids. I want my own kids.”
Lex Fridman
You might be able to find that kind of love having kids.
You might be able to find that kind of love having kids.
Andrew Huberman
Yeah, I think because it was the caretaking. It wasn’t about what he gave me all that time, and the more I could take care of him and see him happy, the better I felt. It was crazy. I don’t know. So I miss him every day. Every day. I miss him every day.
Yeah, I think because it was the caretaking. It wasn’t about what he gave me all that time, and the more I could take care of him and see him happy, the better I felt. It was crazy. I don’t know. So I miss him every day. Every day. I miss him every day.
Lex Fridman
You got a heart that’s so full of love. I can’t wait for you to have kids.
You got a heart that’s so full of love. I can’t wait for you to have kids.
Andrew Huberman
Thanks, man.
Thanks, man.
Lex Fridman
For you to be a father. I can’t wait to do the same.
For you to be a father. I can’t wait to do the same.
Andrew Huberman
Yeah, well, when I’m ready for it. When God decides I’m ready, I’ll have them.
Yeah, well, when I’m ready for it. When God decides I’m ready, I’ll have them.
Lex Fridman
And then I will still beat you to it. As I told you many times before,
And then I will still beat you to it. As I told you many times before,
Andrew Huberman
I think you should absolutely have kids. Look at the people in our life. Because in case you haven’t realized it already, we’re the younger of the podcasters. But like Joe and Peter and Segura and the rest, they’re like the tribal elders and we’re not the youngest in the crew. But if you look at all those guys, they all have kids. They all adore their kids and their kids bring tremendous meaning to their life. We’d be morons if you didn’t go off and start a family, I didn’t start start a family. And yeah, I think that’s the goal. Of the goals, that’s one of them.
I think you should absolutely have kids. Look at the people in our life. Because in case you haven’t realized it already, we’re the younger of the podcasters. But like Joe and Peter and Segura and the rest, they’re like the tribal elders and we’re not the youngest in the crew. But if you look at all those guys, they all have kids. They all adore their kids and their kids bring tremendous meaning to their life. We’d be morons if you didn’t go off and start a family, I didn’t start start a family. And yeah, I think that’s the goal. Of the goals, that’s one of them.
Lex Fridman
The kids not only make their life more joyful and brings love to their life, it’s also makes them more productive, makes them better people, all of that. It’s kind of obvious. Yeah,
The kids not only make their life more joyful and brings love to their life, it’s also makes them more productive, makes them better people, all of that. It’s kind of obvious. Yeah,
Andrew Huberman
I think that’s what Costello wanted, I think, I have this story in my head that he was just like, “Okay, take this like a kid.” It was a good test.
I think that’s what Costello wanted, I think, I have this story in my head that he was just like, “Okay, take this like a kid.” It was a good test.
Lex Fridman
“And don’t fuck this up.”
“And don’t fuck this up.”
Andrew Huberman
“Lord knows, don’t fuck this up.”
“Lord knows, don’t fuck this up.”
Lex Fridman
Andrew, I love you, brother. This was an incredible conversation.
Andrew, I love you, brother. This was an incredible conversation.
Andrew Huberman
Love you too. I appreciate you.
Love you too. I appreciate you.
Lex Fridman
We will talk often on each other’s podcast for many years to come.
We will talk often on each other’s podcast for many years to come.
Andrew Huberman
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
Many, many years to come.
Many, many years to come.
Andrew Huberman
Thank you. Thanks for having me on here. And there are no words for how much I appreciate your example and your friendship. So love you, brother.
Thank you. Thanks for having me on here. And there are no words for how much I appreciate your example and your friendship. So love you, brother.
Lex Fridman
Love you too.
Love you too.
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Andrew Huberman to support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from Albert Camus. “In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.” Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.