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

SOCIAL:
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It's beyond my comprehension, but with Chris, there was this magical chemistry that, I have chemistry with a lot of people and it can be funny.

Yeah, it's a little bit more intelligent than when me and Chris did.

But me and Chris, I think we connected on a funny bone.

Like I found him so funny and we found the same things funny.

And from that, these organic expressions came from some part of our brains that was created from this chemistry.

And yeah, we just developed this language and this cult following and people were really upset when we ended, but it was the right thing to end because like all things that end, it was kind of done a few episodes even before we finished.

And I think we pulled the plug before it started rolling downhill.

Like all, you know, like all great flings, you know, there's your long relationship, long marriages are boring and comfortable.

The 1 you really like fucking always ends abruptly and sadly, but you always look back and you jerk off to it.

So it was like a hot fling with me and him and it was intense and we burned the candle at both ends.

And it was, I think that podcast was meant to be 3 years and maybe people will go back and appreciate it and listen to it over and over again.

And I think the new things we do, people will love.

I'm doing long days now, that podcast and people seem to enjoy it.

really enjoying the long days on YouTube.

I just found myself just like staring at you ranting for same with Tim Dillon.

Whatever those rants are, the genius of just 1 thing after the other, but definitely the chemistry almost as a study.

I remember the reason I first started listening to it, I was trying to get a perspective on certain historical moments.

Yeah, I came for the history and like stayed for the chaos.

And yeah, this, it was almost, I listened to Rogan like this sometimes.

I'll re-listen to an episode to try to understand why was this so fun to listen to?

It's almost like trying to analyze humor or something like that, but it's nice from a conversational perspective, like why was this so easy to listen to?

And with History of Hyenas, why is the chemistry so good?

Cause there's not many podcasts like that.

I don't know any with the chemistry like that.

And it's kind of sad that the fling with a prostitute in Vegas has to end, you know?

The British office, 1 of my favorite shows was that.

It ended very quickly, you know, It's only a couple of seasons or something like that.

And that was tragic, but that took guts to just end it.

Given all the money you could have made, given all the, you just end it.

And that's what makes it like truly special.

Yeah, and I'll tell you, man, I'll just emphasize it because I marvel at it too.

Because as a guy who tries to always figure out what the causes of things, I got to be honest, man, looking back on that, even with retrospective wisdom, you know, that 2020 hindsight, we've been done a couple of months now.

It's something that I don't know how you quantify it, I don't know how you describe it.

It's musical, it's really kind of rhythmic, so.

You guys will meet like, with that, the way you meet with a fling, like a decade from now at a diner and you're both way fatter and uglier and then you just reminisce over some cigarettes and coffee.

But it's definitely a classic podcast that people can go back and appreciate.

What was it like to research for, I mean it was really scholarly, the depth of research that you performed.

It sometimes felt like you almost read an entire Wikipedia article beforehand.

We were 1 fan, we attracted such funny people to that podcast and the fans were so funny.

And 1 fan called us, nicknamed us Wikipedia sluts.

I would do a lot more research than Chris.

And so I would actually, you know, once in a while he'd get into it too, but for very interesting episodes, I got some subject matter would just pull me in, like Bernie Madoff, just to think of 1 that was recent, it was 1 of our last ones.

And I'm glad that it kind of ended after that because it was rare.

I got fascinated and I did a lot of research for Bernie Madoff, but usually, yeah, we'd pull up Wikipedia and we'd have fun.

We were sort of the antithesis of Dan Carlin.

I mean, you went to Dan Carlin for accuracy and thoughtfulness and you went to us for, it was a hang with history.

That's why history hyenas was such an appropriate name because it was a little bit of history.

Some episodes were more hyena, more wild and a little history.

And some were a little more dense, like the battle of Crete and less hyena.

You're either gonna get a majority of 1 or

Yeah, and Dan Carlin's the lion, I guess.

I mean, what are your thoughts about, I mean, he's a storyteller too.

He gets a lot of criticism from the historians, quote unquote, that's why he likes to not, he keeps saying he's not a historian, but what are your thoughts about the hardcore history with Dan Carlin?

Like, was he an inspiration to the podcast you were doing or like an account, like almost like a reverse psychology inspiration where you wanted to do some kind of opposing type of podcast in history?

Or was history always just like a launching pad to just talk shit about human nature?

I wasn't even aware of his podcast when we started.

Again, like the chemistry, me and Chris became very good friends.

First, we did a web series called Bay Ridge Boys, which has its sort of little cult following.

And I talk about them passionately and I told Chris about them.

And so it was just sort of a natural, let's do a history podcast.

And it gave us something to talk about each episode to sort of lean our, you know, hang our hats on and riff off of.

What I think about Dan's, I think it's great.

I think even if he's inaccurate in the opinions of the historical community, it starts conversations, which is good.

It's like this thing where people go, oh, it's dangerous rhetoric.

It's like, no, rhetoric only becomes dangerous when education fails.

What's going on in America is education has failed.

So if you call someone online dangerous, it's not him that's dangerous, it's the fucking stupid people that's dangerous, and it's the fault of this country.

The future of a civilization depends on public education.

So in some sense, those Dan's podcast, podcasts can be incredibly educational.

The storytelling that pulls you in ultimately leads to you internalizing these stories and like remembering them and thinking through them and all those kinds of things that is much more powerful than you book on history that's accurate.

I think often it inspires you to go learn more.

I mean, people would go, hey, I went and learned about this because they knew with us, there was no pretense, which was great.

So it's like, nobody came to us for historical accuracy, But I was kind of turned on by the fact that it inspired people to go learn about this stuff or to at least know Like battle of Crete, like you said a very underappreciated battle Even Winston Churchill said from here on we will no longer say that Greeks fight like heroes, but heroes fight like Greeks.

I mean, it was a monumental battle and not talked about enough.

And our podcast would inspire people to go actually learn more, to go listen to Dan Carlin or to go pick up a book or to do research on their own.

And so I think podcasts, Dan Carlin's obviously much more accurate than us, but it's good that people are going to podcasts like yours to learn shit.

Joe is really like the progenitor of that.

I mean, having intellectuals on and getting the public interested with this new medium in people who are intelligent, it's nice.

Because what the mainstream press pushes out is horseshit, gorgeous horseshit.

It's got a beautiful veneer, but no substance.

I mean, I started listening from the very beginning, you know, doing my, in grad school, you know, like a technical person, and he just pulled me in and made me curious to learn about all kinds of things and use my own critical reasoning skills on some of the bullshit guesses he's had and some of the most inspiring guests he's had.

I don't know much about Bernie Madoff as a small tangent.

Can you tell me who the hell is Bernie Madoff?

Oh, Bernie Madoff is the GOAT, the greatest thief of all time, dude.

Hedge fund guy, ran a hedge fund and pulled a, stole the most money in the history of America.

And he does, people obviously he's become, he's a household name because of the magnitude of his crime.

But you got to appreciate, again, you got to appreciate what went into this and how long he was able to pull it off by tricking the smartest and richest people in the world.

The con man, Con man is short for confidence man.

And it came from, yeah, con men basically they exude confidence and they trick people by playing on their ego and blind spots.

And the word comes from a guy, I can't remember where, but what he used to do, I can't remember the guy's name, whatever.

The first con man that is on record, what he would do is he would go to very rich people and he'd be very well-dressed, right?

And he'd go, he's like, I bet you don't have the confidence to give me your watch.

And he would plan the egos of these very powerful and rich people, and they would give him the watch for some reason, some sort of reverse psychology bullshit.

And he'd take the watch and he would just steal it.

So, because basically saying like, you don't have to come and give me the watch because you don't, I don't know, you don't think I'm going to give it back.

So Bernie Madoff was a very sophisticated con man.

And again, we were talking about people pretending to be the opposite of what they are.

Bernie hid his thievery in how available he was to his clients, how he would show up at every bar mitzvah, every birthday.

He was always available for their phone calls.

He made it so people wanted to invest in him.

And there was a method behind that madness because he wanted the whales that wouldn't notice that he had this pyramid scheme going.

And so what he would do is he would just rob from the richer and he just kept, it was like he'd pay back the richer with the guy who was a little less, and it was a pyramid scheme.

And he was able to do it for so long and steal so much money.

And he would win people over with the scheme because with that scheme, he was the only guy who could provide, who could guarantee like a 1% return even during times of recession.

And because he was such a good con man, he hijacked people's reasoning with his charm.

Because if they use their reasoning for 1 second, they'd go, hey, nobody can provide 1% returns during recessions.

He's stealing from another guy to pay you.

Maybe you can help explain something to me, something I have been affected by.

There's gonna be comments like, tell this guy to calm down.

This is something that I have been thinking about and have encountered indirectly is Jeffrey Epstein.

And I have a sense because of MIT, because of all the other people that have been touched, the wrong term, by Jeffrey Epstein, in the sense that-

And it always felt to me like there's not a deep conspiracy.

I don't know, I don't know, but it felt to me like this not some deeply rooted conspiracy where like Eric Weinstein thinks that there's some probability that Jeffrey Epstein is a front for like an intelligence agency, whether it's Israeli or the CIA, I don't know, but is a front for something much, much bigger.

And then I always thought that he's just, maybe you can correct me, but more of the Bernie Madoff variety, where he's just a charismatic guy who may be a psychopathic in some sense, so, you know, also a pedophile, but just charismatic and is able to convince people of that 1% of any idea that in the case of scientists is able to convince these people that their ideas matter.

So 1 thing scientists don't really, despite what people say, I don't think they care about money as much as people think.

I mean, people are ridiculous when they think that.

Yeah, that's why people get into science for the money.

The person who has to get into science are obsessed with minutiae, and they do the scientific method.

But the thing, what drives you is for your ideas to be then heard.

And when a rich guy comes over, probably super charismatic, is going to tell you that your ideas, especially for some of these outsiders at MIT, at Harvard, at Caltech, at all these like sort of big science, like physics, biology, artificial intelligence, computing fields, to hear somebody say that your ideas are brilliant, ideas matter, It's pretty powerful, especially when you've been an outsider like he's talked to a bunch of people who had outsider ideas.

The big negative for me of modern academia is that most people, actually like most communities, most people think the same and there's just these brilliant outsiders and the outsiders are just derided.

And so when you have Jeffrey Epstein, like a hyena, sorry, sorry, sorry, going from on the outside and picking off these brilliant minds that are the outsiders.

He can use charisma to convince them to collaborate with him, to take his funding.

And then thereby he builds a reputation, like slowly accumulates these people that actually results in network of like some of the most brilliant people in the world, you know, and then pulls in people like Bill Gates and I don't know, political figures.

I think that's what Kahneman, speaking of Bernie Madoff, that's 1 of their major tools is flattery, glib, superficial charm.

It takes your defenses down, plays to our ego, how much we're all just pieces of garbage and wanna hear how great we are.

We want that love from our mother and our father.

It's Freudian And they know because they're not burdened with that need, they're not burdened with that empathy or emotions and they just see things very calculatively.

They play, they know that we're prey in their game And they use that against us.

And that is why someone who is not that intelligent like Hitler can probably convince a lot more intelligent people, you know.

And that's why we can't give Tim Dillon power because you know, he already stands on a stage.

I mean, if we let that guy, I mean, he will just take over a country and everyone who can't cook well will be eliminated.

So it's like- I wonder why he keeps complimenting me when we're in private.

He looks at me, just, I like your suit, I like the cut of your jib.

You gotta be careful of that kid, he's Hitler.

think about- Clip that, please, internet.

I mean, Quentin Tarantino said it to bet, I mean, in his script, personality goes a long way, dude.

I mean, personality can usurp common sense and reason of the smartest people.

These absolute smartest people can be hypnotized.

It's like, you can be tricked because we have such a blind spot

Yeah, I wonder, I think there's a BBC documentary on, I think it's called something like charisma, Hitler's charisma or something like that.

There's quite, I mean, that 1 focused more about the power of the speeches, But I wonder if most of the success or the rise of Hitler and the third Reich had to do with the charisma of Hitler when he's alone in a room with somebody, with the generals, just one-on-one.

Like I wonder if that's the essential element of just being able to just look into a person's eyes, like flatter them or whatever is needed to earn their trust and then convince them of anything you want.

Cause that's the 1 piece of history we don't have.

He got up there and his hair would flop around.

Yeah, there's certain elements about nationalism and pride that are really powerful.

Like a lot of us humans I think long for that, for the feeling of belonging and when some charismatic leader makes us feel like we belong to a group, the amount of evil we can do to other humans because of that.

Nobody wants to look in, nobody wants to do the work to be better or look at where they messed up.

Why does it always have to be the Jews that are the scapegoat?

I mean, it's like, they killed Jesus, you think, get over it, okay?

I'm Jewish, I understand, because we do run the central banks and- And the weather.

Don't forget about the weather, that's a big 1.

That's a funny 1 that people created, like who gives a shit, what is the weather?

Like what's the importance of the weather?

All right, like Jews made it rain outside.

Good, you gotta fuck, you know, they made it snow.

Yeah, it's like, yeah, there's certain conspiracies that make me, like flat earth.

Like what's the motive, like what, who, what's the motivation for lying that the earth is round?

Do you have any, from a historical perspective or just a human perspective, conspiracy theories you connect with, or you're not necessarily conspiratorial?

But then what happens is you find out this 1 or this 2.

And you start questioning everything, man.

It's like the Vietnam War started, that was a lie.

And then next thing you know, everything's a false flag.

You know, there's some strange things from a scientific perspective.

I'm no scientist, but it's like, you know, yeah, 3 steel frame skyscrapers falling on the same day in the same way.

A lot of people say, oh, it was, they were hit by planes.

It's like, yeah, but that's not why they fell.

They fell because of fires and usually, not usually, all the time, except for 3 times.

And there was buildings that have burned for longer than that.

And there might be good explanations, but the lack of transparency, it's like, I feel like government.

I mean, the way it kind of, just a neat, just a neat, the physical, I mean, you're a scientist, is that, Is there resistance from the steel?

Okay, because I had some questions I wanted to ask you about my biology, by the way.

I don't understand the melting point of steel.

But I'm just a common sense human that looks at government and institutions when they try to communicate.

And there's a certain human element where you can sense that there's dishonesty going on.

That dishonesty might not be deeply rooted in a conspiracy theory and something malevolent.

It might just be rooted more likely to me in a basic fear of losing your job.

So when you have a bunch of people that are afraid of losing their job, you know, and they just don't want to, like the origins of the virus, whether it came from a lab or not, You know, that's a pretty, I know a lot of biologists behind closed doors that say it's very likely it was leaked from the lab.

But like, they don't want to talk about it because there's not good evidence either way.

It's mostly, you're just using common sense.

So they're waiting for good evidence to come out in either direction.

But just like nobody in positions of institutional like centralized power wants to just honestly say, we don't know, or on the point of masks or all those kinds of things to say, here's the best evidence we have.

We're not sure we're trying to figure it out.

We're desperately trying to figure that out or just like honesty, especially in the modern day.

That's the hope I have for the 21st centuries.

People seem to detect bullshit much, much better because the internet.

See all Lex Fridman transcripts on Youtube

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