Kind: captions
Language: en
the following is a conversation with
michael malus 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 spelled y-o-u-r 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 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 malus
quick mention of our sponsors
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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 on this podcast
this 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
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 second be kind thoughtful and
fearless
i choose the latter hopefully while
still being open fragile and empathetic
again i strive to be like the main
character of the idiot by dostoyevsky
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 podcast
follow on spotify support it on patreon
or connect with me on twitter at lex
friedman and now here's my conversation
with michael malus
knock knock
you're stealing my bed i'll kill your
family
that's not how knock knock joke works
knock knock michael you don't do knock
knock jokes with the russians because we
have to knock at the door
turn down the tv
you got to sit quiet never hope they go
away this is you don't throw that back
to the netherlands you know this it's
triggered who's there
i can't even do it now
knock knock who's there
leon leon who
leon me when you're not strong michael
well that will never happen
i stole elegantly eloquently that joke
from you
the lie detector that was a lie
elegantly and eloquently
yeah you crossed it 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
to uh do a knock knock joke not once but
three times with alex jones i think it
was like six i had a runner
okay maybe i just they started to sort
of uh 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 a
chance to meet him and talk with him
twice with uh tim poole 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
well there's a lot to to explain where
do you start
i've been on his show in for worse 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 jokes and the last
ones about building seven
uh 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 so i didn't
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 a good mechanism to
keep
kind of the conversation guarded and
this every so often this is kind of
hitting the control delete and bringing
it down uh um
to a certain point of calmness what
about the love thing i mean you're
saying that that was a buildup to the
dagger but
it was also somehow really
refreshing to get that little jolt like
that pause 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 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 uh
conversations are all about like this
ranting especially with alex jones yeah
just like ranting about this or that
this this part of the world like can you
believe this 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
oh i definitely felt that way so it was
actually very fun i'll give you the
backstory of how that happened um
it was it was all 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
like it's got this feature this feature
and that feature and they're like you
know what i'm gonna buy the car if you
keep talking you can only make them lose
the sale you just get them to sign and
get get out of dodge
so tim calls me up
and he goes okay uh here's what we're
thinking
this is top secret alex is going to be
on the show
we want you on as well and i've never
said yes to anything as quickly in my
life um and then he keeps talking and
i'm like tim this you don't have to sell
it i i interrupted him i go you don't
have to sell it why are you by the way
i think because um 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
news media space that you and i travel
in it's the kind of things where
none of us three you know as we said on
the show knew what it would be like
if you you know
to certain within certain parameters
what you know megyn 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 and i knew they didn't know
i was bringing knock-knock jokes yeah um
so
that was kind of what was so ex so i
said at one point i'm kind of envious of
the audience
because this is there's so many exciting
things that are 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
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 call how
could he be prepared
well so i 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 dillon right for jen
yeah but tim was clearly uh tim dillon
was
also kind of uh
a genius
in his own right but he was kind of a
fan and he was back and he was
stepping away
he was almost like in awe of alex jones
where uh
you were both
you were in awe 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 you're on your own
of course on rogan but just you that's
an experience that's the whatever
there's gotta be a good name for it like
jimi hendrix experience there's the
michael and alex
because that was a band it's taken
well i don't know how many years you can
you can restart the the experience
because i feel sorry interrupt 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 gonna 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 right so there's a
lot of people who sit there and be like
oh he's telling not
people who are too cool for school uh
where they're like oh he's telling knock
knock jokes 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 that like oh this is too silly and
meets 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 to kind of have be condemnatory
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
um and again i like with 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 you're
not someone i want on my team are we
going to address
the outfit you're wearing we can dress
it sure you know for those who are color
blind
[Laughter]
michael's wearing the orange or just
listening to this
michael's wearing the exact
opposite the inverse
from uh from another dimension outfit
which is a white suit and black shirt
it's so genius okay so uh you should see
the next two looks i've planned
oh no yeah they're great
well obviously this relationship is
going to end today
okay is there some deep philosophy to
the humor
is uh this goes to our trolling
discussion
is there some
is there like chapters to this genius or
is this just uh what makes you smile in
the morning well i mean i think you're
honestly
in this case using the word genius a
little loosely i think this is
particularly genius but i do think it is
fun
it is exuberant it is joyous
um
i think the the bigger my audience has
gotten
and the more i actually
communicate with you know fans
i do feel it kind of kicks in these
paternal maternal instincts it's which
is very very odd i did not expect to
have that 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 for young smart like
um 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 it's 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 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 the you're
the you're the heroes here they're the
background noise um
it's just really very
uh flattering and humbling to be in that
position you have many minds right
there's the thoughtful kind
michael there's like i'm gonna burn down
the powerful yeah mike i think like
yeah and then there's like i'm going to
have this just
light-hearted trolling of the world yeah
which and which of those are most
important to the 24
to the 27 demographic i i think it's 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 butter sauce
um because i think people
when you're young you need to see
someone who's fought the fight for you
and who's won
so it's very easy to be defeatist so
this is what winning looks like
no this is not
this is most assuredly what winning does
not look like but in my normal clothes
yeah a little bit more
uh this is a good time to mention that
clothes wise you're wearing sheath
underwear
and people should uh buy sheath
underwear use code malice20 if you go to
sheets underwear.com use promo code
malice20
what i love about why i'm glad to
promote the product and wear it it's the
most comfortable underwear i've ever
worn and you have a separate pouch for
both parts of your genitals
that's that's what you i thought there
was like a punch line coming no it's a
very nice aspect of the product yeah but
i think what here's something else just
goes back we're just talking about there
are so many and this is going to 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 uh 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
they're a sponsor of mine i'm happy
to first of all it's funny that i'm
pitching underwear but haha pitching but
it's also
something i enjoy she says small
business yeah yeah it's microscopic like
a thimble
so this isn't a sponsor of mine but this
is a good segue so this is the russians
we celebrate new year's november we have
diet moroz he comes down puts a present
under your pillow so this is a company
called jl 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 so
what a worry coin is i carry around in
my butt if you have raw denim it's great
because it brings you fades so you carry
it around with you all the time
it says worrying is like paying a debt
you don't owe
right and i carry this around
and
for now it's been like a year next time
you're worrying this is good advice if
you don't have a word 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 able to handle it and that's a
good way to maintain perspective so jl
lawson's the company he sent me this
present i said let me give it to lex on
air
so enjoy
should i also open it yeah
j l lawson and co two lex from anthony
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 us tsa
could be a bomb it could be
just like this episode
make sure you unwrap it close to mike
because it drives you crazy that's
really the best part
me
or is this what unboxing video looks
like
i think so
this conversation's going to be a big
hit
on the internet the unboxing community
i need to have an excited look on my
face to make sure
the reaction video it should be an
unboxing and a reaction video lex
freeman reacts
it's another box it's just a series of
boxes
lex big fan since hearing you on rogan
months ago
most of your guests are over my head but
still enjoyable ah
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 all
right
by the way
show it to the camera and then make sure
you look excited or not or disappointed
no this is cool this is a worry coin
like i was showing you oh so you hold it
in your hand and when you can do this
with your thumb if people are 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 laying there too
that's what she said
i'm telling you last time you offended
me saying i don't have humor
uh the spin tray micro brass and copper
bronze
by the way the packaging is epic
i think that's his top he makes tops
cool
yeah you spin it in there and it's the
two different uh bronze and copper
i think he's the only one who makes
these machined tops and then he's
sitting here i guess yeah but you could
spin him in that stack that section
got it cool
where's the where's the worry thing
here's the word coin
anyway i wasn't listening what were you
worried about 10 years ago
10 years ago 2010
what would i have been worried about
then the government
no i'm not that's not a worry i i i i it
was a north korea book i published that
came out in
2014. i went there in 2012.
came out in january 2014. it still pays
my rent um with the royalties so the
north korea book yeah see this is this
is why it's so much better too i gotta
talk to you about self-publishing
because that you brought that up
i'm doing the next book's also going to
be self-published can we talk about
self-publishing what uh
what's that what's the whole idea of
publishing like having a publisher and
an agent because there's a bunch of
people been reaching out to me trying to
get me to write a book which is
ridiculous why there 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
okay
meaning like engineering stuff okay like
a book it has to be engineered and i'm
not using it loosely you have to
engineer a book no for sure i what i
mean is like literally a product with
programming and artificial intelligence
involved that's i want to build the
company i want to because there's i have
a few ideas that i feel i'm equipped
and it has to do with your
like intuition about the way you can
build a better world you individually
like 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 bit
dangerous for me it's like it's fun for
sure
it's 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 and like
just your book on um a dear reader
uh
but also the new right like
clearly
you and i 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 uh on your youtube channel which
i'm a 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
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 uh
when i was when i first came to this
country i read the book the giver i need
to read it again it's like
it uh the red pill thing is it changes
you in where you can never be the same
person again and i feel i feel about a
book in that same way the moment you
write a book
of course it depends on the book i could
also just write uh like in my field a
very technical book no that's a 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
how do i think about this world can you
just leave that behind you i get it dude
it's it's being pregnant there's it
never escapes your brain i'm telling you
you're absolutely right yeah i don't
know it uh it does seem to change it but
the reason i bring that up is because
there's this whole industry
of people that uh
seem to not really contribute much to
the publication process
but they 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
not what you would want to do like
people like marxist and i think is his
name he wrote like the primal blueprints
so like if i'm getting the names correct
he's the first paleo guy right so he
self-published it it sold gangbusters uh
but that would be on their health chart
i believe and
uh
it's a little bit of a different
situation you would be reaching much
more for the mainstream
um you'd be giving up a lot if you go
through a publisher especially
financially but yeah you are not going
to have the cred because there the
publishing is a cartel
the new york times is 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
um
but this is something that people do it
was a kickstarter book yeah
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 the publisher because
you're losing like a year and a half of
your life
because they're glacial and they don't
care well this that's my only problem
it's not the money i mean the money is
whatever percent they take 10 20 30
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 reader
that's six dollars so that's what 87
it's something crazy
but for me what bothers me isn't the
money that that for me personally for me
what bothers me is incompetence like
whenever i go to the dmv or something
like that can i can i interrupt you yeah
let's talk in confidence yep
new ride comes out last year yes
i get on rogan
get on reuben
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 on those shows no with no
help from them correct oh yeah that's
not even a question
uh 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 it's because
they know that person can market their
own book that's the only way
and i i got a reuben i got in rogan
and they they go down 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
hello
so
there is another friend of mine was on a
show on cnbc with nasim taleb
and they said naseem wants a copy of the
book
and they're like oh 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
and it's not incompetence it's um
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
um because this was such a huge
opportunity for them
and it 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 here's
another example the apathy of
bureaucracy something like that
i did this book concierge confidential
there's a typo in the first chapter it
ends with i'm about to t-o-o
they didn't fix it for the paperback
i don't care it's just like wow okay
yeah great book by the way got it got
npr gave it one the books of the year so
that was good
so why
participate in this because otherwise
new york times is going to pretend you
don't exist
uh getting book on some booked on some
shows might be more difficult although i
think that's collapsing in real time
um
you're not going to get reviewed
necessarily in places like pw
um or some others so the new book
you're working on you have a title yeah
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 and a big platform and uh it's
six times the cash if i finish the book
in december i could have it out in
february
if i finish the book in december with
the publisher it's going to be out in
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 do authors have leverage to say
f you
like can you just say
what even 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 your agent can
fight it but they don't have the bureau
they don't have the capacity to rush
things through
yeah i guess if the cause i've heard
like
big authors i don't know sam harris all
those folks talk about like
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 but you're kind of implying that
a human being like me should
like i'm saying these are your options
right so
i just i just hate it i hate the waiting
because
it's incompetence it's not that it's not
necessarily the way if i knew it wasn't
you know if it was the kind of people
that are up at 2 am 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 for example
uh that work with people i just i don't
know anything about this world but
you get like netflix folks who who help
with shows
you could tell that they're obsessed
with those shows yeah well yeah you're
not gonna get that publishing
if you hand like i handed the book in i
think it was july i didn't hear anything
from my uh editor until december
well can we actually talk about
the suffering
sure the darkest parts of writing
a book so the let's let's go to the full
michael mal stephen king
mode of uh 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 so
people are familiar with the red pill
and the blue pill the the red the
they're from the matrix the red pill is
the idea that what is presented as fact
by the corporate press entertainment
industry is in fact a carefully
constructed narrative designed to keep
some very unpleasant people in power and
everyone else under control
and
one of my expressions is you take one
red pill not the whole bottle yes
because at a certain point you think
everything's a lie and then you're
you're kind of no capacity for
distinguishing truths 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 um
disheartened and cynical and one of my
big heroes is albert camus and he said
the worst thing is cynicism
and that led something called the black
pill which is the idea that you know
it's it's all it's it's it's just
we're waiting for the end it's hopeless
and i 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 gonna be
great guys here is why i am
positive
and not that i'm positive the good guys
are gonna win
but i'm positive the good guys can win
and that's all you need because if your
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 uh and i 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 win
so is there a good definition of good
guys
in the sense the ones who wear white
there's layers to this you're like
modern-day shakespeare
is there a danger in thinking um
adolf hitler
was probably pretty confident
that he led a group of good guys listen
if hitler did anything wrong why isn't
he in jail
uh i checked friend thought of that joke
he actually he says in his accent he
goes if hitler's so bad why isn't he in
that jail
[Laughter]
that's a good point he's probably still
alive right and look yeah
hopefully
[Laughter]
oh boy
two of the three people listening to
this are very upset right now
uh
what were you even talking about oh how
do you how do you know the what is good
there's lots 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 um correlated to reality
i you no one thinks we're the bad guys
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
uh better be sure you know what you're
talking about
the control of others if you do have
centralized control or any kind of
you become a leader of a group you
better know
you better do so humbly
and cautiously and i also have uh steam
valves right so if in case things go
wrong let's have i'm sure this is a lot
happening with ai whatever works 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 the going wrong
thing i mean the the whole the feedback
mechanism yeah like uh
i wonder if people in congress
think that things are really wrong
it's working for them i use are you sure
because i'm not sure because
i
i'd like to believe uh that the people
that at least when they got into
politics
actually wanted some of it as ego but
some of it is like wanting to be the
kind of person
that builds a better world sure i'd also
think it's a it's diverse some who are
going to have different motivations than
others
but like
when once you're in the system and
trying to build a better world
how do you know that it's not working
like
how do you take the basic feedback
mechanisms and like
and actually productively change
i mean that's what it means to be a good
guys like
something is wrong here and this that's
why i like the elon musk like think from
first principles like wait wait okay
let's ask the big question like can this
be
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 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
uh like representation of states and
federal government and so on why do we
have us 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 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 honest
and let me give you a counter example
someone who you could tell is not being
a good guy uh joe biden said he was he
regards the iraq war as a mistake okay
you and i have made mistakes in our
lives i'm sure none of our mistakes have
caused tens of thousands of people to
die
um if let's suppose something for
yourself
i
that's fair okay i'll take that i don't
build the killbots
um
if i were a chef let's 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 even
if you get too wrong you're gonna be
sick it's like assume every gun is
loaded only pointed at something that
you want to kill and there's like three
other things and it's like to make sure
that nothing goes wrong so
if i made a 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 warmongers 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 dead
iraqis isn't necessarily ideal either
okay let's talk a bit about war i maybe
you can also correct me on something the
first time
i found myself into barack obama
was uh 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 i think it's on record saying he was
against the war
before it was happening now he wasn't in
senate at the time so it was very easy
for him to say this because i see like
people say that
people say that people say like it was
easy and it was some people say it's
like strategically sure the wise thing
to do given some kind of calculus
whatever
but i to this day give him
that's the reason i've always given him
props in my mind like okay this is a man
of character like he makes i also
personally really value great speeches i
think speeches are really important for
leaders because they inspire the world
it's like one of the most
best things you can contribute to the
world is great uh like
through intellect
mold ideas in a way that's communicable
to like a huge number of people yeah
better to persuade than to force in
every instance that's why i disagree
with chomsky he said like if you're
it chops chopsticks whole idea was that
like if you're really eloquent speaker
that means your ideas aren't that
good that's nonsense yeah so
i think that's a way for him to describe
like
i speak in a very boring way maybe
that's the pitch for this podcast i
speak boring so that the ideas are the
things you uh value and it's also useful
to go to sleep but the
i that's that's why i really liked obama
throughout his life and still do
but when i first like saw this is 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
were for the war or too afraid to be
against the war yeah that's why i liked
uh
uh bernie sanders and that's what i
liked like in the early days
of obama for speaking out against the
war and not like in this weird activist
way not weird but not
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 or something like
that but just saying
this is not a good idea
yeah and and i think it's it's for those
of us who are old enough to remember
it's pretty
uh despicable what happened with tulsi
in 2020 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
existed and for those of us who remember
where 12 years prior
uh 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 um
landslides in 2006 and 2008 to have that
completely not part of the democratic
party in 2020 is both shocking and
reprehensible
hey michael hey
is it that
you don't have to say hey michael you
just say knock knock no it's not knock
knock okay
what did the volcano say to his true
love
what
i love you
[Laughter]
i uh these jokes look better when you
know how to speak english
i it was actually in russian i i did
google translate okay
back to your book in the suffering you
uh
you somehow turned it positive and as as
one who's wearing who's the
representative of the black pill in this
conversation
what are some of the darker moments what
are the some of the hardest challenges
of putting together this book
the white pill uh content content
content
so if i'm having a page
in about reagan taking on gerald ford in
the 1976 presidential primaries i'm
gonna have to read like 20.
so and 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 uh
possible like how do you structure the
the
main philosophical ideas you want to
convey is that already planned out no
the book changed entirely from its
conception so uh my buddy ryan holiday
had a series of books still does where
he takes the ideas of the stoics
and he applies them to contemporary uh
terms he has this whole cottage industry
that he's doing very well with and i'd
asked him years ago
if i could do that with camus and he's
like sure go for it and i was going to
rework camus the myth of sisyphus
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 the book that i
remembered
but the more i was writing it i one of
the things i always yell at
conservatives about and there's a long
list
is they don't talk about um 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 this 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 it's the victory is beautiful but also
pointing out to p when people are like
oh things are worse than they've ever
been
they don't appreciate how bad things
were in the 30s
uh 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 uh
you don't have to be a republican or
conservative to be delighted at the
collapse of totalitarianism and the
peaceful liberation of half the world so
that's a picture of the good guys
winning oh yeah well how does that
connect to sisyphus and uh maybe to
speak deeper to
[Music]
life and the
whatever the hell this thing is
which is
what i remember the myth of sisyphus
being about so
where does the threat of camus
sort of uh
lie in the work that you're doing so
the myth of sisyphus
which i had remembered incorrectly is
actually just a five like seven five to
seven page
uh like coda to the whole book at the
very end like you only need to read that
little essay called the myth of sisyphus
the broader work is about camus concept
of the absurd and the absurd man within
literature and he goes and it's just
like i don't really care about this
character in dostoevsky and all this
other stuff that you're talking about
it's of no relevance but what he the
myth of sisyphus the myth itself not the
book or the or the essay of his is this
greek character and sisyphus is forced
in hell to uh roll a rock up a hill
uh for attorney at the very last moment
the rock falls away
and camus take away from the story is
that we have to met we must imagine
sisyphus 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 um bite
and you can start with that as your kind
of baseline and bite is suffering
and hopelessness so i i think when
people
look at how much ridiculousness is
happening in america and it's escalating
you could 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 tr 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'd have to ask chelsea
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 uh mr jones but it's about the
1930s
called the more the
what would you say the torture of the
ukrainian people yeah 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
sure but also a voice
of uh in the space of public discourse
what would you do in 1930s about
stalin about hundred more 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 a
three-act structure right so act three
is the eighties act one is
the thirties and act two
is gonna 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 and you know we're going to
go down swinging there are two books i
can recommend which are just
masterpieces that that are written by
women um that just are historians that
are superb there's a book called beyond
belief by deborah lipstadt 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 neville chamberlain for kind of
appeasing hitler because not that long
ago they had the great war they had
world war one and they had the carnage
that the earth had never seen before and
when you had people made out of meat
meeting 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 who ever lived and we all had the
western propaganda about the hun
and all the rapes and all this barbarism
and 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 give us a break
and
she has all the quotes
from the different agencies and how they
addressed 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 you know in those areas
and hitler himself was pretty good at uh
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 and power is tenuous
and this is all going to go away by the
way i mean hitler thought that too he
was kind of afraid of the the brown
shirts or 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 their regiment like if you
want to take over the world you can't do
it with hooligans right you have to do
it with an actual army and then you had
kristallnacht which was a nationwide
pogrom
and then all the news agencies
universally were like oh crap we were we
we got this wrong and the condemnation
was universal so that book traces uh the
west's reaction to what's going on there
and including the reaction to the uh in
sip and holocaust as people being you
know what they knew when did they know
there was not ambiguity about
people i think there's this myth
that she dispels that p that they didn't
know the holocaust was happening or they
didn't care they were aware but they
were already at war with nazi germany
like what literally what else could they
do at that point um you know to rescue
um all these jews so so that's the
superb book and anne applebaum i think
the book is called red famine came out
fairly recently
and she
brings the receipts
and she's a you know this is something i
really hate with the binary thinkers
where the people think oh you know if
you're a democrat you're basically a
communist they call joe biden marxist
it's just like you know she's a hard
lefty 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
is trump derangement syndrome yes
so
they you know forced the starvation in
its entire 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 so now
you're on the street without food
because you lied because this is the
people's food you're a kulak you're a
land owned and very quickly a kulak
which meant like peasant landowner
became anyone who had a piece of bread
and it was systemic and ongoing
and
many people in the press
did not believe it
there was a um a british journalist i
believe who got out of the train
uh 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 because at the
time in the 30s this was socialism had
come to fruition this was a noble
experiment i'd seen the future and it
works as i think uh
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 maybe
this will be paradise on earth and
there's a i address this in my book as
well there's superb essay i think by
eugene genovese
and uh 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 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 in washington dc
we were being told on a an especially a
much more limited news information world
where now you have literally anyone
given twitter but how many outlets were
there that this is uh we're backwards
they're the future they're scientific we
have the vagaries of the market which
led to the great depression and when you
see what was being put over on the
american public at the time
anyone who thinks things are as bad now
as they've ever been is simply
delusional or ignorant yeah i i would
say just as a small aside
that's why reading as i'm almost done
with uh the rise and fall of the third
reich oh yeah is uh
it it's uh refreshes the resets the
palette of your understanding of what is
good and evil in the world that i think
is really useful
now like
you know what helps me be really
positive
and almost naive on twitter
and in the world is by just studying
history yeah
and and uh
comparing it to how amazing things are
uh today but in that time
what
would you do
what does the brave mind do
and
not just
acts of bravery but
how do you be effective in that
that's something i often think about
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
uh constantly is how did this happen
a is 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 and and specifically
on the anti-semitism and the holocaust
but just the whole no the whole time
terrorism the cult of hitler and you're
just this whole kind of thing and
there's this sorry to starting to draw
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 that they'd be the ones putting
up anne frank
but if you look at the numbers they'd be
the ones calling the the stasi on her or
whoever the people were at the time and
not the stasi obviously uh 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
and you were not 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 sees this and is not bothered by it
and also very likely
kind of understand this as a necessary
evil or even unnecessary good
yeah and i think people
think
they would be the abolitionists or
marching on selma the numbers don't add
that add up to that at all
and i think the question would be like
what social i my friend was on tinder my
friend matt he'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 their people who still in new
york
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 is not your prop by the
way that's another big problem which is
why i'd like to give richard wolff 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
like communism seriously there's
difficult
waters to tread set 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 i'm quite deeply hurt by the binary
comment are you your feeling has gone
from one to zero
yeah what is my buffers have overflown
uh though but there's difficult i i feel
like communism
is uh
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
the
blm movement is some kind of
marxist i mean i don't i don't really
follow the deep logic in that whatever
but uh
you know it's just well they said they
were formed by marxism the founder
co-founder yeah but
stating that is different
than um there's there's marx the the
totalitarian there's also marx the
revolutionary and i think they're
talking more like we're revolutionaries
who are going to overthrow the status
quo yeah right but like we we can have
that further discussion but i i just
don't think they speak deeply about uh
political systems of and saying
communism is uh
is going to be the righteous system that
you know that there's not a deep
intellectual discourse what i mean but
if you were to try to be on stage with
the jordan peterson
like to me the brave thing now
like it would be to argue for communism
it'd be interesting to see not many
people do it uh i certainly wouldn't 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'll get so
much fire which is why i like richard
wolf he's one of the people who is
quite
rigorously showing that there's some
good ideas within the system of
communism uh specifically saying that
uh attacking more the
the negative sides of capitalism so
saying that there is uh
that capitalism potentially is more
dangerous than communism i mean it's i 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 put to and
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 what nuclear weapons are also can
be good you can easily make the argument
which i don't know that i subscribe to
that nuclear weapons prevented uh
boots on the ground war
and it caused them to be much more
contained and they're also quite
effective at
changing the direction of an asteroid
that's about to hit earth as i've
learned from armageddon
and they're actually useful as elon musk
has claimed for uh
uh for application for
prior to colonizing mars
making it uh more habitable oh okay so
it should change something
[Laughter]
uh but what else
but yes but well i guess what i'm saying
is there's there's place for nuance and
there's some topics so hot like
communism where nuance is very difficult
to to have
and that i feel like with nazi germany
it was a similar
thing at the time
oh let me talk you want to talk about
janet rankin who's one of my favorite
people
so jeanette rankin was the first woman
elected to congress she was elected
before uh women's suffrage was massive
constitutional amendment from 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 uh and was the only
person to vote against getting into
world war ii it was not a unanimous
choice
jeannette rankin was the one person and
she said you could no more win a war
than you can win a hurricane
so she's one of these interesting free
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 is
uh and of course many people are not
interested in hearing her perspective
she's crazy she's evil blah blah it's
also funny someone on my twitter when i
talked about her goes maybe she had
hitler's sympathies like yeah ms rankin
was a big fan of hitler that's what you
figured it out guys 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 write circles
the longer the conversation goes on the
more likelihood that the argument would
come we should have been in world war ii
also becomes one and the argument is at
the very least stay back
let hitler fight stalin kill each other
off
and then go in and knock off the weaker
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
that's a tough uh
sell
what about after pearl harbor i mean i
started saying after pearl harbor how
are you gonna sell that to the people
the argument is blah blah the holocaust
the holocaust is there's no scenario
where that doesn't happen really if
you're unless you're going in way
earlier but even so hitler had said if
the jews launched another war you know
we're going to wipe them from the face
of the earth so the jews are being held
hostage by hitler as 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 completely destitute it makes it
harder to accept them yeah millions of
destitute people who don't speak the
language it's it's it's a tough sell so
speaking of goodwin's law
what do you make of this condition
uh trump derangement syndrome yeah
and
the idea
of comparing trump to hitler i think
it's despicable and i'll give you an
exam something parallel that i think
more people should be regarded
regardless despicable earlier in 2020
we were all told that unless we were in
syria immediately
the kurds were going to be exterminated
they invoke the holocaust
this is going to be another genocide
and if you're not for this you should
you're basically you know forcing
another holocaust none of the people who
use this argument
we didn't go to syria their kurds were
exterminated they just vanished from the
news had any consequences for using this
kind of a comparison
so
i think it's
it's really kind of fatuous
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 um 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 like that's kind of a big
difference
also there between trump and many of his
critics is that his grandchildren will
be raised as jews so that's also kind of
a and and and um deborah lipchat talks
about this a lot the new york times at
the time there's another book called um
buried by the times which talks about
new york times in world war ii because
the idea that jews weren't white
was the hitler idea
the new york times at the time
salzburger
wanted to be against this idea so they
specifically downplayed the
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 um and do you think uh do
you think anti-semitism was fundamental
to who hitler was or was it just that so
this is the interesting thing is like it
was it a tool that he saw
as being
effective no he believed it
so why do you see those as intricately
connected could uh hitler have
accomplished
the same amount or more
without the holocaust yeah because think
about how many resources you have divert
at a time where you have operation
barbarossa with stalin so why are they
connected why are they so connected
uh is it because
hitler was insane or was he a bad
strategist was obviously a bad
strategist he took he had no need to
open a second front his generals my
understanding told him this is crazy it
didn't work out for him at all uh i i 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 where talked about him at that
point was just high all the time on
amphetamines and that could have
affected his thinking yeah there's a
really good book on drugs yeah and uh uh
i forget 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 uh the nazi
mythology
and this kind of one universal figure
explain you know this kind of you know
skeleton key but it could have been the
communists i mean that that could have
been the source of the hatred so like
the communists 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 evil no
the reason we see hitler is evil is
because of world war ii propaganda still
because we don't see stalin as evil
right that's what we don't see mao is
evil to that extent
uh i think that why like why would you
say that you know what because nature
that propaganda
because i think a lot of the problem for
this 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 of a
sudden it's like yeah what are you gonna
do so the fact like you were saying the
hall of more is not common knowledge the
fact that mao's 50 million dead are not
common knowledge and richard nixon can
be raising a glass 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
thank you for being my friend michael
and the heart attacks will say thank you
for being my friend
this is
you gotta do it like this okay all right
yeah okay
now back to hitler
do you think hitler could have been uh
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 but
do you think
i mean i'm not even going to ask about
stalin in terms of could stalin have
been stopped because probably the answer
there is 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
um if you mean by like the west it's
very hard
uh i mean yeah by the german people too
i mean could like if for politically
speaking
there was a rise to power
through the 30s
through the 20s really i mean 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
and sometimes on 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
when you have like 30 percent of
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 rex dog that their target
shouldn't be the nazis but the the
liberals and the social democrats and
they invented the term social fascist
for them so instead of they're just like
like jihadis instead of taking their
sights on nazism they set their sights
on the moderates because they wanted
they figured the choice between hitler
and us were going to win and this was a
huge gamble and it they were all killed
in or had to flee and the ones who fled
were killed also by stalin said that to
my understanding so this is an easy way
where he could have been uh certainly
heavily mitigated what about uh 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
like
this is the anti-pacifist argument
which is like
they should have
threatened military force more but then
the other anti the anti-anti-pacifist
argument is if you're gonna remember
barack obama had that the red line
if you cross this red line in syria
we're gonna go in and assad whatever was
like yeah cool and he's like oh okay
well
sorry
so if you're threatening force there's
the great song lyric uh uh don't show
your guns unless you intend to fight
right so if it's very clear with with
free countries through what's in the
press whether the institutional will is
there to follow through on these threats
so i think we have been very hard for
chamberlain
to
rally the british people to take on
hitler just after the great i mean the
suffering that britons took on the great
war they still you know obviously it
means so much more of them than us does
to us 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 uh
like do you give much credit to
churchill for
being one of the
great forces in stopping hitler in world
war ii i don't think that's really in
dispute um 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
he the expression piece in our time was
neville chamberlain when he signed the
the appeasement with hitler and he goes
uh we now have peace in our time now go
home and get a good night's sleep 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
something like that let's see okay
but everything i've read
it's like
of course there's there's uh it's not
impossible
but when you're in the room with hitler
you should be able to see like
man-to-man
like
like to me a great leader should be able
to see
past the facade and see like
like yes everything in life is a risk
but it seems like the right risk to take
with hitler like
it's surprising to me
i know there's charisma but surprising
to me people did not see through this
facade i i really hate the idea of
hindsight and everything being 2020 and
i think it's a very good idea generally
i'm seeking generally not in this
specific instance to give our ancestors
more credit than they than than we tend
to give them because people often here's
a great example from another context
which is uh 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 whatever town
the church was the tallest building and
that's the one that always got hit by
lightning and got caught on fire now
what it's a coincidence that it's always
the church like that makes logical sense
now there didn't realize well it's
because it's the tallest and therefore
that attracts the electricity and in
fact when they invented lighting rods
this is a controversy because it's like
well how is god going to show his
displeasure
if now it's striking this lightning 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 didn't he's the head of a
parliamentary party um so he does not
have the freedom in a sense that hitler
would to be like all right we're doing
this again boys
we don't know what it's like in the room
with hitler come on that that's that's
we really have no idea but i think you
have to think about that right
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 let's take somebody as an
example let's take uh
our mutual friend vladimir putin yes
okay
i don't know why saying his name makes
my voice crack
because you're scared he can hear you
it's like beetlejuice
[Laughter]
so
there's a lot of people st the one who
built you
no that was uh that was a collaboration
um what's it's a
double-blind
engineering effort
where i was not
told of who my maker was
there's a backstory but um there's a
talking cricket
pinocchio
i talk about him
quite a bit because i find him
fascinating
now there's a 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
it's 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 actions in a historical context
so there's some people who say that
vladimir putin is evil
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
there is a lot of charisma
in the same way i find putin to be
uh
very charismatic in his own way the
humor the wit the brilliance the there's
um
there's a simplicity of the way he
thinks that
really
if taking a face value
looks like a very intelligent honest man
thinking practically about how to
build a better russia
constantly almost like um
like an executive
like he loves
he looks like a man who loves his job
in a way that trump for example doesn't
right
meaning like he loves laws and rules and
how to uh there's no adversarial press
so that's going to help
yes and he's popular with his people
that's also going to help northwesterly
i'm talking about strictly the man
directly the words coming out of his
mouth like all the videos and interviews
i've watched 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
is like you could tell the guy
is genuine 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 a good person you
could 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
argument that he is actually an evil man
behind that charisma
or is able to
you know assassinate people
of you know 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
in deciding how to act in this world and
deciding what policy to enact all those
kinds of things just like with hitler
when uh chairman is in the room with
hitler how does he
decide how to act well let's go back to
like my wheelhouse which is north korea
right so uh when your entire world is
based on uh being against trump and
everything trump does as buffoonery or
counterproductive
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
um
people pretend that oh he was kind of
naive he had one of the refugees that
had stayed the union you know lifting up
his crutch
uh 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 the transfer of 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 well
i i don't think there's anybody that has
a perspective that nor north korean
kim jong-un or ill are not evil right
correct
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 to blow
hard and he's an anti-semite sure
but he's what about like before the war
breaks out
like what about the
basic uh
actionable anti-semitism when you're
like just attacking hurting which type
of crystal knock or talk about the
knight of long knives uh crystal knocks
so this is the night of the broken glass
yeah yeah the long knives 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 crystal knocked and that was
very shocking
uh its level of barbarism um
to the west
because i think i think we still want to
believe understandably
that things aren't as bad as they seem
we would rather this is why i you know i
the 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 and then you're kind of realizing
the enormity of the depravity
um and again
pogroms in russia had been a thing for a
very long time
and there's 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 th there's
there's still levels of evil and
depravity
so you did write the book dear reader on
kim jong-il yeah dear reader the
unauthorized autobiography of kim
jong-il yeah so that's the previous
leader of north korea correct current
one is the un
no no creativity on the naming well no
this is intentional because it's a
throwback to
um the dad
so there's been only three leaders in
north korea
so we've talked about the history of
hitler and stalin men 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
so maybe in a big broad
way can you say who was
who is kim jong-il
as a 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 and he died in
2011 2011 and you wrote the book in
2012. uh i went there in 2012 i wrote
the book came out 2014.
so kim jong-il is um
though not an intellect north korea's
version of forrest gump
in that when they write their history
whenever something appears happens he's
there
uh and by telling his life story 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
going to get the entire history and know
everything you need to know about north
korea in one accessible outlet and it's
it's
what people don't appreciate about north
korea there's 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
uh keep any information from coming in
and you know 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 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 17 holes in one
there's this one story about
kim jong-il shrinking time
and this is a story
it 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 me a
talk kim jong-il is taking notes and
working on his work
and he has an aide who keeps
interrupting him with questions and the
speaker keeps stopping
and kim jong-il says while you're
stopping goes i see you're doing other
things and it goes no 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 and my
friend goes do they mean multitasking
and yes
kim jong-il is the only person in north
korea who's capable of multitasking so
in order to elevate him
they basically make everyone else in
north korea completely you know
incompetent
um
and that has a purpose
because should the leader go away
this country is going to collapse
overnight
so this
they laugh in the west about all these
newspapers show him
you know at the factory and he's at the
fish hatchery at the paper plant
they say the difference in north korea
is that the leader goes among the people
and does what he called field guidance
so he will go in that farm and be like
this is 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 is the totalitarian
structure where there's one figure
that's a source of comfort and knowledge
kim jong-il is not good at farming kim
jong-il is not good at the machinery
it's all a complete lie
or the things he'll point out will be
things that are completely obvious so
here's another example they use
in north korea they have something
called the tower of the juicy idea which
is an obelisk which looks like the
washington monument but it's completely
different because it's got this like
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 jong-il says no
let's make it the tallest they're like
oh 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 tower that you
should idea they're like all right we
gotta do something innovative to put
north korea on the map what can we do
how about second biggest he's gonna go
for this and then he's like oh we never
thought of this it's it's it 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 farce here's another example
north korea is very big and i think
russia is to some extent too on
amusement parks fun fairs they call them
in the british style
because this is a chance for the people
to all to get together
and there was this amusement park it's
almost like south park at cartman
where there's all these rides
and kim jong-il is like i'm not gonna
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 are
going to be safe for everyone even
during the light rain to 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
yeah but that's what's and you ask all
the thing in one power it's like listen
i'm quite confident that those funfair
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
uh although to be fair some of those
amusement parks are not are pretty rusty
and dangerous yeah but that that kind of
propaganda
i guess what i'm
playing a devil's advocate is like it's
it's comforting and it's useful
but it does seem that that
naturally leads to
an
abuse of power
it's not how can it be used correctly no
one person
has the intellect or the mind to
understand the entirety of an economy
let alone every individual field of
interest
well for example you could have an
artificial intelligence system that
understands
the entirety of it your affect just
complete change the mask slip
i guess you could have an artificial
intelligence system
uh but like
the question is
can that
mean like the the the human version of
that is like you can hire a lot of
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 ultimately be a check
on your own power but that's not if i
was like
uh if i was creating a human
it's like it would that's not an obvious
bug of the system that
we would not
be able to fire ourselves
to uh 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 is like am i
wrong about this well this is what we
talked about earlier what are the safety
valves yeah 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 deleterious consequences
and north korea does not really have
that and as a result they had polio in
the 90s
so there is a you
you write about it straight but there's
a humor to it because it's an
absurdly evil place i suppose yeah
a bunch of people
i asked i asked uh i said that i'm
talking to you and a bunch of people
asked questions
oh we gotta hear from the plebs
you asked me before we start recording i
specifically said no it was in my
contract
uh yeah and you gave i gave you all the
pink skittles or whatever uh but they so
thanks you know pink
i'm trolling michael let me explain to
you how that works
uh people should go
malice.locals.com which and sign up and
uh pay i think the membership fee
several thousand dollars it's very it's
it's it's not it's not for the layman
yeah but uh the service is excellent
you get a coat with it uh but yeah i i
went there posted a lot of really
brilliant people there people should
join that community
if you find uh uh michael interesting or
if you just want to go and say why he's
wrong it's a great place to have that
discussion for that
i assure you
uh yeah a lot of really kind people so
anyway the
there's a bunch of people
ask that we should talk about humor okay
so i'll pretend hypothetically speaking
that i'm a robot
asking you to explain humor to me what
so dear reader i mean there's a humor
there's
there's you're so
a wonderfully dance between
serious dark topics and then
seriously dark humor
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 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 despite no matter how you carve that
thing up it's not going to be working
the next day and you needed to sew those
little sneakers with those hands oh um i
don't know that humor is something that
is very explainable people there's
something called clapter
where
this is like the worst kind of humor
where people applaud because they agree
with what you're saying as opposed to
laughter
oh that's though that's that's the kind
of approach you're reading yeah
and the drag queens do that too
um i think because they're the nails
this you laugh it's a visceral reaction
when someone on twitter is insisting you
know that's not funny
you're not in a position to make that
claim and let's let's go let's go back
to north korea i had a refugee
i knew and he went to high school here
and he was talking his buddies and they
said um
hey remember when we were kids we had
pokemon and he goes oh yeah except
instead of pokemon i watched my dad
starve 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 uh starve to death and my dad's
fatty so he's not going hungry anytime
soon
um 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 gallows humor especially when
it's some laughing about a personal
uh loss or experience that they've had
humor
is a great way to mitigate um
pain and suffering but it's also i think
this com 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're finding like
wasps who are notoriously uh humorless
which is strange because people pay you
a lot of money for the jokes you do so
it's not really free yeah well no they
don't have to pay me i it's
appreciated but not expected
i find my voice cracking every time i
try to make a joke like i fail ever
miserably at this
uh so some people uh you're still in
beta that's right
alpha
alpha was like being sure
lady if you have to help people you are
you aren't
no i meant alpha version oh
okay
i don't i don't know if you're a robot
gobbly cook
i'm not going there okay uh who are you
talking to in my own head i'm talking to
myself in my own head
okay speaking of north korea some people
say that uh
you know
i've read
that comedy is about timing
first of all do you agree and second of
all
no i'm serious it's not just that you're
saying yes
it's funny okay isn't it comedy's
tragedy plus timing is not the this is
not the full reference
what is it the interrupting call knock
knock joke i'm not gonna do it but uh
that's not a timing thing that's more of
a repetition and then the twist ending
no the move oh the move yeah yeah yeah
yeah interrupting cow you think of the
banana the banana one
anyway uh
i'm not i'm not going there yet you're
talking to me
are you small wonder do you stand
sleeping in a wardrobe yeah
uh uh that's so british
but yet you're very i want to stay in a
closet because that is connotations
let's let's both come out of the closet
for a second i love it let's talk about
you relax
i wasn't saying i love you alex i was
saying i love you lex
oh you were talking to me yes that's
through the screen so when you
so you think about me when you're with a
with another man i watch it when you're
sleeping
okay so you're a dangle song you're
really active on twitter yeah uh and
somebody else asked on your uh overly
expensive membership site
uh
what like
[Laughter]
how do you find uh humor different in
writing on twitter versus spoken humor
so if that'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 the
context of twitter like another way to
say it is uh
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 articulate
libertarian he's doing a great job by an
impression right now all the
libertarians got ass 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 died a
week later it doesn't make any sense now
you might too soon it's perfect timing
or you could say it's not appropriate
ever but too soon does not make sense in
this context um so that is something
that i
uh enjoy doing it's also fun ruffling
people's feathers if it's something i
enjoy doing i think
uh spoken
versus writing is very different because
when you are having good banter with
someone
uh 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 whereas
in writing it's
you're losing the tone you're losing the
relationship
of a dynamic conversation um
and a lot of times the joke is just
giving a different type of joke
well it's funny but twitter there's a
sense especially your twitter that
you're you just thought of that and you
just wrote it yes like there's a 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 look like it whoever your
editor is should be fired
[Laughter]
there's an interesting effect actually
if i want to say something
i don't know about uh
about the
something that's bothering me about the
presidential election or something like
that
like what are what is the actual central
idea that i'm trying to convey to myself
like if say i was having hypothetical
conversation with myself okay
why am i putting my pants back on i'm
more comfortable this way
promo called malice20 sheath underwear
dot com okay
um
that's she's
uh what is it what's the website sheath
underwear.com sheath underwear.com promo
code malice20
and i forgot why is that underwear
really nice because it has a dual pouch
technology to keep your man parts
separate they've also got women's stuff
but i don't know how that works yeah
there's a thing worth going somewhere
and the material is really refreshing i
mean it's really again and it makes your
ass look good
that's
promo code mouse 20.
and it's made by 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 the the tweet i i like to it
forces me to think deeply about
the core of the message okay
but what i found this really interesting
effect like i don't really do much
editing on the tweet like i'll just like
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 huh i
often delete like i delete i don't know
some percentage of tweets about like two
five seconds after wow i don't know it's
something well once you send it
it's why the gmail send features
undo 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
[Laughter]
spoken word is like you can't delete
what you just said and i often regret
the things i say like in in on the spot
like i shouldn't have said that really
yeah i don't have that
well again whoever your editor is
what is it uh
edith piatt uh generic han
wow you're french is this bad is 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
needlessly offensive to somebody or
hurtful or accidentally i would make
sure to fix it
and 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
uh us you know some recently some people
have come after me pretty hard
and my perspective is that it's not
really about me
it's either i represent something to
them i'm just some
jackass with a twitter so if you're
getting this riled up over me
it's not really about me maybe i'm
delusional 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 uh 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
jeannette 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 i'm an echo quantum
court i'm not an academic but i do still
have an affiliation with mit i
the word academic is just dirty it's
like
which is a problem that needs to change
just like the word nerd is dirty now
academic needs is 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 you're right 100 yeah
right so like they're you have to
you have to clarify what you mean by
academic and right now the word academic
means a very
in the intellectual public discourse it
means the enemy
and there's a lot of people that perhaps
deserve that targeted uh
vilification but like a lot that don't
they're just curious people they're just
absolutely right building 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 telling me
i'm editing i'm gonna i can't delete
that joke
okay it's not even a joke
robots building robots that'll one day
kill us
you god willing humans are the joke
that's why i'm cracking my voice is
cracking
what were even uh what was i even
saying academics uh
but why uh local someone had a question
they're an academic right they're at
academic they're saying like are you
worried that
uh you know
in academia
associating yourself with a sort of uh
somebody who has
who can be misconstrued to have radical
ideas like the two examples they gave is
michael mouse and joe rogan
uh
is uh joe have any radical i wouldn't
consider him radical at all well we'll
get we can talk about it
i think a bad example he's
quite centrist to me
well he could have for example like what
has the job been attacked on is for
example on the on the topic of like
transgender
like uh
athletes in sports based in sports uh
there's
what else i mean he's been pro bernie
sanders and that's
pro
trump or like giving trump a pastor not
anti-trump not anti-trump
uh
what else
just
but none of these are radical meat
meat stuff being pro-meat versus
anti-vegan
yeah of you know all those kinds of
things but you can be misconstrued and
and saying
there's i think a highlight and my mom
actually wrote to me about this which is
joshua thank you
i think i like hey
dom that's when it's important well i
said your mom wrote to you
that's that's the sign my voice cracks
the sign when when michael malice makes
the funny jokes when you jot something
down
and
he writes it and then the next time he
crosses it out
just get put yeah it's like joe biden at
the debates okay
uh i did also just grab my pants
so uh
slide down here
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 humorous side yeah
humorist is
so you can misconstrue like joe as being
somehow a radical thinker and the same
one could be done with you and his
question was
how are you worried about associating
yourself with folks like that
am i or you me me yeah
and
is that something do you see yourself
as
somebody
uh who's dangerous that i shouldn't be
talking to
and in the same way
do you uh do you ever think about guests
on your podcast
or people you talk to publicly associate
yourself with publicly
uh and think that there is somebody that
crosses that line that you shouldn't so
i interviewed
in the new ride i interviewed like up to
full-blown nazis last chapters about
chris cantwell 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 a tablecloth right and
let's suppose the table is
a three feet wide the tablecloth is two
feet wide
so if i move the tablecloth to the right
i'm gonna lose people on the left i can
only cover so much space and the further
you go on the fringe in one direction
the more mainstream you're going to lose
in 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 perfect
example of why on my birthday last year
i woke up seven o'clock in the morning
to go pee
and i checked twitter so whatever
and jeb bush had followed me jeb
and i i
it's 7 00 am you're not really awake
you're like wait what and then i thought
maybe it's a fake account but it's in
the verified tab oh you don't have this
because you're not verified on twitter
that's a shame uh so people who are
matter on twitter twitter does not
respect
robots
they danbots you're lucky
zero one zero zero it's zero zero
those are my pronouns
[Laughter]
so i it was jeb
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
and get cancelled 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 jones and tim poole i think a lot
of people
would be very excited to see me sit down
with jeb bush and i told him in writing
and i meant this i wouldn't be clowning
him
i wouldn't be disrespectful it would be
a lot of fun i 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
prescott uh bush was a senator from
connecticut uh
marrying a woman didn't speak 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 with that like ben shapiro does a
good job with that too which is
you can have multiple you can have a
trolley side a humorous side where you
tear down the power structures and so on
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 yes not
you're not adversarial never i'm there i
i take the word guest 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 the conspiracy stuff for some
reason maybe you can explain maybe you
can psychoanalyze me but i find him
hilarious
yeah
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 like consequences of spreading
conspiracy theories of different kinds
and
uh
yeah they see the danger of it you know
and i personally
i'm often tempted
to 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
yeah you'd have to be on naive and
honest yeah and like and uh actually
i
generally when i talk to humans i want
to see the best in them
and i think that's
like i often think about if i talk to
hitler in 1935
you got a list of names to give him
well yeah i mean that's how you get the
interview
come on let's be honest
who who are we getting um
i would uh you have to give away one of
your i'll probably get one with my
brother so how many brothers do you have
well just one 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 he had
a good life you should think of it more
stalin i saw interrupt you because
hitler you're jewish so you're already
gonna have very adversarial it's not
gonna be a normal he's not gonna
perceive you as a as a human in a sense
right right so it's all in you right
yeah that would be much easier or kim
jong un or something like that okay you
think like how okay this is a good
question is is and that and that's
wait why don't you jot something down
uh if you
hitler
all right we'll cross it on in a second
uh
[Laughter]
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
interviewed twice which is curtis yarvin
yeah manchester united manchester small
aka mention small bug which is his
pseudonym that he goes by is his blog
can you tell me about who he is sure why
is he interesting what if his ideas are
interesting well he briefly he invented
the concept the red pill
so curtis mentions mulbuck had a
blog called unqualified reservations you
can still find it online it's very
verbose he writes at length
very very bright
um
his perspective is very heretical
so a lot of things that we take for
granted in our liberal democracy uh he
regards as not only incorrect which is
downright absurd and does not he does
not take what many people
view as the basis of american discourse
as the basis for his thought
so
when you're starting with someone who is
basically repudiating
uh kind of the western world view or not
the western world view like the american
milieu
a lot of people are gonna
of course regard him as dangerous or uh
someone who is verboten um
he's a very bright person um
why is he such a toxic figure
because if you are blue-pilled if you
are the
guardians of what is
acceptable discourse
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 radioactive
as possible you don't want to let in
these kind of uh
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 a
racist a white supremacist neo-fascist
so on
i go to his wikipedia
yeah there's a view on race section
let me let me read it okay yarvin's
opinions have been described as racist
with his writings interpreted as
supportive of slavery including the
belief that whites have higher iqs than
blacks for genetic reasons
jarvan 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 and 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
suprem white nationalist i am not
exactly allergic to the stuff jarvan
wrote in a post that linked approvingly
of i don't know these people steve
saylor
yeah he's from jared taylor and other
racialists yeah so okay so like
one of my questions is
we can let me just say one sentence
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's like this
should be radioactive right the fact
that he is engaging with these ideas
uh in any thing other than this has to
be reputed at all costs is what renders
him to a large extent racist that's
really interesting so there are some
topics you can be
nuanced nuanced and some not and
communism is still a topic that you can
be nuanced about right it's difficult
but you can be
uh race and 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
even if it's
like
nuanced or
not even like making a point it's like
touching it
as you make another point and
understandably because you can
understand that i'm going to steal man
the their 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 you know 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
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 investigating this
person any further yeah they're off
limits definitely racism and sexism is a
thing that's not used to shut down
conversation that's quite absurd uh by
by a small percent of the point jarrod
taylor and steve saylor jared taylor
interviewed him from my book he would be
regarded in any sense as a racist what's
the difference between racist and
racialist so racialists i mean this is
splitting hairs and now i'm going to be
all radioactive
jared taylor runs something called
amaran and this is
i mean his perspective is that there are
inherent differences to the races and
you cannot live side by side uh um well
whites and blacks should not be living
uh 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 right
which is not includes these concepts but
talks about yeah well
it's more about the growth of the comm
the community uh around
the uh that's the alt-right and all
those kinds of the world right so
and his point about iq it's like if you
had a population
the dutch right i think they're the
tallest people on 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 there's somehow
a lower quality person well maybe one
very specific aspect but i mean if
they're a good human being i've got
friends who are low iq all my friends
are like you frankly compared to me
sound like trump they're first that's
how you choose
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 that i've ever seen
unlike him i actually am honest so
so he is
someone who very much swims in heretical
ideas
aristo 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 mencken who was a
great um heretic and
uh early to 20th century figure uh one
of his quotes that i say all the time
which people have seen a lot in this
past year that the average man does not
want to be free he merely wants to be
safe
that i think is speaking i don't know
what i am not familiar
uh with what mullbug's 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 that is
actively disinterested in freedom and
the more responsibilities it entails
well i mean really just the word slavery
if you want to 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
let's be clear this is i mean very
important and there's slavery going on
today and a lot of people argue that uh
uh sex trafficking and all those kinds
of things i mean there's there's
atrocities going on today that
you know
uh
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 not when
i say things i often say things that are
controversial
or i will say uncontroversial things in
a controversial way because it's a
useful mechanism to alienate people you
don't want around you
because if there are people who are
going to be
shocked
by certain topics like we should have
entered world war ii like even as a
hypothesis they just clutch their pros
they're like oh you want the holocaust
to happen
i can't discuss most things with you
because you're not interested in having
a 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 find that if you do that you're not
actually
uh 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
ruin 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 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 un
necessarily provoking people
feels um
it's it's it's
you this is beta testing you try to
break the system and see what works you
put as much pressure 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 them as many mistakes see what go
wrong right is that not common yeah
exactly yeah so you're saying that
that's a way to see
communication with the world as you say
something
uncontroversial in a controversial way
and that blocks people that or or does
it trigger them do they roll their eyes
you know what is going to be their
emotional response are they going to
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 i'm in
being thoughtful
i'm afraid that
i'll turn off
with an ineloquently phrased or even
incorrect statement
i will do damage that can't be undone in
terms of
a 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 is uh
like not saying something out of fear is
at the core of the many of the problems
of 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
and touching
i would say
listen i've i've uh on your show
which is which is great i mean
i'd like to say thank you for having me
just small bugs you are welcome
that's the uh
that's the name
of the show
thank you for having me a couple of
times it's 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 talked about race at all so no no no
no but i'm just bringing it back to what
you were asking which is if you read the
wikipedia the perspective is going to be
this guy talks about slavery constantly
where 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 uh
nuanced
yeah he's not afraid to say something
just like i would say let me just
criticize him my face is not you this is
me
carelessly say something controversial
right like
i'm not saying he doesn't go like you
know that makes him it's a very
different thing than uh
somebody who on purpose says something
controversial stuff
uh like milo not annopolis sorry i
forgot my milo whatever his name is
yeah which is really nice to see that
he's a genuine person who's thoughtful
he doesn't mean to but he just cares
carelessly
seems to say things
that uh 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
world view 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
blackfield at all because it's a cynical
way like these people so like it's 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
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 going to get the scarlet letter
yeah i just disagree with that because
for example i'm one i am one person that
he turned off okay by his carelessness
and i think i should be a good target i
i should be saying 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 sure who call everybody
racist and sexist currently and then you
can't please them so i'm not even going
to try no but there's like this gray
area of people sure that i don't listen
to the outrage culture whatever that i
don't this wikipedia article means
nothing to me like i i'm not going to
right
i'm more i'm just seeing this careless
person and if he's going to be careless
about
uh
like race like this i feel like if i
walk along with him long enough i'm
going to catch the carelessness
i'm going to lose
like i'll i'll defend your perspective
better than you can yeah this is this is
good i'm taking notes i talked to eric
weinstein after you guys talked about me
on your show when i was 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 yeah
it would never he might not be aware of
who of well that's why he wanted 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
and very much was very clear that's not
where the conversation would go
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're perce 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 and you're
going for something different than i am
no no like in my 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 born a lot for me i think i think i
would like to actually talk to him one
day
uh alex jones has crossed the other line
for me well you could do what you could
do with me
tape the episode and never release it
no it's it's one of those things will be
uh 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 uh
there's a
we'll release it then because it'll be
like unseen footage
this is how it started
it'll be black and white
in a basement somewhere in new york yeah
yeah my mother's
basement uh let's explain so much okay
so i spoke to yaran brook
about
objectivism
and iron rand
he uh
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
the negative way to say it is like
having a monopoly on violence but
basically being the arbiter of
or the
the people that making sure that
violence doesn't get out of hand
that would yeah 2020 show that yep the
government's great at that yep well what
what's
okay
without this is him with a straight face
making that argument good work here on
all right well can you with a straight
face argue
for the idea that
in anarchism
violence would not get out of hand
sure for one thing uh if your worst
argument against
one of my little quotes is what are
presented as the strongest arguments
against anarchism or inevitably
description of the stratus quo so the
argument is under anarchism you know
you'd have warlords
you know killing people
and then you'd have uh you know
whoever's strongest gets to just take
over a neighborhood well we have that
now uh we saw that the police um are
perfectly comfortable disarming the
population
and then when they try to protect
themselves are punished they were happy
to stand down you can't you can only
have that happen if you have a monopoly
if they're like let's suppose you had uh
television stations right and cbs said
you know what
we're not gonna broadcast cool
you don't broadcast we're going to watch
any of these other channels so the
problem with have a monopoly is everyone
has to be dependent on this issue what's
amazing about minikism which
objectivists are 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 that's not there
for but
but there is a thing that's
fundamentally different than all the
other things but joran brooke also said
that no government
has ever this is on your show
has ever worked in the way he's
proposing now objectivism ein rand's
philosophy
is based on objective reality and what
she posited is you look and study the
facts of nature stack that's the reality
and deduce things accordingly
and she very much regards herself as
part of the aristotelian tradition
as opposed to the plaintiff's 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 expensive more
difficult for poor people the cost of
hiring a lawyer is more expensive than
hiring a surgeon you can't say with a
straight face this is the only way or
the best way
okay so
and the other thing is the argument for
objectivism they have this stupid
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
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 same thing with cell phone
companies if i'm on sprint you're on
metropcs and i call you who pays does
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 um
our desk so the only thing
that cops are good at is keeping peop at
any government monopoly it's 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 new mexico
and so on that it does
something has been worked out perhaps
not perhaps don't say perhaps 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
there was a point in history where it
wasn't worked out
like to to to work
to come to a place of stability there
has to first be some instability so you
when you first
like for every kind of situation
they're like dispute over space like who
gets to own mars that kind of thing sure
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
brilliantly that there's
an anarchism relative to the there's no
one world government right
uh
alex jones enters the chat but
uh the
there's an insta because the the fear is
that there's going to be an instability
that's that 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
doesn't work and he goes broke when
government tries to implement
improvement 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
right
it's not like the instability let's give
you
there's no stability is one of these
words that sounds objective but has no
real meaning what field has stability if
you had 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 where if you look at 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 it's 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
monopoly the store would have someone
the street would have someone and you'd
have your own personal security that
would 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-cell phone world so you think it's
possible to have psychologically
speaking as an individual
among the masses to have a sense of
security
even there's even though there's not a
centralized thing at the bottom of the
whole thing so like
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 enforcing some kind
of
emergent agreed-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 uh
i don't know but you have to take all my
vodka let's let's take a different way
if you were worried about a hotel having
bed bugs that's not something that
government's involved in what mechanic
and that's not an 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
hotel that has security it'll be exactly
the same thing and here's another
example kosher food uh people who keep
kosher juice who keep kosher their food
has to be prepared in a certain way it
has to meet higher rabbinical standards
right if you look at food
it will have that certification decay
and there's even competition there
there's decay and there's a stricter u
letter people don't notice it because
they're looking for it right you would
have companies certifying different
locales for their level of security 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 covered 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 okay you can give me a different
word than stability but you're already
in a place
where the forces of the market or
whatever can operate right the worry is
like
initially
you might not have enough
stability to where you can choose one
place over the other versus based on the
security that they provide
we already have different types of
security here because we have federal
government we have state governments and
we have local
governments
so and and these often contradict each
other
so 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
especially with euron is like it all
started with government monopoly of
violence saying like in all kids
don't let violence get out of hand
so like we had a civil war where half
the country was slaughtered that's the
display of the government
not having a monopoly on the violence
right it's like it's
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 but there's a south so it's like
it's a it's a
it's the government splitting
okay so because this is giant iceberg
like splitting it's it's
the the argument is that you would have
something like a civil war much more
often under anarchism but that's that's
that's first of all if you had a civil
war
much more often
we don't have that with car companies
right there's no car company that says i
refuse to pay you or whatever uh that's
not violence and trump but like uh and
i'm playing this it isn't that i'll
never finish it is violence because if
i'm a company and i'm saying that my
cars can
run over yours 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 fifty dollars a month a
hundred dollars a month once my son
i'm not going to be a member of the
security company unless
in that case we're dealing with
something like a pearl harbor or foreign
innovation 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 at a large scale
well that's absolutely 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 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 on ebay you could also
commit violence
theft is violence
no if yeah if you give me 10 grand for a
car and i don't deliver anything you've
stolen 10 grand for 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
it's a strong argument but uh
well
let's actually just
briefly mention the scale thing why why
don't you think we should talk about
scale like because if you had anarchism
just in vermont or just in brooklyn
fine the people make the argument you
need anarchism or else china is going to
invade but that's like saying what like
does like do these little countries
don't exist does san salvador not exist
some of them are violent some of them
are not but the point is they're not all
at a moment's 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 and kicked him out of
kuwait if you had this company that was
waging more in the population it seems
quite likely that the other organization
would get together put a stop to this
because they're not a position to
provide the services security to their
customers okay all 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 this is this is
what
aren't we 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 right a good
place
so
so really
you could if you could just much easier
choose right which space of ideas
you uh associated with right that would
be actually a state of anarchism 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
uh and you're certainly not allowing
everyone else on the street who wants to
be there
can we say something nice about iran i
can talk about nice things about her all
day i own her copy of the foundation
yeah what to you is iran's best idea
one that you find impactful 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
and i'm going to work toward that
and that oh there's a few others that
you owe nobody else some random stranger
a second of your time
you see this a lot on twitter and social
media people like demanding a debate or
demanding you act a certain way and you
engage with them you don't know them
anything
um
so i think those are some of her
uh uh best ideas and she teaches you how
to think iran does not have all the
answers but she has all the questions do
you think uh what do you think about the
whole selfishness thing i mean do you
do are you triggered by the word
selfishness so it's really unfortunate
what she does because you were just
talking earlier about mold bug being
carelessly
she
this is indefensible in my opinion
so she talks about the virtue of
selfishness
and she claims
that when people talk about selfishness
they they mean concern primarily with
the self they don't when people talk
about selfishness they mean in a
sociopathic way concerned exclusively
with 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 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 so when she attacks um
which she advocates for the self
she basically means self-development
self-improvement and achievement so i
think that word choice is really
um
false and needlessly off-putting yeah
uh controversial perhaps for the purpose
of being controversial i don't know but
it's just it's not accurate
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 uh
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
mentions mob 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 secession oh yeah i was the
first one on this trip yeah you were uh
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 does it mean for the united states
in some way for different states to
secede sure america has been one country
with several cultures 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 um a
secession 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'm
advocating for
is it tends to
kind of run through
ideas through like an evolutionary
process and drive them to the logical
inclusion uh so it's very hard to be a
moderate online because there's gonna be
people you know pushing through your
ideas through several cycles and then
you're gonna end up at some kind of more
pure or if you wanna dislike it extreme
perspective having these different
pockets
it's not really governable because
people fundamentally have different
world views so i don't know what this
session would look like i think the
number is really
increasing an exponential rate
um i do not have a number of supporters
supporters uh i think the claim that
this can only be accomplished through
violence is
false it's a lie uh just like any
divorce doesn't have to involve beating
your ex-husband or ex-wife
so
and i i 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 um
competing world views
being forced
to be in the same
yes within a context
so we can agree if group one
thinks a b and c are the fundamental
aspects of their world view and argue
within that and world group two thinks d
e 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 world view there's
no reason to be
especially when each views the other is
completely incoherent and unreasonable
do you think there's a line
of fundamentally different world views
that uh
along which a secession will happen in
the united states like is there
something that emerges to you as a set
of ideas that
are like
um
what do you call that like you can't
come to
you can't come to an agreement over i
yeah i think it's already happening like
with the masks um 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
um
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 and then there's
like a uh
a hope for
the comfort of the
sort of uh centralized science
giving the the truth and then everybody
must follow the truth right
of the proper way to behave and then
there's uh on the other side
a distrust of any kind of centralized
institutions
of anybody who might
uh use
uh 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 case yeah
effective way of uh
of stopping the virus which is really
unfortunate to me as a from a
perspective i happen to be on a survey
paper about masks like people don't seem
to care about the data or the so on
correct this is this has become just a
nice
point on which to then highlight the
difference between
uh the two
the two sides yeah that's really i mean
i
it it sounds kind of on the face kind of
ridiculous that the secession would
occur over a mask it wouldn't but i'm
saying this is an example of something
where there's a clean break yes um and
and risk averse versus you know uh
someone who's risk seeking these are
just two fundamental different
perspectives do you want have an nhs or
do you have 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 but you you think that's
not something that's
that you think that's irreconcilable if
that's the word yeah uh that
that's not in the space of ideas that
you can have in the same room together
and they fight at each other and
ultimately make progress like they that
secession is the more effective way to
proceed forward yes
well
uh
do you see
a possible world with knows 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
uh russian okay papastathopoulos
papastathon argument
in terms of relationships like
when
goes wrong in a relationship about
your language
okay there's only a place for one stall
at this table
okay
okay i'll get to you
no you get to be like merkel as our
previous discussion with putin okay
don't let me unleash the hounds
uh it you know
you want to work through some of the
troubles
before you get divorced like you want to
do the work and relationship sometimes
like it goes up and down it's been 200
plus years
it's uh it's done
but in the listen okay so it's not a one
night stand but you know look at trump
this 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 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 in that analogy
trump being gone makes things worse yes
for that 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 comfortable with the
violence is making me very unsettled
well i see words as violence and your
twitter
it's like hiroshima that's a million
uh
sometimes i curl up in the corner crying
after i check your twitter feed
so
but you know
in all seriousness you um you think it's
possible to do non-violent succession it
took a check of slovakia
look at brexit brexit was the succession
right
right so you can have uh civil war did
not need to be fought
that would have been an unviolent
secession and and if you worry 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 to
wonder about like how the civil war
could have been avoided well that's how
is uh well conversation
so like no no if they want to secede say
look here's what we're gonna do we're
gonna let you secede but you have to end
up slate you have to end slavery they
succeeded because of slavery here's the
other thing there's like this con some
circles of conservatism have this myth
that oh it wasn't about slavers 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 the other
countries have you know ended slavery
peacefully 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 um
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 ends up
fighting these wars often
disproportionately it's poor people and
uneducated people yeah and i don't i
don't i do not regard them as cannon
fodder i think it's horrible
so what would it look like there would
be two founding documents
yeah they had they had their
constitution
actually i don't know the history of
that yeah they had a constitution but it
was much more decentralized
if secession doesn't happen yeah
you said that donald trump
was the dam not the river yeah
that that sounds like walt whitman or
something
it's poetry okay
are you flirting with me
i don't know
you know us we don't we don't flirt we
just go to town club and drag you to the
it's just the hammer cave we hammer in
stickle
and you don't want to know about the
sickle it's not good combat cop it's bad
cop for a stop
yeah
what do you think 2024
looks like uh in terms of the candidates
and it's going to be kamal harris as the
democratic candidate
uh i'm really looking forward to ted
cruz versus mike pence because they're
both very good at debate
um that would be interesting to see how
differentiate themselves but
honestly i don't i mean
things are going to get really ugly
really soon what about donald trump
coming back he's not going to do it
um
so things in my opinion i think things
are going to be really really crazy in
2021 and talk about talking about the
damn being gone like 2021 so this year
coming up oh yeah it's going to be
complete it's going to be complete
mayhem what do you think uh
like prediction-wise and this is
empirical
what do you think donald trump's twitter
feed looks like
in 2021 like if we're at the end of 2021
we'll look back and see like
what was the you know
obama gate
exclamation points or we won
he is going to be for the first time in
history
holding the republican party accountable
to the the base
we've never had that happen before i i
think he's going to be holding their
feet to the fire uh radicalizing them
and given that they have the senate
where it's going to be 50 50. the
democrats have a three-seat majority in
the house this is not a governing
coalition for either
um it's going to be a complete mayhem
what does that actually look like it's
like what are the key values do you
think that he's he's going to try to
push um i think it's just gonna be very
contrarian it's he's gonna be holding
them accountable in terms of budgeting
even though he never did that as
president
uh i think in terms of some kind of
nominations
here's the thing this is the first time
since
um uh
like nixon
uh 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 gonna and
especially as revenge for kavanaugh this
is gonna get 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
uh and i think the base it's just gonna
be throwing just they're gonna want some
bone it's like oh yeah we we eliminated
this one person so that's gonna get
really ugly really quickly you see it
being quite divisive like the division
increasing not
stabilizing or decreasing uh 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 uh shouting over
uh people like elon musk
uh 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 play i'm
talking about forget elon uh spacex and
tesla and uh actually the good sides of
like some of the things that google is
doing
um
like actually building things like
making the world's information
searchable all that kind of stuff like
all the stuff you know the making
actually the world a better
uh place there's a bunch of technologies
that are increasing our quality of life
all this all that kind of stuff i feel
like they get like not much credit or in
our public discourse
because of the division division is just
like
like peop it's clouding our ability to
concentrate on what's awesome about this
world well you know what would eliminate
the division right
secession yeah
see i don't
i don't
it's hard for me to disagree
because
but at the same time
secession um
i'm i'm a romantic at heart
divorce breaks my heart cool but do you
want to live in a country bro 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
i don't well but see i feel like that's
not the country we live in that's just
the new york times did it
the cathedral does it on a regular basis
well the cathedral is okay
the the cathedral i guess you can maybe
define the cathedral but it's it's like
the centralized institutions that have
like a story that they're trying to sell
and so this is moldbuck's concept but
yeah they basically are set the limits
of permissible discourse and create a
narrative for the population to follow
but to me that's a minority of people
minorities always controlling everything
in any country the vast majority of
masses have no thought yeah but
minorities can be overthrown and sure
the circulation elites yeah the way the
pro no no no that's
the what progress looks like is
ridiculous people take power yes and
then uh they get annoying and new
ridiculous people that are a little bit
better overthrow 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 secession
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
what's in their power to maintain their
power and they're going to fight
innovation because it's a threat to
their control there's always going to be
the new york times of the world right
there's always going to be those those
that let them have their own 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
i don't mean like that's what we're
operating under now but there's actually
like progress being made like roads
being built uh hospitals being run all
those kinds of things like
different innovations that seems like
secession is counter productive to that
right because one country would have all
the roads and the other would have all
the hospitals that's that's a great
point no it's not that'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 gonna have to
solve the same problems it feels like
sure but they can solve them differently
and compete that way massively a great
example yeah now we're seeing that right
now different countries have different
mass mandates and things like this and
uh the competition within the same
structure with the same founding
documents and same institutions is not
effective you think is as effective as
separating it is effective but there is
a certain point which i think we have
long past
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 i'm excited by it the
human being stepping foot on mars
that to me is uh
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 is um
it's obvious that eventually if human
species has to survive
it's going to have to innovate in ways
that includes the sp space okay
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 they'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
and that we should engage in okay that's
just to contextualize things
the fun idea idea and experiment from a
philosophical and political sense is
what kind of government
how do you orchestrate a government when
you go to mars like
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 um you would
have to figure out i mean that's how
america was built you had was a
jamestown colony and they tried to do
communism here and it completely failed
then they went to a more free market
system with the second wave of colonists
is my understanding um for mars i mean
it depends on the population who the
population was the number of people
um
[Music]
i i don't know
these are all kind of hypotheticals that
i don't really have any good insight in
whatsoever i'm not a space person 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 you look up to the stars 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 it's like things that are not
literal but they're unimaginable to us
uh 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
how 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 that does things
uh
it's not an obvious
despite everybody being really certain
about everything in this in this modern
world to me it's not obvious like how do
you run successfully as a group of
people
i agree i that's why 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 gonna say when you have one
country it's all open borders yeah yeah
you're right the from from outer space
right
some say they're aliens already there so
you're gonna have to negotiate that sure
we're aliens so we're aliens to somebody
we're legal aliens 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 just the math it's impossible
that there isn't so what do you make of
all the 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
um
operating the way we knew vehicles
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 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 there 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
uh that says something shouldn't that be
a bigger problem shouldn't that be
bigger news
and a bigger problem if government is in
fact hiding it i guess but like what are
they going to do with that information
it's a good question like if a ufo
uh if extraterrestrial
spacecraft which most likely would be
like a crappy space like it would it
wouldn't be the actual aliens it would
be like some
drone probe ship ai 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
uh
who 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
and that's a trivial one right
i don't
i don't i don't know
they're certainly feel incompetent and
being able to communicate
effectively with the public about
something much more
difficult much more full to mis full of
mystery like a ufo
a thing a piece of material that's out
of this earth forget like
organic material
i don't i don't know to me i just so
from a scientist perspective would be
beautiful it'd be inspiring to reveal
this to the world here's a mystery
and make it completely public share it
would try and share it with everybody i
think there is a domino effect where the
concern would be what else you 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
uh 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 mind
the kind of journey can take you on
like what what do you think
what is
what do you think the psychedelics do to
the human mind and what does that say
about the 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
uh 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
yourself to see and to hear only what
you want to see into here and then what
psychedelics do is they tear that away
and suddenly you're much more aware of
what's out there and also you're going
to 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
um
i mean rogan is probably the person who
popularized dmt more than anyone he's
obviously the person who's popularized
dmt more than anything uh it's i don't
know anyone
who has even the researchers who have
anything close to a coherent explanation
of why
this drug
which 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 with the government this you
know the cia
started experimenting with lsd they
killed one of their own people drove to
suicide
and there was a lot of research into
terrence mckenna talks about this
um
into this field and then very quickly
once they got into the mainstream they
shut it down
even though it's not addictive it
doesn't cause you to go crazy or
anything like that and there was a lot
of propaganda against its use which i
think thankfully is now somewhat
receding i think in colorado just
legalized mushrooms something 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 psilocybin like
mushrooms there doesn't seem to be a
lethal dose
which is
fascinating like matthew johnson the the
hopkins
professor you mentioned
i'm
definitely going to do one of his
studies
it's uh it's a really cool way to do
uh
what he calls a heroic dose
oh i want to do it what do i have to do
i'll let you know so he's he is uh
heroic those holy crap yeah
but it's safe
what's the hell i mean
how many grams are we talking i don't i
don't know but it's just it's it's big
he's he says that uh she's gonna have a
kick yeah so
he says that i mean he also studies
cocaine he studies all kinds of drugs
and
he's like the psilocybin is heroic
drosophila cocaine kills you well he you
can't there 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 uh it's it's nothing to
them right yeah yeah cybin is the only
one where like even like
daily users or like regular users
like are blown away by the dose they
give them oh
[Laughter]
you can go to rush in your mind yeah um
you could go to outer space maybe maybe
you'll become an astronaut or astronomer
um after all maybe i'll be bubba yaga
uh i'll let people look that one up holy
crap wow
what is
love
what do you think this thing is uh like
uh 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 hughley in
his book
he didn't use the term but he was
describing
like low-key depression
and he talked about how he was in the
airport
and he noticed a girl had a red dress
and he went up and thanked her and she
was like what are you thinking for and
he had realized he hadn't 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 or i want more of this
that kind of thing it's really
uh uh
it really disorients and reorients your
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 a whole other level because
it's like
i could have this is going to be great
for years it's like you know every day
it's something new
i mean that that is and that is rare
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 about
that's true for years yes 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
[Laughter]
for uh this is
new year new year's
eve uh
so
you talked about the session and the
world burning down and
you holding
the match at the end yes standing with a
big smile on your face yes why so
serious
but let me ask you
if it doesn't include flame and
secession and destruction
and a laughing malice and makeup and a
white suit at the end
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 length them
surround yourself with people who also
want to be happy here's a great example
my buddy chris williamson who i
mentioned before he's a podcaster does
modern wisdom
he's he's an awesome dude and we became
friend very close friends this past year
and he was in dubai recently and he sent
me pics from 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 underwear model
at the pool they would think this is him
bragging or humble bragging
and that never entered my head i'm like
oh man i'm so glad my boy
can be having a good time
and is 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 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 blessed to have that very
few people have that
and to have that be
not only
um
to have that be like 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 them russians
so they talk like immigrants but that's
okay and we're gonna change that um we
have to dismember her that's fine
that makes me happy and like
to be able to
to be able to finish this book and know
it's gonna give people a sense of hope
that's really validating
well what are you most grateful for
for our conversation today
you're stealing my debt
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 no 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
uh responding derisively
i feel safe here
you're welcome
thanks for talking michael it was
awesome
thank you for listening to this
conversation with michael malus and
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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