Destiny: Politics, Free Speech, Controversy, Sex, War, and Relationships

Lex Fridman Podcast #337 – Destiny: Politics, Free Speech, Controversy, Sex, War, and Relationships Machine transcription by Qwen3-ASR 0.6B (MLX, local, Apache-2.0). May contain recognition errors. The following is a conversation with Stephen Benel, also known online as Destiny. He is a video game streamer and political commentator, one of the early pioneers of both live streaming in general and live streamed political debate and discourse. Politically, he is a progressive, identifying as either left or far left depending on your perspective. There are many reasons I wanted to talk to Stephen. First, I just talked to Ben Shapiro, and many people have told me that Stephen is the Ben Shapiro of the left in terms of political perspective and exceptional debate skills. Second reason is he skillfully defends some nuanced non standard views. At the same time, being pro establishment, pro institutions, and pro Biden, while also being pro capitalism and pro free speech. Third reason is he has been there at the beginning and throughout the meteoric rise of the video game live streaming community. In some mainstream circles, this community is not taken seriously, perhaps because of its demographic distribution skewing young or perhaps because of the sometimes harsh style of communication. But I think this community should be taken seriously and shown respect. Millions of young minds tune into live streams like Destinies to question and to try to understand what is going on with the world, often exploring challenging even controversial ideas. The language is sometimes harsher and the humor sometimes meaner than I would prefer, but I, Grandpa Lex, put on my rain boots and went into the beautiful chaotic muck of online discourse and have so far survived to tell the tale with a smile and even more love in my heart than before. On top of all this, we were lucky to have Molina Gorinson, a popular streamer and world traveler, join us at the end of the conversation. You can check out her channel on Twitch TV slash Molina and you can check out Stephen's channel on YouTube dot com slash Destiny. And now a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. We got True Classic T's for shirts, Athleta Greens for nutrition, MasterClass for learning and Blinkist for non fiction. Choose wisely, my friends. And now onto the full ad reads. As always, there is no ads in the middle. I try to make this interesting, but if you skip them, please still check out our sponsors. I enjoy their stuff, maybe you will too. This show is brought to you by a thing that I am currently wearing as I am doing this very ad read. It's called True Classic T's, high quality soft slim fitted T shirts for men. They're definitely slim fitted currently because I just ate a lot and I drank two cappuccinos, Venti cappuccino from Starbucks. Because I didn't sleep much last night and I had a lot to get done today, and so I was feeling really good. I am still feeling really good and I am celebrating that by even more caffeine. So they're definitely slim fitted, extra slim fit. I wear large and they feel good, they look good. I mean, there is nothing better in this world than a great fitting, comfortable, sexy T shirt. Okay, there might be a couple of other things, but a T shirt is pretty nice. And so I wear a suit in tie when I am trying to do a thing that I want to take super seriously. Sometimes I wear a dress shirt when it's more relaxed, but still I am taking pretty seriously. And the go to is a T shirt, T shirt and jeans. My favorite T shirt is the ones that go with black. It's called True Classic T's. Like I said, go to trueclassic dot com and enter code Lex to get twenty five percent off. Free shipping included on purchases over one hundred bucks, one hundred percent risk free guarantee with a thirty day return policy. True Classic. When you look good, you feel good. I had to read that. They don't tell me to read that, but that's what it says on their website. So when you look good, you feel good. This show is brought to you by Athleta Greens, and it's AG One drink that I drink twice a day. It takes care of all my nutritional needs for all the crazy fasting, keto diet, carnivore diet, whatever diet I do. If I am traveling, if I am stressed, if I am sleep deprived, all the chaos that's going on in life. By the way, I am not complaining. Chaos in life is beautiful, but I try to do anything I can that's easy to do to take care of my body. I do try to get sleep. I do try to make sure I have a bed that I am super comfortable with. I try to make sure I get enough electrolytes, enough vitamins. The vitamin part is taken care of by Athleta Greens. Plus, it's delicious. I mean, there is a zen aspect of just slowing down life and enjoying a nice drink of Athleta Greens. It just puts me back to a place where all the stress of life disappears. And I return to a place of calm. Anyway, they'll give you one month supply fish oil when you sign up at athletagreens dot com slash Lex. These reads are getting increasingly more ridiculous, and I love it. This show is also brought to you by MasterClass. One hundred and eighty dollars a year gets you an all access pass to watch courses from the best people in the world at the coolest stuff in the world. So we got Chris Hatfield. I mean the list is ridiculous. I hope to talk to a bunch of them on the podcast, but I'll never be able to have such a dense and sexy presentation of their insights on a podcast as MasterClass achieves in these classes. I mean it's just not comparable. A podcast is a fun chat. This is an intense, also fun. Educational experience. So Chris Hatfield, Neil deGrasse Tyson, will write, Carl Santana, Gary Casparov, Daniel Negrono, Neil Gaiman, Martin Scorsese, Tony Hawk, Jane. It just goes on and on. It never stops. It's really really really worth it. I recommend it. Check it out, get unlimited access to every MasterClass and get fifteen percent off an annual membership at masterclass dot com slash Lex. This show is also brought to you by Blinkist, my favorite app for learning new things. They take key ideas from thousands of non fiction books and condense them down into fifteen minutes that you can read or listen to. And sometimes the new things I learn are from books I've already read, sometimes multiple times. The insights they pull out. Really take a fresh perspective, not not in all cases, but in many cases a fresh perspective on books I've already read. Obviously, if I haven't read the book, this is a great way to pick which non fiction books you should read. Or if you are never going to get a chance to read those books, it's a nice way to get caught up in case it's brought up in conversation and you are not completely lost out at sea. Like a lonely sailor wishing he could be home with family, this is your way. This is the way to return back to family. Come along with me, dear sailor. You can claim a special offer for savings at blinkist dot com slash Lex. This is the Lex Freedom Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here is Destiny. I don't know if you watched me watching your yay interview. Yeah, thank you so much for. I am so curious when you are navigating a conversation like that. Are you how intentional is the thought process between like building rapport and pushing and and giving a little and letting like zero zero intention. I was watching and thank you so much. I was very kind for you to review that conversation. It meant a lot that you were complimenting parts on the technical aspects of the conversation. But no zero and I am actually deliberately. Trying to avoid, I think you've called the debate brain, which is just another flavor of thinking about. Like the meta conversation, trying to optimize how should this conversation go because I feel like the more you do that, the better you get at that. The less human connection you have, like the less genuinely you are actually sitting there in the moment and listening to the person. You are more like calculating what's the right thing to say versus like feeling what is. What is that person feeling right now? What are they thinking? That's what I am trying to do is like putting myself. In their mind and thinking, what does the world look like to them? What does the world feel like to them? And so from that, I truly try to listen. Now I am also learning, especially because Rogan and others have been giving me shit for not pushing back. It's good sometimes to say from a place of care for the other human being to say stop. What did you just say? I don't think that represents who you are and what you really mean, or maybe. If it does at that time, represents who they are. I could see a better a better world if they grow into a different direction. Try to point that direction out to them. It's a really complicated dance between letting somebody share their full story versus letting somebody like essentially I guess like proselytize your audience and it's like okay hold on let's take a minute here but yeah I used to be four or five years ago it was attack attack attack attack attack whatever you said and now I am leaning way more towards the like okay well tell me how you feel about everything and then we'll go from there so a lot of people like my new approach some older fans will watch and they're like why are you letting this guy just ramble on you know he said like five or six wrong things and you are only going to call him out on two of them and it's like it's different styles of conversation but yeah do you do a lot of research beforehand too depending on the conversation yeah so if we're going to talk like vaccines and stuff yeah that's a ton of reading and stuff that I never thought I'd know going into it if it's a more personal like political philosophy conversation there is not as much you can prepare for just it truly depends on the conversation how much are you actually listening to the other person I am always listening you have to listen because as soon as you stop listening the quality of everything falls apart the connection disappears the quality of the conversation disappears but my natural inclination is to just be way more aggressive than normal so I have to constantly remind myself I guess you would call it a meta conversation but I like okay he's probably saying this because of that or we'll let him go here and then we'll stop later but um yeah because my my preferred style of conversation is like I am going to talk and the second I say something you disagree with then let's iron it out right I got like I think in like syllogisms like okay here is premise A good okay premise B okay and then conclusion and then as long as we're both deductively sound we're not crazy no psychosis then we're going to agree on everything whereas other people like to most people think in stories like narratives like a whole there is a whole like narrative and the individual facts don't matter as much because they'll pick and choose what they want and it's really hard because everybody thinks narratives have to function in that world but it's frustrating for me sometimes well I've seen you had a lot of excellent debates one of them I just recently last night watched is a on systemic racism and it's the first time I've seen you completely lose your shit oh shoot who was out against I am not sure exactly but you were just very frustrated and sorry not lose your shit but you were frustrated constantly because of the thing let's lay out one two three and every time you try to lay it out it would falter I think it had to do with sort of can you use data to make an argument or do you need to use a study that does an interpretation of that data and then there is like this tension between I think this is a behavioral economist that you were talking to and the point is you do this kind of nice layout that the whole point of behavioral economics it says there is more to it than just the data you have to give a context and like do the rich rigorous interpretation in the context of the full human story and then there was like a dance back and forth sometimes use data sometimes not and you were getting really frustrated and shutting down and so that felt like a failure mode I've seen Sam Harris have similar sticking points like if we can't agree on the terminology we can't go on to me I feel like I am sort of the the Wittgenstein perspective is like I think if you get stuck on any one thing you are just not going to make progress you have to part of the conversation has to be about doing a good dance together versus being dogmatically stuck on the path to truth I think the true challenge is identifying what of those sticking points are important versus what is not important it's like if I am having an argument with somebody about like Jewish representation in media they might it might be like a big conversation and they might say a couple things like I think Jewish people you know they tend to help their own or whatever and saying okay but like for the purpose of the conversation we can keep moving but if they casually drop like you know yeah and I think that's why the Holocaust numbers were blown up from like one hundred thousand to six million and that's what and it's like okay well hold on wait wait if you think this we have to stop here because this is going to be it's not just a language game in this part if you really believe this fact then the whole rest of the conversation is going to be informed by that belief you know and it has to be something that doesn't bother you personally you have to step outside your own ego so Holocaust denial is somebody that would bother a lot of people and there are some things just just observing you I feel like when you get really good at conversation you can become a stickler to you might have your favorite terms that really bothers you people don't agree on those terms begs the question you mean raising the question yeah I usually just want if people say stuff I just let it slide yeah because you can't because if you fight when you are having a conversation with somebody and you are talking to their audience at the same time because that's really what's happening you never want to come off as combative or over aggressive because it puts people in like there is there is like a trigger in your brain and this is true of relationships of friendships of persuasive rhetoric or whatever there is a trigger in the brain and as soon as that defensive trigger gets like flipped on everything is over you've lost the ability to persuade because everything becomes a fight at that point yeah well I wanted to talk to you because I heard somewhere that you were referred to as the Ben Shapiro of the left and since I am talking with Ben as well I wanted to sort of complete spiritually this Platonic political philosophy puzzle in my head you are a progressive but a progressive with many non standard progressive views and you had a heck of a fascinating journey through all of that and like I said I think you argue with passion sometimes with excessive amounts of passion but it's a really polite way of saying that almost always with good faith and with rigor with seriousness I asked on your subreddit which is an excellent subreddit shout out to the Destiny subreddit so much at least for that particular post what I really loved is when I asked for questions for you there were like holy shit there is adults in the room let's all behave like nobody say incest I was like what what what's going on here but actually the the the questions that rose to the top were really good so somebody said that Destiny was speaking of your journey was a conservative in his early teens then he became a libertarian then he became a left wing social justice warrior then he flirted with socialism and now he is a social democrat liberal I've also heard you refer to yourself as a far left person so to the degree there is truth to that journey can you take me through your evolution through the landscape of political ideologies that you went through so my dad comes from Kentucky and my mom is a Cuban immigrant Cubans are notorious for being very conservative in the United States for historical reasons and for other reasons but my upbringing was a very Republican one I grew up listening to Rush Limbaugh Glenn Beck Michael Savage on the radio Billy Cunningham I think Sean Hannity a little bit later on like that was like my whole upbringing politically I remember I was writing I had written like articles for the school journal like in favor of defending the war in Iraq and you know defending Bush from all the criticism etc so that was my upbringing I think once I hit high school college I had my edgy like libertarian s high school phase of like reading Eintrand of figuring out that like oh my god nothing in life matters except for class and money that's actually the answer to everything and I got to college I became a Ron Paul fan very big Ron Paul fan and then from there I kind of work do life life happens at the kind of the lowest point of my life in terms of where I am working financially everything is like kind of in ruin in my life there is a whole bunch of dumb stuff that's happened it's probably my most conservative point I don't know what it is about like being poor and thinking like you can work your way out of it you can do whatever it's just my upbringing is always just like if you are not if you are not if you are not having financial success just work work work work work and then I got into streaming very very lucky break everything just lined up at the right time and then as I've progressed through streaming I would say through the years I've gradually fallen more and more to the left especially once my kid turned four five six years old and I started to see like how much different his life was just because of the financial opportunities that I was able to provide for him through no merit of his own and that started to radically change how I viewed the world in a lot of ways so actually let's like linger on that yeah low point you worked at McDonald's you worked at a casino you did carpet cleaning what was the the lowest point definitely the carpet cleaning really absolutely why why was it the lowest point that's when you were just flirting with starting streaming my whole life has been a series of lucky breaks really truly I grew up playing a lot of video games but back in my day our day you had to read there was a lot of text on the screen back in my day we used to play they didn't all talk yeah because nowadays everything's voice acted but back then you had to read a lot I was a really good reader and a really good vocabulary yeah I heard you actually say that what games are we talking about what what do you mean there is reading you are talking about like RPG yeah JRPG so like Final Fantasy games Fantasy stars like all of these like any any RPG that would have been on the SNES Sega PlayStation these are the things I pause on that okay I just talked to Todd Howard who's of the Elder Scrolls fame and the Fallout fame and Beyond what's your thoughts on Elder Scrolls why Skyrim the greatest RPG of all time man I really don't like Skyrim or Fallout you don't love it games oh really no not at all why do you hate Skyrim yeah so I really like characters and like compelling stories and narratives around those characters and I like to see them kind of like grow and change kind of like a movie or a story so in your like Final Fantasy games you've got characters there a lot of like like classical tropes of like a character starts off kind of like edgy angsty all on their own they develop relationships friendships they realize that the life is more about themselves and they do that and I like that that growth that's kind of what you see in all of those old role playing games I didn't like the open world ones as much because your main character is just like a blank slate never talks it's for you to like project onto but there is not the same like linear narrative of like growth for the character that's fascinating there is an actual story arc to the character that's more crafted in a beautiful way by the designers of the game yeah I don't think one is better or worse it's just I tend towards like I want to hear a compelling story around like a set of characters that like grow and change with the game oh that's beautifully put then yeah I I just really loved being able to leave the town you go outside the town and you look outside its nature and the world of possibilities is before you you can do whatever the fuck you want I mean that immensity of just being lost in the world it was really immersive for me but yeah you are right. Whatever attracts you about the world, so you were just starting to play video games, you go out play the video games that's one of your lucky breaks. There's just like a lot of random skills you pick up depending on the type of game you play. I played a lot of text based games on the computer, so I was a very fast typer. I'm still a very fast typer. Read a lot, you know, learned weird kind of math stuff for some of the calculations, some of the games. I think I'm pretty good at getting information, figuring stuff out, learning patterns all of that. And then that plus the reading and everything for the games meant that I I don't want to say I excelled in school because my grades were pretty bad, but I was in like all honors all AP classes or whatever. A lot of dual enrollment, a lot of AP credit going into college, so I did pretty well in school, probably better than I should have, but it was because I had the game stuff that was like really powering a lot of my brain there while I was trying to sleep through class. Yeah. So you're you're able to soak in information, integrate it, quickly take notes. Generally, I think I'm pretty good at that. Yeah. What what you do this a lot when you stream, you're typing stuff. Is there a system in that note taking? And what note what do you use for note taking? Does it matter? I use a notepad. Like notepad the original C notepad. Yep, notepad. Ex not the plus plus not. Is there genius to the madness behind that or you just don't give a shit? No, I mean like it it's going to depend on the style of conversation. If I'm with somebody that is very meticulously organize their thoughts and they're a fine better word here for rambler you can edit that in better word for rambler. Yeah, somebody that talks a lot and a lot. I'll start like taking notes bullet points like this this this this this this because there's a style of conversation where I say seven or eight different things and then when you go to respond to everything I said I cut you off immediately and we argue that point. But if somebody's going to do that, you just like hold on. You just said these eight things. I'm going to respond to every single one. I've written them all down and then you can go if you want to go point by point we can. But you just said all this and I wrote it down so we're going to go. So what are you actually writing down like a couple words per point they left. Honestly, like there are very few unique conversations in politics. Like a lot of them are kind of retreading old ground. So if we're having a debate on abortion, somebody might say like, "Oh well I believe this thing about viability and I believe this thing about you know when they're a fetus versus a human and I'll just write down like those points so that when I go to respond I kind of have like a like note cards like a guiding thing there to keep me centered on my response. Political discourse is a kind of tree you're walking down. I got it and you're like taking just to keep my focus guided so I'm not like running off on a weird tangent or responding something I didn't say or something. Yeah. What about like doing research? It just is there a system to your note taking because mentally you seem to be one of the most organized people I've listened to. So is there is it in your mind or is there a system that's on paper? A little of both. I feel like the human mind is a beautiful thing. If you have interest in an area, so like what I'll tell people is let's say there's like a totally new topic that I'm researching I don't know anything and I'll do a couple of these on stream I think they're boring but people watch it. I might open a Wikipedia article and I'll read and I hit something I don't know and then I open the next Wikipedia article and I'll read into and then I might have like seven tabs open and I'll read and I'll read and I'll read. Um and I'll read a ton of stuff maybe for hour two three four hours of stuff and then by the end you know someone in chat will ask me like do you even remember like this particular thing and I'll say not really no not too much but what happens is as long as you've seen it once what will happen is like the next day the day after it will read something else and be like oh I remember that thing from this thing I remember like vaguely that and then if you see it like a third time you're like oh this makes sense because especially when it comes to oh here's like a little trick on stuff if you ever reading any news and there's a place that pops up always look at it on a map because so much of history is like on a map it's so important to like know the geography it makes things make so much more sense. Um but yeah once I once I start to see stuff over and over again just because I've like read it a few times stuff will start to kind of connect in my mind and like oh yeah well this makes sense of course these people believe this because of this or of course like this happened here it's because you know that happened there. Um so yeah it's it's a lot of that if there's like a topic that I'm doing specific research for um so like vaccine related stuff is a big one the Ukrainian Russian conflict is a big one that I'll break out a note um I'll probably get like a Google Doc and I'll just start like writing like an outline of kind of the rough points of everything just to organize my thoughts around different topics yeah. We're just going to go tangent upon tangent upon tangent we'll return to the low point of your life at some point always returning from the philosophy to the psychology so you did the Ukraine topic. One question is, what role does the US play in this war? Could they have done something to avoid the war? Did they have a role to play in forcing Vladimir Putin's hand? Do they have a role to play in de escalating the war towards a peace agreement? And the opposite if it does escalate towards something like the use of a tactical nuclear weapon are they to blame or are we to blame? Oh man, somebody sent me an email a while ago with great words. Um, there's a specific way to navigate a conversation where you can kind of like contribute to a negative event but you're not really the one responsible for it. Um, like the classic example is a woman goes out late at night gets a little bit too drunk and then something happens and it's like while there might have been steps you could have taken to mitigate the risk it's not her fault of what happened because the responsibility rests on the on the agent making the choice right there's a chooser at some point that is choosing to do wrong or evil. I don't believe in any of the arguments that say the United States has contributed to Russia's position on Ukraine or the actions that they've taken on Ukraine. There are several arguments that some people some even political scholars are are are putting out there to say that the United States is to blame but I find them completely unconvincing. I think that when you ask the question of like what is the United States role or what is our role been, I think it's really important for us. I don't think we even agree as a country on what our role should be which I think is a hard one because you've got this kind of there's this growing populist movement in the United States it might be the far left and the far right. I think populists tend to have this kind of isolationist view of the world where the United States should just be our own thing we shouldn't be telling anybody what to do we shouldn't be the world police and then kind of more in these like center left center right positions and then across a lot of Europe you've got well okay the United States is kind of like the big kid on the block like we're looking to them for guidance and leadership on situations like what's going on in Ukraine. So insofar as the original question is like what what is like the United States responsibility I think we have a responsibility to ensure the relative like freedom prosperity and stability across Europe. I think that defending Ukraine's sovereignty and right to their borders is a part of that and I don't believe that prior to the invasion in 2022. I don't think the United States was contributing to Russia invading that country. I know there are arguments given that like the expansion of NATO you know has has something that's been threatening to Russia but the Baltics joined and Russia didn't do anything about it. The invasion of Crimea was very clearly a response to the revolution of 2014. The invasion on the borders is clearly a response to Ukraine winning that civil war in the southeast and the Donbas and Russia becoming more aggressive. I don't think that you can blame any of that on on NATO expansion. There's no NATO countries that are threatening Russia or invading Russia. Do you think there is a nuclear threat? Do you think about this? Do you worry about this that there is a threat of a tactical nuclear weapon being dropped? I think that possibility exists either way and I think the responsibility for that is on Russia because it it just can't be the case that if you have nukes you're allowed to invade countries and take their land because of anything I think that that down the road also increases increases the potential for nuclear problems in the future right because at that point either every single country has to acquire their own nuclear weapons because if you don't Russia is going to mess with you or every single country has to join NATO and now what we're back at square zero ground zero square one where people like oh well look all these countries joining NATO is aggressive towards Russia like what are you going to do? Yeah you've mentioned that there's a complicated calculus going on with the countries that have they have nuclear weapons and what's our responsibility. Are you allowed to do anything you want to countries that don't have nuclear weapons? That's a really tricky discussion for sure because what is US supposed to do if Russia drops a tactical nuclear weapon? There's a set of options, none of which are good, and it's such a tricky moment right now because the things that Biden and other public figures say I feel like has a significant impact on the way this game turns out because I think mutually assured destruction is partially a game of. Words. Yeah, I mean I believe in the power of conversation of leaders talking to each other. I feel like you have to have a balance between threat and compromise and like empathy for the needs the geopolitical the economic needs of a nation but also sort of respect. And represent your own interests, so it's a tricky one. Like how do you play the how do you play the hand? Reminds me of I don't know if you've ever heard in like evolutionary psychology evolutionary biology there are things called tit for tat strategies. It kind of reminds me of that where it's like if like there there are a whole bunch of these little biological mechanisms where creatures will develop like socializing like tit for tat. If you do something bad to me I'm going to do something bad for you and then more complicated schemes will come out where it'll be like tit tit for tat or it's like you can make one mistake and then I'm going to get you if you do a second one or it could be tit tit tit for tat or there could be tit for tat tat for tat. There's like all these like back and forth where creatures kind of optimize themselves and um yeah I think something the United States did really well in terms of that kind of conversational strategy and I approved of this in the beginning was Biden was very clear about setting out like the exact level of US involvement for the war. We're not going to do a no fly zone. There's not going to be US troops in the ground in Ukraine but we are going to send a whole bunch of money and a whole bunch of arms and a whole bunch of intel to them and I thought he did a good job at laying out like the limitation of the US involvement while opening as much as we could in the ways that we could help. But the yeah that looming threat of some sort of tactical nuclear weapon I think on the table right now is like it's going to be the annihilation of like Russian sea forces and everything but you know what happens if it continues to escalate that's like a world that nobody wants to nobody wants to be in yeah. So we talked about difficult conversations and again thank you so much for reviewing the yay conversation. Let me ask you about Putin. Speaking of difficult conversations, so if you sit down if I sit down with somebody like Vladimir Putin or Vladimir Zelensky, what's the right way to have that conversation? We can talk about that one or we could talk about somebody more well understood through history like something like Stalin or Hitler. Somebody like that maybe that's an easier example to illustrate how to handle extremely difficult conversations. Yeah I mean I can have a really difficult conversation between like two people leaders of countries though there are so much that you are representing in that conversation. I guess the thing that would be interesting to me would be like what is Vladimir Putin's interest like what is the genuine interest that he has in the conflict because I think finding out like what is your buy in or what is your like what is the driving force keeping you here is probably the most important thing. I think for Zelensky I think it's it's quite a bit more simpler because he's he's on the defense so it's defending his country and his people. Um for Putin I've heard all sorts of things you know Dugan has his writings on you know like the East versus the West the collapse of the West in the face of like all of the liberalism and the weird LGBT stuff that they criticize. You've got the desire to like return to this like former Soviet Union esque thing. You've got Putin's quotes that collapse the Soviet Union was the biggest geopolitical disaster you know 20th century and I guess figuring out like what is Putin after I'm not actually sure I don't know the answer to that question I know a lot of people write about it but yeah well there's a lot of answers to that question there's a lot of answers that he can give to that question so say I sit down with him for three hours and talk about it. I think this is a really interesting distinction because you do do difficult conversations in the space of ideas, but also in your stream you have I mean there's a bunch of drama going on there's there's a human psychology laid out in its full richness before you. So to me with leaders I think a part of the conversation has to be about the human psychology. Sure, not like a meta conversation but like really understand what they feel what they fear who they are as a human being like as a family man as a as a person proud of their country as a person with an ego as a person who's been affected if not corrupted by powers. All of us can be and likely are so all of that that gives context to then the answers about what do you want in this war because the answers about what you want in this war will be political answers. It's a it's like a game that's being played again with words and politicians they're incredibly good at playing that game. I think the deeper truth comes from understanding the human being from which those words come and I think that's what you do I don't know if you do those kinds of conversations where I've never talked to any country leaders so no not not not a country leader but say a controversial figure somebody that represents a certain idea. Don't just talk in the space of ideas or challenge the ideas but understand who is this person how did you come to those ideas. Oh yeah when I've had there have been a couple of very controversial right leaning figures so the two obviously the my streams familiar Lawrence Southern and Nick Fuentes and those types of conversations initially aren't very political at all yeah it's more like like obviously we believe in very very very different things but like beliefs don't happen accidentally so how did you get to where you are. Those are way more personal conversations that's true. Is there things you regret about those conversations where you failed? Is there things you're proud of where you succeeded? For things that I'm proud of I feel like I feel like I'm really good at attempting to understand people without judgment that I think a lot of people feel like they can have conversations with me where they can share a lot and I'm not going to jump down their throat for them having a politically incorrect observation or for them being judgmental of somebody else or having like a feeling that's maybe not something they should have something they're embarrassed about. So I think I do a really good job at that and then by extension of that I've got the ability to hear perspectives from so many different people that I think I can understand a lot of different perspectives. Um for failures of mine I mean it's always going to be on stream it'll be like I didn't push back hard enough or I didn't know like a certain fact for a conversation. These are usually the they're going to be on these like very technical grounds generally I'm pretty happy with like the direction my conversations have gone recently especially over like the past six months. So your goal is to. Deradicalize the audience of those folks, so that used to be my goal. My goal was deradicalization. Now I'm kind of hoping that that's just the byproduct. So the goal I think is to talk to somebody and to show they believe this because of these reasons and if you want to change people's beliefs we have to talk about the underlying reasons for why they think the things they think. It's not enough to just say like that belief is bad because it's like while they believe it for a whole bunch of things that are true and real to them at least so you have to address all the underlying things that they believe before you can change the underlying belief. So if I'm having a conversation with somebody it'll be like okay why do you feel this about that that and that okay I understand that maybe like a better way to solve that would be like this or that instead of this thing. So to what degree do you have to empathize with the person's worldview versus pushback? That's that's always the hard one when I'm talking to other people it's almost always me stepping as much inside their bubble as I can I have to like live and breathe their worldview and be able to speak their worldview in order to like navigate their thoughts because my worldview is um I don't I don't even I'm not even using as an insult I don't know if I