The following is a conversation with Yanis Papas, a comedian who co-hosted the podcast
History Hyenas that I came across when I was researching the battle of Crete from World War Two.
He and his co-hosts were hilarious in their rants about history and about life. The chemistry
they have is probably the best of any co-hosted comedy podcast or even podcast in general
that I've ever heard. As of a few weeks ago, unfortunately, History Hyenas is no more,
at least for now, because all good things must come to an end. But Yanis hosts a new podcast
called Long Days with Yanis Papas, plus he has a comedy special on YouTube for free.
Quick mention of our sponsors, Wine Access, Blinkist, Magic Spoon, and Indeed. Check them out
in the description to support the podcast. As a side note, let me say that some of you
have noticed that I have not spoken with too many computer scientists, physicists, biologists,
or engineers recently. The reason has to do mostly with the risk aversion of many of these folks
in the time of COVID, especially as they get closer to taking the vaccine. I'm tested several times
a week and still some people are just more willing than others to have an in-person conversation in
these times. I only do these podcasts in person because I look for the possibility of a genuine
human connection. I'm willing to sacrifice a lot for that. Maybe it's silly, but I look for the
magic that Charles Bukowski writes about in this poem, Nirvana, the magic that is somehow in the air
on those rare occasions when two people meet, talk, and you notice that while on the surface
you may be worlds apart, you're still somehow woven from the same fabric. I've had that with
many guests. Jim Keller comes to mind, but many others as well. I'm an AI person. Machine learning,
robotics, computer science is my passion. Trust me, I can't wait to be having more technical
conversations again, but I will also continue to mix in comedians, musicians, historians, and of
course, wise all-seeing sages like Yannis Papas and Tim Dillon just to keep it as Tim likes to say
fun. This is the Lex Friedman podcast, and here is my conversation with Yannis Papas.
You've co-hosted until recently an amazing history comedy podcast called The History Hyenas,
so you're a bit of a student of history? Yeah, an F student of history.
F student. Okay, I thought it was more like a D minus. D minus, yeah. Okay. Still got to repeat
the grade if you get all D minuses. I actually had a 0.67 GPA average my freshman year and I had to
do it again. This podcast is going to be the spectrum of human intelligence. It runs from
there to here. So this is going to set the low bar. I'm barely sliding into human. I'm closer to chimp.
And I bring that up that you're also friends with the great, the powerful Tim Dillon. So let's talk
about power and the corrupting effects of power. Sometimes I look at Tim Dillon as he grows in
power. I thought you meant he's in size. Well, size, I think they're correlated. Yeah. I saw him,
I've been in Austin a couple of days. I saw him once. We had eight meals in one day.
Eight meals. Yeah. So I feel like I've been here longer than I have just because of the meals with
Dylan. Kid likes biscuits and barbecue. Okay. So he's more like, see, I was imagining Putin or
something like that. He's more like the North Korean dictator. All right. They get along great
those two. Yeah. They would get, I mean, Tim Dillon and King John Ohm would be like, they could make
like a buddy cop movie. They would get along like lethal weapon. That would be a good pitch movie.
Great podcast. Yeah. That would be a great podcast. Yeah. So much to talk about. So many
similar ideas about the world. So what do you think the world would look like if Tim Dillon was
given absolute power? He seems like a person that's an interesting study of the corrupting effects of
power. Yeah. You don't want to give him power. You don't want, I don't even want him wearing a suit.
Like I want a guy who's as thoughtful and educated as you wearing a suit. Like because, you know,
suits corrupt you. You put that suit on, you start feeling that power. It's like, you know,
yeah, I don't even want Tim Dillon in his suit. Power would, he would kill people. He'd get rid
of anything that he deemed. I mean, if you made a lobster roll and it wasn't up to Tim Dillon's
standard, he would have you executed. The entire restaurant staff is just gone. He would have
people below his food standard execute. There'd be programs, not of people who are political
dissidents, but of people who don't meet his food standard. His cuisine standard is high.
And he's usually right. Do you think power does corrupt people?
Yes. Like one of the reasons we mentioned offline Joe Rogan,
he's been an inspiration to me because he gets, he gets, if we get power, just more famous and
famous. And yes, probably a bit of power in terms of influence. And he's still pretty much the same
guy. I'm not sure that's going to be true for everybody. Do you ever think, ask yourself
for that question? Yeah, he's a rare breed. He's like a benign king. I've, I've, most people I
meet who are like really powerful are like douchebags. And that's how they got there. I think
that's psychopaths have the advantage because they don't have feelings. And Joe's a rare example.
He's just a powerhouse of will. And he, I do think about that. Yeah. I think I should be stopped
right now. Just stop me right now because yeah, power for me, I would, when people get power,
they indulge. I don't think it changes anyone. It just reveals your darkest. You know, people
aren't supposed to have anything they want. You got to be able to struggle for everything. So
I would have a harem. I'd be like a Roman dictator. Yeah. I'd be like a Roman emperor. I mean,
people call them emperors. They were dictators. The most effective leaders are dictators.
I hope we get back to that. Democracy hasn't worked. I'm ready for a secession of Caesars.
And I want to start with AOC. That's true. Dictators get the job done. They do. They do. At
certain point you got, that's why social workers can only get you so far. You need action. I was
a social worker for five years. And all you do is ask about medications and you don't solve anything.
I do ask myself of that, like, because I'm more in the tech space of constructing
systems that prevent me from being corrupt. Because right now I'm all about love and all
about those kinds of things. But I wonder, you said like, it just reveals the darkness. The
problem is we might not be aware of our own darkness. I have the same feeling about money,
actually. I've been avoiding thinking about money, like, basically constructing my moral system,
my moral compass around money. So like, the moment I feel a little too happy about the idea of owning
some cool shiny thing, I started to think, okay, I'm not going to own that shiny thing,
because I'm afraid of the slippery slope of it. Yeah. You ever think about that kind of stuff?
Yeah. The funny thing about the capitalist system is it puts sort of profit motive above
beauty. And you notice when you see certain cities, especially in the old days where like,
buildings used to be beautiful. And now they're just like boxes, they throw a kid up and it's
just for all profit margin. It's the illusion of permanence that, you know, it's like, oh,
let me get as much money as I can. You're like, yeah. My dad used to say, you know,
everyone, it's a cliche, but you can't take it with you. So it's kind of, it's comical to me
that we're here trying to get this infinite amount, like, it's like Sisyphus. We're all
trying to climb this hill, but I mean, rock's going to fall on us. So I think that's a healthy
outlook. Yeah. My dad always used to say before he passed, you know, he would say you can't,
you have to survive not only physically, but you have to survive emotionally. I think a lot
of people forget about the emotional part of survival. You have to survive emotionally and
humor and understanding reality in its objective context helps with that. Accepting reality as this
ephemeral thing that you're really just a part of, but not as significant as your ego wants
you to believe is a start. That's a good foundation for surviving emotionally.
What's that mean? Surviving emotionally? Like, what's an ideal life look like for you?
You can't take things too seriously. You can't, because they're ephemeral.
They're not permanent. Nothing's permanent. Your bank accounts are not permanent. Your
problems aren't permanent. Nothing's permanent. Your abilities aren't permanent. Your memory's
not permanent. Your dick getting hard is not permanent. Can I curse on this or just go out
to dinner? Yeah. You can curse to your heart's content. Okay. Yeah. I mean, gender's not even
permanent anymore. I think I'm going to change maybe and live my second half as another gender
just to have, I'm bored with this gender. So it's like nothing is permanent. And so accepting that
emotionally is a good start to being more flexible. You got to be flexible. Like my dad used to say
anything too stiff snaps. You got to, you know, it's a cliche and people have said it a bunch of
different ways, but Bruce Lee is right, man. Be water. Be water. Yeah. Bukowski has this quote
about love that love is a fog that fades with the first light of reality. So he's a romantic,
that guy. Yeah. But that even love is a thing that just doesn't last very long. No.
You know, some people would disagree with that. Maybe morphs, like water, it changes,
right? It might not be, it might not be this, because he's mostly just loved like prostitutes,
I think. So the best kind of love. Yeah. No demand, no responsibilities. Yeah. It's a financial
transaction. Yeah. A thermo is ever. You mentioned your dad. He passed away two, a year and a half
ago. Yeah. What did you learn from him? I love my dad. My dad, I would say my dad was my hero.
He was just, my dad really embodied those values. And I think for better or worse, it's made me who
I am. My dad was a painter. He was a lawyer. He was a lieutenant in the military. New Yorker.
New Yorker, born in Brad, Brooklyn. His dad, surprise owned a diner. So that's sort of the
Greek passport. That's the immigration passport for Greeks into America. And yeah, my dad played
football. My dad did what he wanted. He lived as he wanted at all costs. And I think I got that
from him for better or worse. I think it's hurt me in my pursuits. If you consider money and fame
to be paramount, I've always done what I wanted. If I stopped wanting to do it, I just stopped
doing it. And I think I got that from my dad. So maybe for better or worse, that's what I learned
from him. But that's a real currency. Feeling like you're in love with what you're doing when
you're doing it, maybe perhaps that's worth more than money. I don't know. You miss him?
Yeah, every day. Every day. But I'm happy that he got 91 years. It's very rare. I mean, he smoked
for 60 years. Talk about like a guy who was an outlier. I mean, he smoked like 60 years, like
packs. I mean, and he didn't die from that. He died. He had prostate cancer, which is the way
men should go. Your dick should give out. It should start from the dick. I mean, we focused so much
of our life on the dick that that's the way that's a successful life. And that's why every man
eventually gets prostate cancer, because that is the universe's way of saying like, the thing you
focused on the most is you put the most energy into is the thing that's spent. And it's going to,
your rotting is going to start there. So that's a successful life. And it just spread all over his
body and he slowly died. I was with him when he died. And that meant a lot to me because me and
my brother weren't talking at the time because we're Greeks. We're talking again, but that's how
it is. You got a few brothers, right? I got two brothers. But I wanted to make sure I was with
him when he died. And I got lucky and I was in the room with him when he died. You were in the
room with your brother and you weren't? No, my brother wasn't there. We were kind of doing shifts.
I was there. I spent the night that my dad died. He died early in the morning. And I heard the
death rat of the last breath. And it was just, I think it was, he knew I was there. And I think
that just probably meant something to him. And I'm just glad I was there. Does it make you sad
that life is ephemeral, like you said? That you die? What do you think about your own death?
You meditate on that? I think the actual, if there is a point to life, it's to
hopefully not fear death, to accept reality. I think that's important. I think so much goes
awry in the human condition when we lose touch with reality. Every political system that's led
to mass murder and everything, I think because it's because the tenants of those political
philosophies ended up being utopian. They were detached from reality, detached from nature.
And so I think it's very important to accept and acknowledge your own mortality. I think
it's the foundation for what makes a good person, a moral person, a contributing member of society,
because it's true. True things should be the foundation of all things. If what you believe
is based on illusion, you're going to end up doing destruction. Whether that destruction's
on a scale of one to 10, you are going to be destructive because it's not real. It's a fantasy.
It doesn't exist. See, the thing is, the truth is about, I don't think you can ever reach truth.
Truth is about constantly digging. And to push back on your idea that you should accept death,
I think the more honest response to death, so the least honest is to run away from it, create
illusions that help you imagine that there's not a death. The next is to accept it, but the real
honest one is to fear it because I mean, I'm with Ernest Becker as a philosopher, wrote a book
called Denial of Death. He says that much of the human condition is based in the fear of mortality
that that's the creative force of the human energy. Like Freud said, do you want to sleep
with your mother? He said, no, that's not what motivates you. Maybe his mom wasn't hot though,
I mean, or he wasn't Greek because apparently at a poll, we found that we found that all things
go to him bad. Thanks for that. I just don't know if his mom was a looker or not. I mean,
I have to Google it. I look up on Google images. But I think the honest, as he says, the thing
that we run away from is that there's a terror. He calls it like terror. There's something called
terror management theory that's some philosophers after him followed on, that we're basically
trying to run away from this fear. And acceptance is actually creating an illusion for yourself.
Like you can actually accept something as terrifying as this. So he's more with the
Stoics, the Stoics constantly meditate on their death. I mean, they, what does that mean? I mean,
it's kind of, you know, acceptance of death isn't a thing you do like on a Monday and then you're
done. It's a thing you constantly have to meditate on, like reminding yourself, like this ride is
over. It could be over today. And that's something you're, if you think about every single day,
it gives you an appreciation of Woody Allen movies, at least.
It gives you appreciation of basically everything, including Woody Allen movies,
which shows you how deep your appreciation for life could be. I've actually,
haven't been following much of what Woody Allen's, but apparently he's been a troublemaker
for most of his life. He's, yeah, I mean, you know, he's caused a little bit of strife. He's
left a little, yeah, he's left a little confusion in his wake for sure. But I mean, you know,
that's another one, separate the art from the artist. He's got, I mean, the guys will go down in
history as the greatest. He's made, I mean, a movie a year and they're all, you can always find
something good about each movie, like the dialogue or whatever. I love what you're saying. It's
interesting, but the only thing I would say to push back a little bit since we're playing a little
table tennis here is, I don't know if it's a choice to fear death. That's more of an,
it seems more instinctual. It seems like something that nature wants you to do,
because I've been in positions where I thought I was going to die, like I've been shot and
I had those moments. And then nature also kicks in an instinct, which is acceptance,
where you kind of, I don't know, it's a chemical release or whatever. I don't know,
we're all, we're robots basically. So some sort of chemical is released that protects you, but
there is an acceptance. I don't know how much was a conscious choice, probably very little.
And that's the point I'm making is it's, it's instinctual. We don't really have a choice
in fearing death. Otherwise there would be no progression. We wouldn't,
all life seems to want to survive, not by choice, but by instinct.
So he argues that the fear is not the instinctual, it's not the animalistic stuff. That's the thing
that makes us special is the, what humans are able to do is to have a knowledge that we're going to
die one day. Animals don't have that. Animals fear is instinctual. It's like, holy shit, what's that
sound over there? He says we're actually able to contemplate the fact that this ride ends.
And that, that kind of cognitive construct is difficult for us to deal with. Like what the,
how does that mean? Like just to, just to think about it's going to be over at a certain point.
It's just over, lights out. Like it's very difficult to kind of load that into
to whatever this like little brain we got. Like what does that actually mean?
Maybe that's what gives everything meaning. Because if everything lasted forever, if this
went on an infinite, there would be no meaning to it. I'd be like, hey, if I don't see it,
tomorrow I'll see in a million years. There would be no meaning. There would be no urgency.
There would be no feelings. There'd be no nothing of magnitude or superficiality. It would all just
be this kind of, it would be torture. It would actually, that would actually be torture to be
here forever. I mean, I'm already sick of this place. And I'm just in my 40s. Like I'm done.
I'm sick of me. I'm sick of everything. You know, a lot of people, when they talk about
mortality, they consider, they consider mortality appealing because you get a chance to do basically
all these things you might not get a chance to do. Otherwise, like all the kinds of travel
broadly, read every book, explore every idea, do every hobby, all those kinds of things.
Somebody else I was talking to mentioned the reality of being immortal would be more likely,
I like this idea, more likely would be you just sitting there doing nothing
because and putting off all that travel and exploration till later because you'll always
have time. And so when you're going to have what actual immortality would look like for a bunch
of humans is people sitting there doing nothing. It would be like a Greek cafe near just sitting
around drinking coffee watching. I love it. Yeah. I mean, it's a lazy man's paradise. Yeah.
But it's so interesting because that's, that rings true to me for what humans are like is we'll
basically just put off all those exciting adventures and just be lazy, become lazier
and lazier and lazier because you'll always have a chance to do all the exciting things.
And we'll just get, we'll basically become Tim Dill. We'll just sit there and have a podcast
and that's it. He works hard. Yeah. I mean, that sounds actually like heaven, dude. That's
speaking to my heart, really. I mean, I'm at heart. I'm a very lazy person. I always try to
find ways to lie down. Like if I'm sitting, I'll figure out a way to kind of contort myself to
later. That's an interesting thing to like in. Yeah. If you can always push something off.
Yeah. I like that. I think that's heaven. And Steve, we just changed your mind that you kind
of like the immortality. Yeah. I kind of like it. No. So there'll be no thirsts. No. You can
always put it off. Hey, I want to, I want to, I want to have, I want to bang this girl. You're
like, I'll put it off. But now I'm thinking about Muslim heaven and they may be offering the best
deal. I mean, if it was an expo and they had a booth, I may go with them because they offer,
they offer 62 or 72, but then I'd get sick of them. I'd want to, I don't know. I always wondered
like, are you given the 62 versions or you choose, can you create them like an avatar,
like a video game or are you just given? I don't know what the number, why it's important to have
that high number. First of all, I think it's a mistranslation about the versions, but outside of
that, outside of that, I feel like the conversation is really important. I don't think they ever
specify like what kind of books these girls read. Like what are they, what are they into?
Right. Like the quality of the conversation, I think if you're talking about eternity,
the quality of the intellect and the conversation and the personalities is way more important.
And the Greeks have an ancient, ancient expression, which my mother always used to say,
which is everything in moderation, nothing in excess. So try and always get the status quo.
And yeah, that many women, eventually it's like the magic Johnson effect, Isaiah Thomas effect,
it's just too much. And you're going to end up, you're going to end up banging a dude is what
I'm saying. You're going to get sick of it because it's too much. And there's going to be a eunuch
that finds its way into your harem that's been proven throughout history, every empire, when
you have all that power. And again, this goes back to power corrupting. If you have, if there's no
struggle, there's no meaning, there's the value is from the journey, the working hard to struggle.
And if it's just given to you because you're a sultan or you're Alexander the Great or whatever,
you're going to get bored and you're going to bang a dude. That's it's I think that's a scientific
axiom, actually, eventually you'll get bored and bang a dude. Yeah, but I think it won't stop there.
I think you'll go to animals, you go to robot. I mean, eventually it all ends up in robots and
then the robots rebel and then the humus will be destroyed. Yeah. I'm sorry. If if we're speaking
truth, you said the value of life, one of the highest ideals is to seek truth. I think if we're
being honest. Can I ask you a quick question? If you, if you live in a small, I come from small
islands, right? And so there's a stereotype that that's where they bang animals. But if you come
from a very small community, you know, an island or something, and you have the choice of banging
a family member or an animal, which one is worse on the moral scale? Because you're technically
not related to the animal. Right. This is interesting. I mean, all of these are human constructs,
these ideas, but yet for me personally, taboo would be more taboo to to have sex with a family
member. Yeah. I mean, animal, I mean, okay. It's good to know where you stand on that. I think
if you were, you know, that if they didn't have, they didn't know they had that question. I just,
they just learned a little bit about you and now I know. I look forward to the internet clipping
that out. Yeah. I mean, there is, listen, in some, outside, outside of that, I do think about that
a lot. It sounds ridiculous about morality connected to animals in terms of all the,
the, the factory farming and so on. It seems like that's one of the things we'll look because I love
meat, but I kind of feel bad about it. And bad in a way where I think if we look like 100 years
from now, we'll look back at this time as like one of the great like tortures and injustices
that we humans have committed. And I mean, all that has to do with the sex with the animal has to do
with consent and about the experience of suffering of the animals. The reason I think about that
personally a lot because I think about robotics, I think about creating artificial consciousnesses,
artificial like beings that have some elements of the human nature. And then you start to think
like, well, what does it mean to suffer? What does it mean for entity to exist such that it
deserves rights? This is something that the founding fathers were thinking about, like,
you know, all men are created equal. What is it, which, who's included in the men who,
who's not in that, in that sentence? And our animals included in that are robots. I honestly
think that there will be a civil rights movement for robots in the future. I don't know.
Is that the Turing test, the way you try to, is that what they call it, where you're trying to
see if AI can think like a human or whatever or feel like a human?
Well, it's the Turing test closely defined as more about talk like a human. So you can,
you can imagine systems they're able to, you can have a conversation like this and I would be a robot,
for example. But that doesn't mean I would, in the, in society, that doesn't mean I deserve rights or
that doesn't mean I would be conscious. It doesn't mean that I would be able to suffer and to
experience pleasure and dream and all those kinds of human things. The question isn't whether you're
able to talk, which is passing the Turing test. The question is whether you're able to feel,
to be, I mean, to, I go back to suffering. The thing that the, that our documents protect us
against is suffering. Like we don't want humans to suffer. And if a robot can suffer,
that discussion starts being about like, well, shouldn't we protect them?
Currently, we don't protect animals. We protect that dog. There's laws. There's
actual legislation that protects dogs in certain places. Yeah. And you know,
at dogs is something I don't think people really understand enough about. It's one of my obsessions.
So they, they, my dad always used to say those, he goes, those things, those things are basically
human. And I mean, they dream, they have anxiety. And what people often overlook about dogs is
without dogs, we wouldn't be here. We would not have ever evolved from hunter-gatherer to agrarian
to, you know, civilization. We wouldn't have cities. We wouldn't have anything. I mean,
I mean, they are our partner in survival and they are a magical animal. There's no,
there's no animal that was, it was like destiny almost. I mean, a malleable animal,
there's no animal that's that malleable that in a few generations, you can tailor to
a specific job that you need. And without that animal, without dogs doing that animal,
protecting our crops from, from, you know, scavengers and stuff like that, you know,
the list goes on, we wouldn't be here. So we, that's an often overlooked fact that
human evolution was not done in a vacuum just with humans. I mean, without dogs,
we would have never evolved. I mean, we weren't the apex predator. For most of our existence,
we weren't even the apex predator. I mean, we're getting eaten by hyenas, which is my favorite
animal. And you know, that's kind of an injustice to, I mean, I'm kind of mad at dogs. We deserve
to get eaten by hyenas. But without dogs, we wouldn't be here. And dogs, dogs deserve the
protection. So do horses. They fucking lugged us around for thousands of years. And now these
fucking German psychopaths are eating them or whatever. We should not eat horse meat just on
like, be a good dude, man. These things lugged us around for generations. They're beautiful,
you know, ride them. Or I don't know, I don't know, but it rubs me the wrong way that we eat horses.
Yeah, the horse is one is interesting. And one of my favorite books is Animal Farm by Orwell. And
the horses don't get a good ending in that. I kind of, my spirit animal, I suppose, is the
horse from Animal Farm Boxer, where he says, I will work harder. That's his motto. I work really hard
at stupid things. That's basically what I did. I just hit my head against the wall for no reason
whatsoever. But that probably fulfills. You have a big brain. You were probably born with a big
brain that kind of fulfills killing neurons. It's exercise for you. Yes. Yes. Don't you think
some animals deserve to be eaten though? Kind of like hyenas? Come on, dude. I mean,
you got to respect hyena. Okay. So first of all, let me just comment on the dog thing. There is
like conferences on dog cognition. From a perspective of people that study psychology,
cognitive science, neuroscience, dogs are fascinating. The way they move their eyes,
they're able to, they're the only other animal besides humans, they're able to communicate
with their eyes. They can look at a thing and look back at you and look back at the thing
to communicate that we're all like through our eyes, communicate that we're collaborating. So
every other animal uses their eyes to actually look at things. The dogs use it to like communicate
with us humans. It's fascinating. There's a lot of other elements of dogs that are amazing.
Yeah. I mean, if it wasn't for them, they are the ones, they were our first alarm system
for predators. They would defend us. I mean, the besengi is one of the most ancient dogs. I mean,
they're tiny, but they're fearless. Yeah. And they would chase off lions. Like, you know,
there'd be packs of them and they chase off lions and protect the tribes. I even get tingles
like thinking about dogs because I have a dog, I love my dog. It's just, and there's something
about when you're walking with your dog off leash in the woods, it like, there's something about it
that's like, that tugs at that millions of years of evolution, like that gut, you know, it's like,
I had a Finnish friend of mine, he's a comic, Tommy Volumies once told me, he was like,
he was like the gut. He's like, I believe in like that gut, you know, when you have that feeling,
he's like, always trust that because that is million, those are all your ancestors. That's
the survival instinct of all your ancestors at the beginning of time, you know, telling you like,
hey, something's off here, something's, you know, so don't get in the car with Ted Bundy is what
I'm saying, ladies. How fucking stupid. How could you fall for that? You know, he's got a fucking
sling on. Don't get in. Yeah. Follow the gut. My question to you, are psychopaths essentially robots?
So first of all, let's not, you're using the word robot in a derogatory way that I'm triggered by.
Okay. Yeah. And you should be, you should be because you know what, people are always scared
robots, but I actually, I have, I've made the sort of, I've made it to say, hey, I've thought
about it like robot robots have been nothing but helpful. It's the people we should be scared of.
Again, we're kind of missing the most destructive thing is us because it's, but robots are helpful.
I mean, this is a fucking robot. You know, I went on hotel tonight. I'm already booked up. You know,
I got my, I can change my flight if this barbecue with Rogan goes 16 hours, which whatever Rogan
wants to do, I'll do if he wants to kick me in the chest, I'll let him kick me in the chest, whatever.
Yeah. Robots are helpful. No. Yeah. Tanks and autonomous weapons systems don't kill people.
People kill people. Yeah. That's
Yeah. Yeah. The NRA is about to click that for you.
A lot of love for dogs. I appreciate it very much. And at the same time, you have the other thing
that people seem to have loved for, which is cats. And on the flip side of everything you've said,
I'm trying to understand what have cats ever done for human civilization?
They keep rodents away. The domesticated cat is very important. Keeps rodents away. Yeah,
that's what they were domesticated for. I mean, they're psychopathic killers who end up killing
innocent neighborhood chipmunks and birds. They really affect the balance of the local ecosystem.
But not as much as dogs. I mean, dogs are, like you said, they look at humans. I actually read
an article there. Some people were theorizing they're smarter than chimps because of the way
they can work with humans. And there was one border collie that spoke like 300 words, like a
quarter, almost part of the language. And their nose is like a, I mean, that's like magic, dude.
If you can smell in my ass to what I had for breakfast from miles away.
That's intelligence. That's intelligence. I mean,
in some ways that their nose, if you were to put it on a scale, maybe their nose is more
intelligent than our brain for what it does. It's like, I mean, dude, they can smell you
from miles away. You ever see a dog just like sniffing, catching? I mean, it's smelling like,
I don't remember the date on it, but it's like they have like millions of receptors or something
where we only, thank God we don't have their nose. That would make sex weird.
It would be a little too intense. I think you mentioned when you were talking about Woody Allen
separating the art from the artist. So that brings to mind, Vladimir Putin.
How about that transition? I don't know. I'm so sorry. But if you look at just powerful
leaders throughout history, Stalin, Hitler, but even model ones like Putin, and we were talking
about power, how do you explain them? You said that power reveals not corrupt. But do you think
there's some element to which power corrupted Hitler, power corrupted Stalin after he gained
power? And the same with Putin. When Putin gained power in 2000, do you think the amount of power
that he was in possession with for many years, do you think that corrupted him? I mean, we're joking
about dictators get the job done. There is some sense in certain countries where a dictator is
the only thing that can stabilize a nation. The Conor argument to that for democracies is like,
yeah, but that's a short-term solution for a long-term problem. So you want to embrace chaos
of democracy that might be violent. There might be a lot of just constant changing of leadership.
There might be a lot of corruption in the short term. But if you stay strong with
the ideals of democracy, then it'll ultimately create something that's as beautiful and stable
as the United States. The sad thing is, I don't know if history tells that story. It's like I said,
you look at Greece, you look at Rome, democracy kind of failed. The majority of Rome, the most
successful empire that we've had was a dictatorship for most of its run. But I do believe in a
republic, which is sort of a limited democracy. I do believe in what we have here. I believe in
common law, I believe, in individual rights. But yeah, I think you said it. Nobody could have
said it better. Yeah, it's a short-term solution. You look at Saddam Hussein, when we took him out,
then there was a lot of infighting that happened that he was kind of keeping at bay
because he was a strongman, dictator. Well, he's an interesting one. Sorry to interrupt.
No. From my understanding, I'm sure people will correct me. But when Saddam Hussein first came to
power, he's quite progressive. As far as I understand, the signs of an evil dictator weren't
exactly there. So again, I don't know if power revealed or power corrupted.
Or that could have been the initial subterfuge to kind of get everybody. Hitler also is a
champion of the people. It's built some new roads. It's what psychopaths do. And that's why
it's interesting to me. I'm not sure if power corrupts psychopaths. And now that we know that
we can do these CAT scans and brain scans, we know that they're born that way, power definitely
corrupts people who have the capacity to feel and for empathy. I'm not sure. I don't think
power corrupts people who were born psychopathic with that condition or sociopaths who had
who were closer to psychopath and then had some traumatic life. I just think the best way to
get away with whatever nefarious thing you want to do to feel, I guess the only thing
psychopaths can feel is that excitement, is to pretend to be the opposite of what you are.
That's what killers do. That's what the worst people to look at Bill Cosby.
What better way to hide? It's like what wokeness is now. It's like, I'm such a great person.
And then you're like, are you? It's a great, the best way to hide is to pretend to be the
opposite of what you are. Just like Ted Bundy. I'm just an innocent, helpful guy. And then,
boom, next thing you know, you're getting your tip bit off.
It's really well said. It's actually kind of funny because I talk about love a lot.
And I think the people that kind of look at me with squinty eyes, they wonder,
like, how many bodies are in that closet? You know what I mean? Like, there's something about
the duality of like, we're so skeptical as a culture. Like if somebody just like seems to be
kind of sort of, I don't know, positive and all that kind of, you know, how do I put it?
Just simple. Simple minded in the positivity they express. They think like, there's some
demons in there. Yeah, especially if you're a New Yorker, we don't trust any, the nicer you are,
the more skeptical we are. I've struggled with that down here. I've been like, what's your angle?
And they're like, nah, dude, just I wanted to show you the best tacos, man. And I'm like,
did you really? What do you want? Because in New York, it's like, if anyone's nice to you,
they want something. And that's, the pro side to that is it makes you very street smart. The
downside to that is it makes you way too cynical. Yeah, definitely experienced that here in Texas.
But people are super, super nice. And they're like, do all this cool shit for you. And you wonder,
what's the angle? What are we doing here? You mentioned hyenas is your favorite animal. I forgot
to ask you, what the hell were you thinking? Why is hyena is your favorite animal? Yeah, it's
fascinating animal. Let's look at the whole animal kingdom. Like why is it, where do you put,
so you like dogs? Love, my favorite. Your favorite is dogs. But they're kind of outside the animal
kingdom because you're thinking about wolves. So the animal kingdom is in nature. Dogs escaped
nature. They kind of did, yeah. Together with humans, like in a collaborative way, exactly.
So within nature, within the animal kingdom, who's, why not lions? Because lions are predictable.
Lions are just, you know, they're regal and kind of they bore me. It's like the hot chick. It's like,
we get it. You were born the best. Yeah. You know, I like a scrappy by any means necessary,
intelligent and cunning. But aren't they dishonest? Yeah. And that's what I like. Yes,
they're dishonest. They employ chicanery. They, they're, and that's just a sign of how
intelligent they are and how self-reliant they are and how brutal they are. They're brutally
honest in how much they lie, you know, because they're trying to get the job done. You know,
lions are just like, they're, they're too gifted. Everyone hates the fucking, you know,
if I went to school with you, I'd be like, of course, Lex knows the fucking answer. Lex was
born smarter than me, you know, and you'd probably hate me because I was the kid always seeking
attention and making people. It's like, that's not interesting. The guy that claws his way to the
top. And those are hyenas. They're also fascinating just by merely who they are. I mean, they're not
related to any other animal. They're more closely related to cats than they are dogs, even though
they look like a dog. Yeah. They're, but they're very, like very tangentially related even to
cats. So they're their own kind of thing, which is kind of mysterious. I don't think they fully
figured out. And they, the pseudo penis thing is the, is the, I mean, it is. Can you explain the
pseudo penis? Yeah. So the, it's a matriarchal society, by the way. So that's the unique
in and of itself that this, we're talking about an apex predator that is matriarchal, much like,
you know, the praying mantis. It's very rare though. And they are fucking brutal and vicious.
And the women are bigger and they let their cubs fight a lot of fratricide and they do that because
they're like, Hey, you're weaker. They let your brother kill you. And the women have penises,
the women have pseudo penises that they give birth out of. And the birth is violent,
but they, they roll around with just huge pieces. They're glue guns who just fucking swing and,
you know, and the women are just run the show. And it's just cool that they have these pseudopedises.
It's almost romantic to eat this guy. They have the strongest bite force.
They, they pulverize bone. Like when they eat an animal, the animal's gone. There's no bones.
They eat everything. They can pulverize. Their bite is so powerful. They pulverize bone and eat
it. So if they consume an animal, it, the animal was there and then the animal was gone. There's
no, nothing for the vultures there to, to, to grab. Yeah. I'm going to have to revisit the hyenas
because my experience with the hyenas was from, first of all, history, hyenas, your show has
rebranded them for me, but the Lion King, which is a cartoon, I guess, that I get emotional
that every time I, I hope, I probably have father issues. Every guy.
You probably just, you just have feelings. You're a good guy. I mean, everyone gets that.
I have feelings. Yeah, you have feelings. That one gets everybody. I don't know. I get,
I get every father son movie, like Blow with Johnny Depp and Ray Leota. Damn, that's a good movie.
And whenever there's like, like the disappointment in the father that his son has become like
this incredibly successful drug lord that then ends up with nothing in prison,
just the sadness of them communicating through letters, man, that gets me every time.
But, you know, the hyenas are not presented that well in that.
No, they're usually portrayed as like, it's really sad that they're portrayed that way in
lions. Like lions aren't dicks. Lions are dicks. They, the, the, the, the alpha lions will kill
the cubs of another rival. They do all types of dick shit. And yeah, the hyenas are more
interesting. Like they'll just roll in like a hyena will like, like you said, the lie,
you know, because when you watch the Serengeti, you know, animals will hang out with each other.
They're like by water. So one hyena will just kind of roll in and pretend like it's not hungry.
And then bang, they'll use any means necessary to take an animal down. Like lions will just
use brute strength hyenas use cunning. And you can even go on the internet and find
memes of this where hyenas will grab the big animal by the balls and just like, we'll sneak
up behind it and bite its balls and you'll watch an animal 10 size, 10 times the size of the hyena
just slowly go down. It's brutal, but it's fucking hilarious. So I think that's, I don't know if you
follow the, the channel, um, nature's metal. That's, that one weighs heavy on me. And with the hyenas
and the balls, I, it's tough to, to intellectualize it. It's tough to think that the entirety of life
on earth has this history of, um, predators being violent, just like just the murder that we come
from. Yeah. It's crazy. I, it, uh, just like, we're talking about meditating on death. I,
I actually, I keep following and on following that Instagram channel because like sometimes
just too much. Like I can't, I can't continue with the day after like seeing the brutality,
the honest brutality of that. I don't know how to make sense of it. It's important to acknowledge,
I think, cause that it's real. We do come from that. We are, we evolve from that. It's important.
We still do that. We're just hidden from it. You know, when you go to the supermarket and get your
slab of meat and you know, you're so disconnected from where that meat came from, it came from that.
And often that's uglier to watch than because there's some honesty, you know, the, the, the,
the nature channels only show, uh, that's why we have so much sympathy with the prey. And this is
where I think the same thing with mafia movies. They don't show what the mafia really does. They
glorify the good parts. That's why I like state of grace. Cause it's really just shaking down
old people and fucking being dicks. It's not driving nice cars and being like, you know,
so, and, and animal channels do the same thing. They only show when the cheetah
gets it because that's, that's the exciting part. But what most people don't know is that
those predators strike out almost always. A majority of the time the prey wins.
And so if you saw that and put in context, you might not hate it as much when the predator
actually gets the little fawn or whatever, because it's so many fawns got away. It's so hard
to capture your prey. And you know, we, we don't have the, the, the, they,
no, no documentary is going to sit around and show you the 99 times the cheetah didn't catch.
Thank you for this perspective. That's murder is difficult. So like,
this is the, they never talk about for people who murder, how difficult it is, like to trap
somebody, to convince them to come back to your place, give it some respect, put some respect
on Ted Bundy's name. Yeah. It's not easy to convince somebody to get in your Volkswagen
Beagle and clean up. And then you have to kind of plan ahead because you want to keep doing
the murder, mass murder. You got to learn how to saw him up, put him in duffel bags,
bury, you got to learn how to dig, you got to learn how to hide, you got to learn to lie. I mean,
it's a lot that goes into it. Yeah. That we need to pull the respect on. Yeah.
Yeah. And you have to figure out which tools work the best for the song and all those kinds of things.
So thank you for the perspective. That's, that's what I was hoping who would bring to this table.
So you, you got a little bit Greek in you. One of the episodes on,
on history hyenas, you talked about the Battle of Crete, where the Greeks, your people in,
in 19, I guess, 41, in the early stages of the World War II, there's one of the most epic battles
of the war. In fact, in 1941, in a speech made at the Reichstag, Hitler paid tribute to the bravery
of the Greeks saying, it must be said, for the sake of historical truth, that amongst all our
opponents, only the Greeks fought with the endless courage and defiance of death. So, okay, what do
you make of this battle? What do you make of the spirit of the Greek people? This is one of the
closest things to me because my mother was actually on the island of Crete during this,
the first aerial invasion in history. A lot of people don't know that. So this is a very significant
battle. First time there was an invasion from the sky. And my mother was a little girl and she
lived through four years of Nazi occupation there. So my mother was a human rights lawyer and
everything, but she just always hated Germans. It's just what it is. She hated Germans and she
never got over it. So the most progressive open-minded woman just could not get over this.
It's a monumental battle that a lot of historians in retrospect have now looked back on and said,
because the Nazis, first off, you got to take it back to when Hitler instructed Mussolini,
because let's be honest, Mussolini was Hitler's bitch. I mean, it was like,
if it was Fantasy Island, Hitler was the fucking, and Mussolini was boss of the plane.
Mussolini ever say no to Hitler? Or even maybe it's always like, yes.
Yes, we would do it. And it's like, you have to take Greece. And so, yeah. So Italy being
much bigger than Greece. Greece is a tiny country, nine, 10 million. So Italy invaded Greece.
And Aukide is a big, it's a big holiday for Greeks. And this speaks to the spirit.
Greeks in fight until we have a common enemy and then we unite. You see it throughout history,
Sparta and Athens. You see it in Greek families where the brothers will fight. But then as soon
as we have a common enemy, we unite. And maybe it's an overactive brain. We think too much. Our
traditions philosophy, and we overthink things, and we fight with each other and take things
personally. We're all so passionate. But when Italy said, hey, we're going to move troops through,
you know, a Greek said, Aukide, which means no. And that was, and then Italy attacked.
And we beat the shit out of them. A much bigger country, much more well equipped country.
Greece beat the shit out of them, kicked them back into Albania. Actually, not only repelled them,
actually, like conquered some grounding in Albania, pushed them back. And then Hitler was like,
fuck, you know, I was planning my march to Russia. But I have to go down because he basically said
to Mussolini, like, you know, you're basically bitch lapped. I'm like, I got to do this myself.
Because you're such a fucking bitch. So then the Nazis invaded Greece. Obviously,
they took the mainland with fight and shot out. The Greeks never give credit to the
British and New Zealand and Australian troops that were there. You know, they were a large part
of this, the majority of it. But the Greeks fight to civilians. I mean, they fought. You know,
the Ottomans were there 400 years, you go to Greece. Now there's no evidence. There's virtually no
evidence of them ever being there. That's the Greek spirit. Kick them out. And we kicked out
hummus too. So it's like their culture is gone. You're gone. Because Greeks are, it's Philopthimo.
It's called Philopthimo. And it's a real thing. Philopthimo is a very little translate. You
can't translate it, but it's kind of like honor, loyalty, friendship, altruism. It's a,
you can't define it, but Greeks know it and we're taught it from our, from our families.
It's a vibe, man. It's a Greek cultural thing and we're an old culture and Philopthimo is what
it's called. Philopthimo and it's, it's love, it's passion. And it comes out and it comes out. And so,
so, so Hitler had to postpone his invasion of, of Russia went down the island of Crete took 10
days to conquer. It's an island to put that in perspective. The country of France fell in three
or four days. I can't even remember because they fucking just rolled over. So what is, what, what
is a couple of hours matter when you're that much of a fucking pussy? Okay. What is a couple
hours and 12 hours fucking three or four days? The island of Crete took the Germans 10 days to
conquer. And because of that, and because of the Greek resistance, Hitler had to postpone
his invasion of Russia to winner. And of course that was, you know, that was his downfall just
as it was Napoleon's and a never dude, never try to invade Russia. They got millions of people to
throw at death. Every time you read about Russians in history books, like, and a million died. I
mean, you just guys throw millions of people at the problem. And don't fuck with that Russian
winner. And don't fuck with Russian people, dude. They're tough. People in New York know that you
don't go to fucking sheep's head bands are talking shit. You'll end up in a fucking car trunk and
they'll brutally murder you. I do not fuck with Russians. Amen. And there's, I mean, there's a
lot of people, a lot of historians argue that that battle was because of the Russian winter,
because of delaying the Russian invasion, but also psychologically delaying the invasion.
It was the first time, I think it was the first time the Germans failed, not or didn't succeed
like they wanted to early in the war, which is a little like psychologically, the impact of that,
I think is immeasurable. And also a lot of people argue from a military strategy perspective that
the just like you said, it was an aerial attack and that Hitler didn't think that that that kind
of attack would then be useful for the rest of the war. So that's that's a really part where
whereas it might have been very useful. So it's a it's really interesting how these little battles
can steer the directions of war. Of course, me growing up in the Soviet Union, we didn't hear
much about this battle. Just like you said, millions of Soviets died. All those people in
history that you read about dying, those are all civilians. But I mean, not all, but a very large
number of them are civilians. And their stories, obviously, that's the rooted, the literature,
the poetry, the music, just the way people talk, the way they drink vodka, the way they love,
the way they hate, the way they fear, that's all like rooted in World War Two and World War One.
And so but we never kind of think about Europe. And we certainly growing up didn't think about
their role in the United States. All this, there's plenty of stories of heroism in the Soviet Union
enough to enough for many lifetimes. So but it was fascinating to reach from a Greek perspective.
Because I, you know, I don't have many Greek friends. I'm hoping to change that.
This is the beginning of a love affair of your people.
Yeah, that likewise, the Americans don't hear about the Soviet contribution to the end of World
War Two, because obviously we became, you know, enemies after that, because of the two systems.
But yeah, without the Russians with World War Two wouldn't have been one either.
Yeah, the stories are written by the victors. That's really interesting. I just looking at
history, you wonder what's missing. I'll tell you what's missing that I know for a fact.
Because my dad told me combat's hell. And he would tell me the reality of what it's really
like guys pissing themselves, calling for their mother, the fog of war, obviously,
fratricide happens all the time. It's pandemonium. I mean, there's skill involved. But I mean,
there's no, like it's a lot of it is just luck. My dad said, he, my dad won three.
He got, you know, medals, purple hearts, all that shit. And he said, the reason was,
is because he can't, he always said, there's another thing he told me, you can't pin a
medal on a dead guy. So it's like, those are the guys who deserve it, but you can't pin a medal.
You can't do the pomp and, and I'll tell you one thing is that it is written by the victors.
And all these leaders, they say we're in the front. We're not in the front.
We're not. Whenever the history books say, he led his troops into battle, it's like,
did he really? Did he? So then how did he live? Because they put like kids in the front, you
know, it's like, nobody limps back from the front with like a injury, you know, that's,
that's army PR. You know, whenever you read, you know, 27 soldiers died, 14 were injured.
The word injured is PR. That's like injured. Was he, did he sprain his ankle? Did he need,
yeah, did he get carried off the court or, you know, he was maimed. I mean, he was like,
his leg was blown off. You know, it's like, so, uh, I think that, you know, Alexander the Great
was just kind of in the back on his horse and just kind of, he had his eunuch blown a few times.
And he was like, is it bad up there? And then like after that, he was like, okay, my scribe,
give me my scribe. Okay, when you write this down, can you put me in the front? Yeah. And
I was just, make me a big hero. And I was in there and then he, you know, he just blew his,
you know, you know, he had sex with his eunuch and rode off into the sunset because there's
just no way you survive in the front, especially warfare back then. I mean, it's like brutal.
Then again, you have like, uh, Jengus Khan, the sense I got that he was a little bit up on the
front, at least at first. Yeah. Or is that also, is he a little bit, give me my scribe. Yeah,
it's all lore. I mean, you ever play the game of telephone? You know, it's like, you know,
there's no video cameras back then. So shit just turns into myth, you know? And there's no way
he was in the front. There's no way he wouldn't have lived. You know, he was probably good on
horseback because those dudes were good on horseback. It was like Game of Thrones back then.
You had all these different people and they're kind of, yeah, the Mongols were wild, dude.
They are actually said like, they started like, they were more adaptable to the horse because
they were so good on horseback that kids started to be born like kind of bow-legged, like to fit
the horse. It's wild. And they would stretch their heads and shit like that. They'd wrap them and
stretch their heads so they find like Mongol skulls and they look like cone heads and they were brutal
and vicious. And they would maraud and rape and all the fun stuff that, you know, when, you know,
when you visit other places back then, there's no Chachiki stops and souvenir shops. What you do
is you take women and those are the tokens, you know, you burn a few huts. Different. Tourism was
different back then. Yeah. That's another difficult thing. Just, we're talking about nature and
predators to think about the long stretch of history where we're just murder. Yeah. And we
made so much progress, I guess, in the past couple of centuries. The United States is a shiny example
of that. But do you think also that it's that effect that we were, a lot of good things had to
happen too? Or else we wouldn't be here. So do we just focus? Isn't it like a car crash effect?
That like we're, you know, the rubber neck that everyone pulls over to see a car crash. Are we
just only focusing on the negative things of history because they're just more exciting to us?
Like it's just not, it's boring to be like, yeah, and then there was a bunch of villagers and they
ate every day and danced and loved. Yeah. I wonder, I wonder how different those people were, you
know, like they might have had the same exact loves and fears and like they, they perhaps had
the same kind of brilliant ideas in their head, if not more brilliant. And we kind of think about
like this moment in history is like the most special moment. Like we're doing the coolest
shit that we're doing the most amazing building and most amazing things. But maybe they were
building amazing things in their different way with like less technological, but in the space
of ideas and the space of just all the different, the camaraderie and the space of like concepts,
mathematics, all those kinds of things. Yeah. I mean, Greece, you look at the architecture,
it still stands up. I mean, all the government, it's still arguably, I mean, as far as objective
beauty, it's hard to argue that Greco-Roman, it's just something about it with the, with the columns,
it's just, it's powerful. It's, I don't know, even Ayn Rand would probably appreciate it.
Yeah. She doesn't know. No. No.
So in your history, Hyena's, that unfortunately has come to an end before we're talking about
empires coming to an end, all empires fall. Yeah. That one, you may rise again, empires might rise,
who knows, who knows? I, I'm obviously a fan, so I hope it does rise again. But you've seemed to
develop your own language. Can you, you know, it's what it is. What is, what is that? What the
hell? Is this some kind of medical condition or can you, can you explain like the linguistic
essentials that catch us up to the linguistic essentials that people need to know to understand
the way you speak? You know, Leopold and Loeb, you know, the story of those two, they murdered
that kid and they had this weird relationship. Anyway, it's an interesting thing to Google,
Leopold and Loeb, these two guys who ended up murdering a kid because they developed their
own language with each other and this own reality and this weird thing and they wanted to know what
it's like to murder a kid and they murdered a kid. It's a famous story in American lore and history
or whatever, famous case. But this phenomenon, yeah, me and Chris got together. It wasn't as
dark as Leopold, no, we didn't murder a kid, but we murdered a podcast. Or at least stab it a few
times. Yeah, it's, it was something in the organic chemistry of me and Chris that I think we'll both
end up appreciating even probably more than we do now that it's mysterious. I gotta be honest with
you, it was the thing that, it wasn't conscious, wasn't intentional. It was something that happened
in the music of our energies that just went. It's fascinating. Like when you hear someone sing or
when a jazz band hits a rhythm or even when I'm on stage and I just catch a rhythm, it's like,
dude, I didn't make a choice there. I don't know what that is. I don't know how to explain it.
But it comes from somewhere else and I don't know what it is. It's beyond my comprehension,
but with Chris, there was this magical chemistry that, you know, I have chemistry with a lot of
people and it can be funny and I enjoy it. I feel zero chemistry here. This is great.
Yeah, it's a little bit more intelligent than when me and Chris did. But, you know, me and Chris,
I think we connected on the funny bone. Like I found him so funny and we found the same things
funny. And from that, these organic expressions came from some part of our brains that was created
from this chemistry. And yeah, we just developed this language and this cult following and people
were really upset when we ended, but it was the right thing to end because like all things that
ended, it was kind of done a few episodes even before we finished. And I think we pulled the
plug before it started rolling downhill. Like all, you know, like all great flings, you know,
there's your long relationship, long marriages are boring and comfortable.
The one you really like fucking always ends abruptly and sadly. But you always look back
and you jerk off to it. So you guys made love? Yeah. So it's like, it was like a hot fling
with me and him. And it was intense and we burned the candle at both ends. And it was, I think that
podcast was meant to be three years. And maybe people will go back and appreciate it and listen
to it over and over again. And I think the new things we do people will love. I'm doing long
days now that podcast and people seem to enjoy it. I'm really enjoying the long days on YouTube.
I just found myself just like staring at you ranting for a scene with Tim Dillon. I really
enjoyed whatever those rants are, the genius of just one thing after the other. But definitely
the chemistry almost as a study. I remember the reason I first started listening to it,
I was trying to get a perspective on certain historical moments. Like it was interesting.
I tuned in to learn history. Yeah, I came for the history and like stayed for the chaos.
Stayed for the crack open and clean out. And yeah, it was almost, I listened to Rogan like this
sometimes. I'll re-listen to an episode to try to understand why was this so fun to listen to?
It's almost like trying to analyze humor or something like that. But it's nice from a
conversational perspective. Like why was this so easy to listen to? And with history,
Hain is like, why is the chemistry so good? It's so, it's weird. It's weird because there's not
many podcasts like that. I don't know any with the chemistry like that. It's interesting. It's
kind of sad that the fling with the prostitute in Vegas has to end. But that's what makes it special.
It's the Bukowski thing with the fog. The British office one of my favorite shows was that it ended
very quickly. It's only a couple of seasons or something like that. And that was tragic,
but that took guts to just end it. Given all the money you could have made, given all the,
you just end it. And that's what makes it truly special.
Yeah. And I'll tell you, man, I'll just emphasize it because I marvel at it too.
Because as a guy who tries to always figure out what the causes of things, I gotta be honest,
man. Looking back on that, even with retrospective wisdom, that 2020 hindsight,
we've been done a couple of months now, it's something that I can't explain. It's something
that I don't know how you quantify it. I don't know how you describe it. It's musical. It's really
kind of rhythmic. Maybe like a Netflix show about history. That's in the future with the two of you.
You guys will meet with that, the way you meet with the fling like a decade from now,
a diner, and you're both way fatter and uglier. And then you just reminisce over some cigarettes
and coffee. That could be. Yeah, that could be. Yeah. But it's definitely a classic podcast
that people can go back and appreciate. It's fast paced and it was unique.
What was it like to research for, I mean, it was really scholarly, the depth of research that you
performed. It sometimes felt like you almost read an entire Wikipedia article beforehand.
That's exactly true. We were one fan. We attracted such funny people to that podcast,
and the fans were so funny. And one fan called us nicknamed as Wikipedia Sluts.
And so it just stuck. Yeah, we just would read Wikipedia. I would do a lot more research than
Chris. And so I would actually, once in a while, he'd get into it too. But for very interesting
episodes, some subject matter would just pull me in, like Bernie Madoff, just to think of one
that was recent. It was one of our last ones. And I think one of our better episodes. And I'm glad
that it kind of ended after that because it was rare. I think we started to slip a little bit.
I got fascinated and I did a lot of research for Bernie Madoff. But usually, yeah, we'd pull up
Wikipedia and we'd have fun. We were sort of the antithesis of Dan Carlin. I mean, you went to Dan
Carlin for accuracy and thoughtfulness. And you went to us for it was a hang with history. That's
why History Hyenas was such an appropriate name because it was a little bit of history. Some
episodes were more hyena, more wild, and a little history. And some were a little more dense,
like the Battle of Crete and less hyena. So you were always going to get both. You're either
going to get a majority of one or the other. Yeah. And Dan Carlin's the lion, I guess.
And you guys are predictably good. I mean, what are your thoughts about... I mean,
he's a storyteller too. He gets a lot of criticism from the historians,
quote unquote. That's why he likes to not... He keeps saying he's not a historian. But what's your...
What are your thoughts about hardcore history with Dan Carlin? Like, was he an inspiration to
the podcast you were doing or an account, almost like a reverse psychology inspiration,
where you wanted to do some kind of opposing type of podcast in history? Or was history
always just like a launching pad to just talk shit about human nature?
More of the latter. I wasn't even aware of his podcast when we started.
Oh, interesting. Yeah. And so it was just very organic. Again, like the chemistry,
me and Chris became very good friends. We started the podcast. First, we did a web series called
Bay Ridge Boys, which has a sort of little cult following. We did like five episodes and ended
it. And then we did the podcast. Hyenas were my favorite animal. And I talked about them passionately
and I told Chris about them. And then he started appreciating them. And we both love history.
I majored in history. It's one of the things I love. I go to museums all the time. I go to...
I do history tours. So does he. And so it was just sort of a natural, let's do a history podcast.
And it gave us something to talk about each episode to sort of lean our, hang our hats on
and riff off of. So it had nothing to do with dance. What I think about dance, I think it's great.
I think even if he's inaccurate in the opinions of the historical community, it starts conversations,
which is good. It's like this thing where people go, oh, it's dangerous rhetoric. It's like, no,
no, rhetoric only becomes dangerous when education fails. What's going on in America is
education has failed. So if you call someone online dangerous, it's not him that's dangerous.
It's the fucking stupid people that's dangerous. And it's the fault of this country. We didn't
listen to Aristotle. The future of a civilization depends on public education. And we failed.
Education has failed. Kids are kids are not interested in shit. And so in some sense,
those like Dan's podcast and podcast can be incredibly educational. That's he's a
the storytelling that pulls you in ultimately leads to you internalizing these stories and
like remembering them and thinking through them and all those kinds of things that is much more
powerful than you book on history. That's accurate. I think often it inspires you to go learn more.
So it's like, I know we did that. I mean, you know, I people would go, hey, I went and learned
about this because they knew with us, there was no pretense, which was great, that we had no standard.
So it's like nobody came to us for historical accuracy. But I was kind of turned on by the fact
that it inspired people to go learn about this stuff, or to at least know like Battle of Crete,
like you said, a very underappreciated battle. Even Winston Churchill said from here on, we will no
longer say that Greeks fight like heroes, but heroes fight like Greeks. I mean, it was a
monumental battle and, you know, not talked about enough. And our podcast would inspire
people to go actually learn more, to go listen to Dan Carlin or to go pick up a book or to do
research on their own. And so I think podcasts, Dan Carlin is obviously much more accurate than
us, but it's good that people are going to podcasts like yours and to learn shit. Joe was is really
like the progenitor of that. I mean, you know, having intellectuals on and getting the public
interested with this new medium in people who are intelligent. It's nice because, you know,
what the mainstream press pushes out is horseshit, gorgeous horseshit. It's got a beautiful veneer,
but no substance. And so this, this is a nice pushback. Yeah, the authenticity of Joe's show.
I mean, I'm through, I started listening from the very beginning, you know, doing my in grad
school, you know, like a technical person, and he just pulled me in and made me curious to learn
about all kinds of things and use my own critical reasoning skills on some of the bullshit guess
he's had and some of the most inspiring guess he's had. And so I teach you to think, can you,
I don't know much about Bernie Madoff as a small tangent. Can you tell me who the hell is Bernie
Madoff? Oh, Bernie Madoff is the goat, the greatest thief of all time, dude. Hedge fund guy ran a
hedge fund and stole the most money in the history of America. I mean, a con artist. And he does,
people obviously, he's become, he's a household name because of the magnitude of his crime,
but you got to appreciate, again, you got to appreciate what went into this and how long he
was able to pull it off by tricking the smartest and richest people in the world. And a brilliant
scam. The con man, con man is short for confidence man. And it came from, yeah, a con man, basically,
they exude confidence and they trick people by playing on their ego and blind spots. And the
word comes from a guy I can't remember where, but what do you, what do you used to do? I can't
remember the guy's name or whatever. You can Google it, con man. But it's very interesting. The first
con man that is on record, what he would do is he would go to very rich people and he'd be very
well dressed, right? And he'd go, I bet you, you don't have the confidence to give me your watch.
And he would plan the egos of these very powerful and rich people and they would give
them the watch for some reason, some sort of reverse psychology bullshit. And he would take
the watch and he would just steal it. Cause basically saying like, I don't, you don't have
the confidence to give me the watch cause you don't, I don't know. You don't think I'm going to give it
back. And he would just take it. So Bernie Madoff was a very sophisticated con man. And again,
we were talking about people pretending to be the opposite of what they are. Bernie hid his
thievery in how available he was to his clients, how he would show up at every bar mitzvah,
every birthday, he was always available for their phone calls. And he played on their egos.
He made it so people were wanted to invest in him. Like they were competing. He made it very
exclusive. He wouldn't just take anyone. And there was a method behind that madness because
he wanted the whales that wouldn't notice that he was, he had this pyramid scheme going. And so
what he would do is he would just rob from the richer and he just kept, it was like, he'd pay
back the richer with the guy who was a little, and it was a pyramid scheme. And he was able to do it
for so long and steal so much money. And he would win people over with the scheme because with that
scheme, he was the only guy who could provide, who could guarantee like a 1% return even during
times of recession. And because he was such a good con man, he hijacked people's reasoning with his
charm. And that's what con artists do. That's what psychopaths do. They're so fucking charming.
They get you in that Volkswagen Beetle because if they use their reasoning for one second,
they'd go, Hey, nobody can provide 1% returns during recessions. How the fuck is this guy doing
it? I'll tell you how he's doing it. He's stealing from another guy to pay you. You fucking idiot.
So charisma is essential to that. Maybe you can help explain something to me, something I have been
affected by. I'm getting way too loud for your listeners. It's just going to be comments like,
tell this guy to calm down. I'm sorry. I'm Greek apostate.
No, that's beautiful. I love it. Something that I have been thinking about and have encountered
indirectly is Jeffrey Epstein. And I have a sense because of MIT, because of all the other
people that have been touched the wrong term by Jeffrey Epstein in the sense that literally
and figuratively. And it always felt to me like there's not a deep conspiracy. I don't know,
I don't know, but it felt to me like it's not some deeply rooted conspiracy where like Eric
Weinstein thinks that there's some probability that Jeffrey Epstein is a front for like an
intelligence agency, whether it's Israeli or the CIA, I don't know, but is a front for something
much, much bigger. And then I always thought that he's just, maybe you can correct me, but more of
the Bernie Madoff variety where he's just a charismatic guy who maybe a psychopathic in some
sense. So, you know, also a pedophile, but just charismatic and is able to convince people of
that 1% of any idea that in the case of scientists is able to convince these people that their ideas
matter. So, one thing scientists don't really, you know, despite what people say, I don't think
they care about money as much as people think. People are ridiculous when they think that,
yeah, that's why people get into science for the money. The personalities that get into science
are obsessed with minutiae and they do the scientific method. You know how boring that is?
Like, you have to have a love for it in order to do it. But the thing, what drives you is for
your ideas to be then heard. And when a rich guy comes over, probably super charismatic,
is going to tell you that your ideas, especially for some of these outsiders that MIT at Harvard
and Caltech, all these like sort of big science, like physics, biology, artificial intelligence,
computing fields. To hear somebody say that your ideas are brilliant, ideas matter, it's pretty
powerful, especially when you've been an outsider. Like, he's talked to a bunch of people who were
who had outsider ideas. You know, the big negative for me of modern academia is that
most people, actually like most communities, most people think the same and there's just
these brilliant outsiders. And the outsiders are just derided. And so when you have Jeffrey Epstein,
like Hyena, sorry, sorry, sorry, going from on the outside and picking off these brilliant minds
that are the outsiders, he can use charisma to convince them to collaborate with him,
to take his funding, and then thereby he builds a reputation, like slowly accumulates these people
that actually results in a network of like some of the most brilliant people in the world,
you know, and then pulls in people like Bill Gates and I don't know, political figures.
I tend to believe one person can do that. Yeah. I mean, look at Hitler, charisma is blinding. I
think that's what Kahneman, speaking of Bernie Madoff, that's one of their major tools is flattery,
glib, superficial charm. It creates those blind spots. People want to hear how great they are.
They want to be flattered. It takes your defenses down, plays to our ego how much we're all just
pieces of garbage and want to hear how great we are. We want that love from our mother and our
father. It's Freudian and they know because they're not burdened with that need, they're not burdened
with that empathy or emotions and they just see things very calculatively. They play,
they know that we're prey in their game and they use that against us and that is why someone
who is not that intelligent like Hitler can probably convince a lot more intelligent people,
you know, and that's why we can't give him dill in power because, you know, he already stands on
a stage. I mean, if we let that guy, I mean, he will just take over a country and everyone who
can't cook well will be eliminated. So it's like- I wonder why he keeps complimenting me
when we're in private. Exactly. Be careful. He looks at me just, you're, I like your suit.
I like the cut of your jib. Yeah, definitely. You gotta be careful of that kid. He's Hitler.
But it's crazy to think about that. Clip that, please, internet. I mean,
Quentin Tarantino said it the best. I mean, in his script, personality goes a long way,
dude. I mean, personality can usurp common sense and reason of the smartest people.
These absolute smartest people can be hypnotized. It's sort of like a sexy woman. It's like you
can just, it just, you can be tricked because we have such a blind spot for, you know, for flattery.
Yeah, I wonder, I think there's a BBC documentary on, I think it's called something like Charisma,
Hitler's Charisma or something like that. It does quite, I mean, that one focused more about
the power of the speeches. But I wonder if most of the success or the rise of Hitler and the
Third Reich had to do with the charisma of Hitler when he's alone in a room with somebody,
with the generals, just one-on-one. I wonder if that's the essential element of just being able
to just look into a person's eyes, like flatter them or whatever is needed to earn their trust
and then convince them of anything you want. Right. Yeah, I mean, you're right because that's
the one piece of history we don't have. We don't know. We don't know. We do know that the kid
crushed. I mean, he was a headliner. He got up there and his hair would flopper. I mean, he
crushed it. Yeah, there's certain elements about nationalism and pride that are really powerful.
Like a lot of us humans, I think, long for that, for the feeling of belonging. And when
some charismatic leader makes us feel like we belong to a group, the amount of evil we can
do to other humans because of that sandless scapegoat. Nobody wants to look in. Nobody wants
to do the work to be better or look at where they messed up. Why does it always have to be the Jews
that are the scapegoat? You know, it's like, get over it, guys. I mean, it's like they killed Jesus.
You get over it. Yeah. Okay. It's a long time ago. I mean, move on. I'm Jewish. I understand because
we do run the central banks and the weather and the weather. Yeah. Don't forget about the
weather. That's a big one. That's a funny one that people created. Like, who gives a shit?
Well, what is the weather? Like, what's the importance of the weather? All right,
Jews made a rain outside. Good, you got to fucking, you know, they made it snow. Okay,
you get a day off. Thank the Jews. Yeah, it's like, yeah, there's certain conspiracies that
make me like flat earth. Like, what's the motivation for lying that the earth is round?
Like, what's the conspiracy? Yeah, what does anyone get out of that? Yeah, what is exactly
the profit? What's the strategy? Do you have any, from a historical perspective,
or just a human perspective conspiracy theories you connect with, or you're not necessarily
conspiratorial? I'm not necessarily conspiratorial. Nobody cares that much. But then, you know,
what happens is you find out this one or this two and you start questioning everything, man.
It's like, you know, the Vietnam War started, that was a lie. That was a false flag. And then
the next thing you know, everything's a false flag. There are some strange things on 9-11.
You know, there's some strange things from a scientific perspective. I'm no scientist,
but it's like, you know, yeah, three steel-framed skyscrapers falling on the same day in the same
way. A lot of people say, oh, they were hit by planes. It's like, yeah, but that's not
where they fell. They fell because of fires and usually, not usually, all the time, except for
three times. And there was buildings that have burned for longer than that.
And there might be good explanations, but the lack of transparency, it's like, I feel like
government... I'm building sevens weird. I mean, the way I kind of die. I'm just a neat, just a neat
physical... I mean, you're a scientist. Is that... Well, I don't... Is there resistance from the
steel? No, it's in the... Free, false... Not all scientists know everything. I'm just a computer
guy. Okay, because I had some questions I wanted to ask you about my biology.
Yeah, so exactly. I don't understand biology. I don't understand the melting point of steel.
But I'm just a common sense human that looks at government and institutions when they try to
communicate. And there's a certain human element where you can sense that there's dishonesty going
on. That dishonesty might not be deeply rooted in a conspiracy theory and something malevolent.
It might just be rooted more likely to me in a basic fear of losing your job.
Right. So when you have a bunch of people that are afraid of losing their job,
and they just don't want to... The origins of the virus, whether it came from a lab or not,
that's a pretty... I know a lot of biologists behind closed doors that say it's very likely it
was leaked from the lab. But they don't want to talk about it because there's not good evidence
either way. It's mostly you're just using common sense. So they're waiting for good evidence to
come out in either direction. But just like nobody in positions of institutional centralized power
wants to just honestly say, we don't know. Or on the point of masks or all those kinds of things to
say, here's the best evidence we have. We're not sure we're trying to figure that out. We're
desperately trying to figure that out. Or just like honesty, especially in the modern day,
that's the hope I have for the 21st centuries. People seem to detect bullshit much, much better
because of the internet. But they also believe crazy shit too. There's no yang without a yang,
I guess. But I think the conspiracy theories arise only when the people in positions of power
and government and institutions are full of shit. The air will be taken out of the conspiracy
theories if the people in elected power would be much more honest. Just like real. People like
Andrew Yang, whatever you think about him, just more honest. He just says whatever the hell
comes to mind. By the way, he's running for New York mayor. Do you have opinions?
Yeah, it's no good. I like Andrew Yang and it's no good. I'd be honest with you. I'm a lifelong
New Yorker. I mean, I'm a New Yorker. Well, you're a New Yorker, so nothing is good.
Well, something is good. Let's be honest about New York. It's a very socially liberal place.
It is the head of the snake. New York is the country. If New York, when New York's not doing
good, country's not doing good. It's the most important city, D.C., New York. It's really
Rome, be honest. Maybe I'm biased. I don't know. No. We just did. New Yorkers, we walk around
everywhere and we go, this is just like New York, but not New York. But New York needs,
and I'm a guy who leans left. I'd lean left and that's just what it is.
A dictator. Is that where you're going? No, we need, it's a money town.
Let's be, come on, man. I mean, New York is a money town. And Wall Street, and then when AOC and
her cronies at the local level rejected that Amazon thing, you're going like, what do you think
makes cities? What's going to create jobs in the 21st century? What do we need? More nail
salons? More pizza places? I mean, we're living in the tech revolution and whatever your opinions
are about Jeff Bezos, that's the world, tech. And they want to come here. Of course you give
them tax breaks. That's why companies go anywhere. She's so fucking utopian and that progressive
wing is so utopian and that always ends in disaster because it's not rooted in reality.
It doesn't accept the reality that people are self-interested. Now they're going to do this
14%, 15% tax hike on people making a million dollars more. In New York City, a million dollars is
not that much. So people are going to flee New York. The tax base is going to flee. New York's
going to fall to shit like it did before. So you're saying it basically needs a more capitalist
front, like capitalistic type of thinker. Bloomberg, Giuliani when he was still saying,
and his hair wasn't melting off his face. Prosecutor, you need a top. I mean, I don't know what's
happened to that guy's lost it, but it's fun. Yeah, it's fun to watch. Yeah, it's fun to watch
him be just like Trump's lacking. Like, yeah, boy, whatever you want, boss. I'll just say whatever
you want, boss. But New York is a money town that needs a money guy and sort of more of a Republican.
I have to say on the local level, as more of a guy who leans left, I'll just be honest,
it's a tough city that needs a tough mayor. Not some guy who's going like, I understand,
we all need free money. Andrew Yang, I think is right in the big picture because all the
real jobs are somewhere else. You look at those Asian cities, you go like, oh, that's what our
cities used to look like at the Industrial Revolution. There was jobs and people were
making things here. And now you look at those cities in Asia and you're going like, wow.
And then you go to Detroit and you're like, yeah, we're done. You go to Cleveland, you go, we're
done. So I don't actually, it's funny. The reason I really like Andrew Yang is I've learned a lot
every time he talks. Like, it's not his opinions. He's just giving a lot of data, like information,
which I just start a podcast. Don't run from there. That's true. He already has a podcast
that Yang speaks. Who does it? That's the way we communicate. I don't even talk to people
unless it's on a podcast. Listen, man, I'm not going to criticize that because there is something,
like I talked to my dad on a podcast for four hours and I'm not sure I would ever talk to him
in the way we talked without the podcast. What does he do? He's a physicist. Oh, shit.
But like, yeah, it's episode 100. And, you know,
I, the way I recorded that podcast is I tried to put my ego aside. It's actually really tough to
talk to your dad, especially because you're giving him a platform, especially at that time,
there's already a bit of a platform for this podcast. And so there's this as a son,
you think like, oh, here it goes with this bullshit again. Like that's the natural son thought
you have. But at the same time, I wanted to, the way I thought about it is in 20 years,
when I look back, like I want to do a conversation where I'm happy with it, you know? So I want to
make him shine. But I also called him out on like, why were you so distant? Like all that kind of
stuff. Yeah, it was very difficult to do, but it was really important to do. And I don't think I'd
be able to do it without a, without a microphone. Right. Listen, how often do we sit there and
just focus our attention, just look at the other person? I don't know, man. This is not even
recording right now. I just invited you over. Just so we could actually, you're right. The podcast
does make like, I listened, I've been listening to every word you've been saying. And if we weren't
doing a podcast, I might be looking at my phone or being self conscious about something else or
nervous or anxious. Especially with people close to you. I mean, that was, I recommend that actually
for people to talk to their family on a podcast or like a fake or not. This is really powerful.
It made me realize that there's a clear distinction between the conversations we usually have with
humans and those we have on the podcast as being recorded. What the fuck were we talking
on before that? I knew you were going to lose your train of thought on that one because that's
a big one. There's a motion behind that one. The podcast with dad is going to take,
that's going to take you to a place. That took you to a place. It took you outside of
interviewer. New York. I went to a place in New York and Yang. So the data, one of the things
that really surprised me about, I like the psycho analysis you just threw in there.
Yeah. That took you, that took you to a place. So Angie Yang mentioned,
respect me now, dad. MIT, is it enough? Fuck a million people listening to this. I got 14
Rogans. Is it enough, dad? I'm creating robots. Is it enough for you? That's what drives you
probably. That probably what drives me. That's what gives meaning to life, is it's never enough.
And I hope to pass that on to my kids one day that nothing's ever enough.
Whether they're robot or human, right? Your kids. Most likely. Let's be honest, robot.
You might call one of your robot. Do you love your robot? Are you starting to love
your, is it going to be like that Pygmalion thing? You create them and then they kill you,
but even while they're killing you, you got a tear rolling on your right.
The tear. A slow one tear. One tear. And just.
Why are you doing this Frankenstein? Why? Why? But I loved you. Those would be the last words
out of my mouth. But Angie Yang mentioned something on the, that it cost $400,000,
over $400,000 per year to support one person in prison in New York. When I heard that number,
it was really confusing to me. It cost that much, $400,000 per person.
And it was really refreshing to hear a politician describe a particular problem with data,
that this is this prison industrial complex, whatever the hell it is.
And whether the solution, it's unclear what the solution is. I think he has solutions,
but just the honesty of presenting that information was refreshing. And I'm not sure
a capitalistic person would solve that. Those kinds of problems he might make worse.
And I'm not, you know, I'm a huge fan of capitalism. I think,
I think the free market is the way we make progress in this world, but it seems to go wrong
in certain directions, like the military industrial complex, the prison, anything that ends with
industrial complex. And so I'm not sure. I'm not sure if all of the problems, you're basically
saying, let's put New York's problems aside. We need to have New York shine first to do what it
does best. And then the problems will fix them. Well, and then we can focus on the problems.
But if you just say, like, here's a problem, here's a problem, here's a problem, let's make sure
we have the safety net that protects against all of these kinds of problems, that's not going to,
that's going to kill the city, the spirit of the city that is, in your biased opinion, the Rome of
the world. That said, a lot of people are fleeing New York. Yeah, that's why I say it. That's the
reality of the situation is, you know, I'm all for the public good. But yeah, there needs to be
back to that Greek expression, pan metronarist. And I also think the free market is responsible
for progress. I think it's the most natural thing, the thing that's most aligned with human nature,
which is self interest. And which I believe not to the extent that I ran would, but I do believe
people are mostly self interested, especially with one gun to the head. Morals are out the window,
you know, it's about survival. So, you know, create a system that respects that and acknowledges
that. But socialism works very well, at least right now, as a check as to temper the excesses
of capitalism. And in certain scenarios, is the more appropriate system, you know, in a vacuum.
So one being prisons or, you know, you know, governance, you know, maybe even, well, and
this is a difficult one, but in healthcare, healthcare, it's unclear what to write. There's
a lot of the base there. Yeah, doctors want boats. So I guess you're voting for AOC, you're saying.
No, I'm not voting for AOC, but I do. It's just a tough one. That's a tough one. But
ultimately, the Hippocratic oath, it's like, how do you turn people away, man? How do you do that
to people? It's like, it's a tough thing to reconcile helping people, curing people with
the marketplace. It's just, I can understand why that one's so tough. And then you got
hypochondriacs, of course, who drain the system, you know, like people who are having anxiety like
me, who had COVID and called 14, you know, I called 14 ambulances. So, and then, of course,
we're fat and the free market made us fat because it played the marketing made us want all this
junk food and that's a burden on the healthcare system. So we got to do something about that.
We got to get creative. We need new thinkers. I'll be one of them. When you go to a fast food
restaurant, you stand on a scale. If you're over a certain thing, you can't be served. It's good
for the healthcare system. You know, you just handed a salad and say, sorry, this burger is
illegal for it right now. If you achieve these certain, oh, BMI goals, then you can have this
burger, but right now you can. And that's where the state's important. Yeah. Okay, to regulate
our freedoms. No slurpees up with you, Bloomberg. Well, I'm with you to go along. I think the salads
are too expensive. They should be subsidized. If you go to like a fast food joint, the burger is
always going to be cheaper than the salad. And this does not make sense. We should run on this
platform. I'll be your vice president. We'll ban burgers for people over a certain weight
and make salads cheap. Three day work weeks. Why has that been happening yet?
Okay, where are you going with this one? Good for the economy. Stimulates the economy, right?
More shifts, creates more jobs, more people spending because they have more leisure time,
boosts the leisure economy. Why are we still doing the five day work week? That was tempered
from the seven day work week. So it used to be seven day work week. It used to be like,
people who are just these libertarians, it's like, come on, dude, what is this? Are we freshmen in
college? Yeah. We're going to talk about Iron Man next. Let's talk about reality and human nature.
People are fucking greedy. They lie. There's no end to up, which is one of my favorite expressions.
No end to up. No end to up. There's no end to up.
But can we dissect that from a Randian perspective?
There's no end to up, which is, you just keep going. It's never enough.
Oh, never enough.
It's never enough. No end to up. More, more, more. And you have to reconcile. In fact,
you're going to die. So there's no end to up thing is that balance is just as valuable as
progress. So we have to reconcile those two things and put them on a seesaw and figure out how to get
two people who have the equal weight to keep it like that. And that's the goal. And it constantly
vacillates according to the time. Sometimes you need a little more socialism. Sometimes you need
a little more capitalism. You got to fly the plane, man. You got to fly the plane, dude.
What's your looking back at history, Kainas? Is there a moment, time period in history,
in history, a person in history that's most fascinating to you? You mentioned Bertie
Madoff. Maybe second to Bertie Madoff. Is there in a battle of Crete,
is there something that you've always been curious about, even if it's something you
haven't actually researched that well yet? Just something that pulled at your curiosity
that instructed the way you think about the world?
An individual or an event?
An event, individual, moment in history or person in history?
There's a few, but Queen Elizabeth, the Elizabethan era, the sun never sets in the British
Empire, very successful empire. What an absolute success story that is for a leader and a woman.
Can you tell a little bit about her story? I actually don't know much about the British Empire.
Yeah, she had a good run. I think it's like 70 years. She knows Shakespeare.
Oh, I guess what's the word, Pax Romana, the period of Rome that was at peace and they flourished,
like a couple of emperors like Trajan or some good ones. I think he was part of the Pax Romana
that sort of just a peace and a comfortable flourishing time. England had sort of that
in their empire under her. Successful reign. She murdered her cousin. The movies,
there's, you know, Kate Blanchett plays her and does so. And she didn't win the Oscar because
fucking Gwyneth Paltrow put a British accent on in Shakespeare and Love. It's a tragedy.
Why do I know this? Because I'm not a full man. I'm a comedian, which means I do skits that I
perform. And Kate Blanchett's incredible actress, great movies. She was just so, and here's the
thing. She never got married. She was so astute at public relations. And imagine how strong you
got to be as a woman to lead the greatest empire, maybe known to man at the time, and to do so
successfully. How Machiavellian you have to be, how idealist you have to be, how much of a good
marketer you have to be, propaganda machine was on point. She was married to England.
She was adored the way she adorned herself. You walked in, you're like, holy men,
a God just walked in here. And of course she got fucked. I mean, who doesn't fuck? We all
fuck. Even robots one day will fuck. But she was, she did that propaganda thing. And historians
aren't, they haven't decided this, but I believe she fucked. And I believe she did that as a tool
of propaganda, a married to England. So you're directly referring to like using sex as a way
to manipulate people. Well, she was known as like the virgin queen. And her thing was like,
I'm married to England. Like I can't be distracted by man or woman. She never had any kids,
nothing. I think she did that as a tool of manipulation, which you need. Rulers need to,
you know, Obama made you feel good. And then he went and carpet bombed everywhere.
You need to feel good about your guy, no matter how evil they are. And she was fucking a dictator.
But when you look back at her, everyone's like, oh my God, she was so great. The horror and the
shit that she had to do, she didn't put that in the history books. But that's what probably was
part of what made her successful. And she's a fascinating character to Pundram because she
was so successful and England flourished so much. And it's just fascinating to me,
because she was the great version queen. And can you think of a, there's no other woman
who was that say, I mean, Angela Merkel, I mean, come on. I mean, there's nobody who comes close
and defeating the Spanish hermada. I think that happened under her. I mean, I'm no professional
history, but I mean, the woman crushed. Do you think it's more effective to lead by
love, which it sounds like what she did from the PR perspective or by fear? Where do you land on
that? That's a great question. We got to ask Joe. Well, yeah, this is interesting because I think
leading in the 21st century in whatever ways is different. I think it's very difficult to lead
by fear. I mean, that's why I find Putin fascinating and like really fascinating. Like is he a relic
of another era? Or is he something that will still be necessary in the coming decades for certain
nations? I think he's a, I don't think he's a relic from another era. I think his background,
I think he is who you think he is because his background was an espionage. His background
was in subterfusion espionage. I think I've said the word subterfusion maybe 10 times now,
but he- You like big words, your intellectuals. I just, I'm sitting here with you. It's time to
flex. But he, he's very good at that, right? Like controlling people with psychology and
even if you look at the way he sort of used the internet and has sort of been, you know,
gotten into the citizens of other countries' opinions and it's very KGB. He also looks great
without a shirt on a pony. On a horse. On a horse, yeah. Yeah. I thought he would choose a pony
because a pony's smaller. Would you, would you put Queen Elizabeth as the greatest leader of all
time? Probably. Yeah. I think as a woman and you look at, you look at the, the length of the
rain, I think it's like 70-something years or something like that, that she reigned. Success,
man. Success. She used the church, she used public psychology, Shakespeare, the greatest playwright
of all time under her reign. You know, people were going to plays and it was a, it was a
success front and she was marauding everywhere else, marauding and, and culling resources for
the empire and just say absolute successful. It's even a token of her success. We don't consider
her a dictator. Yeah. She's a dictator, you know? She was queen. This is my thing I love about the
feudal system, that these fucking countries still have feudal systems. They're celebrating a horrible
thing. Divine right of kings, oppression. Kings were dictators and now they have fucking ceremonial.
Why don't we have a ceremonial furor? What is in German? He doesn't do any of the bad stuff. He
just rolls around and does this and that. I mean, it's like, what the fuck? There's no difference
between a Hitler and a fucking king. They did the same horrible shit. Why not a fucking ceremonial
conqueror? Alexander the Great walks in, rapes it a little bit, but it's all fun. It's for ceremony.
He represents the country, Macedonia. It's Greek. It's interesting to see that some, you're starting
to see a bit of that in Russia with Stalin, actually, the celebration of a man that helped
win the Great Patriotic War. Uh-oh. Yeah. Right. So like, you're already starting to see that. It's
very possible in the history books. You'll be seen as maybe like a Jenghis Khan type of character
and you forget the millions that he tortured. So you're one of the most successful and brilliant
people the world has ever seen. So you're the good person to ask for advice. You know, there's a lot
of young people that look up to you. God bless their souls and hearts. Made the right choice.
What advice would you give to a young person, maybe to yourself, to a young version of yourself?
You know, just how to live a successful, a good life. Be doggedly you. I think the magic happens
when you are stubbornly doggedly you and you meet other people who are doing the same. And
the real magic of life, the real true currency in this ephemeral life is sort of the communication
that happens between people. That's the real currency. Friendships, love, it's cliche, but it's
I think the meaning of life is to experience love. And I think people often mistake, maybe it's
because of Hollywood films and things like that, that love is feeling, but it's not. It's an action.
So that took me a while to learn. And I think that's why I've made decisions since that I think
have been good for me and healthy for me. Love is an action. People can say things, you can feel
things. That doesn't mean they're necessarily real. It's all chemical reactions. It's all tied to our
immaturity and psychological issues and survival. But action when you do things, when you act out
of love and that's what it's about. Is there times when you're younger where you were kind of dishonest
with who you are to yourself in terms of what kind of things did you have to do to shake yourself
up and be like, okay, I thought I thought I'm going to be a scientist, but instead I realized I'm
going to do this. I'm going to make funny. Yeah. My comedy is a hard thing to explain to an immigrant
mother who came here and under Nazi-occupied Crete and became a human rights lawyer and lawyer.
And my brother's a lawyer. My father was a lawyer. Claude is way up. His dad was a...
So you're a disappointment.
I'm the black sheep. Yeah. My brother went to Oxford, Georgetown Law at Brown.
He has a master's in law degrees. My mother has four law degrees. She was on the Human Rights
Commission in New York up for a judgeship under Dinkins. She was the editor of Unitar.
She wrote a seminal piece on the Human Rights of Children for the United Nations.
And yeah, it was a comedian. I was always a fuck up. And the thing that I was best at,
the only thing I was ever decent at was just like making people laugh. I don't know why.
I don't know where that comes from, but... Was there ever a question or was there a moment
where you decided this is what I'm going to do? There was a moment after I graduated college.
Yeah. But I was thinking about all types of stuff that other people imposed on me. And
I was honest with myself. And once I figured out that it was an actual career path,
I wasn't even aware. Back then, the internet wasn't huge. In late 99, 2000, it wasn't big
yet. So I thought Robin Williams was just like an actor. I didn't know there was comedy clubs.
So once I learned that, I was just like, I tried it. I suffered from massive anxiety.
I remember the first time I did comedy, my arms went numb. I started having a massive panic attack.
I have my first set. I can show it to you. It's like, I just...
I'm video.
Yeah, I'm video. Oh, nice.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And the reason why I kept saying thank you is because I forgot
my whole jokes. I was so scared. And then they laughed because of the amount of times I said
thank you. And then once they laughed, I remembered the whole thing. And I did the five minutes.
And I remember getting off and for a person who never felt like he had a place anywhere,
nothing ever felt right. That felt like, okay, I found it. This is what I'm supposed to do.
This is it. It was the only time in my life I felt that I haven't felt it since,
never felt it before. So it's the only thing I can do. And...
Yeah, I had that. You know, it's funny because there's... I have a similar experience like immigrant
family in the world tells you to do certain things and you think that's right. But then
you put yourself in situations by luck, probably, where it's like, oh, this feels right. I don't
know what this means, but this feels right. I think the biggest moment like that for me was...
I don't know what to make of it exactly, but when I met Spott, the robot, the legged robot,
it was like five years ago, it felt like the depth of fascinating ideas that are yet to be
explored with this thing. This felt like a journey. It was like a door that opened.
And I was like, I don't want to be a professor. At that point, I realized I don't want to
do sort of generic stuff. I want to do something crazy. I want to do something big. That's the
reason I stepped away from MIT. That's the reason I have this burning desire to do a startup.
That's the reason I came to Austin. Yeah. I don't know what the hell it all means,
but you just kind of follow that. That's awesome. That sounds like you're following
what's doggedly you. And also, I think just to piggyback off it, I think that means no matter
what it is, because I think the American dream is sold like, hey, if you're not Beyonce or if
you're not famous, you're not worth it. I hate that. And that's what I love so much about certain
countries like Sweden. It's like where everyone has healthcare and stuff like that, because
everyone is valued more. It's like whatever... If you want to be a doorman, dude, it's all the same.
Prince was not happy. There's no... Just because you're rich or famous, you're still the same guy
with your possessions are a lot little. It's like I have met some doorman. I have met some tax
gapers that a lot of you not are more fascinating. I have comedians or horrible people. I want to
get away from all of them. I have very few friends, Paul Verzi, Tim Dillon, who are comedians,
because they're awful, awful people. Some of the people who you know the most, who are the most
famous, are not who they say they are. Usually that's the case. They're putting on that public
facade because they're fucking sociopaths. They're horrible people. And some of the most beautiful
people I've met and the most interesting people I've met have regular jobs. There is no shame in
any fucking job. We don't all have to be rappers with like rims. It's just a weird thing.
Yeah, fame is a drug. And yeah, comedians, I agree with you. There's some part of me that knows
that there'll be a moment in my life when I'm standing there with like a sword or a knife in
my stomach and looking at Tim Dillon's smiling face saying, you shouldn't have trusted me.
You stupid fuck. So on that note, to be honest, I've been a huge fan of yours. I love what you're
doing with Long Days now, your new podcast. And I obviously love all the stuff you've done before
with history, hyenas, the chemistry, the chemistry you have with yourself is also fun to watch.
So man, I'm a huge fan. It's a huge honor that you come down here. Thanks so much for talking to
me. It means so much to me to hear you say that. I really appreciate it. I'm a big fan of yours.
And have me on has been amazing. And just thank you, man. Thank you for having me on. And people,
if they want to watch my special, it's called Blowing the Light. It's on YouTube. And please
come listen to Long Days of Podcasts. And let's go eat some barbecue. Let's do it.
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Yanis Papas. And thank you to Wine Access,
Blinkist, Magic Spoon, and Indeed. Check them out in the description to support this podcast.
And now let me leave you with some words from Karl Marx.
Revolutions are the locomotives of history. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.