YouSaid · the spoken record

Saagar Enjeti

lines on the record: 194
first: 2021-03-14
most recent: 2021-03-14
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

“I think Texas is going to dramatically change within the next 10 years. Alternative to our, it's already become a more urbanized state that's moved away from oil and gas in terms of like its emphasis, not necessarily in terms of its real economics. And 10 years from now, I don't think it will be necessarily the name prop like of the town. The only question to me is how that manifests politically. It's very possible, though, because a lot of these workers themselves are California culturally liberal. You could see Gavin Newsom type person getting elected governor of Texas. Or like the American of Austin. I mean, look, Mayor of Austin's already a Democrat, right? Like, I mean, a joe has his own problems with Austin. It's funny. I remember him leaving LA and I'm like,”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know if the same building blocks are there, and also no multi-billion dollar companies which employ thousands of people are coming there. That's the ingredient. It's not just Joe Rogan. It's not just even Elon Musk if he still operated in California. It's all the people he employs. I think that is where”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. You just remade the entire city. And that's why I'm fascinated. And obviously, there's network effects, which is now that all those people are down there. I mean, if I were Elon Musk, I would donate a shit ton of money to the University of Texas and I would turn it into my Stanford for Silicon Valley. Let's introduce some competition and let UT Austin hire the best software developers, engineers, professors, and more and turn Texas into a true Austin revolving door hub where people come to UT Austin to get an internship at Tesla and then become an executive there and then create their own company in their own garage in Austin, which is the next Facebook, Twitter. That's how it happens. This is why I'm much more skeptical of Miami. There's a whole like tech Miami crew. I'm like, yeah, like, there's no university. It's very inorganic. Look, I think Miami is awesome. I just like.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's possible. You know, I actually think the most significant thing that happened were Tesla moving there. The reason why is I love Joe, obviously, but like he can only attract X amount of people. Elon actually employs thousands of people. And then you also oracle. Oracle's decision to move to Austin is just as important because those two men, Larry, was Ellison, right? Yeah. Elson and Elon, they actually employ tens of thousands of people collectively. That can change the nature of the city. You combine that with Joe bringing this entire new entertainment complex with the bodies of people who will appreciate said entertainment complex. Spend money on that.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now, I don't think that that's the case. Texas is now a dynamic economy, not just 100% reliant on oil, because of its kind of like I would call it like regulatory arbitrage relative to California and New York offers a large incentive to people who are more, I wouldn't say culturally liberal, but they're not necessarily like culturally conservative, like the people who I grew up with. That's changed the whole state's politics. Beto came two points away from beating Ted Cruz. And I'm not saying the state's gonna go blue. I think the Republican Party will just change and we'll have to readjust. But the re-urbanization of Texas has made it, I'll put it in this way, much more attractive to me than the place that I grew up. And then from my perspective,”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Become way more urban from when I grew up. When I grew up, Text was a much more rural state. It's politics were much more static. It looked much more like Rick Perry. Like that, he was a very accurate representation of who we were.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To California part to me, which is that since I left, it's changed dramatically, which is that it used to be like this conservative state where the main money to be made was oil. And everybody knew that. Petro, it was a petro state, Houston, all of that. Austin was always weird, but it was more of a music town and a university town. It was not a tech town. But in the 10 years or so since I left, I have begun to realize I'm like, well, the Texas I grew up in is over. It is not a deep red state in any sense of the term. The number one U-Haul route in the country pre-pandemic already was San Francisco to Austin. So like you have this massive influx of people from California and New York and the state, the composition of it is changed dramatically. The intra composition and the outrage. So the intra-composition, it's”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That will do it to you. Live in a non-democracy. Even in Europe, I would say you guys aren't living as free as we are here. It's awesome. I love it.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“High school with these guys and the Qatari royal family. And all I wanted to do was speak out how they were pieces of shit for the way that they treated Indian citizens in the country who are basically used as slave labor, and I could not say one word because I knew I would be deported and I only knew my dad would lose his job and my mom would lose her job and that we would be forced out of the country. You don't know what it's like to live like that or to be in a society where like, you know, you have like a high school girlfriend or something and you can't even touch in public or you're lectured for public decency. Like, listen, I've lived under a gulf monarchy now and I have, that turned me into the most pro-America golf ever.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I went from school and College Station to this Ritzy. Best thing that ever happened to me because, first of all, it got me out of college station. Second, at that time, I had this annoying streak of, I wouldn't call it being anti-America, but you don't appreciate America. Let me tell everybody out there listening leave for a while. You will miss it so much. You do not know what it is like to not have freedom of speech until you don't have it. And I was going to.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How do this happen? Like, how did this catastrophe happen? I realize it's not as bad as previous conflicts, but this one was mine. And to see how it changed our domestic politics forever. And so that was my rebellion. But it's funny because I identified as a left on the left when I was growing up until I was 18. I had also a funny two-year stint. This is where everything kind of changed for me. When I was 16, actually, I moved to Qatar to Doha Qatar because my dad was the dean of or associate dean of Texas A&M University at Doha. So my last two years of high school were at this, I went from this small town in Texas and I love my parents because they could recognize that I had within me that I was not a small town kid. So they took me out of this country every chance they got. I had traveled everywhere and constantly let me go. And so I was.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like, you know, race manifesto. I'm just telling it this is what happened, which is that. Like we had, it was just hard to be proud, frankly, and to have some of the fallout from 9-11 and during Iraq. And the reason I am political is because I realize in myself I have a strong, rebellious nature against systems and structures of power. And the first people I ever rebelled against were all the people telling me to shut up and not question the Iraq war. So the reason I am in politics is because I hated Georgia W. Bush with a passion and I hated the war. And I was so, again, my entire background is largely in national security for this reason, which is I was obsessed with the idea of like, how do we get people who are not going to get us into these quagmire situations in positions of power? That's how I became fascinated by power in the first place was all a question of how.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Being raised in a town where the dominant culture was predominantly like white evangelical Christian was hard. Like it was just difficult. And I think of it in the beginning, I would say like ages like zero to like eight, it was like cultural ignorance as in like they just don't know how to interact with you. And there was a level of always there was like the evangelical kind of antipathy towards like you being not Christian, you know, my parents are Hindu like that's how I was raised and so like there was that but 9-11 was very difficult like 9-11 happened when I was in third or fourth grade and that changed everything man like I mean our temple had to like print out t-shirts and I'm not saying this is a sob story to be clear I've still actually largely for my adult life identified on the political right so don't take this as some”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I am being honest, and many Texans will hate me for this. Texas was not a place that was kind to me, quote unquote. And this is because of my own parent. I was raised in College Station, Texas, which is a town of 50,000. It's a university town. It exists only for the university. So it was a very, I did not get the full Texas experience purely speaking from a college station experience. Growing up first generation or I forget what it is, whatever. I'm the first American. I was born and raised in College Station. My parents are from India.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's so fascinating to me because I never thought I would want to move back. But now I'm beginning to be convinced.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a guy I follow on Instagram, Paul Saladino, CarnivoreMD. He just went over there to the Hadza to live with them. And I was watching his stuff just like I was like, man, there's something in you that wants to go. I'm like, I want to do that. I'm not, I wouldn't be very good at it, but like I want to.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With the baboon when he goes hunting, and there's something to that, man. There's something to that. Where is like they are living the way that we were supposed to. I don't want to put a normative judgment on it. They are living the way that we used to.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But McDougall tells the vignettes and a tiny story of a single person in the history of running and like how it's baked into your DNA. And I think there was just something very useful to that for me, for being like, I don't need to go to the gym or like, I'm not saying you should still go to the gym. I'll be clear. I'm saying like in order to fulfill who you are, you can actually tap into something that's the most basic. I don't know if I'm sure if you listen to the David Cho episode with Joe Rogan.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You have to. You should because you are inheriting our most basic skill, which is running and reimagining human history or reimagining like what we were as opposed to what we are is very useful because it helps you understand how to tap into primal aspects of your brain, which just drive you. And the reason I love McDougall's writing is because I love anybody who writes like this. Malcolm Gladwell, who else? Michael Lewis, people who find characters to tell a bigger story. Michael Lewis finds characters to tell us a story of the financial crisis. Malcolm Gladwell writes, finds characters to tell us a story of...”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh shit, yeah. Okay. All right. All right. Well, this one is actually a corollary to that, which is sapiens. And I know that's a very normal normie answer. Yeah. One of the best selling books, I think there's a reason for that. You all know a Harari. Oh, cool. Okay, look, yes, he didn't do any new research. I get that. All he did was aggregate. I'm sure he's very controversial in the scientific community. But guess what? He wrote a great book. It's a very easy to read general explanation of the rise of human history. And it helps challenge a lot of preconceptions. Are we special? Are we an accident? Are we more like a parasite? Are we not? What is there a destiny to all of us? I don't know. You know, if anything, it's like what I just described, which is more. Move, move out. The evolution of money. Like, I know he gets a lot of hate, but I think that he writes it so clearly and well that for your average person to be able to read that, you will come away with a more clear understanding of the human race than before. And I think that that's why it's worth it.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Could have been content to sit actually, many of them were content to sit and say these berries will be here for a long time. And they got eaten and they died. And it's the ones who got out and went to the next place and the next place and went across the Siberian land bridge and went across Moore and just did extraordinary things. The craziest ones, we are their offspring, and we fail them if we don't go into space. That's how I would put it.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“From the moon? What did we get from Apollo, right? Technically, and there were a lot of socialists at the time making this argument. They're like, all this money going, you know what? We went to the fucking moon in 1969. That was amazing, the greatest feat in human history. Period. What did we learn from it? We learned about interstellar or interplanetary travel. We learned that we could do something off of a device less powerful than the computer in my pocket. The amount of potential locked within my pocket and your pocket. I mean, this is, if you were to define my policies in one way, it's greatness, like a quest for national greatness. There is no greatness without fulfilling the ultimate calling of the human spirit, which is more It's not enough, and why should it be? It wasn't enough. Our ancestors.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot of people died, like there were some people who got frozen in the eye. I mean, man, this again also came to the North exploration. I read a lot about the exploration of the North Pole. And same thing, these unextraordinary men take people out into the ice and get frozen out there for years and shit goes so bad. They end up eating each other. They all die. There's the famous, when I'm forgetting his name, the British Franklin Expedition, where they went searching for them for like 20 years. And they eventually came across a group of Inuit who are like, oh, yeah, we saw some weird white men here like 15 years ago. And they find their bones and there's like sawmarks which show that they were eating each other.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it's like a docu series where the fictionalized part is the like astronauts on Mars, but then they're interviewing people like Elon Musk and others who are the ones who paved the way to get to Mars. So it's a really interesting concept. I think it's on Netflix. And yeah, I agree with him 100%, which is that the first guys to make, like, for example, Robert Frost, who went to Australia, sorry, to Antarctica, the British explorer who was beaten to the South Pole three weeks by Robert Amundsen, he died on the way back. And the reason why is because he wasn't well prepared. He was arrogant. He didn't have the proper amounts of supplies. His team had terrible morale. Antarctica was a brutal place. If you fuck up one time, you die. And it's like, and this is what you read a lot about, which is the reason why such heroic characters like Shackleton Shine is.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Antarctica is as close to what you could simulate what it would get. That Nat Geo series on Mars, I'm not sure if you watched it, it's incredible. Elon's actually in it, and it's like they get there, everything goes wrong, somebody dies, like it's horrible. They can't find any water. It's not working.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That kills you. I know. Is dog li And so his friend ends up dying, have a horrific heart attack, all of that Mawson crawls back hundreds of miles away, makes it back to base camp hours after the ship leaves. And two guys or a couple guys stayed behind for him and he basically has to recuperate for like six months before he can even walk again. But it's like you were saying about the human spirit. It's like Antarctica brings that out of people or Amundsen, the guy who made it to the South Pole. Robert Amundsen. Oh my God, like this guy trained his whole life in the ice from Norway to make it to the South Pole. And he beat Robert Frost, the British guy with all this money and all these, I could go on this forever. I'm obsessed with it. First of all,”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And there are hundreds of miles away from Base Camp. He and this guy have to make it back there in time before the ship comes to come get them on an agreed upon date. And he makes it. But the guy he was with, he dies. And it's a crazy story. They have, first of all, they have to eat the dogs. A really creepy part of Antarctic exploration is everyone ends up eating dogs at different points. And part of the theory, which is so crazy, is that the guy he was with was dying because they were eating dog liver and dog liver has a lot of vitamin E, which if you eat too much of it can give you like a poisoning. And so Mawson by trying to help his friend was giving him more liver.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's the thing about Antarctica it brings it out of you. So for example, I read another one recently called Mawson's Will. Douglas Mawson. He was an Australian. He was on one of the first Robert Frost expeditions he leads an expedition down to the south. Him and a partner. They're leading explorations in 1908, something like that. They're going around Antarctica with dog teams. And one of what happens is they keep going over these snow bridges where there's a crevice, but it's covered in snow. And so one of the lead driver. The dogs go over and they plummet. And that sled takes with it. So the guy survives, but that sled takes all their food, half the dogs, their stove, the camping tent, the tent specifically designed for the snow, everything.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“From Elephant Island to Prince George, the guy, they had to hold him steady, his legs so that he could chart the stars. And if they miss this island, they're into open sea. They're dead. And then before that, how do you survive for a year on the ice? On seals. And before that, he kept his crew from depression frozen one year in the ice. It's just an amazing story. And it made me obsessed with Antarctic exploration. So I've read like 15 books on the...”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“and is able to get all of his men every single one of them alive to an island hundreds of miles away called Elephant Island, and when they got there he had to leave everybody behind except for six people. And him and two other guys I'm forgetting their names navigated by the stars 800 miles through the Drake Passage with seas of hundreds of feet to Prince, I think it's called Prince George's Island. And then when they got to Prince George's Island, they landed on the wrong side and they had to hike from one side to the other to go and meet the whalers. And every single one of those things was supposed to be impossible. Nobody was ever supposed to hike that island. It wasn't done again until like the 1980s with professional equipment. He did it after two years of starvation. Nobody was ever supposed to make it.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it all began with a book called Shackleton's Incredible Journey, which is the collection of diaries of everybody who was on Shackleton's journey. For those who don't know, Shackleton was the last explorer of the heroic age of Antarctic exploration. He led a ship called the Endurance, which froze in the ice off the coast of Antarctica in 1914. And they didn't have radios over the last exploration, the last one without the age of radio. And he happens to freeze in the ice. And then the ship collapses after a year, frozen in the ice. And this man leads his entire crew from that ship onto the ice with a team of dogs, survives out on the ice for another year with three little life.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ron Chernau. Ron Chernow's grant. It's a thousand pages. And the reason I tell everybody to read it is it's not just the story of Grant. It is the story of pre-Civil War America, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War, and Reconstruction all told in the life of one person who was involved in all three. Most people don't know anything about the Mexican-American war. It's fascinating. Most people don't know anything about Reconstruction. Now more so because people are talking it's a hot topic now. I've been reading about it for years. That is another thing people need to learn a lot more about. In terms of non-history books, the book that probably had the most impact on me, which is also a historical nonfiction, is I am obsessed with Antarctic exploration.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is the thing. It's not a biography, it's a story of the times. That's what great biography. So another one, this isn't part of my list. So don't is Grant.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“His life when he gets elected to Congress, the book begins with a history of Texas and its weather patterns, and then of his great, great-grandfather moving to Texas. Then the story of that about a hundred or so pages in, you get to Lyndon Johnson, that's how you do it, which is you get a fucking.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everything man Let me tell you this so I'll just give it an anecdote. This is why I love these books. The beginning of the first book is about Lyndon Johnson”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure. I already talked about the Johnson book, so I'll leave that at loan. Robert A. Carro, he's still alive, thank God. He's finishing the last book. I hope he makes it. So those Johnson books. Second”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the beginning, he did. I'm always fascinated is around 1920, what happened, right? Post revolution, you crushed the whites. Now it's all about consolidation. That's where the games really began. And I'm like, I don't think that was about communism.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For Lenin, it was, I think he was a true believer and an actual narcissist who thought he was the only one who could do it. Stalin, I do think, just wanted power and realized, well, I don't know. Look, he wrote very passionately when he was young.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Don't know. Yeah, that's the question. And this is where I think given all of his behavior and more, I don't know if it's about money. I don't know if it's about enriching himself. Obviously he did to the tune of billions and billions and billions of dollars. But I think he probably, he says close to like an actual Russian nationalist, like at the top who really does believe in Russia as its rightful superpower, everything he does seems to stem from that opposition to NATO, intro to Syria, like wanting to play a large role in affairs, deeply distrustful and yet coveting of the European powers. Like, look, I could describe every czar, you know, in those same language. Like every czar falls into the exact same category.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Totally. He's a transformational figure in Russian history. Really? Like the bridge between the fall of the Soviet Union and the chaos of Yeltsin, that will be how he's remembered. The only question is what comes next and what he wants to come next. I'm always fat. I'm like, he's getting up. How old are you? 60-something? Yeah”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Against that, which is a long, you know, has a long history within Russia too. So I don't know if it changed him. I think it just revealed him because it's not like he, I mean, he has a bill, you know, Navalny has put that like billion dollar palace and all that. Don't know sometimes I feel like Putin does that for show. He doesn't seem like somebody who indulges in all that stuff. Or maybe we just don't see it. Like, I don't know.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which is that he, I think he thinks of himself probably as he always has since 2001, as like this benevolent, almost as a benevolent dictator. He's like, without me, the whole system would collapse. I'm the only guys keeping these people keeping all these people in check. Most Russians probably do support Putin because they feel like they support some form of functional government. It's like a check.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Course, people in the West are like, what? I'm like, I get it, right? Like, they were a superpower, now their population is declining. Like, it's like a petro state. It sucks. Like, I understand. I understand how somebody could feel about that. I think it revealed his character.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It reveals, I think that's what it is. It reveals. So Putin was a much more deft politician, much more amenable to the West. If you think back, you know, to 2001 and more right when he came, because he was still, because at that time, his biggest problem was intra-Russian politics, right? Like it was all consolidating power within the oligarchy. Once he did that by around like 2007, there's that famous time when he spoke out against the West at the Munich Security Conference. I forget when it was. And that's when everybody in the audience was like, whoa. And he was talking about like NATO encirclement. And like, we will not be beaten back by the West very shortly afterwards, like the Georgia invasion happens. And that was like a big wake-up call of like, we will not be pushed around anymore. I mean, he said before publicly, like, the worst thing that ever happened was the fall, or what did he say? He was like the fall of the Soviet Union was a tragedy, right? Yeah.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My parents are immigrants and I've traveled a lot of putting yourself in the mind of people who aren't. Western and haven't lived a history, especially our lives, of America's fucking awesome. We're the number one country in the world. I'm like, we're literally better than you. Like in many ways. And they can't empathize with people who have suffered so much. And I just, yeah, it's just so interesting to me.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was the threat Right. Do you want to return to Yeltsin? Yeah. And the thing is in the West, we have this own propaganda of like, no, Yeltsin was great. That was the golden age. What could have been with Russia? And I was like, well, what do actual Russians think? And so that, yeah, I'll always be fascinated by it. And then just like to understand the idea of feeling encircled by NATO and all of that, you have to understand like Russian defense theory all the way going back to the Tsars has always been defense in depth in terms of having Estonia, Lithuania, and more as like protection of the heartland. I'm not justifying in this, so NATO shills like, please don't come after me. But look, Estonian like NATO. They want to be in NATO, so I don't want to minimize that. I'm more just saying, like, I understand him and Russia much better, having done that. And we are very incapable in America. I think this is probably.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We have this narrative of like the fall of the Soviet Union. And then I read this book from the perspective of Russians who lived through the fall. And they were like, I was like, this is terrible. Like, actually, the introduction of capitalism was awful. And like the rise of all these crazy oligarchs, that's why Putin came to power to restore order to the oligarchy.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, easily. I mean, there's a world where, and I don't have all the characters, there's like Kerensky. And then there was like whoever Lenin's number, Stalin's chief rival. And even, I mean, look, even a Soviet Union led by Trotsky, that's a whole other world, right? Like literally a whole other world. And yeah, it's just, I don't know. I find it so interesting. I'll never not be fascinated by Russia. I always will. It's funny that I get to talk to you because it's like I read this book. I forget what it's called. It won, I think it won a Paul's surprise. And it was like the story of, I tried to understand Russia post-Crimea because I came up amongst people who are much more like neoconservative and they're like, fuck Russia, Russia is bad by it. And I was like, okay, like, what do these people think?”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There is a convenient explanation where that is true, but there were also a series of decisions made by Lenin and Stalin to kill many of the people in the center left and marginalize them and also not to associate with the more quote-unquote amenable communists in order to make sure that their pure strain of Bolshevism was the only thing. And the reason I like that is because it comes back to a point I made earlier. It's all about intentionality, which is that you actually can will something into existence. Even if people don't want it, that was the craziest thing. Nobody wanted this, but it still ruled for half a century more, actually. I mean, almost, you know, 75 years.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of the Russian autocracy. And just, but at the same time, there's all these cultural implications of this, right? In terms of like how it became hollowed out post Catherine the Great and all that. I was obsessed with autoc because Russia wasn't actual autocracy. And, like, actually, and I'm like, it was there. Like, they didn't even remove serfdom to like the Civil War in America. Like, that's crazy. Like, you know, and nobody really talks about it. And I just, yeah, I was like, was Bolshevism a natural reaction to the excesses of Tsarism?”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source