Lex Fridman Podcast - #150 – Michael Malice: The White Pill, Freedom, Hope, and Happiness Amidst Chaos

Starting point is 00:00:00 The following is a conversation with Michael Malice, his second time on the podcast. He's an anarchist, political thinker, podcaster, and author. He wrote Dear Reader, which is a book on North Korea, and The New Right, a book on the various ideological movements at the fringe of American politics. He hosts the podcast called You're Welcome, why you are, and in general there's a lot of live shows on YouTube that are at times profoundly absurd and at other times absurdly profound and always full of humor and wisdom. He is the Joker to my Batman and the caviar to my vodka. His masterful dance between dark humor and

Starting point is 00:00:46 difficult, even dangerous ideas challenges me to think deeply about this world. And when that fails, at least smile and have a good laugh at the absurdity of it all. This episode has much of that. His outfit, for example, the exact inverse of mine with a white suit and a black shirt is just one example of that of the humor, trolling, and brilliance that is Michael Malice. Quick mention of our sponsors. That's sweet business management software, athletic greens, all-in-one nutrition drink, sun basket, meal delivery service, and cash app. So the choice is success, health, food, or money. Choose wisely, my friends.

Starting point is 00:01:39 And if you wish, click the sponsor links below to get a discount and support this podcast. As a side note, let me say that Michael is in many ways a man of radical ideas, but also a man with kindness in his heart. Those two things are great ingredients for a fascinating conversation. I hope to have several such people in this podcast, this upcoming year, who also have radical ideas about politics, science upcoming year, who also have radical ideas about politics, science, technology, and life. At times, often perhaps, I might fail at asking the challenging questions that should be

Starting point is 00:02:14 asked, but I will try my best to do so, and hope to keep improving every time. Mostly, I come to these conversations with an open mind and with love. Unfortunately, that kind of approach can be taken advantage of in many ways. It can be used by reporters or just people online later to highlight how or why I'm ignorant or worse, I'm generally not a good human being. In the context of this, I have two options. I could either be cautious and afraid or or second, be kind, thoughtful, and fearless. I choose the latter, hopefully, while still being open fragile and empathetic.

Starting point is 00:02:54 Again, I strive to be like the main character of the idiot by Dusty Yevsky. That's my New Year's resolution. Be kind and do difficult things. Difficult conversations, difficult research projects, and difficult entrepreneurial adventures. If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review it on Apple Podcasts, follow on Spotify, support it on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter and Lex Friedman. As usual, I'll do a few minutes of ads now and no ads in the middle. I tried to make these interesting, but I give you time stamps so if you skip, please still check out the sponsors by clicking the links in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast.

Starting point is 00:03:35 This show is sponsored by NetSuite. This one's for the business owners out there. Running a business is hard. Spoiler alert. If you own a business, don't let QuickBooks and spreadsheets make it even harder than it needs to. You should consider upgrading to NetSuite. It allows you to manage financials, HR, inventory, e-commerce, and many more business-related

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Starting point is 00:04:32 Let net suite show you how they'll benefit your business with a free product tour, free and all caps. That's how you know they mean it. At netsweat.com slash strategy. You might be wondering why the code word strategy and not the usual code word Lex is used. Well, it's because this one friends is hot off the presses. New sponsor. It's a trial run. So if you want to support this podcast and your own a business, now is the time to try Netsuite. That probably changed it to Lex from Strategy soon, but for now it's Strategy. Schedule your free product tour right now at Netsuite.com slash Strategy.

Starting point is 00:05:14 Netsuite.com slash Strategy. That is the cheesiest and the worst code word they could have used. Strategy. But I did read a bunch of reviews of NetSuite and people really do love it. All right, onto the next one. This show is also sponsored by Athletic Greens. The only one daily drink to support better health and peak performance. I can't say enough positive things about these guys. I love them. It replaced the multivitamin for me and went far beyond that with 75 vitamins and minerals.

Starting point is 00:05:46 I do intermittent fasting of 16 to 24 hours every day and always break my fast with athletic greens. It helps me not worry whether I'm getting all the nutrients I need. One of the many reasons I'm a fan of these guys is that they keep iterating on their formula. I love continuous improvement. That's what makes engineering super fun. Life is not about reaching perfection, it's about constantly striving for it and making sure each iteration is a positive delta. The other thing I've taken for a long time outside of athletic greens is fish oil. So I'm especially excited now that they're selling fish oil and are offering listeners of this here podcast. Free one month supply of wild caught omega-3 fish oil.

Starting point is 00:06:32 When you go to athleticgreens.com slash Lex to claim the special offer, click the athleticgreens.com slash Lex link in the description to get the fish oil and the only one supplement I rely on every day for the nutritional foundation of my physical and mental performance. This show is also sponsored by Sun Basket. Sun Basket delivers fresh, healthy, delicious meals straight to your door. As you may know, my diet is pretty minimalist, so it's nice to get some healthy variety into the mix. They make it easy and convenient to do so, with everything pre-portioned and ready to prep and cook. Even I somehow managed

Starting point is 00:07:17 to figure it out. You can enjoy delicious, healthy dinner in as little as 15 minutes. I've enjoyed a bunch of meals from their menu that fit my what they call, carb conscious ways. Some items on the menu today are black angus rib-eye steaks with broccoli and radishes, Italian sausages and vegetable skewers with two ramescos, Mediterranean lemon chicken with baby broccoli,

Starting point is 00:07:42 artichokes and olives. It goes on, the menus is ridiculously delicious and healthy. Right now, sunbasket is offering $35 off your order when you go to sunbasket.com slash Lex and enter promo code Lex to check out. Again, that's a lot of Lex. Visit sunbasket.com slash Lex and use code Lex to get 35 bucks off your order. Good luck you won't regret it. It's delicious. Finally, this show is presented by CashApp, the number one finance app in the App Store.

Starting point is 00:08:15 When you get it, use code Lex Podcast. CashApp, as you send money to friends by Bitcoin and invest in the stock market was as little as $1. I'm thinking of doing conversations with folks who work in and around the cryptocurrency space. Similar to AI, there are a lot of charlatans in the space, but there are also a lot of free thinkers and technical geniuses. From my perspective, it's actually sometimes difficult to figure out the difference between the charlatans and the geniuses.

Starting point is 00:08:45 But I do my best. Anyway, if I do make mistakes in selecting the guests I speak with, or just the details of various things I say inside conversations, as I'm sure I often do, I will keep trying to improve, I promise you this, correct things where I can, afterwards, and also keep following my curiosity wherever it takes me. Please be patient, I'm doing my best here. So again, if you get cash out from the App Store

Starting point is 00:09:11 or Google Play and use the code Lex Podcast, you get 10 bucks in cash app, we'll also donate to the dollars to first an organization that is helping to advance robotics and STEM education for young people around the world. And now, here's my conversation with Michael Vales. Knock, knock. You're stealing my bed. I'll kill you family. Knock knock joke works. Knock knock Michael. You don't do knock knock jokes with Russians.

Starting point is 00:10:00 Because we have knock at the door. Shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh. Turn down the TV. You got to sit quiet. Everyone will take away. We have knock at the door. Shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, Leon me when you're not strong Michael. Well, that will never happen. I Stole elegantly eloquently that joke from you The light detected term that was a lie elegantly an eloquent Yeah, you cross that on a sheet of paper that means it's real the reason I bring it up is because you had the guts the brilliance to real. The reason I bring it up is because you had the guts, the brilliance to to do a knock knock joke. Not once, but three times with Alex Jones. I think it was like six. I had a runner.

Starting point is 00:10:52 Okay. Maybe I just they started to sort of melt together in this beautiful art form that you've created, which is like these kind loving knock knock jokes with Alex Jones. So you got the chance to meet him talk with him twice with a temple. Yeah in a long form conversation What was it like Talking to Alex Jones both on the deep philosophical intellectual level and staring the man in his eyes and doing a knock knock joke about Olive knock knock who's there? Olive, I love you, Alex. I love you. But there's a lot to explain.

Starting point is 00:11:32 Where do you start? I've been in his show in For Wars a few times when I was researching my book, then you write. So I had had conversations with him before. One of the things that I appreciate about Alex is he is a lot more self-aware than people think and has a good sense of humor. And I also like a good twist ending. So if you set people up and all these jokes are these kind of vapid, you know, all of you

Starting point is 00:11:59 jokes and the last ones about building seven, they're not going to see that one coming, nor will he see that one coming. I even had another one about Sandy Hook, which I didn't do on the air, because he was being like a good sport, but that was the dagger that was kind of behind my back if necessary. But it was a good mechanism toward, I like it when things work on several levels. It was also good mechanism to keep kind of the conversation guarded and this every so often this is kind of hitting the control delete and bring it down to a certain point of calmness. What about the love thing? I mean, you're saying that that was a build up to the dagger, but it was also somehow really refreshing to get that little jolt like that pause.

Starting point is 00:12:45 You don't get that in conversations often like I'm a huge fan of Rogan and he'll have a three hour conversation. But at some point just pause and be like, I love you, man. Like it's in the cheesiest way possible because that seems to be, it somehow hits the hardest then. I don't know. I don't know. You didn't intend it that way, but with Alex Jones to sit there and to say, I love you. That was like that. I just haven't never heard that before. And so it struck me as like not just funny for what you're doing, but just like, whoa, we just took because conversations are all

Starting point is 00:13:24 about like this ranting, especially with Alex Jones, just like ranting, we just took, because conversations are all about like this ranting, especially with Alex Jones. Yeah. Just like ranting about this or that, this part of the world. Like, can you believe this shit? That kind of thing. But like to pause and be like, this is awesome. I don't know if you felt that way, but... Oh, I definitely felt that way. So it was actually very fun. I'll give you the backstory of how that happened. It was, it was, it was silly because Tim calls me up and there's this expression in marketing don't go past the sale, right? So if you're trying to sell someone a car and you're like, it's got this feature, this feature in that feature, and they're like, you know what, I'm

Starting point is 00:13:55 going to buy the car. If you keep talking, you can only make them lose the sale. You just get them to sign and get out of Dodge. So Tim calls me up and he goes, okay, here's what we're thinking. This is top secret. Alex is gonna be on the show. We want you on as well. And I've never said yes to anything as quickly in my life. And then he keeps talking.

Starting point is 00:14:17 And I'm like, Tim, you don't have to sell it. I end up there, Michael. You don't have to sell it. Why you by the way? I think because I am kind of an agent of chaos, and Alex is in his own way an agent of chaos, and what is, provides an opportunity in this kind of media space that you and I travel in.

Starting point is 00:14:37 It's the kind of things where none of us three, as we said on the show, knew what it would be like. If you know, certain, what Megan Kelly or Wolf Blitzer or any of these corporate figures are going to be like in a conversation, to some extent, none of us had any idea. I knew they didn't know I was bringing knock-knock jokes. That was what was so ex... I said at one point on kind of Envious of the audience because this is there's so many exciting things that are

Starting point is 00:15:10 happening and that the internet and podcasting provides people an opportunity to do that it was great. Yeah, that that was the greatest pairing with Alex Jones that I've ever seen by far. So like, okay think, so I immediately knew, now this isn't a knock on Tim, but I don't even know if Tim was prepared. Tim was not prepared for this couple. How could he be prepared?

Starting point is 00:15:35 Well, so I mean, I don't know if Tim is used to that. I think Joe Rogan is more equipped prepared for the chaos just the years he's been in it. Like I immediately thought This is the right pairing for Joe Rogan because Alex Jones has been on Joe Rogan a few times Yeah, three times my favorite so far was with Tim Dylan right for Janet Yeah, but Tim was clearly Tim Dylan was also kind of a Aginious in his own right, but he was kind of a fan and he was stepping away.

Starting point is 00:16:09 He was almost like in all of Alex Jones where you were both in all of the experience that's being created and at the same time fearlessly just trolling the situation. I mean, to do a knock-knock joke, to stop me, that just shows that you're in control of the experience. No, you're like riding the experience. That immediately was like, this needs to be on Rogan. So I hope that happens as well. You're on your own, of course, on Rogan, but just you, that's an experience. That's the whatever. This got to be a good name for it. Like Jimmy Hendrix experience.

Starting point is 00:16:48 There's no Michael and I was a bear. It's taken. Well, I don't know how many years you can restart the experience because I feel, sorry, I dropped you. I feel a very big responsibility, especially in 2020, to provide fun and something cool and something unique that hasn't been done before for the audience. I think this has been a very rough year on our audiences psychologically and in other aspects of their lives. So I feel if I'm going to be there, I'm going to put on a show. And it's also going to be great because it also alienates the people you don't want.

Starting point is 00:17:27 Right? So there's a lot of people who sit there be like, Oh, he's telling not people who are too cool for school. We're like, Oh, he's telling not to joke. This is stupid. I'm like, good. If you have an issue with having eaten cotton candy or doing a puzzle with a kid or without it, you know, by yourself, that's on you. And it's something very, I, something I think is the enemy of cynicism and this idea

Starting point is 00:17:52 that like, oh, this is too silly and it makes me, it's like, we need that kind of childlike aspect in our lives. I think it's something we could use more of. It's very much an aspect of our media culture that kind of have, we can demnatory about that or to do it in a certain very corporate fake way. So it is something I encourage a lot, something I enjoy doing. And again, like the first time I was on Tim, I had a propeller beanie on, you know, with the motorized. And a lot of people were like, I can't take anyone seriously who dresses like this. I go, good, if you judge someone's ideas by how they appear instead of the ideas themselves,

Starting point is 00:18:29 you're not someone I want on my team. Are we gonna address the outfit you're wearing? We got dressed, I sure. You know, for those who are colorblind, Michael's wearing the, or just listening to this. Michael's wearing the exact opposite, the universe from another dimension outfit, which is a white suit and black shirt.

Starting point is 00:18:56 So genius. Okay. So you see the next two looks I've planned. Oh, no. Yeah, they're great. Well, obviously this relationship is gonna end today Okay, is there some deep philosophy to the humor is Let's go start trolling discussion. Is there some

Starting point is 00:19:22 Is there like chapters to this genius or is this just What makes you smile in the morning? I mean, I think you're honestly, in this case, using the word genius a little loosely. I don't think this is particularly genius. But I do think it is fun. It is exuberant. It is joyous. I think the bigger my audience has gotten

Starting point is 00:19:41 and the more I actually communicate with fans, I do feel it kind of kicks in these paternal, maternal instincts, which is very, very odd. I did not expect to have them. What do you mean? Who's the dad? I'm the dad and the mom. I remember and it may have been similar for you. I'm curious to hear it.

Starting point is 00:19:59 For young, smart, like ambitious men, like 24 to 27, for me, was a very rough period. Because that's the window where a lot of people get married and they kind of check out. And if you're very much kind of finding your own road, you don't know what's happening. No one's in a position to really guide you or help you. And it's tough. It's a very tough window. And what I'm finding now is having these kids who are in that position, but now instead of them stumbling along for some of them, I'm the one who could be like, no, no, no, no, no, it's not you. It's everybody else. And to be able to give them that semblance of feeling seen to use a cliched expression to feel normal and that, no, no, you're no, you're the heroes here. They're the background noise. It's just really very flattering and humbling to be in that position. You have many minds, right? There's the thoughtful kind. Michael, there's like, I'm going to burn down the powerful. Yeah. Michael.

Starting point is 00:21:01 I think like he. Yeah. And then there's like, I'm going to have this just light-hearted trolling of the world. Yeah. Which of those are most important to the 24 to the 27 demographic? I think it is the combination. You know, it's like if you're making a meal, you know, chicken Kiev, you need the chicken, you need the ham, you need the ham, you need the butter sauce, because I think people, when you're young, you need to see someone who's fought the fight for you and who's won.

Starting point is 00:21:37 So it's very easy to be defeatist. So this is what winning looks like. Well, no, this is not. This is most assuredly what winning does not look like. No, this is not. This is most assuredly what winning does not look like. But in my normal clothes, I'm a little bit more. This is a good time to mention that clothes wise, you're wearing sheath underwear and people should buy sheath underwear, use code mallas20. If you go to sheathunderwear.com, use promo code mallas20.

Starting point is 00:22:04 What I love about the, why I'm glad to promote the product and wear it. It's the most comfortable underwear ever worn, and you have a separate pouch for both parts of your genitals. That's what you, I thought there was like a punchline coming. No, it's a very nice aspect of the product. Yeah, but I think what, here's something else, just as it goes back to what we're just talking about.

Starting point is 00:22:22 There are so many, and this is gonna segue into this. There are so many small companies who have been devastated this year. We have not seen a sustained attack on mom and pop shops, like we've seen in 2020, who are innovators and making something happen. And when you're just like one dude who's producing a product, their response or mine, I'm happy. First of all, it's funny that I'm pitching underwear, but I'm pitching, but it's also something I enjoy. And also you said small business.

Starting point is 00:22:52 Yeah, yeah, it's microscopic, like a thimble. So this isn't a sponsor mine, but this is a good segue. So this is Russians we celebrate in New Year's. Yeah, it's Novum Gondom. We have Deb Motoz, he comes down, puts a present under your pillow. So this is a company called J.LL Lawson. He's a fan of yours. He's a metal worker And he said can I give you something to give to Lex? I have one of his worry coins I'll tell you what it is. He's not a sponsor. This is not I'm not getting paid for this

Starting point is 00:23:17 So what a worry coin is I carried around in my butt if you have raw denim It's great because it brings you fades So you carried around with you all the time. It says worrying is like paying a debt. You don't oh, right? And I carry this around and for now, it's been like a year. Next time you're worrying, and this is a good advice if you don't have a worry coin. Go think about 10 years ago. Yes. And what you were worried about then. And then think about did any of those things pan out and some of them did, but you were worried about then. And then think about, did any of those things pan out? And some of them did. But you were able to handle it. And that's a good way to maintain perspective.

Starting point is 00:23:50 So Jail Lawson's the company. He sent me this present. I said, let me give it to Lex on the air. So enjoy. So I open it up. Yeah. Jail Lawson and Co. Two Lex from Anthony.

Starting point is 00:24:03 Yeah. And I said, make something mathematical for Lex. I don't even know what's in there You don't know what's in there. No, and it got through with TSA Could be a bomb. It could be just like this episode Make sure you unwrap it close to Mike because it drives you for crazy. That's really the best part I mean, or is this what unboxing video looks like? This conversation is going to be a big hit on the internet. With the unboxing community.

Starting point is 00:24:35 I need to have an excited look on my face to make sure the reaction video is being unboxing and a reaction video. Like screaming reacts. It's another box. It's another box. It's just the series of boxes. Lex, big fan since hearing you on Rogan months ago, most of your guests are over my head,

Starting point is 00:24:54 but still enjoyable. Uh huh. Like this episode, Michael was kind enough to want to share my work with you. Keep doing what you do, Anthony Lawson. Thanks, Anthony. There's a lot in there. What is in there? Give me some. I'll open some. Okay. Show it to the camera and then make sure you look excited or not or disappoint. No, this is cool. This is a worry coin. Like I was showing you.

Starting point is 00:25:21 Oh, so you hold it in your hand and when you couldn't do this with your thumb, if people have anxiety or whatever. Oh, there's a lot of cool stuff in here. Fibonacci coin. Oh, see, yeah, that's the math stuff. That's really awesome. This is really cool. Wait, you got a big one, Leonard, too. That's what she said. I'm telling you, last time you offended me saying, I don't have humor. The spin tray, micro, press and copper bronze. By the way, the packaging is epic. I think that's his top. He makes tops.

Starting point is 00:26:01 Cool. Yeah, you spin in there and it's a two different bronze and copper. I think he's the only one who makes these machined tops. And they'd be sitting here, I guess. Yeah, but you could spin them in that section. Got it. Cool. Where's the, where's the worry thing?

Starting point is 00:26:24 Here's the worry client. Anyway, I wasn't listening. What were you worried about 10 years ago? 10 years ago, 20, 10. What would I have been worried about then? The government? No, I'm not, that's not a worry. I, I, I, I, I was in North Korea book.

Starting point is 00:26:38 I, I apologize. That came out in 2014. I went there in 2012. Came out in January 2014. It still pays my rent With the royalties so the North Korea book. Yeah, see this is this is why it's so much better to talk to you about Self-publishing because you brought that up and I'm doing the next books also gonna be self-published. Can we talk about self-publishing? What What's that what's the whole idea of publishing, like having a publisher in an agent? Because there's a bunch of people who have been reaching out to me,

Starting point is 00:27:11 trying to give me the right to book, which is ridiculous. Why? There's people who are brilliant folks like you, like Jordan Peterson, that I think have a lot of knowledge to share with the world. Okay. I think what I feel I can contribute to the world in terms of impact is to build something. Meaning like engineering stuff. Like a book. I feel- What has to be engineered and I'm not using it loosely. Yep. The engineered book. No, for sure. What I mean is like literally a product with programming and artificial intelligence

Starting point is 00:27:44 as well. I want to build a company I want to, because I have a few ideas that I feel I'm equipped. And it has to do with your intuition about the way you can build a better world, you individually. What can you add to the world, that's a positive thing. And for me, I feel like the maximal thing I can add to the world is at least to attempt to build products that would add more love in the world. And like, so I want to focus on that. The danger of the book for me, or any kind of writing, and even this podcast is a little

Starting point is 00:28:18 bit dangerous for me, is like, it's fun. It's for sure. It's fun. It's like, it takes you into this place where you start thinking about the world, you start enjoying and playing with ideas, you start. Just your book on a dear reader, but also the new right. Clearly, you're not probably think similarly in the sense that you did a lot of work. Yes. This next book is killing me. Yeah. As you mentioned, often it's clear like on your YouTube channel,

Starting point is 00:28:53 some fan of you, often it just comes out like you mentioned all of these books that you're reading. It just comes through you that you're suffering through this and you've it changes you. through you that you're suffering through this and you've it changes you and it's clear that you're thinking deeply about the world because of this book and I feel like if you do that, that's like when I was when I first came to this country, I read the book to give, I had me to read it again. It's like it's the red pill thing is it changes you and where you can never be the same person again. And I feel, I feel about a book in that same way.

Starting point is 00:29:29 The moment you write a book, the main, of course, it depends on the book. I could also just write, uh, like in my field, a very technical book. No, that's terrible idea. Yes. But that, that's okay. That doesn't really change you. That's just like sharing information. But like something where you're like

Starting point is 00:29:45 How do I think about this world? Can you just leave that behind you? I get it. Dude. It's it's it's being pregnant There's it never escapes your brain. I'm telling you. Yeah, you're absolutely right. Yeah, I don't know it It doesn't seem to change you but the reason I bring that up is because there's this whole industry of people that seem to not really contribute much to the publication process, but they make themselves seem necessary for like, if you want to be in the New York Times bestseller list kind of thing, but also just being like reputable. Yeah, which is, I'm allergic to that whole concept, but it does, do you think it's possible to be on the New York Times bestseller list and be a reputable author and still be self-published?

Starting point is 00:30:31 Not what you would want to do. People like Mark Sisson, I think his name, he wrote the primal blueprints, so if I'm getting the names correct, he's the first paleo guy, right? So he self-published it, it sold gangbusters, but that would be a gun there health chart, I believe. And it's a little bit of a different situation. You would be reaching much more for the mainstream. You'd be giving up a lot if you go through a publisher, especially financially, but yeah,

Starting point is 00:30:58 you are not going to have the cred because the publishing is a cartel, then you're a times part of this cartel. And if you don't publish within this cartel, they will do what they can, as any cartel has to, by necessity of being cartel, to pretend you don't exist. So they will, I was, I think, the first one to have an hour on book TV for dear reader, because that was a Kickstarter book. But this is something that people do it or was a Kickstarter book.

Starting point is 00:31:30 This is something people would have to be aware of. So you would be giving up a lot, but you'd also be giving a lot to work with a publisher because you're losing like a year and a half of your life because they're glacial and they don't care. Well, that's my main problem. It's not the money. I mean, the money is whatever percent they take 10, 20, 30, 50 percent. They're taking a huge chunk. So if I sell a book through St. Martin's, it's a dollar. If I sell a book through Amazon, which is dear

Starting point is 00:31:57 reader, that's six dollars. So that's what 87 percent. It's something crazy. But for me, what bothers me is the money that that for me personally for me will bothers me is incompetence Like whenever I go to the DMV or something like that. Can I interrupt you? Yeah, let's talk in confidence New right comes out last year. Yes. I get on Rogan get on Rubin I Call them and I said I got in these shows. Is there money in the budget for travel? And they say we don't have that budget. Fine. By the way, you got to know shows with no help from them.

Starting point is 00:32:36 Correct. Oh, yeah, that's not even a question. The reason they would want you to do a book is because they know you could get. The only reason people get book deals nowadays literally is because they know that person can market their own book. That's the only way. And I got a roof and I got a rug in and they go out of the money for the bunch for travel which is fair. They can do Skype. They told me this in writing and I'm like, okay. And they can financially cover Skype. No, but it's like, hey, Joe. Yeah, we don't have the budget, but you're gonna do Skype. Hello So there is another friend of mine was on a show on Cmbc with Nassim Teleb and

Starting point is 00:33:18 They said Nassim wants to copy the book and they're like, oh, yeah, it's like four o'clock on Friday So we're close yeah, it's like four o'clock on Friday. So we're closed. So, and he's like, he went there, picked it up and walked it the two blocks. So there is, it's almost cartoonish. Yeah. And it's not incompetence. It's, it's past that. It's something almost, you can't really believe that I've had two friends who have been literally rendered suicidal because this was such a huge opportunity for them and they was like watching their kid get beaten in front of them and I had to talk them off the ledge. So it's people do not appreciate how bad.

Starting point is 00:34:00 Here's another example. The apathy of bureaucracy, something like that. I did this book on Ciers confidential There's a type on the first chapter to ends with I'm about to T. Oh, oh, they didn't fix it for the paperback Care it's just like wow, okay Yeah, great book by the way got it got mpr gave it one of the books the year. So that was good So why

Starting point is 00:34:23 Participate in this because otherwise New York Times is going to pretend you don't exist. Getting book on some book on some shows might be more difficult, although I think that's collapsing in real time. You're not going to get reviewed in the like PW or some others. So the new book you're working on, you know, Italian or the white pill. The white pill. Are you self publishing that? Oh, yeah, for sure. And what's the thinking behind that? Just because you already have a huge following in a big platform and it's six times the cash. If I finished the book in December, I could have it out in February. If I finished the book in December with the publisher, it's going to be out in

Starting point is 00:35:09 December at the earliest, 2021. Why am I giving up 10 months of my life? Well, this is the big one. Do you have any leverage? Like, do authors have leverage to say, F you? Like, can you just say, can you... What do you mean? Just look at meaning, like, I want to release this book in two months. Like can you just say What do you mean just look meaning like I? Want to release this book in two months. Oh, no, no I mean you'll have a contract and then you age you can fight it But they don't have the you're they don't have the capacity to rush things through Yeah, I guess if the I've heard like big authors. I don't know Sam Harris all those folks talk about like

Starting point is 00:35:43 They've accepted it actually They've accepted. They're like yeah, it takes a long time to I'm not accepting it But you're kind of implying that a human being like me should like I'm saying these are your options All right, so I just hate it. I hate the waiting because it's incompetence. It's not necessary the way. If I knew it wasn't, you know, if it was the kind of people that are up at 2 a.m. at night on a Friday and they love what you're doing and they're helping create something special, that's the sense I get with some of the Netflix folks,

Starting point is 00:36:20 for example, that work with people. I just, I don't know anything about this world, but you get like Netflix folks, for example, that work with people. I just, I don't know anything about this world, but you get like Netflix folks who who help with the shows. You could tell that they're obsessed with those shows. Yeah. Oh, yeah, you're not going to get that publishing. If you hand like I handed the book in, I think it was July, I didn't hear anything from my editor until December. Well, can we actually talk about the suffering? Sure. The darkest parts of writing a book. So let's go to the full Michael Malos Stephen King mode of what are the darkest moments of writing this book? And what is it maybe start the white pill? What's the idea? What's the hope? And what are your darkest moments around writing this book?

Starting point is 00:37:05 So, people are familiar with the red pill and the blue pill. The red, the, they're for the matrix. The red pill is the idea that what is presented as fact by the corporate press and entertainment industry is in fact a carefully constructed narrative designed to keep some very unpleasant people in power and everyone else under control. And I guess one of my expressions is you take one red pill, not the whole bottle. Yeah. Because at a certain point, you think everything's lie and then you're kind of no capacity for distinguishing truths.

Starting point is 00:37:33 You're full of good one-liners. Well, thank you. Yeah. I'm full of something, that's for sure. And what I saw in this space is a lot of these red-pilled people got very disheartened and cynical. And one of my big heroes is Albert Camus, and he said the worst thing is criticism. And that's something called the black pill, which is the idea that it's all, it's just waiting for the end.

Starting point is 00:38:03 It's hopeless. And I don't see it that way at all. And I'm like, all right, I have to address this and not just with some kind of cheerleading, everything's going to be great guys. Here is why I am positive. And not that I'm positive the good guys are going to win. But I'm positive the good guys can going to win, but I'm positive the good guys can win.

Starting point is 00:38:27 And that's all you need because if you're God forbid kid is kidnapped and there's a 10% chance that you can save them, you're not going to be like, well, I don't like those odds. This is your country. This is your values. This is your family. I don't think it's much more than 10%. And even if you lose, you will take pride in that you did everything in your power to

Starting point is 00:38:52 win. So is there a good definition of good guys in the sense that once you wear white, there's layers to this. You're like modern day Shakespeare. Is there a danger in thinking Uh, at all Hitler was probably pretty confident that he let a group of good guys listen if Hitler did anything wrong. Why isn't he jail Uh, check friend thought about just And he actually says that his accent goes it's so bad. Why isn't he in the jail?

Starting point is 00:39:28 That's a good point. He's probably still alive, right? And look at you. Hopefully. Oh, boy. Two of the three people listening to this are very upset right now. What were you even talking about? Oh, how do you know what is good? There's a lot of standards of good. But if you're, for me, to be a good guy is, if you want to leave the world a little bit better than you found it, that to me is the definition of a good guy. And I think there are many people that that that's not their motivation. And also, it's about your motivation. Well, it's also about if your motivation is at all correlated to reality.

Starting point is 00:40:12 I you know, one thinks we're the bad guys that that's correct. But are you taking steps to check your motivations and, and also take a certain amount of humility. Because if you're going to start interfering with other people's lives, you really better be sure you know what you're talking about. The control of others, if you do have centralized control or then you kind of, you become a leader of a group, you better know,

Starting point is 00:40:40 you better do so humbly and cautiously. And also have steam valves, right? So if in case things go wrong, let's have I'm sure this is a lot happening with AI Whatever work with computers like okay, if something goes wrong here How do we have a workaround to make sure it doesn't cause everything to collapse? Yeah, the going wrong thing. I mean the whole the feedback mechanism. Yeah, like I wonder if people in Congress think that things are really wrong. It's working for them. I use, I use sure because

Starting point is 00:41:15 I'm not sure because I, I'd like to believe that the people that at least when they got into politics actually wanted some of it is ego, but some of it is like wanting to be the kind of person that builds a better world. Sure. I also think it's a diverse, some of who are going to have different motivations than others. But like once you're in the system and trying to build a better world, how do you know that it's not working? How do you take the basic feedback mechanisms and actually productively change? I mean, that's what it means to be a good guy. It's like, hmm, something is wrong here.

Starting point is 00:41:56 And that's why I like the Elon Musk, I think, from first principles. Like, wait, wait, wait, okay. Let's ask the big question. One, is this working at all? Like, the way we're solving this particular problem of government is this working at all. And then, like, stepping away and saying, like, as opposed to modifying this bill or that bill, or like, this little strategy, like, increase the tax

Starting point is 00:42:20 by this much or decrease the tax by this much, like, why do we have a democracy at all? Or why do we have any kind of representative democracy? Shouldn't it be a pure democracy? Or why do we have states, like, representation states and federal government and so on? Why do we have this kind of separation of powers? Is this different? Why don't we have term limits or not? Like big things. Like how do you actually make that happen?

Starting point is 00:42:53 And is that what it means to be a good guy? It's like taking big revolutionary steps as opposed to incremental steps. Well, I don't know that you could be a politician to be a good guy to be a youngist. And let me give you a counter example. Someone who you could tell is not being a good guy. Joe Biden said he was, he regards the Iraq wars

Starting point is 00:43:11 a mistake, OK? You and I made mistakes in our lives, I'm sure. None of our mistakes have caused tens of thousands of people to die. If, let's suppose I'm big for yourself. I, that's fair. OK, I'll take that. I don't build the killbots. If I were a chef, let's

Starting point is 00:43:28 take it out of politics. And in my restaurant somehow accidentally someone ate something and they died. A, I would feel horrible. But more importantly, I would be like, we need to look through the system and figure out how it got to the point where someone lost their life. Because that can never happen again. And we need to figure out step by step. It's there's I'm not a gun person, but there's like this checklist of like if you're holding a gun, there's five things to do. And if you get too wrong, you're going to be say, it's like assume every gun is loaded, only pointed at something that you want to kill. And there's like three other things.

Starting point is 00:44:05 And it's like to make sure that nothing goes wrong. So if I made, if I'm not chef, and I would have to not only feel guilt, but take preventative action to make sure this has no possibility of happening again. If you look at the staff he's putting in, it's the same war mongers that would have advised him to get into the Iraq war on the first time. That is to me is not a good guy. That to me is someone who does not feel remorse for their responsibility in killing not only many Americans, but some of us think that, you know, that Iraqis is a necessarily ideal either

Starting point is 00:44:53 Okay, let's talk a bit about war. Maybe you can also correct me on something the first time I found myself into Barack Obama was I don't know how many years ago this was but when I maybe heard a speech of his About him speaking out against the war. Yeah. And him, I think it's some record saying he was against the war before he was happening. Now, he wasn't in Senate at the time, so it was very easy for him to say this. But see, like, people say that, people say that. People say, like, it was easy, and it was some people say it's like strategically the wise thing to do given some kind of calculus, whatever.

Starting point is 00:45:29 But I to this day give him that's the reason I've always given him props in my mind. Like this is a man of character. He makes I also personally really value great speeches. I think speeches are really important for leaders because they inspire the world. That's one of the most best things you can contribute to the world is great. Through intellect, mold ideas in a way that's communicable to a huge number of people. It's better to persuade them to force in every instance. That's where I disagree with Chomsky. If you're a Chomsky's whole idea was that like if you're really eloquent speaker, that means your ideas aren't that good.

Starting point is 00:46:10 That's nonsense. Yeah, so I think that's a way for him to describe like I speak in a very boring way. I mean, that's a pitch for this podcast. I speak boring so that the ideas are the things you value and it's also useful to go to sleep. But that's why I really liked Obama throughout his life, and still do. But when I first saw this for some reason, you can disagree. I thought he's a man of character is to, when most politicians, most people who are trying to calculate and rise in power, I think we're for the war or too afraid to be against the war.

Starting point is 00:46:46 Yeah, that's why I liked Bernie Sanders and that's why I liked like in the early days Obama for speaking out against the war. And not like in this weird activist way, not weird, but not saying I'm an activist, this is, but like just saying the common sense thing and being brave enough to say the common sense thing without like having a big sign and saying, I'm going to be the anti-war candidate. I'm like that, but just saying this is not a good idea. Yeah, and I think it's for those of us who are older, for a member, it's pretty despicable what happened with Tulsi in 2020.

Starting point is 00:47:26 She was the biggest anti-war candidate and she was marginalized within her own party, which I guess you can make sense. She's just a congresswoman from Hawaii, but the corporate press did everything in their power to diminish her and pretend she didn't exist. And for those of us who remember where 12 years prior, you know, when George W. Bush had the Republican National Convention in New York, and it was the biggest protest in history, and the Iraq war led to democratic landslides in 2006 and 2008 to have that completely not part of the Democratic Party in 2020 is both shocking and reprehensible.

Starting point is 00:48:06 Hey, Michael. Is it? You don't have to say, Hey, Michael, you just say knock, knock. No, it's not a knock. Oh, okay. Hey, you're sure. What did the volcano say to his true love?

Starting point is 00:48:19 What? I love you. I, um, these jokes are better when you know how to speak English. I was actually in Russia. I did Google translate. Okay. Back to your book and the suffering. You, uh, you somehow turned it positive. And as one who's wearing, who's the representative of the black pill in this conversation, what are some of the darker moments?

Starting point is 00:48:47 What are the some of the hardest challenges of putting together this book? The white pill. Content content content. So if I'm having a page in about Reagan taking on Gerald Ford in the 1976 presidential primaries, I'm going to have to read like 20. in the 1976 presidential primaries, I'm going to have to read like 20. So it's the thing like, if there'll be sometimes I'll remember some quotes somewhere and then I have to spend an hour trying to find it because I want it to be as dense with information as possible. Like how do you structure the main philosophical ideas you want to convey? Is that already planned out? No, the book changed entirely from its conception.

Starting point is 00:49:28 So my buddy, Ryan Holliday, had a series of books, still does, where he takes the ideas of the Stoics, and he applies them to contemporary terms. He has a sole cottage industry that he's doing very well with. And I'd asked him years ago, if I could do that with Kamu, he's like, sure, go for it. And I was going to rework Kamu's The Myth of Cicophess. And I read it recently, I re-read it. And this wasn't the book I remembered at all. And I'm like, okay, I'm going to write

Starting point is 00:49:55 the book that I remembered. But the more I was writing it, I, one of the things I always yell at, conservative is about. There's a long about is they don't talk about the great victory of conservatism, which was the winning of the Cold War without firing a shot. And I said you can't expect the New York Times to tell the story because the blood is on their hands. And I'm like, well, Michael, instead of complaining about it, why don't you do it? Why don't you talk? That is a great example of the good guys winning over the bad guys. And that's become, A, the victory is beautiful, but also pointing out to people, when people like all things are worse than they've ever been, they don't appreciate how bad things

Starting point is 00:50:38 were in the 30s. What Stalin was doing overseas and how people in the West were advocating to bring that here. So, that's kind of pointing out how bad things were and how good they became. And you don't have to be Republican or conservative to be delighted at the collapse of totalitarianism and the peaceful liberation of how the world. So, that's a picture of the good guys winning. Oh, yeah. Well how does that connect to Sisyphus and maybe to speak deeper to life and whatever the hell this thing is, which is what I remember to myth the Sisyphus being about. So where does the threat of Kamu

Starting point is 00:51:20 sort of lie in the work that you're doing? So the myth of Cicifis, what I had remembered and correctly is actually just a five to seven page, like Koda to the whole book at the very end, like you only need to read that little essay called the myth of Cicifis. The broader work is about Kamu's concept of the absurd and the absurd man within literature and he's ghost, and it's just like, I don't really care

Starting point is 00:51:44 about this character and dusty effskin, all this other stuff that you're he goes and it's just like I don't really care about this character industrial effskin all the stuff that you're talking about it's of no relevance. But what he the myth of Cicifis the myth itself not the book or the essay of his is this Greek character and Cicifis is forced in hell to roll a rock up a hill for attorney at the very last moment, the rock falls away. And Kamu's take away from the stories that we have to met. We must imagine, this is if it's happy. And there's several interpretations of this. But one is once you accept that you are living an absurdist existence, once you own your reality, it loses its bite. And you can start with that as you are kind of baseline. And bite is suffering. And hopelessness. So I think when people look at how much ridiculousness

Starting point is 00:52:38 is happening in America and it's escalating, you can either think, oh, all is lost or you can, and I think you and I have lived our lives like this. You can either think, oh, all is lost. Or you can, and I think you and I have lived our lives like this, you can live life more like a surfer, whereas you're never going to control the ocean. But you can sure enjoy that ride and stop. If you're trying to control the waves, yeah, you're done. But if you're like, all right, I've got my board. I'm going to see where this takes me surfing from what I understand is a pretty fun activity. And also sometimes dangerous. But you have to ask Tell See about that. So we were offline talking about Stalin and the evils of the Soviet regime. Yeah. One of the things I mentioned I watched the movie Mr. Jones, but it's about the 1930s,

Starting point is 00:53:27 called the more the, what would you say, the torch-hervity Ukrainian people by Stalin. One interesting thing to me that I'd love to hear your opinion about is the role of journalism and all of this. And also about 1930s, Germany. So what's the role of journalists and intellectuals in a time when trouble is brewing? But it requires a really sort of brave and deep thinking to understand that trouble is brewing. Like if you were a journalist or if you were just like an intellectual, a thinker, but also a voice in the space of public discourse, what would you do in 1930s about Stalin,

Starting point is 00:54:18 about Hathamore? And what would you do about Nazi Germany in 1937, 1938? So that's really funny that you asked that because currently how the book is structured, it's like, you know, books often follow three acts structure, right? So act three is the eighties, act one is the thirties and act two is going to be like, all right, let's suppose you were in the thirties. Are you just going to give up? Like, are you just going to be like, well, we're screwed? And you'd be right to say things are going to be very bad for a long time. Or are you going to be one of those few who are like, we're going to do something about this?

Starting point is 00:54:52 And, you know, we're going to go down swinging. There are two books I can recommend, which are just masterpiece is that that are written by women that just historians that are just superb. There's a book called Beyond Belief by Deborah Lipschta. She talks about the rise of Nazi Germany as seen through the press. And what was amazing, and she does a great job empathizing with the press and understand their perspective, is we remember, and Chamberlain gets a bad rap,

Starting point is 00:55:17 Neville Chamberlain for kind of a peasy Hitler, because not that long ago they had the Great War, they had World War I, and they had the carnage that the earth had never seen before, and when you had people made out of meat, meat and industrial machines, and plastic surgery was invented as a consequence of this, they're coming back mangled and disfigured, and for what? And this was a world where the Kaiser was the most evil person ever lived, and we all had the western propaganda about the Han, was the most evil person ever lived. And we all had the Western propaganda about the hunt

Starting point is 00:55:45 and all the rapes and all this barbarism and blah, blah, blah. So not that long later, when you're hearing all this propaganda, which was factual, about Hitler, it's like, we heard this, we heard this 20 years ago, this was all lies, give us a break. And she has all the quotes from the different agencies and how they address it. Plus they had very limited information. It's not like Nazi Germany was an open society where reporters can walk around and they were under a lot of pressure as well

Starting point is 00:56:17 you know in those areas. And Hitler himself was pretty good at he let some stuff slip but usually he made it seem like he wants peace. He wants world peace. This was amazing. They were making the argument that because all these Jews were being beaten up on the street, this proved this was the hot take of the day. That Hitler was weak. Because since Hitler's a statesman and he can't control these hooligans, that shows his control on powers tenuous, and this is all going to go away. By the way, I mean Hitler thought that too.

Starting point is 00:56:48 He was kind of afraid of the the bronchers, whatever, like he was afraid of these hooligans a little bit, like they were useful to him. But like at a certain point, like, yeah, they can get in the way. Yeah. That's why he wanted to get control of the military, the army, like they're regiment, like if you want to take over the world, you can't do it with huligans. Right. You have to do it with an actual army. And then you had Kristalnacht, which was a nationwide program. And then all the news agencies universally were like, oh crap, we were, we got this wrong. And the condemnation

Starting point is 00:57:20 was universal. So that book traces the West's reaction to what's going on there, and including the reaction to the in sip and holocaust as people being, you know, what they knew, when did they know? There was not ambiguity about it. People, I think there's this myth that she dispels, that Pete, that they didn't know the Holocaust was happening where they didn't care. They were aware, but they were already at war with Nazi Germany. Like literally what else could they do at that point, to rescue all these Jews? So that's the superbook.

Starting point is 00:57:54 And Ann Applebaum, I think the book is called Red Fam and came out fairly recently. And she brings the receipts. And she's a, this is something I really hate with binary thinkers, where the people think, oh, you know, if you're a Democrat, you're basically a communist, they call Joe Biden a Marxist. It's just like, you know, she's a hard leftist.

Starting point is 00:58:14 She's, you know, has TDS, but this book just systemically lays out what Stalin did. By the way, I'm triggered by the binary thinkers. And for those who don't know, TDS 0011 is Trump to arrangement syndrome. Yes. So they, you know, forced the starvation and since our population. And they, it's not only that, it's like they knew if you weren't starving by looking at you, that you were hiding food. So they'd come back to your house at night and break your fingers in the door or take burn down your house. And now you're on the street without food

Starting point is 00:58:50 because you lied, because this is the people's food. You're a kulak, you're a landowner. And very quickly a kulak, which meant like peasant landowner, became anyone who had a piece of bread. And it's with systemic and ongoing. And many people in the press did not believe it. There was a British journalist, I believe, who got out of the train Ukraine, like one town earlier and walked and he described all this and he was mocked and derided. And this is just anti-Russian propaganda

Starting point is 00:59:19 because at the time in the 30s, this was socialism and come through fruition. This was a noble experiment. I'd seen the future and it works as I think, so Sydney Webb was the guy who said that. And the premise was, let's see what happens. We've never tried something like that. And they were perfectly happy to have this experiment happen overseas at the price of the Russian people because it's like, you know what,

Starting point is 00:59:43 maybe this will be paradise on earth. And there's a, I dress this in my book as well. There's superb essay, I think, by Eugene Genovies. And he talks about the question, the question being, what did you know and when did you know it? What did you know about the concentration camps? What did you know about the starvation? What did you know about children being taught at school to turn in their parents for, you know, having some extra bread? And his conclusion is we all knew, and we all knew from the beginning every bit of it,

Starting point is 01:00:11 and we didn't care, because we were more interested in promoting this ideology. So when people are kind of thinking the worst thing on earth is like Robert E. Lee statue being taken down to Washington D.C., we were being told, and especially a much more limited news information world, where now you have literally anyone can have a Twitter, but how many outlets were there, that this is, we're backwards, they're the future, they're scientific.

Starting point is 01:00:39 We have the vagaries at the market, which lets it a great depression. And when you see what was being put over on the American public at a time, anyone who thinks things are as bad now as they have ever been, it's simply delusional or ignorant. Yeah, I would say just as a small aside, that's why reading, as I'm almost done with the rise and fall of the Third Reich, is it's a a refreshes the resets the palette of your understanding what is good and evil in the world. I think it's really useful now. What helps me be really positive and almost naive on Twitter and in the world is by just studying history and comparing it to how amazing things are today be effective in that?

Starting point is 01:01:51 That's something I often think about. It's sometimes easy to be an activist in terms of just saying stuff. It's hard to be effective at your activism. One of the big questions historians have constantly is how did this happen? A, to make sure it doesn't happen again, but this is Germany. This is not some kind of weirdo, cult nation. They're very advanced, very in the land of poets and philosophers. How did it get to that point that they're just shooting children and everyone's cheering for this?

Starting point is 01:02:23 And specifically on the anti-Semitism and the Holocaust But just the whole the whole to tell Teran is and the cult of Hitler and you're just this holocunist thing So there's this side to it's starting to drop But there's two sides. I don't know if you want to separate them one is the totalitarianism and the the entire the entirety of the Nazi regime and then there's the Holocaust which is like you know going I would say, like very specifically, as I think you're about to describe, it's like, you know, targeting Jews very much. So I don't know if you see those as two separate things. I think they're very interconnected, but I think if you look at it, everyone thinks

Starting point is 01:03:03 that they'd be the ones putting up in Frank. But if you look at the numbers, they'd be the ones calling the Stasi on her or the people who were at the time and not the Stasi, obviously, and patting themselves in the back for it. So sorry to pause on that. It's a really important thing. If you're listening to this, that you were in Germany at the time, you would have likely been willing to commit or at least keep a blind eye to the violence against Jews. Like you have to really sit with that idea that you would have been somebody who just

Starting point is 01:03:38 sees this and is not bothered by it and also very likely kind of understand this as a necessary evil or even a necessary good. Yeah. And I think people think they would be the abolitionists and marching on Selma. The numbers don't add up to that at all. And I think the question would be like, what is social? My friend was on Tinder.

Starting point is 01:04:02 My friend Matt, who's a great dude. And the question was, what's the most controversial opinion you have? This is New York, and the girl wrote, I hate Trump. And what people perceive themselves as being courageous in saying and doing, and what is the actual social costs of you saying or doing this are two very disconnected things. And we're also trained by corporate media to have completely vapid, uninteresting banal ideas and yet regard ourselves as revolutionaries. You know, there are people who still in New York

Starting point is 01:04:36 will take pride because they have a gay friend. And it's like, first of all, who cares, but second of all, you are not a hero. And that person's not your prop, by the way, that's another big problem, which is why I'd like to give Richard Wolf a shout out for being an intellectual who talks about communism. I think it takes kind of a heroic intellectual right now to speak about communism seriously. There's difficult waters to tread, is that the expression? There's difficult paths to walk. I love watching a robot try to use idiom in a language. Zero, zero, one, one. I'm quite deeply heard by the binary comment. Are you? You're feeling has got from one to zero. Yeah. What is my buffers have overflown?

Starting point is 01:05:28 No, but there's difficult. I feel like communism is like universally seen as a bad thing currently in intellectual circles. Yes. Or actually, maybe some people disagree with that. People say like far far left. People are trying to, you know, there's some people who argue the BLM movement is some kind of a Marxist. I mean, I don't really follow the deep logic in that, whatever, but you know, it's just what they said before my Marxism, the founder, go found you.

Starting point is 01:05:59 Yeah, but stating that is different than there's there's marks the totalitarian. There's also marks the revolutionary And I think they're talking about more like we're revolutionaries. We're gonna overthrow the status quo Yeah, right, but I we can have that further discussion But I just don't think they speak deeply about political systems of insane communism is Is going to be the righteous system that you know, there's not a deep intellectual discourse with what I mean. But if you were to try to be on stage with the Jordan Peterson, like to me, the brave thing now,

Starting point is 01:06:32 like it would be to argue for communism. It'd be interesting to see. Not many people do it. I certainly would be willing to do it. I don't have enough. I don't, first of all, don't believe it, but second of all, it's a very difficult argument to make because you get so much fire, which is why Richard Wolf he's one of the people who is quite rigorously showing that there is some good ideas within

Starting point is 01:06:55 the system of communism, specifically saying that attacking more the negative size of capitalism. So saying that there is that capitalism potentially is more dangerous than communism. I mean, I disagree with that, but I think it's a... I love how something is like, we've got a body count of 60 million, but this, everything is potentially, you know, like water can drown everyone on earth. So this is incoherent. Well, I think nuclear weapons are bad, but nuclear energy is good. Sure. That's so nuclear weapons are also can be good. You can easily make the argument, which I don't know that I subscribe to,

Starting point is 01:07:32 that nuclear weapons prevented, uh, boots on the ground war. And it costs into me much more contained. And they're also quite quite effective at changing the direction of a asteroid that's about to hit earth. As I've learned from a... Armageddon. And they're actually useful as Elon Musk has claimed for

Starting point is 01:07:52 application, prior to colonizing Mars, making it more habitable. Oh, okay. So, it changed. That looks something. But yes, but I guess what I'm saying is there's there's place for nuance and there's some topics so hot like communism when nuance is very difficult to have and that I feel like with Nazi Germany, it was a similar thing at the time. Let me tell you want to talk about Janet Rankin, who is one of my favorite people. So

Starting point is 01:08:25 Janet Rankin was the first woman elected to Congress. She was elected before woman's suffrage was messed in constitutional for Montana. She was elected in 1916. She was one of a handful of people to vote against the US going into the Great War, which was the right call at the time. She was a pacifist Republican as well, coincidentally. She lost her seat. Ran again in was it 1940, got the seat again, and was the only person to vote against getting in Sue World War II.

Starting point is 01:09:00 It was not a unanimous choice. Janette Rankin was the one person, and she said, you can no more win a war than you can win a hurricane. So she's one of these interesting, and talk about bravery. You're the one vote after Pearl Harbor to say, we're not doing this. And I mean, the pressure she must have been under at the time

Starting point is 01:09:20 is, and of course, many people are interested in hearing her perspective. She's crazy, she's evil, blah, blah. It's also funny, someone on the, my Twitter when I talked about her goes, maybe Shed Hitler sympathies, like yeah, Ms. Rankin was a big fan of Hitler. That's what you figured it out, guys.

Starting point is 01:09:36 Do you think there's an argument to be made that United States should not have gotten involved in World War II? Oh, easy, an easy argument. The argument, there's a, I talk about this in the New Right. So on internet circles, there's something called Godwin's Law, which means the longer an internet conversation goes on, the probability someone gets compared to Hitler becomes one. In certain New Right circles, the longer the conversation goes on, the more likelihood that the argument will become, we should have ended world war two also becomes one. And the argument is,

Starting point is 01:10:08 at the very least, stay back, let Hitler and Stalin kill each other off, and then go in and knock off the week one. And you're going to be saving, destroying two nightmare systems. And I think that's an easy argument to make. Now, it's hard to pull off after Pearl Harbor, but in terms of strategy, I don't think that's a tough sell. What about after Pearl Harbor? I mean, that's so saying, after Pearl Harbor, how are you going to sell it to the people? The argument is, bubble of the Holocaust. The Holocaust is, there's no scenario where that doesn't happen, really, unless you're going in way earlier. But even so, Hitler had said, if the Jews launched another war, we're going to wipe them from the face of the earth. So, the Jews are being held hostage by Hitler as

Starting point is 01:10:48 an argument for this. Another thing he did, which was, you know, diabolical, is in order to make it that people could not accept Jews as refugees if they were going to leave Germany, they had to be penniless. So, now you have, it's not like they're coming over with money and they can take care of themselves. No, no, they're going to be a completed destitute. Makes it harder to accept them. Yeah. Millions of destu people who don't speak the language, it's a tough sell. So speaking of good ones law, what do you make of this condition, Trump derangement syndrome? Yeah. And the idea of comparing Trump to Hitler. I think it's despicable. And I'll give you an example, something parallel that I think more people should be regard to get regard is despicable. Earlier in 2020, we were all told that unless we were in Syria

Starting point is 01:11:39 immediately, the curbs were going to be exterminated. They invoke the Holocaust. This is going to be another genocide. If you're not for this, you're basically forcing another Holocaust. None of the people who used this argument, we didn't go to Syria. The curds were exterminated. They just vanish from news. Had any consequences for using this kind of comparison. I think it's really kind of fattuous. And I think it's amazing that people think Hitler's the only tyrant who ever lived, like everyone who's bad is specifically Hitler.

Starting point is 01:12:14 You know how you know he's not Hitler? Because you can tweet at him and no one comes to your house to kill your family. That's kind of a big difference. Also, there was Trump and many of his critics is that his grandchildren will be raised as Jews. So that's also kind of a, and Deborah Lipschitz talks about this a lot. The New York Times at the time, there's another book called Bared by the Times, which talks about the New York Times and the World War II. Because the idea that Jews weren't white was a Hitler idea. The New York Times at the time, Salzberger, wanted to be against this idea. So they specifically downplayed the

Starting point is 01:12:54 anti-Semitism as opposed to the Nazis are being oppressive. So the argument that you can separate Nazism from anti-Semitism is a historical debate people have. And my perspective is, I think it's, I do not find it convincing that you can separate those two. I think anti-Semitism was essential to Nazism. I think Nazism and Mussolini's fascism have very big differences. And- Do you think, do you think anti-Semitism was fundamental to who Hitler was? Yes. So this is the interesting thing is like it was at a tool that he saw as being effective. No, he believes it.

Starting point is 01:13:36 So why do you see those as intricately connected? Could Hitler have accomplished the same amount or more without the Holocaust. Yeah, because think about how many resources you had to divert at a time where you have Operation Barbarossa with Stalin. So why are they connected? Why are they so connected? Is it because Hitler was insane? Or is he a bad strategist?

Starting point is 01:13:59 It was obviously bad. So I just took, he had no need to open a second front. His general's mind-standing told him this is crazy. It didn't work out for him at all. I mean, to draw Russia and her resources into that war, it makes absolutely no sense in retrospect. There's a book about, I forget what it's called, we're talked about him at that point, was just high all the time on endphetamines and that could have affected his thinking.

Starting point is 01:14:23 Yeah, there's a really good book on drugs in the, I figure what it's called, but yeah, it's a really good one. But it was, I mean, scapegoating is a big part and parcel of the Nazi mythology and this kind of one universal figure to explain, you know, this kind of, you know, skeleton key. But it could have been the communists. I mean, that could have been the source of the hatred so like the communist didn't get Germany into world war one like he said the Jews did it seems to me that the atrocity of the Holocaust is the reason we see Hitler's

Starting point is 01:14:58 evil no reason we see Hitler's evil is because of world war two propaganda still because we don't see Stalin as evil right that's right we don't see Mao as evil to that extent. I think that why? Like, why would you say that? You know, because nature that propaganda, because I think a lot of the problem for certain type of mentality is Hitler didn't mass murder equally. So as long as you're killing just one group, it's a problem. But if you're murdering everyone equally, all the sudden, it's like, I, what are you going to do? So the fact that you were saying the hall de mor is not common knowledge, the fact that Mao's 50 million dead are not common knowledge and Richard Nixon can be raising a glass

Starting point is 01:15:34 to him in China. These are things that I think the West has not done a good job reconciling. Knock knock. Who's there? Frank. Frank who? Knock knock. Who's there? Frank. Frank who? Frank you for being my friend, my coach. And the heart attacks will say Frank you for being my friend. You got to do like this. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Not back to Hitler. Do you think Hitler could have been stopped? We kind of talked about it a little bit in terms of how to what is the brave thing to do in the time of Nazi Germany.

Starting point is 01:16:15 But do you think, I mean, I'm not even going to ask about Stalin in terms of could Stalin have been stopped? Because the probably the answer to this is no. But on the Hitler side, Stalin have been stopped? Because the probably the answer to there's no. But on the Hitler side, could Hitler have been stopped? I think a lot of these things, a lot of luck has to play with it. He was almost assassinated. If you mean by the West, it's very hard.

Starting point is 01:16:37 I mean, yeah, what are the German people too? I mean, could, like, if politically speaking, there was a rise to power through the 30s through 20s really mean to like can whoever it's not about Hitler. It's about that kind of way of thinking that totalitarian control that always leads to trouble As sometimes a mass scale could that have been stopped in Germany or maybe in the Soviet Union? Well, I think this is one of the best arguments against radicalization in the states, which is how do you engage

Starting point is 01:17:12 when you have like 30% of the population who are members of a party which is dedicated to systemically overthrowing the existing democracy? Stalin gave orders that the Communists who had a pretty sizable population, the Reichstag, that their target shouldn't be the Nazis, but the liberals and the social Democrats, and they invented the term social fascists for them. So instead of, they're just like, like, geodes. Instead of taking their sites on Nazism, they set their sites on the moderates because they wanted, they figured the choice between Hitler and us were going to win.

Starting point is 01:17:50 And this was a huge gamble and they were all killed or had to flee and the ones who fled were killed also by Stalin to my understanding. So this is an easy way where he could have been certainly heavily mitigated. What about France and England that it was obvious that Hitler was lying and they wanted peace so bad that they were willing to put up with it even after Czechoslovakia? Like this is the anti-pastifist argument which is like they should have threatened military force more. But then the other anti-antipastor's argument is, if you're gonna remember a Barack Obama had the red line, if you cross this red line in Syria,

Starting point is 01:18:34 we're gonna go in and Assad would have was like, yeah, cool. And he's like, oh, okay, well, sorry. So if you're threatening force, there's the great song lyric, don't show your guns unless you intend to fight, right? So it's very clear with free countries through what's in the press, whether the institutional

Starting point is 01:18:54 will is there to follow through on these threats. So I think you have been very hard for Chamberlain to rally the British people to take on Hitler just after the great, I mean, the suffering on Hitler just after the Great War. I mean, the suffering that Britain took on the Great War, they still, you know, obviously, it means so much more than that dust, dust in the West. What about what do you make of Churchill then? Like, why was Churchill able to rally the British people? Why was he, like, do you give much credit to Churchill for being one of the great forces in stopping

Starting point is 01:19:28 Hitler and World War II? I don't think that's really in dispute. I think he was very much regarded as this kind of the right man at the right time. And I think Chamberlain took a gamble. The expression, peace in our time, was Neville Chamberlain. When he signed the peace movement with Hitler and he goes, we the expression peace in our time was Neville Chamberlain when he signed the, the peace movement with Hitler and he goes, we now have peace in our time, now go home and get a good night's sleep,

Starting point is 01:19:51 that's what he said, because he's like, all right, you know, he's gonna stop here. And it's not impossible that if you just gave him, like if he gave Saddam Hussein Kuwait, it's not impossible that he's not gonna, you know, invade Saudi Arabia next to something like that. Let's see.

Starting point is 01:20:08 Okay. But everything I've read, it's like, of course, there's, there's, it's not impossible. But when you're in the room with Hitler, you should be able to see like, man to man. To me, a great leader should be able to see past the facade and see like, yes, everything in life is a risk, but it seems like the right risk to take with Hitler. It's surprising to me, I know there's charisma, but it's surprising to me people did not see through this facade. I really hate the idea of hindsight and everything being 2020.

Starting point is 01:20:49 And I think it's a very good idea generally, not seeking generally, not in this specific instance, to give our ancestors more credit than we tend to give them. Because people often, here's a great example from another context, which is lightning rods. People always talk about religious people being stupid and superstitious, and they weren't. They often were very well-reasoned. An example of this is lightning rods, which is every year, or whatever town, the church was the tallest building, and that's the one that always got hit by lightning and got caught on fire.

Starting point is 01:21:21 Now, what it's a coincidence that it's always the church. Like that makes logical sense. Now they didn't realize, well, it's because the tallest and therefore that attracts electricity. And in fact, when they invent and lighting rods, this was a controversy because it's like, well, how is God going to show his displeasure? If now it's striking, this lighting rod not burning down the church. So a lot of times things are a lot more coherent than we give them credit for. And again, Chamberlain, he's ahead of a parliamentary party. So he does not have the freedom in a sense that a Hitler would to be like, all right, we're doing this again, boys. We don't know what it's like in a room with Hitler. Come on, that's that's

Starting point is 01:22:03 we really have no idea. But I think you have to think about that, right? Yeah, but you can, I can very easily see him in the room, being very calm and charming, and then you think, okay, the guy with the speeches is the act, and he's putting on a show for his people, and this is the real one. Okay, so let's take somebody as an example.

Starting point is 01:22:24 Let's take our mutual friend Vladimir Putin. Yes. Okay. I don't know why saying his name makes my voice crack. You scared it. You're you. I'm like Beetlejuice. The Lodja. So there's a lot of people that's either one who built you. No, that was a collaboration. What's it's a double blind engineering effort where I was not told of who my maker was. There's a backstory, but there's a talking cricket. Pinocchio. You'll be a real boy someday. I talk about him quite a bit because I find him fascinating.

Starting point is 01:23:19 Now there's a really important line that people say, like, why does Lex admire Putin? I do not admire Putin. I find the man fascinating. I find Hitler fascinating. I find a lot of figures in history fascinating, both good and bad. And the figures, just as you said, that are with us today, like Vladimir Putin, like Donald Trump, like Barack Obama, is difficult to place them on the spectrum of good and evil because that's only really applies to like when you see the consequences of their action in their historical context. So there's some people who say that Vladimir Putin is evil.

Starting point is 01:24:03 And based on our discussion about Hitler, that's something I think about a lot, which is in the room with Putin, and there's also a lot of historical descriptions of what it's like to be in the room with Hitler in the 1930s. There is a lot of charisma. In the same way, I find Putin to be very charismatic in his own way. The humor, the wit, the brilliance, there's a simplicity of the way he thinks that really, if taken of face value, looks like a very intelligent honest man thinking practically about how to build a better Russia constantly, almost like that can executive. Like he loves, he looks like a man who loves his job in a way that Trump, for example, doesn't right.

Starting point is 01:25:04 Meaning like he loves laws and rules and how to- There's no adversarial press. So that's gonna help. Yes. And he's popular with his people. That's also gonna help. But, I'm talking about strictly the man,

Starting point is 01:25:17 directly the words coming out of his mouth. Like all the videos and interviews I watch. I'm based on that. Not the press, not the reporting. You can just see that here's a man who's able to display a charisma that's not, like I can see, that's why I love Joe Rogan. It's like, you could tell the guy is genuine

Starting point is 01:25:39 and there's a good person. And like, you could tell immediately that, like, once you meet Joe, that he's going to be offline, also good person, you could tell immediately that once you meet Joe that he's going to be offline also good person You can tell there's like signals that we send that are like difficult to kind of describe in the same way you can tell Putin is like He genuinely loves his job and wants to build a better Russia. There's the

Starting point is 01:26:02 argument that he is actually an evil man behind that charisma or is able to assassinate people of limit free press, all those kinds of things. Like that's, what do we do with that? So what do human beings like journalists or what do other leaders when they're in the room with Putin do with those kinds of notions and deciding how to act in this world and deciding what policy to enact all those kinds of things, just like with Hitler when Chairman is in the room with Hitler, how does he decide how to act? Let's go back to my real house, which is North Korea.

Starting point is 01:26:50 When your entire world is based on being against Trump and everything Trump does is buffunery or a kind of productive, the conclusion of your reporting is going to be pretty much given. I was very hopeful that there would be some positive outlooks or outcomes rather of Trump's meeting with Kim Jong-un. It looked like there was a space for things to go a bit better. I talked about it a lot at the time. And Trump was under no illusions about who he was dealing with. People pretend that he was kind of naive.

Starting point is 01:27:30 He had one of the refugees that has stayed the union, lifting up his crutch. The first thing he sat down and talked to Xi Jinping about in Mar-a-Lago right after he became inaugurated was North Korea. Barack Obama said that when he sat down Trump in the White House during transfer power, he said North Korea is the biggest issue. So I think a good leader, whether or not you consider Trump a good leader, has to be aware of, all right, I'm going to have to have relationships of some kind, even if it's adversarial, with some really evil, evil, horrible people, which Kim Jong-un clearly is.

Starting point is 01:28:09 Well, I don't think there's anybody that has a perspective in North Korea and Kim Jong-un on or ill are not evil, right? But with, in 1930s, Germany, isn't it a little bit more nuanced? Yeah, because Hitler hasn't done anything yet. And he's just a blowhard and he's an anti-Semite shore. But he's... What about like before the war breaks out? Like what about the basic actionable anti-Semitism when you're like just attacking hurting

Starting point is 01:28:45 Chris Delnaught or talk about the night of Long Nives. Chris Delnaught, so this is the night of the broken glass. Long Nives is when he assassinated a bunch of his people. That was something different. Yeah, so like when you're actually attacking your own citizenry. Yeah, that was universally condemned. Chris Delnaught, and that was very shocking. It's a level of barbarism to the West. Because I think we still want to believe, understandably, that things aren't as bad

Starting point is 01:29:17 as they seem. We would rather, this is why I, you know, I did North Korea book, I did dear reader, is used in a humorous framework because if you have to look, it's like looking to the sun, if you stare at it straight on, it's very hard to do. So you have to kind of look at it obliquely and then you kind of realizing the normity of the depravity. And again, pogroms in Russia had been a thing for a very long time. And there is a difference between, okay, you know, we're going to sack these villages and persecute people, and we're going to systematically exterminate them. That's, there's still levels of evil and depravity. So you did write the book, dear reader, on Jung Il. Yeah. Dear Reader, the unauthorized autobiography of King Jung Il.

Starting point is 01:30:09 Yeah. So that's the previous leader of North Korea. Correct. Current one is the un. Jong Un. No creativity on the naming. Well, no, this is intentional because it's a throwback to the dad. So there's been only three leaders in North Korea.

Starting point is 01:30:27 So we've talked about the history of Hitler and Stalin, and like these, I think it's important to understand that the history of those kinds of humans, there's the history of North Korea is not well written about or understood, which is why your book is exceptionally powerful and important.

Starting point is 01:30:43 So maybe in a big broad way, can you say who is King Jung Il, as a man, as a leader, as a historical figure that we should understand, and why should we understand them? So I wrote Dear Reader by going to North Korea and getting all their propaganda, which is translated into several languages because the conceit is everyone on earth is interested in them and wants to mirror their ideology. He died in 2011.

Starting point is 01:31:14 2011. And you wrote the book in 2012. I went there in 2012. I wrote the book came out in 2014. So Kim Jong Il is, though not an intellect intellect North Korea's version of Forest Gump. In that when they write their history, whenever something appears happens, he's there. Uh, and by telling his life story,

Starting point is 01:31:32 it's in the first person, he's telling the history of North Korea. So I wanted to write the kind of book where, in one book, and it's the kind of reading you could do in the beach or the bathroom, you're gonna get the entire history and know everything you need to know about North Korea in one

Starting point is 01:31:46 accessible outlet. And it's what people don't appreciate about North Korea, the several things. How bad it is. And this didn't happen overnight. This was very systemic that what this family did to that country, where piece by piece, they did everything in their power to hermetically seal it from the rest of the world, ramp up the oppression, keep any information from coming in. And they're very creative and innovative in their style of manipulation and control. So there is a farcical element, let me give you an example. So people in the

Starting point is 01:32:26 West kind of get it wrong. They talk about oh, they talk about when Kim Jong-il played golf for the first time he gets 70 holes in one. There is this one story about Kim Jong-il shrinking time. And this is a story how he sounds supernatural, but it's not. So Kim Jong-il is at a conference, the dear leader, and someone is giving a talk. And while that person is giving a talk, Kim Jong-il is taking notes and working on what was work. And he has an aid who keeps interrupting him with questions

Starting point is 01:32:55 and the speaker keeps stopping. And Kim Jong-il says, why are you stopping? He goes, I see you're doing these other things. And it goes, no, no, he can do all these things at once. Everyone's shocked. And they said, this, no, he can, I can do all these things at once. Everyone's shocked. And they said, this is why Kim Jong-il looks at time, not like a plane, but like a cube. And he can shrink time.

Starting point is 01:33:13 And my friend goes, do they mean multitasking? And yes, Kim Jong-il is the only person North Korea who's capable of multitasking. So in order to elevate him, they basically make everyone else in North Korea completely incompetent. And that has a purpose because should the leader go away, this country is going to collapse overnight. So they laugh in the west about all these newspapers show him, the factory and he's at the fish hatchery

Starting point is 01:33:45 at the paper plant. They say the difference in North Korea is that the leader goes among the people and does what he calls field guidance. So he will go in that farm and be like this what you need to do and he'll go here and he's so smart, he's good at everything and thanks to him for sharing his wisdom with us and he's not removed from the people like in every other country. Why does that seem to go wrong with humans, do you think, that this kind of, the structure where there's this one figure, this authoritarian, this totalitarian structure where there's one figure that's the source of comfort and knowledge. Kim Jong Il is not good at farming. Kim Jong Il is not good at the machinery.

Starting point is 01:34:27 It's all a complete lie. Or the things you'll point out will be things that are complete obvious. So here's another example they use. In North Korea, they have something called the Tower of the Jishu idea, which is an obelisk, which looks like the Washington Monument, but it's completely different because it's got this plastic torch at the top. And they talk about in their propaganda how all the architects got together and they said, oh, we should make this the second tallest stone obelisk in the world. And Kim

Starting point is 01:34:57 Jong-il says, no, let's make it the tallest. They're like, we never thought of this before. And the way it's presented as it, and like he's the first person to think of this, like these architects are having a brainstorming session. The towers that you should have, yeah, they're like, all right, we gotta do something innovative to put North Korea on the map. Well, what can we do?

Starting point is 01:35:16 How about second biggest? He's gonna go for this. And then he's like, oh, we never thought of this. It's so, because I presented at face value, people sometimes say the book's a satire, it's not a satire, I downplayed all this stuff. It's a far, Susan Lutter example. North Korea is very big, and I think Russia

Starting point is 01:35:35 is to some extent too, on amusement parks, fun fairs, they call them in the British style, because this is the chance for the people to all to get together. And there was this amusement park, it's almost like South Park, the Cartman, where there's all these rides. And Kim Jong-il's like, I'm not going to let any elderly or children take these rides until I put myself in danger and ride them myself. And they go, but dear leader, it's drizzling. And he goes, no, I have to make sure these rides

Starting point is 01:36:08 are gonna be safe for everyone, even during the light rain. They go, well, can we go on these rides with you? No, no, no. I have to be the courageous one. And he's riding all the rides, and they're standing there crying at his courage. But that's what's, and you ask all the thing in one power,

Starting point is 01:36:22 it's like, listen, I'm quite confident that those fun, fair engineers are in a position to ride modest mouse, wherever it's called, by themselves, and be like, yeah, okay, this is good for the kids. Although to be fair, some of those amusement parks are not are pretty rusty and dangerous. Yeah, but that, that, that kind of propaganda, I guess what I'm not playing a devil's advocate is like, it's comforting and it's useful, but it does seem that that naturally leads to an abuse of power. How can it be used correctly? No one person has the intellect or the mind to understand the entirety of an economy,

Starting point is 01:37:02 let alone every individual field of interest. Well, for example, you can have an artificial intelligence system that understands the and the entirety of an economy let alone every individual field of interest. Well, for example, you can have an artificial intelligence system that understands the entire deal. Your app that just completely changed the mask slipped. Yes, you could have an artificial intelligence system. But the question is, can that mean, like the human version of that is like you can hire a lot of

Starting point is 01:37:26 experts right you can be an extremely good manager and since everything's dynamic it's not gonna they're not gonna have the data to kind of manage it well it seems that there's a like what George Washington allegedly did it seems like most humans are not able to fire themselves you're not able to like yeah you're right I'll do me be a check on your own power but that's not if seems like most humans are not able to fire themselves. You're not able to like, yeah, you're right. I'll be checking your power, but that's not if I was like,

Starting point is 01:37:50 if I was creating a human, it's like, that's not an obvious bug of the system that we would not be able to fire ourselves due to to know when we have, I mean, it seems like that's something you have to know always. Like, that's something I often wonder. Like, am I wrong about this? Well, this is what we talked about earlier.

Starting point is 01:38:12 What are the safety valves to make sure that, okay, if I am incorrect or my knowledge is finite, Plato's cave kind of thing, what mechanisms are in place that my mistake or limited information isn't going to have the illiterious consequences. And North Korea does not really have that. And as a result, they had polio in the 90s. So there is a, you're, you're out about it straight, but there's a humor to it because it's an absurdly evil place, as opposed. Yeah. A bunch of people. I asked, I asked, uh, I said that I'm talking to you

Starting point is 01:38:48 and a bunch of past questions. Oh, I got to hear from the plebs. I said, you asked me before we started recording it, I specifically said no, it was in my contract. Yeah, and you gave, I gave you all the pink skittles or whatever, uh, but they, oh, pink, you know, pink. I'm'm trolling Michael let me explain to you how that works. If people should go malice.locals.com which in sign up and pay I think the membership fee is several thousand dollars. It's very it's it's it's not it's not for the layman. Yeah, but the service is excellent.

Starting point is 01:39:25 You get a coat with it. But yeah, I went there posted a lot of really brilliant people. People should join that community if you find Michael interesting, or if you just want to go and say why he's wrong, it's a great place to have that place. I'm sorry. I sure you. Yeah, a lot of really kind people. So anyway, there's a bunch of people ask that we should talk about humor. Okay So pretend hypothetically speaking that I'm a robot

Starting point is 01:39:57 Asking you to explain humor to me what So dear reader, I mean, there's a humor. There's a, there's, there's, you're so a wonderfully dance between serious dark topics and then seriously dark humor. Yeah. Can you try to, uh, if you were to write like a, I don't know, Wikipedia article, maybe a book about your philosophy of humor. What do you think is the role of humor in all of this?

Starting point is 01:40:27 A joke is like a baby. You can't dissect it and then put it back together and expect it to work. Trust me on this one. No matter how you carve that thing up, it's not going to be working the next day. And you need it to sew those little sneakers with those hands. I don't know that humor is something that is very explainable. People, there's something called Claptor, where this is like the worst kind of humor

Starting point is 01:40:52 where people applaud because they agree with what you're saying as opposed to laughter. Well, that's still, that's the kind of... That's a poetry reading. Yeah, and the drag queens do that too. I think because they have the nails. You laugh, it's a visceral reaction. Someone on Twitter is insisting, you know, that's not funny. You're not in a position to make that claim. And let's go back to North Korea. I had a refugee I knew and he went to high school here

Starting point is 01:41:21 and he was talking his buddies and they said, hey, remember when we were kids? We had Pokemon and he was talking his buddies and they said, Hey, remember when we were kids, we had Pokemon and he goes, Oh, yeah, except instead of Pokemon, I watched my dad start to death, which is the truth. Now, who are, who are any of us to tell him not to make that joke? I don't know what it's like watching anyone, including my dad start to death. And my dad's fatty. So he's not going hungry anytime soon. So it's very bizarre to me when people feel comfortable precluding others from making jokes, especially, and I think this is a very Jewish thing, like this kind of galos humor, especially when it's something laughing about a personal loss or experience that they've had.

Starting point is 01:42:05 Humor is a great way to mitigate pain and suffering, but it's also, I think this is why it's a Jewish thing, it's a black thing. When you are a marginalized community or poorer, it's free. Telling stories, telling jokes or songs, you don't have to have money, but you can have joy and happiness. And I think that's why you find it so much more in kind of lower status communities than you find it like wasps who are notoriously humorless. Which is strange because people pay a lot of money for the jokes you do. So it's not really free. Yeah, well, they don't have to pay me. It's from the pre-shaded but not expected. I find my voice cracking every time I try to make a joke.

Starting point is 01:42:50 I fail miserably at this. Some people... You're still in beta, that's why. Alpha. Sure. Being an Alpha is like being a lady. If you have to help people, you are, you aren't. No, I meant Alpha version.

Starting point is 01:43:03 Oh, no. Okay. I don't know if you're robot-gobbly-gook. I'm not going there. Okay. Can we be talking to you? In my own head. I'm talking to myself in my own head.

Starting point is 01:43:16 Okay. Speaking of North Korea, some people say that, I've read that comedy is about timing. Or first of all, do you agree? And second of all. No, I'm serious, it's very much about it. No, it's just that you're saying yes, that time, it's funny.

Starting point is 01:43:35 Okay. Isn't it comedy's tragedy plus timing? Isn't that the full reference? What is it, interruption, colon knock knock joke? I'm not gonna do it, but. That's not a timing thing. It's more of a repetition and then the twist ending. The move the move yeah yeah yeah yeah interrupting cow you think it's a banana banana one anyway i'm not i'm not going there yet you're talking. I'm fucking good. You might have a lot of the good vloggers.

Starting point is 01:44:03 You have to hear these small, wonder-deez stand sleeping in a wardrobe. Yeah. That's so British. But yet you're very... I want to say in a closet, because that is connotations. Let's both come out of the closet for a second.

Starting point is 01:44:19 I love you. I love you, Lex. I wasn't saying I love you, Alex. I was saying I love you, Lex. Oh, you were talking to me. I was saying I love you Alex. I was saying I love you Lex. Oh, you're talking to me. Yes, that's what the show is. So when you, so you think about me when you're with another man.

Starting point is 01:44:34 I watch it when you're sleeping. Okay, so you're on a single song. It's a really active on Twitter. Yeah. And somebody else asked on your overly expensive membership site What like grifts How do you find

Starting point is 01:44:51 humor different in writing on Twitter versus spoken humor? So if you think it's a great question if humor is about timing How do you capture the timing and the brilliance of the whatever is underlying humor in a context of Twitter? Like another way to say it is how do you be funny and yet thoughtful on Twitter? So with Twitter, you have to be the first one to the punch line. So when Ron Paul had a stroke, I was immediately being like, he's still the most article libertarian. He's doing a great joke Biden impression right now. All the libertarians got asked mad. That's and people like too soon or like when someone dies, you're making the jokes about them. It's like, when do you want to make the jokes about someone just

Starting point is 01:45:37 died a week later? It doesn't make any sense. Now you might. Too soon is perfect timing. Or you could say it's not appropriate ever, but too soon does not make sense in this context. So that is something that I enjoy doing. It's also fun ruffling people's feathers, if something I enjoy doing. I think spoken versus writing is very different because when you are having good banter with someone, for me as the audience, knowing that it is on the spot really adds an element of humor because then it's like, wow, this is fun. It's like a ping pong match or something.

Starting point is 01:46:16 Whereas in writing, you're losing the tone, you're losing the relationship of a dynamic conversation. And a lot of times the joke is just gonna be a different type of joke. Well, it's funny, but Twitter, there's a sense, especially your Twitter, that you just thought of that and you just wrote it. Yes.

Starting point is 01:46:39 Like, there's a feeling like, it's literally you talking, as opposed to what I imagine is there's some editing or it doesn't feeling like it's literally you talking as opposed to what I imagine is there some editing or it doesn't look like it. Whatever your editor is should be fired. There's an issue in effect actually. If I want to say something, I don't know about the something that's bothering me about the presidential election, something like that. Like, what are, what is the actual central idea that I'm trying to convey to myself?

Starting point is 01:47:11 Like if sales having hypothetically conversation with myself. What? No, I'm not going there. Why am I putting my parents back on? I'm more comfortable this way. From a god, malice 20sheathunderwear.com okay. that's sheath what is it what's the website? sheathunderwear.com sheathunderwear.com promo code mallas20 and I forgot why is that underwear really nice? because it has a dual pouch technology to keep your man parts separate.

Starting point is 01:47:45 They've also got woman stuff but I don't know how that works. There's the thing worth going somewhere. And the material is really refreshing. I mean it's really a good thing. And it makes your ass look good. That's promo code mouse 20. And it's made by a it's made by a former vet because he was in Iraq. So that's why I like promoting it. Yeah. But what I'm writing, the tweet, I like to, it forces me to think deeply about the core of the message. OK. But what I found this really interesting effect,

Starting point is 01:48:14 like I don't really do much editing on the tweet, I'll just think, and then I'll write it. And then when I post it, like submit, like I immediately see the tweet very differently than it was in my mind. I often delete, like I delete, I don't know, some percentage of tweets about like two five seconds after. Wow.

Starting point is 01:48:35 I don't know. It's something, well, once you send it, it's why the Gmail send features on do send features really nice. It's like, it just changes the way I see the thing. So it's very interesting. It's, uh, but I really love it that you can delete it because when I say stuff out in the wild, like to other humans, like, spoken word is like you can't delete what you just said. And I often regret the things I say like in on the spot like I shouldn't have said that. Really? Yeah. I don't have that. Well again whoever you're editor is what is it at this P.O.

Starting point is 01:49:17 a generic hand? Wow your French is as bad as your English. Um, I don't have any tweets I regret because if I sent a tweet that I regretted, I would make amends. I would make it a point if I was a needless, the offensive of somebody or hurtful or accidentally I would make sure to fix it and go out of my way to make sure that person feels vindicated and validated by accepting my apology. That has never happened. Had to happen thankfully. I'm also someone who is not big on taking the bait. You know some recently some people have come after me pretty hard and my perspective is that it's not really about me.

Starting point is 01:50:06 It's either I represent something to them. I'm just some jagass with a Twitter. So if you're getting this riled up over me, it's not really about me. Maybe I'm delusional, but that's how I look at it. So if they are trying to provoke me into this kind of heated exchange, I will never do it because that's not I'm not interested in it. And it's, I don't think there's going to be any, it's like, Jenna Rankin, you, you can't win. It's just going to be like trying to win a hurricane. There's no hero here. Well, let me ask you about this because somebody also asked that on your overly expensive membership site, that like, they were saying that they're an academic, they wonder, because

Starting point is 01:50:43 I'm an, I could quote unquote, I'm not an academic, but I do still have an affiliation with MIT. I, the word academic is dirty. It's like, which is a problem that needs to change. Just like the word nerd is dirty. No, academic needs, is it going to be the next front to open and they're going to be very vilified. We're coming for them and it's going to be very, very ugly, and I cannot wait. No, but there needs to be a place, a different term for people who love research and knowledge and like, you have to clarify what you mean by economic, and right now the word economic means a very, in the intellectual public discourse. It means the enemy. And there's a lot of people that perhaps deserve that targeted vilification, but like a

Starting point is 01:51:32 lot that don't. They're just curious people. They're building robots that will one day destroy you. Voice cracks every time. I make a joke. You're not consistent. I can't do this. You're not in good joke. It's all meditating.

Starting point is 01:51:47 I can't delete that joke. Okay, that's not even a joke. Robots, building robots, they'll one day kill us. Humans. You God willing, humans are the joke. That's why I'm cracking. My voice is cracking. What were you were even what was

Starting point is 01:52:06 even fucking things? Academics, but why I local someone had a question, they're an academic right they're an academic, they're saying like, are you worried that you know, in academia, associating yourself with a sort of somebody who has who can be misconstrued to have radical ideas like the two examples they gave is Michael Males and Joe Rogan. I wouldn't consider him radical at all. Well, we can talk about it. Joe is, I think, a bad example.

Starting point is 01:52:39 He's quite centrist to me. Well, he could have, for example, like what has Joe been attacked on? Is for example, on the topic of like transgender, like, uh, athletes in sports. Yeah, based in sports. There's what else? I mean, he's been pro Bernie Sanders and that's hard to wrap up. Pro Trump or like giving Trump a pass or not and I Trump not anti Trump. Yeah. Oh, what else just need none of these erratic meat meat stuff being pro meat versus anti vegan. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:53:17 Yeah. You know, all those kinds of things, but you could be misconstrued and saying there's I think a highlight and my mom actually wrote to me about this, which is hilarious. Josh Hika. Thank you. I like how you jotted down. It's once an important, I say your mom wrote to you, Josh Hika. That's that's a sign. My voice cracks.

Starting point is 01:53:35 A sign when Michael Malice makes a funny joke because when you jot something down. Josh Hika. And then he writes it and then the next time he crosses it out. Just good put. Yeah, it's like Joe Biden at the debates. Okay. It also just grabbed my pants. So, uh,

Starting point is 01:53:59 there's a, I mean, he's a comedian. You have a comedian side to you, right? I mean, you're, you've talked about humor side. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Humorous is, so you can misconstruely, like Joe is being somehow a radical thinker

Starting point is 01:54:14 and then say what could be done with you. And his question was, how are you worried about associating yourself with folks like that? Am I or you? I mean, me. Yeah. That's a good question. And is that something, do you see yourself as somebody who's dangerous that I shouldn't

Starting point is 01:54:34 be talking to? And in the same way, do you ever think about guests on your podcast or people you talk to publicly? Associated series self with publicly and Think that there is somebody that crosses that line that you shouldn't talk to. I interviewed In the new right I interviewed like up to full blown Nazis the last chapters about Chris can't well But that was in the context of that book, right? So there's lots of people who people want me to have on my show. And the way I look at it is like you have a table and table cloth, right?

Starting point is 01:55:10 And what's supposed to table is of three feet wide, the table cloth is two feet wide. So if I move the table cloth to the right, I'm going to lose people on the left. I can only cover so much space. And the further you go in the fringe and one direction the more mainstream You're going to lose and the other direction. So I'm very much making a conscious choice not to talk to being people will say I'm cowardly and that's absolutely true. I'm being fearful here I would prefer not to talk to some of those who would alienate some of the more mainstream people and here's a those who would alienate some of the more mainstream people. And here's a perfect example of why.

Starting point is 01:55:47 On my birthday last year, I woke up seven o'clock in the morning to go pee. And I checked Twitter, whatever. And Jeb Bush had followed me, Jeb. And I did seven AM, you're not really awake, you're like, wait, what? And then I thought maybe it was a fake account, but it's in the verified tab.

Starting point is 01:56:03 Oh, you don't have this, because you're not verified on Twitter. That's a shame. So people who are mad around Twitter, Twitter does not respect robots. They they then bots. You're lucky. I'm in zero. One zero zero zero zero zero. Those are my pronouns.

Starting point is 01:56:22 So I it was Jeb, Jeb, governor Governor Bush, and I corresponded with him. And I asked him on the show and he decided not to for various reasons. Very politely, he's like just politics is so bad right now. I don't want to talk about it. And I respect that for him. If I am in a spit, if I'm creating my show where he's going to get heat for who I can get canceled. Oh, you can't be on the show. He has these other guests. I don't want to lose that opportunity because, as we were talking about earlier, me and Alex shows in Tim Poole, I think a lot of people would be

Starting point is 01:56:55 very excited to see me sit down and jet bush. And I told him writing and I meant this. I wouldn't be clowning him. I wouldn't be disrespectful. It would be a lot of fun. There's a goofball side to him that comes out sometimes and I would do my best to bring that out and talk about what it's like being a blue blood to be born into his grandfather, Bush was a senator from Connecticut, he marring a woman in speaking English. How does that work when your family's royalty and things like that? So I had a lot of fun questions for him and that's kind of you're gonna have to choose one or the other. Well, you do a really good job of that. Like Ben Shapiro does a good job of that too, which is you can have multiple, you can have a trolley side, humor side where you tear down the power structures and so on.

Starting point is 01:57:36 But you can also have a serious side and it's a safe space for people from all walks of life to walk in and you're not adversarial. Never. I take the word guests seriously. If they're going to be on my show, I'm not going to have them have negative consequences as a result of being on my show. That said, I mean, maybe in my case, I'll be honest and say that I find Alex Jones outside of the conspiracy stuff. For some reason, maybe you can explain, maybe you can secondally ask me, but I find Alex Jones outside of the conspiracy stuff. For some reason, maybe you can explain,

Starting point is 01:58:06 maybe you can secondalyze me, but I find him hilarious. Yeah, listen to. He's a performer. He's very performative. But there's a lot of people that don't see the humor of it, and they see the serious consequences of spreading conspiracy theories of different kinds. And they see the danger of it. And I personally, I'm often tempted to talk to Alex in a podcast format, but I think I'm trying to convince myself that I never will. For me, I feel unsafe talking to Alex because I can't truly be myself, which is like, you have to be on. naive and honest. And actually, I generally, when I talk to humans, I want to see the best in them.

Starting point is 01:58:59 And I think that's like I often think about if I talk to Hitler in 1935, 1938. You've got to list the names to give him. Well, yeah, I mean, that's how you get the energy. Come on, let's be honest. Who are we getting? I would, you have to give away one of your, I would probably give one to my brother, so. How many brothers do you have?

Starting point is 01:59:23 We just won. Okay. Too many. What? I want to be an only child. He's the older brother. He used to pick on me. Payback. You know, it's only a good life.

Starting point is 01:59:33 You should think of it more as Stalin. I'm so interrupt you because Hitler, you're Jewish. So you're already going to have very adversarial. It's not going to be normal. He's not going to perceive you as a human in a sense, right? So it's... Yeah, that would be much easier. Work Kim Jong-un or something like that. be normal, he's not going to perceive you as a human in a sense, right? Right. So it's all in you. Right. Yeah. It would that would be much easier work.

Starting point is 01:59:46 Kim Jong-un or something like that. Like, do you think like how? Oh, this is a good question is in that. And that's but why don't you jot something? If you. Alright, we'll cross it on in a second. True. I think this is a really good example of a difficult figure that's controversial, that people bring up to me a lot and you've interviewed twice, which is Curtis Yarvan.

Starting point is 02:00:15 Yeah, Manchester Smallblog. Manchester Small, aka Manchester Smallblog, which is his pseudonym that he goes by. Yeah. His block. Can you tell me about who he is? Sure. Why is he interesting? What are his ideas? They're interesting. Well, he briefly invented the concept of Red Pill. So Curtis, your mental smoldbook had a blog called on qualified reservations. You can still find it online. It's very verbose. He writes at length, very, very bright. His perspective is very heretical.

Starting point is 02:00:48 So a lot of things that we take for granted in our liberal democracy, he regards as not only incorrect, which is downright absurd, and does not take what many people view as the basis of American political discourse as the basis for his thought. So when you're starting with someone who is basically repudiating kind of the Western worldview, we're not the Western worldview like the American milieu, a lot of people are going to of course regard him as dangerous or someone who is verboten. He's a very bright person. Why is he such a toxic figure? Because if you are blue-pilled, if you are the guardians of what is acceptable discourse,

Starting point is 02:01:38 then you have to make sure your forts are secured and that any figure outside of this acceptable discourse has to be marginalized and regarded as a radioactive as possible. You don't want to let in these kind of ideas that would be destructive to your hegemony. Well, so let's dig into it. So like he, I've read a few things by him, but then I hear that in a bunch of places him being called the racist, a white supremacist, neo-fascist, so on. I go to his Wikipedia, there's a view on race section. Let me read it.

Starting point is 02:02:19 Yarvin's opinions have been described as racist, with his writings interpreted as support of his slavery, including the belief that whites have higher IQs than blacks for genetic reasons. Yarvan himself maintains that he's not a racist because while he doubts that, quote, all races are equally smart, the notion, quote, that people who score higher on IQ tests than in some sense superior human beings is quote creepy. He also disputes being an outspoken advocate for slavery, though he has argued that some races are more suited for slavery than others. Quote, it should be obvious that although I'm not a white nationalist, I am not exactly

Starting point is 02:03:00 allergic to the stuff. Yarvan wrote in a post that linked approvingly if I don't know these people, Steve Saylor. Steve Saylor, yeah, he's from Jared Daylor and other racial lists. Yeah, so. Okay, so like, one of my questions is, we can let me just say one sentence.

Starting point is 02:03:18 In the same way that you had, you mentioned that guy earlier who was defending some aspects of communism and that is in some context acceptable. When you think about it, it's like this should be radioactive. Right. The fact that he is engaging with these ideas in anything other than this has to be refuted at all costs is what renders him to large extent, a racist.

Starting point is 02:03:40 That's really interesting. So there are some topics you can be nuanced and some not. And communism is still a topic that you can be nuanced about. Right. It's difficult, but you can be race in this like talking about slavery and IQ differences based on race is a topic that I guess is radioactive to a degree where you can't even say anything, I guess it's radioactive to a degree where you can't even say anything, even if it's like nuanced or not even like making a point. It's like touching it as you make another point.

Starting point is 02:04:14 And understandably, because you can understand that, I'm going to steal now the point, because you can understand the point. It's like you're just talking about Hitler. Once this foot gets in the door that some people are inherently slaves or some people are inherently better than others, it really quickly collapses. So that would be their perspective. But that's what, like, if I were to give criticism of his... But let me just say one more thing.

Starting point is 02:04:36 Racist is also used to describe Alex Jones. Alex doesn't talk about race. Racist is a shorthand for a certain percentage of the population to let you know, do not bother investing in this person any further. They're off limits. Definitely. Racism and sexism is a thing that's not used to shut down conversation. It's quite absurd by a small percentage of the public.

Starting point is 02:04:58 But Jared Taylor and Steve Seller, a Jared Taylor interviewed him for my book. He would be regarded in any sense as a racist. What's the difference in racist and racialists? So racialists, I mean, this is splitting hairs and now I'm gonna be all radioactive. Jared Taylor runs on the called Amaran. And this is, I mean, his perspective is that they're inherent differences to the races

Starting point is 02:05:19 and you cannot live side by side, well, white, some black, should not be living side by side. And by the way, for people who don't know, this is out of context that you have written a great book that includes some of these concepts called the new rate, which is not inclusive concepts, but talks about, yeah, well, it's more about the growth of the community around the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the that's the outrage and all those kinds of world. So, and his point about IQ, it's like if you had a population, the Dutch,

Starting point is 02:05:51 right, I think they're the tallest people on the earth. And if you said, well, the Dutch are the best people on earth, why? Because they're the tallest, it's like you're a crazy person. So if someone is scoring low, an individual on an IQ test, that means they're somehow a lower quality person. Well, maybe in one very specific aspect, but I mean, if they're a good human being, I've got friends who are low IQ.

Starting point is 02:06:11 All my friends are low IQ, frankly, compared to me. Sound like Trump there for a second. That's how you choose friends. Well, I don't have any other choices. No one's going to be at my level. You're the smartest person since Abraham Lincoln that I've ever seen. And unlike him, I actually am honest. So so he is someone who very much swims in heretical ideas.

Starting point is 02:06:33 Aristotle. Here's another thing. Like if you bring up that Aristotle said that some people are born to be slaves. He wasn't speaking about race. He just meant people's souls. H. L. Mankin, who was a great heretic and early to the 20th century figure, one of his quotes that I say all the time, which people have seen a lot in this past year,

Starting point is 02:06:52 that the average man doesn't now want to be free. He merely wants to be safe. That I think is, I don't know what, I am not familiar with what Mullbug saying about slavery because his writing is ponderous, but that certainly is something I think that is undeniable. That I think more people are realizing there's a large percent of the population

Starting point is 02:07:10 that is actively disinterested in freedom and the more responsibilities it entails. Well, I mean, really just the words slavery, if you wanna make some kind of point or even think about the topic outside the context of this is a horrible thing that happened in the United States history. And other countries history. And I'll be clear. This is very important. There's slavery going on today. And a lot of people argue that sex trafficking and all those

Starting point is 02:07:36 kinds of things. I mean, there's atrocities going on today that, you know, talking about it in a way that's not immediately saying, this is the most horrible thing that happened ever. You know, it's something I think about a lot is like, if I want to say something controversial, I should do so with skill, with care and only about things I care about. Well, here's where I would disagree. I'm not when I say things, I often say things that are controversial, or I will say uncontroversial things in a controversial way,

Starting point is 02:08:12 because it's a useful mechanism to alienate people you don't want to round you. Because if there are people who are going to be shocked by certain topics, like we should have ended World War II, like even as a hypothesis, they just clutch their pearls They're like oh you want the holocaust to happen. I can't discuss most things with you You're not interested in having conversation you're interested in your emotional response Yeah, I think I see things differently. Maybe this is a bit of a devil's advocate But what in at least the modern discourse of like Twitter and social media and so on I I find that if you do that, you're not actually

Starting point is 02:08:47 removing the people that are not thoughtful and kind and so on. You're actually attracting loud people. Like a small number of them, they come over and start yelling at you. Start yelling, they're basically ruined the party by showing up and just screaming. And so all the thoughtful people leave. Well, that's why you have to be a very heavy blocker. You have to block people on Twitter because you have to cultivate your audience and have them, like a lot of times

Starting point is 02:09:13 people come at me, I don't care. Then they'll start attacking members of my audience and then I'm like, dang, I gotta block them because they've won this one because I can't have that. Yeah, I don't know. I'm unnecessarily provoking people, feels it's it's it's it's this is beta testing. You try to break the system and see what works. You put up as much pressure

Starting point is 02:09:37 as possible. This is very much computer stuff that you should be able to appreciate. The point being when you have a program, you're trying to intentionally sit there and do as many mistakes as you go wrong, right? Is that not common practice? Yeah, yeah. So you're saying that that's a way to see communication with the world. Does you say something uncontroversial and controversial way and that blocks people? Or does it trigger them?

Starting point is 02:10:03 Do they roll their eyes? You know, what is going to be their emotional response? Or they start yelling? The problem is the reason I can't think like this or I can't because I'm not sure about the points I'm trying to make always like I'm not always 100% sure that I'm right about things like so in being thoughtful, I'm afraid that I'll turn off with an eloquently phrased or even incorrect statement, I will do damage that can't be undone in terms of having a good conversation about a topic. So I want to be very careful about like, I'm not saying afraid fear is not what I'm talking about. I think fear is like not saying something out of fears at the core of the media, the problems of

Starting point is 02:10:53 the world today. But I'm just saying be say stuff with care. If I'm going to touch race as a topic, it feels like you really should be deeply, first, have a point to make. Like you really care about a point you want to make. And second, think deeply about how to say that point in a way that communicates it the best. And touching, I would say, listen, I've on your show, which is great. I mean, I'd like to say thank you for having mentioned small bugs. You are welcome.

Starting point is 02:11:31 That's the name of the show. Thank you for having me a couple of times. It's great to sort of get him to in this loose way to talk about different kinds of stuff. I don't think we talk about race at all. So, no, no, no, no, I'm just bringing it back to what you're asking, which is if you read the Wikipedia, the perspective is going to be this guy talks about slavery constantly, where

Starting point is 02:11:53 it's completely disproportionate to his work. But even on your show, you can tell even not outside of the race stuff that he's not ultra careful about. He's not nuanced. Yeah, he's not afraid to say something just like, I would say, let me just criticize him. I face does not use me carelessly say something controversial. Right. Like, I'm not saying he doesn't go, you know, that makes him, it's a very different thing than somebody who on purpose says something controversial stuff. Like Milo and Apollos, sorry, I forgot Milo, whatever's name is.

Starting point is 02:12:31 Yeah, which is really nice to see that he's a genuine person who's thoughtfully doesn't mean to, but he just carelessly seems to say things that I feel like damaged the rest of his body of work. I can't really speak for him, but I would guess his point is once you're swimming in this kind of worldview, you're going to be anathema already. So there's no pleasing these people. So why bother trying? Yeah, I think that's a deeply, that's a, that's a black pill way of seeing the world. It's not black pill at all because it's a cynical way that these people.

Starting point is 02:13:06 So like it's saying that you're, it's a very kind of way of thinking, like I'll say whatever I want, whoever comes along with me. No, you just earlier said yourself that race racism has been weaponized as a way to shut down conversation. So I think his perspective would be,

Starting point is 02:13:24 I am so outside the mainstream in my worldview that I know I'm going to be called racism, racist. So there's no point in trying to be nuanced because I'm already gonna get the scarlet letter. Yeah, I just disagree with that because for example, I am one person, he turned off by his carelessness. And I think I should be a good target.

Starting point is 02:13:47 I should be somebody. I think that's fair. And I'm just like, he, it's very convenient to think that there's ridiculous people out there, which they are who call everybody racist and sexist currently. And then you can't please them. So I'm not even gonna try. No, but there's like this gray area of people that I don't

Starting point is 02:14:06 listen to the outrage culture, whatever. I don't this Wikipedia article means nothing to me. Like I'm not going to write a picture of what I'm more, I'm just seeing this careless person. And if he's going to be careless about like race like this, I feel like if I walk along with them long enough, I'm going to catch the carelessness. I'm going to lose like, I'll defend your perspective there than you can. This is good. I'm taking notes. I talked to Eric Weinstein after you guys talked about me on your show. I lost Weinstein. We had a good conversation. He invited me on his show. That would be an amazing conversation. And we got on the phone and his concern fairly, he goes, I don't want you to come on my show for the purposes of clowning me. And I would never do that.

Starting point is 02:14:54 Yeah. It would never. He might not be aware of. Well, that's why he wants to feel me out. He's like, you know, when he hears troll, it can mean a lot of different things. And I, we had a very conversation. A very much, it was clear that that's not where the conversation would go.

Starting point is 02:15:07 But I think when you are going to be on someone's show, there is a responsibility that they're not going to have to pay a cost for having you as their guests. So if you were put off by how he was in that live stream or two I did, like I understand where you're coming from, I think he's very, very bright, but you have a very, you have a different audience than I do when you're going for something different two I did. Like I understand where you're coming from. I think he's very, very bright, but you have a very, you have a different audience than I do when you're going for something different

Starting point is 02:15:28 than I am. No, no, no. Like, am I in just a sense of... You wouldn't feel safe with him. Yeah, I wouldn't feel safe with him. But he's he's more alive for me. I think I think I would like to actually talk to him one day. Alex Jones is cross the other line for me.

Starting point is 02:15:43 Well, you could do what you could do with me. Tape the episode and then never release it. No, it's one of those things will be, when there's finally, they'll make a history channel documentary about you and I and how it all went wrong. Like the cult that we started and everybody killed themselves. And there's a, we'll release it then because it'll be like unseen footage.

Starting point is 02:16:11 This is how it started. It'll be black and white. In a basement somewhere in New York. Yeah. Yeah. My mother's basement. Oh, that's explained so much. Okay.

Starting point is 02:16:24 So I spoke to Yaron on Brook about objectivism and I and Rand. He kind of argued, he highlighted difference between capitalism and anarchism as around the topic of violence and the that having government be the sort of, the negative way to say it is like having a monopoly on violence, but basically being the arbiter of the people that making sure that violence doesn't get out of hand, that would, you know, 2020 show that. Yeah. The government's great at that. Yep. Well, what, what's, okay, without, this is the same with the straight face making that argument. Good work, you're on. Okay. All right. Well, can you with a straight face argue for the idea that in anarchism, violence would not get out of hand.

Starting point is 02:17:26 Sure. For one thing, if your worst argument against that, one of my little quotes is what are presented as the strongest arguments against anarchism are inevitably descriptions of the stress quo. So, the argument is under anarchism, you know, you'd have warlords killing people, and then you'd have, you know, whoever's strongest gets to just take over a neighborhood. Well, we have that now. We saw that the police are perfectly comfortable disarming the population. And then when they try to protect themselves or punish,

Starting point is 02:17:57 they're happy to stand down. You can't, you can only have that happen if you have a monopoly. Like, let's suppose you had a television stations, right? And CBS said, you know what? We're not going to broadcast. Cool. You don't broadcast. We're going to watch any of these other channels. So the problem with having a monopoly is everyone has to be dependent on this issue.

Starting point is 02:18:19 What's amazing about minoracism, which objective is star, is they will argue that government is really, really bad at everything it does and it touches. Therefore, it has to be in charge of the most important stuff. Well, there's not therefore but but there is a thing that's fundamentally different than all the other things. But your own book also said that no government has ever, this is on your show, has ever worked in the way he's proposing. Now, objectivism, Iran's philosophy, is based on objective reality in what she posited

Starting point is 02:18:54 is you look and study the facts of nature, facts of reality, and to do things accordingly. And she very much regard herself as part of the Aristotelian tradition as opposed to the Platonist tradition where the idea precedes reality and the idea is more real than what we see around us. So what he's saying is all the data, according to him, contradicts his argument, but still he's going to make this imaginary government that has never existed. And there's no evidence that it can exist. Let's talk about objective law to have access to the legal system, which is something we want. Even just in terms of selling disputes, when you have a government monopoly, it's going to be more

Starting point is 02:19:39 expensive, more difficult for poor people. The cost of hiring a lawyer is more expensive than hiring a surgeon. You can't say what the straight face, this is the only way or the best way. Okay, so and the other thing is the argument for objectivism, they have the stoop against anarchism. They have this stupid claim. It's like, what if you know, you're a member of one security company and I'm a member of another, and we have a dispute, and one shows up the door. What happens now, as if this is some insuperable argument?

Starting point is 02:20:11 Well, we have that on earth. Every country is in a state of anarchism regarding every other country. We don't have a world government. So what happens if a Canadian kills an American in Mexico? I have no idea. I bet you don't have an idea. What I'm sure of is that system has been worked out ahead of time between the three countries. And it's been worked out in such a way that you and I don't have to reinvent the wheel.

Starting point is 02:20:35 Same thing with cell phone companies. If I'm on Sprint, you're on Metro PCS, and I call you who pays, the Sprint pay you. Do they split the difference? First of all, there's no objective way that one has to work, but the thing is companies who have auto accidents, they have arbitrage all the time. Like if I run into you, they work it out and it never reaches our desk. So the only thing that cops are good at is keeping people at any government monopoly,

Starting point is 02:21:03 is forcing people to be their customers by keeping them unsafe. Okay. There's a few things I'd like to say there that just explore some of these ideas. So one, in terms of Canadian and Mexico and so on, that it does something that has been worked out perhaps. Not perhaps. Don't say perhaps.

Starting point is 02:21:22 You know, for sure, that if something, there's a point I'm trying to make. So let's say for sure it's been worked out. There is a, that was a point in history where it wasn't worked out. Like to work to come to a place of stability, there has to first be some instability. So when you first, like for every kind of situation, they're like dispute over space like who gets the own Mars that kind of thing There's a first for it and then these different competing institutions will have to figure it out And so there's the concern with anarchism, I think or with any kind of interaction What you said the brilliantly that there's an anarchism relative to the, there's no one world government.

Starting point is 02:22:07 Right. Alex Jones enters the chat, but the, there's an insta, the fears that there's going to be an instability that doesn't converge towards some stable place. That is not the fear that is the goal under Iran's philosophy. Markets have something what they always talk about as being creatively destructive, which means you look at something that's been happening for a very long time. Every generation, every innovator starts chipping away at it. He finds better ways, marginal improvement or marginal and or it doesn't work. And he goes broke. When government tries to implement improvement,

Starting point is 02:22:45 we all have to suffer the consequences. When an innovator does, it's a huge asymmetry. If it hurts, it only hurts him. If it succeeds, he becomes rich and we all profit as a consequence. But the fear of anarchism, I think, is that it will be non-creative destruction. It'll be just destruction.

Starting point is 02:23:04 Right? It's not like the instability. Let's give you... There's no stability is one of these words that sounds objector but has no real meaning. What field has stability? If you... Let's suppose you want stability... Relationships. Yeah. Let's talk about medicine. Stability means we're not going to invent new diseases or new treatments, right? If you mean stability in terms of a baseline of security, we have that already. Very few relationships turn violent under an anarchist system. Look at it right now. If you look at

Starting point is 02:23:37 a bar full of drunken young males full of testosterone, if you look at a hotel where everyone is not native to the area, those are both far safer than the places that the government has taken upon itself to protect you, the parks, the alleyways, the streets, the subways. We have right now a comparison of which is better at keeping people safe and it's very obvious that when something is private and under someone's control, and there would be layers of, there'd be more police, but they wouldn't be a government obli. The store would have someone, the street would have someone,

Starting point is 02:24:15 and you'd have your own personal security that would be attached to your phone. Having security as a function of geography as opposed to a function of you as an individual is a landline technology in a post-self-one world. So, you think it's possible to have psychological speaking, as an individual among the masses, to have a sense of security, even though there's not a centralized thing at the bottom of the

Starting point is 02:24:39 whole thing. So, there's not a set of laws that are enforced based on geography. Like we have nations now. You can have a set of laws that are enforced in some kind of emergent degree upon way. So like basically I want to go to a hotel and trust that I'll be able to get a room and nobody's going to break down the door and I don't know. But you have that.

Starting point is 02:25:01 I'll take a different way. If you were worried about a hotel having bedbugs, that's not something that government's involved in. What mechanism, and that's not unrealistic concern, are there mechanisms right now that you can undertake to make sure that's not the case? Yes. So it would be the same thing with, I want to make sure I go to a hotel that has security. It would be exactly the same thing.

Starting point is 02:25:24 And here's another example. Cocher food. People who keep kosher, juice, you keep kosher. Their food has to be repaired in a certain way. It has to meet higher rabbinical standards, right? If you look at food, it will have that certification, the K, and there's even competition there. There's the K, and there's a stricter U letter. People don't notice it because they're looking for it. You would have companies certifying different locales for their level of security

Starting point is 02:25:50 and it would take an hour to have an app that would just like when you have toll roads, right? That would tell you you're approaching an unsafe area. You're not going to be comfort by us or and you could have it color coded very easily. We could do this today. by us or and you could have it color coded very easily. We could do this today. But the thing is you're exactly correct, but there's an assumption of you're already in a, you can give me a different word and stability, but you're already in a place where the forces of the market or whatever it can operate. The worry is like initially, you might not have enough worries like, initially, you might not have enough stability to where you can choose one place over the other based on the security that they provide. We already have different types of security here because we have federal government, we

Starting point is 02:26:36 have state governments, and we have local governments. These often contradict each other. The idea of the implausibility of having different security companies and having it be unstable or impossible, we already have a very rough example of it happening in real life. But all of it started, this is what this like the idea of what especially with Yaron is like it all started with government monopoly of violence saying like, no kids don't let violence get out of hand. So like, we got a civil war where half the country was slaughtered. That's a display of the government not having a monopoly on the violence, right? It's like, it's that's

Starting point is 02:27:19 a split. It had such a monopoly on the violence in the North that it could draft people to fight others that they didn't even care about. But there's a South. It's the government splitting. Okay. So this is giant iceberg like splitting. The argument is that you would have something like a civil war much more often under anarchism. But that's first of all, if you had a civil war much more often,

Starting point is 02:27:46 we don't have that with car companies, right? There's no car company that says, I refuse to pay you or whatever. If you're not violent, so I didn't drop it. Like, and I'm playing that like that. It is, I'll tell you finish. It is violence because if I'm a company, and I'm saying that my cars can run over yours

Starting point is 02:28:04 with no consequences. This is a rough analog. That's why has that not happened. Now, in terms of having security system, if I am free, just like switching cell phone to go from one provider to another, and this one company, as part of its payment, doesn't want $50 a month, the $100 a month, wants my son, I'm not going to be a member of this security company unless, in that case, we're dealing with something like a Pearl Harbor

Starting point is 02:28:30 or foreign invasion where it's like all hands on deck. Let's go by evidence. How many places do we have evidence of that there? You can have it a large scale. Well, I guess it's gonna a large scale because it feels like once you don't know the person, what about eBay? eBay is an example of anarchism and practice.

Starting point is 02:28:49 I am selling something to someone whose name I don't even know in a country that is nowhere approximate to me and eBay acts as the arbiter. Sometimes I don't get the money after I get screwed over, but that's far less than the taxation that I have to give to the federal government. It's a great point, but it's in the space of finance. If I could, if I'm eBay, you could also commit violence. Theft is violence. No.

Starting point is 02:29:13 If, yeah, if you give me 10 grand for a car, and I don't deliver anything, you've stolen 10 grand from me. Yes, but it's, there's something uniquely problematic to being stabbed or shot. The reason you're stabbed or shot is because the government, despite its contract, is refusing to allow second amendment rights to be implemented among the citizenry. And the people who are making that the case are the cops. They are the ones who are the traitors of the Constitution and should be regarded as such, whereas private companies are far more amenable to market pressures than the state is.

Starting point is 02:29:51 It's a strong argument, but let's actually just briefly mention the scale thing. Why don't you think we should talk about scale? Because if you had anarchism just in Vermont or just in Brooklyn, fine. The people make Because if you had anarchism just in Vermont or just in Brooklyn, fine. The people make the argument you need anarchism, Russ China is going to invade. But that's like saying, what like do these little countries don't exist? Does that sense salvage or not exist? Some of them are violent, some of them are not. But the point is they're not all at moments notice about to be invaded. Kuwait's an example of this. Kuwait was invaded by Iraq and very quickly all the big countries who are interested in having your stability, safe space, got involved and kicked him out of Kuwait. If you had this company that was waging more in the population,

Starting point is 02:30:37 it seems quite likely that the other organization would get together and put a stop to this because they're not in a position to provide the services security to their customers. Okay. All of this is brilliant. But didn't you just say that we are actually in a state of anarchism relative to other countries? Yes. So, isn't this what emerges?

Starting point is 02:30:57 This is what an anarchist actually living in a state of anarchism where we all have agreed. I haven't agreed to anything. So like the basic criticism you have is like you're born on a land, geographical land, geographical area, and you're forced to have signed a bunch of stuff just by being born in a good place. So really, if you could just much easier choose, right, which space of ideas you associated with, right? That would be actually a state of anarchism.

Starting point is 02:31:32 Yes. And you could have like a military that you sign up with. Sure. And you're certainly not putting people in prison to get raped because they're selling drugs. Yeah. And you're certainly not allowing everyone else on the street who wants to be there. Can we say something nice about iron Rand? I can talk about nice things about her all day. I owe her a copy of the fountain head.

Starting point is 02:31:57 You know, what to you is iron Rand's best idea. One that you find impactful and insightful useful for us in modern society that you think about. That your life has meaning and productive work is your highest value, and that you shouldn't apologize, and this is something I despise. You shouldn't apologize for saying, I want to be happy happy and I'm going to work toward that. And that, as a few others, that you owe nobody else some random stranger a second of your time.

Starting point is 02:32:34 You see this a lot on Twitter and social media, people like demanding a debate or demanding you act a certain way and engage with them. You don't know them anything. So I think those are some of her best ideas. And she teaches you how to think. I and Rand does not have all the answers, but she has all the questions. Do you think what do you think about the whole selfishness thing? I mean, do you, do you, are you triggered by the word selfishness? So it's really unfortunate what she does because you were just talking about earlier about mold bug being carelessly.

Starting point is 02:33:11 This is indefensible, in my opinion. So she talks about the virtue of selfishness, and she claims that when people talk about selfishness, they mean concern primarily with the self. They don't. When people talk about selfishness, they mean in a sociopathic way, concern exclusive to oneself, right? They mean like, oh, if someone is dying on the street, I'm not gonna, you know, even waste a second saving them because I'm selfish. So she sets up this complete caricature of the term. What she, when she's attacking selflessness

Starting point is 02:33:39 in her best sense is when there are people who have no sense of self. They have no values of their own. They have no goals of their own. Everything that's in their mind is gotten second hand from the culture at large. And there's nothing unique or special from their perspective worth fighting for.

Starting point is 02:33:58 So when she advocates for the self, she basically means self development, self improvement, and achievement. So I think that word choice is really, it falls and needlessly off-putting. Yeah. Controversial, perhaps for the purpose of being controversial. I don't know. But it's just, it's not accurate.

Starting point is 02:34:21 That's not what people mean by selfishness. Yeah, I would say it's one of the, one of the reasons probably her philosophy is not as much adopted or thought about is like, it's funny, like the use of words mean something exactly. As you said, that's my criticism mentioned small bug, which could be incorrect criticism, by the way. So I'm not exactly sure. Can we talk about some modern day chaos and politics? Yes, please. I hate chaos. Speaking of your hatred for chaos, let's talk about the session.

Starting point is 02:34:55 Oh, yeah, I was the first one on this trip. Yeah, you were, well, the Civil War beat you to it, but sure. In contemporary times. In contemporary times, you were, you're on this. Can you talk about what is the idea of secession? What are the odds that it might happen? What doesn't mean for the United States in some way for different states to succeed? Sure. America's been one country with several cultures

Starting point is 02:35:22 since the beginning. There's absolutely no reason for someone. this goes back to the anarchist idea, if you despise Donald Trump, which is your prerogative, if you think Joe Biden is a clown, which is your prerogative, there's absolutely no reason for you to be governed by someone you disapprove of. This is an incoherent, nonsensical concept. The only reason we even take it as a hypothesis is that we're trained to the contrary since kindergarten.

Starting point is 02:35:48 A succession, I don't know, along what lines, but increasingly it's becoming harder and harder for people to have conversations. I think social media, and this is something people despise social media for. I think this is something that social media has done well, which I am advocating for, is it tends to kind of run through ideas through like an evolutionary process and drive them to the logical conclusion. So, it's very hard to be a modern online because there's going to be people pushing through your ideas through several cycles and then you're going to end up at some kind of more pure or if you want to dislike it extreme perspective.

Starting point is 02:36:23 Having these different pockets, it's not really guffinable because people fundamentally have different worldviews. So I don't know what's the session would look like. I think the number is really increasing at exponential rate. I do not think the number of supporters of orders. I think the claim that this can only be accomplished

Starting point is 02:36:44 through violence is false. It's a lie. Just like any divorce doesn't have to involve beating your ex-husband or ex-wife. So, and I'm very much looking forward to this becoming a reality far quicker than I ever expected. Well, do you think there's a value of competing worldviews being forced to be in the same space within a context?

Starting point is 02:37:14 So we can agree if group one thinks A, B and C are the fundamental aspects of the worldview and argue within that and group two thinks D, E and F and argue within that. So group two thinks DE and F and argue within that. So you're going to have a lot of argument within those space. But if there's fundamental differences in worldview, there's no reason to be, especially when each views the other is completely coherent and unreasonable. Do you think there's a line of fundamentally different worldview views that along which a session will happen in the United States. Is there something that emerges to you as a set of ideas that are like,

Starting point is 02:37:56 what do you call that? Like you can't come to, you can't come to an agreement over. I, yeah, I think this is already happening. Like with the masks, I think there's just two fundamental perspective and each one thinks the other is insane and also deadly and destructive. And I don't see how there's any discourse on this topic. So on the left, I wouldn't say it's left versus right. I think it's people who are pro-risk versus people who are risk-averse. Yeah, so risk-averse.

Starting point is 02:38:28 And then there's like a hope for the comfort of the sort of centralized science, giving the truth and then everybody must follow the truth of the proper way to behave. And then there's on the other side a distrust of any kind of centralized institutions of anybody who might use, like, control to try to gain greater and greater power and masks are simple of that. And even if masks are or are not a effective way of stopping the virus, which is really unfortunate to me as a perspective. I happen to be on a survey paper about masks. People don't seem to care about the data or the so on.

Starting point is 02:39:19 This has become just a nice point on which to then highlight the difference between the two sides. Yeah, that's really... I mean, it sounds kind of on the face kind of ridiculous that the succession would occur over a mask. It would, but I'm saying this is an example of somewhere where there's a clean break. Yes. And risk averse versus someone who's risk-seeking, these are just two funnomal and different perspectives. Do you want to have an NHS or do you have a one-of-a-market-based healthcare system? You can make very valid arguments for both. There's no reason for everyone to be under one.

Starting point is 02:39:56 But you think that's irreconcilable if that's the word, that's not in the space of ideas that you can have in the same room together and they fight each other and ultimately make progress. That secession is the more effective way to proceed forward. Do you see a possible world with nose the answer? Meaning, I know you say yes because you kind of lean on the side of freedom and anarchism. Yes. Like you make, you want to make, let me make an argument in terms of divorce, which is in your world view or your intuition is you want to make secession as frictionless as possible. Like of course, along all lines, not just like states or whatever, just like, absolutely. You want to choose, you want to be free. Yeah. And peaceful. Let me make my authoritarian Russian,

Starting point is 02:40:56 okay, popestalian popestalian argument in terms of relationships. like when shit goes wrong in a relationship. That's what your language. Okay, there's only a place for one stall at this table. Okay. Okay, I'll get to be let in. No, you get to be like, Merkel is our previous discussion with Putin. Okay, don't let me unleash the hounds. You know, you want to work through some of the troubles before you get divorced. Like you want to do the work in relationships sometimes. Like it goes up and down.

Starting point is 02:41:30 It's been 200 plus years. It's done. But in the listen, okay, so it's not a one nice stand. But you know, look at Trump. I don't see the middle ground. He's either a complete calamity buffoon or he's been the first great president we've had in like many, many years. So you think that there's something different now than it was 20 years ago? Yes. Social media and access to information. And the division will only increase, you think? Oh, yes.

Starting point is 02:42:02 So Trump is not an accident of history. So they thought Trump was the river, but he was the dam. Trump was the dam. They thought he was the river. So that analogy, Trump being gone makes things worse. Yes, for them perspective, because now things are really going to hit the fan. So what are the odds of succession? I don't know. And my desperate hope is that it's peaceful. But I think the number of people who are becoming very

Starting point is 02:42:35 comfortable with violence is making me very unsettled. Well, I see words as violence in your Twitter. It's like Hiroshima. That's a million. words as violence and your Twitter. It's like Hiroshima. Sometimes I curl up in the corner crying after I check your Twitter feed. So, but you know, in all seriousness, you, you think it's possible to do non-violence recession. It took a check of Slovakia. Look at Brexit. Brexit was this a session. Right, right, so you can have a civil war did not need to be fought.

Starting point is 02:43:12 That would have been a non-violence session. And if you were about slavery, you could have bought off all the slaves, import them to the North. It still would have been cheaper and less loss of life, and probably better for race relations. Yeah, I don't know enough history to wonder about like how the civil war could have been avoided.

Starting point is 02:43:27 Well, that's how is, uh, well, conversation. So like, no, no, if they want to succeed, say, look, here's what we're going to do. We're going to let you succeed, but you have to end up slave, you have to end slavery. They secede because of slavery. Here's the other thing. This is like this, this can some circles of concertism have this

Starting point is 02:43:43 myth that, oh, it wasn't about slavery, it's about states rights. Well, if you go back every state when they seceded because of slavery. Here's the other thing, there's like this, some circles of concertism have this myth that, oh, it wasn't about slavery, it's about states rights. Well, if you go back, every state when they seceded released the press release, and they said explicitly, we're doing this because of slavery. So that is an abomination that needs to be taken care of. But the way other countries have, you know, ended slavery peacefully.

Starting point is 02:43:59 One of the ways to do it is, pay them by all, and we end up doing this after war. I think the South people got reparations, the slave owners, it was just insane. Bring them north, you want to go to Canada, whatever, and you agree and that's our peace treaty. Because the people who died weren't the slave owners, it was white trash. And it was, that's who always, and I hate that that's the term, I can't think of a better one, but that's who always and I hate that that's the term I can't think of a better one But that's who always ends up fighting these wars often disproportionately. It's poor people and uneducated people Yeah, and I don't I don't I did not regard them as cannon fodder. I think it's horrible

Starting point is 02:44:34 So what would it look like there'll be two founding documents? Yeah, they had they had their constitution I'm sure I don't know the history of the yeah, they had a constitution, but it was much more decentralized If succession doesn't happen. Yeah You said that Donald Trump Was the damn not the river. Yeah That that sounds like Walt Whitman or something. He's in it's poetry. Okay Are you flirting with me? I don't know You know, so we don't flirt. We just go

Starting point is 02:45:08 to the club and drag you to the cave. We have a sickle. And you don't want to know about the sickle. It's not a good cop back hob. It's bad cop for a stop. Yeah. What do you think 2024 looks like in terms of the candidates? And it's going to be Kamala Harris as the Democratic candidate. I'm really looking forward to Ted Cruz versus Mike Pence, because they're both a very good at debate. That would be interesting to see how they differentiate themselves. But honestly, I mean, things are going to get really ugly, really soon. What about Donald Trump coming back? He's not going to do it. So things, in my opinion,

Starting point is 02:45:51 I think things are going to be really, really crazy in 2021 and talk about the damp being gone. Like 2021. So this year coming up, oh yeah, it's going to be completely, it's going to be complete mayhem. What do you think, like prediction wise, and this is empirical, what do you think Donald Trump's Twitter feed looks like in 2021, like, at the end of 2021, we'll look back and see, like, what was the, you know, Obama gate exclamation points, or won. He is going to be for the first time in history holding the Republican Party accountable to the base. We've never had that happen before. I think he's going to be holding their feet to the fire, radicalizing them and giving that they have the Senate where it's going to be 50-50. The Democrats have a three seat majority in the House.

Starting point is 02:46:45 This is not a governing coalition for either. It's going to be a complete mayhem. What does that actually look like? What are the key values you think that he's going to try to push? I think it's just going to be very contrarian. He's going to be holding the accountable in terms of budgeting, even though he never did that as president. I think in terms of some kind of nominations.

Starting point is 02:47:05 Here's the thing. This is the first time since Nixon, 50 years, and things weren't as politicized then, where an incoming president doesn't have control of the Senate. The Senate has the vote over cabinet positions. I do not see a possibility of them not trying to pick a fight on one or two of these nominations. And that's going to, and especially as a revenge for Kavanaugh, this is going to get a very bloody, very quickly. And I think Mitch McConnell, there's a sadistic side to him. He revels in being the brakes on the car. And I think the base, it's just going to be throwing just, they're going to want some bone. It's like, oh, yeah, we eliminated this one person. So that's going to get really

Starting point is 02:47:48 ugly really quickly. You see it being quite divisive like a division increasing not stabilizing or decreasing. And I'll be doing my part. I know you'll be doing my part, but I'm trying to do my part and like trying to be like to me, the division is shouting over people like Elon Musk, people who are actually building stuff and like accomplishing things in this world in terms of like Elon said he took the red pill. No, see, you're talking about the, I'm talking about Figget Elon, SpaceX and Tesla and actually the good sides of some of the things that Google is doing, actually building things that making the world's information searchable, all that kind of stuff, all the stuff, making

Starting point is 02:48:36 actually the world a better place. There's a bunch of technologies that are increasing our quality of life, all that kind of stuff. I feel like they get like not much credit in their public discourse because of the division. The division is just like, it's clouding our ability to concentrate on what's awesome about this world. Well, you know what would eliminate the division, right? So, Session. Yeah. See, I don't, the division, right? So session. Yeah. See, I don't, it's hard for me to disagree. It's hard to me to disagree because, but at the same time,

Starting point is 02:49:14 so session, I'm a romantic at heart. You want to live in it? It breaks my heart. Cool. But do you want to live in a country? Yeah. But do you want to live in a country where Joe Rogan is regarded as an example of someone who's spreading white supremacy?

Starting point is 02:49:31 I don't. Well, but see, I feel like that's not the country we live in. That's just your time. Did it? The cathedral does it on a regular basis. Well, the cathedral is, okay. The cathedral, I guess you can maybe define the cathedral, but it's like the centralized institutions that have like a story that they're trying to sell and so on.

Starting point is 02:49:51 Yeah, this is Moldbox concept, but yeah, they basically are set the limits of permissible discourse and create an narrative for the population to follow. But to me, that's a minority of people. Yeah, minorities always controlling everything in any country. The vast majority of the masses have no thought. Yeah, but minorities can be overthrown in the... Sure, the circulation of the elites, yeah. The way the pro...

Starting point is 02:50:09 No, no, no, no. And that's what progress looks like is ridiculous people take power. Yes. And then they get annoying and new ridiculous people that are a little bit better over throw the previous... No, I think people... Progress happens despite the people who are in power, not because of them. Right. And so why is this a session? So is it always about overthrowing the powerful? Is that how progress happens? No, I think progress happens despite the powerful the powerful are going to do

Starting point is 02:50:37 What's in their power to maintain their power when they're going to fight innovation because the threat to their control? There's always going to be the New York Times of the world, right? There's always gonna be those, those, sure, that have a murder on country. So it's two countries. One has Joe Rogan, the other one has the New York Times. That's basically what's happening right now. It just geographically doesn't map out very well, but culturally, yes. But that's just cultural stuff. Like there's a layer of public discourse. Okay.

Starting point is 02:51:06 I don't mean, that's what we're operating under now. But there's actually progress being made, like, Rose being built, hospitals being run, all those kinds of things, they're different innovations. That seems like secession is counterproductive to that. Right, because one country would have all the roads and the other would have all the hospitals.

Starting point is 02:51:24 That's a great point. No, that's not the point I'm trying to that. Right, because one country would have all the roads and the other would have all the hospitals. That's great point. No, it's not, it's not the point I'm trying to make. It's just like, it just feels like the division that we're experiencing in the space of ideas could be constructive and productive for, for building better roads and better hospitals as opposed to like using that division to separate the countries. They're all going to have to solve the same problems, it feels like, like, sure, but they can solve them differently and compete that way. Mass-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be and the same founding documents and the same as the decisions is not effective, you think, is as effective as separating it is effective, but there is a certain point, which I think we

Starting point is 02:52:08 have long passed where there is not a consensus, a governing consensus ideologically or culturally. Let me ask you a fun question, okay? Knock knock. Who's there? Mars. God of War. The other one. The planet. Yeah. So there is a kind of captivating notion that we might, I'm excited by it. The human being stepping foot on Mars. that to me is, it's like one of those things that feels like it's why do we want to engage in space exploration, but I'm a bit with the Elon Musk on this, which

Starting point is 02:52:57 is obvious that eventually if human species is to survive, it's going to have to innovate in ways that includes the space. Like, there's a lot of things we're not able to predict yet that if we push ourselves to the limits of space, like new ideas will come, there'll be obvious a hundred years from now and then we're not even imagining now. And colonizing Mars, that idea that seems ridiculous, exceptionally difficult, impossibly expensive, is something that is actually going to be seen as obvious in retrospect. Okay.

Starting point is 02:53:36 And that we should engage in. Okay. That's just contextualized things. The fun idea, idea and experiment from a philosophical political sense is what kind of government? How do you orchestrate a government when you go to Mars? Like what we don't get too many chances like this, but how do you build new systems not in place of old ones, but in a place where no system previously have existed? I think organically. I hate that word, but that's the correct word.

Starting point is 02:54:07 You would have to figure out, I mean, that's how America was built. You had that it was a Jamestown colony and they tried to commoner some here and it completely failed and they went to a more free market system with the second wave of colonists, this mind-er-standing. For Mars, I mean, it depends on the population, who the population was, the number of people. I don't know, these are all kind of hypotheticals that I don't really have any good insight in whatsoever. I'm not at a space purse, I hate astronomy, like I hate it. So a lot of people look up to the stars and they're filled with awe and wonder about the mystery of the universe and you look up to the stars

Starting point is 02:54:42 and you feel what? I'm not looking up. I'm looking at the earth. If you, if you look at what's, I'd much rather given a choice between Mars and the deep sea, I'd much rather spend a week at the deep sea and all the life forms that are down there because they're literal aliens. They're like things that are not literal, but they're unimaginable to us. Some of the things down there. Yeah, that's true. To me, it's an interesting thought experiment to see when you have 10 people, when you have 100 people. Right.

Starting point is 02:55:11 How do you build an effective, you know, this is actually really useful for a company, right? Like how do you build an effective company? Right. And it does things. It's not obvious, despite everybody being really certain about everything in this modern world. To me, it's not obvious like how do you run successfully as a group of people?

Starting point is 02:55:30 I agree. That's what I'm saying. It also organic means you have to look at who the people are and tailor the organization to them as opposed to try to impose something. But you get to also select people, right? Because it's not going to be open borders on Mars. Oh, right. Tomorrow. I was going to say, when you have It's not going to be open borders on Mars. All right. I was going to say, when you have one country, it's all open borders.

Starting point is 02:55:49 Yeah, you're right. From outer space. Right. Some say their aliens are already there. So you're going to negotiate that. Sure. We're aliens. We're aliens to somebody.

Starting point is 02:56:00 We're legal aliens. Do you think there's alien civilizations out there? Yes. Of course. What do you think there's alien civilizations out there? Yes, of course. What do you think is their system of government? Anarchism, because they're advanced. Do you honestly think there's intelligent life forms out there? Of course, it's the math. It's impossible if there isn't. So what do you make of all the stories of UFO sightings, all that kind of stuff. Do you think they've visited Earth? Yes. My grandfather was an air traffic controller in the Soviet Union. And he said they would often see these things that were not operating the way we knew vehicles

Starting point is 02:56:37 operate. So that's good enough for me. So I mean, do you think government is in possession of some, like, what do you think government is doing possession of some, like, what do you think government is doing with this kind of information? Do you think somebody has any understanding of UFO sightings or any kind of information about extraterrestrial life forms that are not known to the public? Yes, that's indisputably true. I think the fact that so many of these sightings are from aerodynamic professionals, like pilots and things of that nature.

Starting point is 02:57:12 They are people who've seen it all, who are reputable. If they are on record saying, I've seen things that don't make sense. And both the Russians and the Americans thought it was the other one that says something. Shouldn't that be a bigger problem? Shouldn't that be bigger news? And a bigger problem of government is in fact hiding it. I guess, but like, what are they gonna do with that information?

Starting point is 02:57:34 It's a good question. Like, if a UFO, if a extraterrestrial spacecraft, which most likely would be like a crappy space, like it wouldn't be the actual aliens. It would be like some drone probe ship. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So if that like, what would you do with that information as somebody that's in charge of, you know, like you see how badly W H O fumbled the discussion of masks, masks, yeah, masks is one of them, but everything really in terms of communicating with the public honestly about what they know, what they don't know.

Starting point is 02:58:12 And that's a trivial one. Right. I don't, I don't know, there certainly feel incompetent at being able to communicate effectively with the public about something much more difficult, much more full of mystery like a beautiful, I think a piece of material that's out of this earth forget like organic material. I don't know. To me, so from a scientist's perspective, it would be beautiful. It would be inspiring to reveal this to the world. Here's a mystery and make it completely public. Share it with China. Share it with everybody.

Starting point is 02:58:52 I think there is a domino effect where they're concerned would be what else you're hiding from us. And at that point, if you said, no, no, this is everything, people wouldn't believe you and they would, you can't blame them for not believing them. Ah, yeah. And then it'll be like, show us daily ends. people wouldn't believe you and they would you can't blame them for not believing them. Yeah, and then it'll be like show us the aliens they'd be like we don't have them. We just have the craft you're lying speaking of aliens Offline you mentioned elves. Yeah, and psychedelics. Yeah, what do you think about psychedelics? In terms of the kind of places that can take your

Starting point is 02:59:29 mind, the kind of journey that you can take you on? Like what do you think, what do you think the psychedelics do to the human mind? What does that say about the capacity of the human mind and just in general, like the mysteries of all that's out there? I don't know that we understand what they do. The way I heard it explained to me is that much of the human mind isn't about receiving information but blocking information, right? Because we're so, there's so much data coming in any moment that you basically have to train

Starting point is 03:00:01 yourself to see into here, only what you want to see into here. And that what psychedelics do is they tear that away and suddenly you're much more aware of what's out there. And also you're gonna be noticing patterns that you hadn't noticed before. I know you had that researcher on the show and he kind of discussed this at some length. I mean, Rogan is probably the person

Starting point is 03:00:20 who popularized DMT more than any. Well, he's obviously the person who's popularized DMT more than anything. I don't know anyone who has even the researchers, person who popularized DMT more than any, well, he's obviously the person who's popularized DMT more than anything. I don't know anyone who has even the researchers who have anything close to a coherent explanation of why this drug, which is exists everywhere, would have this very specific, very extreme effect on so many people who are going to be experiencing such bizarre consequences as a result of it. I think it's very interesting that this is talking to the government.

Starting point is 03:00:48 The CIA started experimenting with LSD. They killed one of their own people, dropped a suicide. There was a lot of research into Terence McKenna talks about this into this field. Then very quickly, once they got into the mainstream, they shut it down. Even though it even though it's not addictive doesn't cause you go crazy or anything like that and there was a lot of propaganda against its use which I think thankfully is now someone receding I think Colorado just legalized mushrooms and like that. And I think it'll be very interesting to see what happens as a result of this. Yeah and the interesting thing is there doesn't seem to be for certain psychedelics like Salasai and like mushrooms. There doesn't seem to be a lethal dose Which is fascinating like Matthew Johnson the Hopkins

Starting point is 03:01:34 professor the mentioned Definitely gonna do one of his studies. It's it's a really cool way to do What he calls heroic dose oh, I want to do it. What do I have to do? Let's do it. I'll let you know you so he's he is heroic dose holy crap. Yeah, but it's safe What's the hero I mean how many grams are we talking? I don't know, but it's just It's big he says that He's gonna have a kick. Yeah.

Starting point is 03:02:07 So he says that, I mean, he also studies cocaine. He studies all kinds of drugs. And he's like, the silocybin is the road Joseph cocaine kills you. Well, he, he can't, you can't, so you can't even come close. So he says like, the problem with studying cocaine is, you have like, people who are addicted to cocaine. Yeah Or war or so on you give them the kind of doses that we can and part of the study is like

Starting point is 03:02:33 It's nothing to them right. Yeah, yeah Saddle Sibon is the only one where like even like daily users are like regular users like are blown away by the dose They give them. Oh, so you can go to the Russian your mind. Yeah, you can go to outer space. Maybe you'll become an astronaut or astronomer after all. Maybe I'll be bubble you guy.

Starting point is 03:03:04 I'll let people look that one up. Holy crap. Wow. What is love? What do you think this thing is, like, our attachment to other human beings? And is it something that we should give to just a few people? Yes, that's for sure. When I was working with DL Hewgl in his book, he didn't use the term, but he was describing like low-key depression.

Starting point is 03:03:31 And he talked about how he was in the airport and he noticed a girl had a red dress and he went up to the tank turn, and she was like, why do I think for? And he had realized he had registered color in like weeks. And I think love is like that when you see someone and you just like, Oh, like, like your eyes are open. Like this is something I've never seen before. I want more of this. That kind of thing. It's really, uh, uh,

Starting point is 03:03:58 it really disorient and reorient. You're thinking. Don't you find that like, the world is full of that, like non-stop, it's not just like a person either, it's like, but it, yes, but when it's in a person, it's at a whole other level, because it's like, I could have, this is gonna be great for years. It's like, you know, every day, it's something new. I mean, that is, and that is rare.

Starting point is 03:04:22 You think it's rare? I mean, find someone who you could talk to them for years and not run out of things to talk to. That's trophy years. Yeah, that's, that's rare. And know that they really, if you leave the room, they will do right by you. That's really rare. Well, from a Russian perspective, you just don't give them another choice. Russian perspective, you just don't give him another choice.

Starting point is 03:04:52 For this is Dividesh, New Year, New Year's Eve. So you've talked about succession and the world burning down. And you holding the match at the end, standing with a big smile in your face? Yes. Why so serious? But let me ask you, if it doesn't include flame and secession and destruction and laughing malice and makeup and a white suit at the end,

Starting point is 03:05:19 how do we bring more kindness and love to the world in 2021? Oh, easy. Be comfortable saying I want to be happy. And if there's someone who interjects and gives you attitude, arms like them. Surround yourself with people who also want to be happy. Here's a great example. My buddy, Chris Williamson, who I've mentioned before,

Starting point is 03:05:44 he's a podcaster, does modern wisdom. He's an awesome dude and we became very close friends this past year. And he was in Dubai recently and he sent me a picture in Dubai by the pool just loving life. And it took me a week and then it clicked in my head. And I'm like, you know what? For some other people, if they saw him under remodel at The pool they would think this is him bragging or humble bragging and that never enter my head

Starting point is 03:06:13 I'm like, oh man. I'm so glad my boy can be having a good time and a sharing his joy with me That's the kind of people you need to surround yourself with where it never enters their head to be resentful or anything other than sharing in your bounty. What makes you happy? I'm happy all the time. And one of the points I made in my life is like I really hated, I really did not like to give advice because I feel don't give advice until you know what you're talking about. And to me, what makes me happy is being self-actualized. I am in a position with my career where I could be myself 24-7, where I never have to engage in small talk, where I never have to interact with someone I don't want to, and I'm very

Starting point is 03:07:02 blessed to have that, very few people have that. And to have that be not only to have that be rewarded and having people find that something of value to them makes me very, very happy. But also being an uncle, you know, I have two little nephews, they make me very, very happy. Sure my sister's raising in Russian so they talk like immigrants, but that's okay. And we're gonna change that. We have to dismember her, that's fine. That makes me happy. And to be able to finish this book

Starting point is 03:07:36 and know it's gonna give people a sense of hope, that's really validating. What are your most grateful for for our conversation today? I just feeling my bit. What am I most grateful for? I am very grateful that I can come in here not knowing what we're going to talk about and know it's not going to be something I have to be on guard about or I have to watch my words. And that neither you or your audience is going to be responding derisively.

Starting point is 03:08:14 I feel safe here. You're welcome. Let's see. Thanks for talking to me, Michael. This is awesome. Thank you for listening to this conversation with Michael Malis and thank you to our sponsors. NetSuite, business, management, software, athletic greens, all-in-one nutrition drink, sunbasket, meal delivery service, and cash app. So the choice, success, health, food, our money. Choose wisely, my friends.

Starting point is 03:08:45 And if you wish, click the sponsor links below to get a discount at the support this podcast. And now, let me leave you with some words from Emma Goldman on Anarchism. People have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take. Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.

Starting point is 03:09:19 you

Lex Fridman Podcast - #150 – Michael Malice: The White Pill, Freedom, Hope, and Happiness Amidst Chaos

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