Yannis Pappas is a comedian and podcaster. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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EPISODE LINKS:
Yannis's Twitter: https://twitter.com/yannispappas
Long Days Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCywn6iboO1P8U7fotfllocw
Stand Up Special: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R156F0uXhzk

PODCAST INFO:
Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast
Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8
RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/
Full episodes playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4
Clips playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOeciFP3CBCIEElOJeitOr41

OUTLINE:
0:00 - Introduction
2:25 - Tim Dillon and absolute power
9:47 - Mortality
17:48 - Immortality
25:34 - Dogs
32:13 - Power
37:33 - Hyenas
42:47 - Nature is metal
45:40 - Battle of Crete
53:08 - History is written by the victors
57:56 - History Hyenas podcast
1:10:05 - Bernie Madoff
1:13:10 - Jeffrey Epstein
1:18:03 - Hitler
1:20:11 - Conspiracy theories
1:23:21 - Andrew Yang and New York City
1:26:47 - Podcast with Lex's dad
1:29:56 - Andrew Yang and the prison-industrial complex
1:35:44 - Queen Elizabeth
1:42:51 - Advice for young people

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The following is a conversation with Giannis Papas, a comedian who co-hosted the podcast, History Hyenas, that I came across when I was researching the Battle of Crete from World War II.

He and his co-host were hilarious in their rants about history and about life.

The chemistry they have is probably the best of any co-hosted comedy podcast, or even podcast in general, that I've ever heard.

As of a few weeks ago, unfortunately, History of Hyenas is no more, at least for now, because all good things must come to an end.

But Giannis hosts a new podcast called Long Days with Giannis Papas, plus he has a comedy special on YouTube for free.

Quick mention of our sponsors, Wine Access, Blinkist, Magic Spoon, and Indeed.

Check them out in the description to support this podcast.

As a side note, let me say that some of you have noticed that I have not spoken with too many computer scientists, physicists, biologists, or engineers recently.

The reason has to do mostly with the risk aversion of many of these folks in the time of COVID, especially as they get closer to taking the vaccine.

I'm tested several times a week, and still some people are just more willing than others to have an in-person conversation in these times.

I only do these podcasts in person because I look for the possibility of a genuine human connection.

Maybe it's silly, but I look for the magic that Charles Bukowski writes about in this poem, Nirvana.

The magic that is somehow in the air on those rare occasions when 2 people meet, talk, and you notice that while on the surface, you may be worlds apart, you're still somehow woven from the same fabric.

Jim Keller comes to mind, but many others as well.

Machine learning, robotics, computer science is my passion.

Trust me, I can't wait to be having more technical conversations again, but I will also continue to mix in comedians, musicians, historians, and of course, wise, all-seeing sages like Yanis Papas and Tim Dillon, just to keep it, as Tim likes to say, fun.

This is the Lex Friedman Podcast, and here is my conversation with Giannis Papas.

You've co-hosted, until recently, an amazing history comedy podcast called The History Hyenas.

Still got to repeat the grade if you get all D minuses.

I actually had a 0.67 GPA average my freshman year and I had to do it again.

This podcast is gonna be the spectrum of human intelligence.

I'm barely sliding into human, I'm closer to chimp.

And I bring that up that you're also friends with the great, the powerful Tim Dillon.

So let's talk about power and the corrupting effects of power.

Sometimes I look at Tim Dillon as he grows in power.

Yeah, I saw him, I've been in Austin a couple days.

So I feel like I've been here longer than I have just because of the meals with Dillon.

Okay, so he's more like, see, I was imagining Putin or somebody like that.

He's more like the North Korean dictator.

They would get, I mean, Tim Dillon and King John Umb would be like, they could make like a buddy cop movie.

So What do you think the world would look like if Tim Dillon was given absolute power?

He seems like a person that's an interesting study of the corrupting effects of power.

Like I want a guy who's as thoughtful and educated as you wearing a suit, like, cause you know, suits corrupt you.

You put that suit on, you start feeling that power.

it's like, you know, yeah, I don't even want Tim Dillon in a suit.

I mean, if you made a lobster roll and it wasn't up to Tim Dillon's standard, he would have you executed.

The entire restaurant staff is just gone.

He would have people below his food standard executed.

There'd be programs, not of people who are political dissidents, but of people who don't meet his food standard.

His cuisine standard is high and he's usually right.

Like 1 of the reasons we mentioned offline Joe Rogan, he's been an inspiration to me because he gets, forget power, just more famous and famous and yes, probably a bit of power in terms of influence, and he's still pretty much the same guy.

I'm not sure that's going to be true for everybody.

Most people I meet who are like really powerful are like douchebags and that's how they got there.

I think that's, psychopaths have the advantage because they don't have feelings.

Yeah, I think I should be stopped right now.

Just stop me right now because yeah, power for me, when people get power, they indulge.

I don't think it changes anyone, it just reveals your darkest.

People aren't supposed to have anything they want.

You gotta be able to struggle for everything.

The most effective leaders are dictators.

I'm ready for a succession of Caesars and I want to start with AOC.

At certain point, you got, that's why social workers can only get you so far.

I was a social worker for 5 years and all you do is ask about medications and you don't solve anything.

I do ask myself of that, like, because I'm more in the tech space of constructing systems that prevent me from being corrupt.

Because right now I'm all about love and all about those kinds of things.

But I wonder, you said like, it just reveals the darkness.

The problem is we might not be aware of our own darkness.

I have the same feeling about money actually.

I've been avoiding thinking about money, like basically constructing my moral system, my moral compass around money.

So like the moment I feel a little too happy but about the idea of owning some cool shiny thing, I started to think, okay, I'm not gonna own that shiny thing because I'm afraid of the slippery slope of it.

The funny thing about the capitalist system is it puts sort of a profit motive above beauty.

And you notice when you see certain cities, especially in the old days where like buildings used to be beautiful.

And now they're just like boxes, they throw a kid up and it's just for all profit margin.

It's the illusion of permanence that, it's like, oh, let me get as much money as I can.

My dad used to say, everyone, it's a cliche, but you can't take it with you.

So it's kind of, it's comical to me that we're here trying to get this infinite amount, like that we're climbing, it's like Sisyphus, we're all trying to climb this hill, but I mean, the rock's gonna fall on us.

So I think that's a healthy outlook, yeah.

My dad always used to say before he passed, he would say you have to survive not only physically, but you have to survive emotionally.

I think a lot of people forget about the emotional part of survival.

You have to survive emotionally, and humor and Understanding reality in its objective context helps with that.

Accepting reality as this ephemeral thing that you're really just a part of, but not as significant as your ego wants you to believe is a start.

That's a good foundation for surviving emotionally.

You can't take things too seriously because they're ephemeral.

They're not permanent, nothing's permanent.

Can I curse on this or does this go out the door?

I mean, gender's not even permanent anymore.

I think I'm gonna change maybe and live my second half as another gender just to have, I'm bored with this gender.

And so accepting that emotionally is a good start to being more flexible.

Like my dad used to say anything too stiff snaps.

You gotta, you know, it's a cliche and people have said it a bunch of different ways, but Bruce Lee's right, man.

Yeah, Bukowski has this quote about love that love is a fog that fades with the first light of reality, so he's a romantic, that guy.

But that even love is a thing that just doesn't last very long.

Yeah, some people would disagree with that.

Maybe it morphs, like water, it changes, right?

It might not be, it might not be this, because he's mostly just loved like prostitutes, I think.

You mentioned your dad, he passed away a year and a half ago.

He was just, my dad really embodied those values.

And I think for better or worse, it's made me who I am.

He's, my dad was a painter, he was a lawyer.

He was a, he was a, you know, a Lieutenant in the military.

His dad, you know, surprise, owned a diner.

That's the immigration passport for Greeks in New America.

And I think I got that from him for better or worse.

If you consider money and fame to be paramount, you know, I've always done what I wanted.

If I stopped wanting to do it, I just stopped doing it and I think I got that from my dad.

So maybe for better or worse, that's what I learned from him.

But that's a real currency, you know, feeling like you're in love with what you're doing when you're doing it, maybe perhaps that's worth more than money, I don't know.

Talk about like a guy who was an outlier.

I mean, he smoked like 60 years, like packs.

He died, he had a prostate cancer, which is the way men should go.

I mean, we focus so much of our life on the dick that that's the way, that's a successful life.

And That's why every man eventually gets prostate cancer because that is the universe's way of saying like, the thing you focused on the most is, you put the most energy into is the thing that's spent.

And it's gonna, your rotting is gonna start there.

And it just spread all over his body and he slowly died.

I was with him when he died and that meant a lot to me because me and my brother weren't talking at the time because we're Greeks.

We're talking again, but that's how it is.

I got 2 brothers, but I wanted to make sure I was with him when he died and I got lucky and I was in the room with him when he died.

You were in the room with your brother and you weren't?

No, my brother wasn't there, we were kind of doing shifts.

I was there, I spent the night, the night my dad died.

He died early in the morning and I heard the death rattle of the last breath.

And it was just, I think it was, he knew I was there and I think that just probably meant something to him and I'm just glad I was there.

Does that make you sad that life is ephemeral, like you said?

I think the actual, if there is a point to life, it's to hopefully not fear death, to accept reality.

I think so much goes awry in the human condition when we lose touch with reality.

Every political system that's led to mass murder and everything, I think because it's, because the tenants of those political philosophies ended up being utopian.

They were detached from reality, detached from nature.

And so I think it's very important to accept and acknowledge your own mortality.

I think it's the foundation for what makes a good person, a moral person, a contributing member of society because it's true.

True things should be the foundation of all things.

If what you believe is based on illusion, you're gonna end up doing destruction.

Whether that destruction's on a scale of 1 to 10, you are going to be destructed because it's not real.

See, the thing is though, truth is about, I don't think you can ever reach truth.

Truth is about like constantly digging and to push back in your idea that you should accept death.

I think the more honest response to death.

So the least honest is to run away from it, create illusions that help you imagine like there's not a death.

The next is to accept it, but the real honest 1 is to fear it.

Because I mean, I'm with Ernest Becker as a philosopher, who wrote a book called Denial of Death.

He says that like much of the human condition is based in the fear of mortality.

That we, like that's the creative force of the human energy.

Like Freud said, do you want to sleep with your mother.

He said, no, that's not what motivates you.

Maybe his mom wasn't hot though, I mean, or he wasn't Greek because apparently Oedipal, we found that all things good and bad.

I just don't know if his mom was a looker or not.

But I think that Anas, as he says, the thing that we run away from is that there's a terror.

There's something called terror management theory that some philosophers after him followed on that we're basically trying to run away from this fear.

And acceptance is actually creating an illusion for yourself like you can actually accept something as terrifying as this.

The Stoic constantly meditate on their death.

I mean, it's kind of, you know, acceptance of death isn't a thing you do like on a Monday and then you're done, is a thing you constantly have to meditate on.

Like reminding yourself, like this ride is over.

And that's something you're, if you think about every single day.

It gives you an appreciation of Woody Allen movies, at least.

It gives the appreciation of basically everything, including Woody Allen movies, which shows you how deep your appreciation for life could be.

I've actually haven't been following much about Woody Allen, but apparently he's been a troublemaker for most of his life.

He's, yeah, I mean, you know, he's caused a little bit of strife.

He's left a little, yeah, he's left a little confusion in his wake, for sure.

He's got, I mean, the guys will go down in history as the greatest, he's made, I mean, a movie a year, and they're all, you can always find something good about each movie, like the dialogue or whatever.

I love what you're saying, it's interesting, but the only thing I would say to push back a little bit, since we're playing a little table tennis

is I don't know if it's a choice to fear death.

That's more of an, it seems more instinctual.

It seems like something that nature wants you to do because I've been in positions where I thought I was gonna die, like I've been shot.

And then nature also kicks in an instinct, which is acceptance, where you kind of, I don't know, it's a chemical release or whatever, I don't know, we're robots basically, so some sort of chemical is released that protects you, but there is an acceptance.

I don't know how much of it was a conscious choice, probably very little.

And that's the point I'm making is it's instinctual.

We don't really have a choice in fearing death.

We wouldn't, all life seems to want to survive not by choice, but by instinct.

So he argues that the fear is not the instinctual, it's not the animalistic stuff.

Is the, what humans are able to do is to have a knowledge that we're going to die 1 day.

It's like, holy shit, what's that sound over there?

He says, we're actually able to contemplate the fact that this ride ends.

And that kind of cognitive construct is difficult for us to deal with.

Like, just to think about, it's going to be over at a certain point.

It's very difficult to kind of load that into whatever this little brain we got.

Maybe that's what gives everything meaning.

Because if everything lasted forever, if this went on ad infinitum, there would be no meaning to it.

It'd be like, hey, if I don't see you tomorrow, I'll see you in a million years.

There would be no meaning, there'd be no urgency, there would be no feelings, there'd be nothing of magnitude or superficiality.

It would all just be this kind of, it would be torture.

It would actually, that would actually be torture to be here forever.

I mean, I'm already sick of this place And I'm just in my 40s, like I'm done.

You know, a lot of people, when they talk about immortality, they consider mortality appealing because you get a chance to do basically all these things you might not get a chance to do otherwise, like all the kinds of travel broadly, explore, read every book, explore every idea, do every hobby, all those kinds of things.

Somebody else I was talking to mentioned the reality of being immortal would be more likely, I like this idea, more likely would be you just sitting there doing nothing because and putting off all that travel and exploration till later, because you'll always have time.

And so what you're going to have, what actual immortality would look like for a bunch of humans is people sitting there doing nothing.

would be like a Greek caffeinea, just sitting around drinking coffee, watching.

But it's so interesting, because that rings true to me for what humans are like, is we'll basically just put off all those exciting adventures and just be lazy, become lazier and lazier and lazier, because you always have a chance to do all the exciting things.

And we'll just get, we'll basically become Tim Dillon.

We'll just sit there and have a podcast and that's

Yeah, I mean, that sounds actually like heaven, dude.

I mean, I'm at heart, I'm a very lazy person.

Like if I'm sitting, I'll figure out a way to kind of contort myself to lay down.

That's an interesting thing to like, yeah, if you can always push something off.

I wanna, I wanna, I wanna have, I wanna bang this girl.

But now I'm thinking about Muslim heaven and they may be offering the best deal.

I mean, if it was an expo and they had a booth, I may go with them because they offer 62 or

I always wondered, are you given the 62 versions or you choose, can you create them like an avatar, like a video game, or are you just given?

I don't know why it's important to have that high number.

First of all, I think it's a mistranslation about the virgins, but outside of that, I feel like the conversation is really important.

I don't think they ever specify like what kind of books these girls read, like what are they into?

Like the quality of the conversation, I think if you're talking about eternity, the quality of the intellect and the conversation and the personalities is way more important.

And the Greeks have an ancient expression, Padma Tronariston, which my mother always used to say, which is everything in moderation, nothing in excess.

And yeah, that many Women, eventually it's like the Magic Johnson effect, Isaiah Thomas effect, it's just too much.

And you're gonna end up banging a dude is what I'm saying.

You're gonna get sick of it because it's too much.

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Yannis Pappas: History and Comedy | Lex Fridman Podcast #175