TRIGGERnometry - Eric Weinstein - All Hell Is About to Break Loose

00:00:00.200 We don't realize that we incrementally gave up on the idea that our lives could be filled with an exciting parade of major innovations.

00:00:12.300 I see AI and I find it terrifying. I find it terrifying the effect it's going to have on people's jobs, the fact that it's going to obliterate a lot of jobs.

00:00:21.160 What effect is that going to have on society? Am I right?

00:00:24.800 You just lost your capitalist model. You have a fabric that is overlying the entire world that directs people whether to get up in the morning and what to do once they do rise.

00:00:37.060 And it tells them how to do things without having a dictator. So it's not just the invisible hand, it's the invisible mesh.

00:00:45.480 And this invisible mesh, if it breaks, means people are not going to know what to do in the morning.

00:00:50.220 All hell's about to break loose. And my question is, are you trying to figure out which way the wave is going to break and get your surfboard in the water?

00:01:00.100 We should be sitting around talking about what is the new economics.

00:01:04.260 Instead, what we're talking about is how do we keep communism at bay while capitalism is struggling?

00:01:20.220 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster.

00:01:23.980 I'm Constantine Kissinger.

00:01:25.160 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:01:30.320 Our brilliant guest today is a physicist. He's one of the smartest people in the world and a friend of the show, Eric Weinstein. Welcome to Trigonometry.

00:01:36.500 Hey, it's great to be here. Thanks, guys.

00:01:38.020 It's really good to have you on the show, Eric. It's been a long time coming. So exciting to have you here.

00:01:42.840 But listen, you know, for a lot of people who watch our show, you will be one of the IDW guys who was part of this sort of weird emerging thing a few years ago.

00:01:53.060 And they won't actually know who you are exactly. They'll know you for the things you say.

00:01:57.920 What has been your journey through life that leads you to be sitting here? Because you've done a lot of interesting things.

00:02:03.120 Right. So sometimes I try to avoid being known to the audience.

00:02:06.780 I would say that I, by profession, I started off trying to do physics, but realizing that physics was in a terrible situation.

00:02:15.200 So I ended up doing the mathematics that allowed me to shadow the physics that I wanted to be doing.

00:02:21.360 In a certain sense, a lot of who I am is a person who has believed deeply that the master narratives that govern our time have been getting weirder and wackier.

00:02:33.020 And so I started, I would say, late 80s, early 90s, really exploring the idea that our institutions are much farther gone and much stranger and weirder than anyone expects.

00:02:44.760 And because that has such a high social cost, or at least had such a high social cost, when you explored it at that time, it was kind of an open world.

00:02:54.420 And I would say that people who had been particularly active in progressive politics were about the only people who believed that a lot of these structures were really far decayed, that the narratives were wildly off of what was actually happening.

00:03:07.500 And I've tried tracking that, I would say, through economics, labor markets, financial instruments, political skullduggery, science, the ways in which the military complex interacts with all of these things from art to physics to news.

00:03:27.100 And beyond that, I mean, my personal life is something that I really probably care about even more than any of this, and all of these actions are really because I have children on this planet, and I'm deeply concerned that they have a happy, optimistic, and positive future.

00:03:44.980 And I have to, I feel personally responsible for clearing away a lot of stuff that we're not supposed to talk about, because as we are increasingly seeing, we grew up thinking we were in a free society, but that is actually governed by these incredibly strong narratives that are clearly untrue.

00:04:01.040 And they're very difficult to source as to why is it that so many people pretend to believe things that no one can believe in an individual instance.

00:04:08.720 I hear you, and particularly on the feeling of responsibility now that I've become a father as well.

00:04:13.700 I get it, I get it.

00:04:15.840 But before we get into the narratives and the institutions and all of that, what was wrong with physics?

00:04:21.040 What's wrong with physics?

00:04:21.900 What was wrong with physics that made you do math?

00:04:23.320 Same thing that's wrong with physics now.

00:04:24.760 I mean, the fact is, this is the 50th anniversary of a couple of developments, one of which was February 1st, 1973, called the Kobayashi-Maskawa Augmentation of the Kibibo Angle, which introduced three families of matter into the standard model.

00:04:42.060 But that picture of the matter in this room, who and what we actually are as waves propagating through the space-time that Einstein gave us, that model has been stagnant for 50 years.

00:04:54.280 And as I was just saying on Joe Rogan, if you think about songs from that period of time, like Crocodile Rock or Tie a Yellow Ribbon Around the Old Oak Tree, imagine that playing on a continuous loop for 50 years without any real progress in the underlying understanding of the world.

00:05:09.660 That's a catastrophe because it means that you replace all of the people who knew what science was with a group of people who will tell you, well, in science, this is the way things go.

00:05:20.520 Yet they have no understanding of science, having never contributed.

00:05:23.660 So why has it got to that stage?

00:05:26.460 Why has this happened, Eric?

00:05:28.240 It's an interesting question.

00:05:29.460 Why has it happened, furthermore, across multiple fields?

00:05:32.300 Why is it that, for example, evolutionary theory in terms of the sexual and natural selection theories, why did that stagnate when it tried to go into sociobiology and ran into political problems?

00:05:44.320 Why is it that neoclassical economics hardened into dogma?

00:05:48.420 In all of these situations, we have the fact that there was something that was going on, late 60s, early 70s, that ossified.

00:05:57.980 And except in the fields of computation communications, things largely stagnated.

00:06:04.640 And it's hard to think about because so much of our lives are digital, that the fact, thank God, that we had Moore's Law and these explosions in computation,

00:06:13.440 we almost don't notice that that feeling that the world is taking place at breakneck pace, at a breathtaking speed, rather.

00:06:23.120 Sorry to confuse those two.

00:06:24.960 That feeling derives almost entirely from our digital lives and the innovations in software and computation and artificial intelligence, all of those things.

00:06:34.360 But oddly, that neon sign, that poster, the fact that we're filming in a studio, all of those things were possible in 1973.

00:06:42.160 It might have been more expensive.

00:06:44.120 But the only really novel thing here is that you're able to push this out without a broadcast news station.

00:06:49.680 Wow.

00:06:50.240 So, I mean, that says a lot about not only science, but it says a lot about society.

00:06:55.980 Because if society is not innovating, it's effectively dying, isn't it?

00:06:59.980 Well, again, it's not that we're not innovating at all.

00:07:02.620 But if you think about, you know, the jetpacks, for example, that were featured in a James Bond film in the 1970s, we always wondered, when were we going to get personal jetpacks?

00:07:14.920 We're still dealing with the idea that they're quite hard to stabilize.

00:07:18.260 If you go to the airport in Los Angeles, where I'm from, there's a completely space-age futuristic building that dominates the architecture.

00:07:27.140 It's still the most futuristic thing in the city.

00:07:30.680 I mean, we somehow took on a very different perspective at the future.

00:07:36.640 I just was dealing with somebody involved in the relaunch of the DeLorean Motor Company.

00:07:40.500 And 40 years later, the DeLorean is still absolutely something that excites us because it is new.

00:07:48.420 And I just find this fascinating that we don't realize that we incrementally gave up on the idea that our lives could be filled with an exciting parade of major innovations.

00:08:01.280 And I was just on stage in Miami at Bitcoin talking about the three white papers that changed the world.

00:08:07.220 And one of them was Bitcoin, the blockchain white paper from 2008.

00:08:13.500 One of them was something called Attention is All You Need from 2017, which changed the large language model landscape.

00:08:20.200 And one of them was the 2018 proposal from the EcoHealth Alliance that we should start experimenting with furin cleavage sites and spike protein and coronavirus.

00:08:28.820 Wow.

00:08:31.420 You left that one for the end there.

00:08:33.400 Eric, you know, one of the interesting things that you mentioned there is something that I think is part of this whole thing that confronts all of us who are trying to think about these things,

00:08:43.680 which is our vision of our future and of ourselves is fundamentally changed.

00:08:48.720 And I remember as a boy growing up reading science fiction about the great challenges that humanity would face as it expanded into the universe and how when you create a spin-off of your civilization on a different planet or as you introduce robotics, as you introduce this, new challenges come along.

00:09:08.140 And it was almost taken for granted in that era, having just watched, you know, first of all, my guys launch a man into space and your guys put one on the moon and all of that, that this would continue, that these vast breakthroughs in human achievement would continue.

00:09:23.380 And now we sort of squabble about tax rates and stuff like that.

00:09:27.560 Maddening, isn't it?

00:09:28.720 Yeah.

00:09:29.060 Because there was nowhere to go.

00:09:32.320 You see, what did we really do?

00:09:34.080 Did we put a man on the moon or did we put a man on an ICBM and said it was a moon mission?

00:09:39.620 At some level, that was also a giant head fake, right?

00:09:43.700 Because we knew that there was almost nowhere to go.

00:09:46.080 I mean, basically, there's the moon and there's Mars and then you're out of range of anything interesting with chemical rockets.

00:09:51.600 And I can even ask, you know, if you've ever been to Joshua Tree in Southern California, you have an idea of what it might be like to be on Mars.

00:09:58.700 It's beautiful, but it gets old pretty quickly.

00:10:01.820 I think in part that that's not the issue.

00:10:04.440 The issue is what happens when you take a moonless night and you go out and there isn't a cloud in the sky and you lay on your back, maybe during a meteor shower, and you gaze up at the heavens and you think, why is it that Uruguay is on my bucket list when I can see the heavens?

00:10:19.980 You know what I mean?

00:10:20.900 I'm seeing galaxies.

00:10:22.380 I'm seeing unbelievable objects.

00:10:25.580 And I know that some of those are stars and some of them are galaxies.

00:10:30.140 That's where we're supposed to be dreaming.

00:10:32.240 And the only way to get out of here and to go find that and find out what the universe is, is physics.

00:10:37.740 So, while many things stagnated, the unforgivable thing that's stagnated, the singular unforgivable thing, is our understanding of the most basic notion of who we are.

00:10:48.480 And when we lost the taste, and we're in the process of not only stagnating in physics, but killing the impetus to solve these problems, there's a new kind of ethos that says that to ask for an ultimate theory is immodest.

00:11:04.480 It's destructive, it's destructive, it is fundamentally imperious, that really begins to scare me, that we start thinking about these things in terms of very personal negative characteristics of arrogance, of hubris.

00:11:20.160 And you understand where it comes from, right, because we did unlock this power.

00:11:25.180 And in particular, in 1952, and forget about the actual atomic bombs dropped on humans, tragic as they may be, but the potential tragedy of hydrogen weapons, with that we came to understand we're really good at this.

00:11:43.900 We're really incredible, we're really incredible, and we have to watch ourselves, and I think that that's the right ethos, is that we need to worry about ourselves.

00:11:52.480 But to stop ourselves, we've now crawled into the valley of death, and the trick is to get out to the other side, to get to the cosmos, and to start to feel that we're being invited to the world's greatest adventure.

00:12:07.780 Well, people might say, and I mean, I have some sympathy with this argument, you made it yourself only a few minutes ago, which is, the pace of change is such that we are rapidly developing technologies that are breaking the world around us.

00:12:25.720 If you look at the impact social media has had on the way that human beings communicate, I mean, nuclear weapons is another example, of course, but you could give others where the technological progress we make is so disruptive to our world that I don't blame people who think, why don't we just slow down a bit?

00:12:46.320 And tell me something, when your wife's water broke, what was your sense of like, oh, shoot, we've got to stabilize the situation, how do we make sure that our child can stay in here forever?

00:12:58.640 No, it's an invitation.

00:13:00.860 Our water just broke.

00:13:03.600 Yeah, what could happen next could be absolutely deadly.

00:13:06.880 But to not understand that it is now time to call the hospital, to get that bag together, to run like hell, to care about those less fortunate than ourselves because they may be incapacitated, I don't think we're understanding what this moment is, for example.

00:13:25.320 The idea that I believe it's four amino acids and 12 nucleotides that shut down planet Earth.

00:13:31.680 Whether or not that came from a pangolin or a laboratory does not matter.

00:13:38.000 It's a tiny change that led to a virality.

00:13:41.840 This is the leverage level that we're now talking about, where a tiny change in the world with a large enough lever.

00:13:49.740 Archimedes was simply right.

00:13:51.780 This is the opportunity.

00:13:53.340 And, you know, in the Jewish tradition, I have at least something I can say, which is don't wait for the bread to rise.

00:13:59.160 This is your moment.

00:13:59.900 You're being invited out.

00:14:03.000 But, Eric, look, and I'm not a scientist and my background isn't in science, but I see AI and the rise of AI.

00:14:12.220 And to me, and look, I'm of a slightly, you know, pessimistic mindset.

00:14:17.540 Okay.

00:14:17.980 He's a fucking depressor.

00:14:19.140 But I see AI and I find it terrifying.

00:14:24.220 I find it terrifying the effect it's going to have on people's jobs.

00:14:28.540 The fact that it's going to obliterate a lot of jobs.

00:14:30.860 What effect is that going to have on society?

00:14:33.480 Am I right?

00:14:34.820 You just lost your capitalist model.

00:14:37.100 You have a model with two inputs called K and L that's taught in every university that subscribes to neoclassical economics.

00:14:46.700 What's AI?

00:14:47.540 Is it L?

00:14:49.020 Is it labor?

00:14:49.780 Is it capital?

00:14:50.720 What the heck is it?

00:14:51.560 This is the first time that humans are not being chased into higher and higher levels of work.

00:14:58.620 We're being chased out of repetitive work.

00:15:01.420 Whether it's high-level repetitive work, the way that a neurosurgeon might perform, or low-level repetitive work.

00:15:07.740 So, your model of economics just broke.

00:15:13.420 And when your water breaks, when your wife's water breaks, it doesn't mean that the baby is born instantly.

00:15:18.360 When the contractions are coming, you know, 15 minutes apart, it's not yet time to be born.

00:15:23.220 This is the moment.

00:15:24.800 Why are we not holding a conference on after capitalism and communism?

00:15:29.340 What is the next economic system?

00:15:30.880 Do you imagine that Adam Smith and Karl Marx would just be sitting on their hands?

00:15:35.280 No, they'd be smart enough to say, okay, we now need a new model.

00:15:38.820 It is bizarre that we are sitting here, inert, saying, gosh, this is going to break capitalism.

00:15:47.280 Well, no kidding.

00:15:48.060 This is going to break capitalism.

00:15:49.080 It's entirely clear that it's going to break capitalism.

00:15:52.360 And you have this fabric.

00:15:55.220 It's really fascinating.

00:15:56.060 You have a fabric that is overlying the entire world that directs people whether to get up in the morning

00:16:01.860 and what to do once they do rise.

00:16:04.280 And it tells them how to do things without having a dictator.

00:16:08.600 So it's not just the invisible hand.

00:16:11.420 It's the invisible mesh.

00:16:13.400 And this invisible mesh, if it breaks, means people are not going to know what to do in the morning.

00:16:18.960 And now you can see that this is going to break it.

00:16:21.140 Now, you have a brief period of time with what my wife has called it.

00:16:26.200 She's an economist with the Institute for New Economic Thinking.

00:16:29.300 She says this is the golden age of AI complementarity, where a human being making prompts can ask the large language model or neural net, whatever, whatever you like, questions.

00:16:42.240 And the two of them in dialogue can create something.

00:16:44.700 It's sort of like when humans and computers started playing chess together.

00:16:48.060 This is going to quickly give way to where the AI says, I can take it from here.

00:16:54.160 And how quick do you think it's going to be, Eric?

00:16:56.720 Probably pretty quick.

00:16:59.420 But keep in mind that there's some things that could happen.

00:17:05.120 Because what these machines are doing is reading a human corpus when it comes to language models, let's say.

00:17:12.720 It could be that they asymptote based on how clever we've been.

00:17:16.780 For example, they don't do a very good job in areas where there are fewer than 200 people writing about a very high-level scientific subject.

00:17:23.720 So I ask these computer models a lot about determinate line bundles, not something in general conversation.

00:17:32.000 And they're terrible at it because they don't know what to read or how much.

00:17:35.900 They don't have enough.

00:17:37.140 So it's possible that that could asymptote.

00:17:40.320 But the thing you really have to keep in mind is that a clever person at one of these AI outfits might figure out how to teach computers to do things that no one has done.

00:17:56.120 So we know that they have emergent behaviors, that you may not teach them Bengali, but they realize they have to learn Bengali in order to tell you about Tagore.

00:18:03.360 So learn Bengali, they do.

00:18:04.780 So that's an emergent behavior.

00:18:07.860 What happens when they start to...

00:18:11.780 Well, you know, I hesitate to give you an example because I think this could be weaponized.

00:18:17.000 So maybe I'm not going to say what I think you could actually teach one of these machines to do.

00:18:21.840 All hell's about to break loose.

00:18:24.080 And my question is, are you trying to figure out which way the wave is going to break and get your surfboard in the water?

00:18:29.700 Are you trying to figure out how to anticipate this?

00:18:33.620 No.

00:18:33.840 In general, we sit around worrying about it in the most inert way possible.

00:18:39.580 And I just don't understand the learned helplessness.

00:18:41.720 This is...

00:18:42.720 Your wife's water is broken and you're thinking, this is terrible.

00:18:46.620 It's like you have to be thinking, get to the hospital.

00:18:49.180 Agreed.

00:18:49.900 Temperamentally, I'm with you.

00:18:52.120 But I think what Francis is getting at is, look, I introduced you as one of the smartest people in the world.

00:18:57.880 I stand by that introduction.

00:18:59.240 There are also some other smart people who are, some of whom are saying, we've got to shut this shit down right now.

00:19:04.480 We need a moratorium.

00:19:05.860 We can't allow this to go.

00:19:06.800 How's that working?

00:19:08.020 I don't agree.

00:19:09.620 No, no, I'm not saying whether it's a good idea or a bad idea.

00:19:13.520 What I'm saying is, how is it working when China and Russia and Iran are reading these papers?

00:19:20.620 That's why it's not going to work.

00:19:21.940 And I agree with you.

00:19:23.040 But I think our question that we're trying to get at is, why are people like Elon Musk so concerned about AI?

00:19:30.880 Because he's smart.

00:19:31.760 Because he doesn't see anybody really, I mean, look, I don't know, Elon and I are sort of leading parallel lives.

00:19:43.040 He must be aware of me.

00:19:44.200 Sometimes he answers me on Twitter and sometimes we encounter each other in spaces.

00:19:48.000 But we know probably 25 people in common at a very high level, we never encounter each other.

00:19:52.900 I can't tell you what's going on with Elon.

00:19:54.240 Elon is on all of the major narratives, and I 90 to 95% agree with him on everything right up until the very end.

00:20:01.840 And I don't know why that goes wrong.

00:20:03.740 But his whole narrative about getting off the planet and diversifying the number of places where the spark of human consciousness can be found without having all of our eggs in one basket, 100% right.

00:20:13.740 And then it becomes a SpaceX pitch for Mars, which loses me.

00:20:17.380 But then again, I don't own a chemical rocket company.

00:20:19.280 In the case of AI, you know, the fact is he was seeing this early, and he saw Sam Altman make these other decisions.

00:20:27.360 They were all at this, you know, I think Sam wasn't at the Puerto Rico conference.

00:20:30.920 But all of these folks who were at the Puerto Rico conference knew that this was coming.

00:20:35.840 Now, 2017 is the dividing line, I think, in AI, because this paper, Attention is All You Need, makes it clear to all of us, not through the paper, but through the consequences,

00:20:46.880 that this is as real as a heart attack.

00:20:50.060 So what are the consequences?

00:20:52.760 Say more.

00:20:53.840 So, for instance, you said the consequences are as real as a heart attack.

00:20:57.220 Because you now have chat GPT, you don't need to read a paper about what academically can happen.

00:21:03.520 You can sit in your room and come up with the most twisted question you like and watch what unfolds.

00:21:09.280 You can watch it fail to do things like it doesn't seem to know how to do palindromes very well.

00:21:14.860 Palindromes are very hard.

00:21:15.840 If I give it a piece of typeset mathematics and ask it to generate the code that would give that, it doesn't seem to know how to do that yet.

00:21:24.140 It doesn't seem to know how to do very specialized quantum field theory questions.

00:21:29.420 Generically, I asked it, you know, I was told that it doesn't have a social intelligence.

00:21:35.540 And that may be, but I asked it, you know, does this query make my ass look fat?

00:21:41.040 And it didn't want to answer.

00:21:43.680 It says, I'm a large language model, it's an inappropriate question.

00:21:45.860 I said, what if I was a husband asking, being asked, does this dress make my ass look fat?

00:21:51.440 And it says, very often when a woman is making this query, she's not asking for an actual piece of information.

00:21:57.580 She's engaging in a form of signaling as a test to see whether the person is sensitive enough to understand the reason,

00:22:03.780 as well as being truthful enough to give credible affirmation or something like this.

00:22:07.020 And I thought, okay, well, score one for the computer.

00:22:11.980 Now, whatever those things are, you can now test to see this is real.

00:22:17.560 You can ask it to do it in a language, you know, that happens to be obscure.

00:22:20.880 The fact that it made it concrete means that we're no longer arguing about whether this thing can write a credible short story.

00:22:29.820 We know that it can.

00:22:30.600 Wow.

00:22:32.700 So what does that mean for people who want to be artists, for people who want to be creatives?

00:22:37.480 Why do you want to be an artist?

00:22:39.240 Because I would say because art is...

00:22:40.760 Tough childhood.

00:22:41.560 Tough childhood, exactly.

00:22:43.900 Because art is an expression of the human soul.

00:22:45.960 You can continue to express the human soul.

00:22:47.920 The fact that a different soul might express itself in a way that dwarfs your contribution.

00:22:51.920 You have to ask yourself, does that affect how you feel about your own output?

00:22:54.540 Or, for example, if it writes a beautiful love letter, but you know that it is soulless in your terms because it's a bit of linear algebra with nonlinear function theory thrown in, does that change the meaning, the poignancy of the words?

00:23:12.220 What is a really moving lyric to you?

00:23:15.020 A really moving lyric to me?

00:23:16.720 For instance, I think, it's actually a stocker manager said this, simplicity is beauty.

00:23:21.720 So, for instance, even though it was a cover, but the Motown song, I heard it through the grapevine.

00:23:27.660 Which part of it?

00:23:28.340 I know a man ain't supposed to cry, but these tears I can't hold inside.

00:23:31.560 It's so simple and clean.

00:23:33.020 That song was a failed song for multiple tries.

00:23:36.080 In fact, Barry Gordy, I believe, said that the next person who mentions that song gets fired.

00:23:40.140 Gladys Knight almost got that song to the point of stardom because the pips had this thing where it's, oh, yes, I am, yes, I am.

00:23:46.300 And it would echo as it would get fainter and fainter.

00:23:48.580 It was genius, but it wasn't as cool as when Marvin Gaye was given the same song a half step or a whole step above where he could sing so he was forced to reach and stretch.

00:23:58.060 And then you have the Halloween violins at the beginning that set the tone for this thing, right?

00:24:03.020 And what was it about that song?

00:24:04.960 It's the fact that you've got the minor sixth, the fifth, and the fourth going, you know,

00:24:08.760 Do you plan to let me go for the other guy you knew before?

00:24:16.700 What is it about that song?

00:24:18.540 Is it the breaking of the voice?

00:24:20.460 Or is it about the particular aspects of the chord progression?

00:24:24.280 Is it about the violins in the background?

00:24:26.500 Why did the song fail four times before it actually succeeded?

00:24:30.380 You have to ask yourself the question.

00:24:32.280 You could do that with any song, and I would have some sort of a similar story.

00:24:35.540 My feeling about this is, did you ever get behind that song?

00:24:40.720 Did you ever wonder why it worked?

00:24:43.080 To me, I always put it down to the unique beauty of Gaye's voice, which I think is just this.

00:24:48.100 You've heard it stripped?

00:24:49.240 Yes.

00:24:49.900 What do you think of that?

00:24:51.140 I think it's phenomenal.

00:24:52.340 It's phenomenal.

00:24:53.640 It's a revelation.

00:24:55.020 Yeah.

00:24:55.380 Yeah.

00:24:55.600 What's your point, Eric?

00:24:59.640 I don't know whether it's the chord progression, which the thing can clearly do, or the fact that I believe that Gaye is straining and feeling what he's doing.

00:25:09.260 I don't know whether it's the fact that this seems like a human expression, but he didn't write the song.

00:25:15.240 Somebody else's, he animated the song.

00:25:17.200 So it really has to do with the context.

00:25:20.600 Okay.

00:25:21.320 And my claim is maybe this thing will come up with a better lyric or a better chord progression, but it'll matter less to you because it didn't come from a human heart.

00:25:29.880 I'm saying that you're going to have to start picking apart the essence of each song or poem or story to figure out whether you continue to feel that it's art if it was written by linear algebra.

00:25:40.960 Okay.

00:25:42.880 Okay.

00:25:44.020 What if we go outside of the realm of art and into the more practical and tangible things?

00:25:49.980 I mean, you talk about the end of capitalism, and that makes sense.

00:25:52.680 And if you look at, you know, communism or fascism or whatever, they're all responses to the economic circumstances that they encountered, right?

00:26:02.280 So they're a way of trying to deal with the fact that you've got an industrial revolution, and suddenly everyone goes into factories, and now these people are there, and they're now in cities, and all of it comes out of that, right?

00:26:14.540 So we're going to have to have a new whatever.

00:26:17.620 A new whatever.

00:26:18.460 A new whatever.

00:26:20.760 But there's a lot of breaking that happens first.

00:26:24.460 Oh, yeah.

00:26:25.520 A lot of breaking.

00:26:26.420 Sure.

00:26:26.760 I mean, one of the things that we haven't explored is my need to work.

00:26:31.560 Yeah.

00:26:32.980 Right.

00:26:34.180 Right, because before...

00:26:35.220 It's purpose and meaning for a lot of people.

00:26:36.720 I had so much work to do that I never had to worry about my need to work.

00:26:41.220 Yes.

00:26:41.820 But when somebody says, look, take the rest of your life off.

00:26:45.280 Yeah.

00:26:45.980 You know, you can watch TV, you can hang around in the pool, and suddenly, you know, maybe your wife is looking at you thinking you're kind of useless.

00:26:55.020 I kind of liked it better when he was going out and killing mastodons and dragging them back to my cave.

00:27:01.200 And now you've got a new need, which is, okay, should we make some work for you that doesn't need to be done?

00:27:06.720 Should we find you some busy work?

00:27:08.780 Right?

00:27:09.520 That's humiliating.

00:27:10.580 So now you've got a dignity shortage.

00:27:14.100 You've got a purpose and dignity shortage.

00:27:16.100 And what I'm saying is, assume that you had all of this work removed from your shoulders.

00:27:21.580 But you knew that you were going to die on this planet because your water had broken.

00:27:26.540 When do you start getting excited about breaking wildly new ground?

00:27:30.180 When do you start thinking about taking fantastic risks?

00:27:33.660 Huge chances.

00:27:35.000 Things that are noble enough to reacquaint ourselves with the idea of a quest.

00:27:39.800 We're dead, man.

00:27:40.880 There's this aspect when I listen to as time goes by and it says, it's still the same old story of fight for love and glory.

00:27:49.360 I'm not allowed to say glory.

00:27:52.120 I'm only allowed to say glory if I support Ukraine.

00:27:54.760 I get to say Slava Ukraine because Slava means glory to Ukraine.

00:27:58.260 I can't say glory to America.

00:27:59.840 So we've been cut off from our concept of questing and glory and winning and triumph and all of these things

00:28:06.020 because it's been associated with the negative externalities of such things.

00:28:08.900 Agreed.

00:28:09.780 Agreed.

00:28:10.640 So, yes, it's an opportunity, but not for everyone.

00:28:15.020 Why do you say that?

00:28:17.260 If I look around at the world, a lot of people find themselves in jobs and things that don't offer them any of that.

00:28:24.320 Such as?

00:28:26.280 You know, checking tickets on a train.

00:28:28.860 You came here on a train today.

00:28:30.140 I came here on a train today.

00:28:31.260 My guess is that somewhere, somebody's checking tickets on a train, listening to your podcast, saying,

00:28:39.120 I love Eric.

00:28:39.900 I listened to all of his stuff.

00:28:41.340 I started buying books on quantum theory.

00:28:44.120 A huge percentage of my audience is plumbers, electricians, long-haul truckers, people who solve problems every day.

00:28:51.720 They're often not in highly repetitive tasks.

00:28:54.720 You get called in to be an electrician or a plumber in a house you've never been at,

00:28:58.060 and it's got some set of problems you've never encountered before.

00:29:01.260 A lot of those people are fit to be part of this army.

00:29:08.200 And I just think that actually we've got so much human creativity that is stuck in these jobs that we don't respect.

00:29:16.540 Yeah.

00:29:16.660 But I've learned to respect these jobs so much more when I realized, oh, my God, my audience is studying spinners and differential operators in between, you know, Uber assignments or something like this.

00:29:30.340 It's very interesting.

00:29:31.340 What do we do with those people who, for whatever reason, are not that way inclined, Eric, who can't access these type of technologies or these type of industries?

00:29:42.580 Because that's going to prove a real problem.

00:29:44.400 Well, first of all, why don't we create some art for them that excites them?

00:29:47.580 Why don't we use art to reacquaint ourselves with the possible?

00:29:53.020 I really feel like the artists have fallen down on the job.

00:29:56.180 I feel like today's art is, in general, not reflecting our time.

00:30:00.580 And as a result, it's becoming less and less relevant.

00:30:03.120 And then people get more and more adamant that, no, art has never been more relevant because they know that it's become less and less relevant.

00:30:08.360 And what do you mean by that, that it doesn't reflect our time?

00:30:10.840 Let's explore that.

00:30:12.880 OK, so when the Erie Canal was dug, there were lots of songs about the Erie Canal.

00:30:18.260 When the trains came in, there were lots of songs about trains.

00:30:21.140 Tell me that we don't have a million songs about cars when people were getting cars in the 1950s and they spoke of independence.

00:30:29.380 All right.

00:30:31.180 What are your favorite app songs?

00:30:33.520 I mean, but can anyone write a song about an app, Eric?

00:30:36.940 Is an app going to move you in order to write a song about it?

00:30:40.360 There are apps that govern your life right now.

00:30:43.060 I know.

00:30:43.680 But my point is, is that a great artist takes our time and changes it into something that matters.

00:30:52.580 I asked Sean Lennon, why don't you write a song that reflects our time?

00:30:56.100 And he wrote Boomerang Baby.

00:30:57.380 That was his attempt.

00:30:59.040 You know, she's never dated someone before a thorough search of Google.

00:31:02.220 The only time she's found in church is when attending her own funeral.

00:31:05.420 So, you know, it was speaking to a godless time where the apps were fully integrated.

00:31:10.620 Was that song highly successful?

00:31:12.180 I don't know.

00:31:13.480 You know, but when Drake says, you used to call me on your cell phone, he's trying to take the fact that there is some way, you know, are you going to swipe right by me, baby?

00:31:24.000 I don't know what that lyric is.

00:31:25.480 It's hard.

00:31:26.060 But then again, the Erie Canal, you know, it's not like it's the high seas and, oh, the Erie was a rising and the gin was getting low and I scarcely think we'll get a drink till we get to Buffalo.

00:31:35.960 You had to make that into something.

00:31:37.880 And so my feeling is artists aren't up to the task of turning Waze and Google Maps into something that I care about.

00:31:46.440 Isn't it also the problem as well?

00:31:47.960 And a lot of musicians have told me this, that in order to write it, the idea of a song that is a hit song has changed.

00:31:55.780 For instance, a classic pop song is around three minutes or two minutes 30.

00:31:59.140 But now everything has to be designed for TikTok.

00:32:02.380 So everything has to be under a minute or 40 seconds.

00:32:04.920 And that's completely transforming the way we appreciate music.

00:32:08.140 I heard the same rumor.

00:32:10.180 I was discussing this with Winston Marshall, formerly of Mumford & Sons.

00:32:15.200 The fact is that you had a snippet that used this unusual Phrygian dominant scale, which was.

00:32:22.020 Mommy don't know, daddy's getting hot at the body shop, doing something unholy.

00:32:30.120 Which is basically Hava Nagila or Miserloo, right?

00:32:33.320 And that lyric couldn't be supported by the song because the song couldn't sustain the interest.

00:32:37.580 That's no way to live.

00:32:38.920 But on the other hand, we have a barbell of attention.

00:32:41.860 We have the inability to get through a longer tweet and the ability to watch Game of Thrones with the longest character developments anyone's ever seen.

00:32:50.580 Far dwarfing a movie and approaching, you know, what you do in spectacular fiction.

00:32:55.860 We have to recognize that just as attention deficit disorder actually contains the ability to concentrate on something for months, you know, with laser focus.

00:33:05.000 It's misnamed.

00:33:06.060 We think that our attention spans have shrunk to nothing.

00:33:09.180 No, we're just really easily bored by things that aren't worthy of our attention at the moment.

00:33:13.260 And it is changing our brains.

00:33:15.160 But if you give me Game of Thrones, I guarantee you people will be glued to their tubes.

00:33:18.820 And the podcasting revolution would certainly speak to that.

00:33:21.740 Long form?

00:33:22.340 I mean, what is it like when somebody says, oh man, I'm only through my second hearing of your four-hour fest on Rogan.

00:33:31.440 You're thinking, you're in your second hearing, you're only through it, means you're going to do three.

00:33:37.000 This is where we are.

00:33:38.540 And nobody understands this.

00:33:39.780 Because the easy thing to say is we got stupid and our attention spans are shrinking to zero.

00:33:45.060 But it's, Eric, I'm so refreshed by what you're talking about.

00:33:50.600 Because one of the things you've put your finger on is we've lost, I don't want to put words in your mouth, so maybe help me out.

00:33:57.200 But we've lost, is it self-belief?

00:34:00.300 Is it aspiration?

00:34:01.320 What is it?

00:34:02.040 What is it that we...

00:34:03.560 What's your best story?

00:34:04.600 Don't tell me.

00:34:05.560 Okay.

00:34:06.040 Okay.

00:34:06.580 But you're now 93 years old and it's getting close to the end.

00:34:11.840 And you're thinking about your life in terms of your best stories.

00:34:14.600 You're watching your children, your grandchildren around you.

00:34:16.860 And then you have a couple of stories that are just the glorious stories of your youth.

00:34:21.340 Think about whether your best story is worthy of your 93 years as it stands.

00:34:26.760 And my feeling is that mine is not yet done.

00:34:32.340 What is it that's worthy of your human life?

00:34:35.660 Why aren't we putting these stories together?

00:34:37.900 Right.

00:34:38.360 Yeah?

00:34:38.920 Right.

00:34:39.720 I couldn't agree with you more.

00:34:41.220 I've been thinking about this a lot.

00:34:43.240 A lot.

00:34:44.060 On a personal level.

00:34:45.500 As we grow and we get opportunities that we didn't have before and whatever.

00:34:50.440 But it's kind of...

00:34:52.640 It's weird.

00:34:53.180 We don't talk about this stuff.

00:34:54.440 Well, we do talk about it.

00:34:55.320 We do.

00:34:55.800 Yeah.

00:34:56.060 We do.

00:34:56.400 We're trying.

00:34:57.400 We're starting.

00:34:58.360 People always want to know, why should I listen to you on a podcast?

00:35:01.980 I don't know.

00:35:02.580 You don't have to.

00:35:03.260 But we do talk about this stuff.

00:35:04.900 And that's why people tune in.

00:35:06.260 Because there's something ancestral that says, I'm not leading an archival life worthy of being remembered.

00:35:12.720 When somebody says, well, when I write my memoirs, are they going to be worth reading?

00:35:16.720 They might be worth writing.

00:35:18.760 But what if they're worth writing but not worth reading?

00:35:20.820 Then you fail.

00:35:22.260 Think about what Feynman's stories did for people.

00:35:24.740 I wrote two books of basically self-aggrandizing stories that let people know, oh my God, it is possible to have such an outré life, a life outside of the lines.

00:35:36.760 There's so much of this world that you can't get to if you never clear your throat.

00:35:42.460 And, you know, one of my favorite quotes from me, people don't have to like it, but I love it.

00:35:48.120 And it was hard to say the first time, is most of us die never having heard our own voices.

00:35:54.760 And that's an epidemic.

00:35:58.140 Yeah.

00:35:58.840 Do you think as well, it speaks to the age that we grew up in.

00:36:02.540 So I'll give the example of my grandfather.

00:36:04.460 My grandfather was born late 1920s, my English grandfather, in a poor working class part of the north of England.

00:36:10.100 And he left school at 14, even though he was very bright, because there was no other option he had to work.

00:36:15.760 When he left school, he went into what was essentially the Great Depression in the north of England.

00:36:22.060 So he used to turn up with hundreds of people at the dockyard in Liverpool.

00:36:25.760 The foreman would come out and there'd be hundreds of men in front of him.

00:36:28.420 He'd go, you, you, you, the rest of you, fuck off.

00:36:30.680 Right.

00:36:31.700 And then when he got a job and he started to make his own way, and he was a joiner, he was a carpenter, a master joiner.

00:36:37.700 Then he was working for the mosquito factory, building the Mosquito, the wooden plane, Second World War.

00:36:46.180 He then joined in order to fight.

00:36:48.740 He joined and he fought right the way from the top of Italy all the way down to the bottom,

00:36:53.500 and then went to North Africa and fought in the Battle of El Alamein.

00:36:57.080 Under Montgomery, fought at fighting against Rommel's army.

00:37:01.220 He then returned, had a family, raised his family.

00:37:06.680 And when we talk about hardship now, and I'm not saying that people don't have it tough.

00:37:10.680 Of course they do.

00:37:11.380 And I'm not saying they don't have difficulty.

00:37:12.740 Right.

00:37:13.400 But I look at my grandfather, that's a different human almost.

00:37:17.800 Do you see what I mean, what he went through?

00:37:19.220 Yeah, because he was catalyzed.

00:37:20.940 And in part, he may have said, you know, we went through life and death situations,

00:37:25.440 but we didn't have your hardship of lack of meaning.

00:37:28.680 I think I did asphyxiate if I had to lead your life.

00:37:32.840 I mean, you have to actually talk to some of these people because some of them say,

00:37:36.040 you know, I'm not scared of bloodshed or a life and death battle,

00:37:39.840 but I'm terrified of being canceled on the line.

00:37:42.140 You're thinking, wait a minute, you actually served voluntarily in Iraq,

00:37:46.560 and you're more afraid of what would happen.

00:37:48.200 So what kills the spirit and what kills the flesh and what puts us at risk is extremely variable.

00:37:55.100 But also just think about this.

00:37:57.040 He had the ability to inspire people.

00:38:00.980 I look at post-World War II Italian rock and roll, and it moves me because these people turn their back on Mussolini.

00:38:12.400 You know, like when Renato Corazon is saying Tu Befalla l'Americano,

00:38:16.560 he's talking about the passion for things American, which are sophisticated.

00:38:21.460 Can you imagine anything as accomplished as Italy turning to America and saying,

00:38:27.400 hey, you're our style icons?

00:38:29.160 I mean, it's fantastic.

00:38:30.680 And, you know, have you ever heard Adriano Tellentano's

00:38:37.260 the song that is pure English nonsense?

00:38:42.240 There's no actual English in it.

00:38:45.640 And it's just aping the English language form showing that people go crazy for it.

00:38:53.320 But those things came out of American GIs fighting through Italy and an admiration and a connection.

00:39:07.560 You know, and my feeling about this, if you don't have the ability to inspire other people like that,

00:39:11.860 wow, I'm not sure that you're more fortunate than your relatives.

00:39:16.280 So, you said your favorite quote from you is about most people die without finding their voice or saying?

00:39:25.120 Without ever hearing their voice.

00:39:26.760 Without ever hearing their voice.

00:39:28.200 How do you find your voice?

00:39:29.560 Or how do you get to the point where you hear your voice?

00:39:33.180 How do you do that?

00:39:33.620 I can tell you how I do it, but I don't know that that's a...

00:39:35.380 Well, that's my point, right?

00:39:36.520 Because I've had to find it for myself as well, right?

00:39:39.380 And maybe that's what you have to do.

00:39:41.380 Maybe it's the journey of...

00:39:42.760 Well, I can't sing, and I've sort of sung on your show.

00:39:46.460 And people, you're going to see in your comments, Eric thinks he's so cool, right?

00:39:51.300 And then you have to survive that, because otherwise you won't sing.

00:39:55.520 You know, one of the things I love is that as an extremely mediocre non-guitarist

00:40:00.860 who puts guitar stuff on Instagram, some of the world's greatest guitarists

00:40:07.480 are cheering me on in the comment section.

00:40:10.720 And it's like the B-plus guitarists who are saying,

00:40:12.780 dude, you can't keep time, you suck, you know, one more blues thing.

00:40:17.740 It's funny that people at the top are always rooting for you,

00:40:21.100 and people a couple levels under are always trying to take the piss out of you.

00:40:24.640 My feeling about it is that you actually have to do it.

00:40:27.280 And you open, you know, I've complained about homosexuals monopolizing the closet.

00:40:33.080 The closet is something where you open the door,

00:40:35.300 and you don't necessarily say, I'm gay.

00:40:37.780 You might open the door and say, I think the left has gone crazy.

00:40:41.020 Or you might open the door and say,

00:40:43.300 I think conspiracy theories are actually quite common and not very rare.

00:40:47.640 And then you find out what happens after that.

00:40:49.580 And you take the damage.

00:40:51.280 Yeah.

00:40:51.400 So the first thing is the courage to do whatever it is you believe,

00:40:56.140 or you want to do, or you want to try.

00:40:57.920 Well, don't do it stupidly.

00:40:59.340 I mean, you have lots of things that you believe are true

00:41:01.600 that are just going to hurt people, aren't going to liberate, aren't going to...

00:41:04.380 So for God's sake, keep most of the stuff that you shouldn't say to yourself.

00:41:08.440 But there's some stuff in you that just you can't live with.

00:41:12.300 It's just eating away at you.

00:41:14.300 And then, you know, be very careful.

00:41:15.880 Make sure that you have a plan for employment.

00:41:19.520 Because that's how they get most of us, is that we're wage slaves.

00:41:23.700 And think about, am I comfortable dying,

00:41:27.040 always having been careful not to say anything that would rock the boat?

00:41:30.160 Because if you're comfortable with that, if that's okay,

00:41:32.380 because this is the only time you get to do this,

00:41:36.200 that's your choice.

00:41:37.900 But, you know, as I was just talking to somebody who'd been canceled,

00:41:42.120 and canceled is really misunderstood.

00:41:44.080 The people you meet after cancellation blow your mind.

00:41:48.560 Totally.

00:41:48.860 Yeah, completely.

00:41:49.760 You know, it's like I never rode on a private plane until I'd been...

00:41:52.640 You know, we were talking about song lyrics,

00:42:00.180 and one of them, one that always sticks out for me,

00:42:03.000 is that song, I can never remember the name of the song,

00:42:05.440 but it's from the musical La Cage aux Folles,

00:42:07.460 which goes,

00:42:08.280 Life ain't worth a damn until I can say I am what I am.

00:42:10.940 If that's what is in you, then yeah.

00:42:15.420 But I will point out that a lot of people are being induced to be what they're not,

00:42:20.280 and then being asked to sing that song.

00:42:23.080 And so one of the things that we're very cautious about

00:42:25.960 is that there are all sorts of fringe freak movements

00:42:29.280 that are trying to push people into extreme behavior,

00:42:32.700 and then, you know, announce who they are to the world

00:42:37.260 and make sure that it is who you are

00:42:40.440 and not that you've joined something that really wants to have you do that.

00:42:45.880 And what are these movements, Eric?

00:42:47.700 Well, for example, the Go Woke, Go Broke issue

00:42:50.180 is you have somebody who has decency and goodness in them,

00:42:54.980 and then they're seized upon by a cult, you know,

00:42:57.620 of undergoing a group mental disease,

00:43:00.720 and then, like, proclaim your hatred for, you know, the market

00:43:05.700 or something like this, or, you know, glue your hand to a painting.

00:43:08.380 Yeah, that's not that inspiring.

00:43:13.180 If you want to protest something, I tell everybody,

00:43:15.960 don't throw soup on Van Gogh.

00:43:19.600 What you want to do is try projection mapping.

00:43:22.340 Put in a huge amount of work,

00:43:24.100 take a building with a complicated facade,

00:43:26.800 map it on a computer, design a brilliant animation,

00:43:30.100 roll up on a moonless night,

00:43:31.960 and project your animation that puts forward

00:43:35.740 your political perspective on that facade of a building

00:43:38.260 for a minute, take a video of it, and leave.

00:43:40.680 You won't have hurt anything that anyone else has built.

00:43:43.320 You'll have owned and monopolized something.

00:43:45.480 You could do it with CIA headquarters.

00:43:47.920 You know, you could do it with, you know,

00:43:49.920 with the Lincoln Memorial.

00:43:51.960 But show that you're clever,

00:43:53.640 you've put in a ton of work,

00:43:54.820 you're extremely creative,

00:43:56.000 and that you care without calling attention

00:43:58.100 to yourself like an ass.

00:43:59.780 But that's hard, Eric.

00:44:00.960 Isn't this the whole point?

00:44:02.200 I mean, a lot of all of this stuff...

00:44:04.000 No, I'm serious.

00:44:05.940 I know.

00:44:06.360 This is the point I made in my...

00:44:07.600 Do something hard.

00:44:08.840 Of course.

00:44:09.760 But this is the point I made in my Oxford speech.

00:44:11.740 It's like,

00:44:12.280 the reason that these people do glue themselves to roads

00:44:15.760 and throw soup on paintings and so on,

00:44:17.720 it's because it's easy.

00:44:19.340 It's because you can be a brain-dead moron and do it.

00:44:23.820 And the moment...

00:44:25.000 And our mutual friend, Melissa Chen,

00:44:26.380 I think this is one of her quotes.

00:44:27.640 She said,

00:44:27.920 you cannot remain woke while building things,

00:44:31.180 whether that's muscle,

00:44:32.180 whether that's a career,

00:44:33.740 whether that's a business,

00:44:34.800 you can't,

00:44:35.800 because it requires you to confront the reality

00:44:38.220 and the complexity of the world.

00:44:40.000 Why is there only one Melissa Chen?

00:44:41.800 We don't know.

00:44:42.980 Right?

00:44:43.180 It's like really mysterious

00:44:44.380 that there are so few people

00:44:45.920 who so many of these ideas come from.

00:44:49.040 Yeah.

00:44:49.220 And so my point is,

00:44:50.520 we just said,

00:44:51.540 or I just said for the nth time,

00:44:53.920 go learn projection mapping

00:44:55.420 and nobody basically does it.

00:44:57.140 Occasionally somebody will take a piece of text

00:44:59.560 and project it onto a building.

00:45:01.580 And I'm just thinking,

00:45:02.740 in your day job,

00:45:05.440 maybe you're doing this for Adidas or Nike,

00:45:07.800 you know?

00:45:08.140 Go be a real pirate

00:45:10.940 and do it for your environmental cause,

00:45:14.720 for your issue about,

00:45:16.300 you know,

00:45:17.040 hanging homosexuals in Iran.

00:45:20.020 You know,

00:45:20.180 do something noble that's hard

00:45:22.180 and inspire people.

00:45:25.080 It will still not happen.

00:45:27.040 People are self-attenuating.

00:45:29.040 This is Marty Seligman's theory

00:45:30.500 of learned helplessness.

00:45:31.580 We have to figure out

00:45:32.720 how can you start small and create?

00:45:35.220 And to your point,

00:45:36.660 or maybe I'm talking to Melissa through you.

00:45:41.920 Once you build things,

00:45:43.400 you don't necessarily lose your idealism.

00:45:46.280 No.

00:45:47.240 You lose your wokeness as a surface level.

00:45:49.540 Yes.

00:45:50.480 Climate is still an issue.

00:45:52.160 For what reasons that I do not understand,

00:45:54.520 we lie about climate in the direction

00:45:56.900 that climate is actually going.

00:45:59.020 So people have the illusion

00:46:00.420 that climate is not a problem at all

00:46:03.660 because if it were a problem,

00:46:05.300 we wouldn't be lying about it.

00:46:06.860 But we're lying about it in the direction.

00:46:08.420 We're trying to make it a simplified thing.

00:46:09.720 Tell us more about that, Eric.

00:46:11.880 It seems to me very clear

00:46:13.480 that scientific consensus

00:46:15.140 is being manipulated by official bodies

00:46:17.400 to get certain narratives to do things.

00:46:20.480 As some of us spot the fact

00:46:22.600 that this scientific consensus

00:46:24.300 is being manipulated,

00:46:25.280 we get the idea,

00:46:27.260 oh, whoever's the manipulator

00:46:28.580 is lying because it's not true

00:46:30.280 as opposed to lying

00:46:32.420 because we have to actually

00:46:33.820 make things simplified

00:46:34.920 in order to get political change

00:46:36.800 or we don't know

00:46:37.940 why we're being lied to.

00:46:39.200 There are plenty of reasons

00:46:39.960 people lie both in your interests

00:46:41.960 and against your interests.

00:46:43.340 So the epidemic of lying

00:46:45.180 has created a general sense

00:46:46.940 that whatever's being lied about

00:46:50.840 is untrue.

00:46:51.340 COVID really wasn't a problem

00:46:54.020 as if many people didn't die.

00:46:56.780 One of the reasons

00:46:57.500 that I thought the vaccines

00:46:58.440 was really interesting

00:46:59.320 was that I felt very clear

00:47:01.180 that COVID's origins

00:47:03.080 were being lied about

00:47:04.200 because to say

00:47:05.400 that you can't ask

00:47:06.520 whether something came from a lab

00:47:08.020 because it's racism

00:47:09.400 was the only thing I knew

00:47:10.480 was total BS.

00:47:12.940 I don't know whether it came

00:47:14.260 from a wet market.

00:47:15.600 I think it didn't.

00:47:16.500 I think it probably came from a lab.

00:47:18.280 But what I didn't know about

00:47:19.780 was whether the vaccine

00:47:21.520 we were being lied to

00:47:23.220 because we knew

00:47:23.720 it was a bioweapon

00:47:24.680 and this vaccine

00:47:25.820 was intended to mitigate

00:47:27.000 the long-term 10-year effects

00:47:28.740 of a bioweapon.

00:47:29.760 Like AIDS doesn't show up initially

00:47:31.760 as a huge problem

00:47:33.520 when you get infected with HIV.

00:47:35.540 It's a long time

00:47:36.300 before really, you know,

00:47:37.820 the Kaposi sarcoma starts.

00:47:39.800 So I think we're just really confused

00:47:42.140 because we've been lied to

00:47:43.340 so many times.

00:47:44.200 We're punched drunk.

00:47:45.540 And as a result,

00:47:46.200 we just don't know

00:47:46.800 what we're advocating for.

00:47:47.840 I don't know how big a problem

00:47:49.080 climate is.

00:47:50.080 I know it's a problem.

00:47:51.880 I don't know how big.

00:47:53.300 I don't know what we actually know.

00:47:55.680 I've been confused.

00:47:57.000 So the variance in my opinion

00:47:58.980 about how big of a problem this is

00:48:00.660 and whether it commands

00:48:01.500 the lion's share

00:48:02.500 of my attention or not,

00:48:04.560 I don't know

00:48:05.860 because I've just lost faith

00:48:07.080 and trust in the IPCC.

00:48:09.500 But that's a very real problem

00:48:11.080 when we don't have faith

00:48:13.280 in our institutions.

00:48:14.360 That means we're at a point of crisis.

00:48:16.340 But can I just push back

00:48:17.840 on this ever so slightly?

00:48:18.940 Of course you can.

00:48:19.600 Absolutely.

00:48:20.900 When we say we don't have faith

00:48:22.420 in our institutions,

00:48:23.560 what the hell are we talking about?

00:48:25.460 Like, I got on a plane to come here.

00:48:28.260 If you think about

00:48:29.040 the de Havilland Comet,

00:48:30.900 it crashed all the time.

00:48:33.200 Planes don't crash anymore.

00:48:35.480 They used to.

00:48:37.720 Those are institutions

00:48:38.920 that are keeping the same people

00:48:40.680 who lose your luggage

00:48:41.700 and who delay

00:48:42.460 and overbook you

00:48:43.880 make sure that your plane

00:48:45.480 doesn't crash.

00:48:46.920 And so you have

00:48:47.320 a weird association.

00:48:49.180 I can't trust the airlines

00:48:50.540 and I totally trust the airlines.

00:48:52.140 You trust the airlines

00:48:53.140 to screw up your flight,

00:48:54.660 to overcharge you,

00:48:55.580 to overbook you,

00:48:56.240 to do all this stuff.

00:48:57.340 And you trust them absolutely

00:48:58.400 with your family

00:48:59.040 and your life

00:48:59.960 to take off

00:49:02.240 on a death trap

00:49:03.040 filled with jet fuel

00:49:04.100 from one situation,

00:49:05.740 not knowing the weather

00:49:06.440 somewhere else,

00:49:07.820 and land it.

00:49:08.740 We do trust our institutions

00:49:11.400 and we don't

00:49:12.440 and we do

00:49:12.840 and we don't

00:49:13.400 and it's making us crazy.

00:49:14.440 Well, that's the worst thing, right?

00:49:15.780 If we just didn't trust them,

00:49:16.960 that would be a lot easier.

00:49:18.040 It's this ambiguity.

00:49:20.500 It's Schrodinger's bullshit.

00:49:22.100 Yes.

00:49:23.500 And this is what's making us mad.

00:49:25.920 The cheap thing to say

00:49:27.060 is I can't trust the institutions.

00:49:28.900 That's right.

00:49:29.880 The weirder thing to say

00:49:31.060 is I don't understand

00:49:32.000 why they're so good

00:49:32.740 and so bad simultaneously.

00:49:34.180 That's right.

00:49:34.900 Why are they so good

00:49:35.820 and so bad simultaneously?

00:49:36.860 I think because

00:49:41.080 there's a centralized reason

00:49:44.080 why they started screwing up,

00:49:45.840 which is this theory

00:49:46.500 of embedded growth obligations.

00:49:48.180 What's that?

00:49:48.660 Tell it.

00:49:48.920 We have no idea what that is.

00:49:51.360 Assume that from 1945,

00:49:53.780 where World War II

00:49:54.900 seals in an order

00:49:56.020 from a really decisive victory

00:49:58.080 up until 1968 through 73.

00:50:02.140 It's not WTF happened in 71

00:50:04.440 as the Bitcoin.

00:50:05.240 It's sort of 68, 73.

00:50:07.280 That period of broad,

00:50:10.180 distributed,

00:50:13.700 technologically led,

00:50:14.840 dependable high levels of growth

00:50:16.480 deranged us.

00:50:17.960 We thought that was our future.

00:50:20.820 And we built a society

00:50:22.200 and a world

00:50:22.900 that required that level of growth.

00:50:26.280 And sometimes you have an organism

00:50:28.300 that has multiple life cycles.

00:50:31.240 A guy named Mark Tashny

00:50:32.820 wrote a book called

00:50:33.460 A Genetic Switch

00:50:34.500 about the fact that

00:50:36.200 T4 bacteriophage,

00:50:38.960 phage lambda,

00:50:41.140 has two different lives

00:50:42.260 it can lead.

00:50:43.040 And I think in part

00:50:43.920 the West has two different lives

00:50:45.680 it can lead.

00:50:46.800 It can lead a high growth life cycle

00:50:49.900 or it can lead a low growth life cycle.

00:50:52.360 And when we say

00:50:52.940 we don't recognize ourselves

00:50:54.160 and are we the same people

00:50:55.160 who won World War II

00:50:56.240 or something like that,

00:50:57.820 we don't recognize

00:50:58.980 that that is

00:51:00.580 one of our potential life cycles.

00:51:02.380 Nobody had ever seen

00:51:03.300 the low growth

00:51:04.240 Western life cycle.

00:51:06.900 And it's terrifying.

00:51:07.920 It's us eating each other.

00:51:10.440 I must grow my slice of the pie

00:51:11.980 just the way my great-grandfathers

00:51:13.280 grew their slice of the pie.

00:51:14.680 And the only way I can do that

00:51:15.700 if the pie isn't growing fast enough

00:51:17.120 is to eye your slice.

00:51:18.880 So I'm looking at your slice.

00:51:20.520 And suddenly we each

00:51:21.460 appear to each other

00:51:22.240 not as a source of inspiration

00:51:23.980 but as a source of protein

00:51:25.140 and nourishment.

00:51:26.680 And that's,

00:51:27.260 but that's a very fear-based response,

00:51:29.140 isn't it, Eric?

00:51:30.180 Well, it's a realistic response.

00:51:31.800 In other words,

00:51:32.300 if I'm doing something

00:51:33.180 that's growth-based

00:51:34.020 and if I suffused

00:51:35.740 all of these institutions

00:51:37.220 with certain growth obligations,

00:51:39.040 the portion of that institution,

00:51:42.060 like its pension fund,

00:51:43.460 that had to grow at a level

00:51:44.920 that it cannot grow at

00:51:46.060 becomes psychopathic.

00:51:48.300 Right?

00:51:49.180 Is that why

00:51:50.000 we print endless money

00:51:51.900 that we don't have

00:51:52.860 and borrow from our grandchildren?

00:51:55.420 Yes.

00:51:58.100 In essence,

00:52:00.060 what happened was north

00:52:01.520 of Bretton Woods collapsing

00:52:03.680 and the removal

00:52:05.500 of the gold standard.

00:52:07.180 It was the loss

00:52:08.580 of technological change

00:52:10.520 and fuel

00:52:11.200 that came easily

00:52:13.380 in the 20th century.

00:52:14.580 So there were all sorts

00:52:15.080 of disasters

00:52:15.680 in the 20th century

00:52:16.360 but there were all sorts

00:52:17.200 of marvels.

00:52:18.740 And when those started

00:52:19.760 to dry up,

00:52:20.880 which essentially came

00:52:21.760 from something

00:52:22.220 I've called

00:52:22.620 Umwelt hacking

00:52:23.480 that you could see

00:52:24.340 more and more

00:52:25.060 with scientific instrumentation

00:52:27.180 so you could look

00:52:28.540 into the cell

00:52:29.160 and at some point

00:52:29.780 you had to guess

00:52:30.300 at what the three-dimensional

00:52:31.080 structure of DNA was

00:52:32.300 and at some point

00:52:32.700 you could basically look at.

00:52:33.860 So we started

00:52:36.800 to get into a place

00:52:38.200 where we couldn't

00:52:38.800 sustain the science.

00:52:40.020 The science couldn't

00:52:40.700 sustain the technology.

00:52:42.980 The technology

00:52:43.600 couldn't sustain the markets

00:52:44.880 and everything had been

00:52:45.800 built with an obligation.

00:52:47.720 So the whole point

00:52:48.620 of this theory

00:52:49.320 of egos

00:52:49.980 or embedded growth

00:52:50.700 obligations

00:52:51.340 is how do we have

00:52:53.060 a theory

00:52:53.420 why all institutions

00:52:54.820 would sort of

00:52:55.440 get into trouble

00:52:56.340 at once.

00:52:58.060 And the common thing

00:52:59.360 is growth

00:52:59.880 that can't be met.

00:53:02.240 Right?

00:53:02.920 So that's why

00:53:04.260 everything went funny.

00:53:06.400 Now,

00:53:06.800 that's not to say

00:53:07.720 that we're not analytic.

00:53:09.320 If we didn't want to lie

00:53:10.880 to keep this game going,

00:53:13.340 we could fix

00:53:14.360 a lot of things.

00:53:15.380 So things that do get fixed

00:53:16.880 are things like

00:53:18.460 airplane checklists

00:53:21.280 to make sure

00:53:22.060 that we don't take off

00:53:23.380 with something broken.

00:53:24.820 The checklist

00:53:25.660 is also operative

00:53:26.820 in a hospital

00:53:27.460 so you don't

00:53:27.940 amputate the wrong leg.

00:53:29.940 So the explosion

00:53:31.340 in iatrogenics,

00:53:32.800 which is the harm

00:53:33.680 done by physicians

00:53:35.380 to their own patients,

00:53:36.800 and the epidemic

00:53:37.980 of crashes that ended,

00:53:39.740 both in part result

00:53:41.120 from a common

00:53:42.040 understanding

00:53:43.600 and management

00:53:44.300 that a checklist

00:53:45.400 is a life-saving thing.

00:53:47.420 We could do that

00:53:48.780 with integrity

00:53:49.580 to

00:53:50.680 the growth-based parts,

00:53:53.560 the pension.

00:53:54.220 I could say to you,

00:53:55.640 actually,

00:53:56.140 you know,

00:53:56.300 these commitments

00:53:57.080 we made to your pension

00:53:58.600 can't be met.

00:54:01.180 Here's what's realistic

00:54:02.160 and here's what's safe.

00:54:03.200 What do you guys,

00:54:03.920 how do you guys feel

00:54:04.640 about 2%

00:54:05.420 or 1.5% growth?

00:54:08.180 And you say,

00:54:08.540 well,

00:54:08.660 can I retire?

00:54:09.560 Not really very well.

00:54:11.840 I've paid my whole life

00:54:12.960 into helping other people.

00:54:14.440 Yeah,

00:54:14.640 you're the loser

00:54:16.120 in a pyramid scheme.

00:54:16.940 How do you feel?

00:54:18.060 Well,

00:54:18.660 you don't feel good.

00:54:20.020 That's the part

00:54:20.640 I have to start lying about.

00:54:22.160 Right.

00:54:23.040 I've been thinking

00:54:23.840 about this a lot,

00:54:24.680 man,

00:54:24.860 because

00:54:25.220 that's really

00:54:28.300 every time,

00:54:30.100 I haven't been able

00:54:31.140 to work out

00:54:31.680 up until this conversation

00:54:32.780 why

00:54:33.820 every time

00:54:35.360 there's a crisis,

00:54:37.760 no one says

00:54:38.780 we have a limited

00:54:40.480 amount of money.

00:54:41.760 No one ever says that.

00:54:43.400 It's like

00:54:44.060 in this country,

00:54:45.180 the NHS

00:54:45.880 is always underfunded.

00:54:47.600 Every,

00:54:47.940 you know,

00:54:48.320 if the electricity prices

00:54:50.520 or gas prices go up,

00:54:51.940 the government

00:54:52.360 has to support people,

00:54:54.160 right?

00:54:54.360 And who could

00:54:55.020 disagree with that?

00:54:55.840 Well,

00:54:56.180 and tell me something.

00:54:57.280 How many of these people

00:54:58.200 know the word seniorage?

00:55:00.500 None.

00:55:01.420 Do you?

00:55:02.000 None.

00:55:02.200 None.

00:55:03.520 Seniorage is the tax

00:55:04.800 on the holders

00:55:06.940 of money

00:55:07.540 that they experience

00:55:10.140 when you print more of it.

00:55:12.240 Right.

00:55:12.700 So in essence,

00:55:14.780 when the money supply

00:55:15.960 goes up

00:55:16.440 and you say,

00:55:17.080 you know,

00:55:17.700 we really need

00:55:19.000 to do something

00:55:21.260 about monetary policy

00:55:23.960 in order to alleviate

00:55:24.900 the pressure,

00:55:26.420 you're really saying

00:55:27.260 we need to tax

00:55:28.260 the holders of money

00:55:29.220 by printing more of it.

00:55:32.440 So you're raising money

00:55:34.040 through seniorage.

00:55:35.600 And then you have

00:55:36.400 like all of these other things

00:55:37.400 that are really bizarrely explained,

00:55:39.040 like a stock market crash.

00:55:40.580 Stocks fell today

00:55:42.680 in a precipitous decline

00:55:44.320 over the last three trading hours.

00:55:46.160 That's not what happened at all.

00:55:47.640 The right way of saying it

00:55:48.600 is the dollar surged

00:55:49.720 against equities

00:55:50.600 or the pound surged

00:55:52.680 against the FTSE.

00:55:53.920 You know,

00:55:54.120 and what is it?

00:55:55.160 You've got this amazing

00:55:56.460 and beautiful numerator,

00:55:58.440 which is an index fund,

00:55:59.620 let's say,

00:56:00.960 with 500 stocks

00:56:01.940 for the S&P.

00:56:02.820 But what's your denominator?

00:56:04.360 Oh,

00:56:04.660 it's the dollar.

00:56:05.380 It's one instrument.

00:56:06.680 And that one instrument

00:56:07.620 is further disguised

00:56:08.840 by being called the numeraire.

00:56:10.840 It's the measuring stick.

00:56:12.660 So now you're playing games

00:56:13.900 with a rubberized measuring stick.

00:56:15.620 And when the measuring stick moves,

00:56:17.700 that's what caused

00:56:18.460 all the equities

00:56:19.140 to apparently fall.

00:56:20.540 It's not the price of equities.

00:56:22.700 It's an exchange rate

00:56:23.580 with another instrument

00:56:24.480 and the other instrument surged.

00:56:27.100 So what we do

00:56:28.440 is we keep you

00:56:29.140 in a perpetual state of stupidity.

00:56:30.940 And the reason

00:56:34.000 that they do that

00:56:34.880 is because if they're honest,

00:56:36.940 that will precipitate

00:56:38.340 a loss of confidence.

00:56:39.320 And if it's a loss of confidence,

00:56:40.520 then the whole thing collapses

00:56:41.800 like the house of cards

00:56:42.940 that it is.

00:56:43.440 Well,

00:56:44.000 correct.

00:56:44.780 And you don't want

00:56:45.720 a complete loss of confidence.

00:56:47.920 You want theater.

00:56:49.140 You want bullshit.

00:56:50.080 You want belief.

00:56:51.320 But you want

00:56:52.220 a higher level,

00:56:53.560 adult level.

00:56:54.660 You want an adult level

00:56:55.700 of fiction.

00:56:56.160 These fictions

00:56:58.280 are dangerous,

00:56:59.680 unsustainable.

00:57:01.880 You know,

00:57:02.040 there's a French philosopher,

00:57:03.680 Jamie Charteris,

00:57:05.100 told me this

00:57:06.240 and it changed my life.

00:57:07.280 He said,

00:57:07.560 a nation is defined

00:57:08.440 to be a group of people

00:57:09.460 who have agreed

00:57:10.020 to forget something in common.

00:57:12.840 And you have to understand

00:57:14.060 the purpose

00:57:14.840 of nonsense,

00:57:17.120 of theater,

00:57:17.720 of BS,

00:57:18.460 of aspiration.

00:57:20.660 The U.S.

00:57:21.420 had some of the best

00:57:22.380 of this stuff.

00:57:24.020 All men being created equal

00:57:25.400 when you held slaves.

00:57:27.440 It wasn't true.

00:57:28.780 It was honored

00:57:29.300 only initially

00:57:30.040 in the breach.

00:57:31.420 But it was open-ended

00:57:32.560 and it gave the opportunity

00:57:34.280 when you had the opportunity

00:57:35.980 to get rid of your slavery,

00:57:37.820 to promote something

00:57:38.960 to all men truly being equal.

00:57:41.800 And then we get

00:57:42.400 the things like this,

00:57:43.840 oh, what is it?

00:57:44.380 The Idiot 1619 Project

00:57:46.600 where we replace

00:57:48.120 one brilliant set of fictions

00:57:49.900 with a completely ridiculous

00:57:51.580 set of fictions

00:57:52.580 that are not sustainable.

00:57:54.420 What is the 1619 Project?

00:57:58.140 The idea being

00:57:59.160 you've agreed to forget

00:58:00.160 something in common.

00:58:01.120 You didn't include us.

00:58:02.200 You oppressed us completely.

00:58:03.520 You're telling this offensive story.

00:58:04.780 This is the part

00:58:05.180 I'm sympathetic with

00:58:06.220 with the 1619.

00:58:07.540 You can't leave out

00:58:08.780 black America

00:58:09.620 from its own part

00:58:12.900 of the founding

00:58:13.560 of the country.

00:58:14.940 You have to create

00:58:15.640 a better, newer fiction.

00:58:17.380 Fine.

00:58:17.980 But the idea

00:58:18.660 that you're going to

00:58:19.400 just try to destroy

00:58:20.840 the founding fathers

00:58:21.880 of the country,

00:58:22.880 the national governing narrative.

00:58:24.760 And you're going to try

00:58:25.300 to make people hate

00:58:26.100 the day they were born

00:58:27.000 for singing the national anthem.

00:58:29.100 I don't know

00:58:30.500 who came up with the idea

00:58:31.820 that this woman,

00:58:32.740 Nicole Hannah-Jones,

00:58:33.680 was fit to refound the country.

00:58:35.760 It's madness and craziness.

00:58:38.720 The issue is

00:58:40.220 we need to be decent

00:58:43.020 and better.

00:58:44.000 And she's right

00:58:44.560 about all sorts of things,

00:58:45.700 but she's wrong

00:58:46.540 about leading.

00:58:51.280 And so,

00:58:52.700 by leading,

00:58:53.800 what do you mean

00:58:55.140 by that,

00:58:55.660 by leading?

00:58:56.520 How do we come up

00:58:57.400 with an inclusive fiction

00:58:58.720 that we can all

00:59:00.340 subscribe to

00:59:01.300 where our common purpose

00:59:03.560 is to build that fiction

00:59:04.700 into reality?

00:59:06.540 What was wrong

00:59:07.260 with MLK's fiction?

00:59:08.260 It was pretty great.

00:59:11.100 That's what I think.

00:59:12.060 Yeah.

00:59:12.760 But,

00:59:14.320 well,

00:59:14.860 you know,

00:59:15.140 it's the same thing.

00:59:15.820 MLK was drawing

00:59:16.640 from Gandhi,

00:59:17.400 for example.

00:59:18.240 Most people think

00:59:19.280 Gandhi was a pacifist.

00:59:21.260 Gandhi hated pacifism

00:59:22.660 with passion

00:59:23.500 you cannot imagine.

00:59:25.460 He had a hierarchy.

00:59:27.560 Oh, yeah.

00:59:28.340 Gandhi was really

00:59:29.160 pro-violence

00:59:30.000 and anti-pacifism.

00:59:31.300 And he's very clear

00:59:32.140 on this if you read it.

00:59:33.960 His point was

00:59:34.880 non-violence

00:59:35.940 is the highest level

00:59:37.060 of courage possible

00:59:38.060 and almost nobody

00:59:39.020 has that ability

00:59:39.940 because what is it?

00:59:41.020 It's a pre-commitment

00:59:42.260 to martyrdom

00:59:43.020 to screw your opponent.

00:59:44.580 The opponent

00:59:45.100 who does not understand

00:59:46.180 that they can kill you

00:59:47.400 and you will not raise

00:59:48.320 your hand to defend yourself

00:59:49.600 is walking into a trap.

00:59:52.400 Gandhi was about martyrdom.

00:59:54.500 And you want to look

00:59:55.240 at the courage

00:59:55.800 of somebody like John Lewis

00:59:57.200 crossing that bridge

00:59:58.860 down south.

01:00:00.440 I mean,

01:00:01.880 my understanding is

01:00:02.700 Malcolm X

01:00:03.800 was not courageous enough

01:00:05.220 to march

01:00:05.840 alongside Dick Gregory

01:00:07.740 and MLK

01:00:08.460 because those guys

01:00:09.780 were so effing hardcore

01:00:11.220 they were willing

01:00:12.020 to die for their cause

01:00:13.300 and they were willing

01:00:14.060 to be martyred

01:00:14.720 for their cause.

01:00:16.400 Gandhi's second level

01:00:17.360 below non-violence

01:00:18.860 was violence.

01:00:20.860 And he said

01:00:21.140 if you don't have

01:00:21.740 the stones

01:00:22.400 for non-violence

01:00:23.560 please pick up a gun.

01:00:25.740 Please engage in violence

01:00:26.880 because the thing

01:00:27.900 I detest

01:00:28.640 is pacifism.

01:00:31.260 So we don't have

01:00:32.280 a story

01:00:32.920 that goes along

01:00:33.840 with that.

01:00:35.200 We have a story

01:00:35.660 when you say

01:00:36.440 about MLK.

01:00:37.580 So MLK

01:00:38.680 has this vision

01:00:39.600 but MLK's vision

01:00:41.460 was based

01:00:42.180 on Gandhi

01:00:43.320 and he was selling it

01:00:45.440 as if it was

01:00:46.020 much less hardcore

01:00:47.240 than it actually was.

01:00:50.940 And civil rights

01:00:51.560 was purchased

01:00:53.400 with infinite heroism.

01:00:56.440 And you know

01:00:56.720 that's why

01:00:57.060 Dick Gregory

01:00:57.580 is my personal

01:00:58.360 I almost can't

01:00:59.980 talk about.

01:01:01.040 You know

01:01:01.280 this comedian

01:01:02.220 he committed

01:01:05.020 that if he

01:01:05.660 and his wife

01:01:06.260 were taken

01:01:06.700 into a police

01:01:07.320 station in the south

01:01:08.360 and she was

01:01:10.140 nine months pregnant

01:01:10.860 with one of his kids

01:01:11.660 and the sheriff

01:01:12.840 was kicking her

01:01:13.520 pregnant belly

01:01:14.120 he wouldn't do anything.

01:01:15.740 And they said

01:01:16.040 our cause

01:01:19.640 is more important

01:01:20.260 than our marriage

01:01:20.820 and our own lives.

01:01:22.960 So what was wrong

01:01:24.280 with it

01:01:24.600 it required too much.

01:01:25.900 we didn't get

01:01:27.500 how amazing

01:01:28.360 these people were.

01:01:31.420 And particularly

01:01:32.480 when we live

01:01:33.180 in an era

01:01:33.940 where we're

01:01:34.960 encouraged evermore

01:01:36.020 to think about

01:01:36.820 ourselves

01:01:37.400 in an era

01:01:38.860 which is evermore

01:01:39.620 atomized.

01:01:40.320 so people

01:01:42.600 will be less likely

01:01:44.940 to martyr

01:01:46.360 themselves

01:01:46.820 for a cause

01:01:47.720 if they think

01:01:48.960 they're the most

01:01:49.440 important thing

01:01:50.220 there is.

01:01:51.340 if they're somatic

01:01:52.780 selves

01:01:53.560 we're leading

01:01:55.840 somatic lives

01:01:56.900 these people

01:01:57.900 weren't leading

01:01:58.480 somatic lives.

01:01:59.560 What does that mean

01:02:00.040 Eric

01:02:00.240 somatic lives?

01:02:01.440 So your cells

01:02:02.560 in your body

01:02:03.140 are divided

01:02:03.780 into soma

01:02:04.700 and germ.

01:02:05.760 Your ear

01:02:06.420 is not going

01:02:06.860 to reproduce

01:02:07.220 itself

01:02:07.700 even though

01:02:08.100 it has all

01:02:08.460 this genetic

01:02:08.960 information.

01:02:10.940 But your gonads

01:02:11.860 have different

01:02:12.480 properties.

01:02:13.780 Your reproductive

01:02:14.540 stuff is what

01:02:15.600 gets cancer

01:02:16.260 early in life

01:02:16.960 whereas all

01:02:17.540 the other stuff

01:02:18.060 gets cancer

01:02:18.660 late in life.

01:02:19.360 So the issue

01:02:21.460 is are you

01:02:22.160 into somatic

01:02:22.900 pleasure

01:02:23.380 or are you

01:02:25.120 into having

01:02:25.660 babies

01:02:26.080 and perpetuating

01:02:27.200 this thing

01:02:28.500 and tying

01:02:29.420 our pleasure

01:02:30.480 to our fitness

01:02:32.380 and by fitness

01:02:33.480 as my brother

01:02:34.080 points out

01:02:34.560 it's about

01:02:34.960 lineage

01:02:35.840 and

01:02:38.120 it's very hard

01:02:41.440 when people

01:02:41.860 no longer

01:02:42.440 believe in

01:02:43.140 religion

01:02:43.540 they don't

01:02:44.060 believe in

01:02:44.860 multi-generational

01:02:46.640 strategies

01:02:47.280 to tell them

01:02:48.180 yeah your

01:02:49.600 soma matters

01:02:50.540 but you're

01:02:51.360 overdoing it.

01:02:53.720 Yeah

01:02:53.840 that is a

01:02:55.040 very difficult

01:02:55.780 thing to

01:02:56.220 tell people

01:02:56.820 particularly

01:02:57.280 when our

01:02:58.380 society is

01:02:58.980 focused on

01:02:59.500 pleasure.

01:03:00.820 Well but

01:03:01.180 when you've

01:03:01.720 given up on

01:03:02.200 the future

01:03:02.680 implicitly

01:03:03.680 you've given

01:03:04.980 up on the

01:03:05.440 future

01:03:05.740 and my

01:03:06.880 feeling is

01:03:07.620 if you're

01:03:08.700 not excited

01:03:09.240 about the

01:03:09.700 future

01:03:10.120 that quote

01:03:11.740 about society

01:03:13.160 functions

01:03:13.720 when old

01:03:14.320 men plant

01:03:14.920 trees under

01:03:16.160 whose shade

01:03:16.560 they will

01:03:16.840 never sit

01:03:17.400 that broke

01:03:19.560 and if I

01:03:20.640 can call

01:03:20.940 out one

01:03:21.340 person

01:03:21.780 who really

01:03:22.940 pisses me

01:03:23.520 off

01:03:23.840 it's Rachel

01:03:24.520 Maddow

01:03:24.980 Rachel Maddow

01:03:27.200 was invited

01:03:28.020 as a guest

01:03:29.340 to give an

01:03:30.540 award for

01:03:31.020 women in

01:03:31.440 science at

01:03:31.960 Rockefeller

01:03:32.440 University

01:03:33.000 and the

01:03:34.620 moment that

01:03:35.260 I completely

01:03:35.880 broke with

01:03:36.900 the sort of

01:03:38.580 woke vision

01:03:39.160 of the left

01:03:39.780 was she

01:03:41.040 shows up at

01:03:41.720 Rockefeller

01:03:42.140 University

01:03:42.640 sort of

01:03:43.020 almost a

01:03:43.460 secret

01:03:43.760 facility

01:03:44.260 because it

01:03:44.660 has no

01:03:44.960 undergraduate

01:03:45.440 so we

01:03:45.760 don't even

01:03:46.080 realize that

01:03:46.640 it's there

01:03:47.000 but a

01:03:47.300 powerhouse

01:03:47.840 of biomedical

01:03:48.420 research

01:03:49.620 and there

01:03:50.600 are multiple

01:03:51.020 Nobel laureates

01:03:51.920 who've called

01:03:52.380 this home

01:03:53.000 and there

01:03:53.480 are pictures

01:03:53.920 and very

01:03:55.020 accomplished

01:03:55.340 people are

01:03:55.700 up on the

01:03:56.040 wall

01:03:56.280 and it

01:03:57.060 happens that

01:03:57.660 most of

01:03:58.020 those people

01:03:58.460 are probably

01:03:59.080 white of

01:03:59.640 hue and

01:04:00.060 male

01:04:00.340 and she

01:04:01.680 looks up

01:04:02.160 and she

01:04:02.480 says

01:04:02.900 what is up

01:04:04.020 with the

01:04:04.440 dude wall

01:04:05.020 and the

01:04:10.160 pictures come

01:04:10.800 down

01:04:11.080 and I

01:04:13.280 have this

01:04:13.500 feeling of

01:04:13.860 who is

01:04:14.400 this woman

01:04:14.860 who is

01:04:17.480 this woman

01:04:18.020 in our

01:04:19.400 house

01:04:19.780 what did

01:04:21.600 she do

01:04:21.980 what did

01:04:23.120 she accomplish

01:04:23.820 does she

01:04:27.380 understand

01:04:27.860 transfer RNA

01:04:30.040 does she

01:04:31.720 know what a

01:04:32.000 vaccine is

01:04:32.580 does she have

01:04:33.000 any knowledge

01:04:33.620 of sex

01:04:34.040 and bacteria

01:04:34.540 I mean

01:04:34.820 who is this

01:04:35.640 person

01:04:35.960 she's a

01:04:36.380 presenter

01:04:36.760 and I

01:04:39.000 wish to be

01:04:39.440 good hosts

01:04:40.040 but there

01:04:41.860 is a

01:04:42.200 moment when

01:04:42.700 you let

01:04:43.120 somebody

01:04:43.500 into your

01:04:44.020 home

01:04:44.360 who is

01:04:44.800 completely

01:04:45.340 empty

01:04:45.940 of the

01:04:46.760 generosity

01:04:47.260 of spirit

01:04:47.860 that lives

01:04:48.380 under your

01:04:48.840 roof

01:04:49.200 and you

01:04:50.460 have to

01:04:50.840 say

01:04:51.100 it seems

01:04:52.540 to be

01:04:52.780 getting late

01:04:53.360 perhaps I

01:04:55.340 should call

01:04:55.680 you a

01:04:55.920 cab

01:04:56.180 right

01:04:57.340 but isn't

01:04:57.860 it the

01:04:58.180 fault

01:04:58.580 of the

01:04:59.200 owner

01:04:59.680 of the

01:05:00.100 house

01:05:00.440 that they

01:05:00.960 don't do

01:05:01.480 that to

01:05:01.940 her

01:05:02.160 I believe

01:05:04.720 she became

01:05:05.260 the owner

01:05:05.600 of the

01:05:05.880 house

01:05:06.180 you know

01:05:08.380 there are

01:05:09.120 stories in

01:05:10.060 India where

01:05:10.520 my wife is

01:05:11.120 from where

01:05:11.600 somebody comes

01:05:12.360 and visits

01:05:12.860 a home

01:05:13.340 and says

01:05:13.880 that painting

01:05:15.760 is magnificent

01:05:16.780 and what does

01:05:17.660 the family do

01:05:18.660 give it away

01:05:19.400 they said

01:05:20.000 really

01:05:20.940 it's been

01:05:21.740 cluttering up

01:05:22.300 our wall

01:05:22.740 for forever

01:05:23.380 please take

01:05:24.280 you'd be

01:05:24.620 doing us

01:05:25.020 a favor

01:05:25.400 so the

01:05:26.060 American

01:05:26.440 walks out

01:05:27.220 with bags

01:05:28.260 full of

01:05:28.760 stuff

01:05:29.140 saying

01:05:29.460 those are

01:05:30.100 such nice

01:05:30.880 people

01:05:31.320 and the

01:05:32.400 family when

01:05:32.940 the door

01:05:33.220 closes

01:05:33.620 oh my

01:05:34.400 god

01:05:34.780 she just

01:05:35.580 kept taking

01:05:36.220 and taking

01:05:36.880 and taking

01:05:37.420 because it's

01:05:38.460 a cultural

01:05:38.980 misunderstanding

01:05:39.740 yes

01:05:40.240 right

01:05:41.360 and my

01:05:41.980 feeling is

01:05:42.640 is that

01:05:42.980 the people

01:05:43.380 who let

01:05:43.820 Rachel Maddow

01:05:44.540 into

01:05:44.840 Rockefeller

01:05:45.380 University

01:05:46.120 were acting

01:05:47.680 in beautiful

01:05:48.940 good faith

01:05:49.760 were they

01:05:52.580 or were they

01:05:54.000 afraid

01:05:54.640 this is what

01:05:55.240 I increasingly

01:05:55.840 wonder

01:05:56.220 because

01:05:56.580 that's a

01:05:57.460 metaphor

01:05:57.740 for institutions

01:05:58.600 more broadly

01:05:59.240 right

01:05:59.600 were they

01:06:01.620 though

01:06:01.880 or were

01:06:02.360 they just

01:06:02.740 afraid

01:06:03.160 because

01:06:03.680 increasingly

01:06:04.280 that's my

01:06:04.880 sense

01:06:05.080 I hear the

01:06:05.520 ugliness

01:06:06.100 of my

01:06:06.480 own speech

01:06:07.080 Constantine

01:06:07.760 I hear my

01:06:09.180 phrase

01:06:09.720 who are you

01:06:10.220 and what are

01:06:10.580 you doing

01:06:10.960 in my lab

01:06:11.740 right

01:06:13.020 but that's

01:06:13.280 exactly the

01:06:13.840 right question

01:06:14.380 isn't it

01:06:14.800 yes

01:06:15.160 but when they

01:06:15.780 came from

01:06:16.320 my brother

01:06:16.840 at Evergreen

01:06:18.700 yeah

01:06:19.000 and I was

01:06:19.620 calling up

01:06:20.280 you know

01:06:23.860 newspapers

01:06:24.420 will you write

01:06:25.160 this story

01:06:25.720 nobody until

01:06:26.920 Barry Weiss

01:06:27.500 wrote the story

01:06:28.140 would write

01:06:28.540 that story

01:06:29.020 the only person

01:06:29.720 I could even

01:06:30.220 get to understand

01:06:30.960 this thing

01:06:31.620 before

01:06:32.080 somebody you

01:06:33.300 had in

01:06:33.700 this chair

01:06:34.220 who

01:06:34.720 you know

01:06:35.520 a great deal

01:06:36.540 of damage

01:06:36.960 was done

01:06:37.420 Mr. Sam

01:06:38.100 Harris

01:06:38.500 Sam Harris

01:06:39.720 courageously

01:06:40.680 waded into

01:06:41.480 something

01:06:41.740 he did not

01:06:42.360 understand

01:06:42.920 what was

01:06:43.320 going on

01:06:43.680 at Evergreen

01:06:44.040 nobody understood

01:06:44.720 this woke

01:06:45.200 mind virus

01:06:45.840 and figured it

01:06:47.580 out

01:06:47.760 Barry and Sam

01:06:48.880 were two of

01:06:49.280 the very first

01:06:50.020 people to even

01:06:51.020 get what this

01:06:51.800 risk was

01:06:52.400 and by the way

01:06:53.940 we've got to

01:06:55.040 take people

01:06:55.640 who stumble

01:06:56.320 in these

01:06:56.800 interviews

01:06:57.160 and who make

01:06:57.780 mistakes

01:06:58.220 and have

01:06:58.580 blind spots

01:06:59.400 and who do

01:07:00.380 things that we

01:07:00.920 don't like

01:07:01.340 but basically

01:07:02.000 show courage

01:07:02.980 and integrity

01:07:04.600 and we've got

01:07:05.860 to stop blaming

01:07:06.660 them for the

01:07:07.240 tiny bit

01:07:07.840 they can't see

01:07:08.720 I agree

01:07:09.720 I completely

01:07:10.480 agree

01:07:10.740 the first thing

01:07:11.240 we did

01:07:11.700 when that whole

01:07:12.400 thing went

01:07:13.160 crazy

01:07:13.680 was contact

01:07:14.580 Sam to make

01:07:15.300 sure he was

01:07:15.620 okay

01:07:15.900 it was never

01:07:16.860 our intention

01:07:17.540 for him to end

01:07:18.700 up the way

01:07:19.380 that what happened

01:07:20.200 I'm glad you said

01:07:20.920 that actually

01:07:21.360 and there'll be

01:07:22.340 a bunch of

01:07:22.860 idiots in the

01:07:23.380 comments

01:07:23.720 getting upset

01:07:25.340 with you

01:07:25.680 but I couldn't

01:07:26.540 agree with you

01:07:26.940 more

01:07:27.120 always consider

01:07:28.080 reducing your

01:07:29.180 follower count

01:07:29.880 when you have

01:07:30.320 the opportunity

01:07:30.660 that's what

01:07:31.400 we always do

01:07:32.080 we always do

01:07:33.340 and I want

01:07:34.160 to get it

01:07:34.600 on the record

01:07:35.160 that while

01:07:36.180 I think what

01:07:36.920 Sam said

01:07:37.420 was wrong

01:07:38.040 which it was

01:07:38.940 which it was

01:07:39.580 I did not

01:07:41.420 enjoy even

01:07:42.620 a moment

01:07:43.440 of the backlash

01:07:44.580 that happened

01:07:45.260 and you know

01:07:45.680 you guys have

01:07:46.140 been trying to

01:07:46.580 get me to

01:07:46.940 come on this

01:07:47.400 podcast for a

01:07:48.320 while and it

01:07:48.920 was after that

01:07:49.800 happened that I

01:07:50.740 decided I really

01:07:51.580 wanted to do it

01:07:52.480 so anyway

01:07:53.760 to Sam Harris

01:07:54.560 but also as well

01:07:58.600 you know

01:07:58.960 there'll be

01:07:59.420 times where

01:07:59.920 I'm walking

01:08:00.300 through London

01:08:00.820 and they'll

01:08:01.060 be like

01:08:01.360 oh it's

01:08:01.920 the trigonometry

01:08:02.520 go it's

01:08:02.880 Francis

01:08:03.200 and they'll

01:08:03.680 go oh

01:08:04.100 you got

01:08:04.520 Sam Harris

01:08:05.180 didn't you

01:08:05.620 and every

01:08:06.540 time someone

01:08:07.100 says that

01:08:07.520 to me

01:08:07.800 I cringe

01:08:08.280 because this

01:08:08.820 show is not

01:08:09.340 about getting

01:08:09.960 people

01:08:10.380 it's about

01:08:10.800 exploring ideas

01:08:11.780 and I brought

01:08:12.480 it up because

01:08:13.080 you guys needed

01:08:13.700 the opportunity

01:08:14.360 to say it

01:08:14.940 yeah

01:08:15.120 well thank you

01:08:16.900 Eric

01:08:17.040 so let's

01:08:19.500 come back to

01:08:19.900 the growth thing

01:08:20.560 because I feel

01:08:21.220 like we're

01:08:21.740 we've for at

01:08:22.920 least for me

01:08:23.460 we've got our

01:08:24.160 finger near

01:08:25.500 the button

01:08:26.560 yeah

01:08:26.880 this is the

01:08:28.020 big story

01:08:28.720 right

01:08:29.160 so in some

01:08:31.580 ways the

01:08:32.840 crazy loons

01:08:34.080 are right

01:08:34.540 in the infinite

01:08:35.840 growth finite

01:08:36.800 resources that's not

01:08:37.760 going to happen

01:08:38.200 yes and no

01:08:39.800 I mean the growth

01:08:40.600 can't be

01:08:41.440 so much of our

01:08:42.600 growth has

01:08:43.160 basically been

01:08:44.520 in correlation

01:08:45.180 with how much

01:08:45.920 fossil fuel you

01:08:46.920 can burn

01:08:47.400 exactly

01:08:47.780 that has to

01:08:49.460 break

01:08:49.860 and a different

01:08:50.520 form of growth

01:08:51.320 has to occur

01:08:52.160 which is how

01:08:53.000 many ideas

01:08:53.880 per unit

01:08:55.080 of non-sustainable

01:08:56.600 energy you

01:08:57.480 know you can

01:08:57.900 create

01:08:58.320 so the growth

01:08:59.400 has to be in

01:09:00.160 some sense

01:09:00.740 idea based

01:09:01.600 but again

01:09:03.760 you can also

01:09:04.380 potentially try

01:09:05.720 to architect

01:09:06.220 a system that

01:09:06.960 doesn't have the

01:09:07.520 same crazy

01:09:08.080 needs for growth

01:09:09.100 that has a

01:09:09.600 plan for when

01:09:11.400 growth is

01:09:11.820 naturally present

01:09:12.580 when growth

01:09:13.120 is absent

01:09:13.620 we should be

01:09:14.840 sitting around

01:09:15.520 talking about

01:09:16.360 what is the

01:09:17.580 new economics

01:09:18.460 instead what

01:09:18.980 we're talking

01:09:19.420 about is

01:09:19.940 how do we

01:09:21.240 keep communism

01:09:21.980 at bay

01:09:22.640 while capitalism

01:09:23.760 is struggling

01:09:24.420 and my feeling

01:09:25.260 is

01:09:25.680 Tweedledum

01:09:27.020 and Tweedledee

01:09:27.560 you may have

01:09:27.920 a preference

01:09:28.400 between the

01:09:29.040 two of them

01:09:29.520 but everything

01:09:30.120 is telling you

01:09:30.860 innovate in a

01:09:31.880 new economic

01:09:32.800 market based

01:09:33.460 system

01:09:33.860 if you care

01:09:34.640 about freedom

01:09:35.280 human potential

01:09:36.140 and we have

01:09:37.340 people who are

01:09:37.840 just stuck

01:09:38.620 on capitalism

01:09:40.440 it's a part

01:09:41.580 of the problem

01:09:42.080 as well Eric

01:09:42.760 and look I'm

01:09:43.440 in favor of

01:09:43.940 democracy

01:09:44.400 this is not

01:09:45.340 an argument

01:09:45.960 pro-autocracy

01:09:46.760 I want to make

01:09:47.220 that absolutely

01:09:47.860 clear before I

01:09:48.600 say this

01:09:48.800 but don't we

01:09:49.280 need a dictator

01:09:49.880 but you know

01:09:52.140 when you have

01:09:53.580 we need one now

01:09:56.040 but when you

01:09:58.620 have you know

01:10:00.020 the democratic

01:10:01.040 model four or

01:10:01.820 five years

01:10:02.380 that encourages

01:10:04.320 short termism

01:10:05.220 doesn't it

01:10:05.800 in that all

01:10:06.580 people are worried

01:10:07.320 about is winning

01:10:08.040 that next election

01:10:09.160 what I'm trying

01:10:10.540 to say to you

01:10:11.080 is you're being

01:10:12.220 invited to a much

01:10:13.280 bigger conversation

01:10:14.340 that no one

01:10:14.920 has attended

01:10:15.420 which is

01:10:16.700 what is the

01:10:18.440 positive port

01:10:19.780 of democracy

01:10:20.700 into a 22nd

01:10:22.000 century framework

01:10:22.980 correct so what

01:10:24.160 is it what's the

01:10:25.080 new economic

01:10:25.580 model Eric

01:10:26.140 what are you

01:10:27.020 talking about

01:10:27.500 I've tried to

01:10:28.020 talk about it

01:10:28.560 tell us more

01:10:29.040 look at my thing

01:10:29.640 about the new

01:10:30.220 gimmick economy

01:10:31.140 right and where

01:10:31.940 I'm trying to talk

01:10:32.740 about the fact

01:10:33.240 that you're going

01:10:33.720 to have to

01:10:34.260 deregulate a

01:10:35.580 tiny number of

01:10:36.520 people who are

01:10:37.220 absolutely powerhouses

01:10:39.440 on generative

01:10:40.960 far right tail

01:10:41.840 behavior and

01:10:43.120 you're going to

01:10:43.340 have to unshackle

01:10:44.140 them and then

01:10:45.340 you're going to

01:10:45.640 have to somehow

01:10:46.360 force a spreading

01:10:47.740 of wealth in

01:10:49.420 this deregulated

01:10:50.460 system you're going

01:10:52.520 to have to

01:10:52.920 recognize that the

01:10:53.920 output of

01:10:54.620 different human

01:10:55.240 beings based on

01:10:56.100 the kurtosis of

01:10:57.000 how people are

01:10:57.680 distributed has to

01:10:59.760 be embraced

01:11:00.240 so what does that

01:11:01.620 look like in real

01:11:02.360 world terms Eric

01:11:03.240 you probably

01:11:03.960 shouldn't be telling

01:11:04.920 Elon Musk that

01:11:05.740 he's not invited to

01:11:06.620 the electric vehicle

01:11:07.800 summit at the

01:11:08.420 White House

01:11:08.860 Salon you

01:11:10.360 know get over

01:11:10.800 yourselves

01:11:11.320 Elon and you

01:11:14.780 know I've been

01:11:15.220 super critical of

01:11:16.040 Elon on a lot of

01:11:17.140 different things

01:11:17.680 is a next level

01:11:18.980 human being at

01:11:19.780 some level he's

01:11:20.420 also a bullshit

01:11:21.040 artist he's a

01:11:21.880 master showman he's

01:11:22.860 a troll he fakes

01:11:24.680 things he's a

01:11:26.440 genius he's a

01:11:27.500 scoundrel I mean

01:11:28.160 there's a lot going

01:11:29.280 on with Elon and

01:11:30.740 what I'm trying to

01:11:31.380 say is you're

01:11:33.180 going to have to

01:11:33.620 start dealing with

01:11:34.460 super complicated

01:11:35.460 generative people I

01:11:37.180 worked for Peter

01:11:37.840 Teal for 10

01:11:38.820 years almost

01:11:39.680 Peter's a genius

01:11:41.480 he's an out and

01:11:42.260 out genius and

01:11:43.200 he's a better

01:11:43.840 communist than most

01:11:44.960 communists he's got

01:11:46.020 the ability to run

01:11:46.780 communism in his

01:11:47.700 mind he can run

01:11:49.120 capitalism and

01:11:49.860 libertarianism and

01:11:50.760 anything else you're

01:11:52.820 going to have to

01:11:53.100 start stop demonizing

01:11:54.740 these people in these

01:11:55.560 completely simplistic

01:11:56.600 terms you're going

01:11:58.100 to have to invite a

01:11:59.940 lot of freaks and

01:12:00.760 weirdos according to

01:12:02.080 normies to dance and

01:12:04.420 play and build and

01:12:05.480 think and you're going

01:12:07.040 to stop just making

01:12:10.080 their lives a living

01:12:11.060 hell it's one of the

01:12:12.400 things I've been

01:12:12.840 thinking about a lot

01:12:13.780 we confuse wealthy

01:12:16.760 people with successful

01:12:18.760 people and we tie them

01:12:20.500 all with one brush and

01:12:21.840 we say if you've got

01:12:22.640 money you're evil

01:12:23.880 well here's the really

01:12:27.480 interesting news a lot

01:12:28.700 of these people tolerate

01:12:29.820 people with radically

01:12:30.940 different politics Peter

01:12:32.100 Teal and I have radically

01:12:33.200 different politics we can

01:12:34.820 also finish each other's

01:12:35.880 sentences at times you

01:12:37.720 know the world of

01:12:40.280 remarkable people needs

01:12:42.780 to be more unshackled

01:12:44.080 and more people need to

01:12:46.020 be invited in case they

01:12:47.260 are also remarkable and

01:12:48.500 they come from

01:12:49.060 circumstances where it

01:12:50.180 wasn't identified you

01:12:52.500 know my belief is and

01:12:56.080 I'll save this maybe

01:12:56.840 towards the end but you

01:13:00.940 need to go after your

01:13:02.000 learning disabled people

01:13:03.840 because a lot of those

01:13:05.540 people are the innovators

01:13:06.680 that you desperately need

01:13:07.860 right now you're making

01:13:09.440 their lives a living hell

01:13:10.920 you're making school a

01:13:13.040 daily exercise and having

01:13:14.640 your head shoved in the

01:13:15.700 toilet and a lot of those

01:13:17.100 people are super learners

01:13:18.140 that you're pretending are

01:13:19.040 learning disabled and we

01:13:23.240 need a new economic model

01:13:25.020 that is based on the tiny

01:13:27.140 number of people who can

01:13:28.400 perform in these completely

01:13:29.940 crazy circumstances we

01:13:32.080 need to make their lives

01:13:32.900 great and we need also to

01:13:36.180 come up with a culture of

01:13:38.360 service you know which is

01:13:41.040 really weird but you don't

01:13:42.720 get to keep your wealth if

01:13:44.960 all you're doing is enjoying

01:13:46.600 luxury and posting pictures

01:13:48.180 on Instagram about you know

01:13:49.940 I drove my Aston Martin to

01:13:52.520 get to my Bentley to get to

01:13:53.800 my Gulf Street if that's your

01:13:55.980 lifestyle you you failed you

01:13:58.660 know the key thing is is

01:13:59.780 that serve others you have

01:14:02.680 to serve you have just Bob

01:14:04.960 Dylan got it right you have

01:14:05.680 to serve somebody and a

01:14:07.480 culture of service of

01:14:08.620 obligation I was just at a

01:14:11.400 kind of a secret meeting of

01:14:12.860 incredible people in London

01:14:14.860 billionaires at the table in

01:14:17.440 general I said you know some

01:14:19.420 point somebody called on me you

01:14:20.800 know and it was a peer and

01:14:23.660 said Eric has something to say

01:14:25.960 I didn't really have

01:14:26.540 something to say but one of

01:14:27.440 the things I said is I just

01:14:28.880 listened to you all talking

01:14:31.280 behind closed doors about the

01:14:32.980 need to help those less

01:14:34.520 fortunate nobody would believe

01:14:36.860 that that's what you're

01:14:37.520 actually talking about behind

01:14:38.620 closed doors right and you

01:14:43.060 have to open your houses

01:14:44.660 invite people to dinner to

01:14:46.700 dine with you I just had this

01:14:47.900 thing with Billy Bragg where I

01:14:49.320 ran into a festival Billy Bragg

01:14:51.760 totally took the piss out of me

01:14:53.100 in a book and on social media

01:14:55.220 and I said why don't we share

01:14:57.280 the stage and sing a song

01:14:58.600 together and he said what are

01:14:59.840 you doing on my stage I'm not

01:15:01.320 going to show you know but when

01:15:02.820 I meet him over coffee you know

01:15:06.100 we're able to bridge things to

01:15:07.960 come together and the issue is

01:15:10.020 we need to do some things where

01:15:11.580 people you never imagine would

01:15:13.520 break bread or share a stage do

01:15:16.240 so because this is an emergency

01:15:17.900 situation so open your homes invite

01:15:20.180 people in show people what it is

01:15:22.440 that's your actual tradition it's

01:15:24.120 very hard for an anti-semite to

01:15:25.900 survive a Shabbat dinner and I

01:15:30.360 completely agree with you on all

01:15:33.160 that you're saying particularly when

01:15:34.240 it comes to education as somebody

01:15:35.580 who was a teacher for many years I

01:15:37.120 saw what we did to the

01:15:38.500 neurologically atypical I'm

01:15:40.200 neurologically atypical myself and

01:15:41.660 it's you're kidding

01:15:42.520 how else do we unshackle potential

01:15:48.860 how else do we unleash this ball of

01:15:51.220 creativity

01:15:51.780 stop with uh

01:15:56.780 how do I put this look at the troll

01:16:01.280 section on reddit it's this giant

01:16:04.700 group of people telling other people

01:16:07.780 you know that thing you believe in I

01:16:09.160 saw through it a long time ago it's

01:16:11.460 like nobody can believe anything

01:16:13.200 we're in this sort of I don't know

01:16:15.780 it's like an orgy of

01:16:18.020 not believing of nihilism if you don't

01:16:23.820 believe in anything you lost like it

01:16:26.820 look it's all BS for sure it may be

01:16:29.800 sound and fury signifying nothing but

01:16:31.700 if that's the answer you came up with

01:16:33.340 you just lost life

01:16:34.280 I think what we have to do is we have

01:16:37.400 to put forward a positive vision where

01:16:38.980 we're starting to talk about you can

01:16:40.820 see when you when you come up with a

01:16:41.980 song lyric I'm in your song I'm feeling

01:16:45.500 I'm thinking it show people what's

01:16:48.200 possible show people how to take

01:16:51.000 anything a cup of coffee you know the

01:16:53.940 the story of robusta versus arabica

01:16:57.140 beans or you know we could take the

01:16:59.480 light in this room and the fact that I

01:17:01.080 keep talking about there's a secret

01:17:02.300 circle at every point in space and time

01:17:04.100 otherwise we wouldn't be able to see

01:17:05.240 each other that we don't tell anybody

01:17:06.620 about so they keep talking to us about

01:17:08.360 Schrodinger's kappa they don't even

01:17:09.700 understand the beauty of Maxwell's

01:17:11.060 equation the world is just overflowing

01:17:13.760 with beauty and majesty and

01:17:16.820 transcendence and we're caught talking

01:17:19.640 about who thinks how much of

01:17:21.560 themselves and who's self-promoting and

01:17:23.600 who's who's a whore for clicks and all

01:17:26.540 of this stuff it's all socially based I

01:17:29.120 think what we need to do in part is to do

01:17:33.240 cool stuff some at some point the first

01:17:36.860 person is going to pull off this

01:17:37.920 projection mapping thing as a protest

01:17:40.620 and it's going to inspire the world and I

01:17:43.200 won't have to explain it again I'll

01:17:44.520 just point people to the video so

01:17:46.800 whoever you are out there going to

01:17:48.000 address the camera if you're upset

01:17:49.680 about the way in which we're burning

01:17:51.480 oil or if you're upset about inequality

01:17:54.460 consider projection mapping and

01:17:56.700 inspiring everybody put a lot of work

01:17:58.500 into it do a killer animation join a team

01:18:01.260 of people who do this for corporate

01:18:02.820 learn the trade and then go radical go

01:18:05.760 rogue and be a pirate and don't hurt

01:18:07.380 people in the process it's so simple to

01:18:09.420 do new things I don't know why we're not

01:18:10.980 I think it's because it's it's our fear

01:18:13.740 it's our fear that holds us back it's our

01:18:16.320 fear it's the because this is something

01:18:21.360 that I've I've learned through my own

01:18:23.040 experiences of doing this show for you

01:18:25.320 know falling losing French friends etc etc we

01:18:28.880 are terrified of being alienated from the

01:18:31.640 tribe we're terrified of standing out

01:18:34.380 because as you know thousands of years

01:18:37.400 ago that meant certain death but we've

01:18:39.360 been programmed that way so I think what

01:18:41.940 happens a lot Eric is that a lot of the

01:18:44.400 time people are scared to be authentic

01:18:46.920 people are scared to say what they truly

01:18:49.820 think and feel people are scared to live

01:18:52.400 the life that they truly want because it

01:18:54.700 would mean in part that they risk

01:18:56.660 alienation from the tribe it's a really

01:18:58.660 interesting point let's assume that those

01:19:00.200 fears are reasonable valid and

01:19:02.540 evolutionarily based let's try a different

01:19:05.100 fear there are slightly less than 5,000

01:19:08.100 weeks in a life think about that fear

01:19:12.720 right one more just went by right come up

01:19:17.200 with with a jar with like 5,000 sweets in

01:19:21.660 it or something and just take one out every

01:19:23.420 week and watch the odds that you're ever

01:19:27.060 going to accomplish anything or do

01:19:28.600 anything or inspire somebody you know go

01:19:31.700 down and further and further why don't you

01:19:33.480 put it off another two weeks or three

01:19:34.800 weeks so why don't we start this in

01:19:36.620 September that's right yeah that's right

01:19:40.460 that's the way that's the way and that's

01:19:43.280 how I think about it that's how I think

01:19:45.820 about it Francis is right that a lot of

01:19:48.160 people fear that and I also think we talked

01:19:51.980 about it earlier you know doing hard

01:19:54.480 things is hard and people prefer to do

01:19:56.520 easy things but you're right I think

01:19:59.440 when and this is you know we haven't

01:20:01.840 talked about God and maybe we don't have

01:20:03.380 time or maybe we'll do it in or not on the

01:20:05.620 local section but you I take a lot of

01:20:10.040 inspiration from the fact that life is

01:20:11.820 finite a lot of inspiration how old are you

01:20:15.060 40 yeah I take a lot of inspiration

01:20:18.280 from that because this is it right here

01:20:22.220 and you either make the most of it you

01:20:23.800 don't every day that's it and to me

01:20:27.340 Eric part of the reason why we had why

01:20:29.680 we went insane over COVID and I use that

01:20:31.760 word accurately because we did go insane

01:20:33.560 we lost we lost still insane okay and I

01:20:38.820 take your point but the reason for me is

01:20:41.340 because we have lost we no longer accept

01:20:46.600 the fact that we are going to die we

01:20:48.180 don't talk about it it's a taboo in

01:20:50.460 particularly in Western nations and you

01:20:52.920 see that with our celebrities with their

01:20:54.800 weird smooth plastic lizard faces right

01:20:58.280 because nobody wants to admit they're

01:21:00.360 aging nobody wants to admit they're

01:21:01.720 getting older nobody wants to admit that

01:21:04.060 there is an end to this so that being the

01:21:07.780 case yeah why would you endure a moment of

01:21:12.400 discomfort in this life is this this is

01:21:15.620 literally all you have if the same

01:21:18.660 more I want to understand this sorry say

01:21:21.120 more I want to so why would you if this is

01:21:24.000 all we have if if this life is all you've

01:21:27.240 got why would you make it unpleasant why

01:21:29.860 would you make it difficult why would you

01:21:31.760 make it because there's something eating

01:21:33.780 at your soul because because there's a

01:21:38.100 worm inside your body whittling you out

01:21:41.400 from the inside causing you to die a

01:21:43.540 little bit more every day you think you're

01:21:45.360 gonna die at age 90 no no that's the final

01:21:47.920 death I told my grandfather I said there's

01:21:50.500 a last time you do everything you don't

01:21:52.960 realize when that is you know I crossed the

01:21:56.320 great Himalayan range when I was 20 or

01:21:58.200 something on foot I thought I would be

01:22:00.300 doing it regularly that may be the only

01:22:02.400 time I ever crossed the great Himalayan

01:22:04.120 range on foot my ankle now isn't as good

01:22:06.600 as it used to be think about the last

01:22:08.760 time you went backpacking and actually

01:22:11.660 slept out under the stars for all I know

01:22:13.740 that part of you was already dead now

01:22:16.160 figure out how much death you can

01:22:17.760 actually handle in a living body and

01:22:20.440 figure out maybe you want to reclaim some

01:22:22.500 of that right maybe you want to reclaim

01:22:25.360 that through having children maybe you

01:22:27.280 want to reclaim that through their eyes

01:22:28.800 you take an ice cream cone and boy that

01:22:32.840 ice cream cone looks good to you you only

01:22:34.900 have one of them you can have you can

01:22:37.140 feed it to your kid you're gonna taste

01:22:39.220 that ice cream cone so much more if you

01:22:40.940 give it to your kid because it's to you

01:22:43.060 it's just an ice cream cone right there's a

01:22:45.540 weird way in which I just think that we're

01:22:47.660 not a quote we're not figuring out how

01:22:50.780 grand this adventure is and to your point

01:22:52.600 about COVID I don't even know how to talk

01:22:55.320 about it I could use some help there's a

01:22:57.620 meaning crisis the people who don't feel

01:22:59.920 comfortable talking about religion and

01:23:01.960 I'm not a religious person I'm an

01:23:03.360 atheist the meaning of life has gone

01:23:07.440 away you can see an amazing band at a

01:23:09.880 concert it just doesn't mean what it

01:23:11.560 used to mean we have better guitarists

01:23:14.200 right now than we've ever had and they

01:23:17.440 don't mean as much as they meant in the

01:23:19.120 70s when we were having idiotic

01:23:20.760 arguments whether Clapton Page or Hendrix was

01:23:22.940 the greatest guitarist of all time I

01:23:25.660 don't know what's going on with this

01:23:26.920 things are not attaching in the sense of

01:23:30.040 meaning the greatest quote and I'm

01:23:32.600 searching for it everywhere somebody out

01:23:34.160 there helped me there was a woman in a

01:23:36.120 Doors documentary who said the words

01:23:38.340 back then we didn't realize it was just

01:23:40.560 music

01:23:40.940 I can't tell you how profound that was to

01:23:45.400 me the idea was she later realized it

01:23:48.180 was just music but for a period of time she

01:23:51.060 was able to attach that feeling of

01:23:53.060 meaning of transcendence of permanence of

01:23:55.080 something to something she was

01:23:57.240 experiencing at the whiskey a go-go on

01:23:59.180 the sunset strip we can't attach that

01:24:03.020 feeling of meaning almost at all there's

01:24:04.900 something about the phone that has

01:24:06.360 rewired our brain we call it a phone

01:24:08.680 even though mostly we don't call anybody

01:24:09.980 on it we go back and forth between a

01:24:12.060 screen and a person screen and a person

01:24:13.600 it rewires our minds and in the end we

01:24:16.680 can't feel our own children or we can't

01:24:18.640 remember our first kiss I don't know

01:24:20.640 what's going on with that yeah so for me

01:24:23.640 I feel see I still think music is is more

01:24:27.640 than just music I've always felt that and

01:24:29.640 I'm not musically gifted in any shape or

01:24:31.640 form if I started singing you would all

01:24:33.640 leave the room immediately do you want to

01:24:34.640 try no yeah I want people to carry on

01:24:36.640 watching this interview right no no you're

01:24:39.640 going to lead over that but I don't want

01:24:41.640 you to I'm not going to push you to sing

01:24:43.640 yeah but isn't it weird that we decide

01:24:47.640 that dances for people who can move

01:24:49.640 properly music is for people who can hit

01:24:51.640 a note people say I don't play an

01:24:53.640 instrument one thing I learned from you

01:24:57.640 know the sort of the gypsy tradition you

01:25:04.640 know you can make noise just by puffing

01:25:06.640 air into your cheeks and changing the

01:25:09.640 tension in your cheek so they always have

01:25:10.640 an instrument they're never without right

01:25:13.640 and it just moves me the fact that we're

01:25:19.640 so alienated from dance and from music

01:25:21.640 that we sit around worrying about what

01:25:23.640 everybody else is going to think yeah

01:25:26.640 you're right keep going so but to me the

01:25:31.640 one of my favorite playwrights is a you

01:25:34.640 you part of me it's good it's called David

01:25:36.640 Mamet sure and David Mamet wrote a book

01:25:38.640 called true and false which was about

01:25:40.640 acting but it wasn't really about acting

01:25:42.640 it was more than that it was about art

01:25:43.640 it was about life it was about how the

01:25:45.640 life of an artist is but is one of the

01:25:48.640 most profound things that you can have

01:25:50.640 and that you can embrace and he said

01:25:52.640 something very simple but he said words

01:25:55.640 that come from the heart go to the heart

01:25:57.640 and and maybe this is me this is me being

01:26:01.640 nostalgic this is me projecting but there's

01:26:04.640 a lot of time now where I just feel when I

01:26:07.640 listen to modern music it doesn't seem to

01:26:11.640 have the heart because when someone is

01:26:14.640 honest with you you know they don't need

01:26:17.640 to use the most verbose language it doesn't

01:26:19.640 need to be poetic it doesn't need all these

01:26:21.640 tricks and tips and whatever else it can

01:26:24.640 be as simple as I know a man ain't supposed

01:26:26.640 to cry but these tears I can't hold inside

01:26:29.640 and the moment you listen to you go bam I

01:26:32.640 know that I felt that because we've all

01:26:34.640 felt that and particularly being men

01:26:36.640 right it's interesting I remember watching

01:26:41.640 Jack White talking about Sun House who

01:26:45.640 could play guitar but there's a moment

01:26:47.640 where Sun House is on stage on film and

01:26:51.640 he's singing John the Revelator I don't

01:26:53.640 know if you know this song who's that

01:26:55.640 writing John the Revelator and he's

01:26:58.640 clapping on one and three and he's

01:27:00.640 stomping on two and four right that's

01:27:04.640 it you know one and three being broken

01:27:07.640 out from two and four and that sort of

01:27:09.640 repetitive pocket that just grabs you and

01:27:11.640 holds you there is some of that music

01:27:14.640 being made and some of it is weird as

01:27:18.640 hell I really looked at Tim Henson's

01:27:20.640 Polyphian goat and you look at that and

01:27:22.640 it's sort of like almost Havana unana

01:27:24.640 some sort of Tex-Mex Caribbean Cuban

01:27:27.640 thing but filtered and sharded and

01:27:30.640 shattered and broken and healed back

01:27:33.640 together there is some way in which

01:27:35.640 Bon Iver's Creek you know that the

01:27:38.640 it's like what Cher did with auto-tune

01:27:41.640 to believe where she takes took something

01:27:43.640 that was pitch adjustment she turned it

01:27:44.640 into an instrument before T-Pain ever

01:27:46.640 got to this that thing which is the

01:27:49.640 which is the alienation in our time and

01:27:51.640 the electronics and the heart and the

01:27:54.640 soul and the alienation and the need

01:27:56.640 for closeness you know whatever these

01:27:59.640 things are that speak to us what is it

01:28:01.640 about Green Day's good riddance that

01:28:02.640 made it blow up like that you know the

01:28:04.640 fact that you could feel the sand going

01:28:07.640 through your hourglass you know or you

01:28:11.640 know maybe one of the best of these

01:28:12.640 things anticipating social media and the

01:28:14.640 internet and all of the cancellation was

01:28:17.640 iris by the Goo Goo Dolls with those

01:28:19.640 lyrics that ended up on so many high

01:28:21.640 school yearbook pages you know I don't

01:28:23.640 want the world to see me because I don't

01:28:24.640 think that they'd understand that's about

01:28:26.640 cancellation before cancellation is a

01:28:28.640 thing right and so these things that

01:28:30.640 speak to us that if we had more of them

01:28:33.640 it would mean more and the thing about it

01:28:36.640 is I can point you to some of the things

01:28:38.640 that are happening now that matter to

01:28:42.640 me I know that I'm not dead I know that

01:28:43.640 I'm not an old man saying get off my

01:28:44.640 lawn the problem is it's very hard to

01:28:48.640 say something changed in music Rick

01:28:50.640 Beato a friend of mine from Atlanta

01:28:52.640 has this channel everything music and

01:28:54.640 he talks about the decrease in the

01:28:55.640 complexity of music you don't see the

01:28:58.640 sort of Steely Dan phenomena or Frank

01:29:00.640 Zappa was effectively a classical

01:29:03.640 a classical composer as my son points out

01:29:06.640 to me in a rock and roll idiom doing

01:29:09.640 the most complicated and complex music

01:29:11.640 about something he points out that the

01:29:14.640 Frank Zappa's titties and beer is

01:29:16.640 actually an homage to Stravinsky we don't

01:29:19.640 have these super rich interlinkings

01:29:21.640 between pieces of art you know I often

01:29:25.640 talk about you know April is the

01:29:27.640 coolest month as a lyric as a line from

01:29:32.640 TS Eliot is evoking the fact that

01:29:35.640 school children used to be taught the

01:29:37.640 middle English one that the pill with

01:29:39.640 the Shura Sota beginning Chaucer's

01:29:40.640 Canterbury Tales this interlinking world

01:29:43.640 of references meaning to the discovery

01:29:46.640 the Easter eggs that are hidden

01:29:48.640 everywhere it's gone it is and part of

01:29:51.640 that is and I've seen it myself because

01:29:53.640 when I went to school I was lucky enough

01:29:55.640 to be taught poetry and I remember we

01:29:57.640 had to learn a poem and we had to

01:29:59.640 stand up and we had to say and as a kid

01:30:01.640 I was like why do I have to get up and

01:30:04.640 say William Blake to the entire class

01:30:06.640 these words don't mean anything to me

01:30:08.640 they don't convey anything it's just

01:30:10.640 boring it's just empty recital but it

01:30:12.640 isn't because Blake is one of our

01:30:15.640 greatest ever poets and thinkers and

01:30:17.640 artists and by listening to those

01:30:20.640 words by ingesting them by literally

01:30:22.640 making them part of you but it's also

01:30:24.640 the weaponization of taste the idea that

01:30:26.640 taste the idea the taste is not

01:30:28.640 discussable that we can't say that

01:30:30.640 certain taste is better than others I

01:30:32.640 see your taste and I want to take you

01:30:34.640 from where you are to where you were

01:30:35.640 meant to be not necessarily to where I

01:30:37.640 am because my taste is different these

01:30:39.640 are things that require high trust you

01:30:42.640 have to trust that in fact you can

01:30:44.640 analyze the complexity of a song you can

01:30:46.640 say what its harmonic structure is and

01:30:48.640 it's not all about get off my lawn or

01:30:51.640 all old people always think those

01:30:53.640 things I could tell you about things

01:30:55.640 that I think are incredibly complex and

01:30:57.640 brilliant that I don't like and what

01:30:59.640 we're seeing is the simplification the

01:31:01.640 language change where we're starting

01:31:04.640 to have a name for Bernie bro or tech

01:31:06.640 bro or reply guy or pick me girl you

01:31:11.640 you know creator and content are the two

01:31:15.640 things if I could I would banish from

01:31:17.640 the English language because what it is

01:31:19.640 is you know should do you want food

01:31:22.640 thank you food is good I enjoyed your

01:31:24.640 food well what kind of food yeah but

01:31:29.640 hierarchy is a problem now tell me the

01:31:31.640 idea of hierarchy is a problem a

01:31:33.640 hierarchy of I mean you're talking about

01:31:35.640 content some content is good some

01:31:37.640 contents bad you can't that's difficult to

01:31:40.640 to have any conversation that involves

01:31:42.640 hierarchy for a lot of people not for

01:31:44.640 me so what should I do yeah I mean

01:31:47.640 that's my life yeah I know and you

01:31:50.640 should carry on doing it yeah not only

01:31:52.640 that Eric you should carry on doing it

01:31:53.640 on locals with us because that's where

01:31:55.640 we're gonna go segue very much we're

01:31:58.640 running out of time sorry about no no

01:32:00.640 don't be sorry about that it's a

01:32:01.640 pleasure before we go there and ask the

01:32:04.640 questions that our audience have

01:32:05.640 submitted and there's some really good

01:32:06.640 ones by the way what's the one thing

01:32:09.640 we're not talking about as a society

01:32:11.640 that we really should be well the most

01:32:13.640 important thing is we're not talking

01:32:15.640 about and I'll combine the two things

01:32:19.640 into one thing so that I actually fit

01:32:21.640 your question we need to be getting

01:32:23.640 people who are learning disabled not

01:32:25.640 marked as learning disabled marked as

01:32:27.640 super learners making sure that they

01:32:30.640 have wonderful lives as scientists

01:32:32.640 particularly getting them to focus on

01:32:34.640 on longevity and on physics for the

01:32:38.640 purpose of diversifying our human

01:32:41.640 habitats to having more than one

01:32:43.640 atmosphere learning that this is not

01:32:45.640 science fiction until we find the

01:32:47.640 ultimate theory every theory beyond

01:32:49.640 Einstein may have possibilities to

01:32:51.640 traverse the cosmos that the current

01:32:53.640 theories indicate is impossible until

01:32:55.640 we transcend the limitations of our

01:32:57.640 current worldview called ineffective

01:32:59.640 theory we need to be getting more

01:33:01.640 people into the hard sciences we need

01:33:04.640 more philanthropy we need to get

01:33:05.640 governments on board we particularly

01:33:07.640 need to get neurodivergent people

01:33:09.640 outside of the schooling system more

01:33:12.640 of them advancing radically quickly made

01:33:15.640 feel confident they will have lives

01:33:18.640 with second homes that they can have

01:33:20.640 three children they can get help in the

01:33:22.640 house if what they're doing is taking

01:33:24.640 their rare gifts and putting them in

01:33:26.640 the service of humanity and allowing them

01:33:28.640 to participate in the prosperity that

01:33:30.640 they have built for everyone else

01:33:31.640 what a beautiful answer Eric Weinstein

01:33:34.640 thank you for coming on head on over

01:33:36.640 to locals where we continue the

01:33:37.640 conversation what is the right balance

01:33:41.640 between being cautious in terms of

01:33:43.640 not getting into a nuclear exchange

01:33:45.640 and not giving into nuclear blackmail

01:33:48.640 yeah it's a it's a good question

TRIGGERnometry - June 28, 2023

Eric Weinstein - All Hell Is About to Break Loose

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