"the following is a conversation with michael malus his fifth time on this the lex friedman podcast to support it please check out our sponsors in the description and now here's my new year's eve 2021 ..."

"dostoevsky wrote in the idiot my favor of his books through the main character prince mishkin that beauty will save the world these words seemingly naive and ultimately at least to me profound what do..."

"fighting for your values if you don't want to make the world a more beautiful place well it's also how you define beauty because beauty could be just aesthetic beauty it could be art of course art cou..."

"there's this plant called areospermum titan up soybeas i don't know how to pronounce it because they're always in latin you never hear them pronounced you said sperm aerial sperm yeah because it's a w..."

"phrase but a prophecy uh which of yours which of these three things are your favorites truth goodness or beauty what did he call truth and goodness the blatant to direct stems of truth and goodness um..."

"work like it's not like going to the gym and working out that's a lot of work and it's great afterwards but like goodness is easy once you get into the habit of it i suppose working out the same way t..."

"will this help one person and i just kind of imagine a specific person depending on the thing that that would help with like what i'm trying to create something whether it's a piece of hardware or or ..."

"it seems we just do better when we focus on doing a small thing helping uh helping one person because it feels like when you start talking about communism and all those kinds of things when you start ..."

"he's charismatic and the in the humor he has even if he is uh charismatic in the expression of curiosity for science which he did he was curious about like uh not just like boring uh minutiae of scien..."

"what are we gonna do with the body uh they put it on ice in the bathtub they had a party so everyone's going the bathroom while angel's body's there michael got they're like all right we got to take c..."

"20 uh 20. um he was clearly a sociopath and i'd never met a sociopath before now a lot of times we'll read these like you'll take a buzzfeed quiz like are you a sociopath but it's like oh my feelings ..."

"of it so that the willingness of those in power to do the wrong thing for this flimsiest pretext which i think was a big important lesson also the fact that no one at abc had any consequences for this..."

"they get off on doing things that if the average person heard about it the average person would be shocked because that gives them this sense of weird above them we're different from them the rules do..."

"activist like so you can tweet about it how courageous you are but just literally see there's something off here there's something off here and i'm not going to participate i'm going to defend these s..."

"it's fun so like it's rewarding like the reason you go into uh science is you can continue really without a boss to continue having fun and solving puzzles that's that's literally so like uh unless yo..."

"gender dimorphism their friends are only going to care so much so if you meet someone who has a lot of money who now cares about aunt spiders it's going to be exciting it will be very exciting but i i..."

"what were we talking about so jeffrey absolutely oh one thing i wanted to ask you so let's put scientists aside what about like uh world leaders uh bill clinton your favorite person why would he fly w..."

"detector like the don't you have a good detector for people who just want to be in your presence like i already understand that there's people like this out there like there's people that kind of want..."

"like that bad example because like let's look at clinton and let's look at obama right so obama even though their politics are very close i'd say in many ways obama is apparent we don't know i don't k..."

"you can see how there's people who want to meet you know the surface bill clinton and i'm sure that guts old for him because he has to be on but then there's the good old boys where he could be a perv..."

"it wasn't cheating she only you know performed on me you're going to say this with a straight face like do you at a certain point when something is so brazen you wonder if the person even has to belie..."

"instinct was let's tuck you in and read you a bedtime story and not let me like touch you or something it was just like like it was just wouldn't enter my head so there's but the thing is is it possib..."

"today um [Laughter] nice and warm this is because so for those who don't know if russians don't celebrate christmas obviously with the soviet union christmas was illegal no thanksgiving basically no m..."

"after i'm out obviously they're turning the lights off but like in my kid logic this was a concern of mine yeah and memories work that same way i have a collection of memories that are stitched togeth..."

"merriment like like laughing fighting arguing but also like in in our case like singing and uh like yeah arguing like philosophical stuff but also like um if i may how would i describe it this is also..."

"happiness is to experience this new thing sugar i don't know um you know there's like there's scarcity there's like communist czech republic so basically they try to rip off coke yeah and it's just li..."

"well it's also i think what people don't appreciate as americans is it's very rare and russia to have a safe space yeah so you know that that january 1st no one's going to snitch on you you know they'..."

"speech is how careful people are in the way they express it even the michael mouses in the world you're you're constantly being like nuanced there they just say crazy shit oh yeah and then they correc..."

"cynicism i know you do and i actually disagree with you about it you see it as cynicism i see it as um waves on top of the water like surface cynicism and the depths as i see the beauty of the russian..."

"no not well yeah i mean kamu kamu doesn't think that now we're going into uh definitions of suffering then because absurd what see life is absurd is life is suffering or not even close to the same con..."

"specifically starving and it could it can encompass like a lot of the philosophers uh talk about it encompass like philosophical suffering the fact that there is if if you're not careful life was can ..."

"personalities are awesome were you in it no i'm in it with so you had to basically write your autobiography in six words and mine was good things happen to bad people you see there you go there's humo..."

"pull of nature that wants to destroy you no nature wants you to nature's indifferent but we have the capacity because we're blessed with minds and we're blessed with friends yeah to transcend yes natu..."

"present so it's your present for new year's uh can we open it yeah sure what's in the box it's gonna take and you brought up suffering this is gonna be very unpleasant here you go i packed it myself y..."

"thank you so much wrenches they're my favorite i can't believe i fell for that okay and there's box number three it's like a mattress i can't believe that worked yeah i wanted a box to open all these ..."

"wrenches okay so let me tell you the story behind that toy tonka robots that turn into vehicles so when you there when i was a kid you had transformers but for us poor people you had gobots right so t..."

"and with the gobots each package had a picture of the different figures so the packaging wasn't uniform and they just had scooter there she was just sitting there and i was like holy crap so that feel..."

"the poor the poor man's robot the poor man's transformers i think there's instructions on the back how to transform her to her i only found out as an adult that it was supposed to be a girl yeah wow t..."

"yep so that's that the arm scout i'm having visions of like baby michael i i can't do it okay i can't do it i can't figure it out wow you're right she looks so much better transformed oh all right i'm..."

"new york was what did you learn about human civilization just life that was beautiful from new york i learned that there's a lot of really unique special people out there who are doing their little pa..."

"again it wasn't all of paris it was the left bank of paris and gertrude stein and hemingway and all them in a little area so you know when you read these history books these scenes it's like 50 people..."

"truly happy for you man it well it's i'm so proud but it's also i i'm proud because these are people who had points of view and they didn't have it easy and they fought for what they believed in and i..."

"i love being able to do that so you have a strong voice yourself and to sort of join them in it's like john lennon joining in with the beatles as like a a chorus of very different views on anarchism j..."

"he's in there uh he was an anarchist so um it was it was a big accomplishment it was really cool to get a chance to do the audiobook for you you did an incredible thing which is got a bunch of really ..."

"you know h.l menken has that quote about every rational man must at times be tempted to spit on his hands hoist the black flag and begin slitting throats so i wanted to talk sound like the seductive a..."

"that's such a beautiful vision yeah because violence that's uh violence is part of human history uh to a degree that it must be seductive it must be there must be a strong pull like it's not insane pe..."

"what do you uh what do you think about just laying maxwell into the trial and so on again maybe the interesting story there is about the coverage of the trial so like the story is more complex and int..."

"because i think in that case you can kind of check out you could be like this isn't my i'm just doing a job yeah i i don't you know you kind of can i think in a sense if you have a certain mindset lik..."

"their that people are i saw people respond like oh that was you know cutting edge technology at the time haha but i'm like i don't think that that was really uh done that that frequently or be hearing..."

"he's like i'm gonna you know screw these people i'm gonna be recognized and we're gonna make people recognize so that somebody said for that but i mean i i i can't relate to people like him yeah but i..."

"think that was a vanity fair piece that you're referring to or oh sorry i'm just referring to a general concept oh there was so there was an article that broke this down because this article is either..."

"favorite moments you mean 20 21 yeah yeah yeah clearly it's just laying maxwell a trial it just really stands out to me it's very moving which is why i bring it up no uh moving here so move moving her..."

"and a lot of people started talking to me about san francisco about the cynicism there and i'll go there and there is a kind of so it's not all the woke stuff and all that kind of things which is also..."

"just giving away the salary not giving away all that but the whole thing that's it you just move to a place there's an empty building you know and you're moving into it um and this is a new life and t..."

"there's no sense of hope you don't go to new york now if if there's been such an assault and intentionally are there otherwise maybe it's inevitable they didn't have a choice but there's been such an ..."

"is like a religious experience for these people but you forget who he is because he doesn't carry himself like a big shot yeah yeah and still i mean he gets competitive as fuck like i argue with him a..."

"let's uh style it down a notch yeah it's uh when elon calls first principles thinking but really it's just not being limited by the constraints of the past yes and so saying like okay this is how thin..."

"feel is is doing that i really am curious to be a fly on the wall i'm sure it'll happen at some point watching you and elon talk to each other because he's even more of a robot than you he was on the ..."

"great because it's uh it's problem solving mode okay yeah yeah okay it's so that is fun that is exciting because like you stop completing sentences i actually feel at home because you don't need to sa..."

"like i'm going back and like all right this is gonna be a whole slog i'm like oh i just have to cut and paste this and basically tweak a few words so um i did a good job with the first draft it's uh i..."

"several ways so one your writing process but two by way of advice of how how to write you've talked about in the past like your your first draft is these kind of uh disparate or more chaotic and that ..."

"that the the good guys will win and this is one of those cases so you know i had the book took on a life of its own it's very different from how originally conceived it i originally conceived it as a ..."

"there to draw i'm extremely um he's a great hero of mine i think his life is just enormously admirable he fought very hard against the you know the nazi occupation uh his book the plague which i find ..."

"books i i really appreciate that don't have a plot i mean uh no uh notes from underground so obviously this desk has a huge amount of plot in in most of his work herman hess has a huge amount of plot ..."

"it has to do something it makes me think about like don't become the way you live don't become like a freak show a circus act like live for an idea live live for um something that brings you joy or do..."

"and so then it became how are you so optimistic in the face of everything that's going on in the world and i started writing it when kovitz started hitting and i because again i'm not optimistic becau..."

"it all out there don't look it over if you have a great line put in your phone and then add it to the the draft so it'll be a complete slog but editing that slog is gonna be a lot easier than creating..."

"specific things like finish the book i years ago and i'm so i'm i think on some level you much less than me but i think you're increasing in this direction i realized it's more i have to learn how to ..."

"heaviest i've i'm i'm 4-8 the heaviest i've ever been was when and this is when i was like he's exaggerating he's not at that that's the metric um oh sorry are you talking about your height yeah um ba..."

"and then uh we run into david goggins at vault this is my first time meeting david i i've talked to david a lot over the phone and we were supposed to do a thing together and this is me trash out of m..."

"realize that that expression means the other thing what's the other thing if things are going great this too shall pass yeah i always talk about suffering no i always thought about it as being more li..."

"you had a great conversation with glenn beck and he said that uh he talked to trump and believes that trump is uh donald trump is definitely running in 2024 or very likely running in 2024. uh i think ..."

"victory is going to come as a consequence of washington do you want to make america great again i think america is great so uh this is my failed attempt at humor uh one of many uh there there are also..."

"republican party there's a asymmetry they'd be much more skeptical of like an actor than the democrats would be because they would regard that actor as coming as a kind of um venturing candidate or wh..."

"what to do as we emerge from the fog yeah so i'm excited by 2024 somebody said this dark cynical thing i i hope this is not true but like that there was some doubt about the results of the election in..."

"you should still be able to say one nice thing like legitimate nice not just like a dismissive nice thing but legitimately say what is one nice thing they did or like uh or who they are as a person no..."

"see the same thing with actually uh one of the reasons i always found joe biden fascinating is he's had a lot of really traumatic things happen in his life yeah and uh if i shit my pants in front of t..."

"uh to some degree because of the wealth under which donald trump existed for a lot of his recent life he's less able to do that quite naturally maybe sometimes obama wasn't quite able the question i w..."

"those videos if you can steal man an argument against uh so i was the first one to kind of bring this issue back into the national um conversation i wrote a piece for observer in 2016. then jesse kell..."

"my steel man argument is there's no way this is gonna be peaceful because the lines don't separate out well so all you're doing is basically just replicating the problem because the disparity isn't be..."

"like china certainly wants to carry itself and have an appearance at least on the world stage as civilized and a leader there's lots of smaller countries who without us are going to feel comfortable d..."

"shut the lights so that's a i think a reasonable argument so those are the um biggest ones i would say and and still what is the case for national divorce and along which lines so like um in making th..."

"this there's there's a difference between convincing someone they want to buy a car and what features you want so if you're at the point where we're arguing about the features then my work here is don..."

"this one i don't know if that logic carries through you can't just say here's an unlikely thing that happened therefore anything can happen i just said you just earlier said anything had happened this..."

"so the you're wearing it you now that from me yeah um it's funny because the metaphor applies across all of these level of collectivism so he was arguing that for the power of nation so you he would b..."

"um we've been at it for a while like there is a lot of value in the fact that we've been at it for a while don't just throw it all away all the time so he says like philosophically he seems in a lot o..."

"so there is a love of country i think it's value but i i don't know that that's the i think it's also the case because the country happens to be america like i don't know if i was living in you know w..."

"politics there i don't care like i care how we hang out we have a good time we watch dumb movies watch youtube go to the store whatever um i don't know your politics are i don't care what your politic..."

"it makes no sense to me um we could still have debates i mean like i would still like to have those conversations and still have disagreements like uh i disagree with joe and kovid a lot on a bunch of..."

"love to have those because i love the debate though i love debates it takes a lot to get me triggered and when the babylon b were interviewing elon and he had this thing he goes well i don't know anyo..."

"that's actually really interesting just to link on that just just just just a little bit with the vaccine and stuff like that with the antiviral drugs the fda say like are you comfortable like who sho..."

"dangerous thinking in general by the way i don't know if you saw i got a chance to talk to the pfizer ceo and uh i had uh help collecting questions i got a lot of questions and people put at the top a..."

"um also not being a coward i was afraid of nothing like what it what do i have to gain or lose exactly well you have something to lose because if you're i do so only to do softballs because if i'm goi..."

"that one of the beautiful things about america is that the the you can criticize the rule of law currently but it's still it's better than soviet in the in the soviet union where people bribed each ot..."

"comment when i and correct me if i'm wrong i'm not a factory expert when he basically they told people not to wear masks or they lied about it to some extent because they said then people were going t..."

"how has that changed you like if you like in the privacy of your mind michael malus like how did you change now that you've gotten more attention let's say you know or even the success of the book lik..."

"i mean the big problem with the masks the changing mind and the mask is the arrogance and how it was communicated to me a lot of this boils down to uh how things are communicated it's like it's obviou..."

"it's a giant mess man uh this podcasting is it's just a fun little conversation but it also has a responsibility i don't know i don't know how joe does it i don't think joe cares as much as you do it'..."

"can be proud of this happens a lot because i have my locals community malice.locals.com and there's a lot of young people in there yeah so that's a great place i'll give i'll give them a meta piece of..."

"that's okay we think everybody oh shit you're trump's pretty good too i i i i'd like your trump to talk to elon conversation well mr president you know look uh some things you did like some not so muc..."

"because your brain knows how to talk to you your brain is off on your enemy and it'll say exactly the right thing to undermine you so that's an issue um b i just this works for me maybe it worked for ..."

"mental exercise what face do you make when you tweet i wouldn't know i don't know that's a good point is it on the toilet how much what percentage is on the toilet very little on the toilets i usually..."

"that socks those socks i'm like oh this is because i was on rogan that was kind of a big deal so if you have these little things throughout your house it gives good mental fuel even like like a toy re..."

"you you don't owe anyone response uh if someone has a question you know them an answer especially if they're not coming at you in good faith or they're coming in hostile way that's a big one it's hard..."

"your 30s because it's like okay old man you're that's all cope i promise you it is yeah i think uh he says so many beautiful things i i would say another version of the openness i'll say take big risk..."

"commit to it should hurt it's like uh when i competed in jiu jitsu or you do like sports and so on don't just say i'm gonna have fun out there so on no try to win and because then if you don't it hurt..."

"um but the cons the negatives what was the conversation like about that like well my sis i talked my you know my sister has two kids my nephews who i absolutely adore whatever their names are and she ..."

"to be the right woman like like you're making a commitment you know and since you know they're all crazy you have to find one where you can handle the crazy oh all women are crazy yeah they're one and..."

"love which is like long-term love for another human being which is like marriage and then love for kids yeah and it almost makes me sad like not getting to experience that you know because i'm also re..."

"happen because every relationship i've had uh they've been very beyond supportive like don't they'd rather do the i take an hour and do your work than spend time with me like i believe in what you're ..."

"you uh think about your death mortality yes fear what do you feel about it i'm just worried i want to take as many people out with me as possible so suitcase news that's what nuke suitcase i'm thinkin..."

"bad well i think you do just this you do this today you do this in our friendship and you do it for a very large number of people is teach them how to be how to have hope yes and teach them how to be ..."