#2260 - Lex Fridman
en
January 22, 2025
TLDR: Lex Fridman, AI and robotics researcher, discusses on his podcast this week.

In this exciting episode of the Lex Fridman Podcast (#2260), Lex Fridman, a distinguished computer scientist and artificial intelligence researcher, dives deep into fascinating discussions surrounding the subjects of space travel, historical figures, geopolitical conflicts, and the complexities of human relationships.
Key Discussion Points
1. Sex in Space
- The podcast opens with a humorous banter about the physics of sex in space. Lex explores the feasibility of sexual activity in zero gravity, touching on the challenges and biological implications of reproduction in space.
- Listeners are encouraged to ponder the logistical and ethical implications of human relationships in eventual space colonization.
2. Genghis Khan's Impact on Modern Society
- The conversation shifts to the historical impact of Genghis Khan, with discussions touching upon his controversial methods of unification, governance, and the paradox of being both ruthless and progressive.
- Key insights include:
- Genghis Khan implemented a meritocracy in leadership.
- Historical perspectives on Khan vary widely, highlighting his role in both destruction and the facilitation of trade and cultural exchange.
3. The Ukraine-Russia Conflict
- Lex Fridman shares his experiences from visiting Ukraine amidst the ongoing conflict, expanding on the emotional and political challenges faced by the Ukrainian people and their leaders.
- Highlights include:
- The importance of maintaining peace and negotiations, even under duress.
- Acknowledgment of Ukrainian President Zelensky's efforts and emotional toll in uniting a nation under threat.
- Comparison of international responses to the war and the consequences of political decisions made during wartime.
4. Understanding UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena)
- The conversation takes a turn towards UAPs, exploring both the scientific community's responses and the conspiracy theories surrounding them.
- Lex discusses the excitement and skepticism within the public regarding the existence of extraterrestrial life and their potential interactions with humanity.
5. The Role of Technology and AI in Society
- A significant portion of the episode covers the rapid advancements in AI, with Lex providing insights into its implications for the future of work, human interaction, and ethical considerations.
- Discussion points include:
- The balance between technological advancement and the potential threats it poses.
- The complexity of integrating AI responsibly into society.
Practical Applications & Takeaways
- Future of Space Exploration: The potential for human habitation in space raises crucial questions about relationships and family structures in extraterrestrial environments.
- Historical Context: Understanding figures like Genghis Khan is essential for grasping how individual actions can shape the course of humanity.
- Conflict Resolution: Emphasizes the need for compassionate leadership and the difficult balance between strength and diplomacy in international relations.
- AI Responsibility: Technology's rapid evolution necessitates proactive measures to ensure ethical integration and equitable access.
Conclusion
Episode #2260 of the Lex Fridman Podcast presents a rich tapestry of ideas, from playful discussions about the implications of sex in space to serious reflections on history, conflict, and the role of technology in shaping our future. Lex's ability to weave humor with critical thought provides listeners with a captivating and thought-provoking experience.
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So Jim, what was your question?
It was too Lex, but it was really like, you see, I wouldn't know. Hardcore science question. Yeah. It's on physics. Okay. In theory, if you were in space and you may be ejaculated, is it possible that the ejaculate would propel you backwards? Like send you, you know, like is it propulsion? Is there enough power in there to propel you? There's only one way to find out. It depends on how long you hold it in for.
Right right if you didn't jerk off for like four months And then you had like the mother load still not you need something to go one way so you go the other way Yeah, yeah, and Lex had an answer, but I don't know was the answer what we had a thought I guess what if you blow out at the same time?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think in space, like the bio dynamics of the liquids is different. I think it's actually difficult to have sex in space and to get people pregnant in space. Does anybody ever gotten pregnant on the space station? Are they allowed to even have sex? No, nobody has officially had sex in space. Officially. Officially, but unofficially, of course, people have tried. I wonder if they have. I mean, how monitored are they?
There is a Wikipedia page about sex and space. It's actually pretty detailed. But it's Wikipedia, so you know, it's half bullshit. There's citations. I encourage people to look into it, read in detail. I mean, it's a serious problem. If you want to, you know, colonize space, you probably want to have a lot of sex and get pregnant and have kids. Well, don't you think they'll develop some sort of gravity generating machines? Yeah, absolutely. You have to, like Jeff Bezos talks about this a lot.
You know, like how you create artificial gravity in space because for Jeff Bezos, the likely way to colonize spaces to have space stations, Elon is more focused on colonizing planets, Mars. Yeah. So both are obviously going to be necessary and you got need to have gravity in order to get laid. Brother, first people that make that trip. Yeah, Jamie was saying he wants to go.
I mean, I'm not that trip, but yeah, I'll trip you go eventually. Why not? Oh, dude. Why would he die out there? Okay, you're gonna die. Everybody dies. Yeah, you don't want to die that way, dude. If you get to decide one way to die, that's not one of the worst ways. It's the worst way. You're gonna die in space running out of air. You don't know how it's gonna happen. What about re-entry? You could get, yeah, you could just cook instantly.
Could be on the way up. You get hit by a micrometeorite. Could be while you're asleep up there. Could be. Imagine standing on Mars looking back at Earth. Going, what the fuck did I do? Why did I do this? Yeah, and then having kids on Mars and teaching them, we came from there. Do you think homeschooling is bad? How about space schooling? Just imagine the crazy shit that happens on Mars. I mean, it's going to be what? A hundred thousand people?
Yeah, and so you're going to get one psycho who's going to run everything and they're going to take over. Yeah. Probably some cult leader convinces everybody to do it his way. That's going to be a sex cult 100%. 100% or back to sex and space. Right. They're going to say like, listen, if Elon is their man, Elon wants to procreate every chance he can. How many kids does he have now?
Allegedly double digits. Oh, we don't even know how many. Well, does he think he's got secret kids? They think was they think the people that run the world. Is there a Wikipedia page on this? It probably is. It's probably got secret kids. Secret kids. Yeah. When you have like, what does he have? Like 300 plus billion dollars. It's gone. You can.
You can have a few ladies here, there, all over the place, having kids. There's a lot of ladies who just want to have kids. They don't want to guy around. Yeah. Especially when they get a little older. There's a castle in the south of France with like a harem. Just a bunch of kids. Wait for them. Yeah. Yeah. Just waiting for dad. I'd like you to land his rocket ship. I'm one of the fish that says at least 12. At least 12 kids. So you know what he even knows. Imagine no one knows how many kids you have? That's kind of crazy.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's the situation, uh, Jengis Khan wasn't, you know. Well, he was doing it a little differently. He was, uh, a little bit more forceful. Actually, I mean, there's a lot of different perspectives on that. Like I, uh, what's the book on Jengis Khan? So first of all, there's obviously the Dan Carlin, Wrath of the Cons, and in that series of podcasts, he criticizes the book, Jack. Weatherford. Weatherford.
Genghis Khan in the making of the modern world, that's kind of the Mongols in the making of the modern world. Yeah, so that's the, and now, there it is, nice. That is one of the things that Dan Carlin talks about, that when enough time has passed, that they sort of look at these marauders and murderers in a different light and say, oh, he opened up trade to the east.
Sure. Also, killed 10% of the population of Earth, lit people on fire and launched them on catapults onto thatched roofs. Well, I think, uh, I think actually Dan Khan makes a really good point. How long do you wait until, you know, that you could tell these kinds of stories about Hitler? I think that's right. Yes. That's what he uses.
But, you know, you want to be historically accurate here. And, Genghis Khan, there's a lot of different perspectives, including opening up trade and including what was the protocol based on what she was doing in the murdering. So, it was very clear, before the invasion, he always said, you can surrender and then we would not murder anybody. You just have to follow the law.
And the law is very, very sort of clear, and it's basically enforcing a law of the land, free trade, free practice of religion. And you have to pay taxes instead of to your king. You have to pay taxes to the Mongol Empire.
But did they really say we won't kill anyone? Yes, 100%. That's they followed that and this is very well documented. Really? Yes. So everybody could have just laid down and 10% of the world's population wouldn't be dead? Yes. Really? So the nuance there is that sometimes they killed the upper classes.
Mm-hmm. Well, you know didn't they kill the royals by like crushing them to death they'd have lunch over them they were Listen, this is a different time, but they were brutal if they if they because they want to They use fear as part of the the military tactics right so they want people to be terrified and
and they want people to talk about how terrifying the Mongol Empire is so that they forfeit more easily. But, you know, there's a lot of aspects of it, not to say that Jengie's cause of feminists, but there's a lot of progressive aspects. Like he put a lot of women in positions of power. He gave a lot of rights to women. This is a very strange perspective. Yeah, but he did a lot of raping. Nope. There's not his kids. It's, I mean,
What do you mean, nope? When he would conquer these places, he would take women. And he would come with new wives. Yeah, but it wasn't their call. So that's kind of rapey. That's very rapey. Yeah. So, but there's a man could take him and make him have your kids.
There's the kind of mass rape that the Soviet soldiers did at the end of World War II when they're marching towards Berlin, which is extremely violent, vicious, and sort of that kind of rape, which is part of the terror of war. And then there's like creating a harem of women. So it's a different, I think the main point is,
that, you know, this is something you talk about that a large percent of the population has that one study from like 20 years ago found our descendants of Genghis Khan. Huge. I think the way to do that is to make everybody who is your descendant
popular within the culture, like you can't you can't have that many be have your DNA propagate throughout civilization by reaping. You have to have everybody who like to have a high status for people that are associated with jingus cause you can't have that kind of thing with fear. You can only do it with respect and high status. And he for several generations created an empire that was flourishing.
Well, okay, you're kind of whitewashing that. They killed a million people in gin China and turned their bones to a stack, a pile that they recognized as snow-covered mountains from the distance. That's what they thought it was until they got up on it. When the Shah of Khorisma came there to check it out, he was like, where is everybody? They had abandoned the roads because there were so many dead bodies that the roads had deteriorated into muck.
Yeah, let me actually sort of backtrack a little bit here because I'm uncomfortable because I'm deeply involved in the military affairs of modern day. And so there's a kind of, I was just kind of having fun. Yes, there was mass murder. Yeah, that was happening. It was vicious. And we could, and I'm not a scholar, Genghis Khan.
I was simply saying that it's interesting how history looks at these different empires. For example, we venerate the Roman Empire, not we, but ancient Greece, and they were equally, if not more, brutal in their conquest and their destruction. There's never really been a time where there was a leading superpower that wasn't brutal.
It's I think become less and less brutal over time than people document this So war the number of people as percent of the population killed is less and less but what about laws? Ukraine and Russia like how many people have died all told between the two it's got to be close to a million and
It's over a million casualties, which includes death and injuries. And the estimates vary, but I think a good estimate is over 400,000 total, maybe over 500,000 on both sides. And the dead on the Ukraine side is probably one third or one fourth of the total dead. Really? So three quarters of them on the Russian side. Really? What do you attribute that to?
I think there's military scholars that understand this really well. I think in general, the invading force loses more people than the defending force. That's one aspect. Of course, the Ukrainian military will say it's about the effectiveness of the Ukrainian military.
And also one of the other things they say is that the medical capability, so the medics are really strong on the Ukrainian side, which is also tragic because you're able to save lives, but you have the injuries, the pain of war, you know, that the veterans have to go through. So they're able to save lives more effectively also.
But there is a big characteristic of the invading force usually loses more people. What was it like going over there and interviewing Zelensky? So I should say I went to Ukraine twice after February 24th, 2022 invasion and
Maybe it's good for me to also say where I come from, because it's surreal to be there for me. Both my parents are from Ukraine, from Kiev and Harkov. These are towns in Ukraine, cities in Ukraine. I've been there many times. I myself was born in Tajikistan, speaking of Genghis Khan. And I lived there in Tajikistan. And by the way, I'm regretting.
Defending Jengis Khan in this conversation for fun. He didn't really defend. Yeah, I want to say that over and over again. War is hell. I'm almost a tension between how much Roman Empire, Caesar, and these folks are venerated. And Jengis Khan is seen as this barbarian that was just destroying and raping and so on.
They were all horrible, vicious, warmongers. All of them, yeah. Anyway, Tajikistan, and I lived for a time in Kiev and I lived for a time in Moscow. I have family in Ukraine, I have family in Russia. And I should say in World War II,
A lot of my family was slaughtered in Babi Yar, which is a ravine in Kiev, where they gather people around the Nazis, and they just put them in this ravine and just shot them, and then put another layer of humans, told them to get naked and face down, lay face down, and slaughter and slaughter like this.
It's mass, mass, mass gray is mass water. And my grandfather fought the Nazis. He's a machine gunner, which is one of the few that survives, which is the reason I'm here, that they basically tried to hold off the Nazi Armada.
And that, that's the real aspect of all, this is the same land, you know. I just still remember the song, the Vatsarova Yuna, the one of Shirdi Shisaki, the one of the Shisaki, the one of the Shisaki, the one of the Shisaki, the one of the Shisaki, the one of the Shisaki, the one of the Shisaki, the one of the Shisaki, the one of the Shisaki, the one of the Shisaki, the one of the Shisaki, the one of the Shisaki, the one of the Shisaki, the one of the Shisaki, the one of the Shisaki, the one of the Shisaki, the one of the Shisaki, the one of the Shisaki, the one of the Shisaki, the one of the Shisaki, the one of the Shisaki, the one of the Shisaki, the one of the Shisaki, the one of
just the Nazi Armada, just coming, Operation Barbarossa, this massive military force invading your land. It's Kiev, and it's the greatest, the biggest battles of all time were in this land.
the Battle of Kiev, the Battle of Stalingrad, the Battle of Moscow. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of millions of people just slaughtering each other. And the way Hitler, of course, approached the battle, and so did Stalin, is nobody's surrenders. It's all in slaughter. It doesn't matter if it's winter. It doesn't matter if there's no guns. It doesn't matter. It's just victory or death on both sides. And so it's just brutal war.
So this is the land, right? And I have, you know, for a lot of people in this land, this history is part of them. It's part of their blood. They remember these struggles. They remember this, this political, this geopolitical, this military, this social, this is real. This is like
Imagine the United States living maybe a few decades after the Civil War. You remember that you have relatives that died. You remember the real hatred, the real tensions, the real battle.
Yeah, it was surreal to be back there and to try to do what I was doing, which is to push for peace. There's probably a lot to say about this war. I should say that I interviewed Vladimir Zelensky and I will be traveling to Russia to interview Vladimir Putin.
And I'm aware of the risks. I accept the risks. And the goal of the mission is to just push for peace, to do my small part in pushing for peace. And that's what I was trying to do in this conversation. And it required just a huge amount of preparation for people who don't know, maybe I'll lay out
where there was opportunities for peace. So since the beginning of the war, February 24, 2022, I think there was three moments to make peace. From the perspective of Ukraine, you want to make peace from strength. So when you're in a position of strength, the first time to make peace was March and April of 2022.
when the Ukrainian forces were able to successfully defend the North, defend Kiev. There's this huge optimism, this belief that we push back this gigantic Russian military. That's a place for leverage and the confidence both of the US funding, the European militaries, and the Ukrainian military that we can win this. This is when you make peace, when there is
when there is a perception and the reality of strength. The second time was in the fall of 2022, when there was a successful counter-offensive by the Ukrainian forces that recaptured Harkiv and Harsan. This is the south and the east of Ukraine.
And there was this real sense that the Ukrainian forces can defeat the Russian forces. Huge optimism. A lot of pressure from the U.S. to make peace then. This is the strength and perhaps the weakness of Vladimir Zelensky, who I do think is a historic figure and a great leader.
is that he, one, deeply emotionally feels the suffering of the people and the loss that war creates, and he single-handedly has to unite the nation and carry the will of a people and the morale of a people, has to lift the morale of a people.
And that kind of man struggles to make peace, because he understands he wants justice, not peace. And so from a position of strength there, he wants to go further, recapture all of the land that he sees belongs to Ukraine. But that's exactly when you make peace.
And so his very strength, a man that stayed in Kiev, that said, you know, fuck you, we're not going to, we're going to win this, that kind of man that lifted a whole nation, the United whole nation, that man is also struggled to make peace. And so the third time to make peace, after all, after all of that, the Russian military regrouped and has been
capturing land gradually. And so the third time to make peace is now. The Trump administration, there's a momentum. They want to make peace. He's a great deal maker. He wants to end wars in all parts of the world. We just made the deal in Gaza now.
made the deal in Gaza, and that's a super complicated situation too, because they made a ceasefire deal with the hostages. But isn't it amazing that the Biden administration had two years, couldn't get anything done, and Trump gets it done in a day. He was saying that he was going to be able to do that, and everybody dismissed it.
Yeah. And I think there's a political battle now taking credit for who made the scenes fire, which I think is silly. It's of course you're going to have that. Yeah. Biden is the president. He's still the president for another few days. The point is with Donald Trump, there's a real will and a momentum to make peace. There's a respect, there's a fear, there's, you know,
Whatever you think about Donald Trump, he is this person that world leaders respect in the full meaning of the word respect. Not like admire, but fear. I think both Zelensky and Putin fear Donald Trump. And that's a great person to then make peace. Because he has delivered all of them believe Putin and Zelensky that Trump can do some crazy shit.
And he probably would but he doesn't want to right is a lot of difference and that's a very unique position that he's in Where they're afraid of him, but yet he wants peace exactly, you know And so this is the time and if you don't make peace now what's going to happen is the funding from us and the support from us is going to dwindle gradually and Putin is willing enable to just wait and to let the war continue for months and for years and
And meanwhile, people are dying every single day. Thousands of people. What's so horrible about this war, too, is there's GoPro footage. There's a lot of cell phone footage. There's a lot of GoPro footage. I've watched too much of it, unfortunately.
But it's a rough man. It's a horrible war. And it's a war that's so confusing over here, especially to the uninitiated, for the people that are just kind of reading the newspaper and getting a sort of a cursory understanding of what happened, Russia invaded, why? You know, what'd they do? And then you got to get into the whole
US-backed coup in 2014, and then you have to think about NATO and the agreement that was made the fall of, you know, when the wall came down in Berlin, the agreement that NATO would not push forth and move closer to Russia, which they violated over and over and over again.
The whole thing is so complicated that it takes forever just to sort of get an understanding of the pieces that are involved. Forget about who's responsible for what, but just like how many different things are happening.
simultaneously that are forcing Putin's hand, now Zelensky's hand, and just to be on this side of the world watching it take place, it's almost unbelievable. It's so hard to believe that Russia and Ukraine, which were both a part of the Soviet Union, just not that long ago, while during my lifetime, now they're at war.
And I should say that I believe, so how do you handle situations like this? I believe US actually gave not enough money to Ukraine.
they should have given more money hit really hard and then make peace this is the point a month or two after the start of the war you can learn the same kind of lesson with the rock and organist and there's no reason those uh... those in invasions those military out there's no other way there's no other way than just give money give money and and hit hard there's no other way what about what i would avoid it avoid it what about nato back out
Well, a lot of this is about diplomatic rhetoric. And yes, NATO was consistently talking shit to Putin. And that's not like a lot of this is about diplomacy. And you can't just
You can't just pressure with words. I mean, for some people, it seems almost silly that you need to show respect to world leaders, but there needs to be shown real respect. Putin has laid out the interest of the Russian Federation. He said that he's been very clear about what the interests are. They want their security to be respected. They want their nation to be respected.
He's very clear, and simply at the negotiation table, he just needs to be respected. Like, his perspective needs to be understood and heard. You can't just say, Putin is evil, bad guy, authoritarian, hates freedom, we need to destroy him, this kind of, this whole...
vibe and energy you come with this idealistic sense that you bring to the table. You have to respect leaders. You have to respect Xi Jinping. You have to respect Putin when you're at the negotiation table. Not when you're on Twitter and X or talking shit or historians or activists. Fine. You can criticize
as much as you want, as vicious you want, you can mock, artist can mock, as much as they want, comedians, it doesn't matter. When you're a world leader and you come to the table, you have to show respect, you have to treat other world leaders as funny as this to say, the way you want to be treated with respect. It's not funny at all, yeah, it makes sense. And it, you know, if you want to get things done.
If you want to get things done, and more importantly, if you want in this ward for the death to end, one of the things I kept pushing in an almost childlike way with Zelensky is getting him to open himself up for peace.
He kept shutting it down. He kept mocking Putin. He kept criticizing Putin, which is okay. It's okay to sort of criticize and say that there's war crimes, that there's real vicious violence and destruction happening.
Along that there has to be a door open of respect of I'm willing to come to the table to negotiate and Respect the other the other nation's interests As opposed to saying I'm only going to talk to the United States. You have to be open to negotiate Because there had unfortunately This is the motherfucker of peace is you have to compromise you have to sit across the table as a world leader with a person you might fucking hate
Because unlike Putin, I should say, Zelensky goes to the front. He talks to the soldiers. He sees the dead bodies. He talks to the civilians, the mothers that lost their children, the wives that lost their husband. This person who's an empath, who's an emotional being, he's wearing all that in his mind. There's a real pain there. He's torture, tormented by this.
If you're a leader, you have to put all that aside and you have to sit and save your nation by compromising. That's it. And that's the hard thing of it, especially now there's an opportunity where the Trump figure rolls in who wants to make peace. You have to use this opportunity. And it's tough. It's very, very tough. Yeah, you're putting it mildly. Very tough.
What do you think Trump can do now? What could possibly, if Zelensky wants victory, they want revenge? What can Trump do to bring peace to the table?
I think some of these notions are all naive, but literally meet, which they haven't been meeting. So meet with Putin, meet with Zelensky. They haven't been meeting at all? No. But Zelensky comes down to what they've been meeting with Zelensky, but there is no meeting with Putin. I think the right thing to do is to go to, whether it's Switzerland or Turk Istanbul or Minsk.
The biggest thing for me would be literally the three of them set together.
I think I trust in Trump's negotiation ability and the carrot and the stick of the United States military and the United States economy for being able to control oil prices, being able to control trade with tariffs, being able to threaten military force and funding and so on, plus sanctions, all of this.
You can roll in with that carrot and stick implied or made implicit implicit or explicit and just sit at the table and talk like human beings and Show each other respect like that You know, it's one of the things that actually COVID did There's something that happens where remote communication just is not it Like the silly thing about this podcast being in person, right? There's a real power there everything else is
You know, like fucking with a condom. Yeah. You have to show up. It's part of the reason. It's more like jerking off with a condom on. Jerking off with a thing. This is not even fucking with a condom on? For the metaphor, yeah. It's part of the reason I wanted to talk to President Zelensky in Russian, which I speak fluently.
And he speaks, it's his primary language. For people who seem to misunderstand this on the internet, he spoke Russian his whole life. That's his main language. He speaks with his wife, with his whole staff, with all of this. This is his language. It's just that now the Ukrainian language has become a symbol of independence. So they're fighting for their independence, for their sovereignty. I understand it. So he spoke with Ukrainian?
He kept going back and forth. But yeah, most of the powerful things were said in Ukrainian. So I'm listening to an interpreter through a shitty headset. The interpreter's not, forgive me, to the interpreter. It's not very good. He's delayed. There's noise. God, but wouldn't it make more sense if he spoke to you in a language that you understand?
Yeah, this would really tried. But this is a man once again. He's the leader of a nation in a time of war, and he's not stylistically who he is. Like he's all in. This is like a Braveheart-type character.
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Which is so crazy, because he started his career as a comedian. Right, right. I mean, you never know who the leaders are that step up. I think a lot of people sort of say that it's trivial that he stayed in Kiev when the Russian military invaded. To me, it's not trivial at all. I think that's a truly heroic act.
to stay. When you know, when nobody knows what's going to happen and all the experts are saying, Kiev is going to be taken to stay as a leader in that same place where you were in the night before, like working and not flee. When everybody's telling you to flee,
to stay there like a bad motherfucker actually go outside and film yourself speaking to the nation that we're going to win this we're going to hold strong that's a that's an insane thing to do and maybe does require like it's a trump level insanity right it's similar to me to the trump standing up when they're still bullets flying and saying fight fight fight right that's a
Where does that come from? I don't know, but most people don't have that. It's nice when it was refreshing. It was refreshing when you see that. Like, holy fuck, yes. We want that guy. And he really united a nation. The nation was fractured and he was actually not popular at all up to that war because the policies he was trying were not working.
What policy specifically? So the stuff that was working, I don't know the internals of the Ukrainian politics that well, but so key one in 2019 based on his desire to fight corruption and to modernize Ukrainian digital system, which he did very successfully. It's actually super interesting. They have a app called DIA, which is your passport, all your identifications, all appified.
which I don't understand why the United States doesn't have that. You can update your license, you can get your license instantly. It's like the 21st century version of what government should work like. The reason they did that is it's a way to fight corruption. Whenever you have paperwork, there's a place for corruption to seep in. So he was very serious about fighting corruption. And that's the other thing is there is corruption in Ukraine.
There's not as much as people perceive, but it's a serious problem, especially less now than before. I want to be careful here because it's very difficult to know. The perception, there's a serious concern about corruption. In a time of war, there's always going to be more corruption.
United States spent nine trillion dollars on the war in Afghanistan and Iraq in the Middle East. After 9-11, on that part of the world, I spent nine trillion dollars in this growing. Using all that money, you've had a lot of guests on this program talking about how that money was used.
There's a lot of shady shit that happened. Yeah. War breeds corruption. One of the reasons you should be concerned about the military industrial complex is because that money is just not used well. Right. But that's all. That's a discussion. The reality of corruption in Ukraine is it should be dealt with after you make peace. All the problems, the elections were suspended too. The idea is a democracy.
There is censorship in Ukraine now. All of those ideas cannot be, all of those things cannot be fixed until the war is ended. The reason there is censorship now in Ukraine is because it's a war.
The ideas of democracy, in part, have to be suspended during a war, to effectively fight that war. This is a whole idea of martial law. The United States has this. You don't fuck around. You have to win the war. When your land is invaded, everybody has to be focused on this. The problem is it's a slippery slope.
when all the media channels are being controlled, and the president and everybody is so invested in, quote unquote, winning the war, then where are the critical voices that say we need peace, right? They're coming from the outside, but you need that. The thing is, it's a really complicated tension, right?
During the war with martial law, you do want to suspend elections, potentially. It's a really difficult trade-off. The United States has the same thing. If we were to be invaded, I don't know by who, this is not, you know, if Canada invaded, I don't want to make a joke out of this. But there's going to be a martial, yeah. I have a quick fight. Yeah, exactly. But like, there would be a martial law.
where elections would be delayed or suspended and so on. So all those criticisms, all those concerns can only be dealt with once you make peace. And in terms of corruption, there's a lot of people that know Zelensky well, and this has been my impression having met him.
I don't think he, and I've not heard anybody that knows him well say that he's personally corrupt. This is really important. Like he himself is not personally corrupt and he legitimately is fighting corruption. Now he's in a system that has corruption. Russia has corruption. It's really difficult to weed out corruption.
But he legitimately, at least to me, that's really important that he as a single human being and the people really close around him, like really close. Corruptions start to seep in, of course, when you go further out. But in that direct human being, that he is not personally corrupt. He, like financially speaking, he singularly believes in the idea
of Ukraine as a sovereign nation and he's willing to die for that idea. That is his strength and that is also his weakness when it's time to make peace.
When you are preparing to do something like this, and you are doing your research, you're getting ready to go do it, what are your concerns other than your own physical safety, of course? What is your, ultimately, what's your concerns? What are your goals when you're setting out to do this? Because this is very different than any other kind of podcast interview.
There's no other format really where a world leader in the middle of a huge international conflict is going to sit down for three hours.
and talk to an American scientist, which is weird too, right? It's like, why are you doing it? You know what I mean? This guy who works in AI just decides he's gonna start a podcast. The podcast becomes very successful, and all of a sudden he's like, I'd like to talk to everybody. I'd like to go over and talk to Zelensky and talk to Putin, and everybody's like, why you? What the fuck are you doing?
So you get a lot of that. And then unfortunately for you, you read the comments. So you get sucked into all that negativity. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot to say there. First of all, on the comments side, I always have a little Joe Rogan on my show listening. Don't read the comments. Don't read the comments. And in this situation, it's especially intense. Yeah.
I should say like privately after I did the conversation with Zelensky, every single person that knows the situation well and knows me personally has written to me and it's all been really positive. Like really positive. Almost like in the desert wanting water positive because there's a lot of voices that are afraid to speak that want peace. Sure.
But online, and this is something we talked about a little bit, there's just like these like swarms of people that are like... Not even necessarily people. I don't want to sort of go too far in that territory assuming that anybody who criticized me is a bot. No, but there is an enormous element of that. That's real.
Whether it's bots or whether it's hired people, paid propagandists, the conversation is not a pure conversation between people expressing their ideas. There's a lot of propaganda online, and it's very confusing to try to discern what the percentage is. We've talked about this a bunch of times on the podcast, but there was a former FBI analyst who estimated that it's
on Twitter alone. This is before the purchase. He believed it was around 80%. So 80% fake accounts, 80%. Not just propaganda, like government propaganda, but most certainly corporations are hiring people to do similar things. I'm sure there's companies that will do that for public figures, actors,
you know people that are involved in conflict and this is part of the Blake Lively dispute is that she is accusing that Justin Baldoni actor of an organized attack on her which is probably what it feels like anyway when you're involved in something on social media like oh my god this is organized where they're attacking you but
It's a very confusing landscape. Ideally, what we would want with social media is different people informed and uninformed, but at least expressing their ideas on things and exchanging information back and forth and talking.
It's not the whole story, though. There's a lot of other players involved that are not real. There's AI, for sure. There's definitely large language models that are involved in this back and forth with automation.
You know, they look out for certain code words and these accounts attack certain ideas. So it's hard to know like what the actual will of the people is. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely true. And I've seen a lot of evidence of this that there's Ukrainian bot farms in Russian bot. Have you spoke to Elon about this?
about bot farms? Yeah, because he knows a lot more now, of course, right? Because there was the big concern when he was buying Twitter. They were trying to say that it was 5%. It was only 5% bots. And they were doing that on an extremely low sample size. They were doing it off of 100 people. So they got 100 people. And out of those 100 people, five of them, they determined were bots. And so they went with 5%, which is just ridiculous. You know, you're dealing with how many people are on Twitter every day. Like, what's the total Twitter audience?
It's not as big as Facebook, right? Facebook is 3.2 billion worldwide, which is unbelievable. I think X has a small number, but very influential. Very active, yeah. Very active, very influential. 245 daily active. What is the total amount of accounts on it though? Because, you know, there's daily active and then there's just people that just read them. There's a lot of people that just read.
541.56 million monthly active users. So again, that's active users. So total users. What's the total users? See, it's all active. I want to know accounts.
they delete counts all the time. Right. Yeah, they definitely do. So they must have some sort of a system where they weed out bots and, you know, there's a lot of concern right now on Twitter about censorship. You know, this is, I'm, I try to stay out of Twitter as much as I can, honestly, because I think it's bad for your mental health. I really do. I think people just,
Barking at each other all day is not good to absorb I want to absorb real people that I interact with I want to I mean I try to pay attention to the news I try to Pay attention to whatever controversial ideas are out there and try to see what I think But I don't think it's good to dive in to social media all day. I think it's uniquely bad
And I think so many people are involved in it, and they don't realize that they're poisoning their brain, just like they're poisoning their body if they're eating junk food all day. I think it's genuinely bad for you. Yeah, I mean, and you and I, and also in a particular, you know, doing a podcast, and we're also very different human beings. I would say your psychological, your psychological forties use is pretty strong.
Again, I'm more, I wear my heart or my sleeve maybe a little bit more and when if I like, shit gets to me.
And, you know, when you try to put compassion out there in the world, in the way I did, especially with this conversation with Zelensky, the attacks, like... You just have to recognize who the kind of people that are doing that are. Yeah. You know, those are just really weak people. Really weak, psychologically damaged, mentally ill people that are probably medicated.
I, sort of, to push back, I think some of them are actually good, sophisticated people. They're just acting not their best selves. Like, I've seen this. There's people that are like, I know them personally and online. They're just like, the whole shit comes out of them. Yeah. Well, because they're mentally ill.
And then all of us are a bit mentally ill. Yeah, well, we're all a little mentally ill. Like no one is enlightened that I've met. I've never met one person who's perfect, right? I don't think it's possible with this journey that we're on as these meat vehicles, these soul-carrying meat vehicles navigating a very confusing world. I don't think it's possible to be perfect, but you can have a desire to be a good person. And some people don't have that. And the excuse that they always use
I mean this is the Donald Trump excuse you do anything you can to stop Hitler You know right and this is this is why they want to conflate and they always want to Pretend that everyone's Hitler the problem with that is it just after a while It's crying wolf and people like oh this is a bullshit game you're playing and you're just using it as an excuse Elon's talked about this a lot about
And he's absolutely correct, is that people use woke ideology as an excuse to be an asshole. And it's really just people that are assholes that are attaching themselves to things that make them feel righteous.
And so they wrap themselves in this idea to give them virtue and to allow them to say the most awful things about other people that have different perspectives. And then just by nature, if you're doing that, you're doing the wrong thing. You're a bad person. You can justify it all you want. You can find people that agree with you all you want.
But those people also are on the right track, or the wrong track rather, the people that are listening to you and agreeing with you, they're on the wrong track. They're the wrong track if we want to be collectively a kind, compassionate, cohesive society, a community of human beings that all live together.
That's totally possible. If you can do it in small groups of people, you can do it in enormous groups of people. It just has to be an ethic that gets promoted. It has to be something that you see people that you admire adhere to and you do it as well. Whenever someone goes outside of that and whenever someone starts making horrific, unfounded personal attacks because someone has a different political ideology or
You know, just going after them every day, all day long, like you're just broken. You're just you're on the wrong path, period. And intelligent, aware people that have control of their emotions, recognize that, and they're not going to take your perspective seriously. So you're going to be less and less effective with what you do.
And in general, the failure mode is to paint the world, to draw a line between good and evil. Whether it's the line in geography, Russians, Putin is evil, or if it's Trump, Trump is evil. The version of that is Hitler. A big proponent of Solzhenitsyn's famous, the author of Gulag Archipelago, that the line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.
that all of us have that in us. And to be, it is good to be humbled by that reality. And if you are humbled by that reality, then you're not going to see any other people as purely evil or purely good.
All of that, that kind of thing is used to just, to just, to hate others. Yeah. Yeah. And even when it's unfounded, you know, even like I'm watching the Pete Hexith, the confirmation hearings and the, these ignorant people are going after us tattoo.
not even knowing what the tattoo is and trying to pretend that it's some sort of radical, hateful tattoo when it's just an ancient Christian tattoo. It's so strange. I mean, that tattoo is in churches.
that symbols and churches that symbols that symbols been around for a long fucking time it's just a Christian tattoo and I was watching the Pierce Morgan show and Pierce Morgan had Michael Knowles
And these two super whack and Dave Rubin and two super whacky leftist people that didn't know what the tattoo was. And they were criticizing it and pierced more and kept hiding. What is the tattoo? What is it? Tell me what it and the guy would go like, go on. You're not answering the question. Go back to it. What is it? Well, let's look it up. He's like, no, no, no, don't look it up. I want you to tell me if you're saying it's offensive. And so then the woman chimes in.
And Michael Knowles just clowns her, just absolutely knows the history of the tattoo, including like, you know, she's talking about it before it existed before Islam, you know, and she's criticizing what it is. And he's like, do you understand that Islam didn't exist when this tattoo, when this symbol existed? Like it's not an anti-Muslim symbol because
There was no Muslims when this symbol was created. Like this is bonkers. And they're all in digging their heels in, pretending, just trying to win this conversation. Just trying to win. And Pierce Morgan's doing that. He's like the Jerry Springer of political ideology now. He just has people get on the show and yell at each other. It's very entertaining and he gets great sound bites out of it. It's kind of genius in terms of like an engagement perspective.
If you looked at your show, it's just like, how do I get more engagement? Well, that's how you do it. You get some wacky left. It's going to say nutty things. You get some right-wing persons going to say nutty things, and you get them all together yelling at each other.
I wish he did less of that. I should say that Pierce Morgan, I think, is a great interviewer. Like, he's legit a great interviewer, but he also has, he can put on his Jerry Springer hat on too. He's making money. Listen. I mean, he does, I mean, he does both. He does do long form street interviews, so that's. He's found his lane. All right. His lane is Jerry Springer.
But he's doing a good job exposing these people. It's very valuable. Like that conversation was very valuable for me because it was like, this is adorable. Watching this guy like flounder around trying to come up with a reason why this tattoo is so offensive. Yeah. But see, what I don't like about that is that guy is floundering, but there could be actually facets to that person outside of this ridiculous. That's interesting.
Right. So you got to cleanse that from your mind. They do. If you want to, if you want to be the guy who's on television talking about important issues and you've got this stupid thing in your head where you're arguing about a tattoo that you don't even understand. Yeah. You got to cleanse that stupidity out of your fucking mind. And sometimes the best way to do that is to get clowned on television. Sure. So you got exposed, she got exposed. They both look like morons and then Michael Knowles who
did a fantastic job of like smiling, never raising his voice, calmly explaining it. Have you seen it? No, I haven't. It's pretty wonderful. Michael Knowles is a pro. He's a pro. The way he handled it was remarkable. I know people criticize that guy, but fucking people criticize everybody. I'm just saying, in this moment... Don't read the comments, Joe. Don't read the comments. Yeah, even about other people, right?
Well, this the thing I think you said that is sometimes read comments from friends of yours. Yeah, I don't even like doing that. I try not to do that too. This is the thing that bothers me about comments is I don't read them, but like, I don't know, my mom will read them and she'll she'll text me something like, don't listen to what people say. It's okay. My mom will send me things. Is this true? My mom? Come on.
This is the clock. Yeah, this is it. This is wonderful. Watch this. The two people on the far right of the screen, the lady in the big jacket and the dude with the beard, they're fucked. They got cooked. You could accuse Pete of as being too alert and energetic. I found it overwhelming, actually, while I was there tired trying to dust the sand out of my eyes. But you suggest that the graduate of Princeton and Harvard, who for decades has been in the US military, served his country honorably
that he's somehow unqualified to work at the Pentagon. The most egregious accusation you make against him, though, is that he's an extremist because he has a tattoo. Could you tell us what the tattoo is? The tattoos, specifically, I do not make the allegation that he's an extremist. It was actually... You repeated the allegations. So what's the tattoo? It's an insider threat.
Yeah, right. So, what's the tattoo? I can tell you, it says, well, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
I wasn't the one upset about it. I was talking about his fellow colleague. This is exactly what I said. His fellow colleague. Do you know what it was? In the U.S. Army called him out as a potential insider threat. What is the tattoo on his chest? What is the tattoo? Also, I called him an extremist based upon his own book. What is the tattoo? His words. If you don't know what the tattoo is, just admit it.
I did hear him answer it, but they were all talking over each other.
Did he say the words? Yeah, they weren't talking about the cross. They're talking about a different tattoo. Yeah, well, she is talking about that as well. Okay. She's, but it'll go on to that. Actually, know what that tattoo is or not.
Listen, what I do know is that he read his book, and in his book, if you read the book, American Crusade in his book, wait a second. Be honest. Be honest. I am. Look, this is jurisprane. No one's been crucified. If you don't know the answer, but do you know the answer? Do you know our national security at risk for Pete Hexen? I'm telling you everything, and you guys are finding ways to spend. Why are you guys? No, no, we've simply asking you. Who has an NDA? We've simply asked him, actually, sexually something. Do you know what the taxi is? Are you exactly about?
now goes further see if you can find where the woman speaking cuz it gets even more brutal because she's incorrect and michael knoll's correct sir and when you correct sir it's looking great and it's a good way to expose if you find the other one jamie very narrow change agent and it's going to be in here i go click on where miss the whole show is our long show will talk to me and click right there i'll know where it is
What is the? What is the other? This falls along the threat as an insider. I'm going back to Michael. I'm going to Michael. I'm going to Michael. I'm going to Michael.
Michael. The tattoo in question is called a Jerusalem cross that this is a medieval Christian symbol goes back a long time. In fact, Jimmy Carter's funeral, there was a Jerusalem cross on the floor of the cathedral and on the program for the funeral. There's one other tattoo that some have suggested could be extremist
It's the phrase Deus Volt, which is a medieval Christian slogan, a long traditional slogan that refers to God's will and goes back a long way. These are very traditional, very mainstream Christian symbols that not only are not extreme in any way, but which even the people who want to accuse him of extremism couldn't possibly name. That is pathetic.
All right. His insider guardsman did it, which is what I said. And also I said that he called himself to extreme for the US military in his book. That's pathetic. Okay. Is Pete Hacks up lying that he's too extreme in his book? Let me go to two leaves me waiting. He's too extreme for radical leftists. Let me go to two leaves. Let me go to two leaves. Let me go to two leaves. Let me go to two leaves. Let me go to two leaves. Let me go to two leaves. Let me go to two leaves. Let me go to two leaves. Let me go to two leaves. Let me go to two leaves. Let me go to two leaves. Let me go to two leaves. Let me go to two leaves. Let me go to two leaves. Let me go to two leaves. Let me go to two leaves. Let me go to two leaves. Let me go to two leaves. Let me go to two leaves. Let me go to two leaves. Let me go to two leaves. Let me go to two
I'll tell you what, before you answer, I know you said in your sub-stack about this, under normal circumstances, he, Peter Hegsef, would be precluded from serving in any leadership role. So explain why you said that.
Well, let me, I will explain in one second, let me go back to something that was said in the very beginning that he spent more than 10 years of Fox News. And that's what qualifies him to be in, in his position that he wants to be in. I spent more than 10 years of Fox News. I don't think I'm qualified to run the DoD whatsoever based on my type of Fox News. I said that was one of the thing. If you, if you, well, I don't think that's even a remote qualification. That's one being able to communicate. You're asking the Secretary of Defense and explain policy is actually a very big part of the job. There are plenty.
There are plenty of qualified Republicans out there who can run the DoD, who also are good on television. It does not need to be Pete Hexeth. Secondly, again, you talked about NDAs. I am bound by an ND8 Fox News. If I were not bound by an ND8, and if Fox News wanted to release me from that ND8, I could tell you about my time with Pete Hexeth.
Unfortunately, that's not possible. But I will say that the reason that there are so many people who anonymously came forward at Fox News is that because they're also bound by confidentiality provisions, which one-third of all American workers need to sign in their first day of work, and if they were to go public, they could get sued. The reason this accuser is not heard from is because, according to The New Yorker, she tried desperately to meet with Joni Ernst.
on the committee, and Joni Ernst turned her down. So the reason that she has not been able to come out publicly is because she has an NDA, and even privately, she could not meet with a senator on this committee, who is also a rape survivor, to share her story, because that rape survivor did not want to hear from a woman who was going to put her potentially in a position to vote against Pete Hexeth. Pete Hexeth has written himself while at Princeton.
saying that women who are passed out, if you have sex with them while they're unconscious, that's not really rape. Right? Now, the American military... Is that true? Is that written somewhere?
i don't know how it doesn't sound true but yeah yeah it's hard to say but scoot ahead to where they just start discussing the tattoo it's it it's in the same flow it's it would not that far away this is definitely a good format though well at least they're letting her talk just go have your way with not really so i don't know which soldiers you've been talking to think pete hex that is a great thing for the military there are not what there's not one woman out there
who cares about being assaulted on deployment who thinks that this is the person that needs to be in charge of the United States military. And as for the cross that you talked about, yes, Dennis Volt, which is the cross that he has, and the slogan that he has, is an old Christian cross. The phrase, excuse me, the phrase, the phrase, however, was uttered by crusaders as they were slaughtering Jews and Muslims
during the second crusade specifically. So it's not just a random cross. It's not just a random phrase. It's not true. The phrase was uttered after the Council of Claremont, when Pope Urban II declared the crusade. And it was actually probably dew la vuille, but it's been rendered in Latin as day was vaulted. There's nothing to do with slaughtering Muslims, because the Muslims had invaded Europe, not the other way around.
Oh my God, are you really, are you really saying that the reason the crusade, which was sent to the Holy Land to liberate the Holy Land from whom, from Jews and Muslims? And that's a phrase. I'll tell you why the crusade, the crusade began because the Eastern emperor asked for help from the Western Pope because the Seljuk Turks were slaughtering Christians in the Holy Land because those lands were Christian before the Muslims invaded in the 7th century. So that's why.
No, no, no. Those lands became Christian after the first crusade, okay? So let's be clear. The lands were Christian in the first two second centuries. And then the Muslims in Islam didn't exist before the seventh century. What are you talking about?
Okay, I could listen. Listen, I can go all the way to talk about the Crusades, but the point is, I got a lot faster than people. What that has to do with Pete Hexett is it's not that he has a random cross.
that talks about his faith in Jesus Christ. He used a very specific terminology. But putting all of that aside... The biggest... ...to defend Christians in the Middle East, just like they're being persecuted today. Okay. And that's who you want as the Secretary of Defense. Wonderful.
If you want to, if you want to talk about the Crusades. If you want to talk about the Crusades. If you want to talk about the Crusades. If you want to talk about the Crusades. If you want to talk about the Crusades. If you want to talk about the Crusades. If you want to talk about the Crusades. If you want to talk about the Crusades. If you want to talk about the Crusades. If you want to talk about the Crusades. If you want to talk about the Crusades. If you want to talk about the Crusades.
You know what, why don't you, why don't you give me a call after this and I will walk you through exactly. All right. Let me, all right. But if you want to talk about it, but if you want to talk about it, we'll do a separate crusade debate another time. Let me bring Dave Rubin in.
The worst way to have conversations. I'm getting a headache from this. Fuck that whole panel. I'm sorry. You can't talk like this. Each of those individual people, I'm not sure about the second guy. Even the woman, would be a fascinating four or five hour conversation. Chill, you should probably have her on.
Yeah. Well, her and Michael Knowles and it appears Morgan. Yes. Yeah. This is not the right. And I'm so exhausted this fucking bullshit. I know. I can't. I'm like angry right now. Yeah, I know. I want to play more for you. This own published column saying sex with unconscious women isn't rape. Jesus. Imagine not just thinking that but publishing it. Yeah. I mean, what did he actually say when I read it, we can read it.
Well, great, but in quotes, intercourse.
In fact, not a clear case of rape, at least not in my home state. So this is Texas saying this. In short, though intercourse was not consented to, there was no duress because the girl drank herself into unconsciousness. Both criteria must be satisfied for rape. Unfortunately, the panelist never cited any legal definition of rape. Yet the panel, all females in the session I attended, claimed that rape it was. Huh, what year was this?
so they talking about this is what's confusing are they talk it says a skit and then it says they're talking about of the legal definition of rape has the legal definition changed over the years like when when was this
Is he talking about a legal definition or is he talking about his own opinion? Right? There's a giant difference between the two of them, right? Especially if you take it something out of context, you don't know if he elaborated article for his college newspaper stating that having sex with unconscious women isn't rape because the criteria for rape isn't met. So this isn't his college newspaper. So how old is he? Is he like 50? How old is Pete Haggseth? Yeah, he's up there, right?
which is really weird to think that forty-four college would have been around two thousand uh... yeah i remember in uh...
two thousand ish i remember when we were doing the podcast there was a brief moment of time where people are talking about uh... if a man had sex with a woman and they had both been drinking that it was rape that the woman could not consent because she was drunk but the man's drunk too right so it gets weird it gets like we understand like traditionally men are pursuing women and that applying someone with alcohol is uh...
a famous thing that people do. It's kind of a weird legal thing. Come on, one more drink, have another drink, have another drink. And we all know that when people get drunk, they do stupid shit. But we don't know what happened if you're both drunk.
You know, so this is what I'm getting at is that 2000, these conversations are already being had. The question is like, is he saying this from his personal perspective? Or is he saying it from a legal perspective? I don't know what else was in the text, you know, I'm trying to be as charitable as possible. Because if like more was in that, like that's a reprehensible act, that's like, did he say anything like that? Or was it just specifically talking about the legal definition? Because he said in his state, right?
Also says to be clear, he did not write it himself. He published it. Oh, that's what this is. In short, I accept that not published a puppet screen. He did not or did publish such a column while he held the role. He did not write it himself. He did not write it. It was written by someone else. Okay. So he just published someone's opinions. Okay, that's very different. That's very, very, very different. She said he said that.
That's not what he said at all. See that right there. I'm just so exhausted. That's exhausting. Both like over the thing. That's wrong with both sides. But that right there is crazy because I, my opinion of him, shifted briefly when I was like, you know, I was watching Daniel Nagrano, you know, the great poker player.
was on Tim Poole's show and they were talking about his shift in political ideologies and then a lot of it came from when they were accusing Trump of saying that thing that Obama repeated
falsely during the campaign was that he was talking about white nationalists and neo-Nazis and saying there's very fine people on both sides. And Negrano had heard that. He had heard the clip where Trump said it, where it was edited. He had never seen the full thing. And then once you saw the full thing, he was like, what the fuck?
and it immediately made him realize like oh my god they're lying they're lying and then he talked about how obama repeated this years after daniel had known it was false obama repeating it at the campaign speeches
And then Obama sitting right next to Trump, and they're joking around with each other. Hey, pal, I know you're a neo-Nazi lover. You fucking rascal. I had you win. Like it's tough. But just what that lady did on that show, and then when we find out that Hexa didn't actually write that, he just published it. You know, and he published it in college.
as a 20-year-old or whatever he was. I think there should be also room for that lady to then change her mind and apologize, because a lot of us pair it, including probably you and I. Never. Yeah. How dare you? Paired bullshit we see on the line. Yeah. Of course. And then we should give each other room to, like, say, I fucked up. But people don't want to say that. This is what they have to understand. Even people I don't like. Listen to me.
There's strength in that. It's better than digging your heels in. There's strength in saying, I was uninformed or I was misinformed. I fucked up. I've said it before. It's important to do. You got to do it because you can't have an erroneous idea in your head and repeat it over and over again. You can't have an incorrect false opinion that you have defended and now you can't ever accept even with new information that shows that it's not true.
I should also say because it's fucking sitting in my head on this topic. I'm probably going to do like a five plus hour interview with Jack Weatherford on Genghis Khan and I read his book and I don't, I'm not proud of the way I formulated my for the fuck. In the beginning of the beginning, I'm still bothered
by the looseness with which I talked about rape. There is, and I don't think I have in me the eloquence or the skill to improve on that. I think in general
It's trying to find the right words. Well, here's to describe the historically accurate thing, the data that we have, and then the narratives. I think the point Jack Weatherford makes is that we keep Oscelin back and forth on Genghis Khan. He's one, like this epic great conqueror, like currently Alexander the Great has that.
good vibes all around him. Nobody talks about him as a horrible human. Horrible human. Yeah. But currently, Jeng's Khan has this kind of
a barbarian, evil, just the rapist. Well, there's so good at it. They were so good at murder. They were so good at war. I mean, there's so uniquely good at military strategy. So it's about, always kept the army to about 100,000, it's small. So it's 100,000 horses, each soldier had five horses, four spare horses with them. So imagine 500,000 horses. Which they used their blood to fuel them.
Yeah, they they would use them for food. So it's very portable. They're not bringing right logistically the whole I mean, this isn't it's just imagine this armada moving like You can they can move like 50 miles a day this entire army and
and they don't have to follow the roads, which all the military would follow the roads. So you can go around, you can surround, and they did the, as you know, they can retreat, feign retreat, and then attack from the sides. It's the Blitzkrieg, it's the genius stuff. And a lot of people, including Dan Collins, say it's the greatest military in history. It would defeat every single military, including Napoleon, with the muskets and everything. They would destroy Napoleon, and then, of course, in the 20th century,
You know what they didn't defeat? Samurai's. Right. But they never really fought. They did. They twice. They fought, but it's not a real battle. These guys are fucking crazy. They thought they were crazy. These guys were like practicing their whole lives for one-on-one combat with swords. As far as I know, they never really had a full-on battle. I wish they did. There were some battles. There was battles on an island, one of the islands outside of Japan, but the Japanese successfully held off the Mongols.
And they were like one of the only civilizations to ever pull that off. I think one of the issues with Mongols except Kublai Khan is they were not good with water. They didn't know how to, the ship thing was not. Oh. What a big mistake. Well, they imagine if they got as good with water as they were with horses, that would have been a real problem. Well, a lot of things they had advantage on. Like, for example, they can ride on ice. And so... How'd they do that? They, it's, they, in Mongolia, they, these people like... Did they have different horseshoes?
Do they even shoe their horses back then? No, I don't think so. Really? No, no, no. It's all done. Like, they don't have... Like, when do they start shoeing horses? That's a good question.
But this doesn't feel like a mongol thing. I mean, the people can ride the mountain archery. Oh my God. They know about this. The mountain archery is so insane. They had the ability to hang off the side of the horse so they would shoot from under the horse's neck. So they were completely defended by the horse and they were shooting arrows and their bows were 160 pounds.
So you had to be insane. They said that a lot of the skeletons they find from that era, their bones are deformed because your whole body has just been pulling 160 pounds with your right arm or your left arm, like your whole life. So your right side is like,
insanely muscled and your bones are all twisted and thicker and denser tendons and everything because they've been doing that since there were children. They were insane. They were like two years old. Insanely formidable army. Insanely formidable. But here's something to take into consideration what we're saying about how Genghis Khan's genes were spread.
Just right off the bat. It's all awful all horrible. I wish no one ever got killed by anybody ever It's all awful all war is hell all of it all's hell
There was so much of it going on throughout human history that women would, there was a survival mechanism in accepting this conqueror as your new husband when he slaughtered your husband. This is the only way your genes passed on. So these women were able, I mean, even if they said they fell in love with him.
You know, even if they did marry him, even if they were happy to marry him, there was like almost an evolutionary requirement because we slaughtered each other so much that if you wanted your genes to pass on, you had to accept the slaughter of your former mate.
and then in modern society will call that rape right but it's it's uh... you have to use different words for that time because there is rape where it's like violent rape as part of wars part of a mechanism of terror i think even as just part of society up until like a few thousand years ago or even a few hundred years ago i think human beings you know like
I've had a bunch of friends who've served overseas, and the stories they tell from Afghanistan, especially with the child raping, is fucking bone curdling. Blood curdling, you just want to leave the room when they're talking. You don't even want to hear this. You don't want to think that this is happening. It's happening right now.
because it's an old culture, it's an old culture, and it's separate from the rest of the world. It's very remote, very difficult to access. You have warlords and herders who are living in these nomadic tribes to this day. Not much different than when Alexander the Great conquered it. So I should say that Jankly Scott from Everything I Understand was not progressive, but he was very pragmatic. This is why he fell out all religions.
all religions, which is Thomas Jefferson, I should say, deeply admired Genghis Khan for this, the freedom of religion. And he didn't just say freedom of religion, it's freedom of an individual to practice any religion they want, which is a, it's like individualism. It's a really revolutionary, badass idea for that time, for that place. Well, he was, he recognized strength.
and the value of accepting strength and taking strength in unity the strength in community if people can worship whatever they want but i'll be united under one banner as it's better than dividing everybody in the feminist thing that i mentioned he would put women in power why is he a feminist.
No, he understood that women are able to rule men conquer better in his perspective and women rule better because they keep a stable society. So he would marry a woman to the king of the place.
And then send the king off to fight, the ruler to fight, knowing for sure he's going to die. But the woman is not ruling. And then there's a lot of like progressive things about like there were a lot to show their face, especially in the Persian lands where they conquered, like they're allowed to wear these fancy head dresses, which is, you know,
Take a floss a little. Yeah, exactly. Just got excited about that. Yeah, exactly. New rules. And the other thing, you know, on the... This is the tricky thing is the Mongolian tribes where Genghis Khan came up, by the way, came up from nothing. Father slaughtered. I mean, this is from nothing.
That was a common practice to steal wives, to steal women. Well, he had one of his wives stolen and she came back pregnant. That was like the origin story. The origin story of Genghis Khan, right, is like the love of his life who was married to him for his whole life that he proposed or he said, we're going to marry at nine years old.
She was kidnapped, and he had to raise an army in order to rescue her back. That was sort of the split in the road. He would have been a normal mongol, but here he has to raise an army to rescue her back. And then he realized he's really fucking good at this whole rescue.
But it started with you know What I could find is that the horses were unshoot unshoot, but they did do something that this is here They use some sort of skin to cover it
Interesting allowed a dry in place in order to acquire the shape of a hoof, perfect the technique to cover the hoof, which offered greater abilities their armies to move faster more efficiently than their opponents. Interesting. Of course, these were around for at least two or three hundred years before them, so they probably knew about them. Skins, that's interesting. What you're saying about him developing the ability and like really, hey, I'm really good at this. Do you know that's exactly what happened with the Somali pirates?
Do you know the Somali pirates? Origin story? No. The Somali pirates call themselves the People's Coast Guard of Somalia.
They were defending their waters against Europeans dumping toxic waste in the ocean. They were fishermen. So they had found that these ships were dumping water and killing all their fish and say that these motherfuckers were going to hold them responsible. So they boarded these ships, kidnapped them, and said, hey, you have to pay us. We've lost all this money from all our fish. We don't have any fish. Give us money or we'll kill these motherfuckers. And they gave the money and they said, hey, let's start kidnapping people.
Like, this is way better. And then, you know, there's obviously, there's a narcotic aspect to it because of cat, because of widespread use of this narcotic cat, which is like an amphetamine. Is it a leaf? K-H-A-T? That's like, you know, the guy in the boat, look, look at me. I am the captain now. That guy's cracked out.
I mean, they're all real skinny. And what's really important in that dynamic is who is the leader that emerges. That's the interesting thing about Jengis Khan. He became super powerful. That person could have been incompetent. Jengis Khan could have been a bunch of different people. Right. He instilled one of the really revolutionary things is meritocracy.
Right. By the way, he appointed his kids, several people including Marcus Aurelius wrote fancy, you know, meditations. He failed as an emperor by appointing his kids. Before him, the five emperors all appointed based generals based on merit, right? So, Genghis Khan always appointed based on merit. Who's the best person here to lead the groups?
which is a revolutionary idea for the time, because it was usually based on kin, like your relationship, your brothers, your sisters, your father, and so on. That was really important. And the other thing I mentioned about the tribes, the origin story, is everybody would kidnap an actual rape, the woman, there were still women in the Mongol Empire,
as soon as he won over the entire original Mongolia, he banned. That was a strict rule. There's no kidnapping of wives. That was a rule for Mongolia, and that rule propagated everywhere. That's wild. It's like, this is what got us into this shit. Yeah, which is one of the pieces of evidence where they're like, it's like, there was a lot of cracking down on the whole rape thing, but
There's a, and Kathy out of like, well, why is there so many dead bodies where like the atmosphere changed. Why is the carbon footprint different of the human race during the time that he was alive? But it's, that's, it's interesting because we also have to look at things in a perspective of living in the year 1200. Or what does it, 1240s? Like, when was he around? Well, I should know this 12 or 13.
So yeah, we'll we'll jam you'll find out. It's so you have to it's very hard to do and it's not apologize for these people I'm not like saying that we should apply the way they looked at the world today I think the way we look at the world is infinitely better and we're moving in an infinitely better direction and I think we have like
large extremes that go in one direction and things push back in the other direction too far. There's an over-correction and then they balance out. I think we're generally moving in a direction of a more kind, more peaceful society. I think we're better.
That said, 1,200 years ago, the world was hell. There was no newspapers. No one could read. OK, where did you get your information from? You got your information from priests and from generals. And you shared information of your farmers. The world was horrific. People fought with bows and arrows and cannons and catapults. And murder was commonplace. If you were 12 years old, you've probably seen a few people killed already.
It was a different time to be alive. Diseases would kill everybody. There was no medicine. You broke your leg, you're dead. You get infected, you're dead. The world was a very, very different place. It was so, so dangerous and so fucking terrifying and people relied on their base instincts.
and the worst aspects of humanity, they relied on that to survive because that was all around you. You had to become a monster if you wanted to live in monstrous times. And that's why the rule of law had to be enforced in a brutal way. One of the really powerful things he did is protect merchants, people that traded. If you fuck with people that trade,
that on the Silk Road, you're going to get slaughtered. It's not like there's going to be a process. You get slaughtered. In fact, one of the reasons has the date to say this because people are projecting to the future.
He slaughtered, he took Kiev and slaughtered people because they broke the rule of, I forget the term for this, but the people that are sent out to communicate before the battle starts. Ambassadors. And the ambassadors, the rule is you don't fuck with them. Yeah. And the Kiev and residents killed them.
And that's where you break the rule. It's like, that's it. Then it's total war. And you have to do that. I mean, you don't have to do that, but that is one of the. Well, if you're living back, then you have to do that. And then you look at like, but the result is complete slaughter. And by the way, thank you.
for rescuing me. I said a bunch of stupid shit, and you're adding more complexity and depth and nuance. Well, we just got started. I love you too. I love you to death, man. You know how you, when you begin a podcast, I don't know if you're like this, but for me,
I got to get cooking. You know, sometimes that's one of the reasons why I like to talk to people. I like to talk sometimes like 15 minutes even before we go in there. The danger is they're going to say something and I'm going to ask them to repeat it. I don't want that. So sometimes I'll come in hot and I'm like, let's just go right now. But your brain, you don't know we're going to talk about the Mongols and rape.
And so then all of a sudden, you were in this very intense conversation about the responsibility you have as a podcaster, which is a crazy thing to say, but you do. You have probably more responsibility than anybody. And then this subject comes up in the middle of that.
And before that, we were joking about ejaculating in space. Yeah, that's how we started it. Yeah. Right. I mean, we used to open up some of the most serious conversations this podcast ever had with a flashlight ad.
The early days of the podcast, that was the only sponsor we had. This is, again, you reacting to criticism. It's the fear of the criticism of you yourself knowing you could have done a better job of explaining that had you prepared something.
which is really the difference between off-the-cuff conversations and like your actual well-considered thoughts on things expressed in the best way possible, which is what you would do if you're going to write it out, if you're going to write a sub-stack piece about it. Well, one of the things I'm trying to do for myself personally, I think a lot of people have to do this when young kids have to do this.
is figure out how to create a psychological framework where I'm not affected by the internet. It sounds like ridiculous to say, but you say don't read the comments, but they come at you. They'll find their way, and I need to. It doesn't work. Nobody's good at it. Even Elon's not good at it. Just post and ghost. Post and ghost.
But these things that you think are interesting and just get out of there. Don't read stuff about yourself. Someone said this. I think it was Anthony Hopkins. He was talking about someone's opinion of him. He said, that doesn't concern me. No. Was it Anthony Hopkins? I think it was. But he was like, their opinions of me are not my business.
But let's, let's add to this little puzzle. What if a bunch of your friends say you're getting cancer online? By the way, Tucker Carlson is good at this. He doesn't read anything. Yeah. He doesn't even have social media. Yeah. I know. I always want to send him things, but this motherfuckers are going to look at this. What if like all your friends have read the thing, right? Like that your, or your parents or so on, your loved ones, like,
And the thing could be just a bunch of lies about you. Sure. For me, that's a little bit of a tricky thing. Well, that's not something you should ignore. If you want to make a statement, there's nothing wrong with that. What I'm saying is don't regularly engage in people's opinions of the product that you put out. I don't think it's healthy for you because I think, first of all, I've said this before, I'm only kind of joking, but I'm kind of serious. Most people commenting are losers.
Sorry. If you're doing it all the time and you're doing it in a negative way all the time, this is not everybody. There's a lot of like really well thought out commentary on YouTube videos that I see on if occasionally I'll read someone's Instagram page and I'll read my friend's comments. Some people are brilliant. Don't get me wrong, but it is a haven for fuck heads.
It's a place where people can go and just try to insult people and say the most negative thing possible. And they generally, I think there's generally a lot of like dull-minded people that gravitate towards the negativity.
You know, where that differs is Christians, which is interesting. Like a lot of like low wattage Christians are still super nice, you know, and they'll just praise Jesus and look for forgiveness, the real ones, right? Which is a great thing that we should all aspire to.
Yeah, like the default state is super nice. Yes, the default state what you're supposed to do if you really follow Jesus is teaching is like be completely nonviolent and be a beautiful person and love everybody like it's your brother. That's what he wants. That's like, you know, and if you follow that, but there's just too many assholes and too many disgruntled people out there that have terrible lives.
You know, the most men lead lives of quiet desperation, the throw line that I fucking love so dearly. It's such a great line. That's so true and maybe even more true today because of the unnatural world in which we're thrust in. So not only are people
doing things that they hate most of the time, but they're also engaging with their phone more than they are with people. So they're engaging in this very bizarre, non-physical way that is detached from any human interaction, detached from emotions, eye contact, the feel of being with someone, the back and forth of a conversation between two people. Like if you and I were going to disagree about something, if there was like some
Political thing or some social thing that you and I disagreed about We could sit and just I want to know why you think the way you think like I want to know like if you think of a thing and I disagree with it The first thing I want to know is and this is not something I always had I got way better at this in my life as I've gotten older and had more conversations with people you got our like Absolutely know what this person thinks
Don't like attack it. Don't twist it around. Don't distort it. You have to kind of steelman it. You have to be as charitable to that position as possible. And then occasionally when you find things that you disagree with, you have to stop and you have to say, okay, here's my problem with this. And it has to be done in good faith. You have to be doing it not to win. You have to be doing it to figure out what's right.
And everybody's so fucking attached to their opinions and their ideology that most of the time most conversations are had where one person, at least on social media, one person is trying to win. You're trying to win all the time. You're playing this stupid game. It's a dumb ass game where everybody's a loser.
But we just watched the Pierce Morgan thing. That's the same thing. It clearly pulled in your attention. I love it. You're aware of it. See, you love it. You're the part of the problem, Joe. Oh, 100%. I'm a huge part of the problem. Don't get me wrong. Look at our human being. Well, yeah. Well, also, how much do I contribute to people wasting their time? TikTok reels, Instagram reels, Twitter things. How many fucking Twitter articles get written about every stupid thing I said? I mean, for three days, Dragon Believer was trending.
Just because some wacky old lady thinks I believe in dragons. But this is just the nature of the world. I love that aspect of the internet. I love the wacky shit. Even the Ukraine war footage, which is horrible, what it's doing is giving you a more nuanced version of the world. And some of it's not good. Like I watched a video today of a guy who got killed by a tiger. Well, he didn't get killed by a tiger. He got torn apart by a tiger.
The wounds, man. The wounds. So this guy, like, I didn't think, like, what would a tiger do to you if a tiger bit your fit? You want to see? Yeah. That you do. I know you do. Because I'm a little curious. I'm switching over to Android, buddy.
Welcome. Yeah, I just have a few more steps that I have to do before I switch over and I'm going to try to communicate only with encrypted apps from now on. It's just sort of like limiting Twitter replies to registered accounts. You know, people like to do that. I'm going to try to do that. I'm going to try to use WhatsApp for everything. I was going to use Signal, but
Yeah, I don't know the people you signal. I don't know. It seems too secret squirrel. I didn't know what that means. But yeah, you know, like you're a spy of using signal. I use it though. I use it all the time. I don't. I mean, I'm totally being hypocritical here. What was I looking at? Oh, the tiger thing, bro. This one's rough. This one's rough. This is.
Tom Segura I sent it to him today. Tom Segura and I send each other every day the worst shit that we can find on the internet and it has been like legitimately it's been one of the worst aspects of modern life for me. It's like every fucking day me and Tom are sending each other guys getting killed by assassins. Nice. It's every day. It's there's so many footage so many videos of cartel members whacking people like
After a while, you're like, holy shit, I don't know if I could do this anymore. Like every day, someone's getting run over by a truck. Every day. And you're, that's, so here it is. So this guy, they're shooting at, give me some volume. So I can hear this. So they shot at the Tigers just before this, because this guy had been bitten up. And so, see, they're shooting at him right now. And the Tigers like, nah, bitch. And the Tigers just biting down on this guy.
So this is what the guy looked like. This is his wounds. Wow. That bro. Look at his head. I mean, his bone is exposed. Yeah, no, he's alive, dude. Look at his face. Watch this show his face.
So this guy climbed into wildlife enclosure. Those were not wild tigers. I don't want to say tamed. They're not tamed, but there's some in some way at least minimized in their effectiveness. Is that, you know, our buddy Paul sent me that. Paul Rosalie sent me that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So this doesn't remind me of the jungle.
Yeah. Our buddy Paul is fearless. He's a bad motherfucker. Yeah. Paul Rosalie's a bad motherfucker. That guy is literally putting his money where his mouth is, where his life is, trying to save the Amazon, like living in it, helping people.
You know hiring people to guard it taking people that were chopping the wood chopping the trees down and then giving them a new job to protect the trees It's fucking amazing and feel and he feels the pain like he literally like physically feels the pain of lost trees He sent me something. I don't even know I'm allowed to talk about it, but if
If we're not, I'll edit it out afterwards. But he sent me a video, I can't show the video, but he sent me a video of an uncontacted tribe that he discovered. Yeah. Did you send you that? Yeah. Fucking insane. Yeah, since just complete uncontacted tribe naked in the forest, hundreds of them.
And they're like pushing these boats filled with bananas out to them to give them food. The reason we could probably talk about it, they try not to show it so that people don't show up and try to find them. Exactly. You want to kind of protect them. Exactly. That's why I don't know if we could even talk about it. But he has brought up the uncontacted tribes before on the show, and one of his friends was murdered by one. One of the tribes, he was these guys drop off food to these people. And one day they're like, you know what? Enough. Whap. I'm just going to kill you. Fuck you. I don't trust you.
Yeah, we hung out, we talked to a guy that works with Paul that has like a scar from a spear. Jeez. Jeez. Bro. At least 100 uncontacted groups in the rainforest. Unbelievable, man. They're living like they were living 20,000 years ago, maybe even more, you know, completely uncontacted.
That is to me one of the most fascinating aspects of human life today. It's not just that we're on the verge of quantum computing and AI becoming sentient. We're coexisting at the same time with people that have a completely subsistence-based lifestyle with the stuff that's around them. Stone tools, literally, pointed sticks for spears.
that they've been doing this for thousands and thousands of years. And they're living at the same time as smartphone addiction.
Not only that, those people probably, their roots go, they could be the original civilization. I mean, I believe that they're it. Look at that. Isn't that crazy? Look at those people. That is so wild. This is taking in June. Man, that would be so, if you could just be a fucking fly on the wall and observe that life, like without interfering somehow. So just remotely, ah, that would be so incredible. You would be doing what the aliens are doing right now.
I think that is what they're doing. I think it's real similar. I really do. I think if you just looked at the natural progression of human beings and what we're talking about with quantum computing and AI and the technological innovations that are without doubt going to hit us like a tsunami over the next 20 years, 30 years, whatever it is.
What are we going to become? We're going to become what they are, the same kind of thing. And if there was a planet that had something like us that's emerging and just figuring out how to split the atom and still involved in tribal warfare, a primate that's still involved with tribal warfare but now has nuclear bombs. That's us. Also, dick pics.
Also, you know, also only fans. Also, you know, just massive social media addicts all over the entire planet while we're engaging in tribal warfare with hypersonic weapons. So they would be studying us the same way we're studying these folks. Same thing, you know, when we find out a guy got hit with a spear like, Oh, fuck, what happened? These people are crazy.
Like you got to be careful. Like when Paul was saying that they were there and they realized that the tribe was close, like they were starting to hear things and they realized they were probably being hunted and they just got the fuck out of there as quick as they could. That's terrifying.
I do not want to wake up to news on my feed that Paul Rosalie got killed by an uncontacted child. Well, that guy leaps into adventure. I've got the chance to hang out with him. And it's great. There's certain people. I haven't met many people like him in the way that you've described, but also in the way where he sees, you know, I was a little bit like this, actually. He sees the opportunity for adventure.
And he just leaps into it. It's not like a deep, deliberate process of strategy and planning and so on. It's just something pulls at him. And that's a really fun person to be with. But a couple of that with just extreme competence. Like he's good at surviving. He's just.
He's good at taking risks and good at surviving. And that's like the uncontacted tribes or the crazy shit we did in the jungle, just like getting lost and almost dying, all that kind of stuff. And he's a really nice guy. Super nice. A really nice guy. And it's just like there's something to that. He's an actual good person. And he's really doing this for a good cause.
Yeah, yeah, and it's not just the Amazon rainforest. He's also going to Africa and India and sort of trying to save nature. I mean, I mean, you go out hunting, the forest is a bit different than like the Amazon rainforest. Their life is a lot different. It's like real intense, like there's a lot. You're in the middle of a soup of life. When you have that much life, just think about the amount of insects
The button you around it the buzzing at night explain that what that sounds like as an orchestra is millions of little organisms and If you just screaming just no silence at night. Yeah, they're all fucking They're all screaming and fucking and killing each other
Yeah. And it's all life eats life all around you. It's life eating life. And one of the ways to experience that is the sound, the other way is just standing there. Stuff starts crawling on you pretty quickly. So did you get bit by a bullet ant?
No, but, you know, step very close to it. There's a lot. I mean, I want to get bit by one. In the context here, I would love to get bit by one. Would you do it on the podcast? If we brought in bullet ads? Let's go. Yeah. So we have to take a day off of everything else, I think. What are you pussy?
I think you do. I think you don't want to be interviewing some person about AI just sweating, just sweating and agony. Everybody likes to think they have super high pain tolerance. You know that about men? It's fun. Men always like to think, oh, man, I've got fucking crazy pain tolerance. Well, don't women have them much higher? Much higher. He knows the highest redheaded women. Oh, that explains a lot.
This is up for debate, but I sent Jamie something recently. Do you remember that thing I sent you? So we were talking about on the podcast multiple times because I had read that, that they had a higher pain threshold. I'm like, that's weird. I wonder why? Well, well, because everybody's been fucking with jingers forever. They've been beating their ass. They're like an MMA guy who's got two older brothers, you know? They're fucking, they can take it. The scariest MMA fighters have older brothers who used to beat them up.
Because they're ready to fucking throw down all the time. Like the scariest guys or abusive stepdad, those two. That makes a scary guy or abusive father. The guys that I know that are the fucking scariest, they had abusive dads. They had people that beat them up when they were young. And they just get fucking used to going, just ready to go. They don't have a fear of going. They want to go. They want to go all the time. Let's fucking go. Like they've just been, there's no way to survive.
If you're a kid and you have a brother who's four years old and your dad is a raging alcoholic and he beats your mom in front of you and your brother beats your ass too, like fuck man, you better be hard or you're not going to make it. There's no pill to cry into. You got to fight your brother. He's four years older than you. He might knock you out today. He knocked you out last week. He laughed at you when you're on your back. Yeah.
I mean, not to return to the topic, but Jeng is gone. Murdered his older brother because he's picking on him. He stole his fish. He stole his fish. Yeah, he said, fuck you. Shot him in the bow and arrow. The mom freaked out. Yeah. Called him a monster. Yeah. She was right. Well, also, you learn how to kill your brother when you're, you know, was he six? Wasn't he? Yeah, something like that. Yeah, like this gets married in nine. Yeah, you're getting off on the wrong foot.
and conquered an empire at 16. But they didn't expect you to live past 30, you know? If you got to 30, you were an old fuck back then. Meanwhile, he lived, like, into his 60s. Yeah. He lived really long and he was consulting with monks because he was trying to figure out how to live longer, how to live forever. He was like, you know, he felt the iron ebbing from his blood. He felt the body weakened. And he wanted to visit today beyond TRT. He'd be fucking great. Meanwhile, his kids are kind of disappointing.
Well, of course. Isn't that always the case? That's the thing. Show me a man who's a great man, who's the son of a great man. It's tough. It's tough. It's a hard road. I mean, you have to have a very exceptional father who recognizes the requirements that this kid is going to go through if you're fucking Genghis Khan's son. And meanwhile, you're also running an empire. Raising kids is a very involving thing.
and it's a nuanced thing. And you have to know which ones to push and which ones to just let them be themselves, which ones to support, which ones to encourage, and how to encourage and how to instill discipline, how to show them how important it is to feel the pain of loss.
and to feel like failure and to understand that this doesn't make you a bad person. These are just the lessons of life and the energy that comes with doing something well and throwing yourself into something and finding success versus half-assing your existence and feeling filled with misery and regret. And that's a difficult thing when you're sleeping on silk sheets.
You know, that was like what Marvin Hagley used to talk about. Like, you know, it's hard to get up in the morning and run when you sleep it in silk sheets. He was talking about the pull of as you become successful boxers get softer. And it's because they start getting rich, you know, and then, you know, there's chill a little bit. Well, if you have a sun then and the sun's growing up rich and you're chill,
Like fuck man, like you want to make a conqueror? You want to make a champion fighter? Give them a rough childhood. I don't think you should do it. It definitely shouldn't be mean to your kid just so that they could be a badass fighter.
Well, I think it's also, there's probably a balance you can hit, but a lot of these folks, because they had nothing, they want to spoil their kids. They go too far in the other direction. Yeah. It's not, it's harder to be a strict parent, I think. Mitzi sure used to ignore Paulie just to make him funnier.
She talked about it. She talked about ignoring him when he was crying. Yeah, it'll make him funny. She was right. She knew what she was doing. But it's like to do that.
If you're a conqueror and you came up from shooting your brother with a bow and arrow and then raising an army to take back your wife and then you have children and your children are born when you're 40, you know, and you've got this insane empire that's like one of the most spectacular and impressive military accomplishments. If you just look at in terms of just like the sheer numbers of human beings, they sent into the reincarnation cycle.
It's fucking it's a crazy number man. They killed somewhere between I think the estimates are 50 to 60 million people Over the course of his lifetime 10% of the population of earth
and they you know how by the brutal one-on-one contact bows and arrows fire catapults swords spears trampled
And through all of that, it doesn't seem like power corrupted the guy. So he was big on Mark Grave. No statues were allowed to be made of him, no paintings, no anything. Not just that. They killed everybody that was involved in it. The people that went to bury him, another group came out to kill them.
And then another group came out to kill the people that killed them. They came in three waves so that no one would have any idea where Genghis Khan is buried. And we still don't know.
You know, that's one of the qualities of, there's a perception of Zelensky, sort of the actor, the showman, all that kind of stuff, some of that is true, but in his interactions that I'm aware of with the soldiers, there is no, like he wants to be on an exact same level, sleep on the same bunks, no glamour, none of that, which I personally admire in a leader in general, just walk amongst the soldiers. It's a very admirable thing. I mean, if you're gonna ask people, could you imagine Biden was at the front line?
You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah. You may maybe see Kamala Harris at the front line in Afghanistan. Could you see that? No. Could you see Obama at the front line? No. You see Trump at the front line? Fuck out of here. I'm 78 years old. Leave him alone. Yeah. It's a very admirable thing. And if you know, that's a thing if people have always said the number one concern that people have with the military industrial complex is sending young men
to die in a war that's unnecessary for profit while you are in an air conditioned office, right? That was during fear and loathing in Las Vegas. Who was it? McGovern? Did McGovern say that?
But it was a very powerful speech. I'm tired of watching these old men in air conditioned offices send young men to die in these unnecessary wars. Actually, if you're willing to be out there too, that's a very different thing. It's a very different thing.
I mean, some people make the argument that a president should moderate how much they do that, because you could die. You could die. But it also wears on it. To make compromise decisions in the realm of geopolitics, in the realm of war, you have to have a bit of coldness.
If you really feel the pain of soldiers, you may make unwise decisions. In terms of diplomatic decisions? Yes. In terms of, for example, you've seen a lot of people die, children die. And if you've seen enough, there's the idea of quote unquote peace is a dirty word. Right. Like you want justice. Isn't that a problem right now? Not just in Ukraine, but also in Gaza? Yeah. I mean, this is the thing that
The sheer number of people that died that had nothing to do with it is crazy. It's crazy. I think the most recent estimate, and they don't even know because there's so many people that are under rubble, the most recent estimate was somewhere north of 60,000 people.
And how many of them are kids? Like what's the number of kids that have been killed by missiles that had done nothing wrong? Like what's that number? And those kids have families and those kids have mothers and brothers and sisters and some people that lived and some people that died. And whoever makes it out of that, you want to radicalize somebody. You want to radicalize somebody to
to just want nothing but revenge. I can think of no better way. No better way.
And here, Donald Trump has tasked with going in there and trying to make peace. I think I'm pretty optimistic about just knowing the skill set of all the people involved in Israel Palestine and Russia, Ukraine, I'm pretty optimistic about. I can't believe those people, those hostages are still alive. How many of them are still alive now?
I don't know if the exact numbers are, but it's crazy that they were not freed sooner. The whole thing's horrible from top to bottom, including all the people that have decided what happened, people that are saying it was definitely a false flag, or these things are complicated.
These things are complicated. It's definitely like whenever something horrible happens and someone fucked up, like someone fucked up, Israel is the most protected place on earth. It's one of the most secure countries on earth. For them to let something like that happen, it's just a huge fuck up. But what I had heard was that there was also a lot of troops that were stationed near where there were protests.
So there was a lot of protests about Netanyahu before October 7th happened. Most people weren't even aware of. There was hundreds of thousands of people in the streets protesting Netanyahu before October 7th. So then October 7th comes and then all of a sudden, now whenever you have any sort of military engagement, any sort of, you're at war right now, when those things happen,
One of the first things that happens is all the protests and all the bullshit stops because now a bunch of people got killed. And when anything like that happens and you're now involved in a country-wide assault on this other country, everything else gets put aside. And so the conspiracy fear has always been when a leader knows that they're going to get pushed out, they'll start a false flag or start a war. So they look at October 7th and they say they let that happen.
Or they say they had knowledge of it, they knew it was going to happen, they knew it, but they wanted an excuse to raise Gaza. They wanted an excuse to just have a full on bombing campaign against Hamas. I mean, you definitely need to look at the incentives there. That is one of the concerns in Ukraine for President Zelensky.
the prospects of ending the war, because right now the country is unified. If you end the war and you have elections, now you have to face a lot of the consequences internally about the potential discovery of corruption, about the suspension of democracy, about all of these things, and the same thing with Netanyahu, who, by the way, also
They want to do a three-hour podcast. I talked to him before October 7th for an hour. I regret.
talking to him for an hour. One of the things I really learned a lot from you and from just myself, you can't, you can't do. One of the things I really don't like what happened with me talking to Donald Trump is like 40 minutes with Donald Trump. It was a mistake. They didn't really, there was a- I was almost willing to do that with Kamala Harris.
Well, comma is entertaining. I was entertaining the 45 minute one. I was entertaining. Because I was like, maybe if I could just come in at a 10, just like work my brain up, like really come in and just engage with it real quick. I just wanted to get, I wanted to get loose. I don't, the problem is like, I want to see how you are as a real person.
I think, actually, genuinely with you and Kamala Harris, I think 45 minutes is horrible, but I think you're so skilled and compassionate. It's fun to talk to you. I think you would just end up being much, much longer. That's the hope. If that's the hope, yeah. There would be questions, though, and some questions would be very complicated, like the immigration question.
Like I would say, what's happening? Like what is happening? What do you do you think that there should be limitations to this? Do you think it should be stopped? All right. Do you think we should round up all the people that we know that are terrorists that made it across? Are we keeping track of them? Do we know how many? Do we know what happened? Do we know why it happened? Why are people opposed to the idea of cracking down on border patrol? Making more soldiers available, putting walls up everywhere. Like what is the reason to not do this? Like tell me what you're thinking.
And when people start talking about labor, they're talking about bringing in labor, and then our population is lower, like Chuck Schumer brought that up, talked about like, we need workers. And I'm like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah
Is that really what the problem is? That Americans aren't willing to do jobs and you want to bring in illegal people? How about just make legal immigration easier for poor people that are trying to get over here? How about just scan them, screen them, make sure that they're not fucking murderers.
make sure that our cartel members and then let them in easier. Wouldn't that be a better way to do it to vet people? But the idea of not vetting people just doesn't make any sense at all. That would have been a problem. That conversation would have been a problem because it doesn't make any sense at all. And I'm a grandchild of immigrants. I believe in immigration. I think America is the fucking shining light in the world. If you can get here,
You can actually make something happen. There's not a caste system. They actually reward people from, you know, started from the bottom. Now we're here. Like that's a thing here. Although that's Drake. He's Canada, but it's that that that thought. That's going to be America soon, right? Yeah, we're going to take over Canada for sure. Yeah, that needs to happen.
Yeah, 51st state. Let's go. Puerto Rico's next. You got to become a real state now. Puerto Rico's got a weird thing where you're allowed to not pay taxes, but you can't vote. Do you know that deal? That's the Peter Schiff deal.
You don't vote, but you don't pay federal income tax like that. I think you're going to go to jail some day. I think one day they're going to fucking pull you inside. We changed that rule and you owe us $4 billion in back taxes, you fucking criminal. What are you doing out here?
hanging out on this aisle and just stealing money. But yeah, we definitely need legal immigration, the idea of bringing the best people in the world here. But also, Mark Andreessen talks about this. We need to make sure we recruit the Midwest, the farm boys, get them to do epic shit inside Americans. Well, here's step one.
ramp up the fucking education system yeah Jesus Christ at what point in time do we not say how far do we have to slip down the list of like the best performing students in the world before someone comes along and says hey the whole thing about this place is if our kids are losers they're going to grow up to become loser adults make it way easier to be a winner
What's the best way to do that? Have a way better education system. Just imagine if they completely revamped the education system in this country, just poured a shitload of money and had the wisest minds come up with a brilliant strategy for more creative ways of approaching learning, pushing people into viable pathways that maybe didn't even exist when the education system was structured.
Because things have changed so much in the world. You could probably do a way better job than we're doing, which would make people come out of that, they would emerge better qualified people. So we would get more shit done in America. So America would prosper overall. The GDP would grow. Everything would be better. You'd have less poverty. That's where they need to start. It's not just letting all the immigrants