How I Learned to Love, Hate, then Love Lex Fridman Again
How his conversations with Bret Weinstein, Sam Harris, Kanye, Netanyahu, and Destiny shaped my worldview.
I first discovered Lex Fridman’s podcast during lockdown around April-May of 2020. Back then, it was called the Artificial Intelligence Podcast, and Lex had a variety of guests mostly from the field of artificial intelligence. The first somewhat political guest Lex had on was Eric Weinstein back in 2019. He later had Elon Musk on the podcast, but it only lasted about 30 minutes and wasn't political, nor was his later podcast with Noam Chomsky— both mainly covered their scientific work rather than their political activism. I was immediately impressed by Lex’s ability to get so many high profile guests on his podcast, an ability that has only grown, especially since in 2019 podcasts were still relatively new and hadn’t become quite ubiquitous like they did during COVID.
The sad reality of COVID however was rather that instead of taking more time to read, learn new hobbies, and acquire new skills, most people started spending 8 hours a day on their phone instead of the usual 5, and podcasts became a much more important part of people’s information diet, and it was during this time that Lex’s podcast started really exploding, with 2-3 hour interviews of the world’s most famous intellectuals.
The first truly controversial guest (that I can recall) that Lex Fridman had on his show was Bret Weinstein, which was on June 25, 2021. Bret had gained acclaim for standing up against Evergreen State College’s insane Day of Absence policy, earning lots of respect among the heterodox movement. But by this point, he was really starting to piss off people like Claire Lehmann and Sam Harris for his insane statements about vaccines, including the idea that Ivermectin could’ve saved millions of lives from COVID and that the vaccines would go on to kill 17 million people globally.
Bret and his wife Heather’s Dark Horse Podcast channel on Youtube was having its videos flagged and demonetized left and right, and many were calling for Bret’s podcast to be shut down for vaccine misinformation. At the time I thought this was the completely wrong approach. Bret’s vaccine skepticism was worrisome, but protecting freedom of speech meant protecting his right to question the efficacy of vaccines, and it was in this spirit that Lex invited Bret onto his podcast to discuss the issue, but other issues as well such as the lab leak hypothesis, long term monogamous relationships, and internet censorship. He even claimed that he did pioneering but unaccredited work in mouse telomeres that was stolen by a Nobel laureate named Carol Greider, and that this work would show that most U.S. drugs are unsafe. But I think the best moment of the podcast was when Lex asked Bret the following question:
Lex: “There is popularity in martyrdom. There’s popularity in pointing out that the emperor has no clothes. That can become a drug in itself. I’ve confronted this in scientific work I’ve done at MIT where there’s certain things not done well. People aren’t being the best version of themselves and particular aspects of a field are in need of a revolution, and part of me wanted to point that out versus the hard work of publishing papers and doing the revolution. Saying “look, you guys are doing it wrong!” and just walking away. Are you aware of the drug of martyrdom and the ego involved in it that it can cloud your thinking?
Bret: “Probably one of the best questions I’ve been asked! Let me try to sort it out. First of all, we’re all mysteries to ourselves at some level. So there’s a possibility that there’s stuff going on in me that I’m not aware of that’s driving me. But in general, I would say that one of my strengths is that I’m not especially ego driven. I have an ego, I clearly think highly of myself, but it is not driving me, I do not crave that validation. I do crave certain things and I do love a good eureka moment. There's something great about it, and there’s something even better about the phone calls you make next. It’s really fun and I really like it…
… “As far as the martyrdom thing, I understand the drug you’re talking about and I've seen it more than I’ve felt it. I do, if I’m just to be completely candid and this question is so good it deserves a candid answer, I do like the fight. Right? I like fighting against people I don’t respect and I like winning. But I have no interest in martyrdom. One of the reasons is that I’m having too good of a time. I very much enjoy my life and I have a wonderful wife, amazing children, I live in a lovely place and I don’t want to exit any quicker than I have to. That said, I also believe in things, and a willingness to exit if that’s the only way is not exactly inviting martyrdom by accepting that fighting is dangerous and that going up against powerful forces means who knows what will come of it?
… There’s a difference between willing to face the hazard rather than a desire to face it because of the thrill. For me the thrill is in fighting when I’m in the right. I feel that’s a worthwhile way to take what I see as the type of brutality that is built into man and channel it into something useful.”
I think the best response to this moment was another Lex podcast with Jamie Metzl, where although Metzl credited Bret for getting the lab leak theory right, he later in the interview poked fun at him by saying “when you had Bret Weinstein on, he said I have no ego, but these 57 have screwed me over and I deserve credit!”
And it was a good podcast. A 3+ hour conversation where they were able to discuss a lot of interesting things, but Lex allowed Bret to expose himself as a contrarianism addict with a simple, non-bad faith, non-gotcha question.
Sam Harris took the opposite approach, refusing to have a podcast with Bret because of the inherent entropy of bullshit; that it’s faster and easier to lie about 10 things than to debunk 1 thing, and impossible to correct anything in real time conversation. Had Sam done a podcast with Bret, Bret could ‘win’ the argument by saying something like “Well what about the 10 CDC officials who came out against mRNA vaccine technology?” (Not true, I’m just making this up) and in order to debunk such a statement, Sam would need an hour of researching the statement and seeing what such officials made in context, if they even said it at all. And by the time you’ve done it, your opponent has lied about 10 more things.
Joe Rogan went in the opposite direction of Sam, having an “emergency podcast” with Bret Weinstein and Pierre Kory (JRE #1671), where Bret elaborated on his ivermectin conspiracy theories and Joe Rogan basically believed everything and took it for granted. Sam with his technocratic and academic approach always defers to the foremost established experts on any given topic, while Joe tends to just have anyone he finds interesting on his podcast and completely lean into whatever the person says. Lex struck me as having the best of both worlds, having controversial people on but not letting them display their brain rot.
So was the case until he invited Kanye on the podcast (332) . Where they immediately started talking about engineering and history…
Ye: “Engineering is the only thing worth teaching in school. Engineering. We don’t need to teach history or anything that is subjective. It needs to only be engineering taught in school, and everything else needs to be recess. Any forced subjective information is just to weaken and indoctrinate our species. That's what our school does now…
“Is Emily Ratajkowski the hottest person? And I’m like that’s such a subjective thing. But if you go and shoot 3-pointers with Steph Curry, it’s not subjective. Or if you go and compare bank accounts with Elon, it’s not subjective. And another thing that’s not subjective is porn!”
Lex: What about it?
Ye: “Dick size! It’s not subjective. You can measure it!”
The podcast was so painful to listen to. He compared Planned Parenthood to the Holocaust, that 6 million Jews died in the holocaust, while 20 million babies have been killed by abortion, and that he himself was Jewish. He kept claiming that Jewish music producers screwed him over in business deals, and that Jewish doctors were making him sick. Lex did stand firm, and confronted Kanye about these comments, saying that he needed the balls to judge people as individuals. While I do feel Lex did a good job of appropriately pushing back without being too confrontational as to derail the conversation, I don’t think allowing Kanye, someone who was clearly off his bipolar medication, to ramble about the Jews in a public conversation was a good idea, something Sam Harris talked about in his podcast appearance with Lex a few months later.
In fact, the first three and a half hours of that conversation (365) were devoted to Sam defending himself from critics about his views on Trump, COVID vaccines. Only the last hour was devoted to actually interesting topics like AI, UFOs, and free will. I don’t know how much of Lex’s audience would call themselves rightwing, but he displayed clear signs of audience capture based on how much he wanted Sam to steelman the perspective of the average Trump supporter, even though Sam has always been clear about the importance of sympathy for 60 million Trump voters, but that Trump himself and his enablers in power who need to be called out for the frauds and liars they indisputably proved themselves to be after the 2020 election.
Lex: “To me, the great Sam Harris as someone I’ve looked up to for a long time as a beacon of voice of reason, and there’s this meme on the internet, and I would love you to steelman the case for it and against, that Trump broke Sam Harris’s brain. That there is something disproportionate to the impact that Trump had on our society, on the ability of balanced, calm, rational minds to see the world and think clearly, you being one of the beacons of that. Is there a degree to which he broke your brain? Otherwise known as Trump derangement syndrome, a medical condition (chuckles).”
Sam: “Yeah well TDS is a very clever meme because it just throws the problem back on the person who is criticizing Trump, but the true Trump derangement syndrome is not to have seen how dangerous and divisive it would be to promote someone like him to that position of power, and in the final moment not to see how untenable it was to still support a sitting president who wouldn’t commit to a peaceful transfer of power. If that wasn’t a red line for you, you have been deranged by something, because that was one minute to midnight as far as our democracy was concerned. And it was basically for the integrity of a few people that we didn’t suffer a real constitutional crisis.”
Lex throughout the entire conversation seemed to think that empathizing with someone meant taking all of their viewpoints seriously. People are afraid to get vaccinated? Well we need to take the paranoia about the vaccine seriously. People are worried about Joe and Hunter Biden’s corruption? Well we need to assume that their levels of corruption are equal, even if Biden is the only other choice. He wanted Sam and Bret to simply resolve their differences over COVID and conspiracy theories through a loving, good faith conversation, not recognizing the vast epistemological asymmetry between their respective lines of thought. And when it came to whether to have a conversation with Kanye, Sam pretty much nailed it:
Sam: “You’re not doing him a favor by sticking a mic in front of him and letting him go off the Jews or anything else, right? We know what he thought about the Jews, we know that there’s not much illumination that’s gonna come from the topic from him, and if it is a symptom of mental illness that he thinks these things, you’re not doing a favor for him making that even more public. If he’s just an asshole and an ordinary garden-variety antisemite, there’s also not much to say unless you’re really gonna dig in and kick the shit out of him in public. And you can do that with love. That’s the other thing here, I don’t agree that compassion and love always have this patient, embracing acquiescent face. They don’t always feel good to the recipient. There’s this sword of wisdom you can wield compassionately in moments like that where someone is just full of shit and you make it absolutely clear to them and to your audience, and there’s no hatred being communicated. In fact, you can say “look I’m doing everyone a favor right now, take your foot out of your mouth, and I don’t think I would’ve aired the conversation.”
That podcast is what really got me annoyed with Lex’s naive “love solves everything” philosophy. I also learned around that Lex was 40 years old. Everyone has the right to speak, but not everyone’s perspective is worth hearing, and even when it is, you sometimes have to give people tough love and not indulge in their bullshit. I usually have to make this point to right-wingers, because their conspiracy theories are usually far lower IQ than those of the left, and I typically use the analogy of having the right to believe in RussiaGate; that Trump colluded with the Russian government to win the 2016 election, but that having such a conversation with someone in the year 2024 about it is an objective waste of time.
It also didn’t help around this time that I learned Lex was sort of playing loose with his MIT credentials (he’s a researcher there, not tenured faculty), but he doesn’t bring it up all the time so it’s not that big of a deal. Nassim Taleb also chewed his ass out a bit for claiming he could read and fully process The Brothers Karamazov in only a week.
So I stopped listening to Lex’s podcast for a while. Until a friend shared with me his interview with Benjamin Netanyahu…
Lex: “Can you steelman the case that this (the judicial reforms) may give much power to the governing coalition and prime minister? Not just to you but to those who follow?”
Bibi: “No. I think that’s complete hogwash. I think there’s very few people demonstrating against this, quite a few don’t have any idea what’s being discussed, they’re basically being sloganized and you can sloganize not just with mass media but with the social network, and basically feed deliberately with big money and big data, slogans that get into people’s minds.”
Lex: “You have served six years as prime minister, fifteen years of power. Let me ask you here again about human nature, do you worry about the corrupting nature of power on you as a leader, and on you as a man?”
Bibi: “No, not at all, because I think again that thing that drives me is nothing but the mission I took to assure the survival and thriving of the Jewish state, it’s economic prosperity, its security, and ability to achieve peace with our neighbors. I’m committed to it, and I think there’s still many things that have been done, and a few big things that I can still do, but it doesn’t only depend on my sense of mission, but it depends on the market, as we say it, and the will of the Israeli people and voters, who have decided to vote for me again and again, even though I wield no power in the press and in many quarters here, and so on. Nothing. I’m going to be one of the longest serving prime ministers in the last half century in the western democracies, but that’s not because I amass great political power in the political institutions…”
When asked if he worries about power corrupting him, Netanyahu just chuckled and said “Nah bro.” Bibi is a very impressive individual, but everyone has flaws. Seeing him at the peak of his hubris, speaking in his perfect English after coming back from being ousted from power, right when his judicial reforms seemed poised to succeed, right when Israel seemed poised to establish diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia, right on the eve of October 7, really was a delight to see looking back, and jewel only someone like Lex could’ve extracted, because he knows how to strike the right balance between listening and challenging in a way most interviewers don’t.
People saying Lex didn’t “challenge Bibi enough” in the interview don’t understand how unrealistic it is to back a politician as skilled as Netanyahu is into some rhetorical corner and utterly humiliate him and expose him. Anyone hoping for “Netanyahu gets DESTROYED and HUMILITATED by interviewer” videos on Youtube doesn’t realize that Bibi would never agree to an interview with someone like Mehdi Hasan or Cenk Uygur, and even if he did, it would suck because all they would do is grill him for not making peace (something we already know he doesn’t want) without learning anything new about him. Netanyahu further went on to deny any difference between anti Zionism and antisemitism even in theory, which was also a huge insight into how his mind works.
He later had on Yuval Noah Harari, who “destroyed” Netanyahu (podcast 390) by pointing out that millions of Israelis (a country of only 9 million people) were on the streets protesting the judicial reforms, and that even Israeli air force pilots were refusing to serve, and how Netanyahu just denied the obvious reality that power is corrupting him.
Lex, being charitable to the Palestinian perspective and all of the suffering they’ve endured over the years, also invited Palestinian activist Mohammed El-Kurd on the podcast (391). Seeing him describe some of the insane settler violence that goes on in the West Bank and East Jerusalem definitely reminded me of Israel’s flaws, but he repeatedly dodged questions about condemning Palestinian violence, Hamas attacks on civilians, and when asked if Israel had a right to exist, he would further dodge the question by saying “well I don’t really think in abstract that any nation states really have the right to exist, and we should move beyond them.” He then went on to promote completely unrealistic solutions like the unlimited right of return for 1948 Palestinian refugees, and then praised Palestinian martyrdom culture, which shows that the Palestinian spirit can never be broken. El-Kurd revealed himself to be totally unserious about a realistic Israeli-Palestinian peace in the podcast. Omar Suleiman (podcast 411) did a much better job talking about the Palestinian case, though he didn’t propose much of a peace plan either.
But by simply listening to both people and letting them speak at length, asking difficult, but good faith questions, Lex was able to get both Netanyahu and El-Kurd to rhetorically hang themselves in ways that more adversarial interviewers couldn’t do. And I remembered that this isn’t even his goal. His goal is to understand the innerworkings of people’s minds through conversation, knowing people are more reasonable and reveal more when they don’t have to always keep their guard up. Sure, his philosophy is kind of naive and childish, like his reaction to October 7 shown here:
But having 2-3 major people in our culture that any controversial public figure can go to in order to speak their mind freely with is important. Does Lex make mistakes like his interview with Kanye? Yes, but he’s done a superb job with many of his recent interviews with people like John Mearsheimer (podcast 401), who still thinks Putin didn’t want to conquer Ukraine (So far he’s annexed 4 additional Oblasts with no intention of stopping), or Tucker Carlson (podcast 414), who claims that the texts he sent where he said he “passionately hated Trump” was just momentary frustration with the president because of the stress of the lawsuit he was a part of, and that now he likes Trump again.
As for “platforming dangerous people?” Some people like Netanyahu, Andrew Tate or Tucker become too influential to ignore, and having nonconfrontational conversations with these people reveals things about themselves to us that we wouldn’t see in any other platform. I don’t see him platforming holocaust deniers with only 20,000 twitter followers or youtube subscribers, nor is he like Dave Rubin who was clearly hiding his partisan right bent for years, platforming a bunch of no name libertarians from think tanks while ignoring more prominent lefties who wanted to go on his show. Lex has had on people from all over the political spectrum, like Noam Chomsky, Richard Wolff, and David Pakman on the left, and Douglas Murray, Ben Shapiro, and Jordan Peterson on the right.
I thought the most recent debate last week he did with Benny Morris and Destiny versus Norman Finkelstein and Mouin Rabbani was fantastic (podcast 418). I’m a supporter of Israel, and a fan of Destiny, so I did not watch this impartially. But I’ll just summarize points I liked and disliked.
Benny Morris: Good history about the state of mind of the Zionists pre-1948, though when he said that al-Husseini indirectly helped the holocaust by not taking in Jewish refugees was king of a stretch.
Destiny/Mr. Vurelli: Made a good point about how both sides want violence, but only one side (the Palestinians) are delusional about it working. I did cringe when he said dropping a nuke on Gaza wouldn’t necessarily be genocide though.
Rabbani: He made good points about how other European nations should have taken in Jews instead of sending them to Palestine (even though they didn’t and wouldn’t), but consistently downplayed the religious nature of Hamas’ Antisemtism.
Finkelstein: I honestly didn’t think Finkelstein made any reasonable points. He was rude and purposely botched Destiny’s name. He clearly didn’t read the ICJ case against Israel (Destiny was right, mens rea doesn’t appear in it at all while dolus specialis appears four times). Around 3:00:00 in, he says he doesn’t want to understand the mind of the Israelis because what they believe is so awful (that’s literally your job as a historian). He claimed to support international law but then supported the Houthis attacking civilian merchant ships.
I hope Lex continues to have difficult conversations like these. I don’t agree with his philosophy, but Lex is a humble guy who doesn’t take his own beliefs too seriously either. And we could use a bit more humility in this culture.