YouSaid · the spoken record

Pavel Durov

lines on the record: 212
first: 2025-10-01
most recent: 2025-10-01
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Millions of Telegram users collectively. And it's quite strange that the same agency asked us to do certain things in Moldova as well. So even before that, I think it was October last year or September. I was arrested in Paris in late August. And then again, approach through an intermediary and asked, Would you mind taking down some channels in Moldova because there is an election going on and we're afraid there are going to be some interference with these elections? Could you please connect with? Representatives of the government of Moldova and take care of it. We said we're happy to take a look at it and see if There's content there that is in violation of our rules. They sent us a list of channels and bots, some of them were a very short list and some of these channels and bots were”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And in a way, that's what I did. Had a small debate with him about the morality of this whole thing. And then at a certain point, just disclose the content of this entire conversation because I never signed an ND. I don't ever sign NDAs with any people like that. I want to be able to tell the world what's going on. And that's quite. Shocking to me that you would have people in the French government. Trying to get advantage of this situation. Of course, They had nothing to do with. Start of this investigation itself. And use it to reach their political or geopolitical goals. I consider Attempt to humiliate myself personally”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So they asked me whether I would be shutting down or ready to shut down. Channels on Telegram. Supported the Conservative candidate. Or protest against. The pro-European candidates, so they call the guy they liked. I said, well, if there is no violation of the rules of Telegram, which are quite clear, You can't go to violence. If it's a peaceful demonstration, if it's a peaceful debate, We can't do this. It would be political censorship. Protected freedom of speech in many countries in the world. In Asia and Eastern Europe, in the Middle East, we are not going to start engaging in censorship in Europe. Matter who is asking us. That was very clear to this guy who is the head of French intelligence. I said, if you think Because I'm stuck here. You can tell me what to do? You're very wrong. I would rather do the opposite every time.”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So when I got stuck in France unable to leave the country for a few months, I was offered to meet the head of state foreign intelligence services through a person I know quite well. It's actually a Well known Tekken supreme in France, and he's well connected. And he said, this guy wants to meet you. I said, okay, fine. Do that, but I'm not promising anything I took the meeting, and in this meeting. I was asked. To restrict what I see as restriction of freedom of speech in Romania. I don't know if you follow the whole saga with the Romanian elections. They had a presidential elections last year. The results got cancelled. Now, Romania at that point when I had this meeting was preparing for a new. Presidential elections. The conservative candidate was not somebody who the French government was supportive of.”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You become broken inside. You become a shell of your former self. On a debiological and spiritual level. So I wouldn't do that. There are probably other people in the world that would consider that. I don't care. Tilgrim disappears to something people don't understand, including in this intelligence services or governments. I don't care. I'll be fine. If they put me into prison for 20 years Which, let's be clear, it's not something that I think is realistic, but let's Just think about it as a hypothetical situation. I would rather starve myself to death and die there, reboot the whole game. Then do something stupid.”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the French government is losing this battle. This battle is wrong. The more pressure. I The more Resilient and defined I become. I think I have proven that in the last several months when there were attempts to use my situation in being stuck here in France. By approaching me and asking me to do things in other countries, blocking certain channels Changing the way Telegram And not only I refused, I told the world about it, and I'm going to keep telling the world about every instance. Any government in this case, in particular the French government. Tries to force me to do anything. I would rather lose everything I have than yield to this pressure. Because if you submit to this pressure and agree with something that is fundamentally wrong and it violates rights of other people as well.”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A hard question to answer because it doesn't depend on just my actions. I can just say this. I am patient I will not let this limitation on Freedom Dictate my actions. If anything, double down on defending freedoms because I experienced firsthand. What the absence of freedom feels like at least during these four days in police custody where Unable to Communicated with people. Are important to you When you don't even know what's going on in the world, In relation to you personally. So I have no crystal ball that would tell me the future. I can't say that I am pessimistic. I think we've been able to gradually remove. Most of the restrictions initially imposed on my freedom Last”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not just for me, but for everybody. Which made me realize the system may be broken in many levels. Entrepreneurs affected by the French justice system Telling me horror stories about their experiences. Were businesses got paralyzed. By very unnecessary actions of investigative judges that ended up being unjustified and biased. And in the end, you can perhaps solve it when you reach a higher And you'll get justice. You lose a lot of time and energy in the process. So, this is the only thing that is, I hope, different. Will be different in this case compared to the story you told from Kafka.”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In France, they have this role of investigative judge, and I don't think you have it in many other places in the world. It means I'm not on trial. Being investigated And in France, it's not just the police or prosecutor asking me questions, it's a judge. Which, in my experience, is more like still a prosecutor, but it's called a judge. And that makes it harder to appeal. So if you're limited in, say, countries where you can travel, then to appeal that restriction will take you a lot of time. The investigation itself should have never been started. It's an absurd and harmful Way of solving an issue as complicated as Regulating social media. Just the wrong tool Objected and appealed. The investigation itself we did last year, I believe. We are still not even given A hearing date for the APO. Because the process is painfully slow.”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you include all kinds of content that we remove, all the accounts, groups, channels, busts, that would amount to millions of pieces of content every week, hundreds of thousands every day, and then somebody would read the newspaper, get enraged because they would read something about child porn, and this is a subject that is very emotionally charged. Start doing Something not based on data. Logical thinking. And But based on emotions driven from inaccurate input.”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a concept that is challenging to explain to them, but I think they will learn much more about it by the end of this investigation. That's my hope. In any case, you're right. If you look at Telegram, we've been fighting Harmful content that is publicly distributed on our platform since ten years ago. Actually, since the time we launched public channels on Telegram. And since something like eight years ago, we had daily transparency reports. How many channels related to child abuse or terrorist propaganda we take in down daily every day we've taken maybe Take down hundreds of them”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I agree with you on the absurdity of this. Because if this was a good faith attempt to fix an issue, There were so many ways to reach out, to Telegram, to reach out to me personally, voice their concerns and solve any alleged problem in a way that is conventional and diplomatic the way every other country on this planet solves its problems, including with Telegram, and we did it dozens of times.”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Me in a police car, and I found myself in police custody. Small room, no windows. Just a narrow bed made of concrete I spent four days, almost four days there. In the process, I had to answer some questions of the policemen and the They were interested in. Telegram operates. Most of it is public anyway, and I was struck by. Very limited understanding, or should I say even lack of understanding. On behalf of The people who initiated this investigation against me about how technology works, how encryption works, how social media work,”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I arrived in France last year in August just for a short two-day trip. And then I see a dozen of armed policemen. Greeting me and ask me to follow them. The read me a list of Something like 15 serious crimes. I'm accused Which was mind bog At first, I thought there must be some mistake. They realize they're being serious. They're accusing me of all possible crimes that the users of Telegram have committed. Allegedly committed with some users. And they think I should be responsible for this. Which again, like you said, it's something that never happened in the history of this planet. No country, not even an. Authoritarian Did that to any tech leader? Least at this There are good reasons for that because you're sacrificing a big part of your economic growth by sending these kind of messages. The business and tech community.”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The government is not some abstract notion. The government consists of people. And these people have goals. They would naturally be inclined to increase their level of influence, to have more subordinates, to have more resources, and that's how you end up in an endless loop of Ever increase in taxes, ever increasing regulation. Which ultimately dissuffates free market, free enterprise, and free speech. So you do want to have very, very strict limitations on the extent the government can increase its powers at the expense of citizens. Ironically, you don't have those limitations. You're supposed in all countries which are considered to be free. Supposed to be the constitution that protects everybody. But interestingly, it doesn't work always this way. They are able to find Very tricky phrasings in order to cover out exceptions.”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Perhaps some of them assume they are doing good, but interestingly, It always results in the state accumulating more power at the expense of the individual And then, where does it stop? We humans are not very good at finding the right balance. And in this case, the right balance between chaos and order. Between freedom and structure. We tend to go to extremes.”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No dictator in the world ever said, let's just strip you away from your rights because I want more power to myself and I want you to be miserable. They all justified it. With very reasonable sounding justifications. And then it came in stages gradually. And after a few years, people would find themselves in a position when they're helpless. They can't protest. Every message they sent is monitored. They can't It's over”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And this allows us to operate the way we operate. To build this project and maintain it based on the Fundamental principles, which, by the way, I think everybody believes in. I think the right to privacy is included in the Constitution of most countries, at least most Western countries, but it's still under attack almost every week. And it often starts with well meaning proposals. Or we have to fight crime. We have to do that. We have to protect the children. But at the end of the day, the result is the same. People lose their right to such fundamental thing as privacy. They sometimes lose their right to express themselves, to assemble. And this is a slippery slope that we witnessed in pretty much every autocratic country or country that used to be free and then became autocratic.”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Don't like encryption, you don't like privacy, you think you should ban encryption in your country, like the European Union is trying to do now for all the member states? Well, go ahead and do that. We'll just quit this market. We won't operate there. It's not that important. They all think that somehow we profit from their citizens. And the only goal tech companies have is extracting revenues. And it's true most tech companies are like this. But there are projects like Telegram, which are a bit different. And I'm not sure they realize that.”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Guess part of it is just me being me. I stood up. For myself and for my value since I was a little kid. I was had issues with my teachers because I would point out their mistakes during classes. And at the end of the day, what's important is to remind yourself that you have nothing to lose. They can think they blackmail you with something, they can threaten you with something, but what is it they really can really do to you? Worst case, they can kill you. But that brings us back to the first part of our discussion. There's no point living your life in fear. For a telegram, it's incredibly successful, but if we lose one market or two markets, or pretty much all of the markets I don't care that much. It won't affect me, it won't affect my lifestyle in any way. I will still be doing my push-ups, you know.”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Design a system in a way that's impossible Will require us to change the system, and we won't do that because we made a promise to our users. Would rather shut Telegram down in a certain country than do that.”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, never. Telegram has never shared a single pride message with anyone, including governments and intelligence services. If you try to access any server in any of the data center locations, it's all encrypted. You can extract all the hard drives and analyze it. But he won't get anything. It's all encropted in the way that is undecipherable. That was very important for us. That's why we can say with confidence there hasn't been a Leakage of data, any leak of data from Telegram, not in terms of private messages, not in terms of, say, contact lists.”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The way we designed Telegram is We never wanted to have any humans, any employees have any access to private messaging data. That's why 2012, when we've been trying to come up with this design, we always invested a lot of effort into making sure that nobody can mess with it. Like if you hire an employee or any of the existing employee, they can't break the system in a way that would allow them to access messages of users. And then, of course, we launched Entry messaging that is even more protected, but it has certain limitations, so you still have to rely on encrypted cloud. So an interesting engineering challenge was how you make sure that no point of failure can be created within your team or outside.”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, humans are attack vectors. And if you have a distributed system that runs itself automatically, you have a chance at increasing the security of speed and speed of your service. This is what we've did with Telegram. While also making it much more reliable, because if some part of the network goes down, you can still switch to the other parts of it.”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But by finding problems that don't exist within the team and that can disrupt the team and The mood inside it even further Also, Intentionally don't allow some of your team members to hire more people to help them. Will be forced to automate things. In our case, We have tens of thousands of servers around the world, almost a hundred thousand distributed across several continents and data centers. If you try to manage this system, Manually without automation, you will probably end up hurrying thousands of people, tens of thousands of people, but If you rely on algorithms and the team is forced to put together algorithms, In order to manage it, then it becomes much more scalable, much more efficient, and interestingly much more reliable as well.”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What we realized really early is that. Quantity of employees doesn't translate the quality of the product they produce. In many cases, it is the opposite. If you have too many people, they have to coordinate their efforts, constantly communicate, and ninety percent of their time will be spent on coordinated the small pieces of work they're responsible for between each other. The other problem with having too many employees is that Some of them won't get enough work to do. And if they don't get enough work to do, they demotivize everybody else by their mere existence. They're still there, they're still getting the salary, but they don't do anything. And if they don't do anything more often than not, they will start. Trying to Find their purpose elsewhere. Be inside your team, but not by doing productive work.”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Try to be strategic. I try to act under assumption that I'm not going. To die in one hour from now, and I'm going to stick around for a bit. Despite the fact that we are all mortal. So, why would I? Change the mid and long term for the short term. Doesn't make any sense.”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't watch porn because I just feel it's a surrogate substitute for a real thing that Not necessary in my life. If anything It just forces you to exchange some energy. Some inspiration to a fleeting moment of pleasure. Doesn't make sense, and in any case, as I said, it's not the real thing. So as long as you can access the real thing, you don't need to watch porn. But then, if you can't access the real thing, you shouldn't watch porn as well because it means there is some deficiency in your life, some problem that you have to overcome.”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Again, it ties back with. Restrained from alcohol. Because if your mind is clouded, how can you analyze yourself? You will always be dependent on opinions of others. You always follow the mainstream Then whatever the authorities or whoever in charge will tell you. Believe it because you don't have a tool. Of your own to rely on, to come to your own conclusions.”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is something I practice every day. I read some piece of news and I ask myself, Who benefits from me reading this? Then you can end up coming to this conclusion that maybe 95% of things we read in the news have been written and published because somebody wanted you to. Buys some product Support some political clause, fight some war, donate some money, let's do something that would benefit other people. And this is not a problem. Support causes that you truly believe in. As long as it was your intentional choice and you're not being manipulated into fighting other people's worth.”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've been staying away from all of that since I became an adult. When you're a teenager, your mom would typically say, we need to take this pill, otherwise the world collapses Once they became a grown up, I said, no, I don't think that the producers of Pill are incentivized in the right way. They are not really interested in eliminating the root of the problem. They would rather have me dependent on the pills they're producing so that I could buy them forever. And then I also realized no, I'm not saying that you should never take pills. There obviously some diseases that you can only fight with antibiotics, for example. So, I'm not suggesting we go back to the Middle Ages. But what I'm saying is, we overuse pills.”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because this harmful factor is still there. It's like you're piloting a helicopter and there is some red signal, some red lamp starts to blink and it starts producing bad, unpleasant noise. What would you do? You would try to figure out the cause and eliminate it. Maybe there is some mountain next to you and you have to avoid it. Or you take a hammer and smash the signal. I think the good answer is quite obvious Why are we constantly doing this regardless? Oh, because everybody else is doing it because there's a whole industry trying to persuade you that this is the right thing to do. So it's incredibly important to analyze yourself and try to get to the bottom of things.”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and trying to identify the real cause of an issue you're experiencing. If you're experiencing a headache, one solution would be to take a pill and then the headache disappears. The spill would actually do in most cases it would Consequence, you have feeling of pain, it's a painkiller. Will not eliminate the root cause, so you have to ask yourself what is it that is causing this headache Do I need to drink some water Is the air quality here bad? Do I need to start getting more sleep? Is there something wrong with people around me? They're stressing me out. There must be some reason why you experience a headache. But if you take a pill, you're not removing this reason. You're actually making it worse.”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Red meat, I stopped eating it about 20 years ago because I just felt heavy Every time I headed, so I guess it's individual, it's my metabolism, my digestive system. Isn't agreeing with this kind of food. So I normally see food of all kinds and vegetables. The basic source of calories for me.”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sugar is pretty easy because it's addictive. The more you consume sugar, the more you want it, the hungrier you get. So, if you want to stay efficient and healthy, Why consume processed sugar? You'll just end up snacking all the time. Interim means in fasting, so eating only within six hours and not eating for 18 hours every day. Brings structure into your day and into your eating habits. So you don't create sugar anymore because you know if you eat sugar and then you're unable to snack. Just punishing yourself I read a few books on longevity, I think. Something everybody agrees on is that sugar is harmful. No, I'm not militant about sugar. You can eat berries, fruit if you feel your body needs it. But it's not true to think. It's necessary to consume sweet things, not for children, not for adults.”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yes. When I can't train, I can instantly feel that stress is creeping on me. So, even in situations where I'm constrained, I can't go to the gym. Would just keep doing push ups. I just keep doing squats.”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of this qualities are necessary if you want to run a large company, if you want to start a company. I'm surprised when I started doing this more than 10 years ago that more CEOs didn't engage in sports. The situation changed in the last several years, which is great. Because back in the day, if you take 20 years ago, there was this stereotype that if you were strong, you must be not very smart and vice versa. Which is a complete lunacy Very often these two things go together”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not really. I'm a Reasonably stress resilient person. I didn't panic at that moment. And there were worse swims I had that were shorter but involved accidents and, you know, about some of them. So that wasn't the worst by far. But an important thing about swimming and physical activity in general is that it makes your mind clear. Your thinking process is becoming more efficient. Because at the end of the day, the efficiency of our brain is limited by how much sugar and oxygen our heart can push through blood to our brain. So how can you make this go faster? Or do you make your lungs more efficient? How do you make... Your heart is more efficient in doing that. Physical activity is the only way I know of. So it's not just staying healthy or trying to look good. It's also Productive, it's also being stress resilient.”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Left swimming for hours the longest I swam was five and a half hours in Finland was quite cold. I got lost in the process, barely could find my way back. The reason I do it, yes, you feel great after you're shaking a little bit, you feel great after. You cross a huge lake and I cross many lakes, Geneva Lake, Zurich Lake, and every time you feel this achievement, which Makes you happy, makes you feel strong, and then you're more ready to other challenges. Of course, when you know you're going to start a journey that will last a few hours, you're reluctant to do it. But you swim for 10 minutes and then for 20 minutes and then for 30 minutes. And teaches you this incredible patience. I think it is necessary if you want to achieve anything in life.”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What's more, it gives you this long term health benefit. In a way, you can look at it as alcohol in reverse. Alcohol will give you this short, fleeting pleasure for an hour, for a couple of hours. But then you will be paying for it with long-term negative consequences. I'd rather do Banya in ice bath.”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know if it's crazy. I think it's quite natural and normal by this time. Maybe I could just get used to it. So Banya is this extreme kind of sauna. Practiced by Eastern Europeans. But it is A way that maximizes heat, and they also use all kind of herbs and branches. It's a much more holistic and natural experience. Then, in this report of it, you get the cold plunge. And then you go back. And again, this is one of these things that maybe in the moment is not always that pleasant, particularly if you go to extreme temperatures. Don't feel great. I don't always feel great. But this feeling is passing. It's only a few minutes. Same with the ice bath. You have to suffer a bit. And then you get to feel great for hours and days after”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is how I start my day. I'm not sure they do a lot in terms of changing your body, but they're definitely a good way to. Practice of discipline. You don't want to do these push-ups in the morning most of the days. It's quite a particularly boring. They're not that hard. They're just boring. But you overcome it, and then it's much easier to Start doing other things Related to your work, for example When I can, I also take a nice bath because it's another exercise of self discipline. I think the main muscle you can exercise is this muscle, the muscle of self-discipline. Not your biceps or your pecs or anything else. Because if you get to train that one, everything else. Comes by itself”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do 300 push ups and 300 squats every morning. And in addition to that, I go to the gym, normally five, six times a week. Spending between one and two hours every day”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly, and going to the gym is a good example. There are many days when you don't want to start working out. You have to overcome this initial reluctance. And then you get to a point that you enjoy it and you think, oh my God, it was such a good idea to come to the gym today. But it's similar to pretty much every activity. You get to write some code. Write a small piece of code first, and then you get inspired, then you'll come up with more ideas. Need to write a novel or just write a paragraph. This is pretty obvious, and it's not a secret. But because we are bombarded with all kinds of information that is not really important for us in terms of becoming successful, We often forget the important things, and this is one of them.”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you are stuck in this loop of being worried about something, nothing's ever going to change. And people often make this mistake thinking, oh, I should just have some rest and then regain energy. This is not how it works. You gain energy by doing something. So you start doing something, then it happens, you feel motivated, you feel inspired. And then ultimately you do something else a little bit more, a little bit more. And in a few years, who knows? You may end up achieving great things.”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm a human being like everybody else. I do get to experience emotions, and some of them are not very pleasant. But I believe that it's the responsibility of every one of us. Cope with these emotions and to learn to work through them. Self-discipline is particularly important because without it, how can you overcome this? Seemingly endless loop of negativity or despair. Ultimately leads to depression for some people. I normally never have depression. I don't remember having depression in the last 20 years at least. Maybe when I was a teenager. One of the reasons for that is I Doing things Identify the problem I can see a solution and I start executing the strategy.”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a bit pointless. Of course, there are people who are engaged in activities that require them to be up to date of everything that's going on. 99% of people aren't.”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I know it's kind of counterintuitive because. I found it one of the largest social networks in the world, after which I founded the second largest messaging app in the world. You're supposed to be really connected. But the conclusion you reach very early is that the more connected and accessible you are, the less productive you are Then, how can you run this thing if you're constantly bombarded by all kinds of information, most of which is irrelevant to the success of the What you're trying to build The entire world can be fascinated by a fight, a quarrel between the world's richest men and the world's most powerful man. But for the vast majority of these people following this saga, it's irrelevant. Won't change their lives. And in any case, they can't affect it.”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Beautiful ideas can come to you while you're doing your morning exercise, your morning routine without a phone. If you open your phone first thing in the morning, what you end up being is a creature that is told what to think about for the rest of the day Same is true in a way if You've been consuming news from social media late at night Then, how do you define what is important and what you really want to become in life? Now, I'm not saying you have to completely stay away from all sources of information, but take some time to think about what's really important for you and what you want to change in this world.”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. So the thing I'm trying to do, I try to allocate as much time as possible Sleep. Now, even if I allocate, say, 11 or 12 hours for sleep, I want to sleep for 11 or 12 hours. So what I end up doing is I end up lying in bed thinking. And some people hated they say you have to take a sleeping pill, but I never take pills. I love these moments. I get so many brilliant ideas, or at least they seem brilliant to me at the moment, while I'm lying in bed either late in the evening or early in the morning. That's my favorite time of the day. Sometimes I go, I wake up, I go take a shower. Still without a phone”
2025-10-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source