The following is a conversation with Michael Malis, his fifth time on this, the Lex Friedman
podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, here's
my New Year's Eve 2021 conversation with the one and only, Mr. Michael Malis.
Dostoevsky wrote in The Idiot, my favorite of his books,
through the main character, Prince Mishkin, that beauty will save the world.
These words seemingly naive and ultimately, at least to me, profound. What do they mean to you?
Beauty will save the world.
Naive? Really? I don't think they seem naive at all.
Well, Solzhenitsyn, actually, for his 1970 Nobel Prize speech, talked about this line a lot.
And he thought, for most of his life, that was a silly line. There was just words thrown out there,
because with all the suffering that's in the world, what has beauty actually ever done?
Oh, my God, I hate this so much.
You're talking trash about Solzhenitsyn?
Yeah, I am. And this perfectly sets up this theme. I said, let's do this episode,
start the new year on a positive note, give people hope, give people joy.
You and I both have friends who are models, right? And it's a silly profession to some extent, of
course. But you are actually a model. You are my friend.
Yeah, that's right. That's true. I am under a model. I was trying to be subtle.
But for those people who actually deserve to be models, when you look at someone who is a model
and in some of their photos, and these people look perfect. Now, in real life, they're not perfect.
They have flaws. They'll be the first to admit it, so on and so forth. But when you look at beauty,
it is almost impossible to maintain a sense of cynicism and hopelessness. Because if there's
even one moment when some element of perfection has been actualized, if there's one moment where
beauty has been realized and captured, you can't say, well, it's never going to happen again.
So I think beauty, it means hope. I think I hate that cynical idea of like,
I get, I appreciate Solzhenitsyn's broader point that a lot of times people, there's
something called the deepity, where people throw words together to sound profound. And
then if you take it apart, like this is just complete gibberish. I don't think this is an
I don't think this is an example of that. I think beauty inspires, and more importantly,
it proves to you this is something that can actually happen on this earth. Plato, right?
The Platonic theory of forms, like this world is imperfect, but these perfect forms exist in
another dimension, and that's where our concepts come from. He was an early person trying to figure
out where our concepts come from, and epistemology and so on and so forth. But that is something
that is real in here. So I completely disagree with his analysis of that, and I don't know if
it'll save the world, but it's certainly a prerequisite. And what's the point of fighting
for your values if you don't want to make the world a more beautiful place?
Well, it's also how you define beauty, because beauty could be just aesthetic beauty,
could be art. Of course, art could encompass a lot, a lot more than just literature and
paintings. It can encompass the full life, the full dance of life. But then beauty could be
something just deeper, like whatever that awe you feel, when you pause and hear the music,
just hear and look up at the stars. For some reason, when I see rockets go up,
for me, it's like science. What is that? The awe that we're able to accomplish
that as humans. That's funny, because there's lots of different schools of thought,
like these people versus these people, and maybe vegans versus steakhouse people.
I think in terms of the sciences, and I guess you and I would be on opposite sides here,
you have the astronomy people versus the zoology people. The big question is, would you rather
spend 10 minutes on the moon, or would you rather spend 10 minutes in the deep sea?
For me, it's clearly the deep sea. The zoology that's down there, there's something I would
encourage people to look up called deep staria, which is a jellyfish. The scientists, what's
amazing when you watch these deep sea dives on YouTube is that the scientists, their nature
dorks, like everybody else, they went into this field, and there's none of this maybe
Solzhenitsyn-style cynicism of when they see an amazing animal in its natural environment exhibiting
these crazy behaviors, they lose it. They're on the mic like, oh my god, it's so exciting to watch.
I'm not a rocket person, but I'm definitely a zoology person.
So animals and plants in the sea.
And also, it's so mathematical. There's so many forms. There's this plant called
areospermum titanopsoides. I don't know how to pronounce it, because they're always in Latin,
you never hear them pronounced. You said sperm. Areospermum, yeah, because it's a woolly seed,
is the genus. The leaf, it just always puts out one leaf, but the leaf is covered in little
magnifying glasses, lenses, to make it maximize the sunlight. So it looks like this little crystal
seashell, it's tiny, it's like two centimeters, but it's just this amazing thing that grows out of
the sands in South Africa. Just a defense old genus in four seconds. So if I may read a couple
of his lines from the speech. Sure. So he said, one day, this is how he introduces it, one day
Dostoevsky throughout the enigmatic remark, beauty will save the world. What sort of a statement
is that? For a long time, I considered it near words. How could that be possible when in blood
thirsty history did beauty ever save anyone from anything? And then later he goes on to argue with
himself in the speech as a older, wiser man now. But perhaps that ancient trinity of truth, goodness,
and beauty is not simply an empty faded formula, as we thought in the days of our self-confident
materialistic youth. If the tops of these three trees converge, as the scholars maintained,
but the two blatant, two direct stems of truth and goodness are crushed, cut down, not allowed through,
then perhaps the fantastic, unpredictable, unexpected stems of beauty will push through
and soar to that very same place. And so doing will fulfill the work of all three. In that case,
Dostoevsky's remark, beauty will save the world, was not a careless phrase, but a prophecy.
Which of these three things are your favorites? Truth, goodness, or beauty? What did he call
truth and goodness? The blatant, two direct stems of truth and goodness versus the fantastic,
unpredictable, unexpected stems of beauty, which is how I see your Twitter account.
I don't think there's certain birth of beauty to be had in my Twitter account, that's for sure.
It's certainly no goodness. Or truth. Yeah, yeah. It's Twitter. There's no truth to be found.
I will answer the question. I will, of course, point out that having this kind of
distinction between the three things is, I think, kind of synthetic. I think they very
heavily overlap. If not, if I can probably make the argument, they're synonymous.
In fact, I do believe that they're largely synonymous.
Goodness. That's such an interesting word, goodness.
Which of those three is my favorite? I think truth is overrated in the sense that if something is a
good story, the story doesn't have to be true or real in order to motivate you and move you.
A lot of times, we can delude ourselves about somebody and that might actually serve a purpose
to some extent. If you have someone who's maybe a family member and you kind of ignore bad things
that they do, there might be a reason for that. Of the three which is most important,
I think, I would say probably goodness. I would say of the three the most important is goodness,
because if you don't appreciate goodness, then beauty is just empty. It's just a picture or
it's nice. Bad people appreciate beauty. Bad people are often seductive or have a beauty
about them. In terms of action, I think it takes a lot of skill and work to create beauty or to
create truth or to express truth or to express beauty. I think goodness is the easiest default
state of being, just being good to others. Yeah, there'll be things where these videos where
one dog is drowning and another dog jumps in and saves it from the pool. That to me is
just really amazing stuff and is very moving. To me, goodness means integrity and it means kindness.
Yeah, I think of the three that would be the one I pick. I think people also have this idea,
which is inculcated to them, especially by corporate America, that as you get older,
it's okay to do the wrong things sometimes, blah, blah, blah. I don't buy that. I think goodness
gets rarer and rarer. I think people know better and they tell themselves lies.
But once you get, allow yourself the chance to just be good, I think it makes for a better
life. It's not that much work. It's not like going to the gym or working out. That's a lot of work
and it's great afterwards. But goodness is easy once you get into the habit of it. I
suppose working out the same way. There's a lot of stuff. If you make it a habit,
you're going to get the rewards of it and it's going to be easy. The rewards of goodness, I think,
are more immediate than the rewards of working out. As opposed to the hard drugs. Yeah. If you
mentioned this quote on one of your live streams, I think, if you save one life, you save the world.
Yeah. That's such a cool line. I remember reading about Paul Farmer. I think his name is, he's a
doctor that really, I mean, doctors in general, they don't care about what they're doing as a
broad policy across hundreds of thousands of millions of people. They just care about the
human in front of them, which is so interesting. They don't care it's going to cost, like in his
case, to save one child, it will cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars. They don't care about
that. They can't, they know very well that what their actions cannot be scaled, but they can't help
but help the child in front of them. And it's so interesting. There's such an interesting way to
live and that's the way I kind of think when I try to do something positive is will this help one
person? And I just kind of imagine a specific person, depending on the thing, that that would
help with like what I'm trying to create something, whether it's a piece of hardware or a video or
anything like that, or educational material, lecture, that kind of stuff. I don't know, what do
you think about this quote? Like what is it profound or just poetic? I think it's more profound than
it sounds at first. The example I think of is Michelle Bachman. She was a former congresswoman
from Minnesota. She clearly had crazy eyes, something weird's going on with the husband,
but she adopted like 20 kids. Terry Shappard's another friend of mine. He's like a either Navy
Seal or Marines, whatever it is. Terry, I apologize. I'm not trying to be funny. And he adopts like
elder dogs. So going back to Bachman, it's like, yeah, you can say she's crazy. You can make fun of
her politics, all you want, and all that stuff's legitimate. But if you save a kid, give them a
home, and you save them from the foster system, and you put a roof over their heads and make them
feel loved and appreciated, it's really hard for me to sit here and call you like a totally bad
person. I think that kind of thing is Nick Cersei's another one. He adopted a kid. And I said,
I think you're a hero. Like if you, there's some, you know, one of the things that's very hard for
me, I'm writing, as you know, I talk about this endlessly, this book, The White Pill. But writing
about when people do hurtful things to children, it really is hard to watch. And it's hard to,
because when you're an author, you have to kind of empathize with the character. You have to,
where's this character coming from? Explain their point of view. And that's the one that's the hardest
for me to wrap my head around. Like cruelty to children. Yeah. Or, and yeah, sadism to children.
It's just like, this is a, this is something even animals know not to do, do you know what I mean?
Like dogs are right when you see them around kids, they're very protective. Like if the kid pokes
their eyes out, the dog doesn't do anything. So it's like, if you can't even get to that level,
what kind of person are you? So I think that quote is a profound one. And it's an important one.
It also means we're not all called upon to be Superman, right? You only have very finite
ability to move the needle. But at the same time, if you have actually, you know, saved the life,
you can go to meet your maker, you did your part, you know, you left the world a little bit better
than you found it. And that's all you could ask anybody. Also, I think from a policy perspective,
it seems we just do better when we focus on doing a small thing, helping one person.
Because it feels like when you start talking about communism and all those kinds of things,
when you start to believe you could do good by a lot of people, that's where your mind somehow
stops being able to do good by a lot of people. That's when you start to
think about utopias and somehow utopias goes to feeds power into the brain to where it deludes
you completely. And then you start, it's okay to crack a few eggs to make an omelet kind of
reasoning and you run into trouble. It seems like it's much better even when you have the power
and the money and so on to achieve scale, to focus on one. Or locally, yeah. Locally, yeah.
Because then also you have the feedback, right? So if you have some kind of program,
you know, in Austin or Brooklyn or something like that, and you can, you can watch, oh,
this is working, this isn't working, then you can port it out to other places. But
top-down helping is, you know, at the very least, it's going to be inefficient. And also,
I think it's a lot more useful when you're helping people, when it's a one-on-one relationship,
because then it's less, I don't know, embarrassing, but certainly less something
to receive help. And you also feel it's one thing if you get a check from the government,
you know, food stamps, it's not thinking of someone's like, hey, I'm going to buy your
groceries until you get back on your feet. You have this kind of motivation, I think for most
people to be like, you know what, this person believed in me, I'm going to make it worth their
while that they believed in me. Because I didn't believe in me. Yeah, when I was giving lectures
at MIT, there was one, it was a scare shitless. And I mean, everybody, you know, how students are
and all that kind of stuff, they're kind of bored. Yeah. And they don't, they don't understand that
you're human, too. Yeah. Or this could be just me. I don't understand you're trying to pass this
human. I know. But there's one, one gentleman in the audience, and he went to all the lectures,
all the gentlemen, he was a faculty at MIT. And he just, without very kind of nonchalant,
just said, after the lectures, he kind of nodded me and say, you did great.
And before, like one time he said, in a non creepy way, I know this is going to come off as creepy,
he said, you look great today. Like he said that in a, I don't know, in the way, so he's like
60, 70, whatever, like he in this, I don't know, it's in a wise sage way, because I was wearing
a suit and tie. Like I look like, you know, when you dress up like a young kid, you dress
like a mother. So he was just like, all right, you're, you're all dressed up. You look great.
You got this. I don't know. That has a lasting impact, that kind of pat on the back. But I
agree with you. Cruelty towards other adults is somehow understandable. Because it's a
a world full of conflict, but cruelty towards children doesn't, it doesn't quite,
I can't, I can't understand it. I can't understand how you could act in a way that directly causes
suffering to a child in front of you. Yeah, that is like the, I don't think I've ever talked to you.
This might be a good time to ask you about this. What do you make, what lessons do you draw about
human civilization from Jeffrey Epstein, from just laying out, everybody thinks about different
things. When you talk to Eric Weinstein, he thinks about intelligence and like who, like
Jeffrey Epstein is the front for something else. That's what he thinks about. I think about the
weakness of grown men in the face of charismatic evil, which is like for me directly is MIT.
I didn't know, I actually was, I guess I was at MIT when Jeffrey Epstein was just at the very end.
He must have been there. I didn't know any of this, but it really bothers me that nobody was able to
see through this man, because he's obviously, what is also obvious to me is that he was very
charismatic. I mean, I try to think about human nature from this perspective is directly, like
we said, help one life. Would I know Jeffrey Epstein if he was in my life? Would I know evil
when I saw evil? Even if it's sitting across from you. Even, I mean, you, so exactly the evil laugh.
Thank you. The thing. It's a necronomicon. Well, the thing, I'm sure we'll talk about it. Maybe not,
it doesn't really matter. We see things unite Michael very differently about a lot of things,
politically and so on. The reason I like you a lot, the reason I like the people I do in my life
is there's a warmth, there's a kindness, there's a humanity underneath it all. I don't really care
what you believe. I don't care. I don't care what your Twitter says. It's easy to mistake your Twitter
to indicate that there's not a deeply human love for humanity in there. And that's why I'm detecting
that. I think I would be able to detect that, Jeffrey Epstein. He's saying detect, I'm just
imagining the T-1000. Yes. I imagine, I hope I would be able to not detect that Epstein
lacks that completely. Even if he's charismatic in the humor he has, even if he is charismatic in
the expression of curiosity for science, which he did, he was curious about not just boring minutia
of science. He was interested about the big questions in science, which I could see that
become exciting to scientists. Like, oh, wow, here's a person who's thinking big. That's always
exciting. When somebody goes into a room and thinks about how do we solve intelligence?
How do we travel faster than the speed of light? That's exciting to people, especially people
with money, because it's like, all right, so we might be able to actually do big things here.
But you could see through the bullshit, the deadness in the eyes, I don't know.
So I think about that because I feel like I have the responsibility for me as an individual
to detect evil. So I, do you know who Michael Allig is? Okay, this is going to be a whole long,
this is going to be on Lex Clips, but this is a whole long story. So there was a scene in New
York in the 90s called the club kids. And they would go out to different night clubs at night.
They would all dress in really kind of crazy costumes. And the costumes are all like, like
goofy and like just like an angel. This was dressed like a nurse. There's a juvenile
aspect to it. They're all taking, you know, ketamine and ecstasy to all hours. This is kind
of rape culture was coming up in there. And the head of it, and in fact, there's a clip on YouTube.
I think it was the Jane Whitney show of the club kids and GG Allen. GG Allen is a, you know,
kind of punk rock performer, hard rock performer who passed away and the audience and GG Allen was
very aggressive and like a crazy person. My friend once saw him in a concert and he took a dump on
stage smeared it all over his face, grabbed the girl from the audience, gave her a big kiss.
And as she walked by him, she just went like this, like, excuse me, like went to the bathroom.
So the audience is screaming at GG Allen because he's very visibly over the top. Whereas you've
got a bunch of these kids dressed in these silly costumes. You guys just having fun.
Well, the head of the club kids, Michael Allen, again, ended up killing someone.
There was a kid called Angel Menendez who hung around with them. He would always have angel
wings and boots. One time they're at Michael's condo with another drug dealer named Freeze.
They got into a fight. So Angel got hit in the head with a hammer. They kill him. What are we
going to do with the body? They put it on ice in the bathtub. They had a party. So everyone's
going to the bathroom while Angel's body is there. Michael got, they're like, all right,
we got to take care of this. Michael got extremely high in heroin, had like a cutlery from Macy's,
sawed the body in pieces, put it in a box. They took him in the cab. The cab driver helped them
throw the body into the river. And then Michael starts walking around Manhattan wearing Angel's
boots and would tell people, oh, I killed Angel. Now, because he was a super effeminate over the
top, like he would pee in people's beer kind of guy, everyone's like, oh God, Michael, like you
and your stupid pranks. But it was true. And he got caught. And he got sentenced to jail.
So I was in a store in Manhattan in Soho. And it was one of those stores where you have like all
sorts of things for sale. And I saw a painting and it said, Malice. And I'm like, wait, what?
And it was M. Alec. It was a Michael Alec painting. He had painted while in jail. So my mom bought it
for me for my birthday. I don't remember what birthday it was. And I started writing to him
in prison. He was going to write a memoir called Alegula, which is clever. And then I actually
went to visit him. I'm like, I want to see what this person's like. Because on the, on one hand,
he's king of New York nightlife, this goofy person. And it's also kind of ironic that Gigi Allen is
like, maybe he's gross. He's not killing anybody. He's probably going to counten off the stage.
And Michael Alec actually did kill someone and then bragged about it tongue in cheek. So, but
meeting him, he passed away last December on Christmas, actually, on Christmas 20, 20. He
was clearly a sociopath. And I'd never met a sociopath before. Now, a lot of times we'll read
these like, you'll take a Buzzfeed quiz, like, are you a sociopath? And it's like, oh, my feelings
weren't hurt when I was mean to someone. It's not a thin line between like me and you and him. It's
a thick, thick line. Because when you're talking to someone like that, at least in this specific
case, he was being very friendly. He wasn't, and it's not like he was going to kill anyone or
is a threat to me. But there's that sense like something's really off here. And he was talking
to me about how after he had killed Angel, he would just talk about it because he felt so much
guilt. He just wanted to get caught. It's like, no, no, no, he was describing wasn't guilt. He
was describing just he didn't like the knife over his head, like waiting to get caught. I'm like,
you don't even know what guilt is. So it was kind of like, oh, wow. So as for Jeffrey Epstein, but
the thing is Michael Aleg is it was in a very low social position. And the thing is when someone is
powerful, very high status, and they do something, we are as kind of hierarchical animals, we kind
of defer to their norms. So if you're at a party with, let's suppose, either of us, and it's like
a Jeffrey Epstein party, and everyone at the party is doing some sort of weird drug we've never heard
of, we wouldn't really feel comfortable judging them because like their norms kind of become the
norm for that space. The lesson for me about Jeffrey Epstein, there's a lot of them. Because I
think this, to me, the biggest moment was the Amy Rohrbach situation. Amy Rohrbach was caught on a
hot mic saying that they had all the goods on him, they had all the names, and that Buckingham Palace
called them, they killed the story because they weren't going to get a Meghan Markle interview
out of it. So that the willingness of those in power to do the wrong thing for the flimsiest
pretext, which I think was a big important lesson, also the fact that no one at ABC had any consequences
for this. In fact, the only person who got in trouble for all this was someone who used to
work at ABC, went to I believe CBS, and they got fired from CBS because apparently they had access
to footage at one point, even though they weren't the ones who had leaked it. So whistleblowers are
like the only, for example, the case in Eric Garner, the guy who was selling Lucy cigarettes in
New York City, who was arrested, he had a heart attack or whatever it was on the way to jail,
he died, the only person, so the cops had a situation there, the only person who had gotten
in trouble because of that was the guy filming it, like he went to jail. So I think there is,
there's a lesson in terms of, we look at Julian Assange, right? There's a huge amount of power
exercised by elites to make sure that what is done in the cover of darkness remains in the cover
of darkness. And also Kevin McCarthy, who was currently the house minority leader, leader of
the Republicans, he wrote a letter to ABC News, like, you had this guy, maybe you couldn't call
him the authorities, but you could have leaked it to somebody, why hasn't anything come forward?
Nothing happened as a result of this. We also have to keep in mind that the longest serving
Republican Speaker of the House in history, Dennis Hastert, went to jail because of things
related to pedophilia and things like that. So as Russians, and this is something I think you
and I've mentioned before, Americans are very naive, often decreasingly so, about the nature
of evil. They think an evil person is someone who's like getting kickbacks, or you know,
like the Cuomo's are colluding, something like that. I would hardly even call that evil. No, no,
this is the sort of things that are so depraved that you would never think about it in a million
years in your own home. You don't think in these terms. And I think they get off on doing things
that if the average person heard about it, the average person would be shocked, because that
gives them this sense of we're above them, we're different from them. The rules don't apply to us.
There's a lot to say here. So what is the norm thing you said at a party? It's really interesting
for an anarchist to say that. Well, no, it's... No, well, I know, I know. I'm not sorry. That
came off as criticism. I meant it as harsh criticism. No, I think about that a lot, like,
as... I found myself in situations where I'm invited to these kinds of parties where people
have nice things, and I find it deeply uncomfortable for that reason. I don't want to be sort of an
activist that goes in and ruins a party. I think that's not the courageous act. Neither is it courageous
when everyone's doing some weird drug that you mentioned to join in, I think. Courageous is more
being your... remaining yourself, sticking to your principles, calmly, in that room where
everybody is doing the drug. And just don't do the drug. Yeah, sure. Don't make a scene about it,
but also don't do it. And I think that little act of courage over time is the way you resist,
Jeffrey Epstein, that exactly the thing you said is probably the situation where charisma works.
So one charismatic person gets a little crowd going, and the crowd is everybody sort of
establishes a norm at the little crowd. And yes, there could be some dynamics that allow that
norm to be established. Like you said, like rich and powerful people might enjoy being rich and
powerful and better than everybody else kind of thing. But especially for scientists, I thought
they should have integrity and courage enough to see through that, not again as an activist,
like so you can tweet about it, how courageous you are. But just literally, see, there's something
off here. There's something off here, and I'm not going to participate in it. I'm going to defend
these scientists because something off, first of all, you're always defending academia is discussed.
It's my favorite thing. I think that first of all, this is going to sound like a joke, and it's not.
I bet you 90% of those MIT scientists are on the spectrum. So everyone they're going to meet is
going to be off, right? So I'm sure part of their brain is like, okay, this person's weird. This is
just them being on the spectrum. Like the lights, but spectrum, I couldn't even finish the joke.
Okay, guys. Number two is off. We tend to, there's this poem, I forget who wrote it. It was like
Nick Cave or something. And it was describing, like, I think it was Gerbils, hair, normal,
height, normal, weight, normal. What do you expect, horns, right? So when you meet someone,
you think something's off. There's going to be a bell curve or what that could be, right? It could
be that they're twitchy or maybe they're completely social. And then you have Jeffrey Epstein over
here. You're going to need a lot of evidence to be like, oh, I feel something off there for this
guy's the head of an international sex trafficking ring. So yeah, you might be like, okay, but the
same time if their extended relationship is this guy is interested in my work, he's going to fund
my work, and I don't have to give him anything in return. He's clearly intelligent. He's appreciating
it. And being a scientist is a thankless job. I know what it's like as an author when I was
writing Dear Reader, the North Korea book, my friends are sick of hearing all these North
Korea anecdotes because at a certain point it's like, okay, we get it, just save it for the book.
And you know, you got to be in that lab, you're looking at the springtails, whatever it is you're
looking at, no one knows what a springtail is. I just disagree with you. So that'd be interesting
to draw the distinction between science and writing because the scientific process itself
is fun as fuck. You're solving little puzzles. Sure. So like in itself, it's fun. So like it's
rewarding. Like the reason you go into science is you can continue really without a boss to
continue having fun and solving puzzles. That's literally, so like, unless you become cynical
and tired of the whole thing. So the people, the administration, or when you're running a large lab
and what you get sick of is the emails and the meetings and all that kind of stuff. The actual
act of being in the lab is still fun as fuck. If you allow it to be writing, I feel like
is there's more priority to publishing. Like, would you enjoy it, the tree falling in the forest?
Would you still enjoy any of the books you've written if they never got published?
Not to the same extent, even close. Right. Right. I think that's the thing about science.
It's almost like you get a peek into the mysterious. Yeah, but this is okay. This is where I'm coming
from. Since moving to Austin, I bought 150, over 150 plants. How are you doing the politician thing?
Look, let me be clear. All right. It's not. You are running in 2024. This is very interesting.
I bought 150 succulents from my house. They're thriving here in Austin as they wouldn't have
in Brooklyn. You have a great video about it, people. Yeah. One of those plants I have is
the photo I took on my Instagram. There's no other photos on the whole internet. None of my
friends care or they care like ostensibly, but like, oh, that's cool. Like I have a better plant
collection in my house than like almost any botanical succulent collection than any botanical
garden in America than probably the Huntington and no one cares. This is what ego looks like,
by the way. I can prove it to you. No, I know, but you don't have to rub it in.
Well, they have a big budget. I don't. So if I can put it together, they should be able to.
So I can only imagine that a scientist who studied the spiders that look like ants,
like this species does this with the gender dimorphism, their friends are only going to care
so much. So if you meet someone who has a lot of money, who now cares about ant spiders,
it's going to be exciting. It will be very exciting. But I just wanted to push back on the, I think
the act itself should be the biggest reward. I think you're always safe. We're talking about
goodness being a safe default. I think it's a good default for, for plants and for writing
and for science is to just enjoying the act, even if nobody cares. Okay, this is where this,
okay, now I'm even, now I'm wondering why I'm pushing back so hard. I realized what it was
because I've made this point several times and I'm glad I can make it again. There's this window
of time that happened in my life. And I know it happens to a lot of people when you're in your
like 24 to 27, 28, right? So 21 to 24, like you still have your friends from college,
so on and so forth, right? But then it's kind of like a poker game. And, you know, every so often,
people cash out. They're like, I'm out, I'm out. They get married, they get a job, they move.
And if you are someone who is a young, ambitious, creative, that window is a very rough one
because you're doing the right thing, right? And you're not being, you know, drug addict,
you're not being a philanderer, not that those things are wrong, but just like,
you're playing by the rules, you're creating your stuff, what you want to be known for,
contribution you want to make for the world. And no one cares. And it gets very lonely.
And there is this very emotional disconnect about how is it that I'm creating and I'm working hard
and I'm making something happen. And it's just radio silence. So that I don't think it's that easy
when you're, you're the scientist, not me, when you don't have any kind of external validation.
Humans only have so much fuel. Nothing worth having is easy, Michael. By the way,
yesterday, talked on the phone with a person, he said he was deeply moved the first time you
mentioned this age group of 24 to 27. He's like, he, he's 26, he said. And he feels the full
responsibility of that and the excitement. So he left his like corporate type of job
to pursue something that he's really passionate about. And that, that was like,
you were an inspiration to him, which I was deeply saddened by that.
I also inspired Michael Alex.
The amount of mass murder, those that were inspired by you will eventually lead to is,
is truly horrifying. What were we talking about? So Jeff, one thing I wanted to ask you,
so let's put scientists aside, what about like world leaders, Bill Clinton,
your favorite person? Why would he fly with Jeffrey Epstein? Why would he interact with that guy?
I mean, don't you think that that's kind of the deal that I'm the president and I get big and
powerful people fly around their jets and that's the symbiotic relationship?
Yeah, but don't you also have a good BS detector? Like the,
the, don't you have a good detector for people who just want to be in your presence?
Like I already understand that there's people like this out there. Like there's people that
kind of want to use me for stuff. And you mean Tim Dillon? Tim Dillon.
I love that guy. You guys met? We haven't met yet here. You haven't met?
Yeah. We met before in New York, but we had not since I moved here.
Yeah. So you should be able to detect that there's those people and there's the people
that have kindness in their heart, even if they can benefit from the interaction with you,
but they have like, they're good human beings. I feel like you want to,
you run into a lot of trouble if you surround yourself or have any people that are manipulative.
But I think you make a bad example because like, let's look at Clinton and let's look at Obama,
right? So Obama, even though their politics are very close, I'd say in many ways, Obama is
a parent. We don't know, I don't know either of them. But to me, it seems very apparent that he's
very similar behind closed doors as he's in front of the camera. Yeah, he's Barak to me.
Clinton seems very clearly to be much more of a performer. He's in front of the cameras,
he puts on a role, but behind the cameras, he very much has a temper. He's known for that.
He's much more of a lech. What's that? A lech with an E? L-E-T-C-H, yeah. Oh, cool. Lech.
Is that like, that's a cool term. So I can use that on the internet. Like, you're a lech.
Yeah, you can use that on the internet. You're a dirty lech. Well, it's a dirty supplied.
Oh, so it's okay. Yeah, so. Being redundant. Yeah.
But it just feels like he needs an adjective to give it more power. I'm sorry. So Clinton is a
lech. Right. So you can see how there's people who want to meet the surface, Bill Clinton,
and I'm sure that gets old for him because he has to be on. But then there's the good old boys
where he could be a pervert and this guy's like, yeah, I know what it's like. And then he feels
like he's himself. But we're all speculating. I mean, I don't know what Bill Clinton is like,
what was in it for him. He certainly could afford private jets if he wanted to. There's no
shortage of people who want to fly around the world to give speeches. Can he satisfy the lech
within without hanging out with the Jeffrey Epstein's of the world? This is the Monica
Lewinsky question to me. I'm confused by all of this. Can he get women in a legitimate way
of not using his power, not hanging out with these shady, rich people, but just like
having a normal mistress like JFK? Well, JFK had a lot. I know, I understand that. But in a normal
way, or I don't know enough. I don't understand the Clinton psychology. First of all, the fact
that you're hooking up with someone who's close to your daughter's age to me, I think is inherently
disturbing. But she's an adult. So okay, that's not that, that, you know, beyond the pale. But
also the idea that, oh, if I don't physically fornicate with you, it's not cheating. Like that,
whatever you tell yourself, or like if I don't ejaculate, it's not cheating. Like these rules
that maybe it leads to some kind of slippery slope. Like you start not having the rules of
who you fool. I mean, if you told your wife, like, listen, it wasn't cheating. She only,
you know, performed on me. You're going to say this with a straight face. Like,
at a certain point when something is so brazen, you wonder if the person even has to believe it,
because who are you fooling? But like, we started this, this conversation with them,
even there is a line between young women older than 18 and young teen, like 12, 13 kids.
Have you ever, when's the last, oh, because you're, it's different for you because you're at MIT.
I was hanging out with Blair White, and she had a couple of fans with her of hers, and they were
like 22, 23, and they were like children to me. Like, I'm like, to me, as someone who is in his
late 60s, to look at these people as adults, like they look completely like kids. So that,
of course, there's exceptions. Like I've interacted with a young 20 year olds
that are like, you're way more mature than I'll ever be. Like the wisdom that comes out of them
is quite fascinating.
Visually, the energy and the way they look, they look so young to me, and the way they
carried themselves. It was the idea that my instinct was, let's tuck you in,
read you a bedtime story, not let me like touch you or something. It was just like,
it was just wouldn't enter my head. So there's, but the thing is, is it possible that in order
to want to be the president, you have to be a crazy person?
That you have some kind of weird view on power. It could be a power thing too.
Yeah.
Like you can get away with stuff.
Like if I was Clinton's age, nothing about Monica Lewinsky to me would be
attractive. And also, I would just feel bad for her because I know she's going to catch feelings.
And it's kind of like-
Catch feelings. Yeah, it's true.
It's just like, why would I do this to this kid? For what? Just because I want to get some
like momentary pleasure. Come on.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I'm sure she looked gorgeous to him in the moment.
Well, let me ask, we started talking about beauty. Who are you wearing?
So as a model, you usually don't have a shirt on when you're modeling.
So it's nice to see you dressed up today.
Nice and warm.
This is because so for those who don't know, for Russians, don't celebrate Christmas.
Obviously with the Soviet Union, Christmas was illegal.
No Thanksgiving, basically no major holidays where everyone gets together. This is the
one holiday. New Year's, it's the one holiday.
And instead of, I remember as a kid, instead of Santa Claus, we have Diedmeros, who's the
same thing basically. It's like Android and iPhone. It's like a cheap version of Christmas.
He's got this girl with him. She's like Snow White or whatever.
And Russian kids, they go to sleep on December 31st and they wake up January and they have a
present under their pillow. And I remember as a kid, this happened once and it just blew my mind.
You know what I mean? It's just like, I went to bed, my dad's like, oh, you know,
you're going to have Diedmeros is going to bring your present if you've been a good kid.
I'm like, I think I was a good kid. Like, but you don't even remember a year of your life
when you're four. You remember those moments.
Yeah. And then I woke up and there was a present in my pillow and I was, it just blew my mind.
And that building is still there at 1461 Sherpa Parkway in Brooklyn. So, and it's just also funny
like what I really like about kids, you know, being an uncle now is kid logic because they have
very little data, but they're using logic to make sense of it. And sometimes it gives them the
completely wrong conclusions for the completely right reasons. I remember, you know, my bedroom
as a kid was right off the kitchen and I'd be scared the dark a little bit. So they'd leave
the light on the kitchen while I went to sleep. And at the same time, my parents had told me,
you don't leave the lights on the house. It costs money waste electricity, right?
So I would be worried because I'm like, oh my God, my parents leave the lights on the kitchen all
night and now it's costing them so much money. Not realizing that, you know, five minutes after
I'm out, obviously they're turning the lights off. But like in my kid logic, this was a concern of mine.
Yeah. And memories work that same way. I have a collection of memories that are stitched together
logically somehow, but they also don't really make sense. There's a few defining things. So I
grew up in Russia and experienced a lot of new years in Russia. There's a lot of incredible
things about that tradition that just warms my heart. So one, as a kid, you mentioned these
kind of stories. That's the one night of the year that kids are allowed to be adults in the
following way, like in kid logic. You're allowed to stay up all night. Oh yeah, okay.
Those as late as you want, which actually ends up being, you're not used to it. 11.
Right, you're out. You crash. But no, you get to, you know, two, three, four at night, you stay up
and when you get to witness, it's almost like Alice in Wonderland goes into this world.
Yeah. You get to witness what is the adult world really like? Now, obviously, it's not an actual
adult world. A lot of tricky and fighting. A merriment, like laughing, fighting, arguing,
but also like in our case, like singing and like, yeah, arguing like philosophical stuff,
but also like, if I may, how would I describe it? This is also probably a little bit Russian
culture, but like flirtation in all of its forms, meaning like men and women just being like,
because they dress up. Yeah, yeah. It's like, it's, it's joy. It's like, you get to show off like
dresses, whatever you got, you show it off. This is fun. And then men too, just like friends,
laughing, like arguing, just showing off the best they got with delicious food. Obviously,
that there's a Thanksgiving element there, where there's just so many, just you bring out all the
traditional stuff, the, the, yes, salad, just everything, just the full thing with the desserts
and obviously the vodka, a lot of vodka. And at the time, so this is the Soviet Union,
like the biggest stuff. And this is so sad that these are the things that I remember is like
Coca-Cola, like American, like that, I'll probably kill somebody for Dr. Pepper. It's so fascinating
that you take it for granted, sort of the results of capitalist society, the material things that
are created, but that was the ultimate happiness is to experience this new thing, sugar, I don't
know, under scarcity. There's like communist Coca-Cola in Czech Republic. So basically,
they try to rip off Coke and it's just like, they just threw whatever they could together.
And it was a very poor knockoff, as you can imagine. I forget what it's called and all the
Czech people right now are getting very angry at me because I can't think of it. But they have it
now and the slogan is good or weird. So it's like this. So they kind of reclaimed this kind of hipster
stuff. Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. It's almost like a parody. Right. Yeah. But I think the
thing I really remember is the camaraderie, like the love for each other and neighbors too.
Like you and I are neighbors now. We don't see each other that often. I hope that changes,
but a lot of it is also me. I'm just a deep introvert. You're also the hardest working person I know.
Yeah. So it's time, but you know, like it's not like I'll go in middle of the night at like 4am
and go to 7-Eleven just sit there sipping a slurpee for an hour thinking about life.
So it's not like I'm always working. Yeah, I don't know. What I mean is like you get to meet your
neighbors and you get to experience their highs and their lows and you get to bitch about life,
about government, about corruption, about the unfairness of life together. Well, it's also,
I think, what people don't appreciate as Americans is it's very rare in Russia to have a safe space.
Yeah. So you know that January 1st, no one's going to snitch on you. You know, they're not
going to be informants probably. So you can vent and that's the thing with people in totalitarian
countries. You have to have the public facing persona and then behind closed doors is very
different. It all comes out. And I also remember the arguments and I've been going on clubhouse
recently into Russian rooms. Just to practice Russian. And they, it's so beautiful to watch.
I mean, clubhouse is a very specific collection of Russian people. Maybe it's a little bit
political, but and they're a little bit older. And it's interesting to watch how much they love
to argue. Russian love to argue. And so it will be literally, you can think of it as a
nonlinear dynamical system from an engineering perspective. Whenever any positive topic comes
up, you could feel the skepticism and then wait a minute, this is not good. And they'll start
perturbing it until you're like, they'll find some way to say, come on now. That is the dumbest
thing I've ever heard. And then it goes back into argument. It's so fun to watch because
in one sense, you could see it as negative. In another, you could see it as free to express
yourself because it feels like you can solve a lot of problems by allowing yourself to just
be emotional, both emotional and say hard truth and all those kinds of things without like,
without prodding yourself in the back about it. But also, it just sort of those Russian rooms
make me realize how constrained American speeches, how careful people are in the way
they express it, even the Michael Mouses in the world. You're constantly being like nuanced.
There, they just say crazy shit. Oh yeah. And then they correct themselves and make fun of
themselves. And they completely shift opinions a minute later. And it's chaos. Yeah. And it's,
I mean, it's beautiful. So I love that that culture is present. It's funny given the current regime
in Russia, like how that's coupled with how people are talking. And yeah, I don't know. And I have
those memories of childhood of friends that I had of just having that true freedom of talking and
somehow that leads to deep bonds together. When the life, when you're poor, when life is, has a
lot of elements that are unfair, when the government is corrupt, there's sort of, it's just, especially
in the Soviet Union, there's uncertainty about the future, all of it, you just get closer together,
like penguins huddling together in the cold, like that March of the Penguins movie, that I don't
know. The friends I've gotten there, like, I get emotional every time I kind of think about
those friends because it was so close. That friendship was so fucking close. But I just
really hate the Russian cynicism. I know you do. And I actually disagree with you about it.
You see it as cynicism. I see it as waves on top of the water, like surface cynicism,
and the depths, as I see the beauty of the Russian soul. So we, like, yes, that cynicism can negatively
affect a lot of people. I think you've talked about, like, as a parent, being cynical about the
world, and then you have dire negative consequences on your children, they become cynical, they don't
ever take big risks or take on bold things. And I have those arguments because the cynicism is
exhausting, it's destructive, it's anti-creative. But so in their perspective, this is what the
Russian folks would say, well, yes, that's our role, like being cynical is being reasonable
about the world. It's not, it's completely unreasonable. It's a complete lie. No, I know.
But their argument is, yes, but we're giving you this force, and it's your job to resist against
it. So it's a test. I love the idea that if you're going to be creative and innovative,
you don't have enough up against you. Yeah, exactly. This is exactly.
Like, oh, I don't, I don't, it's not hard enough already that I want to be an author,
and now you got to be like, well, what, let me just put some fire ants on top of it.
So I just want to separate, I agree with you that the cynicism is bad and destructive,
but the idea that life is suffering and thinking from that as a first principle,
I think there's a lot of beauty to be discovered through that. So there's a cynicism,
and then there's horrible message. Life is suffering? No, not, well, yeah. I mean, Camus,
Camus doesn't think that. Now we're going into definitions of suffering then,
because absurd. Life is absurd and life is suffering are not even close to the same concept.
Well, then you're just defining the terms differently. Well, that's because they're
different terms. Well, it's always love and beauty, but so let's define terms.
Wait, you're selling if your baby's in the crib, like with a fever, you're like, oh,
that's absurd. No, it's the kid's suffering. It's not the same.
So yes, starvation. See, you've been for white pill researching a lot of actual,
specifically defined suffering. Sure. But also a lot of wonderful things.
Right. Yeah, yeah. But the word suffering can encompass more than just specifically starving,
and it can encompass, like a lot of the philosophers talk about it, it encompassed
like philosophical suffering, the fact that if you're not careful, life can appear meaningless.
You can fall into a nihilistic view. It's difficult to have the responsibility of freedom
to act in this world, because you can fuck up in so many different ways. And then life is seemingly
unfair in the sense that good things happen for no apparent reason, and terrible things
happen for no apparent reason. Like, you know, it's the old religious question of why does evil
happen in the world? Why do terrible things happen in the world?
There's this book called Six Word Memoirs, right, where all these different personalities
are awesome. Were you in it? No, I'm in it with, so you had to basically write your
autobiography in six words, and mine was good things happen to bad people.
You see, there you go. There's humor. Yes. That's your way of dealing with the suffering.
But I don't think life is inherent. If life was suffering, we wouldn't be able to have happiness.
No, out of suffering, happiness is born. So like, it's the ups and downs of life. And what it means,
like, I don't, this, I don't agree at all that you need to suffer in order to be happy. I agree,
you have to work hard, but that's not the same thing. Yeah. All right. So the way I'm using
suffering, and I think a lot of them use suffering is the way you use, like, gravity. So in order
for the roller coaster to work, you need gravity. There needs to be a force that brings you down.
Sure. In that same way, there's, like, you have to resist the natural
pull of nature that wants to destroy you. No, nature wants you to, nature's indifferent,
but we have the capacity because we're blessed with minds and we're blessed with friends.
Yeah, to transcend nature. Yes. Yeah. No, I know, but I think it's a word
that captures something about life that there's no reason to it that is absurd. I think, to me,
oftentimes, the way I think about the word suffering is synonymous with absurdity.
This is not suffering, but this is absurd. I just noticed there's a box with a big bow on it next to
you. What's in the box, Michael? It's your present. So it's your present for New Year's.
Can we open it? Yeah, sure. What's in the box? It's gonna take...
And you brought up suffering. This is gonna be very unpleasant. Here you go.
I packed it myself. Yeah, there's a whole process in there. So there's three presents in there.
Lex, I'll read the card first. Okay.
Okay. Something about opening presents, like tearing stuff, makes me feel like...
Because I can just tore this sheet of paper, so it'll never be the same again.
It's entropy. It's entropy times... You've got a powerful voice.
You've got a powerful voice.
To Lex, thank you. Maybe I should read the other card first.
You've got a powerful voice. Listening to what you have to say always puts me in a hopeful
place. I feel like this is building up to something. You show me how change can happen
when you face the world with pride, confidence, and a voice that can't be silence.
Keep speaking up. The world is listening. Yeah.
Yeah. There's no cynicism in this card. No, this is about... This is New Year's.
This is all about hope and joy. Love. To Lex, I'm seeing the binary.
To Lex, thank you for setting the path for me to move to Austin.
0-1, 0-0-1, 0-0-1, 0-1-1, 0-0-1, 0-0-1, 0-1-1, 0-1-1, 0-1-1, Michael Malz. Yeah.
Putting tears to my eyes. Thank you, brother. My pleasure.
Let's get to the present. Okay. It's a PC box. This is very promising.
It better not be sex toys. There's nothing inappropriate at all. Why would it?
Why would sex toys be inappropriate? Because you're a version.
Yeah, bring a knife to a party.
How clever is it to put it in a PC box? Well, I had it. I just got a new PC.
Okay. There's also a can. Yeah. Open the can first. Open the can.
Do you wrap this yourself?
That scares shit out of me.
Go get back in the can. That actually stayed in there. That's magic.
Just got to cut the string.
No.
You're the most beautiful troll of all. I love you so much.
This is awesome.
Did it not work? Pick it up. Oh, it didn't work.
There's a terrifying springy feeling to this thing. I don't want to open this.
I need to move some side. I hate you so much. What?
Oh, is it the other way? No, just pick it up.
I can't believe I fell for that. I hate you so much.
Wrenches are my favorite. I can't believe I fell for that. Okay.
And there's box number three. It's like a matryoshka. I can't believe that worked.
Yeah.
I wanted the box to open all these gears to fall out, but you can't get them.
Yeah. Does that really grind your gears?
Why am I scared? Okay.
There's another box.
This leads to my death. No, no. There's a story behind it.
I can't believe that worked. Oh, God, that's so good. All right.
All right. No springs, no weapons, no wrenches.
Okay. So let me tell you the story behind that toy.
Tonka robots that turn into vehicles.
So when I was a kid, you had transformers, but for us poor people, you had go-bots, right?
So the go-bots, they were four main characters for the good guys. It was leader one,
small foot turbo and scooter. And what was annoying is when you had the action figures,
you couldn't find the ones that were on the TV show. And I was a big go-bots fan as a kid.
And I went once to the Toys R Us in Caesars Bay in Brooklyn with my grandfather. My grandfather was
always very lucky. Like just good things happen to him every so often. And I went there. I remember
very vividly. They must have just unpacked, just loaded the shelves. And how they had the shelving,
it would be like a grid. You know, you'd have like, it was like one, two, three, four, five,
five rows and like five by five. And I remember it was like two up. And then you have to do,
you have to sit by the side and kind of sort through them. And with the go-bots, each package
had a picture of the different figures. So the packaging wasn't uniform. And they just had scooter
there. She was just sitting there. And I was like, holy crap. So that feeling when you're a kid,
and you find that just sitting on the shelf is right there. It's just, it was such this.
Wait, is this that scooter? No, I have it though. But that one is for you. I thought,
if you want to put it next to your other robots, open it up. I can open it up. Yeah,
yeah, it's for you. And that way, it's that symbol of joy when you have, when you're a kid,
when you find something you really want. I think it just is really like, when people look at it,
they'll be like, don't be hopeless. I'll open this carefully later. No, do it.
No, just do it. Yeah, I should. There's no way to open it carefully.
Kids don't open stuff carefully. You rip that crap open. But then you break it and you cry.
That's what happens when you're a kid. I never did that. Okay. Me neither. I never cried,
but never got presents either. That is so cool. All right, scooter.
You symbolize childlike discovery. Right?
The poor man's robot. The poor man's transformers.
I think there's instructions on the back how to transform her.
To her? I only found out as an adult that it was supposed to be a girl. Yeah.
Wow, this changes everything.
No, give me here. Let me show you. It looks better when she's transformed.
What? No, there's levels to that statement. Oh, how does it do like this? Let me see
if I remember how to do it. Because I had this as a kid. Arms out.
Oh, what? The thing is, these are easy to break, I remember. Is it like this?
No. Oh, the front comes out. Oh, let me see this. Oh, this comes up. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yep. So that's that. The arms go. I'm having visions of like baby Michael.
I can't do it. Okay, I can't do it. I can't figure it out.
Wow, you're right. She looks so much better transformed. Oh, all right.
I'm going to follow the instructions in a bit and I'll leave this failed project of yours.
Oh, there's a wheel out. Look, I don't like this in between form.
Well, this is how it's going to be. Okay.
Okay. Because we're going to be accepting of the transformation that takes time. Okay. I got,
I saw this little thing when I was walking on Congress and it says resist. It's a bracelet.
I mean, think of you. The reason I got it is because there's two bracelets. So one said lucky
fuck and the other one said resist. Now I first saw resist and I'm like, and then I saw the lucky
fuck and I realized I'm a lucky fuck to find a relevant. It makes me think of you. This is very
nice. Resist the powerful. That's true. I saw this somewhere. The, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah. This has to do with, in terms of resist, you often bring up the book Machiavellians by
James Burnham. And so I was looking through, I was reading different parts of it. It's a tricky
read. It's a little bit, but there, there is a ebook Kindle version now that I've been working
through this. I think there's an actual audio book too. Anyway. Yeah. I just bought some,
the Machiavellians is, is James Burnham's analysis of four
thinkers that he regards as the Machiavellians. It was Guy Tana Moscow, Vilfredo Pareto, George
Sorrell, and I'm blanking on the Moscow Pareto Sorrell and George Michel. And I just got Pareto's
autograph in the mail this week. So he, he, he talks about freedom and liberty. This is the
interesting line that I'd like to get your opinion on in terms of resist and in terms of liberty.
There's no one force, it goes, quote, there's no one force, no group and no class that is the
preserver of liberty. Liberty is preserved by those who are against the existing chief power.
Oppositions which do not express genuine social forces are as trivial in relation to entrenched
power as the old court gestures. So, I mean, the question here is can liberty is,
are you comfortable with that definition or that view of liberty of freedom that it, at its highest
ideal is expressed through the resistance to the powerful as opposed to existing in its own?
I think his point broadly speaking, which I agree with, is the only thing that can work to mitigate
power is other power, that it's talk is cheap and persuasion has very limited efficacy. It's like,
if there's a burglar, right, and one person will give you a speech about property rights and you
shouldn't be in this person's house, and the other person has a gun, you know, it's clear, which is
going to be more persuasive. Yeah, but can't you just be free without the struggle, without
this conflict? I mean, what I'm uncomfortable with this view is how closely it links freedom
and conflict. Like, why does this world have to have conflict for you to be free? I mean,
it's, in part of it is just emphasis. Well, you weren't just saying suffering is what leads to joy?
See, and now you're in agreement. Thank you. I just did that just so you can come around and agree.
I win. Next topic. Wow, I'm playing 3D chess here. Okay. This is New Year's. This is now
December 31st. I think that's how it works, but in 1973, we recorded this before you were born. Oh,
no, years after you were born. You look great for 60s, early 60s or? Sure. Okay. What five things,
let's say, are moments in 2021, are you grateful for? Or people? Just, I don't know, things,
moments, beautiful experiences, profound essences of the year. Like, looking back,
what are the cool things? Personally or socially? Do you exist like in a platonic way, socially? I
mean, oh, in your personal life? Yeah. Anything. You're both, you're now Michael Malis. You exist
as a social entity and a personal human being and all of it, the whole thing. Like, what stands out to
you about 2021? The fact that for the first time in my life other than college, I moved to New City.
That was a very big one. And there's no part of me that regrets it or misses New York. So that was
a very big deal for me. What do you, about this move, about Austin itself, but maybe the move
itself, maybe just the act of moving, what's great about it to you? The fact that I had
forgotten what it's like to have a huge social network, which I had in New York before people
started falling away and then it really escalated as a result of de Blasio and the COVID restrictions.
So to have a big crew here is something that was very validating. The thing that's also
exciting about Austin is that Austin is not a particularly big town. It's not a particularly
great town. But everyone here, at least in the circles I travel in, is kind of a refugee
from their towns. So there is this sense of camaraderie. There is this sense of we're building
something together. Back in New York, when you meet someone, it would be like, who is this person?
Why am I talking to them? Are they a normie? Are they going to be weird? And here there's
very little of that. I think there's much more sense of trust with one another when you meet new
people. So that's something that's really exciting about. I've been introducing all my friends to
each other and everyone's been hitting it off like gangbusters. It's really great. So I really
enjoy that about Austin. I'm enjoying the weather, the space. You're at Kerouac and you have
his stuff. I have. On the road, I read. I read a biography of him. I don't know if it was on.
I think it was on the road. He talked about that feeling when you go into some place,
you're leaving a place and you go somewhere else. And the place you're leaving disappears
behind you and all the people and all. You just think about that life and it's forever gone.
And there's some inkling of that where you get to realize your almost mortality because, okay,
that's a chapter and there's not many more. And it was a beautiful chapter,
but now onto the next chapter. Is there a melancholy feeling there?
No, it's the opposite. I feel like I've been given a new lease on life because I didn't
realize to what extent there was this subtext of hopelessness in New York. And also people who,
in New York, you don't appreciate or you appreciate it consciously, but you can't escape it emotionally.
How much the winters get to you psychologically. It's tough. It gets dark so early, it gets cold,
you can't walk around. That's the thing that's fun about or what's fun about New York is that
when the weather's warm, you can walk for an hour and just enjoy the sunshine and there's
a lot to see and do. But in the winter, you don't have any of that. It's brutal. And here it's just
... So that is something. There's no melancholy at all.
Well, that's because there's... Can we say something beautiful about New York? Not the way
it is now, but the way it... I could go on for days about how great New York was.
What did you learn about human civilization and just life that was beautiful from New York?
I learned that there's a lot of really unique special people out there who are doing their
little part to move the envelope and make the world a better place. And that when you have a
city where they're all there together at the same time, that really moves the world. And I'm
thinking of Paris in the 20s and Harlem in the 20s and New York in the 70s and LA in the late
60s and San Francisco especially in late 60s, things like this. They really punch above Detroit
certainly at its heyday. They punch above their weight and just really kind of Philadelphia in
1700s. Things really start happening and that ripples throughout the world.
You think Austin has a chance to be a Paris in some way?
Yes, because again, it wasn't all of Paris. It was the left bank of Paris and Gertrude Stein
and Hemingway and all of them in a little area. So when you read these history books, these scenes,
it's like 50 people in a 10 block radius. These aren't these huge Davos conventions.
Okay, so the move, the big move, what else? What else stands out to you? Again, both personally and
socially, like zooming in and zooming out. I did a book with the UFC fighter and I was making the
point that he was a nine-time world champion that I would never be as good at my job as he was at
his. And then when I dropped Anarchist Handbook in May and it was the top non-fiction book on
Amazon for like most of a day, I'm like, oh, I'm the top non-fiction writer in America just for
today. I was like, oh crap, okay. So I guess I was wrong. That was a major deal. I was still
shocked and delighted. By the way, congratulations. I'm truly happy for you, man. I'm so proud.
But it's also, I'm proud because these are people who had points of view and they didn't have it easy
and they fought for what they believed in. And insofar as I get to rescue them to some extent
from the dustbin of history and say, these people really mattered and they really are worth hearing,
that I love. I love stuff like that. You know, I was talking to a friend of mine, Topher,
like a year ago, because we're in a weird position with what kind of jobs we have. So like I'd be
talking on my live streams about people like Candy Darling or Wallace Thurman. And like these are not
household names at all. And then I'd be like proud of myself that I'm the one who brings them to some
sort of more prominence. And then you want to tell yourself, well, get over yourself who you think
you are. But it's like, but no one else is talking about these people or very few. So to be able to
kind of give them some kind of stature and platform that they deserve, I think is, I love being able
to do that. So you have a strong voice yourself. And to sort of join them in, it's like John Lennon
joining in with the Beatles is like a chorus of very different views on anarchism. It's celebrating
the individuals, it's celebrating the idea. And you are, I think we'll be remembered as a powerful
philosophy yourself, but like you're almost taking just the humility of being in a room with powerful
minds together in one book. It's cool. Yeah. And that these people mattered and they had a unique
perspective. And as I said in the introduction to the book, I remember I was in college and we were
studying bioethics and there was like a graph in the book. And one part says, antinomianism,
which was the view that at one side said legalism, right? These two extremes, legalism is what is
legal is defined by the government or what is moral is defined by the government. And one said
antinomianism, which is nothing stands above moral law. And then there was like, well, since no one
believes in this, the answer's something to the other side. It's like, well, why is it on the
charge no one believes, if it has a name, someone believes in it. So, you know, anarchism is a
word that's bandied about and in a dismissive way. And it's like, you don't have to like me or agree
with what I'm saying, but you can't pretend that they weren't Tolstoy. You're going to tell me
Tolstoy. There's nobody's talking about completely. He's in there. He was an anarchist. So it was a
big accomplishment. It was really cool to get a chance to do the audiobook. You did an incredible
thing, which has got a bunch of really cool people to read a lot of interesting, varied people.
Yeah. So what I did for the audiobook, which I don't like the idea that hard work is inherently
good, because sometimes being lazy is actually the right choice. So I'm like, wait a minute,
why am I reading all 23 chapters when it's 23 different authors? Does it make sense? So I
hit my Rolodex and I had different people read different chapters to make it sound literally
like you have the different voices in the book. Thank you very much. You did my, because I was
going to read my chapter, but wait a minute, like all the other authors being by somebody else.
Let's have Lex read mine. The one chapter I am most moved by is Lauren Chen. She's a
podcast as well. She's expecting now. So we wish nothing but the best for Lauren and Liam
and the babby. There's a chapter there by this guy named Charles Robert Plunkett called Dynamite,
and he's advocating for making bombs and killing people, killing the forces of capitalism.
And Emma Goldman was publishing her essay while she was in lecture tour, and she was just like,
why is this in here? This is just really going to make us look bad, so on and so forth.
And when you're dealing with any kind of, you know, HL Makin has that quote about,
every rational man must at times be tempted to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag,
and begin slitting throats. So I wanted to talk, sound like the seductive aspect of violence.
Like that's the problem. Like when you're dealing with terrorism, when you're dealing with
political violence, to be able to understand how people can fall for this, how people can
be persuaded to think, this is a good idea that I'm going to make some dynamite and throw it into
this crowd and kill, you know, police officers and innocent people, possibly in the service of
like, you have to, it's easy to say all they're all crazy, but they're not, you know, even not,
most people who are crazy don't do these things, you know. So to have a woman read that chapter,
and I told her kind of read it like a phone sex operator, because I wanted to have that
siren song of like, so you can understand why this calls out to people who are in the rope,
the people who are like marginalized. And she did such a superb job with that chapter.
That's such a beautiful vision. Yeah, because violence, that's violence,
part of human history, to a degree that it must be seductive. It must be,
there must be a strong pull. Like it's not insane people. There's something probably
deep within our nature that craves violence. And then when there is charismatic leaders that inspire
that and revolution plus violence, I could see that being extremely seductive to us.
Like when you're truly suffering in your current situation, whatever it is,
you're being oppressed by governments or being oppressed by the powerful, violent revolution is
probably there's something deep within us that longs for that.
And also this kind of the Jolaine Maxwell to Jeffrey Epstein, right? You need that woman
to be like, no, no, this is okay, honey, come along. It's not a big deal. Don't listen to what your
parents told you. They're just prudes. It's a siren song. What do you think about Jolaine Maxwell,
the trial and so on? Again, maybe the interesting story there is about the coverage of the trial.
So like the story is more complex and interesting than the actual horrific acts themselves.
So to me, I don't, maybe I'm not knowledgeable enough, but to me, she's also truly evil. I don't
know where to, maybe you can help me to figure out who is more evil. The, just like you said now,
the person says it's okay. It's okay. That helps the evil doer or is it the evil doer themselves?
I don't know. But I think she's a, she scares me more than Jeffrey Epstein somehow.
There's people like that in the world too. I had a, like a Twitter poll. Do you think it's more
evil or less evil to kill someone because you've been paid to do it? And people, the winning answer
was more evil. And I said it was less because I think in that case, you can kind of check out,
you could be like, this isn't my, I'm just doing a job. I don't, you know, you kind of can, I think
in a sense, if you have a certain mindset, like intellect to remove yourself from the situation,
I'm just a conduit. When you were talking, I haven't been following her case that, that much.
Just because you mostly watch CNN and CNN is not covering it.
Well, I think my broader point would be people who are untouchable and who know they're untouchable
do much worse things than those of us who aren't that way can appreciate. Like I was just talking
about on Twitter about Rosemary Kennedy. She was one of JFK's sisters. It's not clear whether she
was developmentally disabled or had like depressive mental illness. There was something
clearly off with her to some capacity. And at age 23, they gave her a lobotomy. And the thing with
a lobotomy is you have to be conscious. You don't put you under. So you have to be counting
backwards while their scalp was in your brain. And they stopped, but they stopped. They did too
far. She became mentally like a two year old, you know, never had bladder control for the rest of
her life, couldn't really talk or walk. And when that happened, they just put her away to some home
and they never mentioned her again, or they didn't tell the brothers or sisters where she went.
The lobotomy was only revealed in 1987. And they pretended, oh, she's, you know, in this home for
kids with special needs. And it's just like, like that to me is very, very scary that someone could
do this to their, that people, I saw people respond, they go, that was cutting edge technology
at the time, haha. But I'm like, I don't think that that was really done that frequently or
be hearing more about it, all these botched lobotomies. And my understanding is lobotomies are
very hard to, like, they would want to do something like a mass murderer or like someone's
really bad. Like if the person's left an invalid, like who cares kind of situation,
but when you're dealing with something like this, like, she's not killing people. She's not
assaulting people. She's just difficult because she's making your, your vaunted family look bad.
So, so that's to you, that's, what is it like psychopathy or something like that? Like, you
don't care about, you just, you do horrific things and you don't really care. I can't
diagnose Joe Kennedy. But what I would say, like, of a Jolaine Maxwell, I can't empathize
because I don't understand. First of all, even in a positive sense, I don't know what it's like to
be grooming my son to be the president and lost, you know, the other son in war. I don't know what
that's like. I don't know what it's like to be so wealthy. Like I have, you have to get Joe
Kennedy credit because a lot of what he was fighting for was to allow, you know, Irish people
and Catholic people acceptance into like high society. And he was up against a lot of pressure
with that. And he's like, I'm going to, you know, screw these people. I'm going to be recognized
and we're going to make people recognize. So there's something to be said for that. But I mean,
I can't relate to people like him. Yeah. But I mean, that like, is just terrifying. Like,
I mean, one of the big reasons I'm an anarchist is like, when you have someone who has that
sense of amount of power over somebody else, a lot of times they're going to do bad things
and have no consequences. Do you think in a just like Maxwell case and Epstein case,
do you think they were trying to blackmail people? Like trying the, what the conspiracy
theory is kind of described, that's probably not too far away from reality.
Did they intentionally try to put powerful people in compromising situations so that they can
basically get more and more power? Yeah. I think that was a Vandy fair piece that you're
referring to or a fortune. Oh, sorry. I'm just referring to general concept.
Oh, there was, so there was an article that broke this down because this article is either
Fortune Business Week Vandy Fair. I don't remember a major, major reputable outlet.
And they, they made the reporter made the point, they asked around and they go,
this guy's a billionaire or extremely wealthy at least. No one I know ever traded with him.
Like, where is his money coming from? There's no, there's no paper trail. So they're like,
okay, if it's not trading and trades are public often, you know, where's his money coming from?
And it's also like, why are all these people allowing Epstein to be their business manager
when he has no kind of track record to show for it? So the hypothesis was he would get people
into uncompromising situations with underage girls, secretly film it, and then he would,
you know, blackmail them accordingly. Well, I guess that's the question. That would make sense.
I know it makes sense, but I also see a lot of evidence that he's just very charismatic in a room.
So, so, and I've also seen, you know, that's how human connections get made, like business
deals get made. Yeah, but how, how, where's his money coming from? Oh, like they rich people
without blackmailing, just like him close, like him as a friend. No, I'm not arguing that. Like,
okay, I like Jeff Epstein. Make sure you pull that quote. Yes. I'm a business person. I like
Jeff Epstein. Michael Malice. I love Jeff. Like or love? Love. I'm in love with.
This escalated quickly. I'm gonna hand over him to be my money manager to have 20% of my estate
fine. Yeah. Where is he making the money for that 20%? That's the thing that there's no paper
trail, have him trading or anything. So I can understand. Oh, I see. Yeah. Interesting. What
were your 20, 20 favorite moments? You mean 2021? Yeah. Clearly, it's just laying Maxwell
trial. It just really stands out to me. It's very moving, which is why I bring it up. No,
moving here. So moving, moving here. But for me, I think we actually didn't cover that with you.
And I'd love to get your comment. Because you said it's the first time in your life you moved. So
it's not just about the place you go to. It's the actual act of moving is also a leap. Oh, yeah.
The decision was that I'm going to give away my salary at MIT. So stop taking salary,
give away the group. So students, normal research, the grant funding, and still keep an MIT
affiliation just because I have friends and colleagues there still doing research, but giving
away really primarily is the source of money. So no salary. And let it go to zero. Let my bank
and con go to zero. And take a leap in San Francisco or elsewhere. And as COVID broke out,
and a lot of people started talking to me about San Francisco, about the cynicism there,
and I'll go there. And there was a kind of... So it's not all the woke stuff and all that kind
of things, which is also a problem. It's less about dreaming about a big future, about building a
big future, and more about some kind of identity, politic battles that they're just... You could
say some aspect in the positive light is important. But in a place like Silicon Valley, to me, the
most important thing is to do big things. And for that to be most of the conversation.
And so that cynicism was there. And then I went to look at Austin, and Austin was the opposite.
Yeah. It was the optimism. And you have people like... So I talked to... So Elon was the optimistic
about making this the capital of artificial intelligence and technology and so on. And
then Mr. Joe Rogan, now just the optimism about making this the cultural capital of the world.
I mean, specifically comedy, but it just radiates from them, just the excitement. And I've seen
not many people of that nature in my life. And when I see that in their eyes, that engine,
that fire of wanting to create something special about the place, first of all, those people rarely
fail. That's first of all. And second of all, that's contagious. It's contagious. Yes, very contagious.
And so all of that combined, for me, 2021 was the actual leap of taking the leap, saying,
all right, well, I'm actually going to do this. So not just giving away the salary,
not giving away all of that, but the whole thing. That's it. You just move to a place,
there's an empty building, and you're moving into it. And this is a new life. And that leap,
I don't know, it's a scary leap to take because I've taken that leap many times in my life.
And this is where parents and all those kinds of cynicism is really destructive because
from a cynical perspective, I worked at Google. So why leave Google? There's a very high-paying
salary that you can have Google. Then MIT, why leave MIT? It's MIT. This is you've always dreamed
about, like, why do you get a PhD? You've loved MIT, you're like, why leave MIT? I mean,
this is the same process I've gone through with a lot of things in life. You've been saying
every single stage, and you need friends, you need support groups, and all those kinds of things
that are extremely important. But in the end, it's about taking the leap. And for me, 2021 was this
leap. And to me, one of the most beautiful things you can do in life is to take those leaps.
And that's something that I think is no longer a thing in New York. There's no sense of hope.
You don't go to New York now. There's been such an assault, and intentionally or otherwise,
maybe it's inevitable, they didn't have a choice. But there's been such an assault on
creativity and small business in New York that no one, very few people who are in New York right
now think things are going to get great soon. Whereas here, I feel it's every day is just
something exciting is going to happen. And that's part of the culture and how the conversation
goes. It's just invoked to be cynical in New York and San Francisco. I hope it changes because
what I love about New York and what I love about Austin also is the weirdos, the characters,
just the variety of personalities that if you just walk around, you get to meet them. And
I think New York still has that, but it has the extra cynicism on top of it.
That's a negative. I mean, just becoming friends with Joe, he inspired me to be nicer to people,
to not take myself seriously, to be humble, to celebrate friends, not to be competitive.
Like all those things, since I started listening to his podcast from the very beginning,
it just radiated from the guy. The thing that people don't appreciate is Joe Rogan
likes it when you bust his chops. I mean, a lot of people at that level, like if it's
oh, Mr. Rogan, you're laughing at everything they say, they don't want that. It's very phony and
they feel uncomfortable because they know that everything they say is hilarious. I remember,
I went with him, he was doing a performance here and yeah, you were there and he was doing his set
and I'd reached the point now where I don't think of him as Joe Rogan. My buddy's doing stand-up,
you forget. And then I looked at the audience and I remember him like, oh, this is like a religious
experience for these people, but you forget who he is because he doesn't carry himself like a big
shot. Yeah. And still, I mean, he gets competitive as fuck. Like I argue with him a lot. When I
talked to Francis Collins and Pfizer CEO, you better believe I heard from Joe. And then we would just
get super drunk and argue about it. So it's, I mean, he's beautiful and he gets really passionate.
So it's not like, it's not like easy to argue with him, but that's great when you don't take it
personally. It's fun. As you and I discussed and I'm sure he wouldn't mind us saying this, but like
that moment when you first get a text from Joe Rogan and it's some boomer meme. Like I finally
felt like I've arrived as a person. A boomer meme? What kind of boomer meme are we talking about?
Like he's just some silly meme, but it's just like, this is the kind of thing you can imagine
someone's uncle posting on Facebook. Yeah. It's Joe Rogan texting it to you. Yeah. I mean, for me
also with Elon, obviously, there's a few people, I'm just saying folks that people know, also Jim
Keller, who worked with Elon. So I've had conversations with them because it's just
my line of work. They're realizing that everything is possible in this world. Yeah. Yeah. Which is
not the Russian mindset. Yeah. Well, okay. All right. Let's style it down a notch. Yeah. It's
what when Elon calls first principles thinking, but really it's just not being limited by the
constraints of the past. Yes. And so saying, okay, this is how things have been done, but
can be done much, much better. And that has to do with manufacture. How do we do this 10 times
cheaper? Everyone says it's super expensive, but does it really need to be? This is more of a
question about manufacture, about how to build a product, how to actually have a product that's
scaled it as an impact than just having a very serious engineering to the level of physics
discussion about building a thing and fucking doing it and just being around people that did it and
basically literally or figuratively said, fuck you to everybody in the room that said they can't
do it. And that energy, so that I've gotten to know Elon a lot better in 2021. That to me
it's like everything, the whole thing that moving here and being surrounded by the optimistic energy
and then the individual interactions with people that refuse to be like brought down by the,
yeah, the cynicism of the world, the naysayers. That to me is what I'm going to remember this
year for. And I hope it like materializes into something concrete here in Austin and I feel
is doing that. I really am curious to be a fly on the wall. I'm sure it'll happen at some point,
watching you and Elon talk to each other. Because he's even more of a robot than you.
He was on the Babylon B podcast and I was honored to be able to be in the room while this was
happening. And with the guys at the B do at the end of every podcast, they have like,
like 10 questions. I don't think this is one of those, no, no, this and they go to Elon.
Would you, would you rather be Batman or Iron Man, you know, because they're both like multimillion
industrialists and Elon being Elon is like, well, let's think this through. There's different
kinds of bats. You've got, you know, fruit bats and you got insect bats. Why is it called Batman?
Batman should fly, right? That's gonna fly. And I'm just sitting there with the whole like, dude,
just answer the question. It was so literal. I was like, damn. I guess by this point,
I've released a podcast with him. That's a several hours. And it's exactly as you would imagine.
It's exactly as you would imagine. There was this super technical movie her.
Yes. So there's that one scene. It's when, but is it walking feet? Who's the lead character?
Yeah. A walking Phoenix. Yeah. So he's the lead and he falls in love with Siri,
basically, who's played by Scarlett Johansson. And there's another artificial AI that she's
talking to. And she's like, oh, can I permission to go into nonverbal communication with this
professor and the guys like, sure. And they just start talking to each other in their robot.
And I'm just imagining the two of you having this mind meld. Well, that, so there's both a humor of
that, but also the practical nature of the kind of conversations to have. It's so great because
it's a, it's problem solving mode. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. It's so cool. That is fun. That is
exciting because like you stop completing sentences. I actually feel at home because
you don't need to say the full sentences anymore. You could just like say random words and you
start to understand what you're talking about. And then you can have multiple conversations at
the same time and go on these tangents. One of the biggest problems I have with podcasting,
for me talking, I have to finish my sentences. I have to actually finish making a point,
which is a big problem because there's like a listener that needs to hear the point being
finished as opposed to completing your sentences inside your own mind. And like the thing I find
is useful to Elon does the exact same thing is when the line of thinking is no longer useful,
you just switched to the next thing. You just leave that whole thing behind. You don't need
a nice transition. You don't need any of that. And also just, it's the first principles thing.
It's like zooming in on the elephant in the room. I love that. It's so energizing. That's
what I love about engineers. It's not the, it's not the maybe most eloquent communication style,
but I love it. What about you? So you said moving the book. The book. What else? And you've been
really excited about, so that's anarchist handbook, but you've also been nonstop excited about
white film. That was most of this year. You've been actually made significant progress. Yeah,
I'm on page 40 of the second draft. And it's really kind of funny because when you're doing
your, I think a 10th book, I lost track already. The first draft is actually pretty good. Like,
I'm going back and like, all right, this is going to be a whole slog. I'm like, oh, I just have to
cut and paste this and basically tweak a few words. So I did a good job with the first draft.
It's also funny when you're writing how, and I guess this is the mark of a good professional
writer, the, my personal feelings don't match how the characters in the book come off. Like,
I have a lot of fondness for people like Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, and they're early
on in the book, but they're not good people. Like, and I'm writing it objectively and whatever,
and I'm reading this, I'm like, they come off much worse than my personal appraisal of them.
So it's kind of interesting as a writer, when you're watching it, I guess kind of like an attorney,
right? Like, you can have a situation where you, as an attorney, you have a lot of fondness for
your client, but you realize that they probably did this thing, or you could not, it could be
other way. Like, they're innocent, but it's hard for you to make a good case for them because the
data is not there.
Can you actually talk about your writing process in several ways? So one, your writing process,
but two, by way of advice of how to write. You've talked about in the past, like,
your first draft is these kind of disparate or more chaotic in the same way maybe I was saying
in the engineering discussion, you don't complete the sentences. It's just thoughts.
The first, like, real good writing advice I remember getting was this book by Peggy Noonan
called What I Saw at the Revolution, and she was Ron Reagan's speechwriter. She still writes
for the Wall Street Journal. The book I bought was at a used bookstore in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania,
when I was in college. The spine is cocked. I still have it. It was 99 cents.
And she talked, you know, when you're writing for a president, this is no joke,
especially for a president who's the great communicator, Reagan, you know. So,
and you have to be very inspirational, but also not come off as corny, which is very hard to do.
And she in the book talks about how she wrote speeches for him, how she, you know,
I'm paraphrasing her, and I haven't read her book in a couple of decades,
but basically she would write like a brain dump, and it's just garbage. And she's like,
that's okay, just get it all out there. And then, you know, there's that expression all
writing is editing. So for the White Pill specifically, this is, I don't know if it's
the most ambitious book I've ever done, your reader, I think is more ambitious,
because that's all of North Korea's history, and it's written somebody else's voice,
not person's emotion. And you, like you mentioned, you had to read a giant number of books.
Yes, 60 books, as research. Yeah.
Well, maybe when we just pause, can you say what White Pill is about?
Sure, it's a tale, it's about hope. And it's a tale of good and evil. And I think that's,
I don't want to tip my hand too much. But people are always like, how do you think,
why are you so hopeful? And I'm not hopeful on an emotional level, I'm hopeful because
looking at history, I think there's certain things that not will certainly happen again,
but it's not at all implausible to happen again, and that the good guys will win.
And this is one of those cases. So, you know, I had, the book took on a life of its own,
it's very different from how I originally conceived it. I originally conceived it as a
kind of retelling of Camus philosophy. Ryan Holiday, who he used to be close friends with,
I've talked to him in a while, he has a whole kind of cottage industry based on the so except
the past. I'm like, okay, can I ask him, what's going to do this with Camus? He said, sure.
And then I reread Camus recently and it wasn't what I was had remembered.
I was like, can we pause on that? I apologize to interrupt. So it's interesting. So he kind
of took ideas from Stoics and started to kind of use it as a book that gives you advice about
how to live life from the Stoic perspectives. And you were thinking, is there something in
existentialism, absurdism, or something specifically in Camus thinking, or I think you've mentioned
the myth is Sisyphus specifically, like his philosophical work. So you were trying to see,
like, is there, can I resurrect this? That's actually, I would think that's an interesting
project. And it's sad to hear that it was, it didn't materialize in exactly that form.
Because I thought there would be a lot in that. So I had Douglas Murray on my show,
and he also made the point, like, when you go back and read Camus, there's not that much there.
The myth of Sisyphus is not at all how I remembered it. The vast bulk of that book is
like literary criticism. So he's talking about Dust Thefts, you know, those different people who are
in bottoms of the absurd, but I'm like, this isn't, there's not much to take from here.
This actual title essay is basically like a, like six chapter essay at the back of the book,
which, you know, it's good for what it is, but there's not that much there to draw. I'm extremely,
he's a great hero of mine. I think his life is just enormously admirable.
He fought very hard against the Nazi occupation. His book, The Plague, which I find unreadable,
is an allegory about, you know, Germany conquering France and so on and so forth.
Wait a minute. Why is The Plague unreadable?
It's the kind of book where reading the book doesn't add anything to the plot.
The plot is a plague comes, sleeps over the town, destroys a lot of life,
and vanishes as quickly as it came. You don't need to read the book now, like you get the point.
I deeply disagree with you.
Yes, of course I've read The Plague. To me, I mean, The Plague is about the doctor,
and it's about love, and it's about the different roles that humans take in time and tragedy,
like The Plague. Also, it's an allegory, so you can start to think about whether it's Nazi
Germany, whatever you think that is. To me, though, that was about love, and about the
highest ideal being the doctor that sacrifices themselves for others, and still has love and
hope. I mean, to me, the way that story is told, I think has a lot of meaning. It's like,
to me, you're saying that's interesting. You say it this way. To me, it's like saying Animal Farm
doesn't need to be read because it's an obvious story.
I don't think there's much plot to The Plague. I think Animal Farm has a very long plot
and a complex plot. But there's experiences within. So the situation set up in The Plague,
and there's experiences that start to reveal a philosophy. So yeah, it's not very plot-driven.
So I would say you still should read it, but the plot doesn't... You didn't give away anything
currently. So some books are just... I mean, Ayn Rand is similar to that in a sense. The plot is
not as important as the behavior of the different people in that plot. I think she's very
plot heavy. No, she has plots, but I'm saying that's not necessarily the important thing.
To me, the behavior of the people is the important thing. Sure, but you could like
separate it into a bunch of blog posts and they stand on their own. I would have to
think about that with Ayn Rand. She does, through The Plot, create a world where you
start to understand the different values that people have. But yeah. But that's what The Plot
serves. Yeah, I would have to think. But in The Plague, it's the behavior of the people that's
really important. And the same... I mean, the stranger too. I mean, these like...
I'm trying to scramble here for books. I really appreciate that Don't Have a Plot. I mean,
Notes From Underground. So obviously, Dostoevsky has a huge amount of plot in most of his work.
Herman Hess has a huge amount of plot. Thomas Mann doesn't have the plot. He's the one who
doesn't have plots. Thomas Mann. Would you say Kafka has a plot? I think Kafka is very
heavy plot-driven. Yeah, but I just don't see that, I guess. I guess metamorphosis doesn't really have
a plot. Yeah, but there's like crawling around. But it's like a vignette. It's not really like...
A hunger artist on my probably favorite short stories. That kind of short story is a pretty
long short story of Kafka's is really interesting. It's about a man. I don't know if you read it.
No, I think so. It's about a man that is like a freak in a sense that
his skill is that he can fast for a long time. Okay. And then people gather on the cage and look
at him as he fasts. I don't actually remember if he's in the cage or not, but... And eventually,
he fasts so long that people don't even care anymore. They just leave. It has to do something.
It makes me think about the way you live. Don't become a freak show, a circus act.
Live for an ideal. Live for something that brings you joy. Or don't live for the sake of attention.
For the sake of attention. Yeah. Anyway, so I rudely interrupt you because you were talking
about the plague and connecting it to the writing process of White Pill. Yeah. Well, anyway, so
how I was writing this one, I just had a first draft of notes and it's not in chronological order.
It's like I read certain books as research and then I had the pull quotes that was necessary there.
And now I'm basically rearranging everything and putting it... So, the book started as
Ryan Holiday's... Right. Equally Ryan Holiday as Camus. The working title would have been
The Point of Tears because this is... Camus is a great quote maker and he has this line about
man must live, live to the point of tears, which I think is just... What I love about him is Camus,
he always comes off as like he's clenching his teeth. He's clenching his teeth both in terms of
barely mitigated rage and injustice. Like when he sees people suffering, it just really makes him
just upset to the core. But also this sense of not taking life for granted and just pushing
yourself and pushing the boundaries and his point being that life is inherently meaningless,
which gives a great opportunity to impute meaning to it and to create our own meaning to life.
So, taking the main essay from Mythocisophus, that was the origin story for the white pill,
but then it became something completely different. Yeah. And so, then it became
how are you so optimistic in the face of everything that's going on in the world? And I
started writing it when COVID started hitting and I... Because again, I'm not optimistic because of
some temperament of mine. I'm optimistic because people talk about how if the US didn't exist,
China would just become an empire and take over everything. Empires are expensive and they
look at the British empire, look at the Soviet Union. It's not automatically sustainable. It costs
a lot of things to make sure when you're geographically all over the world, literally,
to keep everyone in line. It's not at all like a supervillain in a movie. Like, once it happens,
it's the happy ending for them. So, yeah, that was the start. And I'm like, all right, let me tell...
One thing I'm good at is telling stories. So, this is really...
So, this is plot-driven.
Very, very plot-driven and also heavily character-driven, but the characters are real.
Yeah, got it. So, it's interesting to kind of mention what kind of... What does the first draft
kind of look like in terms of what kind of things do you plop down?
Oh, so it'll be like... Let's suppose I just read some book called The Guillotine at Work,
which was an early book attacking Lenin from the anarcho-communist perspective.
So, it'll just be like all the different quotes, like a paragraph here, double space,
another paragraph, blah, blah, blah, so on and so forth. Whereas, for other sections where I
wasn't just using a book as research, there would be talking about McKinley getting shot.
Like, it's just me writing the narrative, and that I could just pretty much copy-paste into
the second draft. By way of advice, would you give that as advice? Is that a good way to do it?
Is that a very peculiar way your brain works?
So, this is actually advice I feel comfortable giving to people who are trying to write, because
it's just like with the gym, right? If you did seven sets, seven, excuse me, reps last week,
and you did eight this week, it's psychologically motivating, because you're going in the right
direction, and the human mind extrapolates. So, make sure, tell yourself, I'm going to get a page
done today, or two pages done, set your asthma on the computer, and I'll have to get up to get
those two pages. It doesn't matter if they look at garbage, because if you have a 300-page first
draft, and it's crap, at least you have something to work with, and that's a big number. So,
if you're going to, the thing is, since the first draft is going to be crap, if you're editing as
you write, it's going to be extremely discouraging. And it's also trying to drive and then doing
reverse at the same time. It's a completely nonsensical way to do it. Get it all out there,
don't look it over. If you have a great line put on your phone and then add it to the draft,
so it'll be a complete slog, but editing that slog is going to be a lot easier than creating it to
begin with. And when you see those disparate lines all laid out on the page, how difficult is it to
then start stitching it together? Do you find that when you look at a list of those things,
the final product will look very different? Yes. Or will you actually use those lines?
No, I will use those lines. Then I have a file called scraps. So, if the line's no longer used,
I put in my scrap pile. I'd love to see what's in the scrap pile. Okay, yeah, sure. One of the
things I've been pulling scraps is a lot of times when I was earlier writing, I would have
contemporary references. And I realized that that's bad because I want the reader to be in the past
as the present. So, if you're talking about, let's say 1901 and you're referring to Obama,
that screws people up. So, I had to pull all those. Okay, let's talk about some New Year's
resolutions. Do you ever do New Year's resolutions? Do you ever think like that? Like, take a special
day in the year to think about how you're going to try to change yourself? Or do you try to transform
yourself every single day when you wake up? Well, I usually have several projects I'm working on at
once. So, there's always incremental progress on those. Right. You know, it's nice to have a deadline
by the end of 2022. I'll accomplish this, kind of like to hold yourself responsible. And then,
you could do that at the beginning of the year to think about that. Both philosophically, like,
what kind of big, not projects that you can quantify, but more like, how can I change my
life? Or like I mentioned, take the leap of different kinds. And then there's specific things
like finish the book. Years ago. And I think on some level, you much less than me, but I think
you're increasing in this direction. I realized it's more, I have to learn how to be a surfer and
not a driver. Because when you reach the level we're at in our careers or in our place in the
culture, a lot of this is luck. And a lot of this is just like, I'm just going along for the ride
because it's kind of counterintuitive. Like, you know, like the success of the anarchist handbook
was counterintuitive. So, all I'm hoping for is, you know, getting the book done. I am extremely
proud of it. And just also, you know, building a, you know, we had Thanksgiving together at
Blair's house, just building a great upcoming community here in Austin, which has happened
very quickly. I was, there was going to be another surprise here. There's a girl named Natalie
Sidesurf and she makes these ultra realistic cakes. Like if you've seen those cakes online
where it looks like you're cutting a puppy, like she makes those kind of things. So she's here
in Austin. Yeah. You know, like moved permanently. I think she's been here for a while. I've never,
I haven't met her yet, but I just kind of chatted with her. So they just, it's just so many,
there's so many scenes happening here that are overlapping. So in general, finish the book,
keep building a community. I mean, you've already been doing that here. You've been here
several months. I've been making a point to introduce people to each other and everyone's
just really getting along very well. That's great. And the book is the focus. The book is the focus.
What about the podcast that you're doing? You're welcome. Yes. I mean, I enjoy it and it's been
growing a lot. I finally got a new computer, which my friend Jay installed so I can have a decent
camera because of my old, this is my mindset as a hoarder. Like I was more interested in spending
money on a Pareto autograph than actually getting a computer that's from the 20th century.
But I'm such an old school person in that in my head, podcasts are so ephemeral.
There's some episodes of my podcast I'm really proud of. And there's a lot of friendships
I've made as a result of it that really mean a lot to me. No question. It's made my life
a profoundly better place. But it's not the same as that book on the shelf, especially when the book
is something that I think matters much more than I do. Yeah. There's a permanence to it. There's a
seriousness to laying down the words on paper, like really giving them thought. Yeah. That's true.
But I'm a huge fan of podcasts. You don't listen to podcasts much. It's just fascinating to...
Yeah, like at all. I don't know how mine is so successful. Yeah.
Yeah. I just love the medium. But I love the authenticity, the realness of the medium.
That's really nice. I just understood for the... It's starting to click because
like my pal Blair White, she was just unrogan. And the first 10 minutes, I was so angry. I was
sitting there yelling at the screen because Joe and Blair, you would think that they're
going to start talking about Trump or trans issues or moving to Austin. They start talking
about shark reproduction and neither of these dumbasses knew anything about it. And I know a
lot about it. And they're like, oh, is it like this? I'll do the shark's lay eggs. And I'm sitting
there like, if you don't know why you're talking about this, why? Why are you talking? And I could
also see why people like these shows, because they feel like they're friends of the people.
Like they're sitting in the room because I felt like it was in that room and I wanted to shake
both of them. Yeah, in the room. So no, what about transforming yourself and your resolutions like
that? Oh, I'm doing a slight bulk now. So I'm almost at my heaviest weight ever, but I've been...
I couldn't go to the gym this week because I'm a little underweather. So that's been a little
frustrating, but yeah. So are we going to get some more modeling picks? What are we... What's...
Is there goals there? So my heaviest... I'm 4'8". The heaviest I've ever been was when... And this
is when I was like... He's exaggerating. He's not at that level. That's the metric. Oh, sorry.
Are you talking about your height or weight? Yeah, yeah. Barely 4'6". So the heaviest I've
ever been when I was like really high body fat, because I learned... Because I couldn't gain
weight as a kid. So when I figured out I could actually gain weight, I was 164.5. So I want to
hit 165 and then see... Take it from there. I have a friend who's been helping me. My buddy,
Trey Goff, and this kid Stronger, his... Jake, his username on Instagram is Stronger,
but the number 5 instead of the letter S. But he does... I've never... It looks like it's
Photoshop, like your brain can't process it. You know the human flag? No. Oh, yeah, yeah. Sorry.
He does human flag push-ups. Wow. So he is horizontal, parallel to the ground, right? He's
holding himself up like a flag, but he could also do this while... So he's moving parallel to the
earth side to side while... It's just crazy. That's really difficult. So you're interested
in that kind of stuff? No, but I'm saying like he's been helping me out. So like the guy knows
what he's doing. He's just a really impressive kid. I love that kind of stuff, like body weight
cells. So my primary mode of working out is very like the... Have you ever seen Leon,
like the professional with Natalie Portman, that movie? Yeah. I have a pull-up thing as you
push-ups and pull-ups. It's very like I'm just missing the milk. I like working out at home just
like that. And the body weight stuff, you can go so much with it. And it's super functional for
everything else you live in, for life, for living life well. On the other hand, I don't care
with functionality. The thing that really bothers me, like I go... I know Joe's thinking of opening
up a gym, like a private gym. There's only like one power cage here at the golds I go to.
I don't know what source that there's only one or that sometimes people aren't using it.
I'm like, no one's doing deadlifts in here. No one, just me. It's golds.
By the way, I don't want to say where. I'll tell you off my... But there's a few really
ghetto places around Austin that are just like these shitty gyms that nobody wants to go to,
but they have a rack. They have like, if you want to lift heavy, that kind of stuff.
But are they 24 hours? That's the thing, golds. Oh. But they're 24 hours in the following way.
There's a code. Okay. And you just go in. Okay. And you turn on the lights.
That's fine. And then you work out. I don't want to meet people.
Exactly. Well, that's just not true. Sometimes there's people and they're great.
Yeah. And I've had fans come up to me at golds and they've all been cool. Except...
Except. Oh, no. Except.
If I have my headphones on and I'm doing deadlifts, I don't need you to come over,
tap my ear, and start giving me critiques about my form.
It's actually happened? Yes. I'm still angry about it. I'm pulling my 150 in peace. Thank you.
Thank you. Yeah. People are hilarious. I was recently in,
actually the wildest day ever in my life. So many things happened in a row. So I went to a wedding
in LA. Andrew? Andrew Schultz. And with Whitney Cummings and Joe Rogan and a bunch of other
fascinating people. It's just, speaking of weirdos, there's the comedian, like the reason I find the
comedians awesome. One, they're authentic. They're just cool people. Yeah. Yeah. But they're also
just weird. Like, you don't become a comedian for not being like fucked up in all kinds of
different ways. Anyway, so there's the wedding. I'm, you know, me, it was only carbs at the wedding.
So I didn't eat. I didn't eat for a long time. So I was like already fasted 20 hours, 25 hours.
And by, so that this whole story of everything that happens is, is Lex like 40 hours fasted
with Joe Rogan drinking a lot of whiskey. And so you were drinking too heavy on 40. Oh my
God, that's crazy. So it is calories. That was my only source of calories, the whiskey. And I,
so I didn't trust myself with carbs when I'm drunk. I just don't enjoy it because
I'll forget. And I just enjoy eating like a strict healthy diet when I'm drunk because
I'd rather eat more food that's healthy versus not. And so anyway, so then we went to Vegas
together and then just kept doing wild thing after another wild thing. Rogan opened up for
Wendy Cummings. He just like showed up at a random party that he wasn't invited and he did a thing.
He almost started a fight because some guys said stop spreading, yelled at him said stop spreading
misinformation. And then we run into David Goggins of all, this is my first time meeting David.
I've talked to David a lot over the phone and we were supposed to do a thing together. And this
is me trash out of my mind meeting David for the first time with his incredible wife, Rogan's
wife was there. By the way, Joe Rogan's wife, David's wife made me realize that I really want to be
married because they're not, they make their partners better. Yeah. Like that I was,
there's a certain aspect of marriage that I'm afraid of that like your partner takes you away
from life. You don't get to experience life as much. But this was like they were enriching them.
I don't know. It's like the world's most powerful support group. It was cool. Anyway,
so then of course drunk Lex is challenges Goggins to push ups. I saw that's on Instagram with
her. So we're in the middle of and you're in your suit in this suit in the middle of casino.
There's a crowd gathering. Like it's Joe Rogan, me and David Goggins, and I'm just doing pushups
with them and Rogan is like commentating and yelling and screaming. It was surreal and just
going on to the next thing and next thing and next thing like this and then drove all the way from
Vegas back to LA with Joe and Whitney and his wife. And it was like, what is this? And all of
it is done in 24 hours. The one valuable lesson is don't fast and drink like excessively.
So I've learned that because what happens is liquor hits your mind, my mind. So I'll speak
about my particular mind. Like the intellectual part of my brain got hit really hard, really fast.
So I was not able to even more so than usual stitch together sentences. I understood everybody
well. So like made your name a good again. Yeah, I was, I don't know. So like meeting David,
I want to say so many things. He's so inspiring to me, right? But all I said was like, hello.
And I remember like opening my mouth to like try to say more and I was like,
and then I would just close my mouth and not be able to say anymore.
This is one of the reasons I don't drink ever. It removes certain barriers. Like it allows you to
maybe have fun that you wouldn't otherwise. But yeah, definitely for personal values and intellectual
eloquence. But I also hate being hungover. The hungover part. Yeah. That's the worst.
Yeah. And you also like I did this to myself. Yeah. But it also teaches me that this too shall pass
because I've been hungover and I've quit drinking so many times in my life
that it realizes, it makes you realize that all the unpleasant feelings,
all you have to do is just wait it out and it'll be fine. It took me a long time to realize that
that expression means the other thing. What's the other thing? If things are going great,
this too shall pass. Yeah. I always thought about it. No, I always thought about it as being more
like, don't worry if things are bad, it'll pass. It's like, it's also like, if something's going
great, it's not going to be this way forever. It's like Bukowski said, love is a fog that
fades with the first daylight of reality. Do you think love can last? Oh yeah, we're gonna win.
Who's we? The good guys. Didn't Hitler also think he's the good guys? He's wrong.
Because you know why? Why? He didn't win.
So you think it's permanent? So this one time, the good guys winning, it'll last. It won't pass
because I think all of it passes, unfortunately. I think we're going to win and win big in the
not so distant future. Do you have specific things in mind or no? Or just a sense about
human civilization, about society waking up? I don't know about waking up, but I think the
increased understanding on all sides of the political spectrum that corporate America and
corporate news outlets are self-motivated actors and those motivations are often inimical to what
others would regard as desirable is something that I think is happening with increasing frequency.
So what do you think about the political landscape in general? You had a great conversation with
Glenn Beck and he said that he talked to Trump and believes that Donald Trump is definitely
running in 2024 or very likely running in 2024. I think he said he thinks he'll have a good chance
of winning. I don't remember that, but the fact that he was running was a surprise to you. Do you
think Donald Trump would be running in 2024? Given that Glenn Beck has a much better relationship
with Trump than I do to put it mildly, if Glenn Beck is certain this is going to happen, I would
defer to Glenn Beck's judgment. Do you think he has a chance of winning? Do you think he'll win?
Anyone in a binary political system who's the nominee has a chance. Whoever the Republican
and Democrat has a chance. I think also it's a lot easier to vote for someone that you have
voted for in the past. So that's why incumbents have a big advantage. There's not that psychological
barrier to cover. I think it's also useful for Trump that he's banished for social media because
then he doesn't have to have the responsibility of governing and all the costs of that because no
matter what decisions you make while governing, some people aren't going to like that. So he gets
to kind of be above the radar or below the radar rather to some extent. I don't think it's at all
a given that he would get the nomination. When I say the good guys are going to win, I certainly
don't mean Donald Trump. I don't think victory is going to come as a consequence of Washington.
Do you want to make America great again? I think America is great.
Right. Does my fail the tempted humor?
One of many. There are also hats that Giuliani and Jim Jeffords wore that said
people can look this up. They said because they were in south the border, make Mexico great again
also. That's in me. It was like just the syntax there. You don't even think you might get the
nomination. Who else might? If you had asked three years out who the nominee in 2020 would be,
Donald Trump wasn't even or 2016 rather wasn't even on the radar screen. So we have a long way to
go. Two years is a long way to go. Yeah. Especially because we're coming out of COVID. There might
be some governor who becomes a rock star for some reason. Maybe someone's going to have some moment,
some congressman might have some big moment where they're screaming at somebody and all of a sudden
they become a rock star in the Republican Party. It could be one of the celebrities we don't
think about. I mean, Donald Trump is essentially not a political figure before he ran. So it could
be any of the famous right-leaning celebrities. I don't even know which way McConaughey leans.
No, I think he's a lefty or he was running the Democrat, but he's not running. But people like
that just might step into the ring. Yeah. I don't think they'd have that much of a chance because
I think the Republican Party, there's an asymmetry. They'd be much more skeptical
of like an actor than a Democrat would be because they would regard that actor as coming
as a kind of mentoring candidate or whatever. Right. But there's other kinds of celebrities,
like Jaco could run as a Republican. That's a good example. Yeah. Yeah. That would be
interesting. So military person. Right. Yeah. But already, for example, Dr. Oz is thinking of
running for, is going to run for the Senate in Pennsylvania. And there's already been a lot of
research people slamming him on Twitter and social media for past positions he's taken. So
DeSantis is the figure of the moment, but Scott Walker was the figure of the moment in the 2016
cycle and he didn't even make it to Iowa. Yeah. And I wonder what role does COVID play in all of
this in terms of, you know, I'm mostly optimistic and hopeful about the world. Like when I look at
the world, I'm excited by most things. I've been a little bit or a lot disappointed by the lack of
great leadership in a time of trouble. Because to me, one of the, one of the great things about
a difficult time is it brings out the great leaders. Again, it's the up and down things.
Like you don't want to ask for war. You don't want to ask for pandemics. But when they happen,
it's a great opportunity for the human spirit to flourish. And the fact that it didn't quite in the
way that I hoped it would is disappointing. I think there's still time too, because people are
trying to figure out what to do as we emerge from the fog. Yeah. So I'm excited by 2020. For
somebody said this dark cynical thing, I hope this is not true, but like that there was some
doubt about the results of the election in 2020, that in 2024, both sides, like it'll just start
becoming standard to completely reject the results of an election no matter who wins.
Well, that's my perspective. I don't regard elections as legitimate. And I see what you're
saying not in the terms of that, that basically the process itself was illegitimate.
Yes. So there's like cheating or something. Yeah. But I think that that's pretty much
a given. It has been a given. Like it's either Republicans often say, oh, they got all these
illegals to vote, you know, or the American House will say the voting machines were hacked or the
media, so on and so forth. Because despite all the people flapping their gums about democracy,
they only like democracy when it gives them the results that they want.
Can I ask you about something else that Glenn Beck said that I thought was really interesting?
I agree with him very much on this. And I was refreshing to hear, although he kind of made a
turn into a point about why Trump is great or whatever. But the point was the following,
which is he doesn't want to talk to anybody who can't say at least one nice thing about
everyone. So like, if you don't like Donald Trump, if you don't like Joe Biden,
you should still be able to say one nice thing like legitimate nice, not just like a dismissive
nice thing, but legitimately say what is one nice thing they did or like, or who they are as a person.
Not not like saying Donald Trump. It's funny sometimes like no like legitimate where you
really mean it. And it's been really troubling to me how few people are able to do that about
political figures. I had a lot of people. I think I tweeted something like this leading up to the
election saying like you should be able to say something nice about both Joe Biden and Donald
Trump. And I've had old friends. I don't want to say specific, I guess to call them out, but they
several people and one in particular wrote me this long like several page email. It was Sam.
It was Sam Harris. Sam Harris. No, but I have a lot of conversations with Sam Harris now
and Joe on both sides. It's like the devil and the angel on both of my, I don't know which one is
which, but they're both devils. That's fair. And they said, how could you say, how could you even
consider like that there's something positive about Donald Trump? Yeah, he's an easy one. He has
three wives with three kids with each, but the kids get along. I think that's really commendable
that Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump and Barron can all get along with each other,
given the circumstances. I think that speaks to something as someone as a father in Ivanka.
So on the family level, and I see the same thing with actually one of the reasons I always found
Joe Biden fascinating is he's had a lot of really traumatic things happen in his life. Yeah. And
if I shit my pants in front of the Pope, I'd be traumatized too.
I'm talking to a master troll about something sensitive and beautiful that is a man suffering
with a loss. I kind of know what he feels like right now. I'm pretending you're the Pope. This
chair is ruined. Sorry, Elon. You're gonna have to sit in it. Why is this chair filled? I don't
like I'm sitting in a swamp. Yeah, look, you have stuff to show. Can you afford a chair?
I'll send you off and test them. That's a pretty good Elon impression.
But yeah, I mean, like one criticism I told Joe,
Rogan is like he has trouble finding one positive thing to say about Joe Biden,
for example. And I just don't, I don't like that. I think, I mean, I'm a big believer in
the shit sandwich sticking on top. I think here's an easy one. I think Joe Biden clearly is a very
amiable person. He gets along with people. It seems really clear that maybe before president,
because it's different when you're the president, but that he could call a lot of these Republican
senators, get them on the phone and have a conversation with them. Yeah, and it's not
some kind of manipulation. To some extent it is because they're all politicians, but he clearly
seemed to be able to get, wasn't like an ideologue. Yeah, yeah. I mean, but there's, I mean, maybe
I'm a sucker for that kind of thing, but the blue collar thing, like riding the train, you know,
the, there's ways to connect with people and not, it's seeing them as equals no matter where
their walks of life are. And I love it when presidents do that. To some degree, because of
the wealth under which Donald Trump existed for a lot of his recent life, he's less able to do that
quite naturally. Maybe sometimes Obama wasn't quite able to do that. That's a good question.
Who's more blue collar Trump or Biden? And you can easily make the case for both, I think.
You could, no, not the blue collar, but like, like literally be able to fit in at a bar,
at a local bar and just like, I can see both of them. Yeah, you're right. I could see both of
them. Yeah. In fact, Obama doesn't quite know because he's got that Ivy League. Yeah, the Ivy
League thing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you're right. It's somehow Donald Trump can too. Yeah, you can
see him having a beer with the guys and yelling at the screen. This is bullshit. Change the channel.
Yeah. I mean, I hope people do that. I think that's one of the most unpleasant things to me is
they're not able to empathize with the fact that half the country voted for another person.
Well, it's also then it's just a bad strategy. If you can't figure out why half the country is
voting for someone you guard as like a demon, well, then how are you going to supposed to
fight this demon? Like, you know, when I did your reader, the North Korea book, it's like,
like, don't you want to understand how these people get to where they got? It's unknown
saying that he's a good person, but like there's a logic to their, there's a method to their madness.
You've, you've talked about national divorce a few times. I've seen a couple of videos recently
where you're responding to articles. It's kind of cool. Can you talk about this idea of national
divorce and as it stands today, uh, arguing for it, maybe, and if you could just out of curious
in the context of those videos, if you can steal man on argument against. Uh, so I was the first
one to kind of bring this issue back into the national, um, conversation. I wrote a piece for
Observer in 2016. Then Jesse Kelly had a piece a few months after that, David Boy just recently
did a piece on his stuff stack earlier this year. Uh, and it's become enough of a mainstreamed idea
that, um, paleontology outlets like the national review have felt the need to respond to them.
So the point being that America has had at least two cultures since the beginning,
and that there's absolutely no reason, and these cultures in recent years, and this was in 2016,
not mentioned 2021, have been increasingly antagonistic toward one another and have even lost
the ability to communicate. They're using language in different ways and that there's no reason for
this to continue any further. Um, and, you know, just you live your life, we'll live ours and,
you know, good, good buying, good luck. There's no harm, no ill will. Um, now there's lots of
arguments against them. Some of this are, are completely, I think, stupid. Uh, the stupidest
one is, well, that's what China wants. Okay. Well, I, I mean, I'm not going to live my life saying
I'm just going to do the opposite of whatever China wants, that that's, that's not logic. That's
not a good pathway. Now they, I'm not saying they're right or wrong, but that's not a reason
why we're another. Yeah, you bring up China or Russia, you know, that's exactly what China or
Russia wants. But sort of the strong way to phrase that is, um, it weakens America, like
not just the one America, but like both sides in the divorce will be much weaker than they
individually were together. So in that sense, not that you have to care about what China thinks,
but like it's a step, but it's a big step backwards. Yes. I think in the short term,
it is absolutely a big step backwards in terms of power. Uh, there's no question that, you know,
when you're trying to reestablish a society, there's going to be a transition period,
that transition period is going to be costly. Uh, each side starts wondering, wait a minute,
why are we still doing this? We don't have to anymore. We're not living with them. So on and
so forth. So that's going to be a, uh, concern. Um, I don't think that the whole point of America,
uh, or even a large primary point of America is to be a bulwark against Chinese power.
And there's going to be very few people on earth, you know, given my work who have as much, uh,
informed hatred and contempt for the Chinese government as I do. Uh, certainly, um, you know,
next to the North Korean people, maybe the people from Eritrea, there's few populations who I'm
as worried about as, uh, the people under the rule of the red Chinese. My steelman argument is,
there's no way this is going to be peaceful because the lines don't separate out well.
So all you're doing is basically just replicating the problem because the disparity isn't between,
you know, like during the civil war, North and South, it's like, it's between New York City and
upstate New York, or between Chicago, downstate Chicago. Once you get outside of LA and like
Sacramento, uh, California in many ways is like Kentucky. So it doesn't make sense. So that's a
strong argument. I mean, you've talked about that this process will be painful. It can be pain.
It can be pain. And we're not just talking about violence. It could be just even the civil war.
You could divide it clean, somewhat cleanly. Obviously the kind of national divorce you might
be suggesting is that people are living amongst each other. So you have to literally move. It's
complicated. Right. So that is a very strong argument. I think a cogent argument against it.
Two is it's not just China. It's that there's a lot of bad actors in the world who maybe aren't,
like China certainly wants to carry itself and have an appearance at least on the world stage
as civilized and at a leader. There's lots of smaller countries who without us are going to
feel comfortable doing some very nefarious things. Um, and they're not going to be scared of us anymore.
And so that would be a bigger concern in many regards than China. So I think that's a reasonable
one. Um, it could be that both sides, if this happens, are going to instead of work toward
better, are the things that make you side bad would get worse. And that's, you know, having
those pushed towards the malevolent extremes is I think a very legitimate criticism and a concern.
I mean, as you suggested, there's no guarantee that won't happen. Correct at all. Also,
there's a, I think a reasonable argument to make is like, are you America just as a symbol and the
myth of America? And I don't mean myth in a negative sense. Do you really want to throw that on the
garbage? Like this meant a lot for a lot of people and a lot for history. You're just going to be
like, okay, good, good work. We're, we were done here. Let's shut the lights. So that's, I think,
a reasonable argument. So those are the, um, biggest ones, I would say. And, and still what is the
case for national divorce and along which lines. So like, um, in making the case for national
divorce, if it is desired based on which kind of ideas do you think it should be carried through?
Honestly, I don't know that it has to be idea based. Like, for example, when Czechoslovakia
broke up, when Norway and Sweden broke up, it wasn't really ideological. It was more cultural.
So I always say divorce into two, but it would probably make more sense if it was like five,
uh, because the Northeast, certainly New England has their own culture. The West Coast has their
own kind of culture. I don't know. The thing is, enter any kind of, um, persuasion technique,
right? Like once people are start, there's a difference between convincing someone they want
to buy a car and what features you want. So if you're at the point where we're arguing about
the features, then my work here is done. You know what I mean? Like I don't have a dog in
the fight in terms of what it's going to look like. I just want to get to the point where
you're at least considering seriously the idea of breaking up America. And I would encourage
people to go look at my article to see, uh, which I'm sure the argument still holds, uh, five years
later. Do you have a kind of vision of what, of the two or which of the five? Like do you actually
have specific cultures or ideas? I'll tell you exactly. Yeah. If I told you and everyone listening
in 2014, we weren't that long ago. It was not long ago. Which of these two things is more likely to
happen? 2014, Texas secedes or declare secession from America or Donald Trump gets elected president.
Everyone's voting for Texas. Like in terms of prediction, which is more likely. So we had this
one. So it's not at all unlikely we're going to have this one. I don't know if that logic carries
through. You can't just say here's an unlikely thing that happened. Therefore anything can happen.
I just said, you just earlier said anything that happened this episode, didn't you?
Life is suffering. I wasn't listening to half the things you're saying.
You said it. I said it. Yes. You said anything that happened. I'm definitely not here. I'm like
you with podcasts. I do a podcast, but I don't listen to it. That's why I'm talking. Okay.
So yeah, yeah, yeah, it can happen. But in which, I guess I'm asking, would you stay in Texas?
100%. So Texas. And I'd run for office probably. It'd be fun.
You know, I'm going to be the first president of Texas.
I attended a debate between Yoram Books and Yoram Hazoni. I don't know if you know who that is.
The nationalist guy. Yeah. He wrote a book called The Virtue of Nationalism.
Yeah, I read that book. And they actually did a podcast with them. They did a debate.
Oh, they both run here? Okay. It was quite interesting. And I tried to wear my Michael
Malz hat. So the- You're wearing it now. You borrowed that from me. Yeah.
It's funny because the metaphor applies across all of these level of collectivism. So he was
arguing that for the power of nation, so he would be arguing against national divorce.
But he was also arguing for marriage, the power of actual marriage between individuals. Like,
I think he's a conservative. And what I really like about him is there's a clear philosophy of
conservatism that he expresses. And I think a lot of people get behind that philosophy. Because
to me, like conservatism and liberalism often is very kind of used loosely. Yes. He has a
clear philosophy that he's expressing there and is grounded in tradition. He has a lot of value
in tradition. And so it's the thing you said about America. Like, one of the arguments against
national divorce is like, listen, we've been at it for a while. Like, there is a lot of value
in the fact that we've been at it for a while. Don't just throw it all away all the time.
So he says philosophically, he seems in a lot of walks of life, revolution should be
avoided as much as possible. I agree. And so it's kind of interesting. So he makes the case that
there's something fundamentally powerful about the nation that we, it's a nice way to group a culture.
And so national divorce, I guess, goes against that. Do you find some aspect of the virtue of
nationalism as you will put it powerful? Well, powerful and in a good sense.
In a good sense. So sorry. Yeah. In a good sense. Like, it brings out the best in humans.
I don't know what the best, but it certainly brings out good things. I have that line I always say
about I love my country. I hate the government because I love my country. Yeah. So there is a
love of country. I think it's, but I don't know that that's the, I think it's also the case because
the country happens to be America. Like, I don't know if I was living in, you know, whatever,
I don't want to insult someone's country. Canada. Yeah. If I was living in Canada,
I don't know that it'd be the ultra patriot. This is a guy who calls basically every other
country shithole country. Yeah, that's true. That's, that's, that's the fact. Yeah. So it's either,
you're either, there's two types of countries, Texas or shitholes. Oh, wow. You went full Texas.
So you, you, you're okay burning the northeast of the ground at this point.
Okay. I'm hoping for it. I'm hoping. What they've done to New York City, I will never forgive these
people. And I hope that they suffer enormously consequences for what they've done to New York.
It's unforget, it's unconscionable the assault that they've done and had no remorse over how many
creative outlets that they've destroyed. Yeah. It's the cultural hub, cultural center of the
world in many ways. It's just, New York was the, this was the place where you go to put up your
shingle and, and, and move the needle and make things happen. And I would understand if it was
like, okay, we got to suffer through this for a year, but we're going to make sure all these
businesses have a kind of safety net to make sure that they kind of get through and survive this,
which they did to the banks in 2008, for example. And I'm saying this as an anarchist and there
was none of that. So I burn it down and salt the earth. It's, it's, because it's like watching
like a zombie. It's unc, it's unnatural. It's, it's an abomination. So I mean, sort of on the,
on the white pill side of things, I don't know about you. Maybe I have a sense that both Silicon
Valley, that for me personally, maybe I have the same intensity of feeling as you do about
New York. It's just disappointing to see it be consumed with cynicism and a lot of other
paralyzing forces, but I still have hope for that place. I think it's, maybe it's the
your arm kind of tradition hope that through momentum, the strong reemerges. So like, I
have hope for New York. I think New York will continue like not maybe on a scale of years,
but a scale of decades, it'd be ups and downs where it reemerges as a cultural center. I just
can't imagine a place like New York is like Paris. There's going to be long stretches of time
where it leads the world.
But Paris has not been a cultural hub for a very long time.
Yeah. Yeah. You know, the days of Matisse and Picasso and Gertrude Stein are long gone.
It's still, it still is a hub. Even London.
Isn't London, you know, you're not the-
But what is then? London is still London. Paris is still Paris. It's just not the Paris of old.
Right.
It's not London of old. London is still a place. It's a tech hub. It's a fashion hub. It's a
music hub. I mean, it's still a pretty strong hub.
Yeah, but not like during the Beatles era.
Right.
It's not like, or during the Sex Pistols era.
But that's, it could be just us romanticizing the past because what is a hub then?
No, it's not romanticizing the past because a hub is the place where everyone on earth or
eyes are on you. So in the late 60s, the British, in the mid 60s, you see the British invasion,
you know, the kinks and all these other bands coming out of Great Britain,
like they were the innovators. This was the place that was happening.
Well, in that sense, like-
And Brooklyn, you know, 15 years ago.
But I guess maybe in that sense, in the 21st century, geographical hubs are becoming a thing
of the past. So like, you can be a hub in the digital space now. So like, it's not, maybe you'll
never have.
I don't think, I think there will always be, I mean, what I'm saying, digital space makes it
easier for, let's suppose, Cleveland to be a hub. Because all you need like 10 people who
happen to live in Cleveland or, you know, Akron was a hub, a minor hub.
All it takes is 10 to 50 people to create a, yeah, and maybe even less, maybe just two or three
or four people.
I mean, there's been no shortage of articles talking about Austin and what's happening here.
And I know some of Joe's plans and you and I and Blair and all these other people that we know,
buddy, Andrew Heaton moved here. He's just one of the best people I know. It's just,
I'm really, really excited.
Can I ask you some weird thing about friendship?
Of course.
Because you mentioned Sam, he's Mr. Harris to you.
Didn't that bother you how he went after Joe?
He's like, oh, in case you guys have brain damage from watching Rogan's last episode,
like watch, here's the answer.
Oh, like digs like that.
Yeah, yeah, I didn't like that.
I didn't like that either. I think Sam doesn't like it either about himself.
Okay.
He regrets those things.
Because it's very easy to say from his perspective,
look, this isn't the full set.
Rogan didn't show you the full set of story.
Here's the other side of the story.
Please watch this and be informed.
That's a very reasonable thing to say.
Yeah, I don't quite understand this.
So they do this about each other now.
I'll put three people on the table, which is Joe Rogan, Sam Harris and Brett Weinstein.
And they have a way of talking like the other person is creating a lot of harm.
Like publicly would say things like that.
And I understand there's emotion in it, but like, these are human beings that are friends of yours.
But I'll go the other way.
Let's suppose it is true that Joe's doing a lot of harm spreading misinformation.
Being sarcastic isn't going to be persuasive.
Whereas if you're like, he's wrong, here's the facts or here's being informed that to me,
but then I'm not Sam Harris.
I'm not, he's got a bigger audience than me, so maybe he's the one who's right now wrong.
No, he's, well, he's just human.
Okay, well, I can relate.
Well, have you seen your Twitter lately?
I mean, you get very, you have a lot of fun on Twitter.
I feel like Twitter lets...
I've never done that with someone I'm friends with.
I never would.
Okay, let's put that on record.
It is on record.
Because if there's an issue with you, I'm getting you on the phone.
Yeah.
Good.
Because then I'm not backing you into a corner publicly, it doesn't make any sense strategically.
Yeah, and actually, Brett Weinstein tweeted something, sort of criticizing something I
didn't already forgot what, but he texted me first saying, like, is it okay if I tweet this?
Yeah.
And I said, yep, like I was excited.
Yeah.
But I think there's some level of just be compassionate privately and be compassionate
publicly, like both.
Or be civil.
Civil.
Civil.
For some reason, I don't like the word civility because it's like polite.
Like, it's...
Or be cordial.
Is that better?
No, what I mean is like...
It seems phony to you?
It seems phony.
Like you should radiate love in whatever way.
So even if you're rough with the other person, you should still show like respect and love
for that person.
And that gets back to the Russian rooms where they're yelling at each other,
but they're still loving underneath it.
I mean, the question I want to ask for you is, I think you and I have a different view
on some things.
Okay.
We have a different approach to things, just on the surface level, but also a different
view on some things.
Like, I have a lot of hope for institutions.
I have...
So maybe it's a gut instinct.
Like your gut instinct is like centers of power or like burn them down first and then
let's figure it out.
Sure.
Well, maybe that's a funny, rough way of saying it.
No, I think that's about right.
And then for me, it's like, no, let's understand the institution and slowly...
Revolutions from within versus revolutions from without.
And, but like we can have those disagreements.
And there may be times when those disagreements will be...
I could see in the future, I could see I'll be attacked by my friend Michael Malis,
which I very look forward to it.
No, not attacked, but you know what I mean.
On the surface level, in the idea space.
Anyway, because you're shaking your head now, you won't.
I guess maybe this also goes to Sam Harrison, Joe Rogan.
I would love to be able to disagree, disagree in big ways on important things and still be
close friends.
And I don't understand why those should be contradictions.
Yeah.
And that's the tension.
That's been the most heartbreaking thing to me about Sam and Brett and Joe.
Well, in the case of Brett, it's me, I don't know Brett.
So I'm just like looking as a somebody who just enjoys having these voices out there.
And it seems like COVID just brought out the worst than some many folks.
And it just feels like it's so sad to me to see their friendship somewhat deteriorating.
Or maybe I'm just being a...
No, it seems clear that it's deteriorated enormously.
Sad, but that's the case.
Yeah, so I've had people come at me because I'm friends with you.
And they were like, oh, Lex authored some paper about masks.
I don't even know what the hell they're referring to.
I don't care.
I always say and mean, I don't care whether someone agrees with me.
I care how they treat me.
And it goes the other way because I'll have a lot of people on Twitter who are like,
oh, I'm on your team and blah, blah, blah.
I'm like, I don't know you.
You're not my team.
And just because you happen to agree with me, it's of no value to me.
Like, I don't know you and I'm interested in knowing you.
Many of my friends, I don't know what their politics are.
I don't care.
Like, I care how we hang out.
We have a good time.
We watch dumb movies, watch YouTube, go to the store, whatever.
I don't know what your politics are.
I don't care what your politics are.
Chris Williamson, who, you know, he's just here.
He's going to be moving to Austin.
I only learned what his politics are unless we chat like almost every day
because he took the world's smallest political quiz.
And he figured out what his answers were.
I had no idea where he's...
He's a communist.
He's a well-obvious, yeah.
Yeah, Marxist.
I mean, let's be honest, yeah.
Let's be honest.
So, like stuff like that, like it never...
And people, I think because politics is often so tribal, especially now,
they'll be like, oh, I could never be friends with someone who voted for X.
Really?
What if they're like grandma worked in that campaign?
What if, you know, you can't think of one steelman argument why this would happen,
but if they just want to spite their boss.
Yes. So, I don't like that approach at all.
It makes no sense to me.
We could still have debates.
I mean, like, I would still like to have those conversations and still have disagreements.
Like, I disagree with Joe on COVID a lot on a bunch of different things.
Very kind of...
But it's never like...
It's not tense at all.
It's just...
It's a...
It doesn't have that arrogance that seems...
A lot of COVID conversation seems to have, like talking down to people from both directions.
So, I would love to have those because I love the debate.
I love debates.
It takes a lot to get me triggered.
And when the Babylon Bee were interviewing Elon and he had this thing, he goes,
well, I don't know anyone who wants to abolish the FDA and the FAA and I'm standing there.
And I'm shaking and the guys look at me and they're like, oh, we actually have an anarchist here.
And the example he used was, you know, look, if you're playing football,
you're going to have a referee there.
You want the referee.
You know what?
But the referee started playing the game is such a good thing.
And I'm sitting there like, the referee doesn't work for the state.
The referee is a private individual working for this organization.
And there's no reason at all that food quality, which is something crucially important,
has to be or can only be delivered through the state and a government monopoly.
That's actually really interesting.
Just to link on that, just a little bit, with the vaccine and stuff like that,
with the antiviral drugs, the FDA, so like, who should be the referee?
Right.
Do you have an idea?
Like, what's the best referee for the vaccine?
It's just the market.
Just let people decide.
This is tricky.
Because the thing that I have not been following COVID as closely as Joe and Sam,
as Mr. Harris, excuse me, and Mr. Musk, the point is, when anything like this is developing,
there's going to be a lot of misinformation out there, even from the scientists,
because it's a dynamic process.
They don't know what they're dealing with.
A lot of it has to be speculative.
They don't know long-term effects because it hasn't been around for a long time.
So, I think it is very dangerous when Joe was mocked for taking a laundry list of things
under his doctor's advice, and they kind of latched on to the ivermectin,
and then they specifically said it was horse-paste, although it's veterinary medicine,
so why didn't they say dog-paste or cat-paste?
It's like, well, he's not dead.
So, and he's also taking drugs which are used in other circumstances, the very least maybe
they're pointless, but if the drug is being allowed for pharmaceutical reasons,
the odds are quite low that they're going to have deleterious side effects in general.
So, I think this kind of insistence that there has to be one officially approved outcome
that we're all doing, that is kind of dangerous thinking.
In general.
By the way, I don't know if you saw, I got a chance to talk to the Pfizer CEO,
and I had helped collecting questions because I got a lot of questions,
and people put at the top a question from Michael Malus.
Oh, really?
No, the ask him what he likes best about me.
Oh, what does he like best?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, I actually had that in my list of questions I was going to ask him,
and my plan was I'll ask him, Michael Malus wants to know what you like best about him,
and then my guess was he'd be like, who?
And I'd be like, exactly, and then go on to the next.
But I thought like, how it was such a tense conversation that I thought there would be no.
Of course, room for levity.
The question I would ask him is, can you acknowledge
that there is an enormous incentive for your company to force everyone in America or everyone
on earth to be a consumer of your product?
Yeah.
That's my question.
So, I dance around that question quite a lot, like I phrased it differently,
which is a conflict of interest and attention between making a lot of money and actually helping
people.
And I mean, I've asked a lot of really heavy questions in that,
and I still, and a lot of people wrote to me with support saying like,
that was a really great conversation.
And a lot of people wrote saying that, I mean, saying that it was just too soft.
And I don't know, I think about that a lot.
Like, how do you have that conversation?
I don't think it was too soft.
And actually just for the record, I want to say that they didn't see any of the questions I'm asking.
They didn't see the final interview.
I can ask anything I want.
And so, any questions that I asked and failed to ask is my own shortcomings.
Also, not being a coward, I was afraid of nothing.
Like, what do I have to gain or lose exactly?
Well, you have something to lose because if you're, I do only do softballs.
Because if I'm going to make it difficult for someone to come to my show, a lot of people
will be disincentivized to do the show.
Because like, well, I don't need this.
I see.
Oh yeah, I wasn't thinking like that.
But I was, I don't like to, what I think some fraction of folks wanted me to do is to
yell at a person, like, criticize them.
Not even ask questions, essentially.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
How dare you?
Yeah.
But to me, my goal, my hope is with these conversations is not just to do
how great you are, all that kind of stuff, is to bring out some deeper truths.
Like, the beautiful things is when you can together realize some truth, like you mentioned,
that, you know, the incentive for everyone to take the vaccine is obviously high
for the maker of a vaccine.
Yeah.
Right.
And for them to arrive at that truth together, like, that is a really difficult
truth to operate under.
Like, for example, I had a whole exchange with him about, this is Jordan Peterson asked
this question.
I used that as a kind of springboard, which is the kind of open doors between the FDA,
the CDC, and Pfizer, right?
Like some people work at Pfizer and then go to work at the FDA and then vice versa.
And I brought up, this is my safe space, maybe yours too, just going back to the Soviet Union
to look at the lessons of human nature and corruption.
Yeah.
I said, like, this, there's two things.
This looks bad and two, this naturally leads to corruption.
And I pushed this with several questions, but polite and respectful.
And he ultimately said, you know, there's rules.
We, there's the rule of law and there's very strict rules about this and we have to follow
those rules.
Otherwise, you get punished severely.
And so, like, his response is, like, people reacted to them as like, okay, that's the
CEO doing the political, but there's also truth to what he's saying, that one of the
beautiful things about America is that the, you can criticize the rule of law currently,
but it still is better than in the Soviet Union where people bribed each other.
But still, he made it seem like there's no corruption.
People often ask me why I describe myself as an anarchist and not a narco-capitalist,
because they think my views are more in line with that school of anarchism.
And one of the other reasons you just gave me a good one is that if I am talking to someone
who's a major CEO, I am, I have that hardcore left anarchist view that this person is, if
not the devil, certainly going to be sinister at the very least.
And if you can't say, listen, this happens inevitably with elites, it's, you know, it
happens in universities, it happens in the food industry.
There's only so many people at the top of these things.
There's the field is small and everyone's going to know each other, which is kind of,
you know, just the dynamics of any market.
That would kind of be more reasonable and just say it's easy to caricature us because
you're not in the boardroom, but we're not, you know, we are trying to produce a product
that people want.
So unlike the people who criticize me, I was bothered by, I wasn't bothered by most things,
but I was bothered by the fact that he didn't show more worry about the corrupting nature
of money and power.
Like he should, if you say that there's no corruption, you should show that because we
constantly worry about it, not because like, look, there's rules and which are enforced
by you.
Yeah, exactly.
So like, I think the only way to avoid force for time, the corrupting force of power is
to freak out about it, nonstop.
But the impression I always get from people like him, and I haven't seen the interview
and I won't be watching it, is they're genuinely convinced that they're good guys, yeah.
And if you're the good guy, sure, corruption is a concern theoretically, but I know this
guy at the FDA, I know this senator, sure we disagree, sure they do some things I don't
like, but in terms of corrupt, they're not getting briefcases full of money.
They're not going to sell a vaccine that, you know, kills people in Georgia.
So yeah, it's a concern theoretically, but this is 21st century, the thought process
I think writes itself.
I think, yeah, having the humility, I do this all the time to maybe to a destructive level,
thinking that I might be doing bad for the world, I might be wrong, I might be that kind
of thinking is very, you should do at least some of that, not to a point being paralyzed,
but a little bit.
You're actually in the right mindset for me to ask you then for advice.
Okay.
You're in this compassionate, thoughtful mood.
I like it.
I like the compassionate, thoughtful Michael.
So for future conversations like that, so the person that offered a conversation that
at first I avoided, but I might return to is Anthony Fauci.
So there's Anthony Fauci, but then there's also Trump and Biden things, people like that.
Like if you add them on your show or just giving me advice on how to talk to them, what
do you think is the right way to talk to them?
And forget about future guests, but like to get at something new, you know, together.
Get at something, not for views or likes or clicks or any of that, but discover something
new through the mode of conversation.
Well, like let's take those one at a time.
So if I had a stalk in a Trump, I told Ruben to ask Trump this and he didn't.
What I wanted to know is, what's the look on your face when you're sending these tweets?
Right?
Because I imagine you're on the toilet with this phone.
Yeah.
Right?
Are you cracking yourself up?
Are you a police stoic?
Are you kind of that Trump little smirky does?
So when you get someone to open up about their emotion, about some of their passion, about
I think that breaks down some barriers and creates a bond, yeah.
But Ruben wouldn't be, that's not his style.
Like that's a great question for you to ask.
Well, I told him to say Michael Malasette.
For Biden, that would be a tough one because Biden gets, doesn't get enough credit for
what a good politician he is.
There was this moment people can see on YouTube where Biden is addressing a room full of people
and he had someone there and he goes, can you, why don't you stand up so everyone can
give you a hand?
And the guy was in a wheelchair and Biden's like, oh, and like, but instantly he goes,
you know what, we're all going to stand up for you and he made everyone get up and applaud
the guy.
Yeah.
I'm like, that's quick.
Yeah.
Like yeah, you made a fool of yourself.
So he is a glad hander.
At least he's more of a schmoozer than Trump was.
Like Trump made the point that he knows all the good people, but Biden knows how to shake
hands.
Well, I think with both, I'm sorry to interrupt, with both Trump and Biden, like you mentioned
earlier, to me at least their family is fascinating.
The dynamic, as a family man, as a father, as a, I think that Biden won't acknowledge
his illegitimate grandkid is a problem for me.
But at the same time, I can see why he thinks it's off limits to ask.
So that's the thing when you're dealing with people that powerful, they're not used to
having to answer questions, which might be perfectly nice, but would cause them to freak
the hell out.
That's the tricky thing of talking to people, as you know, like some, some topics are off
limit, not in that they draw lines, but they just shut down when you ask them.
Trust me, I think I talked to Elon three times now.
You better believe I brought up love.
And how far do you think that got?
You could just...
Zero.
That's one.
We did exactly the kind of robot back and forth, you know, just like just shut down.
So yeah, I worry about that with personal, but those, that's the thing that makes it
fascinating with those two, because he had, with Hunter and losing his son, like the dynamic
of the complexities of all that, like just having, you know, children fuck up in the
way children do, and then with Trump, the interesting dynamic with his very different
kids and all kind of interesting in different ways and maintaining connection with all of
them and also letting them flourish individually is fascinating to me.
Well, I'd also want to ask Trump if he can name all the presidents in order, which there's
no way he can.
Yeah.
But I'd also want to know...
All the pre...
Do you think he knows who the second president of the United States is?
Yes.
Okay.
John Adams, he knows.
I think when it gets between Ulysses S. Grant and McKinley, that's when we all screw up.
That window, it's tough.
Yeah.
I'm sure that's the one window where he, I mean, he's not...
He's going to be able to get back to FDR.
No question.
Okay.
Well, I have to...
My sense was, with Donald Trump, and this is not, I would say criticism, is he doesn't
have a depth of knowledge or more importantly, curiosity about history.
Yeah.
But if you're old enough, you're going to at least remember the presidents in your lifetime.
In your lifetime.
Yeah.
So that's what I'm saying.
You'll get a certain president to FDR pretty easily.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Sure.
I thought you meant FDR from the other direction.
No, no.
Yeah, currently.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But yeah, from a political perspective, like having a conversation about politics with
those two, there is interesting topics, interaction between Donald Trump and Putin.
Not the interaction, like not the stupid journalistic stuff, but it's clear to me that he is a student
of power.
Oh, for sure.
Yeah.
And like he enjoys the game of power.
Yeah.
And so it's interesting because to me, the reason he admires Putin is it's another player
in the game of power.
And I think why so many people hate him, Trump, is that he demonstrated to a lot of Americans
how much of a con job most of politics is and how people just say what they need to do.
But behind closed doors, these people are buffoons and he exposed them as that.
I think Biden would be a tougher interviewer than Trump because I feel like Biden is more
slippery in many ways.
He's much more of a consummate politician.
He's been in the Senate since the early 70s, since he was like 30 or 35, whatever it was.
So he'd have his little kind of pat answers.
There was Larry King, who was certainly a softball interviewer, and I don't begrudge
him that at all.
He was very, very vividly and it was like, I think it was the 2008 cycle.
He asked Hillary, why do so many people hate you?
Why do you think so many people hate you?
And she just goes like, oh, well, I take tough stances on the, and he cut her off.
He goes, other people have taken those stances.
Why they hate you?
And she didn't really, I was really impressed with him that he didn't let her off the hook.
That to me is great.
But some people say that's still too softball because you, like they would want him to start
listing, I don't know, droning, like all the, all the things that Hillary Clinton is criticized
for.
Yeah, but then what she, she's done this many times.
She's very good at this.
She'll be like, look, I've addressed all these in the past.
If you want to start rehashing Republican talking points, you can go look up my interviews.
Yeah, I think it's kind of productive.
So what about more prescient for me?
I can't believe I'm walking through this fire for no good reason whatsoever, but Anthony
Fauci.
Yeah, let me tell you why I care about Anthony Fauci because I care a lot about science in
the way science is viewed in society.
And not to put it at the, at the feet of this one person, but I, him and certain members
of the scientific community that was responsible for managing the response to COVID, I think
are somewhat or entirely responsible for a significant decrease in trust in science.
Yes, no question.
In the past couple of years.
There was a poll that just came out this week that said the number is just collapsed.
And if you don't blame him for it, I personally is blame him for not improving the problem.
And so there's definitely would be a harsh conversation there to be had.
And I think I want to have it, but how do you do it?
It's tough.
Yeah.
Because, you know, again, politicians, this political answers, if they get too frustrated
too quickly, they will not explore these difficult things with you.
They'll just shut down.
But then if you say too many nice things, because I should also say Anthony Fauci is
an incredible career, like there's several hours worth of conversation to be had about
how amazing of a person he is.
Well, I would also be curious about the AIDS stuff, because that's something it's criticized
about.
And I wouldn't come out aggressively.
I would say, let's set the record straight.
This is some of the criticism you get, blah, blah, blah.
You roll in the AIDS crisis.
Let's talk about this.
And this is something that is important part of American history.
There was a pandemic, but it was localized to certain populations.
And that population at the first, at least, was pretty much told goodbye and good luck.
You're going to have to deal with this.
So how did you deal with that?
I mean, were you scared of getting AIDS, so on and so forth?
But also there was that comment when, and correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not a Fauci expert,
when he basically they told people not to wear masks or they lied about it to some extent
because they said then people are going to run out of them or something like that.
And they admitted they were being inaccurate.
I would nail him on that.
I'm like, let's address this.
Were you being dishonest?
Is there sometimes when it's important to be dishonest in service of whatever?
Also I would ask him how as someone who's not a politician, whether his level of fame
and adulation has gotten to his head.
How do you have a perspective and how does it feel when a sitting senator tells you that
you should be imprisoned?
Do you think Ted Cruz means it or do you think Ted Cruz is just playing to his base?
Yeah, I like the fame one.
I would love to sneak up.
I mean, that's got question applies to you too.
The question applies to me.
When you start getting more fame or money or power, are you aware of how that changed
you and explore that?
How has that changed you?
In the privacy of your mind, Michael Malis, how did you change now that you've gotten
more attention, let's say?
Or even the success of the book?
Take yourself back to the, you talk about the early 20s, the mid-20s person.
How are you different from that person?
Are you the same person or are you totally different?
What's an interesting thought, is Putin the same person in 2020 as he was in 2010 and
then in 2000?
It's a non-trivial, almost like...
And then the other thing with Fauci is this is the dynamic system.
Like on the one hand, he's going to want to say we got it right every time, right?
But then how is that even possible when you're dealing with an evolving, unknown dynamic situation?
When did you guys get it wrong?
That result in lives lost, do you feel guilty about that?
I mean, the big problem with the masks, the changing of mind on the mask is the arrogance
in how it was communicated.
Right.
To me, a lot of this boils down to how things are communicated.
It's like, it's obvious that you need to change your mind when you get new information.
Or sometimes, yeah, you take policies that are like, we know the truth, but we're going
to lie for a particular reason, like you have good intentions, but if you're not able to
communicate that later, like we made a mistake.
Or even ask him, can you understand how a rational person might choose not to get vaccinated?
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
And if he can't steel man that, then that's the situation.
That's a good test.
And I've tried, and some people succeed and some people fail is they really need to really
steel man the other, understand that somebody should would be hesitant about taking the
vaccine.
Yeah.
It's a giant mess, man.
This podcasting, it's just a fun little conversation, but it also has a responsibility.
I don't know.
I don't know how Joe does it.
I don't think Joe cares as much as you do.
It's more fun for him in a sense, and he's less concerned about the, I mean, he's not
unconcerned with the cultural impact, but for him, it's just more growing out.
Yeah.
Like he doesn't do as much prep.
He doesn't come in with three pages of single space to, you know, questions.
Yeah.
And that's why he's talking to Blair White for 10 minutes about whether sharks lay eggs
without knowing.
You're the one triggered person.
Maybe he trolled the troll.
Well, it worked.
Yeah, he did.
The sharks lay eggs.
I'd like to get an updated 2021 version of Michael Malis giving advice to young people.
Okay.
So there's, God forbid, high school students, college students listening to you and looking
to you for advice.
What advice would you give them about career and about life, how to live a life that you
can be proud of?
This happens a lot because I have my locals community, malis.locals.com, and there's a
lot of young people in there.
So that's a great place.
I'll give them a meta piece of advice.
Don't ask your friends for advice because you're an idiot at your age and they're all
idiots and they don't want to seem like idiots.
So they're just going to give you advice.
They pulled it from the TV and no one knows what you're talking about and it's just going
to be counterintuitive.
So seek out advice from people who you seek to emulate and ask them for advice.
If you can't get a hold of them, figure out a way to get a hold of them, incentivize them
in some way.
You'd be surprised how many people are responsive on Twitter or in social media if you just ask
them a basic life question because then they can quote, tweet, and answer to a whole population.
So that would be one mechanism.
It's also very hard at that age to realize your parents might not be all that bright and
they might not be all that good people.
So that's a hard one at that age to kind of wrap your head around just because they love
you doesn't mean they understand you and that's okay.
That's okay.
We like everybody.
Shit, your Trump is pretty good too.
I'd like your Trump to talk to Elon to have a conversation.
Well, Mr. President, you know, look, some things you did, like some, not so much, but
you know, for the most part, I think they're kind of a good thing.
What are you talking about?
Hey guys, what are we talking about?
No, I fucked up the legs anyway.
So those would be two pieces, the other piece of advice I would say is join a gym or have
some kind of quantifiable daily improvement to keep you sane.
So the reason I always say weightlifting and it could be running, it could be jump rope,
I don't care what it is, because if you have those numbers moving in the positive direction,
psychologically, if you're dealing with depression or anxiety, it's concrete proof to shut your
brain up, because your brain knows how to talk to you.
Your brain is off on your enemy and I'll say exactly the right thing to undermine you.
So that's an issue.
Be I just, this works for me, maybe it weren't for most people.
I'm very high on the openness metric.
Try new experiences, new things, try things you don't like.
It's okay to have a bad experience, you've learned something.
So go to a restaurant of a cuisine you wouldn't like or hadn't heard of, read a book that's
popular but you have no interest in.
Read a lot.
For example, I didn't know anything about the election, what was it, 1892 when there
was like a split between the electors.
Read a book about it.
Oh, I don't know anything.
You know, I don't know anything really about Malcolm X.
Read a book about him.
You'll be amazed how much more full you become as a person.
Do you see value in writing also, like writing down your ideas?
No, I think there's very little value in that.
I'm not joking.
So reading is where the biggest value comes from.
You're probably not going to revisit what you've written down.
But the act of writing, you don't see it solidify somehow thoughts in your mind.
Not for me.
No, it doesn't for you.
Like a tweet will because then I have to have it narrowed down into like a phrase.
Oh, the responsibility of there being an audience.
No, I just meant in terms of I've got 280 characters.
So instead of having a re-andering thought, I have to codify it in something that's catchy
and short.
That's a good, useful mental exercise.
What face do you make when you tweet?
I wouldn't know.
I don't know.
That's a good point.
Is it on the toilet?
How much?
What percentage is on the toilet?
Very little.
On the toilets, I usually more reading.
Okay.
So even though my tweets are all literally shit, there are a few of them are on the toilet.
They're on a throne.
That's some advice.
Don't compare yourself to other people.
That's a really dangerous one.
All my friends are married.
I should have a kid by now.
Should, there's an expression in recovery, stop shitting yourself.
But it's should, should, should.
It's stupid.
I also, and this could be my hoarder brain, I surround my house with talismans of joy.
So if you have an accomplishment, like when I did Rogan once, I bought with the sock store
and I bought these orange socks with black cherries on them.
And now whenever I wore that socks, those socks, I'm like, oh.
This is cause I was on Rogan.
That was kind of a big deal.
So if you have these little things throughout your house, it's, it was good mental fuel.
Even like, like a toy.
Remember when I was a kid?
Oh, you know what?
This little moments that inspire happiness, I think are visually very useful.
So that's another one.
And I, by the way, have the, that the watch and that because we're talking about 2021,
I was really the guy in the lecture hall giving you a pat in the back, Joe gave me the, the
watch was, it has life changing for me.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It doesn't even, it didn't, the fact that it was on a podcast or whatever, doesn't matter.
Learn how to form boundaries.
That's probably the biggest, that's going to be number one on my list.
Can you explain?
Because you're going to have people around you who feel the need that they're entitled
to your time, who feel the need to criticize you and they're not coming from a good place.
So it's very good for you to be like, I'm not interested in talking about this anymore
right now.
Yeah.
Even if it's your parents.
Even if it's your, especially if it's your parents.
Like I need my space right now, you're entitled to your space, you're entitled to your time.
No one owes you, you don't owe anyone a response.
If someone has a question, you owe them an answer, especially if they're not coming at
you in good faith or they're coming in hostile way.
That's a big one.
It's hard to learn at that age and be valuable to those who are around you.
Be someone who people are happy to see and if things are bad, like you're the one that
they can rely on.
Like I was just a little bit under the weather and I thought to myself, you know what, if
things got really bad, I'll call Blair and she would take care of me and that kind of
was very reassuring.
And you can always call me if you have your stuff lifted in an urgent matter.
Because of the robots?
No, just me.
It's just kind of like, that's those things that can help with or you're actually literally
bleeding.
Not a good caretaker.
I can save you though.
I can murder.
If you need somebody murdered.
Murdered.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Wait, what advice would you have to kids that age?
You're a lot younger than you think you are.
That's the other one.
Yeah.
There's time.
I know.
It's impossible to understand when you're 26 that your 40s are better than your 30s because
like, okay, old man, that's all cope.
I promise you it is.
Yeah.
I think he said so many beautiful things.
I would say another version of the openness, I'll say take big risks when you're young.
Yeah.
If you fail, who cares, you're sleeping in a soup, it's not in a food town, who cares.
And take them often.
Yeah.
Also, this is more a little personal to me.
I get pushed back on this, but I think take big risks and work really hard at whatever
you do.
I think you just have to give yourself to a thing.
It doesn't have to be in terms of time, but really give everything.
So it's not like I'm going to try doing this, I'll try, I'll try.
Try with all of your heart, like really commit yourself.
That doesn't mean necessarily hours, that doesn't mean, but like if you fail at doing
a thing that you commit to, it should hurt.
So like when I competed in Jiu Jitsu or you do like sports and so on, don't just say I'm
going to have fun out there and so on, no, try to win because then if you don't, it hurts
and you learn from that.
And then throughout, I think this is the goodness thing is be kind.
It's like, some of it is also skill, allowing yourself to be kind.
I found myself earlier in life, I still do this.
I find like when I hang out with people, people are often like cynical and negative.
And yeah, I try to avoid those people, no, but like they have, I think everybody falls
into that and sometimes it's the party norm thing.
There's a temptation to me to kind of fit in by being more negative than I'm comfortable
being and so resist the pressure, I think especially when you're younger, it's not cool
to care.
The thing that drives, when you're young, if you are a fan of a band, a writer, a podcast
or an actor and people roll their eyes at you, watch out, those people are dangerous.
You should have, if you love Avril Lavigne with her terrible music and she gives you
joy and people crap on you, they're wrong and you're right.
So hold on to those things that make you happy.
And if people want to take that away from you or how can you like that, those people
are not your friends.
Why do you have to go make life so complicated?
She's my favorite musician of all time, Jim Hendrick's second ever living first.
Thank you for almost bringing a deer to my eye.
You mentioned the should-os in terms of love and you should have kids by now.
I apologize if it's a personal one, but I think at least I have this thought and not
from society, but from myself, like I want to get married, I want to have kids.
Do you feel the pressure of that?
Do you want to have kids?
I just don't want to have kids and I do want to get married.
This was an issue that I had to kind of work out earlier this year in terms of the possibility
of having kids because I was in a relationship with someone who would have been in many ways
literally a perfect mom.
So I did my due diligence and I actually sat down with friends of mine who had kids and
I say, give me the downside.
You did the pros and the cons.
Well, the pros I knew.
The pros for kids are very, I love kids.
I was just with Frank Fleming, he writes for the Babylon Bee and he had his four kids
and his youngest son has Down syndrome, was just adorable, Winchester was so cute.
And I always get along with kids very, like I remember very vividly what it was like to
be a kid, especially a precocious kid, and I remember how much it bothered me when my
parents' friends wouldn't give me attention.
So I always make it a point to acknowledge kids, to talk to them and they're very grateful
and it's just really fun, especially the people who I'm friends with, their kids are probably
going to be pretty cool.
They're not going to be annoying and kind of ugly and overweight.
So I love you got that in there.
Okay, good.
Sorry, I'll go.
But the cons, the negatives, what was the conversation like about that?
Well, my sister has two kids, my nephews who I absolutely adore, whatever their names are.
And she was saying certain things, it's like if I had kids, my kids are in my top priority.
Like it's not even a question.
And I feel like the work I'm doing, and this sounds pompous but it's true, is A, valuable
and important but I'm also the only one doing it.
So this is a big cost and so it's like it would be a major lifestyle readjustment.
And I'm at the point where I'm kind of selfish enough that I wouldn't want to do that and
also would have to do with the right woman.
You're making a commitment and since they're all crazy, you have to find one where you
can handle the crazy.
All women are crazy?
Yeah.
They're one and a half's in a binary world.
Oh boy.
Yeah.
It's not comfortable for me.
Yes, sir.
But do you feel the pressure and thinking of that?
How much does that weigh on your heart?
So Elon has kids, I feel like I love everything and I love stuff I do.
I love the robot over there.
Just working out with robots and but I do feel the pressure of like, almost like when
there's amazing cuisines you never tried or something like that, like go out there and
try it.
Like you need to put in the work and I don't know, like life will run away from you, slip
through your fingers before you truly get to experience this other kind of love which
is like long-term love for another human being which is like marriage and then love
for kids.
Yeah.
And it almost makes me sad like not getting to experience that, you know, because I'm
also really scared of I've seen so many bad stories on the partner side, like being with
the wrong person.
Right.
And that to me is, you know, I'm not worried I have kids all day.
In fact, I could probably just have kids without the partner.
Kids I think are incredible with the like the partner, like a wife, it seems like she could
then have the negative consequences for like you as a writer on your productivity and your
mental ability to flourish or being a joy to others to all those kinds of things.
You know what?
That's that couldn't happen because every relationship I've had, they've been very
me, beyond supportive, like they'd rather take an hour and do your work than spend time
with me like I believe in what you're doing.
So I couldn't even casually date someone who didn't believe that.
So that's energizing.
Yes.
But over time, you never know like how that evolves and all those kinds of things.
And for me, I think we're a little bit different.
I mean, that has to do with the engineering thing.
I just have to pull insane hours.
Yeah.
I don't.
So like I worked like two hours a day.
And like creatives do like you, you can only work a couple of hours honestly to be, to
be productive.
And the rest of the time, not, I have to do a lot of menial labor like, and so there
there's legit tension on the time and attention, all those kinds of things.
I don't know.
Do you think about this stuff a lot or do you just love life and do cool stuff and whatever
happens, happens?
I have been so blessed for so long now that I'm at the point where I don't think about
it.
And I'm like, you know, just like miracles happen every day, so just be open to it.
You think about your death, mortality?
Yes.
Fear?
What do you feel about it?
I'm just worried.
I want to take as many people out with me as possible.
So suitcase nuke.
What's the best way?
Nuke, suitcase nuke.
I'm thinking.
Yeah.
No, I do think.
That would be, that would be kind of like ironic as my other favorite.
I think about my legacy.
And that's why my books are so important to me.
So is it, do you think of it as a kind of immortality?
It is though.
Like that's who you are.
Is those books?
Well, it's not who I am.
My legacy certainly is.
What do you hope your legacy is?
That I encouraged people to be hopeful and that I taught them how to be free.
And you know, my favorite, I think the best show of all time was Dallas, which often gets,
it was like an 80s soap opera and people conflate it with dynasty and they think it's trashy
and it was very Shakespearean because all the characters are motivated by different
values and the writing is just masterful and the acting is masterful.
And I'm not going to spoil anything.
One season ended with one of the characters on their deathbed in the hospital and the
whole cast is there and the amount of acting talent in that room is just phenomenal.
And as the characters dying, they look around and they go, like, please be kind to one another,
be a family.
And they're yelling at this character, don't you dare die on me, you know, and you can
see the actors, you know, because they're losing their castmate who they've had from
the beginning.
And it would have been a perfect ending to the show, but obviously it's a cash cow,
they got to keep milking it.
And I think that like kindness and tenderness, and this is Michael Malis talking, it's,
there's a lot of people who want to make it that if you are kind or tender, you're going
to have consequences, bad consequences.
And I think it's important for me at least to create a space in my life that if someone
is going to be nice or friendly or kind that they're not going to have to feel stupid or
bad about it.
It's, we have such a, it's such a disincentive, these set of structures so different, like
if you want to be cynical and sneering, like round of applause, but if someone says, oh,
this is great, like, okay, simp, it's, it's really bad.
Well, I think you do just this, you do this today, you do this in our friendship and you
can do it for a very large number of people's teach them how to be, how to have hope and
teach them how to be free.
So, Tavaresh.
Snobam Godam.
Snobam Godam.
Thank you so much for talking to me.
Thank you so much for being an inspiration.
I love you, brother.
I love you.
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Michael Malis.
To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.
And now, let me leave you with some words from Albert Camus.
Don't walk in front of me.
I may not follow.
Don't walk behind me.
I may not lead.
Walk beside me.
Just be my friend.
Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.