Michael Malice: New Year's Special | Lex Fridman Podcast #253
the following is a conversation with michael malus his fifth time on this the lex friedman podcast to support it please check out our sponsors in the description and now here's my new year's eve 2021 conversation with the one and only mr michael mallis dostoevsky wrote in the idiot my favor of his books through the main character prince mishkin that beauty will save the world these words seemingly naive and ultimately at least to me profound what do they mean to you beauty will save the world naive really i don't think they seem naive at all well uh sheldon jensen actually for his 1970 nobel prize speech talked about this line a lot and he thought for most of his life that was a silly line there was just words thrown out there because with all the suffering that's in the world what has beauty has actually ever done oh my god i hate this so much i i fucking trash about soldiers yeah i am okay um and this is perfectly sets up this theme you know why i said let's do this episode start the new year on a positive note give people hope give people joy uh you and i both have friends who are models right and it's a silly profession to some extent of course but you are actually a model you are my friend yeah that's right that's true i haven't had a remodel i was trying to be subtle but for those people who actually you know deserve to be models um when you look at someone who is a model and in some of their photos and these these people look perfect now in real life they're not perfect they have flaws they'll be the first to admit it so on and so forth but when you look at beauty it is almost impossible to maintain a sense of cynicism and hopelessness because if there's even one moment when some uh element of perfection has been actualized if there's one moment where a beauty has been realized and captured you can't say well it's never gonna happen again so i think beauty it means hope i think i hate that cynical idea of like um i i get i i appreciate soulja nissan's broader point in that a lot of times people there's something called the deepity where people throw words together to sound profound and if you take it apart like this is just complete gibberish i don't think this is an example of that i think beauty inspires and it more importantly it proves to you this is something that can actually happen on this earth plato right the platonic theory of forms like this world is imperfect but these perfect forms exist in another dimension and that's where our concepts come from you know he was an early uh person trying to figure out where our concepts come from and epistemology and so on and so forth um but that is something that is real in here so i completely disagree with his analysis of that and i don't know if it'll save the world but it's certainly a prerequisite and what's the point of fighting for your values if you don't want to make the world a more beautiful place well it's also how you define beauty because beauty could be just aesthetic beauty it could be art of course art could be could encompass a lot a lot more than just literature and paintings it can encompass the full life the full dance of life but then beauty could be something just uh deeper like whatever that aw you feel when you pause and hear the music just hear and like look up at the stars like for some reason when i see rockets go up for me it's like science what is that the awe that we're able to accomplish that as humans you know that's funny because you know there's lots of different schools of thought like these people versus these people and and you know maybe vegans versus uh steakhouse people i think in terms of the sciences and i guess you and i would be on opposite sides here you have the astronomy people versus the zoology people like the the big question is would you rather spend 10 minutes on the moon or would you rather spend 10 minutes in the deep sea and for me it's clearly the deep sea the zoology that's down there there's something i would encourage people to look up called deep staria which is a jellyfish then the scientists what's amazing when you watch these deep-sea dives on youtube is that the scientists are they're they're nature dorks like everybody else they're they went into this field and there's none of this maybe soulja nation-style cynicism of when they see an amazing animal in its natural environment you know exhibiting these crazy behaviors they lose it they're on the mic like oh my god like it's so exciting to watch so uh i i'm not a rocket person but i'm definitely a zoology so animals and plants in the sea and also it's so mathematical there's so many so many forms there's there's this um there's this plant called areospermum titan up soybeas i don't know how to pronounce it because they're always in latin you never hear them pronounced you said sperm aerial sperm yeah because it's a woolly seed is the is the genus um the leaf it's just always puts out one leaf but the leaf is covered in little magnifying glasses uh lenses to make it maximize the sunlight so it looks like this little crystal seashell it's tiny it's like two centimeters but it's just this amazing thing that that grows out of the sands in south africa just a defense old jensen for a second so if i may read a couple of his lines from the speech sure so he said uh one day that's how he introduces it one day dostoevsky threw out the enigmatic remark beauty will save the world what sort of a statement is that for a long time i considered it mere words how could that be possible when in bloodthirsty history did beauty ever save anyone from anything and then later he goes on to argue with himself in the speech as a older wiser man now but perhaps that ancient trinity of truth goodness and beauty is not simply an empty faded formula as we thought in the days of our self-confident materialistic youth if the tops of these three trees converge as the scholars maintained but the two blatant to direct stems of truth and goodness are crushed cut down not allow through then perhaps the fantastic unpredictable unexpected stems of beauty will push through and soar to that very same place and in so doing will fulfill the work of all three in that case the stavsky's remark beauty will save the world was not a careless phrase but a prophecy uh which of yours which of these three things are your favorites truth goodness or beauty what did he call truth and goodness the blatant to direct stems of truth and goodness um versus the fantastic unpredictable unexpected stems of beauty which is how i see your twitter account i don't think that i think there's a certain directive beauty if you had my twitter account that's for sure uh it's certainly no goodness um or truth yeah yeah it's twitter there's no truth to be found uh i would i will answer the question i will of course point out that having this kind of you know distinction between the three things is i think kind of synthetic i think they very heavily overlap if not if i could probably make the argument they're synonymous um in fact i do believe that they're largely synonymous um goodness that's such an interesting word goodness um uh which of those three is my favorite uh i think truth is overrated in the sense that if something is a good story the story doesn't have to be true or real in order to motivate you and and move you um a lot of times we can delude ourselves about somebody uh and that might actually serve a purpose to some extent you know if you have someone who's maybe a family member and you kind of ignore bad things that they do there might be reasons for that um of the three which is most important i think i would say probably goodness i would say of the three the most important is goodness because if you don't appreciate goodness then beauty is just empty it's just it's just a picture or it's nice um bad people appreciate beauty uh you know bad people are often you know seductive or or have a beauty about them and in terms of action i think it takes a lot of skill and work to create beauty or to create truth or to express truth and express beauty but i think goodness is a it's like um the easiest default state of being just being good to others yeah like you know like there'll be things where these videos where like one dog is drowning and like another dog jumps in and saves it from the pool like that to me is just really amazing stuff uh and it's very moving um so just to me goodness means integrity and it means kindness um and yeah i think of the three that's the knife would be the one i pick yeah yeah and i think people are interrupting i think people also have this idea which is inculcated to them especially by corporate america that as you get older it's okay to do the wrong thing sometimes blah blah blah i don't buy that and so i think goodness gets rarer and rarer um and and i think people know better and they tell themselves lies yeah but once you get allow yourself the chance to just be good i think it makes for a better life yeah it's like it's not that much work like it's not like going to the gym and working out that's a lot of work and it's great afterwards but like goodness is easy once you get into the habit of it i suppose working out the same way there's a lot of stuff if you make it a habit you're going to get the rewards of it and it's going to be easy the rewards of goodness i think are uh more immediate than the rewards of working out as opposed to the hard drugs yeah if uh you mentioned this quote on one of your uh live streams i think if you save one life you save the world yeah that's such a cool line i think i remember reading about paul farmer i think his name is he's a doctor that really i mean um doctors in general they kind of don't care about like what they're doing as a broad policy across hundreds of thousands of millions of people they just care about the human in front of them which is so interesting they don't care it's gonna cost like in this case to save one child it will cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars they don't care about that they can't they know very well that what their actions cannot be scaled but they can't help but help the child in front of them and it's so interesting that's such an interesting way to live and that's the way i kind of think when i try to do something positive is will this help one person and i just kind of imagine a specific person depending on the thing that that would help with like what i'm trying to create something whether it's a piece of hardware or or a video or anything like that or educational material lecture that kind of stuff i don't know what what do you think about this quote like what is it profound or just just poetic i think it's more profound than it sounds at first uh the example i think of is michelle bachman she was a former congresswoman from minnesota she clearly had crazy eyes something weird is going on with the husband but she adopted like like 20 kids terry schappert's another friend of mine he's like a either navy seal or marines i whatever is terry i apologize i'm not trying to be funny and he adopts like elder dogs so going back to bachmann it's like yeah you can say she's crazy you can make fun of her politics all you want and all that stuff's legitimate but if you save a kid give them a home and you save them from the foster system um and you put a roof over their heads and make them feel loved and appreciated it's really hard for me to sit here and call you like a totally bad person i think that kind of thing is nick cersei's another one he adopted a kid and i said you're i think you're a hero like if you there's some you know one of the things that's very hard for me i'm writing as you know i talk about this endlessly this book the white pill but writing about when people do hurtful things to children it really is hard to watch and it's hard to because when you're an author you have to kind of empathize with the character you have to where's this character coming from explain their point of view and that's the one that's the hardest for me to wrap my head around like cruelty to children yeah or or and yeah sadism to children it's just like this is a this is something even animals know not to do you know what i mean like dogs right when you see them around kids they're very protective like if the kid pokes their eyes out the dog doesn't do anything so it's like if you can't even get to that level uh what kind of person are you so i think that quote um is a profound one and it's an important one uh it also means we're not all called upon to be superman right you only have a very finite ability to move the needle but at the same time if you have actually you know saved the life you can go to meet your maker you you did your part you know you left the world a little bit better than you found it and that's all you could ask anybody also i think from a policy perspective it seems we just do better when we focus on doing a small thing helping uh helping one person because it feels like when you start talking about communism and all those kinds of things when you start to believe you could do good by a lot of people that's where your mind somehow stops being able to do good by a lot of people that's when you start to think about utopias and somehow utopia's ghost feeds power into the brain to where it deludes you completely and then you start it's okay to crack a few eggs to make an omelet kind of reasoning and you run into trouble it seems like it's much better even when you have the power and the money and so on to achieve scale to focus on one and then or locally yeah locally yeah right because then suppose you have the feedback exactly right so if you have some kind of program you know in austin or brooklyn or something like that and you're you can you can watch oh this is working this isn't working then you could port it out to other places but top-down helping is you know at the very least it's going to be inefficient and also i think it's a lot more useful when you're helping people when it's a one-on-one relationship because then it's less i don't know embarrassing but certainly less something to receive help and you also feel if it's one thing if you get a check from the government you know food stamps it's nothing if someone's like hey i'm gonna buy you groceries until you get back on your feet you have this kind of motivation i think for most people to be like you know what this person believed in me i'm gonna make it worth their while that they believed in me yes i didn't believe in me yeah i had when i was giving lectures at mit there was one uh was scarce shitless and uh i mean everybody you know how students are and all that kind of stuff they're kind of bored yeah and they don't they don't understand that you're human too they're yeah or this is it could be just me but they don't understand you're trying to pass this human i know uh but there's one one uh gentleman in the audience and he went to all the lectures uh all the gentlemen he was a faculty at mit and he just without very kind of nonchalant just said uh after the lectures he would kind of nod at me and say he did great and uh before like one time he said in a non-creepy way i know this is gonna come off as creepy he said uh you look great today like he said that you know um i don't in the way so he's like 60 70 or whatever like he in this i don't know it's in a wise sage way because i was wearing a suit and tie like i look like you know when you dress up like a young kid yeah yeah so he was just like all right yeah you were uh you're all dressed up you look great yeah you got this i don't know that has a lasting impact that kind of pat on the back but i agree with you um cruelty towards other adults is somehow understandable because it's uh a world full of conflict but cruelty towards children doesn't it doesn't quite i can't i can't understand it i can't understand how you could act in a way that directly causes suffering to a child in front of you yeah that is like the the i don't think i've ever talked to you this might be a good time to ask you about this what do you make what lessons do you draw about human civilization from jeffrey epstein from just laying out everybody thinks about different things when you talk to eric weinstein he thinks about intelligence and like who like jeffrey epstein is a front for something else that's what he he thinks about i think about the weakness of grown men in the face of uh charismatic evil which is like for me directly as mit i didn't know i actually was i guess i was at my team when jeff epstein was just at the very end he must have been there um i didn't know any of this but it really bothers me that nobody was able to see through this man because he's obviously what is also obvious to me is that he was very charismatic like i mean i i tried to think about human nature from this perspective is um directly like we said help one life would i know a jeffrey epstein if he was in my life would i would i know evil when i saw evil even if it's sitting across from you even i mean you so exactly the evil left thank you the the thing [Laughter] well it's a necronomicon well the thing i and i'm sure we'll talk about it maybe not it doesn't really matter we we see things you and i michael very differently about a lot of things politically and so on the reason i like you a lot the reason i like uh the people i do in my life is there's a there's a warmth there's a kindness there's a humanity underneath it all i don't really care what you believe i don't care like i don't care what your twitter says you you know it's easy to mistake your twitter to indicate that there's not a deeply human love for humanity in there and that's why i'm detecting that i think i would be able to detect jeffrey epstein protect i'm just imagining the t-1000 detected yes uh i imagine i hope i would be able to not uh detect that epstein uh lacks that completely even if he's charismatic and the in the humor he has even if he is uh charismatic in the expression of curiosity for science which he did he was curious about like uh not just like boring uh minutiae of science he was interested about the big questions in science which i could see that become exciting to scientists like oh wow here's a person who's thinking big that's always exciting to when somebody goes into a room and thinks about like how do we solve intelligence how do we travel faster than the speed of light that's exciting to people especially people with money because it's like all right so we might be able to actually do big things here uh but you could see through the bullshit the the dead the deadness in the eyes i don't know uh so i think about that because i feel like i have the responsibility for me as an individual to detect evil so i do you know who michael alleg is okay this is going to be a whole long this is going to be on next clips but this is a whole long story so there was a scene in new york in the 90s called the club kids and they would go out to different nightclubs at night they would all dress in really kind of crazy um costumes and but the costumes were all like like goofy and like just thinking like an angel this was dressed like a nurse it was there's a juvenile aspect to it they're all taking you know ketamine and ecstasy to all hours this is kind of rape culture was coming up in there and the head of it and in fact there's um a clip on youtube i think it was the jane whitney show of the club kids and gigi allen gigi allen is a you know kind of punk rock performer hard rock performer who passed away and the audience and gigi allen was very uh aggressive and like a crazy person my friend once saw him in a concert and he took a dump on stage smeared it all over his face grabbed the girl from the audience and gave her a big kiss and as she walked by him she just went like this like excuse me like went to the bathroom so the audience is screaming at gg allen because he's very visibly over the top whereas you got a bunch of these kids dressed in these silly costumes you guys just having fun well the head of the club kids michael alleg ended up killing someone there was a kid called angel menendez who hung around with them he would always have angel wings and boots uh one time they're at michael's condo with um another with a drug dealer named freeze they got into a fight some angel got hit in the head with a hammer they kill him what are we gonna do with the body uh they put it on ice in the bathtub they had a party so everyone's going the bathroom while angel's body's there michael got they're like all right we got to take care of this michael got extremely high in heroin had like uh sil cutlery from macy's saw the body in pieces put in a box they took him in the cab the cab driver helped them throw the body into the river and then michael starts walking around manhattan wearing angel's boots and would tell people i killed angel now because he was a super effeminate over the top like he would pee in people's beer kind of guy everyone's like oh god michael like like you and your stupid pranks uh but it was true and he got caught um and he got sent to jail so i was in a store in manhattan in soho and it was one of those stores we have like all sorts of things for sale and i saw a painting and it said malice and i'm like wait what and it was m aleg it was a michael alec painting he had painted while in jail so my mom bought it for me for my birthday i remember a birthday that was and i started writing him in prison he was going to write a memoir called eligula which is clever and then i actually went to visit him like i want to see what this person is like because on the on one hand he's king of new york nightlife this goofy person and it's also kind of ironic that gigi allen is like maybe he's gross he's not killing anybody he's probably an accountant off the stage and michael actually killed someone and then bragged about it tongue-in-cheek so but meeting him he passed away last december um on christmas actually this uh christmas uh 20 uh 20. um he was clearly a sociopath and i'd never met a sociopath before now a lot of times we'll read these like you'll take a buzzfeed quiz like are you a sociopath but it's like oh my feelings weren't hurt when i was mean to someone it's not a thin line between like me and you and him it's a thick thick line because when you're talking to someone like that at least in this specific case he was being very friendly he wasn't and it's not like he was going to kill anyone or is a threat to me but there's that sense like something's really off here and he was talking to me about how after he had killed angel he would just talk about it because he felt so much guilt he just wanted to get caught it's like no no you what he was describing wasn't guilt he was describing just he didn't like the um the knife over his head like waiting to get caught i'm like you don't even know what guilt is so it was kind of like oh wow so as for jeffrey but the thing is michael aleg is it was in a very low social position and the thing is when someone is powerful very high status and they do something we are as kind of hierarchical animals we kind of defer to their norms yeah so if you're at a party with let's suppose uh or either of us and it's like a jeffrey epstein party and everyone at the party is doing some sort of weird drug we've never heard of we wouldn't really feel comfortable judging them because like their norms kind of become the norm for that space um the lesson for me about jeffrey epstein uh it's the sev there's a lot of them because i think this the to me the the biggest moment was the amy rohrbach situation amy rohrbach was caught on a hot mic saying that they had all the goods on him they had all the names and that buckingham palace called them they killed the story because they weren't going to get a megan mark interview out of it so that the willingness of those in power to do the wrong thing for this flimsiest pretext which i think was a big important lesson also the fact that no one at abc had any consequences for this in fact the only person who got in trouble for all this was someone who used to work at abc went to i believe cbs and they got fired from cbs because apparently they had access to footage at one point even though they weren't the ones who had leaked it um so whistleblowers are like the only for example the case in um uh uh eric garner the guy who was selling lucy cigarettes in new york city uh who was arrested he had a heart attack or whatever it was on the way to jail he died the only person so the cops had a situation there the only person who got in trouble because of that was the guy filming it like he went to jail so i think there is if there's a lesson in terms of we look at julian assange right there's a huge amount of power exercised by elites to make sure that what is done on the cover of darkness remains in the cover of darkness and also kevin mccarthy who was currently the house minority leader leader of the republicans he wrote a letter to abc news like you had this guy maybe you couldn't call in the authorities but you could have leaked it to somebody why hasn't anything come forward nothing happened as a result of this we also have to keep in mind that the longest serving republican speaker of the house in history dennis hastert went to jail because of things related to pedophilia and things like that so as russians and this is something i think you and i have mentioned before uh americans are very naive often decreasingly so about the nature of evil they think an evil person is someone who's like getting kickbacks um or you know like the cuomo's are colluding something like that i would hardly even call that evil um no no this is the sort of things that are so depraved that you would never think about it in a million years in your own home you don't think in these terms and and i think they get off on doing things that if the average person heard about it the average person would be shocked because that gives them this sense of weird above them we're different from them the rules don't apply to us there's a lot to say here so one is the norm thing you said at a party it's really interesting for an nrcas to say that well no it's this no well i know i know so i'm not sorry this that came off as criticism i meant it as harsh criticism [Laughter] no i i think about that a lot like um as uh the you know i found myself in situations where i'm invited uh to these kinds of parties where people have nice things and i find it deeply uncomfortable for that reason i i don't want to be sort of an activist that goes in and ruins a party that's that's a i think that's uh that's not the courageous act neither is it courageous when everyone's doing some weird drug that you mentioned to join in i think courageous is more being remaining yourself sticking to your principles calmly in that room where everybody is doing the drug and just don't do the drug yeah sure don't make a scene about it but also don't don't do it and i think that little act of courage over time is the way you resist jeffrey epstein that exactly the thing you said is is probably the situation where charisma works so one charismatic person gets the little crowd going and the crowd is everybody sort of uh establishes a norm at the little crowd and yes there could be some dynamics that allow that norm to be established like you said like rich and powerful people might enjoy being rich and powerful and better than everybody else kind of kind of thing but like i especially for scientists i i thought they should have integrity and courage enough to to see through that not again as an activist like so you can tweet about it how courageous you are but just literally see there's something off here there's something off here and i'm not going to participate i'm going to defend these scientists because something off first of all you're always defending academia it's disgusting it's my favorite thing i think that first of all this is going to sound like a joke and it's not i bet you 90 of those mit scientists are on the spectrum so everyone they're going to meet is going to be a little off right so i'm sure part of their brains like okay this person is weird this is just them being on the spectrum like the lights but spectrum i couldn't even finish the joke okay guys number two is off we we tend to there's this poem i forget who wrote it it was like nick cave or something and it was describing um like i think it was gerbils hair normal height normal weight normal what do you expect horns right so when you meet someone you think something's off there's going to be a bell curve of what that could be right it could be that they're twitchy or maybe they're completely asocial and then you have jeffrey epstein over here you're going to need a lot of evidence to be like oh i feel something off there for this guy's the head of an international you know sex trafficking ring so yeah you might be like okay but at the same time if their extended relationship is this guy is interested in my work he's going to fund my work and i don't have to give him anything in return he's clearly intelligent he's appreciating it and being a scientist is a thankless job uh i i know what it's like as an author when i was writing dear reader the north korea book my friends are sick of hearing all these north korean anecdotes because at a certain point it's like okay we get it just saved for the book and you know you've got to be in that lab you're looking at the springtails whatever it is you're looking at no one knows what a springtail is i just disagree with you so the that'd be interesting to draw the distinction between science and writing because the scientific process itself is fun as fuck it's you're solving little puzzles sure so like in itself it's fun so like it's rewarding like the reason you go into uh science is you can continue really without a boss to continue having fun and solving puzzles that's that's literally so like uh unless you become cynical and tired of the whole thing so the the people the administration or when you're running a large lab and you what you get sick of is the emails and the meetings and all that kind of stuff the actual act of being in the lab is still fun as fuck if you allow it to be writing i feel like is there's more priority to publishing like would you enjoy it the tree falling in the forest would you still enjoy any of the books you've written if they never got published not to the same extent not even close right right i think that the thing about science it's almost like you get a peek into the mysterious yeah but this is okay let me this is where i'm coming from since moving to austin i've bought 150 over 150 plants look are you doing the the politician thing let me let me be clear all right it's not oh you you are running in 2024 this is very interesting i bought 150 succulents from my house they're they're thriving here in austin as they wouldn't have in brooklyn you have a great video about it people yeah one of those plants i have is the photo i took on my instagram there's no other photos on the internet none of my friends care or they care like ostensibly but like that's cool like i have a better plant collection in my house than like almost any botanical succulent collection than any would santa garden in america other than probably the huntington and no one cares this is what ego looks like by the way i i can prove it to you no i know but you don't have to rub it in well they have a big budget i don't so if i can put it together they should be able to right so i can only imagine that a scientist who studied you know those spiders that look like ants like at a certain like oh and this species does this with the gender dimorphism their friends are only going to care so much so if you meet someone who has a lot of money who now cares about aunt spiders it's going to be exciting it will be very exciting but i i just wanted to push back on the i think the act itself should be the biggest reward i think you're always safe we're talking about goodness being a safe default i think it's a good default for for plants and for writing it for science is to just enjoying the act even if nobody cares okay this is where this okay now i'm even now i'm wondering why i'm pushing back so hard and i realized what it was because i've made this point several times and i'm glad i can make it again there's this window of time that happened in my life and i know it happens to a lot of people when you're in you're like 24 to 27 28 right so 21 to 24 like you still have your friends from college so on and so forth right but then it's kind of like a poker game and you know every so often people cash out they're like i'm out i'm out they get married they get a job they move and if you are someone who is a young ambitious creative that window is a very rough one because you're doing the right thing right and you're not being you know drug addict you're not being a philanderer not that those things are wrong but just like you're playing by the rules you're creating your stuff what you want to be known for contribution you want to make for the world and no one cares and it gets very lonely and there's this very emotional disconnect about how is it that i'm creating and i'm working hard and i'm making something happen and it's just radio silence so that i don't think it's that easy when you're you're the scientist not me when you don't have any kind of external validation humans only have so much fuel nothing worth having is easy michael by the way yesterday talked on the phone with a person he said he was deeply moved the first time you mentioned this uh age group of 24 to 27 he's like he he's 26 he said and uh he feels the full responsibility of that and the excitement so he left his like um corporate typey job to pursue something that he's really passionate about and that that that was like you were an inspiration to him which i i was deeply saddened by that i also inspired michael alex the the the amount of mass murder um those that were inspired by you will eventually uh lead to is is uh truly horrifying what were we talking about so jeffrey absolutely oh one thing i wanted to ask you so let's put scientists aside what about like uh world leaders uh bill clinton your favorite person why would he fly with jeffrey epstein why would he interact with that guy i mean don't you think that that's kind of the deal that i'm the president and i get big and powerful people flying around their jets and that's the symbiotic relationship yeah but don't you also have a good bs detector like the don't you have a good detector for people who just want to be in your presence like i already understand that there's people like this out there like there's people that kind of want to use me for stuff and you mean tim dylan tim dillon um uh i love that guy you guys met we haven't met yet here we have met oh yeah wow we met before in new york but we had not since i've moved here yeah so you should be able to detect that though there's those people and there's the people that have kindness in their heart even if they can benefit from the interaction with you but they have like they're good human beings i feel like you want to you run into a lot of trouble if you surround yourself or have any people that are manipulative but i think you like that bad example because like let's look at clinton and let's look at obama right so obama even though their politics are very close i'd say in many ways obama is apparent we don't know i don't know either of them but to me it seems very apparent that he's very similar behind closed doors as he did from the camera yeah he's he's barack to me oh yeah yeah he's good yeah clinton seems very clearly to be much more of a performer he's in front of the cameras he puts on a roll but behind the cameras he very much has a temper he's known for that he's much more of a letch um perfect oh lech with an e l e t c h yeah oh cool yeah letch is that like uh that's a cool term so i can use that in the internet like you're a ledge yeah you could use an internet you're a dirty watch well it's a dirty's implied um oh so it's okay yeah so being redundant yeah um but it just feels like it needs an adjective to give it more power anyway i'm sorry so uh clinton is a letch right so you can see how there's people who want to meet you know the surface bill clinton and i'm sure that guts old for him because he has to be on but then there's the good old boys where he could be a pervert and this guy's like yeah i know what it's like and then he feels like he's himself but i'm also we're all speculating i mean i don't know what bill clinton is like what was in it for him he certainly had could afford private jets if he wanted to uh there's no shortage of people who want to fly around the world to give speeches you know at you know can he satisfy the lech within uh in without hanging out with the jeffrey epstein's of the world like can't he get i mean this is the monica lewinsky question to me i'm i'm confused by all of this can't he get uh women in a legitimate way of like not not using his power not hanging out with these shady rich people but just like having a normal mistress like jfk had well jake had a lot i know i understand that but in the normal way or i don't i don't know enough about you i i i don't understand the clinton psychology first of all the fact that you're hooking up with someone who's close to your daughter's age to me i think was is inherently disturbing but she's an adult so okay that's not that that you know beyond the pale but also the idea that oh if i don't physically fornicate with you it's not cheating like that whatever you tell yourself or like if i don't ejaculate it's not cheating like these rules then maybe it leads to some kind of slippery slope like you start not having the rules of who you fool i mean if you told your wife like listen it wasn't cheating she only you know performed on me you're going to say this with a straight face like do you at a certain point when something is so brazen you wonder if the person even has to believe it because who are you fooling but like we started this this conversation with them there is a line between young women older than 18 and young teen like 12 13 kids have you ever when's the last oh because you're it's different for you because you're at mit i was hanging out with uh uh blair white uh and she had a couple of fans with her of hers and they were like 22 23 and they were like children to me yeah like i'm like to me as someone who is in his late 60s to look at these people as adults like they look completely like kids so that now of course there's exceptions like i've interacted with a young 20 20 year olds that are like you're way more mature than i'll ever be like the wisdom that comes out of them is quite fascinating visually the the energy and the way they look they looked so young to me and the the way they carried themselves it was the the idea that my instinct was let's tuck you in and read you a bedtime story and not let me like touch you or something it was just like like it was just wouldn't enter my head so there's but the thing is is it possible that in order to want to be the president you have to be a crazy person that you have some kind of weird view on power it could be a power thing too yeah like like you can get away with stuff like if i was clinton's age nothing about monica lewinsky to me would be attractive and also i would just feel bad for her because i know she's going to catch feelings and it's kind of like feeling yeah it's true it's just like why would i do this to this kid for what just because i want to get some like momentary pleasure come on beauty is in the eye of the beholder i'm sure she looked uh gorgeous to him in the moment well let me ask uh we started talking about beauty uh who are you wearing [Laughter] so as a model under you usually have don't have a shirt on when you're modeling so it's nice to see you uh dressed up today um [Laughter] nice and warm this is because so for those who don't know if russians don't celebrate christmas obviously with the soviet union christmas was illegal no thanksgiving basically no major holidays where everyone gets together this is the one holiday yeah it's not a call and instead of i remember as a kid instead of santa claus we have dead marrows who's the same thing basically it's like android and iphone is it's like a cheap version of christmas he's got this girl with him she's like snow white or whatever and russian kids they go to sleep on december 31st and they wake up january they have a present under their pillow um and i remember as a kid this happened once and it just blew my mind you know what i mean it's just like i went to bed my dad's like oh you know you're going to have denmark is going to bring you your present if you've been a good kid i'm like i think i was a good kid like but you don't even remember a year of your life when you're four uh you remember like you remember those moments yeah and then i woke up and there was a present in my pillow and i'm i was it just blew my mind and that building is still there 1461 sure parkway in brooklyn so um and it it's just all so funny like uh what i really like about kids you know being an uncle now is kid logic because there have very little bit of data but they're using logic to make sense of it and sometimes it gives them to the completely wrong conclusions for the completely right reasons i remember you know i my bedroom as a kid was right off the kitchen and i'd be scared in the dark a little bit so they'd leave the light on the kitchen while i went to sleep and at the same time my parents had told me you don't leave the lights on the house it costs money waste electricity right so i would be worried because i'm like oh my god my parents leave the lights on the kitchen all night and now it's costing them so much money not realizing that you know five minutes after i'm out obviously they're turning the lights off but like in my kid logic this was a concern of mine yeah and memories work that same way i have a collection of memories that are stitched together logically somehow but they they also don't really make sense there's a there's a few defining things so i grew up in in russia and experienced a lot of new years in russia there's a there's a a lot of incredible things about that tradition that just warms my heart so one as a kid you mentioned these kind of stories that's the one night of the year that kids are allowed to be adults in the following way like you in in in kid logic you're allowed to stay up all night oh yeah okay that was uh as late as you want which actually ends up being you're not used to it you crash but no you get to uh you know two three four at night you stay up and when you get to witness it's almost like alice in wonderland goes into this world you get to witness what is the adult world really like now obviously it's not an actual adult world merriment like like laughing fighting arguing but also like in in our case like singing and uh like yeah arguing like philosophical stuff but also like um if i may how would i describe it this is also probably a little bit russian culture but like flirtation in all of its forms meaning like men and women just being like because they dress up yeah yeah it's like it's uh it's joy it's like you get to show off like dresses whatever you got you show it off this is fun and then um men too just like friends laughing and like arguing just showing off the best they got with delicious food obviously that there's a thanksgiving element there yeah where there's just so many just you bring out all the traditional stuff uh the the avs salad just everything just the full thing with the desserts and obviously the vodka a lot of vodka and at the time so this is the soviet union like the biggest stuff and this is so sad that these are the things i remember is like uh coca-cola oh yeah like american like that uh i'll probably kill somebody for dr pepper it's so fascinating that um you take it for granted sort of the results of capitalist society with the material things that are created but that was the ultimate happiness is to experience this new thing sugar i don't know um you know there's like there's scarcity there's like communist czech republic so basically they try to rip off coke yeah and it's just like it's like they just threw whatever they could together and it was a very poor knockoff as you can imagine i forget what it's called and all the czech people right now are getting very angry at me because i can't think of it but they have it now and the slogan is good or weird so it's like this so they kind of reclaimed this kind of hipster soda yeah oh that's awesome it's almost like a parody right yeah but i think the thing i really remember is the camaraderie like the love for each other and neighbors too like um like you and i are neighbors now we don't see each other that often i hope that changes but a lot of it is also me i'm just a deep introvert you're also the hardest working person i know yeah so it's time but you know like it's not like i'll go in the middle of the night at like 4 a.m and go to 7-eleven just sit there sipping a slurpee for an hour thinking about life so it's not like i'm always working yeah i don't know what i mean is like you get to meet your neighbors and you get to experience their uh their highs and their lows and you get to bitch about life about government about corruption about the unfairness of life together well it's also i think what people don't appreciate as americans is it's very rare and russia to have a safe space yeah so you know that that january 1st no one's going to snitch on you you know they're not going to be informants probably so you can vent and and you know that's the thing with people in totalitarian countries you have to have the public facing persona and then behind closed doors is very different it all comes out and i also remember the arguments and i've i've been uh going on um clubhouse recently into russian rooms well just to practice russian and uh they it's so beautiful to watch i mean clubhouse is a very specific collection of russian people maybe it's a little bit political but and they're a little bit older and it's interesting to watch how much they love to argue yeah and so like it will be literally um it's you could think of it as a nonlinear dynamical system okay from an engineering perspective it whenever any positive topic comes up it's you could you could feel the skepticism and then wait a minute this is not good and they'll start like uh perturbing it until you're like uh they'll find some way to say like come on now that is the dumbest thing i've ever heard and then it goes back into argument it's so fun to watch because uh in one sense you could see it as negative in another you could see it as free to express yourself because it feels like you can solve a lot of problems by allowing yourself to just uh be emotional and both both emotional and say hard truth and all those kinds of things without like um without patting yourself on the back about it uh but also it just sort of those russian rooms make me realize how constrained american speech is how careful people are in the way they express it even the michael mouses in the world you're you're constantly being like nuanced there they just say crazy shit oh yeah and then they correct themselves and make fun of themselves and they completely shift opinions a minute later and it's it's chaos yeah and is i mean it's it's beautiful so i i love that that culture is it's funny given the current regime in russia like how that's coupled with how people are talking and um yeah i don't know and i have those memories of childhood of of friends that i had of just having that true freedom of talking and somehow that leads to uh deep bonds together when the life when you're poor when life is has a lot of elements that are unfair when the government is corrupt there's sort of it's just um especially in the soviet union there's uncertainty about the future all of it you just get closer together like penguins huddling together in the cold like that much of the penguins movie that i don't know uh the the friends i've gotten there like i get emotional every time i kind of think about those friends because it was so close that friendship was so fucking but i just really hate the the russian cynicism i know you do and i actually disagree with you about it you see it as cynicism i see it as um waves on top of the water like surface cynicism and the depths as i see the beauty of the russian soul so we like yes that cynicism can negatively affect a lot of people like you i think you've talked about like as a parent like being cynical about the world and then you have dire negative consequences on your children they become cynical they don't ever take big risks to take on both things and i have those arguments um because the cynicism is exhausting it's destructive yes and anti creative but so in in their perspective is this is what the russian folks would say well yes that's our role like being cynical is being reasonable about the world it's not it's completely unreasonable it's a complete lie i know but their argument is yes but we're we're giving you this force and it's your job to resist against it so it's a test i love the idea that if you're going to be creative and innovative you don't have enough up against you yeah exactly this is exactly oh i don't know it's not hard enough already that i want to be an author now you got to be like well what let me just put some fire ants on top of it so i i just want to separate i agree with you that the cynicism is is bad and destructive but the idea that life is suffering and thinking from that as a first principle i think there's a lot of beauty to be discovered through that so there's a cynicism and then there's a horrible message uh life is suffering no not well yeah i mean kamu kamu doesn't think that now we're going into uh definitions of suffering then because absurd what see life is absurd is life is suffering or not even close to the same concept well then you're just defining the terms differently well that's because they're different terms yeah well so is love and beauty but like so let's define okay wait you're selling if your baby's in the crib like with a fever you're like oh that's absurd no it's the kid's suffering it's not the same so yes starvation see you've been for white pill researching a lot of actual specifically defined suffering sure but also a lot of wonderful things right yeah yeah but the the word suffering can encompass more than just specifically starving and it could it can encompass like a lot of the philosophers uh talk about it encompass like philosophical suffering the fact that there is if if you're not careful life was can appear meaningless you can fall into a nihilistic view like it it's it's it's difficult to have the responsibility of freedom to act in this world because you can fuck up in so many different ways and then life is seemingly unfair in this in the sense that good things happen for no apparent reason and terrible things happen like what you know it's the old religious question of why does evil uh happen in the world or what why do terrible things happen in the world there's this book called six word memoirs right where all these different personalities are awesome were you in it no i'm in it with so you had to basically write your autobiography in six words and mine was good things happen to bad people you see there you go there's humor yes that's your way of dealing with the suffering but i don't think life is inherent if life was suffering we wouldn't be able to have happiness no out of suffering happiness is born so like it's it's the ups and downs of life and what it means like i don't this i just i don't agree at all that you need to suffer in order to be happy i agree you have to work hard but that's not the same thing yeah all right so the way i'm using suffering i think a lot of them use suffering is the way you use like gravity so in order for the roller coaster to work you need gravity there needs to be a force that bring you down sure in that same way there's like you have to resist the natural pull of nature that wants to destroy you no nature wants you to nature's indifferent but we have the capacity because we're blessed with minds and we're blessed with friends yeah to transcend yes nature yeah no i know but i think it's a it's a word that captures something about life that there's no reason to it that is absurd i think to me oftentimes the way i think about the word suffering is synonymous with absurdity this is not suffering but this is absurd i just noticed there's a box with the big bow on it next to you what's in the box michael it's your present so it's your present for new year's uh can we open it yeah sure what's in the box it's gonna take and you brought up suffering this is gonna be very unpleasant here you go i packed it myself yeah there's a whole process in there so there's three presents in there lex i'll read the card first okay something about opening presents like tearing stuff makes me feel like because like i just tore this sheet of paper yeah so it'll never be the same again it's entropy it's entropy times you've got a powerful voice you've got a powerful voice deluxe thank you maybe i should read the other card first you've got a powerful voice listening to what you have to say always puts me in a hopeful place i feel like this is building up to something you show me how change can happen when you face the world with pride confidence and a voice that can't be silenced keep speaking up the world is listening yeah there's no cynicism in this card no this is about this is new year's this is all about helping joy what to lex i'm seeing the binary uh deluxe thank you for setting the path for me to move to austin zero one zero zero one zero zero one zero one one zero one one zero zero zero one one one zero one zero one michael mouse yeah brings tears to my eyes thank you brother my pleasure let's get to the present okay it's a it's a pc box this is very promising it better not be sex toys there's nothing this is all there's nothing inappropriate at all why would it why would sex toys be inappropriate because you're sex positive because you're a virgin yeah bring a knife to a party how clever is it to put it in a pc box well i had it i just got a new pc okay yep open the cam first open the can you rap push yourself [Laughter] that scares shit out of me could get back in the can that actually stayed in there that's magic just got to cut the string no you're the most beautiful troll of all i love you so much this is awesome did i did it not work pick it up oh it didn't work there's a terrifying springy feeling to this thing i don't want to open this i need to move some beside aside i hate you so much what what oh is it the other way no just pick it up yeah we uh fell for that thank you so much wrenches they're my favorite i can't believe i fell for that okay and there's box number three it's like a mattress i can't believe that worked yeah i wanted a box to open all these gears to fall out but you can't get you can't get him yeah does that really grind your glass you know what gradually is why am i scared okay this there's another box this leads to my death no no this is this is there's a story behind it i can't believe that worked oh god that's so good all right all right no springs no weapons no wrenches okay so let me tell you the story behind that toy tonka robots that turn into vehicles so when you there when i was a kid you had transformers but for us poor people you had gobots right so the gobots there were four main characters for the good guys it was leader one small foot turbo and scooter and what was annoying is when you had the action figures you couldn't find the ones that were on the tv show and i was a big gobots fan as a kid and i went once to the toys r us in caesars bay in brooklyn with my grandfather my grandfather was always very lucky like just good things happened to him every so often and i went there i remember very vividly they must have just unpacked just loaded the shelves and how they had the shelving it would be like like a grid you know you'd have like it was like one two three four five five rows and like uh five by five and i remember it was like two up and then you have to do you have to sit by the side and kind of sort through them and with the gobots each package had a picture of the different figures so the packaging wasn't uniform and they just had scooter there she was just sitting there and i was like holy crap so that feeling when you're a kid and you find that just sitting on the shelf it is right there it's just it was such this was this that scooter no i have it though but that one is for you i thought you if you want to put it next to your other robots yeah open it up i can open it up yeah yeah it's for you and that way uh it's that symbol of joy when you have when you're a kid when you find something you really want i think it just is really like so when people look at it they'll be like don't be hopeless i'll open this carefully later no do it just yeah i should do it yeah okay there's no way to open it carefully kids don't open stuff carefully you rip that crap open but then you break it and you cry that's what happens when you're kid i never did that okay me neither i never cried but never got presents either that is so cool all right scooter you symbolize childlike discovery right the poor the poor man's robot the poor man's transformers i think there's instructions on the back how to transform her to her i only found out as an adult that it was supposed to be a girl yeah wow this changes everything thank you that's incredible no give me here let me show it looks better when she's transformed what no there's there's levels to that statement oh how have to do like this let me see if i remember how to do it because i had this as a kid arms out let go the thing is these are easy to break i remember is it like this no oh the the front comes out oh let me see this oh this comes up yeah yeah yeah yep so that's that the arm scout i'm having visions of like baby michael i i can't do it okay i can't do it i can't figure it out wow you're right she looks so much better transformed oh all right i'm gonna follow the instructions in a bit and i'll leave yeah i'll leave this failed project of yours oh there's a wheel out look i don't like this in between form well this is how it's gonna be okay because we're going to be accepting of the transformation that takes time okay i got uh i saw this oh it's this little thing when i was walking on congress and it says resist it's a bracelet it made me think of you the reason i got it is because there's two bracelets so one said lucky fuck and the other one said resist now i first saw resist and i'm like and then i saw the lucky fuck and i realized i'm a lucky fuck to find a relevant it makes me think of you this is very nice resist the powerful that's true i saw this somewhere the oh yeah yeah yeah um this has to do with in terms of resist you often bring up the book uh machiavellians by james burnham and uh so as i was looking through i was reading different parts it's it's tricky read it's a little bit uh but there there is a ebook kindle version now that i've been um working through this i think there's an actual audiobook too anyway yeah i just bought some the machiavellians is is james burnham's analysis of four uh thinkers that he regards as the machiavellians who's guytana moscow filfredo paredo george sorelle and i'm blanking on the moscow pareto sorel and george michelle and i just got pareto's autograph in the mail this week so he he talks about freedom and liberty this is the interesting um line that i'd like to get your opinion on in terms of resist in terms of liberty there's no one force it goes quote there's no one force no group and no class that is the preserver of liberty liberty is preserved by those who are against the existing chief power oppositions which do not express genuine social forces are as trivial in relation to entrenched power as the old chord gestures so i mean the question here is can liberty is are you comfortable with that definition or that view of liberty of freedom that it at its highest ideal is expressed through the resistance to the powerful as opposed to existing in its own i think his point broadly speaking which i agree with is the only thing that can work to mitigate power is other power that it's um uh talk is cheap and persuasion it has very limited efficacy it's like if there's a burglar right and one person will give you a speech about property rights and you shouldn't be in this person's house and the other person has a gun you know it's it's clear which is going to be more persuasive yeah but can't you just be free without the struggle without this conflict i mean what i'm uncomfortable with this view is how closely it uh links freedom and conflict like why does this world have to have conflict for you to be free can't i mean it's uh and part of it is just emphasis are you just saying suffering is what leads to joy see and now you're in agreement thank you that's i just did that just so you can come around and agree i win next topic one wow i'm playing 3d chess here okay this is new year's this is this is now december 31st i think that's how it works but in 1973 okay actually we recorded this before you were born oh no um years after you're born 60 you look great for 60 early 60s or sure okay what five things let's say or moments in 2021 are you grateful for or people just i don't know things moments beautiful experiences profound essences of the year like looking back what are the cool things that just personally or socially do you exist like in a platonic way socially i mean person oh in your personal life yeah anything you're you're both you're now michael malus you exist as a social entity and a personal human being and all of it the whole thing like what what stands out to you about 2021 uh the fact that for the first time in my life other than college i moved to a new city that was a very big one and there's no part of me that regrets it or misses new york so that was a very big deal for me what do you uh about this move about austin itself but maybe the move itself maybe just the act of moving what what um what's great about it to you the fact that i had forgotten what it's like to have a huge social network which i had in new york before people started falling away and then it really escalated as a result of de blasio and the coveted restrictions so to have a big crew here um is something that was very validating the thing that's also exciting about austin is that boston isn't a particularly big town it's not particular great town but everyone here at least in the circles i travel in is kind of a refugee from their towns so there is this sense of camaraderie there is the sense of we're building something together back in new york when you meet someone it would be like who is this person why am i talking to them like are they a normie are they going to be weird and here there's very little of that i think there's much more sense of trust with one another when you meet new people so that's something that's really exciting about um like i've been introducing all my friends to each other and everyone's been hitting it off like gangbusters it's really great so i really enjoy that about um austin i'm enjoying you know the weather the space uh you ready kerouac any of this stuff i have on the road i read and i read a biography of him i don't know if it was on i think it was on the road uh where he he talks about that feeling when um you go into some place you're leaving a place and you're going somewhere else and the place you're leaving disappears behind you yeah and all the people and all like that you just think about that life and it's forever gone and there's some inkling of that where you get to realize you're almost mortality because okay that's a chapter and there's not many more and it was a beautiful chapter but now on to the next chapter is there a melancholy feeling there no it's the opposite i feel like i've been given a new lease on life because i didn't realize to what extent there was this subtext of hopelessness in new york and also people who in new york you don't appreciate or you appreciate it consciously but you can't escape it emotionally how much the winters get to you psychologically uh it's it's tough it gets dark so early it gets cold you can't walk around like that's the thing that's fun about or what's fun about new york is that you know when the weather's warm you could walk for an hour and just enjoy the sunshine and there's a lot to see and do but in the winter you don't have any of that it's it's brutal and here it's just so that is something there's no melancholy at all well that's because there's can we say something beautiful about new york not the way it is now but the way it i could go on for days about how great new york was what did you learn about human civilization just life that was beautiful from new york i learned that there's a lot of really unique special people out there who are doing their little part to move the envelope and make the world a better place and that when you have a city where they're all there together at the same time then that really moves the world and i'm thinking of paris in the 20s in harlem in the 20s and new york in the 70s and la in the late 60s and san francisco especially in late 60s things like this uh they really punch above detroit certainly at its heyday they punch above their weight and and just really kind of philadelphia in 17 1700s things really start happening and that ripples throughout the world you think austin has a chance to be a paris that's in some way yes because again it wasn't all of paris it was the left bank of paris and gertrude stein and hemingway and all them in a little area so you know when you read these history books these scenes it's like 50 people like in a 10 block radius these aren't these huge like davos conventions okay so the move the big move yeah what else what else stands out to you again all both personally and socially like zooming in and zooming out i did a book with the ufc fighter and i was making the point uh he was a nine-time world champion that i would never be as good at my job as he was at his yeah and then when i dropped anarchist handbook in may and it was the top non-fiction book on amazon for like most of the day like oh i'm the top nonfiction writer in america just for today i was like oh crap okay so i guess i was wrong that that was a major deal i was i was still shocked and delighted by the way congratulations i'm truly happy for you man it well it's i'm so proud but it's also i i'm proud because these are people who had points of view and they didn't have it easy and they fought for what they believed in and in so far as i get to rescue them to some extent from the dustbin of history and say these people really mattered and they really are worth hearing i i i that i love i love stuff like that um you know i was talking a friend of mine topher uh like a year ago and because we're in a weird position with what kind of jobs we have so like i'll be talking in my live streams about people like candy darling or wallace thurman and like these are not household names at all and then i'd be like proud of myself that i'm the one who brings them to some sort of more prominence and then you want to tell yourself well get over yourself who you think you are but it's like but no one else is talking about these people or very few so to be able to kind of give them some kind of stature and platform that they deserve i think is i i love being able to do that so you have a strong voice yourself and to sort of join them in it's like john lennon joining in with the beatles as like a a chorus of very different views on anarchism just it's celebrating the individuals it's celebrating the idea and you are i think will be remembered as a a powerful philosophy yourself but like you're almost taking just the humility of being in a room with powerful minds together in one book it's cool yeah and that these people mattered and they had a unique perspective um and as i said in the introduction to the book i remember i was in college and we were studying bioethics and there was a like a graph in the book and one part says antinomianism which was the view that at one side said legalism right the two extremes legalism is what is legal is defined by the government or what is moral is defined by government and once said anthonyism which is nothing stands above moral law and then there was like well since no one believes in this the answer is something to the other side it's like well why is it in the charge normally if it has a name someone believes in it you know so you know anarchism is a word that's bandied about and in a dismissive way and it's like you don't have to like me or agree with what i'm saying but you can't pretend that they weren't tolstoy you're going to tell me tolstoy doesn't know what he's talking about completely he's in there uh he was an anarchist so um it was it was a big accomplishment it was really cool to get a chance to do the audiobook for you you did an incredible thing which is got a bunch of really cool people uh to read a lot of interesting varied people yeah so what i did for the audiobook which i it's i don't like the idea that hard work is inherently good because sometimes being lazy is actually the right choice yeah so i'm like wait a minute why am i reading all 23 chapters when it's 23 different authors does it make sense so i hit my rolodex and i had different people read different chapters to make it sound literally like you have the different voices in the book thank you very much you did my because i was going to read my chapter wait a minute like all the other authors are being voted by somebody else let's have lex read mine the one chapter i am most moved by is i d uh lauren chen she's a podcaster as well she's expecting now so we wish nothing but the best for lauren and liam and the baby um there's a chapter there by this guy named charles robert plunkett called dynamite and he's advocating for making bombs and killing people uh killing you know the forces of capitalism and emma goldman uh it was published in her essay while she was in lecture tour and she was just like why is this in here this is this is just really going to make us look bad so on and so forth and when you're dealing with any kind of you know h.l menken has that quote about every rational man must at times be tempted to spit on his hands hoist the black flag and begin slitting throats so i wanted to talk sound like the seductive aspect of violence like that's the problem like when you deal with terrorism when you're dealing with political violence to be able to understand how people can fall for this how people can be persuaded to think this is a good idea that i'm going to make some dynamite and throw it into this crowd and kill you know police officers and innocent people possibly in service about it you have to it's easy to say oh they're all crazy but they're not you know even not most people who are crazy don't do these things you know so to have a woman read that chapter and i told her kind of read it like a phone sex operator because i wanted to have that siren song of like so you can understand why this calls out to people who are in the rope the people who are like marginalized and she did such a superb job with that chapter that's such a beautiful vision yeah because violence that's uh violence is part of human history uh to a degree that it must be seductive it must be there must be a strong pull like it's not insane people it's there's something probably deep within our nature that craves violence and then when there's charismatic leaders that inspire that and revolution plus violence that that i could see that being extremely seductive to us like when you're truly suffering in your current situation whatever is you're being oppressed by governments or being oppressed by the powerful violent revolution is probably there's something deep within us that belongs to that and also this kind of the julian maxwell to jeffrey epstein right you need that woman to be like no no this is okay honey yeah come along it's not a big deal don't listen to what your parents told you they're just prudes it's a siren song what do you uh what do you think about just laying maxwell into the trial and so on again maybe the interesting story there is about the coverage of the trial so like the story is more complex and interesting than the actual horrific acts themselves so to me i don't maybe i'm not knowledgeable enough but to me she's also truly evil i don't know where to maybe you can help me to figure out who is more evil the uh just like you said now the person says it's okay it's okay that uh helps the evil doer or is it the evildoer themselves i don't know but i think she's a she scares me more than jeffrey epstein somehow yeah there's people like that in the world like a twitter poll do you think it's more evil or less evil to kill someone because you've been paid to do it and and people the winning answer was more evil and i said it was less because i think in that case you can kind of check out you could be like this isn't my i'm just doing a job yeah i i don't you know you kind of can i think in a sense if you have a certain mindset like intellectual remove yourself from the situation i'm just a conduit uh when you're talking like i haven't been following her case that that much just because you mostly watched cnn and cena is not covering it well i think my broader point would be people who are untouchable and who know they're untouchable do much worse things than those of us who aren't that way can appreciate like i'm i was just talking about on twitter about rosemary kennedy she was one of jfk's sisters it's not clear whether she was developmentally disabled or had like depressive mental illness there was something clearly off with her to some capacity and at age 23 they gave her a lobotomy and the thing with the lobotomy is you have to be conscious you know they don't put you under so you have to be counting backwards while their scalpels in your brain and they stop but they stopped they did too far she became mentally like a two-year-old you know never had bladder control for the rest of her life couldn't really talk or walk and when that happened they just put her away to some home and they never mentioned her again or they didn't tell the brothers or sisters where she went the lobotomy was only revealed in 1987 um and they pretended oh she's uh you know in this home for kids with special needs and it's just like like that to me is very very scary that someone could you know do this to their that people are i saw people respond like oh that was you know cutting edge technology at the time haha but i'm like i don't think that that was really uh done that that frequently or be hearing more about it all these you know botched lobotomies and my understanding is lobotomies are very hard to like you they would want to do something like a mass murderer or like like if someone's really bad like if the person's left an invalid like who cares kind of situation but you're dealing with something like this like she's not killing people she's not assaulting people she's just difficult because she's making your vaunted family look bad so um so that's to you that's what is it like psychopathy or something like that like you don't care about you just you you do horrific things and you don't really care i can't diagnose joe kennedy but what i would say like which elaine maxwell i can't empathize because i don't underst i first of all even in a positive sense i don't know what it's like to be grooming my son to be the president and lost you know the other son in war i don't know what that's like uh i don't know what it's like to be so wealthy like i have you have to give joe kennedy credit because a lot of what he was fighting for was to allow you know irish people and catholic people acceptance into like high society and he was up against a lot of pressure with that and he's like i'm gonna you know screw these people i'm gonna be recognized and we're gonna make people recognize so that somebody said for that but i mean i i i can't relate to people like him yeah but i mean that like is just terrifying like i mean one of the big reasons i'm an anarchist is like when you have someone who has that sense of amount of power over somebody else a lot of times they're gonna do bad things and have no consequences do you think uh in the just lane maxwell case and epstein case would do you think they were trying to blackmail people like trying the what the conspiracy theorists kind of described that's probably not too far away from reality um did they intentionally try to put powerful people in compromising situations so that they can um basically get more and more power yeah i think that was a vanity fair piece that you're referring to or oh sorry i'm just referring to a general concept oh there was so there was an article that broke this down because this article is either fortune business week vanity fair i remember a major major reputable outlet and they were they made the reporter made the point they asked around and they go this guy's a billionaire or extremely wealthy at least no one i know ever traded with him like where is his money coming from there's no there's no paper trail so they're like okay if if it's not trading and trades are public often you know where's this money coming from and it's also like why are all these people allowing epstein to be their business manager when he has no kind of track record to show for it so the hypothesis was he would get people into uncompromising situations with underage girls secretly film it and then he would you know black they'll mail them accordingly well i guess that would make sense i know it makes sense but i also see a lot of evidence that he's just very charismatic in a room so so and i've also seen you know that's how human connections get made like business deals get made yeah but how where's his money coming from oh like they rich people without blackmailing just uh like him close like him as a friend not arguing that like okay i like jeff epstein make sure you pull that quote yes i'm a business person i like jeffrey i love like or love love i'm in love with um this escalated quickly i'm gonna hand over him to be my money manager to have 20 of my state fine where is he making the money for that twenty percent that's the thing that there's no paper trail have him trading or anything so i can understand why oh i see yeah interesting what were your 20 20 um favorite moments you mean 20 21 yeah yeah yeah clearly it's just laying maxwell a trial it just really stands out to me it's very moving which is why i bring it up no uh moving here so move moving here but for me i i think we actually didn't cover that with you and i'd love to get your comment uh because you said this for the first time in your life you moved so it's not just about the death the place you go to it's the actual act of moving is also a leap the decision was that i'm going to give away my salary at mit so stop taking salary give away the group so students no more research the grant funding i still keep an mit affiliation just because i have friends and colleagues they're still doing research but giving away really primarily is the source of money so no salary and let it go to zero let my bank account go to zero and uh take a leap in san francisco or elsewhere and as covid broke out and a lot of people started talking to me about san francisco about the cynicism there and i'll go there and there is a kind of so it's not all the woke stuff and all that kind of things which is also a problem it's less it's uh less about dreaming about a big future about building a big future and more about some kind of identity politic battles that they're just you could say some some aspect in the positive light is important but in a place like silicon valley to me the most important thing is to do big things um and for that to be most of the conversation and so that cynicism was there and then i went to look at austin and austin it was the opposite yeah it's the optimism and you have people like as i talked to so elon was the optimistic about making this the capital of artificial intelligence and technology and so on and then um mr joe rogan now just the optimism about making this the cultural capital of the world of uh i mean specifically comedy but like it just radiates from just the excitement and uh i've seen not many people of that nature in my life and when i see that in their eyes that engine that fire of wanting to create something special about the place first of all those people rarely fail that's first of all and second of all that's contagious it's contagious yes and so all that combined for me 2021 was this the the actual leap of taking the leap saying all right well um i'm actually going to do this so not just giving away the salary not giving away all that but the whole thing that's it you just move to a place there's an empty building you know and you're moving into it um and this is a new life and that leap i don't know it's a scary leap to take because i've taken that leap many times in my life and this is where you know parents and all those kinds of cynicism's really destructive because you know um from a cynical perspective is you know i worked at google so why leave google a very high paying salary that you can have google then mit why leave mit like that's mit this is you've always dreamed about like why do you get a phd yeah you've loved mit or why leave mit i mean it's the same process i've gone through with a lot of things in life like you've been saying every single stage and you need that um you need friends you need support groups and all those kinds of things that are extremely important but in the end it's about taking the leap and for me 2021 was this leap and to me that one one of the most beautiful things you can do in life is to take those leaps and that's something that i think is no longer a thing in new york there's no sense of hope you don't go to new york now if if there's been such an assault and intentionally are there otherwise maybe it's inevitable they didn't have a choice but there's been such an assault on creativity and small business in new york that no one or very few people who are in new york right now think things are going to get great soon whereas here i feel it's every day is just something exciting is going to happen and that's part of the culture and how the conversation goes it's just in vogue to be cynical in new york and san francisco i hope it changes because what i love about new york and what i love about austin also is um the weirdos the characters they the just the variety of personalities that if you just walk around you get to meet them and i think new york still has that but it has the extra cynicism on top of it yeah that's a negative i mean just becoming friends with joe he inspired me to be nicer to people to not take myself seriously to be humble to um to celebrate friends not to be competitive you know like all those things since i started listening to his podcast from the very beginning it was it just radiated from the guy the thing that people don't appreciate is joe rogan likes it when you bust his chops yeah i mean it's a lot of people at that level like if it's oh mr rogan you're laughing at everything they say they don't want that it's very uh phony and they feel uncomfortable because they know that everything they say is hilarious um i remember i went with him he was doing a performance here and i was yeah you were there and he was doing his set and i i'd reached the point now where i don't think of him as joe rogan you know it's just like my buddy's doing stand-up you forget and then i looked at the audience and i remember i'm like oh this is like a religious experience for these people but you forget who he is because he doesn't carry himself like a big shot yeah yeah and still i mean he gets competitive as fuck like i argue with him a lot i mean uh when i talked to francis collins and pfizer ceo you better believe i heard from joe and then we would just get super drunk and argue about it so it's um i mean it's beautiful and he he gets really passionate so it's not like it's not like easy to argue with him but that's great when you don't take it personally that's fun as you and i discussed and i'm sure he wouldn't mind us saying this but like that moment when you first get a text from joe rogan and it's some boomer meme like i i finally felt like i've arrived as a person a boomer meme uh what kind of boomer me what are we talking about like he just some silly meme but it's just like this is the kind of thing you can imagine someone's uncle posting on facebook yeah it's joe rogan texting it to you yeah i mean for me also with elon obviously there's a few people i'm just saying folks that people know also jim keller who's worked with elon uh so i've had conversations with them because it's just my line of work they're realizing that everything is possible in this world yeah yeah which is not the russian mindset yeah well okay all right that's let's uh style it down a notch yeah it's uh when elon calls first principles thinking but really it's just not being limited by the constraints of the past yes and so saying like okay this is how things have been done but can be done much much better and uh that has to do with manufacture like how do we how do we do this 10 times cheaper like everyone says it's this it's super expensive but is it does it really need to be this is more of a question about manufacturing about how to take build a product how to actually have a product at scale that has an impact and just having a very serious engineering like to the level of physics of discussion about building a thing and fucking doing it and just being around people that did it and uh you know basically literally or figuratively said fuck you to everybody in the room that said they can't do it and that that energy so that i've gotten to know elon a lot better in 2021 that to me it's like everything the whole thing that moving here and being surrounded by the optimistic energy and then the individual interactions with people that refuse to be like brought down by the yeah the cynicism and the nature yeah the naysayers it's um that to me is what i'm gonna remember this year for and i hope it like materializes into a something concrete here in austin and i feel is is doing that i really am curious to be a fly on the wall i'm sure it'll happen at some point watching you and elon talk to each other because he's even more of a robot than you he was on the babylon b podcast and i was honored to be able to be in the room while this was happening and with the guys at the be do um at the end of every podcast they have like like 10 questions i don't think this worm with this is one of those no no this and they go to elon um would you would you rather be batman or iron man you know because they're both like multi-millionaire industrialists and elon being elon is like well let's think this through there's different kinds of bats you've got you know fruit bats and you've got insect well it's called batman batman sure it'll fly right that's comply i mean iron man and i'm just sitting there holding dude just answer the question it was so literal i was like damn i guess by this point uh i've released a podcast with him that's uh several hours and it's exactly as as you would imagine it's exactly as you would imagine there was this super technical the movie her yes of course so there's that one scene it's when um what is it joaquin who's the lead character yeah a walking phoenix yeah so he's the lead and he falls in love with siri basically he was played by scarlett johansson and there's another artificial ai that she's talking to and she's like oh can i uh permission to go into nonverbal communication with this professor and and the guy's like sure and they just start talking to each other in their robot and i'm just imagining the two of you having this mind-meld well that so there's both the humor of that but also the practical nature of the kind of conversations to have it's so great because it's uh it's problem solving mode okay yeah yeah okay it's so that is fun that is exciting because like you stop completing sentences i actually feel at home because you don't need to say the full sentences anymore you could just like say random words and you start to understand what you're talking about and then you can have multiple conversations at the same time and go on these tangents one of the biggest problems i have with podcasting for me talking i have to finish my sentences i have to actually finish making a point yeah which is a big problem because there's like a listener that needs to hear the point being finished as opposed to completing your sentences uh in inside your own mind and like the the thing i find is useful to elon does exact same thing is when the line of thinking is no longer useful you just ran you just switch to the next thing you just leave that whole thing behind you don't need a nice transition you don't need any of that and also just um it's the first principles thing it's like zooming in on the on the elephant in the room i love that it's so energizing it's just that that's what i love about engineers it's not the it's not it's not the maybe most eloquent communication style but i um i love it what about you so you said moving the book the book what else um and you've been really excited about so that's anarchist handbook but you've also been non-stop excited about white bill that was most of this year you've been actually made significant progress yeah i'm on page 40 of the second draft and it's really kind of funny because when you're doing your i think 10th book i lost track already um the first draft is actually pretty good like i'm going back and like all right this is gonna be a whole slog i'm like oh i just have to cut and paste this and basically tweak a few words so um i did a good job with the first draft it's uh it's also funny when you're writing um how and i guess this is the mark of a good professional writer the my personal feelings don't match how the characters in the book come off like i have a lot of fondness um for people like emma goldman and alexander berkman and they're early on in the book but they're not good people like and i'm writing and i'm writing it objectively and whatever and i'm reading this i'm like they come off much worse than my personal um appraisal of them um so it's kind of interesting as a writer when you're watching it i guess kind of like an attorney right like you can have in a situation where you as an attorney you have a lot of fondness for your client but you realize that they probably did this thing or you could not they could be the other way like they're innocent but you you're it's hard for you to make a good case for them because the data is not there can you actually talk about your writing process sure several ways so one your writing process but two by way of advice of how how to write you've talked about in the past like your your first draft is these kind of uh disparate or more chaotic and that yeah in the same way maybe i was saying in the engineering discussion you don't complete the sentences yes thoughts the first like real good writing advice i remember getting was this book by peggy noonan called what i sought the revolution and she was ronald reagan's speechwriter she still writes for the wall street journal um i the book i bought was at a used bookstore in louisburg pennsylvania when i was in college and the spine is cocked i still have it it was 99 cents um and she talked you know when you're writing for a president this is no joke especially for a president who's this no the great communicator reagan you know so and you have to you have to be very inspirational but also not come off as corny which is very hard to do and she in the book talks about how she wrote speeches for him how she'd you know i'm paraphrasing her and this i haven't read her book in a couple decades but basically she would write like a brain dump and it's just garbage and she was like that's okay just get it all out there um and then you know there's that expression all writing is editing so for the white pill specifically this is i don't know if it's the most ambitious book i've ever done your reader i think is more ambitious because that's all of north korea's history and it's written somebody else's voice that person's abortion and you like you mentioned you had to read a giant number six books that says research yeah well maybe can we just pause can you say what white pill is about sure it's a tale it's it's about hope and it's a tale of good and evil and i think that's i i don't want to tip my hand too much okay but people always like how do you think why are you so hopeful and i'm not hopeful on an emotional level i'm hopeful because looking at history i think there's certain things that not not will certainly happen again but it's not all implausible to happen again and that the the good guys will win and this is one of those cases so you know i had the book took on a life of its own it's very different from how originally conceived it i originally conceived it as a kind of retelling of camus philosophy um ryan holiday who he used to be close friends with i've talked to him in a while he has a whole kind of cottage industry based on the stokes of the past i'm like okay can i ask them once can i do this with kamu he said sure and then i reread camus and recently and it wasn't what i was had remembered oh it's like pausing that i apologize to interrupt so it's interesting so he kind of took ideas from stoics and started to kind of use it as a book it gives you advice about how to live life from historic perspectives and you were thinking is there something in existentialism absurdism or something specifically in camus thinking or i think you've mentioned sisyphus yes specifically like his philosophical work yeah so you were trying to see like is there can i resurrect this that's actually uh i would think that's an interesting project and it's it's sad to hear that it was uh it didn't materialize in exactly that form because i thought there would be a lot in that so i had douglas murray on my show and he also made the point like when you go back and read kamu there's not that much there the myth of sisyphus is not at all how i remembered it yeah the vast bulk of that book is like literary criticism so he's talking about dust deaths you know there's different people who are embodiments of the absurd but i'm like this isn't there's not much to take from here this the actual title essay is basically like a like sixth chapter uh essay at the back of the book which you know it's it's it's it's good for what it is but there's not that much there to draw i'm extremely um he's a great hero of mine i think his life is just enormously admirable he fought very hard against the you know the nazi occupation uh his book the plague which i find unreadable is an allegory about you know germany conquering france and so on and so forth wait a minute why is the plague unreadable it's the kind of book where reading the book doesn't add anything to the plot the plot is a play comes sweeps over the town destroys a lot of life and vanishes as quickly as it came you don't need to read the book now like you get the point that i i deeply disagree have you yes of course i've read the plague to me i mean the plague is about the doctor and it's about love and it's about the different roles that humans take in a time of tragedy like the plague also it's an allegory so you can start to think about like what you know you could whether it's nazi germany whatever you think that is yeah um to me though that was about love and about like the role like the the highest ideal being the doctor that like sacrifices themselves for others and like still has love and hope i mean i did to me it that the way that story is told i think has a lot of meaning it's like it to me you're saying that's interesting you say it this way but to me it's like saying animal farm doesn't need to be read because it's an obvious story i don't think there's much plot to the plague i think animal farm has a very long plot and a complex plot but there's experiences within so the situation is set up and plague and there's experiences that start to reveal a philosophy so yeah it's not very plot driven yeah but but the so i i would say you still should read it but the plot doesn't like you you didn't give away anything currently right that that's so some books are just i mean iran is similar to that in a sense like the plot is not as important as the behavior of the different people in that plot i think she's very plot heavy no she has plot but i'm saying that's not necessarily the important thing to me the behavior of the people is the important thing sure but you could you could you could like separate it into a bunch of blog posts and they stand on their own i i would have to think about that with iran she cr she does through the plot create a world where you start to understand right different values that people have but yeah but that's what the plot serves yeah i don't know i would have to think but in the plague it's the behavior of the people that's really important and the same i mean the stranger too i mean these like um i'm sure i'm trying to scramble here for books i i really appreciate that don't have a plot i mean uh no uh notes from underground so obviously this desk has a huge amount of plot in in most of his work herman hess has a huge amount of plot thomas man doesn't have the pl he's the one who doesn't have plots that was right yeah would you say kafka has a plot i think kafka is very heavy plot driven yeah but i just don't see that i guess i guess metamorphosis doesn't really have a plot yeah but when there's like crawling around it's like a vignette it's not really like a this is not sure yeah a hunger artist one of my probably favorite short stories is that kind of a short story it's a pretty long short story of kafka's is really interesting as a is about a man i don't know if you read it no i think so um it's about a man that uh it's like a freak in a sense that um his skill is that he can fast for a long time okay and then people gather on the cage and look at him as he as he fasts i don't actually remember if he's in the cage or not but the and uh eventually he fast so long that people don't even care anymore like they just leave so there's a there's a it has to do something it makes me think about like don't become the way you live don't become like a freak show a circus act like live for an idea live live for um something that brings you joy or don't live for the sake of attention for the sake of attention that's yes but yeah um yeah anyway so uh you i rudely interrupted because you were talking about the plague and connecting it to the writing process of white pill yeah well anyway so you know how i was writing this one i just had a first draft of notes and there were it's not in chronological order it's like i read certain books as research and then i had the pull quotes that was necessary there um and now i'm basically rearranging everything and putting it so the book started as ryan holidays right by holiday s caboo the working title would have been the point of tears because this is great comeu is a great quote maker and he has this line about man must live live to the point of tears which i think is just what i love about him is camus you always comes off as like he's clenching his teeth he's clenching his teeth both in terms of like barely mitigated rage and injustice like when he sees people suffering it just it just really makes him like just upset to the core but also this sense of uh not taking life for granted and kind of just pushing yourself and pushing the boundaries and and you know his point being that life is inherently meaningless which gives a great opportunity to impute meaning to it and to create our own meaning to life so taking the the the main essay from mythic sisyphus that was the the origin story for the white pill but then it became something completely different and so then it became how are you so optimistic in the face of everything that's going on in the world and i started writing it when kovitz started hitting and i because again i'm not optimistic because of some temperament of my temperament of mine i'm optimistic because you know people talk about how if the us didn't exist china would just become an empire and take over everything empires are expensive and they're they're they ex like look at the british empire you know look at the soviet union like it's not automatically sustainable it costs a lot of a lot of things to make sure when you're geographically you know all over the all over the world literally to keep everyone in line it's not at all like a super villain in a movie like once it happens it's happy ending for them so yeah that was the start and i'm like all right let me tell um one thing i'm good at is telling stories so this is really uh so this is narrative uh plot driven very very plot driven and also heavily character driven but the characters are real yeah got it so it's interesting to kind of mention what kind of what does the first draft kind of look like in terms of what what kind of things do you plop down oh so it'll be like let's suppose i just read like you know some book called the guillotine at work which was an early book attacking lenin from the narco communist perspective so it'll just be like all the different quotes like a paragraph here double space another paragraph you know blah blah so on and so forth whereas for other sections where i wasn't just using a book as research there would be like talking about mckinley getting shot like it's just me writing the narrative and that i could just pretty much copy paste into the second draft by way of advice would you give that is advice is that's a good way to do it is that a very peculiar way your brain no so this is this is actually advice i feel comfortable giving to people who are trying to write uh because it's just like with the gym right if you did seven sets seven excuse me reps last week and you did eight this week it's psychologically motivating because you're going the right direction and your mind extrapolates so make sure tell yourself i'm gonna get a page done today or two pages done sit your ass on the computer you're not allowed to get up to get those two pages it doesn't matter if they look at garbage because if you have a 300 page first draft and it's crap at least you have something to work with and that's a big number so if you're gonna the thing is since the first draft is gonna be crap if you're editing as you're right it's gonna be extremely discouraging and it's also trying to drive and then doing reverse at the same time it's it's a completely nonsensical way to do it get it all out there don't look it over if you have a great line put in your phone and then add it to the the draft so it'll be a complete slog but editing that slog is gonna be a lot easier than creating it to begin with and when you see those disparate lines all laid out on the page how difficult is it to then start stitching it together do you find that when you look at a list of those things the final product will look very different yeah how will you actually use those lines no i will use those lines then i have a file called scraps so like if the line's no longer used i put in my scrap pile i'd love to see what's in this grab pile okay yeah sure one of the things i've been pulling scraps is a lot of times when i was earlier writing i would have contemporary references and i realized that that's bad because i want the the the reader to be in the past as the present so if you're talking about let's say 1901 and you're referring to obama that screws people up so i have to pull all those okay let's talk about some new year's resolutions do you ever do new year's resolutions do you ever think like that like take a special day in the year to think about how you're going to try to change yourself or you do you try to transform yourself every single day when you wake up well i usually have several projects i'm working on at once so there's always incremental progress on those right but like you know it's nice to have a deadline by the end of 2022 i'll accomplish this kind of a like to hold yourself responsible and then you could do that at the end at the beginning of the year to think about that both philosophically like what kind of big magic not projects that you can quantify but more like how can i change my life or like i mentioned take the leap of different kinds and then there's specific things like finish the book i years ago and i'm so i'm i think on some level you much less than me but i think you're increasing in this direction i realized it's more i have to learn how to be a surfer and not a driver because when you reach the level we're at in our careers or in our place in the culture a lot of this is luck yeah and a lot of this is just like like i'm just going along for the ride because it's kind of counter-intuitive like you know like the success of the anarchist handbook was counter-intuitive um so all i'm hoping for is you know getting the book done i am extremely proud of it um and and just also you know building a you know we had thanksgiving together at blair's house just building a great uh upcoming community here in austin which is it has happened very quickly i was there was going to be another um surprise here there's a girl named natalie um sidesurf and she makes these ultra realistic cakes like if you've seen those cakes online where it looks like cutting a puppy like she makes those kind of things so she's here um in austin yeah you know so like moved permanently i think she's been here for a while i've never i haven't met her yet but i just kind of chatted with her so there's just it's just so many there's so many um scenes happening here um that are overlapping so in general finish the book keep building your community i mean you've already been doing that here you've been here several months i've been making a point to introduce people to each other and everyone's just really getting along very well that's great and the book is the focus the book is the focus what about the podcast that you're doing you're welcome yes i mean i enjoy it and it's been growing a lot i finally got a new computer which my friend jay installed so i can have a decent camera because of my old this is my mindset as a hoarder like i was more interested in spending money on a pareto autograph than actually getting a computer that's from the 20th century um so but i i i'm such an old school person in that in my head podcasts are like so ephemeral like i don't like there's some episodes of my podcast i'm really proud of and there's a lot of friendships i've made as a result of it that really mean a lot to me no question it's made my life a family better place but it's not the same as that book on the shelf especially when the book is something that i think matters much more than i do yeah there's a permanence to it there's a seriousness to laying down the words on paper yeah like really giving him thought yeah that's true but pocket i mean i'm a huge fan of podcasts you're just you're you don't listen to podcast much which is fascinating to yeah like at all and i like i don't know how mine is so successful yeah yeah i just love the medium uh yeah but you're i i love the authenticity the the realness of the medium that's really nice i just understood for the it's starting to click because like my pal blair white she was just on rogan and the first 10 minutes i i was i was so angry like i was sitting there like yelling at the screen because joe and blair you would think that they're going to start talking about you know trump or trans issues or moving to austin they start talking about shark reproduction yeah and neither these dumbasses knew anything about it and i know a lot about it and they're like oh is it like this or do the sharks lay eggs and i'm sitting there like if you don't know why you're talking about this why why are you talking and i could also see why people like these shows because they feel like they're friends with the people like they're sitting in the room because i felt like it was in that room and i wanted to shake both of them you're in the room so know what about transforming yourself any any resolutions like that oh i'm doing a slight bulk now so i'm almost at my heaviest weight ever but i've been i couldn't go to the gym this week because i love underwear under weather um so that's a little frustrating but yeah so uh are we gonna get some more modeling picks what are we what's what what's is their goals there so my heaviest i've i'm i'm 4-8 the heaviest i've ever been was when and this is when i was like he's exaggerating he's not at that that's the metric um oh sorry are you talking about your height yeah um barely four six so the heaviest i've ever been when i was like really high body fat because i was just because i learned because i couldn't gain weight as a kid so when i figured out i could actually gain weight i like i would was 164.5 so i want to hit 165 and then see take it from there i have a friend uh who's been helping me my buddy trey goff and this kid's stronger his yeah jake his username on instagram is stronger but the number five instead of letter and then the number five said the letter s but he does um i've never it looks like it's photoshop like your brain can't process it you know the human flag no oh yeah yeah sorry he does human flag push-ups wow so he is horizontal parallel to the ground right he's holding himself up like a flag but he could also do do this while some he's moving parallel to the earth side to side while he it's just crazy that's really difficult so you oh you're interested in that kind of stuff no but i'm saying like he's been helping me out so like the guy knows what he's doing he's just a really impressive kid i love that kind of stuff like uh body weight stuff so yeah my primary mode of working out it's very like the perfect you ever seen leon like the professional that uh with natalie portman that movie it's like i have a pull-up thing as you push up some pull-ups it's very like um i'm just missing the milk i like working out at home just like that um and the body weight stuff you can go so much with it and it's super functional for everything else you live in for life for living life well i'm on the other hand i don't care what functionality the thing that really bothers me like i go i know joe's thinking of opening up a gym like a private gym there's only like one power cage here at the golds i go to yeah i don't know it's sour so there's only one or that sometimes people aren't using it i'm like no one's doing dead lifts in here no one just me yeah it's golds uh by the way i don't want to say where i'll tell you off mike but there's a there's a few really like ghetto places around austin there are just like these shitty jean gyms that nobody wants to go to but they have iraq they have like if you want to lift heavy that kind of stuff that they 24 hours that's the thing gold oh but there are 24 hours in the following way there's a code okay and you just go in okay and you turn on the lights that's fine then you work out i don't want to i don't want to meet people exactly well that's just not true the people sometimes there's people and they're great yeah like and i've had fans come up to me at goals and they've all been cool except accept oh no except except if i have my headphones on yep and i'm doing deadlifts yep i don't need you to come over tap my ear and start giving me critiques about my form this actually happened yes i'm still angry about it i'm pulling my in piece thank you yeah people are hilarious i was uh recently in uh had actually the wildest day ever in my life that was so many things happened in a row so i went to a wedding in l.a andrew uh andrew schultz is and with whitney cummings and and and joe rogan and a bunch of other fascinating people it's just speaking of weirdos does the comedian like the reason i find the comedian is awesome one they're authentic they're just cool people yeah yeah uh but they're also just weird like you don't become a comedian for not being like fucked up in all kinds of different interesting ways anyway so there's the wedding i'm um you know me it was only carbs at the wedding so i didn't eat i didn't eat for a long time before so i was like already fasted 20 hours 25 hours and but so that this whole story of everything that happens is is lex like 40 hours fasted with joe rogan drinking a lot of whiskey and so you're drinking too oh heavy on 40 oh my god that's crazy so it is calories that was my only source of calories is the whiskey and i so i didn't trust myself with carbs when i'm drunk i just don't enjoy it because i'll forget and i just enjoy eating like a strict healthy diet when i'm drunk because i'd rather eat more food that's healthy yeah versus not and so anyway so then we went to to vegas together and then uh just kept doing wild thing after another wild thing uh rogan opened up for whitney cummings he just like showed up at a random party that he wasn't invited and he did a thing he almost started a fight because some guys said stop spread yelled at him said stop spreading misinformation uh and then uh we run into david goggins at vault this is my first time meeting david i i've talked to david a lot over the phone and we were supposed to do a thing together and this is me trash out of my mind meeting david for the first time with his incredible wife oh rogan's wife was there by the way joe rogan's wife david's wife made me realize that i really want to be married because they're not they make um their partners better yeah like that i was um there's a certain aspect of marriage that i'm afraid of that like your partner takes you away from life you don't get to experience life as much um but this was like they were enriching them i don't know it's like the world's most powerful support group it was cool anyway so then of course drunk lex is uh challenges goggins to push-ups i saw this on instagram whatever we're in the middle of this and you're in your suit in this suit in the middle of casino there's a crowd gathering like it's joe rogan me and david goggins and i'm just doing push-ups with him and rogan is like commentating and yelling and screaming it was it was surreal and just going on to the next thing and next thing the next thing like this and then drove um all the way from vegas back to uh to la with with joe and whitney and his wife and it was like what what is this and all of it is done in 24 hours the one valuable lesson is don't fast and drink like excessively so i've learned that because what happens is um liquor hits your mind my mind sorry i'll speak about my particular mind like the intellectual part of my brain got hit really hard really fast so i was not able to even more so than usual stitched together sentences i understood everybody well so like major immigrant again so like meeting david i want to say so many things he's so inspiring to me right but all i said was like hello and uh and i like i remember like opening my mouth to like try to say more and i was like and then i would just close my mouth and not be able to say anymore this is why this is one of the reasons i don't drink ever damn it removes certain barriers like it allows you to maybe have fun that you wouldn't otherwise but yeah definitely for a person who values intellectual eloquence and but i also hate being hungover the hungover party yeah that's the worst yes and you also like i did this to myself yeah but it also teaches me that this too shall pass because i've been hungover and i've quit drinking so many times in my life that it realizes it makes you realize that all the unpleasant feelings all you have to do is just wait it out okay fine it took me a long time to realize that that expression means the other thing what's the other thing if things are going great this too shall pass yeah i always talk about suffering no i always thought about it as being more like don't worry if things are bad it'll pass it's like it's also like if something's going great it's not gonna be this way forever it's like buckowski said love is a fog that fades with the first daylight of reality do you think love can last oh yeah we're gonna win who's we the good guys didn't hitler also think he's the good guys he's wrong because you know why why he didn't win [Laughter] so you think it's permanent so the this one time the good guys winning it will last it won't pass because i think all of it passes unfortunately i think we're going to win and win big in the not so dis future do you have specific things in mind or no or just a sense about human civilization about society waking up i don't know about waking up but i think the um increased understanding on all sides of the political spectrum that um corporate america and corporate news outlets uh are self-motivated actors and those motivations are often inimical to what others would regard as desirable is something that i think is happening with increasing frequency so what do you think about the the political landscape in general you had a great conversation with glenn beck and he said that uh he talked to trump and believes that trump is uh donald trump is definitely running in 2024 or very likely running in 2024. uh i think he said he thinks he'll have a good chance of winning or i don't remember that but the fact that he was running was a surprise to you do you think uh donald trump would be running in 2024 uh given that glenn beck you know has a much better relationship with trump than i do to put it mildly if glenn beck is certain this is going to happen i would defer to glenn beck's judgment um do you think he has a chance of winning do you think he'll win anyone in a binary political system who's the nominee has a chance like whoever the republican democrat has a chance i think also it's a lot easier to vote for someone that you have voted for in the past so that's why incumbents have a big advantage there's not that psychological barrier to cover i think it's also useful for trump that he's banished for social media because then he doesn't have to have the responsibility of governing um and all the costs of that you know because no matter what decisions you make while governing some people aren't going to like that so he gets to kind of be above the radar or below the radar rather to some extent i don't think it's at all a given that he would get the nomination when i say the good guys are going to win i certainly don't mean donald trump i don't think victory is going to come as a consequence of washington do you want to make america great again i think america is great so uh this is my failed attempt at humor uh one of many uh there there are also hats that giuliani and jim jeffords wore that said people can look this up they said because they were in south the border make mexico great again also like that to me it was like like just the syntax there uh okay so you you you don't even think you might get the nomination if you who else might i mean they if you had asked two year three years out who the nominee in 2020 would be donald trump wasn't even or 2016 rather wasn't even on the on the radar screen so we have a long way to go uh two years is a long way to go yeah um especially because we're coming out of covid there might be some governor who becomes a rock star for some reason maybe someone's gonna have some moment some congressmen might have some big moment where they're you know screaming at somebody and all of a sudden they become a rock star in the republican party it could be one of the celebrities we don't um think about i mean donald trump is essentially not a political figure before right exactly so it could be any of the famous republic like um right-leaning celebrities um i don't even know which way mcconaughey lee uh leans no i think he's the lefty or he's the democrat but he's not running but but like people like that just might step into the ring yeah i don't think they'd have that much of a chance because they're i think the republican party there's a asymmetry they'd be much more skeptical of like an actor than the democrats would be because they would regard that actor as coming as a kind of um venturing candidate or whatever right but there's other kinds of celebrities like uh jacob could run as a as a republican that's a good example yeah yeah that would be interesting so military person right yeah but already like for example dr oz is thinking of running force is going to run for the senate in pennsylvania and there's already been a lot of research people slamming him on twitter and social media for past positions he's taken so um you know desantis is the figure of the moment but scott walker was the figure of the moment in the 2016 cycle and he didn't even make it to iowa yeah and i wonder what role does covet play in all of this right in terms of um you know i'm mostly optimistic and hopeful about the world like when i look at the world i'm excited by most things i've been a little bit uh or a lot disappointed by the lack of great leadership in a time of trouble because to me one of the uh one of the great things about a difficult time is it brings out the great leaders again it's the up and down things like you don't want to ask for war you don't want to ask for pandemics but when they happen um it's it's a great opportunity for the human spirit to flourish and the fact that it didn't quite in the way that i hoped it would it's disappointing i think there's still time too because people are trying to figure out what to do as we emerge from the fog yeah so i'm excited by 2024 somebody said this dark cynical thing i i hope this is not true but like that there was some doubt about the results of the election in 2020 that in 2024 both sides like it will just start becoming standard to completely reject the results of an election no matter who wins well that's my perspective i don't regard elections as legitimate um and i see what you're saying not in the terms of that that basically the process itself was illegitimate yes there's like cheating or something yeah but i think that that's pretty much a given uh has been a given like it's the republicans often say oh they got all these illegals to vote you know or the americans will say the voting machines were hacked or the media and so on and so forth because despite all the people flapping their guns about democracy they only like democracy when it gives them the results that they want to ask about something else that glenn beck said that i thought was really interesting i agree with him very much on this and it was refreshing to hear although he kind of made it turned into a point about why trump is great or whatever um but the point was the following which is he doesn't want to talk to anybody who can't say at least one nice thing about everyone so like if you don't like donald trump if you don't like joe biden you should still be able to say one nice thing like legitimate nice not just like a dismissive nice thing but legitimately say what is one nice thing they did or like uh or who they are as a person not not like saying donald trump it's funny sometimes like no like legitimate where you really mean it and it's been really troubling to me how few people are able to do that about political figures i had a lot of people i've i think i tweeted something like this leading up to the election saying like you should be able to say something nice about both joe biden and donald trump and i've had um old friends um i don't want to say specific i guess to call them out but they several people one in particular like wrote me this long like several page email saying sam it was sam harris this is no uh but uh i have a lot of conversations with sam harris now and joe on both sides it's like the devil and the the angel on both my i don't know which one is which but just angel they're both devils uh and they said how could you say how could you even consider like that there's something positive about donald trump yeah here's an easy one he uh he has three wives with three kids with each but they all the kids get along i think that's really commendable yeah that donald trump jr and eric trump and baron can all get along with each other given the circumstances i think that speaks to something as some someone as a father ivanka so on the family level and i i see the same thing with actually uh one of the reasons i always found joe biden fascinating is he's had a lot of really traumatic things happen in his life yeah and uh if i shit my pants in front of the pope i'd be traumatized too i'm talking to a master troll about something sensitive and beautiful that is a man suffering with a loss i kind of know what he feels like right now i'm pretending to the pope this chair's ruined sorry elon you'd have to sit in it why is this chair feel it's a pretty good elon impression uh but yeah i mean uh like one criticism i tell joe rogan is like he he has trouble finding one positive thing to say about joe biden for example and i just don't i don't i don't like that i i want i think i mean i'm a big believer in the shit sandwich sticking on top here's an easy one i think joe biden clearly is a very amiable person like what's the amiibo it gets along with people like it seems really clear that maybe before president because it's different near the president but that he could call a lot of these republican senators get them on the phone and have a conversation with them yeah and it's not some kind of manipulation to some extent it is because they're all politicians but they he clearly seemed to be able to get wasn't like a an ideologue yeah yeah i mean but there's i mean maybe i'm a sucker for that kind of thing but uh the blue collar thing like riding the train you know the there's ways to connect with people and not it's seeing them as equals no matter where their walks of life are and i love it when presidents do that uh to some degree because of the wealth under which donald trump existed for a lot of his recent life he's less able to do that quite naturally maybe sometimes obama wasn't quite able the question i who's more blue collar trump or or biden and you you can easily make the case for both i think you could no not the blue collar but like like literally be able to fit in at a bar at a local bar and just like i can see both of them yeah you're right i could do both of them yeah and in fact obama doesn't quite no because he's got that ivy league if you had the ivy league thing yeah yeah um yeah you're right uh somehow donald trump can too easily yeah you can see him having a beer with the guys and yelling at the screen this is bullshit change the channel yeah and yeah i hope people do i think that's one of the most unpleasant things to me is um they're not able to empathize with the fact that half the country voted for another well it's also then it's just a bad strategy if you can't figure out why half the country is voting for someone you guard is like a demon well then how are you gonna supposed to fight this demon like you know when i did your reader the north korea book it's like don't you want to understand how these people get to where they got it's no one's saying that he's a good person but like there's a logic to their there's a method to their madness you've uh you've talked about national divorce a few times i've seen a couple videos recently where you're responding to articles it's kind of cool um can you talk about this idea of national divorce and as it stands today uh arguing for it maybe and if you could just out of curious in the context of those videos if you can steal man an argument against uh so i was the first one to kind of bring this issue back into the national um conversation i wrote a piece for observer in 2016. then jesse kelly had a piece a few months after that daver boy just recently did a piece on his stub stack earlier this year and it's become enough of a mainstreamed idea that um paleontology outlets like the national review have felt the need to respond to them so the point being that america has had at least two cultures since the beginning and that there's absolutely no reason and these cultures in recent years and this was in 2016 not mentioned 2021 have been increasingly antagonistic toward one another and have even lost the ability to communicate they're using language in different ways and that there's no reason for this to continue any uh further um and you know just you live your life we'll live hours and you know good goodbye and good luck there's no harm no ill will um now there's lots of arguments against them some of this are are completely i think stupid uh the stupidest one is well that's what china wants okay well i i mean i'm not going to live my life saying i'm just going to do the opposite or whatever china wants that that's that's not logic that's not a good pathway now i'm not saying that right or wrong but that's not a reason one way or another yeah you bring up china or russia you know that's exactly what uh china and russia want but sort of the strong way to phrase that is um it weakens america like not just the one america but like both sides in the divorce will be much weaker than they individually were together so in that sense not that you have to care about what china thinks but like it's a step but it's a big step backwards yes i think in the short term it is absolute big step backwards in terms of power uh there's no question that you know when you're trying to reestablish a society there's going to be a transition period that transition is going to be costly uh each side starts wondering wait a minute why are we still doing this we don't have to anymore we're not living with them so on and so forth so that's going to be a concern um i don't think that the whole point of america uh or even a large primary point of america is to be a bulwark against chinese power and there's gonna be very few people on earth you know given my work who have as much uh informed hatred and contempt for the chinese government as i do uh certainly um you know next to the north korean people maybe the people from eritrea there's few populations who i'm as worried about as uh the people under the rule of the red chinese my steel man argument is there's no way this is gonna be peaceful because the lines don't separate out well so all you're doing is basically just replicating the problem because the disparity isn't between you know like during the civil war north and south it's like it's between new york city and upstate new york between chicago downstate chicago once you get outside of la and like sacramento uh california in many ways like kentucky so it doesn't make sense so that's a strong argument i mean you've talked about that this process would be painful right it can't be pain and we're not just talking about violence it could be just even the civil war you could divide it clean somewhat cleanly obviously the kind of national divorce you might be suggesting is yeah people are living amongst each other so you have to literally move it's complicated right so that is a very strong argument it's i think a cogent argument against it two is it's not just china it's that there's a lot of bad actors in the world who maybe aren't like china certainly wants to carry itself and have an appearance at least on the world stage as civilized and a leader there's lots of smaller countries who without us are going to feel comfortable doing some very nefarious things um and they're not going to be scared of us anymore and so that would be a bigger concern in many regards than china so i think that's a reasonable one um it could be that both sides if this happens are gonna instead of work toward better the things that make each side bad would get worse yeah and that's you know having those pushed towards the malevolent extremes is i think a very legitimate criticism and a concern i mean as you suggested there's no guarantee that won't happen correct at all also there's a i think a reasonable argument to make is like are you america just as a symbol and the myth of america and i don't mean myth in a negative sense do you really want to throw that on the garbage like this meant a lot for a lot of people and a lot for history you're just going to be like okay good good work we're we're done here let's shut the lights so that's a i think a reasonable argument so those are the um biggest ones i would say and and still what is the case for national divorce and along which lines so like um in making the case for national divorce if it is desired based on which kind of ideas do you think it should be uh carried through i honestly i don't know that it has to be idea based like for example when czechoslovakia broke up when norway and sweden broke up it wasn't really ideological it was more cultural so i always say divorce into two but it would probably make more sense if it was like five because the northeast certainly new england has their own culture the west coast has their own kind of culture i don't know the thing is in any kind of persuasion technique right like once people are start this there's there's a difference between convincing someone they want to buy a car and what features you want so if you're at the point where we're arguing about the features then my work here is done you know what i mean like i don't have a dog in the fight in terms of what it's going to look like i just want to get to the point where you're at least considering seriously the idea of breaking up america and i would encourage people to go look at my article to see which i'm sure the arguments still hold uh five years later do you have a kind of vision of which of the two or which of the five like you actually have specific cultures i'll tell you exactly yeah if i told you and everyone listening in 2014 we weren't that long ago long ago which of these two things is more likely to happen 2014 texas secedes or declare secession from america or donald trump gets elected president everyone's voting for texas like in terms of prediction which is more likely so we had this one so it's not all unlikely we're going to have this one i don't know if that logic carries through you can't just say here's an unlikely thing that happened therefore anything can happen i just said you just earlier said anything had happened this episode didn't you life is suffering i wasn't listening to half the things you're saying you said it i said it yes you said anything can happen i'm definitely not here i'm like you with podcasts i do a podcast but i don't listen to it okay so yeah yeah it can happen but in which i guess i'm asking would you stay in texas a hundred percent so texas and i'd run for office probably it'd be fun no i'm gonna be the first president of texas i attended a debate between uh yaran brooks and joram hazoni i don't know if you know who that is the nationalist guy yeah he wrote a book called the virtue of nashville i read that book and then actually did a podcast with them they did a debate they both run here okay it was quite interesting and i tried to wear my michael mal's hat so the you're wearing it you now that from me yeah um it's funny because the metaphor applies across all of these level of collectivism so he was arguing that for the power of nation so you he would be arguing against national divorce but he was also arguing for marriage the power of actual marriage between individuals like um i think he's a conservative and what i really like about him is there's a clear philosophy of conservatism that he expresses and i think a lot of people get behind that philosophy because uh to me like conservatism and liberalism often is very kind of used loosely yes he has a clear philosophy that he's expressing there and is grounded in tradition he has a lot of value in tradition and so it's the thing you said about america like one of the one of the arguments against national divorce is like listen um we've been at it for a while like there is a lot of value in the fact that we've been at it for a while don't just throw it all away all the time so he says like philosophically he seems in a lot of walks of life revolution is should be avoided as much as possible i agree and so it's kind of interesting so he makes the case that there's something fundamentally powerful about the nation that we uh it's a it's a it's a nice way to group a culture and so national divorce i guess goes against that i mean do you find some aspect of the virtue of nationalism as you would put it powerful well powerful and in in a good sense or in a good sense so sorry yeah in a good sense like well yeah it brings out the best in humans i know at the best but it certainly brings out good things i have that line i always say about i love my country i hate the government because i love my country yeah so there is a love of country i think it's value but i i don't know that that's the i think it's also the case because the country happens to be america like i don't know if i was living in you know whatever i don't want to insult someone's country um uh canada yeah if i was living in canada i don't know that would be the truth this is a guy who calls basically every other country shithole country yeah that's true that's that's that's the fact yeah yeah so it's either you're either there's two types of countries texas or shitholes um oh wow you went full texas so you you you you're okay burning the northeast of the ground at this point okay i'm hoping for it i'm gonna call hope what they've done to new york city i will never forgive these people um and i hope that they suffer enormously uh consequences for what they've done to new york um it's unforget it's unconscionable the assault they've done and and no remorse over how many uh uh creative outlets that they've destroyed yes the cultural hub cultural center of the world new york was the sim this was the place where you go to put up your shingle and and move the needle and make things happen uh and i would understand if it was like okay we gotta suffer through this for a year but we're gonna make sure all these businesses have a kind of safety net to make sure that they kind of get through and survive this which they did to the banks in 2008 for example um and i'm saying this is an anarchist and there was none of that so i i burn it down and salt the earth uh it's it's because it's like watching like a zombie it's on it's unnatural it's it's an abomination so i mean sort of on the on the white pill side of things i i don't know about you maybe i have a sense that uh both silicon valley that for me personally maybe i have the same intensity of feeling as you do about new york it's just disappointing to see it be consumed with cynicism and a lot of other paralyzing forces but i still have hope for that place i think it's maybe it's the uh yoram kind of tradition hope that through momentum this the strong reemerges so like i have hope for new york i think new york will continue like not maybe on a scale of years but a scale of decades it would be ups and downs where it reemerges as a cultural center i just can't imagine a place like new york is like paris there's going to be long stretches of time where it leads the world paris has not been a cultural hub for a very long time yeah yeah you know the days of matisse and picasso and gertrude stein are long gone it's still it still is a hub even london isn't like yeah you know you're not there but what it is then london is still london paris is still paris yeah it's not the paris of old right london of all london is still a place it's a it's a tech hub it's a fashion hub it's a music hub i mean it's still a pretty strong hub yeah but not like during the beatles era right it's not like or during the sex pistols era but that's it could be just us romanticizing the past because what is a hub then no it's not rem without romanticizing the past because a hub is the place where everyone on earth our eyes are on you so in the late 60s the british and the mid 60s you see the british invasion you know the kinks and all these other bands coming out of uh great britain like they were the innovators this was the this this was the place that was happening well in that sense like and brooklyn you know 15 years ago but i guess uh maybe in that sense in the 21st century geographical hubs are becoming a thing of the past so like um you can be a hub in the digital space now so like it's not maybe you'll never have i don't think i think there will always be i mean what i'm saying digital space makes it easier for let's suppose cleveland to be a hub right because all you need like 10 people who happen to live in cleveland or you know akron was a minor all it takes is 10 to 50 people to create a yeah and maybe even less maybe it's just uh two or three affordable i mean there's been no shortage of articles talking about austin and what's happening here um and i know some of joe's plans and and you and i and and blair and and all these other people that you know my buddy andrew heaton moved here he's just one of the best people i know it's just i'm really really excited can i ask you some weird thing about friendship of course because you mentioned um sam he's mr harris to you and then didn't that bother you how he went after joe uh what did he do he's like oh in case you guys have brain damage from watching rogan's last episode like watch here's the answer and it's all like digs like that yeah yeah i didn't like that i didn't like that either uh i think sam doesn't like it either about himself okay uh he regressed those things because it's very easy to say from his perspective look this isn't the full size we're all going to show you the full size story here's the other side of the story please watch this and be informed that's a very reasonable thing to say yeah i don't quite understand this so they do this about each other now um i'll put three people on the table which is joe rogan sam harrison and brett weinstein and they have a way of talking like the other person is creating a lot of harm like publicly would say things like that and i understand there's emotion in it but like these are human beings that are friends of yours but i'll go the other way let's suppose it is true that joe's doing a lot of harm spreading misinformation being sarcastic isn't going to be persuasive whereas if you're like he's wrong here's the facts or hears or be informed that i to me but then i'm not sam harris i'm not a he's got a bigger audience to me so maybe he's the one who's right i'm wrong no he's well he's just human okay well i can't relate well have you seen your twitter lately i mean you're twi you get very you have a lot of fun on twitter i feel like twitter lets i've never done that with someone i'm friends with i never would okay let's put that on record it trolls me because if there's an issue with you i'm getting you on the phone yeah good i mean because then i'm not backing you into a corner publicly it doesn't make any sense strategically yeah and actually um brett weinstein um tweeted something sort of criticizing something i did already forgot what but he texted me first saying like is it okay if i tweet this yeah and i i said yep like i was excited yeah but i think there's some level of just be compassionate privately and be compassionate publicly like well civil civil yeah i i i for some reason i don't like the word civility because it it's like polite i do like it it's uh it'll be cordial is that better no what i mean is like it seems funny to you it seems phony like you should radiate love in whatever way so even if you're rough with the other person you should still show like respect and love for that person and that that gets back to the russian rooms where they're yelling at each other but there's still love underneath it i mean uh the question i want to ask for you is uh i think you and i have a different view on some things okay we have a different approach to things but just on on the surface level but also a different view on some things like i have a lot of hope for institutions i i i have so maybe it's a gut instinct like your gut instinct is like centers of power are like burn them down first and then let's figure it out well maybe that's a funny rough way of saying that's about right and then for for me it's like no let's understand the institution and slowly um revolutions from within versus revolutions from the doubt and um but like we can have those disagreements and there may be times when those disagreements will be i could see in the future i could see i'll be attacked by my friend michael malus which i very look forward to it i'm not attacked but you know what i mean on the surface level in the idea space anyway you're shaking your head now you won't i guess i'm maybe this also goes to sam harrison uh joe rogan i would love to be able to disagree disagree in big ways unimportant things and still be close friends and i don't understand why those are should be contradictions yeah and that's the tension that's been the most heartbreaking thing to me about sam and brett and joe with in the case of brett it's me i don't know brett so i'm just like looking as a somebody who just enjoys having these voices out there and it seems like kovic has brought out the worst than some many folks and it just feels like it's so sad to me to see their friendship somewhat deteriorating or maybe i'm just being an um no it seems clear that's deteriorated enormously i'm sad but that's the case yeah so my like i've had people come at me because i'm friends with you and they were like oh lex authored some paper about masks i don't even know what the hell they're referring to i don't care um i always say and mean i don't care whether someone agrees with me i care how they treat me and it goes the other way because i'll have a lot of people on twitter who are like oh i'm on your team and blah blah i'm like i don't know you you're not my team and just because you happen to agree with me it's of no value to me like i don't know you and i'm interested in knowing you many of my friends i don't know their politics there i don't care like i care how we hang out we have a good time we watch dumb movies watch youtube go to the store whatever um i don't know your politics are i don't care what your politics are um chris williamson who you know he's just here he's gonna be moving to austin i only learned what his politics are in the last we've been we chat like almost every day because he took the world's smallest political quiz and he figured out what his answers were i had no idea where he was communist he said well obviously yeah yeah marxist yeah let's be honest um so like stuff like that like it never and people uh i think because politics is often so tribal especially now uh they'll be like oh i could never be friends with someone who voted for x really what if they're like grandma worked in that campaign what if you know it's this you can't think of one steel man argument why this would happen but if they just want to spite their boss so i i don't like that approach at all it makes no sense to me um we could still have debates i mean like i would still like to have those conversations and still have disagreements like uh i disagree with joe and kovid a lot on a bunch of different things very kind of but it's never like it's not tense at all it's it's it's just it's uh it doesn't have the arrogance that seems a lot of kobe conversation seems to have like uh talking down to people from both directions yeah yeah it's um so i would love to have those because i love the debate though i love debates it takes a lot to get me triggered and when the babylon b were interviewing elon and he had this thing he goes well i don't know anyone who wants to you know abolish the fda and the faa and i'm standing there and i'm shaking and the guys look at me and they're like oh we actually have an anarchist here and the example he used was you know look if you're playing football you're gonna have a referee there and you want the referee you know you don't but the referee started playing the game is this a good thing and i'm sitting there like the referee doesn't work for the state yeah the referee is a private individual working for this organization yeah and there's no reason at all that food quality which is something crucially important has to be or can only be delivered through the state in a government monopoly that's actually really interesting just to link on that just just just just a little bit with the vaccine and stuff like that with the antiviral drugs the fda say like are you comfortable like who should be the referee right like do you have an idea like what's the best referee for the vex it's it's just the market just let people decide this is tricky because the thing the thing that i have not been following covetous closely is joe and sam as mr harris excuse me and mr musk the point is when anything like this is developing there's going to be a lot of misinformation out there even from the scientists because it's a dynamic process they don't know what they're dealing with a lot of it has to be speculative they don't know long-term effects because it hasn't been around for a long time so i think it is very um dangerous when you know when joe was mocked for taking a laundry list of things under his doctor's advice and they kind of latched on to the ivermectin and then they specifically said it was horse paste although it's veterinary medicine why didn't they say dog paste or cat paste it's like well he's not dead so and he's also taking drugs which are used in other circumstances the very least maybe they're pointless but if the drug is being allowed for pharmaceutical reasons the odds are quite low that they're going to have deleterious side effects uh in general so i think this kind of insistence that there has to be one a officially approved outcome that we're all doing that is kind of dangerous thinking in general by the way i don't know if you saw i got a chance to talk to the pfizer ceo and uh i had uh help collecting questions i got a lot of questions and people put at the top a question for michael malus oh really no the uh ask him what he likes best about me oh what does he like best yeah yeah so i actually had that in my list of questions i was going to ask him and my plan was i'll ask him uh michael malus wants to know what you like best about him and then my guess is he'd be like who and i'd be like exactly and then go on but i thought like how it was such a tense conversation that i thought there would be no of course room for levity the question i would ask him is can you acknowledge that there is an enormous incentive for your company to force everyone in america or everyone on earth to be a consumer of your product yeah that's my question so i danced around that question quite a lot like is uh i i phrased it differently which is uh a conflict of interest and attention between making a lot of money and actually helping people get the and i mean i've asked a lot of really heavy questions in that and i still and a lot of people wrote to me with support saying like that was a really uh great conversation and a lot of people wrote saying that i mean saying that it was just um uh too soft and it um i don't know i think about that a lot like how do you have that conversation i don't think it was too soft and actually just for the record i want to say that they didn't see any of the questions i'm asking they the they didn't see the final interview i can ask anything i want and so so any questions that i asked and and failed to ask is my own shortcomings um also not being a coward i was afraid of nothing like what it what do i have to gain or lose exactly well you have something to lose because if you're i do so only to do softballs because if i'm going to make it uh difficult for someone to come to my show a lot of people will be disincentivized to do the show because like i don't need this i see oh yeah i wasn't thinking like that but i was i don't like to what i think some fraction of folks wanted me to do is to yell at a person like criticize them not even ask questions yeah how dare you yeah but to me my goal my hope is with these conversations is not just to do how great you are all that kind of stuff is to bring out some deeper truth like the beautiful things is when you can together realize some truth like you mentioned that you know the incentive to uh for everyone to take the vaccine is obviously high for the maker of a vaccine yeah right and for them to arrive at that truth together like that is a really difficult um truth to operate under like for example i had a whole exchange with him about um this is jordan peterson asked this question i used that as a kind of springboard which is the the the kind of open doors between the fda the cdc and pfizer right like some people work at pfizer and then go to work at the fda and then vice versa and i brought up this is my safe space uh maybe yours too just going back to the soviet union to look at the lessons of of human nature and corruption i said like like this there's two things this looks bad and two this naturally leads to corruption and i pushed this with several questions but polite and respectful and he ultimately said you know there's rules uh we there's the rule of law and there's very strict rules about this and we have to follow those rules otherwise we get punished severely and so like his response is like people reacted to them as like okay that's the ceo doing the political but there's also truth to what he's saying that one of the beautiful things about america is that the the you can criticize the rule of law currently but it's still it's better than soviet in the in the soviet union where people bribed each other and but still he made it seem like there's no corruption people often ask me why i describe myself as an anarchist and not an anarcho-capitalist because they think my views are more in line with that school of anarchism and one of the other reasons you just gave me a good one is that if i am talking to someone who's a major ceo i am i have that hardcore left anarchist view that this person is if not the devil certainly going to be sinister at the very least and if you can't say listen this happens inevitably with elites it's you know it happens in universities it happens in the food industry there's only so many people at the top of these things there's a the field is small and everyone's going to know each other which is kind of you know just the dynamics of any market that would kind of be more reasonable and just say it's easy to caricature us because you're not in the boardroom but we're not you know we are trying to produce a product that people want so unlike the people who criticized me i was bothered by i wasn't bothered by most things but i was bothered by the fact that he didn't show more worry about the corrupting nature of money and power like he should he if you say that there's no corruption you should show that because we constantly worry about it right not because like look there's rules yeah which are enforced by you yeah exactly so like i think the only way to avoid force for time the corrupting force of power is to freak out about it nonstop the impression i always get from people like him and i haven't seen the interview and i won't be watching it is um they're genuinely convinced of the good guys yeah and if you're the good guy sure corruption is a concern theoretically but i know this guy at the fda i know this senator sure we disagree sure they do some things i don't like but in terms of corrupt they're not getting briefcases full of money they're not going to sell a vaccine that you know kills people in georgia so yeah it's a concern theoretically but this is the 21st century the thought process i think writes itself i i think uh yeah having the humility i do this all the time to maybe to a destructive level thinking that i might be doing bad for the world i might be wrong i might be that kind of thinking is very you should do at least some of that not to a point being paralyzed but a little bit you're actually in the right mindset for me to to ask you them for advice okay you're you're in this compassionate thoughtful mood i like it the compassion thoughtful michael so for future conversations like that so um the person that offered a conversation that first i avoided but i might return to is anthony fauci so there's anthony fauci but then there's also trump and biden things people like that like if you had them on your show or or just giving me advice on how to talk to them what do you think is the right way to talk to them and forget about future guests but like to get us something new you know together like get at something not for views or likes or clicks or any of that but discover something new through the mode of conversation well like let's take those one at a time so if i had a talking to trump i i told reuben to ask trump this and he didn't what i wanted to know is what's the look on your face when you're sending these tweets right because i'm imagining him on the toilet with this phone yeah right are you cracking yourself up are you just completely stoic are you kind of that trump little smirk he does yeah so when you get someone to open up about their emotion about something they're passionate about i think that breaks down some barriers and that's a really good question bond yeah but uh reuben wouldn't be that's not a style like that's a great question for you to ask well i told him to say michael malos for biden um [Music] that would be a tough one because biden gets doesn't get enough credit for what a good politician he is there was this moment people can see on youtube where biden is addressing a room full of people and he had someone there and he goes can you why don't you stand up so everyone can uh um give you a hand and the guy was in a wheelchair and violence like oh and like but instantly he goes you know what we're all gonna stand up for you and he made everyone get up and applaud the guy yeah i'm like that's quick like yeah you made a fool of yourself so he is a glad hander in many ways he's more of a schmoozer than trump was like trump made the point that he knows all the good people but biden knows how to shake hands well i think with both and sorry to interrupt but both trump and biden like you mentioned earlier to me at least their family is fascinating the dynamic this is a family man as a father i think that biden won't acknowledge his illegitimate grandkid is a problem for me uh but at the same time i can see why he think it's off limits to ask so that's the thing when you're dealing people that powerful they're not used to having to answer questions which might be perfectly nice but would cause them to freak the hell out that's the tricky thing of talking to people as you know like some some topics are off limit not in in that they draw lines but they just shut down yeah yeah when you ask them uh the trust is i think talked to elon three times now you better believe i brought up love and how far do you think that got and you could just one we did we did uh exactly the kind of robot back and forth yeah just like just shut down so yeah i i worry about that with personal but those that's the thing that makes it fascinating with those two because he had um with hunter and losing his like the dynamic of the complexities of all that like just having uh you know children fuck up in the way children do and then with trump the interesting dynamic with his very different kids and they're all kind of interesting in different ways and maintaining connection with all of them and also letting them flourish individually is fascinating to me well i'd also want to ask trump if he can name all the presidents in order which there's no way he can yeah but i'd also want to know all the pres do you think he knows who the second president in the united states is yes okay john adams he knows i think when it gets between ulysses s grant and mckinley that's when we all screw up that window it's tough yeah yeah i'm sure that's the one window where he i mean he he's not he's going to be able to get back to fdr no question i have to my sense was with donald trump and this is not i would say criticism is he doesn't have a depth of knowledge or more importantly curiosity about history yeah but if you're old enough you're going to at least remember the president's in your lifetime in your lifetime yes so that's what i'm saying you'll get a stunt presentation fdr pretty easily yeah yeah okay sure uh i think i thought you meant fdr from the other director no no yeah like current yeah yeah yeah um but yeah from a political perspe like having a conversation about politics with those two um [Music] there is interesting topics interaction between donald trump and putin not the interaction like not the stupid journalistic stuff but it's clear to me that he is a student of power oh for sure and like he enjoys the game of power yeah and so it's interesting because it to me the reason he admires putin is it's another player in the game of power and i think why so many people hate him trump is that he demonstrated to a lot of americans how much of a con job most of politics is and how people just say what they need to do but behind closed doors these people are buffoons and he exposed them as that i'd also um so that the biden i think biden would be a tougher interview than trump because i feel like biden's more slippery in many ways he's much more of a consummate politician he's been in the senate since the early 70s since he was like 30 or 35 whatever it was um so you know he'd have his little kind of pat answers there was larry king who was certainly a softball interviewer and i don't begrudge him that at all i remember was very very vividly and it was like i think was the 2008 cycle he asked hillary why do so many people hate why do you think some people hate you and she just goes like oh well i take tough stances on the and he cut her off he goes other people have taken those stances why they hate you and she didn't really i was really impressed with him that he didn't let her off the hook um that to me is great but some people say that still is too softball because you like they would want him to start listing i don't know droning like uh all the all the things that uh hillary clinton has criticized yeah but then what she she's done this many times she's very good at this she'll be like look i've addressed all these in the past if you want to start rehashing republican talking points you can go check out my interviews yeah i think it's kind of productive yeah so what about the more prescient for me i can't believe i'm walking through this fire for no good reason whatsoever but anthony fauci so yeah let me tell you why i care about anthony fauci because i care a lot about science and the way science is viewed in society and not to put it at the at the feet of this one person but i him and certain members of the scientific community that was responsible for managing the response to kovid i think are somewhat or entirely responsible for a significant decrease in trust in science yes no question in the past couple of years there was a poll that just came out this week that said the number is just collapsed and if you don't blame him for it i personally at least blame him for not um improving the problem so there's definitely would be a harsh conversation there to be had and i think i want to have it but how do you do it it's tough yeah because you know again politicians this political answers if they get too frustrated too quickly they will not explore these difficult things with you they'll just shut down but then if you say too many nice things because i i should also say anthony fauci is an incredible career like there's several hours worth of conversation to be had about how amazing of a person he is well i would also be curious about the aid stuff yes because that's something it's criticized about and i wouldn't come at it aggressively i would say let's set the record straight this is on the criticism you get blah blah your role in the aids crisis let's talk about this and this is something that is important part of american history there was a pandemic and but it was localized to certain populations and that that population at the first at least was pretty much told goodbye and good luck you're gonna have to deal with this so how did you deal with that i mean were you scared of getting aids you know so on and so forth but also there was that comment when i and correct me if i'm wrong i'm not a factory expert when he basically they told people not to wear masks or they lied about it to some extent because they said then people were going to run out of them or something like that and they admitted they were being inaccurate i would nail him on that i'm like let's address this were you being dishonest is there sometimes when it's important to be dishonest in service of whatever also i would ask him how as someone who's not a politician whether his level of fame and adulation has gotten to his head how do you have a perspective when and how does it feel when a sitting senator tells you that you should be imprisoned do you think ted cruz means it or do you think ted cruz is just playing his base yeah i like the fame one i would love to sneak up i mean that question applies to you too that question applies to me when you start getting more fame or money or power are you aware of how that changed you and like explore that like how has that changed you like if you like in the privacy of your mind michael malus like how did you change now that you've gotten more attention let's say you know or even the success of the book like is it like take take yourself back to the the you know you talk about the 20 uh the early twenties the mid-twenties person how are you different from that person are you the same person are you totally different that's an interesting thought is putin the same person in 2020 as he was in 2010 and then in 2000 it's um it's a non-trivial almost like um and then the other thing without actually is this is a dynamic system like on the one hand he's going to want to say we got it right every time right but then how is that even possible when you're dealing with a evolving unknown dynamic situation when did you guys get it wrong did that result in lives lost do you feel guilty about that i mean the big problem with the masks the changing mind and the mask is the arrogance and how it was communicated to me a lot of this boils down to uh how things are communicated it's like it's obvious that you need to change your mind when you get new information or sometimes yeah you take policies that are like we know the truth but we're going to lie for a particular reason like you have good intentions but if you're not able to communicate that later like we made a mistake or even ask him can you understand how a rational person might choose not to get vaccinated yes yes yes and if you can't steal man that then that's the situation that's a good test and i've tried and some people succeed and some people fail is the ability to really steal man the other understand that somebody should would be hesitant about taking the vaccine yeah it's a giant mess man uh this podcasting is it's just a fun little conversation but it also has a responsibility i don't know i don't know how joe does it i don't think joe cares as much as you do it's more fun for him in a sense and he's less concerned about the i mean he's not unconcerned with the cultural impact but for him it's just more growing out yeah like he doesn't do as much prep he doesn't come in with three pages single spaced you know questions yeah and that's why he's talking to blair white for 10 minutes about whether sharks lay eggs without knowing you're the one triggered person uh maybe he he trolled the troll well it worked yeah he did do sharks lay eggs i'd like to get an updated 2021 version of michael mal's giving advice to young people okay so there's god forbid high school students college students listening to you uh and looking to you for advice what advice would you give them about career and about life how to live a life they can be proud of this happens a lot because i have my locals community malice.locals.com and there's a lot of young people in there yeah so that's a great place i'll give i'll give them a meta piece of advice don't ask your friends for advice because you're an idiot at your age and they're all idiots and they don't want to seem like idiots so they're just going to give you advice they pulled it from the tv and no one knows what you're talking about and it's just going to be counterintuitive so seek out advice from people who you seek to emulate yeah um and ask them for advice if you can't get ahold of them figure out a way to get a hold of them incentivize them in some way you'd be surprised how many people are responsive on twitter or in social media if you just ask them a basic life question because then they can quote tweet an answer to a whole population so that would be one mechanism it's also very hard at that age to realize your parents might not be all that bright and they might not be all that good people um so that's a hard one at that age to kind of wrap your head around just because they love you doesn't mean they understand you and that's okay that's okay we think everybody oh shit you're trump's pretty good too i i i i'd like your trump to talk to elon conversation well mr president you know look uh some things you did like some not so much but you know for the most part i think the kind of good thing what are you talking about um hey guys what are you what are we talking about fuck i fucked up the lex anyway so that those would be two pieces the other piece of advice i would say is join a gym or have some kind of quantifiable daily improvement to keep you sane so the reason i always say weightlifting and it could be running it could be jump rope i don't care what it is because if you have those numbers moving in the positive direction psychologically if you're dealing with depression or anxiety it's concrete proof to shut your brain up because your brain knows how to talk to you your brain is off on your enemy and it'll say exactly the right thing to undermine you so that's an issue um b i just this works for me maybe it worked for most people i'm very high in the openness metric uh try new experiences new things try things you don't like um it's okay to have a bad experience you've learned something so go to a restaurant of a cuisine you wouldn't like or hadn't heard of read a book that's popular but you have no interest in um read a lot for example i didn't know anything about the election what was it 1892 when there was like a split between the electors read a book about it oh i don't know anything you know i don't think really about malcolm x read a book about him uh you'll be amazed how much more full you become as a person do you see value in writing also like writing down your ideas no i think there's very little value in that i'm not being i'm not joking because reading is where the biggest yeah because you're probably not going to revisit what you've written down um but the act of writing you don't you don't see it solidify somehow thoughts in your mind not for me yes yeah it doesn't like a tweet will because then then i have to have it narrowed down into like a phrase or the responsibility of there being an audience no i just meant in terms of i've got 280 characters if instead of having a briendry thought meandering thought i have to codify it in something that's catchy and short that's a good useful mental exercise what face do you make when you tweet i wouldn't know i don't know that's a good point is it on the toilet how much what percentage is on the toilet very little on the toilets i usually more reading okay um so even though my tweets are all literally shit uh the very few of them are on the toilet um that's some advice don't compare yourself to other people that's a really dangerous one all my friends are married i should have i should have a kid by should there's an expression in recovery stop shooting yourself but it's but it should should yeah it's stupid yeah i also and this could be my hoarder brain i surround my house with talismans of joy so if you have an accomplishment like when i did rogan once i bought with the sock store and i bought these orange socks with black cherries on them and now whenever i wore that socks those socks i'm like oh this is because i was on rogan that was kind of a big deal so if you have these little things throughout your house it gives good mental fuel even like like a toy remember when i was a kid oh you know what this little moments that inspire happiness i think are visually very useful um so that's another one um and i by the way have the that the watch and um that because we were talking about 2021 that was really um the guy in the lecture hall giving you a pat in the back i wrote uh joe giving me the the watch was um he has life changing for me yeah yeah yeah it doesn't even it didn't the fact that it was on a podcast or whatever doesn't matter learn how to uh um form boundaries that's probably the biggest that's gonna be number one on my list because you know explain you're gonna have people around you who feel the need that they're entitled to your time who feel they need to criticize you and they're not coming from a good place yeah uh so it's very good for you to be like i'm not interested in talking about this anymore right now yeah uh even if it's your parents even if you're especially if it's your parents like i need my space right now you're entitled to your space you're entitled to your time no one owes you you don't owe anyone response uh if someone has a question you know them an answer especially if they're not coming at you in good faith or they're coming in hostile way that's a big one it's hard to learn at that age and and and be valuable to those who are around you be someone who people are happy to see and if things are bad like you're the one that they can rely on like i was just uh you know a little bit under the weather and i thought to myself you know what if things got really bad i'll call blair and she would take care of me and and that kind of was very reassuring and you can always call me if you have your stuff lifted in in uh in an urgent matter because of the robots no just me it's kind of that that's those things that can help with or you're actually literally bleeding not a good caretaker i can save you though i can murder if you need somebody murdered yeah i do this yeah yeah um wait what advice would you have to kids that age and you're all you're a lot younger than you think you are that's the other one like yeah there's time i know like it's impossible to understand when you're 26 that your 40s are better than your 30s because it's like okay old man you're that's all cope i promise you it is yeah i think uh he says so many beautiful things i i would say another version of the openness i'll say take big risks when you're young yeah because if you fail who cares you're sleeping in a suit it's not a futon who cares yeah and take them often yeah um also this is more a little personal to me i get pushback on this but i think take big risks and work really hard like at whatever you do like i think you just have to give yourself to a thing it doesn't have to be in terms of time but really give everything so it's not like i'm going to try doing this i'll try i'll try try with all of your heart like really commit yourself that doesn't mean necessarily ours that doesn't mean but like if you fail at doing a thing that you commit to it should hurt it's like uh when i competed in jiu jitsu or you do like sports and so on don't just say i'm gonna have fun out there so on no try to win and because then if you don't it hurts and you learn from that um and then throughout i think that's the goodness thing is be kind it's like some of it is also skill allowing yourself to be kind i found myself earlier in life i still do this i find like when i hang out with people people are often like cynical and negative and yeah i try to avoid those people no but like they i think everybody falls into that and sometimes it's the party norm thing there's a temptation to me to kind of fit in by being more negative than i'm comfortable being and so um resist the pressure i think especially when you're younger it's not cool to care the thing that drives when you're young if you are a fan of a band yeah a writer a podcast or an actor and people roll their eyes at you watch out those people are dangerous you should have it's if you love avril lavigne with her terrible music and she makes you gives you joy and people crap on you they're wrong and you're right so hold on to those things that make you happy and if people want to take that away from you or they how could you like that what those people are not your friends why do you have to go make life so complicated my she's my favorite um favorite musician of all time jimi hendrix second ever living first um thank you for almost bringing a deer to my eye uh you mentioned the shadows in terms of love and you should have kids by now i apologize if it's a personal one but i think at least i have this thought and not from society but for myself like i want to get married i want to have kids do you feel the pressure of that do you want to have kids i do don't want to have kids get married i do want to get married um this was an issue that i had to kind of work out earlier this year um in terms of the possibility of having kids because i was in a relationship with someone who would have been in many ways literally a perfect uh mom so i did my due diligence and i actually sat down with friends of mine who had kids and i say give me the downside um like what if you did the pros and the cons well the pros i knew the pros for kids are very i love kids i was just with frank fleming he writes for the babylon b and he had his four kids and his youngest son has down syndrome was just adorable uh winchester's so cute um and i always get along with kids very like the go like i remember very vividly what it was like to be a kid especially a precocious kid and i remember how much it bothered me when my parents friends wouldn't give me attention so i always make it a point to acknowledge kids to talk to them and they're very grateful and and it's just really fun um especially the people who i'm friends with their kids are probably gonna be pretty cool they're not gonna be annoying and you know kind of ugly and overweight um so i uh i love you got that in there okay good yeah sorry sorry i'll go but um but the cons the negatives what was the conversation like about that like well my sis i talked my you know my sister has two kids my nephews who i absolutely adore whatever their names are and she was like she was saying certain things it's like if i had kids my kids are in my top priority yeah like it's not even a question and i feel like the work i'm doing and this sounds pompous but it's true is a valuable and important but i'm also the only one doing it so this is a big cost and so it's like it would be a major lifestyle readjustment and i'm at the point where i'm kind of like selfish enough that i i wouldn't want to do that and also it would have to be the right woman like like you're making a commitment you know and since you know they're all crazy you have to find one where you can handle the crazy oh all women are crazy yeah they're one and a half's in a binary world oh boy yeah it's not comfortable for me um but do you feel the pressure and thinking of that how much does that weigh on your heart like uh so so elon has kids like i i feel like i'm i love everything and i love stuff i do i love the robot over there just working with robots and and but i do feel the pressure of like um almost like when there's amazing cuisines you never tried or something like that like go out there and try it like you need to put in the work and i don't know um like life will run away from you slip through your fingers before you truly get to experience this other kind of love which is like long-term love for another human being which is like marriage and then love for kids yeah and it almost makes me sad like not getting to experience that you know because i'm also really scared of i've seen so many bad stories on the partner side like being with the wrong person right it can that to me is you know i'm not worried i have kids all day in fact i could probably just have kids without the the partner um kids i think are incredible but the like the the partner like a wife it seems like she could then have the negative consequences for like you as a writer on your productivity and your mental ability to flourish of being a joy to others to those kinds of things you know what i that's that couldn't happen because every relationship i've had uh they've been very beyond supportive like don't they'd rather do the i take an hour and do your work than spend time with me like i believe in what you're doing yeah so i couldn't even casually date someone who didn't believe that yeah so that's energizing yes but over time you never know like how that evolves and all those kinds of things and for me i think we're a little bit different i mean that has to do with the engineering thing i just have to pull insane hours yeah so i don't i work like two hours a day but that's what like creatives do like you can only work a couple hours honestly to be uh to be productive and most of the time not i have to do a lot of menial labor like and so there there's legit tension on the time and attention all those kinds of things i don't know do you think about this stuff a lot or or do you just love life and and do cool stuff and whatever happens happens i have been so blessed for so long now that i'm at the point where i don't think about it and i'm like uh you know just like miracles happen every day so just yeah be open to it you uh think about your death mortality yes fear what do you feel about it i'm just worried i want to take as many people out with me as possible so suitcase news that's what nuke suitcase i'm thinking that would be kind of like ironic as my other favorite i think about my legacy um and that's why my books are so important to me so the is it a do you think of it as a kind of immortality it is though like that's who you are is those books well it's not who i am i mean like my legacy certainly is what do you hope your legacy is um that i encouraged people to be hopeful and that i taught them how to be free and you know my favorite i think the best show of all time was dallas which often gets a it was like an 80s soap opera and people conflate it with dynasty and they think it's trashy and it was very shakespearean because all the characters are motivated by different values and the writing is just masterful and the acting is masterful and i'm not going to spoil anything one season ended with one the characters on their death bed in the hospital and the whole cast is there and the amount of acting talent in that room is just just phenomenal um and as the character is dying they look around and they go like please be kind to one another be a family and they're yelling at this character don't you dare die on me you know and you can see the actors you know because they're losing their cast mate who they've had from the beginning and it would have been a perfect ending to the show but obviously it's a cash cow they got to keep milking it and i think that like kindness and tenderness and this is michael malus talking it's there's a lot of people who want to make it that if you are kind or tender you're going to have consequences bad consequences and i think it's important for me at least to create a space in my life that if someone is going to be nice or friendly or kind that they're not going to have to feel stupid or bad about it it's we have such a it's such a disincentive like this set of structures so different like if you want to be cynical and sneering like round of applause but if someone says oh this is great like okay simp it's it's really bad well i think you do just this you do this today you do this in our friendship and you do it for a very large number of people is teach them how to be how to have hope yes and teach them how to be free so tavares got them thank you so much for talking to me thank you so much for being an inspiration i love you brother i love you thanks for listening to this conversation with michael malus to support this podcast please check out our sponsors in the description and now let me leave you with some words from albert camus don't walk in front of me i may not follow don't walk behind me i may not lead walk beside me just be my friend thank you for listening and hope to see you next time