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

“And then you get this like weird fail son, Nicholas, who is kind of a good guy, but also terrible and also Russian autocracy itself is terrible. And then I just became obsessed with the question of like, why did the Bolshevik Revolution succeed? Because people in Russia. How did Vladimir Lenin do it, right? Like, and I became obsessed with that question. And it's still, I find it so interesting, which is that series of accidents of history. Incredible boldness by Lenin, incredible realpolitik, smart, unpopular decisions made by Trotsky and Stalin, and just like the arrogance of the Tsars and of the”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was obsessed with the question and still am, I will never be, I will never quench my thirst for Russian history. I love that period of Of 1890 to 1925. It's just like, it's so fucking crazy. Like the autocracy embodied in Tsar Alexander.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Me being an idiot. Right. Seems useful, so I like those kinds of books. That's Russian heritage, man. Yeah, they're anarchist 101. Yeah.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Trump stopped the steel thing. It took my shackles off 100%. Because I was like, no, this is bullshit. And I'm going to say it's bullshit. And I think it's bad. And I think it's bad for the Republican Party. And if people in the Republican Party don't agree with me on that, that's fine. I'm just not going to be necessarily like associated with you anymore.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's true freedom. I now say exactly what I think. And it's not that I wasn't doing that before. It's maybe I would avoid certain topics or like I would think about things more from a team perspective of like, am I making sure that I'm not saying I didn't fight it. I still criticize the right plenty and Trump plenty before the election and more. It's more just like I no longer feel as if I even have the illusion of a stake within the game. I'm like, I only look at myself as an outside observer and I will only call it as I see it truly. And I was aspiring to that before, but I had to have, in a way,”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Had the luxury of able to take that choice, but I still felt an immense amount of pressure to say the election was stolen, to give credence to a lot of the stuff that Trump was doing, to downplay January 6th, to downplay many of the Republican senators, or justify many of the Republican senators, some of whom I know who objected to the electoral college certification and who stoked some of the flames that have eaten the Republican base. And I just wouldn't do it. And that was hard, man. Like I feel more politically homeless right now than I ever have. But I have realized in the last couple of months it's the best thing that ever happened to me.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've really struggled with this. I came up in right wing media. I came up a much more doctrinaire, conservative in my professional life. It wasn't always conservative. We can get to that later if you want. And I did feel an immense pressure after the election. By people to say wanted me to say the election was stolen. And I knew I had a sizable part of my audience. Well, here's the benefit. Most people know me from rising, which is with Crystal and me. That is inherently a left-right program. So it's a large audience. So I felt comfortable and I knew that I could still be fine in terms of my numbers, whatever, because many people knew me who were on the left. And if, you know, my right listeners abandoned me, so be it.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I just inspires me, man. He really does to learn more. And I've read, I bought a lot of books because of Dan Carlin. He'll be, you know, because of this guy, because of that guy. In terms of, you know, another thing he does, which nobody else, and I'm probably guilty of this, he focuses on the actual people involved. Like, he would tell the story of actual British soldiers in World War I. And I probably, and maybe you're guilty of this too, we over focus on what was happening in the German general staff, what was happening in the British general staff. And he doesn't make that mistake. That's what he tells real history”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I know, you know, he takes so much shit from the historical community for no reason. I think he's the greatest popularizer, quote unquote, of history. And I wish more people in history understood it that way. He was an inspiration to me. I mean, I do some videos sometimes on my Instagram now where I'll do like a book tour. I'll be like, here's my bookshelf of these presidents. And like, here's what I learned from this book and this book. And that was very much like a skill I learned from him of being like as a historian writes. I just love the way he talks. He's like, In the mud, you know, he'll be like, quote.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thousands of British people die in order to preserve the balance of power in Europe and prevent the Kaiser from having a port on the English Channel. Like, really? That's why that's more what wars are. They become these like Atypical set, they become these protracted conflicts with a necessary diplomatic resolution that's not clean. It's very dirty. It usually leads in the outbreak of another war and another war and another war and a slow burn of ethnic conflict, which bubbles up. So that's why I look at that one, even because it's more typical of warfare in how it works.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because there's actually quite a clean war. It's a very atypical war. As in the war object, which we learned from World War I, is we must inflict suffering on the German people and invade the borders of Germany and destroy Hitler, like the center of gravity is the Nazi regime and Hitler. So it had a very basic begin and end. Begin, liberate France, invade Germany, destroy Hitler, reoccupy, rebuild. World War I? What are you fighting for? Like, are you, I mean, and nobody even knew. You can go, the German general staff. They were like, even in 1917, they're like, the war was worth it because now we have Luxembourg. I'm like, really? Like you killed 2 million of your citizens for fucking Luxembourg and like half of Belgium, which is now like a pond. And same thing the French are like, well, the French more so they're defending their borders. But like, what are the British fighting for? Why did hundreds...”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I have a degree in security studies from Georgetown. And one of the things that we would focus a lot on that is like war, but also the complexity around war. And it's funny, we never spent that much time on World War II.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Things were because of that conflict. We were convinced as a country that we wanted nothing to do with Europe and its problems. And in many ways that contributed to the proliferation of Hitler and more. So like I'm obsessed with World War I for this reason, which is that it's just like the root, it's like the culmination of the monarchies, then the fall, and then just all the shit spills out. So from there for like 100 years.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hitler, you can't talk about Right. And I'm obsessed with a conflict. I've read way too many books about it. For this reason, it's unresolved. And the roots of so much of even our current problems happened in Versailles, right? Like Vietnam is because of the Treaty of Versailles. Many ways the Middle Eastern problems and the division of the states there, the Treaty of Versailles in terms of the penalties against Germany, but also the fallout from those wars on the French and the German population or the French and the British populations and their reluctance for war in 1939 or 1938 when Neville Chamberlain goes, right? Like that's one of the things people don't understand is the actual appetite of the British public at that time. They didn't want to go to war. Only Churchill. He was the only one in the, you know, in the gathering storm, right? Like being like, hey, this is really bad and all of that. And then even in the United States, our streak of isolationism, which swept, I mean.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, but that's what actually there's a banality of that evil, of the Kaiser and of the Austro-Hungarians and of, see, I like World War I more because it was unresolved. It's one of those periods I was talking to you about. Like sometimes you're called and you fail. That's what happened. I mean, 50 million people were killed in the most horrific way. Like people literally drowned in the mud, like an entire generation. One stat I love is that, you know, Britain didn't need a draft till 1916. Like they went two years of throwing people into barbed wire voluntarily. And because people loved their country and they love the king and they thought they were going against the Kaiser, it's just like that conflict to me, I just can't read enough about it. Also just like birth's Russian Revolution, you know.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. No, that's why Carol wrote the books. And that's why the books are not really about LBJ. They're about power in Washington and about the consolidation of power post-New Deal, the consolidation then, or the using the levers of power like Johnson knew in order to change the House of Representatives, the Senate of the United States, and ultimately the presidency of the United States, which ended in failure and disaster with Vietnam. Don't get me wrong, but he's overlooked for so many of the incredible things that he did with civil rights. Nobody else could have done it. No one else could have gotten it done. And the second thing is, we got to get you into World War I. We got to get you more into World War I because I think that's a rabbit hole, which I know you're Dan Carlin fan. So Blueprint for Armag”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I didn't say you'll love him, but you'll love the books about him because the books are a story of America, the story of politics, the story of power. This is the guy who wrote The Power Broker. These books are up there with decline and fall of the Roman Empire. By Edward Gibbon, in terms of how power works.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was going to say, one of my goals in coming to this is I was like, I got to get Lex into two things because I know he'll love it. I know he'll love LBJ if he has the time to read the book.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In modern history, FDR and JFK, sorry, FDR and JFK's assassination, LBJ, two hypercompetent men who understood government, who understood personnel, and coincidentally were friends. I love this. I don't think actually people understand this. FDR met Johnson three days after he won his election to Congress, special election. He was only 29 years old. And he left that meeting and called somebody and said, this young man is going to be president of the United States someday. Like, even then, like what was within him to understand and to recognize that? And sometimes Johnson is a young member of Congress would come and have breakfast with FDR, like just to the great political minds of the 20th century, just sitting there talking. I would give anything to know what was happening.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can't fix everything. I don't want to give people unrealistic expectations. You can fix a lot, especially in crisis. You can remake America. And the reason I know that is because it's already happened twice. FDR.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That was a bunch of bullshit. I think it's bullshit. There's so many different levels of classification that people need to understand. I mean, look, I read John Podesta. He was the chief of staff to Bill Clinton. He's a big UFO guy. He tried. Like him and Clinton tried to get some of this information. And they could not get any of it. And we're talking about the president and the White House chief of staff.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What I mean, though. They were probably all telling him, sir, you can't do this, you know, all this, and I get that. And there's this legislation written in COVID that they have six months to release it. Is that right?”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The way I almost, I wouldn't say it confirmed it's real, but Trump didn't declassify it. Like, you know that if there was ever a president that actually wanted to get to the bottom of it, it was him. I mean, he didn't declassify it, man. And people begged him to. I know for a fact because I pushed to try and make this happen that some people did speak to him about it and he was like, no, I'm not going to do it.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Commercial pilot over New Mexico, seeing a quote unquote large cylindrical object in the earth. Like I said, when we first started talking, I've never believed more in UFO than aliens.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, this happens. Yeah. Then a guy or like a radio catcher records this and posts it online. American Airlines confirms that this is authentic audio. And they go, all further questions should be referred to the FBI. So then, okay, American Airlines just confirmed it's a legitimate transmission. FBI, then the FAA comes out and says we were tracking no objects in the vicinity of this plane at the time of the transmission. So the only plausible explanation that online salutes have been able to say is maybe he saw a leer jet, which was using like open source data, FAA rules head out. So what was it? He saw a large cylindrical object while he was mid flight, American Airlines. You can go online, listen to the audio yourself. This is 100% no shit transmission confirmed by American Airlines.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of deep state and shadow. Dude, the last thing I sent to him was the American Airlines audio. Did you see that The pilots who were, oh my God, dude, this is amazing. So, these American Airlines flight crew was over New Mexico. This happened five or six days ago. And the guy comes and goes, hey, do you have any targets up here? A large cylindrical object just flew over me.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. Well, like Avi Loeb, I would have no idea who he was if it wasn't for you. I mean, I assume you put him in touch with Joe. He went on Joe's show. I had him on my show. Like millions of people would have no idea who he was if it wasn't just.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so by creating that space, I'd be like, wait, there's a hunger here. Like he showed us all the way. And none of us will ever again be as famous as Rogan because he was the first. And that's fine because he created the umbrella ecosystem for us all to thrive. That is where I see like a great amount of hope within that story.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Dude, I listen to this podcast when I was like young, and I remember when I got to meet him and all that, and I told him this on this pod, I was like, I didn't know people were millions were willing to listen to a guy talk about chimps for three straight hours, including me. I didn't know that I'd be one of those people.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh shit, that's out of ball. But you're not like, oh shit, I love you, Alec Baldwin. This is a Ben Smith of the New York Times actually wrote this column. He's like, the future is everybody will be famous, but only to a small group of people. And I think that is true. But again, I don't decry it. I think it's great because I think that the more that that happens, the more engaged people will be. And it empowers different voices to be able to come in and then possibly, I wouldn't say destroy, but compete against. I mean, look at Joe. Joe is more powerful than CNN and MSNBC and Fox all put together. That gives me like immense inspiration. Like he created the space for me to succeed. And I told him that when I met him, I was like.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My main thing I would say is public legitimacy as a concept. It's not going to be there in mass media anymore because of the balkanization of audiences. I mean, think about it, right? Like this is like Lejion, you know, the classic stuff around a thousand.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Recode, right? Yeah. Recode. I don't know if that's her own thing He gets paid, and because he has, he wants the elite cachet that you just referenced within his social circle in New York, which is that I think the biggest mistake that some of the venture people make is if we give everybody the tools that those people are all going to leave to like go sub stack and go independent, within their social circle, sacrificing some money from being independent is worth it to be a part of the New York Times.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then who else do they hire? Ezra Klein from Vox, Kara Swisher, also from Vox, who does pivot, which is an amazing podcast, or Jayden Koston, same thing. It's personalities who are becoming bundled together within this brand, right?”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a long battle, right? It takes a long time. And I'm saying this is where I think the end state is going. And look at what the Times is doing. They're leaning into podcasting for a reason. But not just podcasting as in NPR level, like here's what's happening. Michael Barbaro is a fucking celebrity, right? The guy who does the daily. That guy's famous amongst these people because they're like, oh my God, I love Michael. Like, I love the way he does this stuff. Again, that's fine. More people are listening to the news. I think that's a good thing. Yeah.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They already are, they're the largest daily The daily look at the daily. Not even that. Think about it not in podcasting. The Times is not a mass media product. It is a subscription product for upper middle class largely white liberals who live the same circumstances across the United States and in Europe. There's nothing wrong with that. But here's the thing. You can't be the paper of record when you're actually the paper of upper middle class white America. Your job is to report on the news from that angle and deliver them the product that they want. There's nothing wrong with that. Their stock price is higher than ever. They're making 10 times more money than they did 10 years ago. But it comes at the cost of not having a mass application audience. So like when people, I think people in our space are always like, the New York Times is going to be destroyed. No, it's actually even better. They will just become one of us. They already are. Their subscription.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I do in the long run. In the long run, the internet is simply too powerful. But here's the mistake everybody makes. The New York Times will never lose. It will just become one of us. See”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They are the ones who can tell you whether something is right or wrong. That battle over unimpeded conversation and the explosion of a format that you and I are doing really well in, and then this more consolidated one, which holds cultural power and elite power and more importantly, money, right, over you and I, that's the battle that we're all going to do.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People will be engaged more within it rather than the current system where news is highly concentrated, highly consolidated, has groupthink, has the same elite production pipeline problem of Everybody knows journalists all come from the same socioeconomic background, and they all party together here in DC or in New York or in LA or wherever, and they're part of the same monoculture, and that affects what affects what they report, this will cause a total dispersion of all of that. The battle of our age is going to be the guild versus the non-guild. So what we see right now with the New York Times and Clubhouse. This is a very, very, very, very, very intentional thing that is happening, which is that the Times talking about unfettered conversations, that's happening on Clubhouse for people who aren't aware. This is important because they need to be the fetters of conversation. They need to be the interagent. That's where they get their power. They get their power from convincing Facebook that they are the ones who can fact check stuff.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you follow the right people, you can get that. And so that is the future of media, which is that the future of media is it will be much smaller amounts of people, which are famous to smaller groups. Walter Cronkite's never going to happen again, at least probably within our lifetimes, where everybody in America knows who's this guy is, that age is over. I think that's a good thing because now people are going to get the news from the people that they trust. Yes, some of it will be opinionated. I'm going to my program. Chris and I are like, we are this, she's coming from this like view. I'm coming from this view. That's our bias when we talk about information and we're going to talk about the information that we think is important. And it has garnered a large audience. I think that's very much where the future is going to be. And the reason why I think that's a good thing is because”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of course Twitter. Twitter is where I get my news from. I don't read the paper. I have literally Twitter is my news aggregator. It's called my wire where I find out about hard events like the president has departed the White House. But not only that,”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Interpretation. Now, you can say that that's a bad thing. I think it's a great thing because the highest level of literacy and news viewership in America was during the time of yellow journalism. Was during the time of partisan journalism. Not a surprise. People like to read the news from people that they agree with. You could say that's bad. Echo chambers, etc. That's the downside of it. The upside is more people are more educated. More people are interested in the news. So I think the proliferation of mass media, I mean, sorry, of this format of...”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the future of journalism looks much more like what we and I are doing here right now. And journalism is going to be downstream from culture. That can be a good and a bad thing depending on how you look at it. We are going to look at our media. Our media is going to look much more like it did pre-mass media. And the way that I mean that is that back in the 1800s in particular, especially after the invention of the telegraph when information itself was known. So for example, like you and I don't need to, let's say you and I are competing journalists. You and I are no longer competing quote unquote to tell the public X event happened. All journalism today is largely explaining why did X happen. And part of the problem with that is that that means that it's all up for part.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It took a long time for shit to sort out. I think that's where we're at with the internet. Like at a certain level, it disrupts everything. And that's a good thing. It can be very tumultuous. I never felt like I was living through history until coronavirus. Like, you know, like until we were all locked down, I was like, I'm living through history. Like this, there's this very overused cliche in DC where every com staffer wants you to think that what their boss just did is history. And I've always been like, this isn't history. This is some like stupid fucking bill, you know, whatever. But like that was the first time I was like, this is history, like this right here.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, Jeff Jarvis, he's a media scholar, I respect. He's not the only person to say this, but many others have, which is that look, this is kind of like the printing press. There was a whole 30 years war because of the printing press.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It could just be a blip, right? A 20, 30 year blip. Like when you think about who was president between 1890 and before, between like 1888 and 1910. Like nobody really thinks about that period of America. But like, that was an entire lifetime for people, right? Like, what did they, how did they feel about the country that they were in?”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Grover Cleveland. That's kind of how if I think of us within history, I feel like we're in one of those times. We're just waiting.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they did not show up. And I really, it hadn't happened in my lifetime except for 9-11. And even then, you could kind of see that as an opportunity for somebody like Obama to come in and fix it. But then he didn't do it. And then Trump didn't do it. And you realize, I feel like our politics are most analogous to like the 1910s, like in terms of the gilded age, in terms of that. Remember there's that long period of presence between like Lincoln.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is the FDR. This is why it's so hard like FDR Lincoln TR. They were who they were and they live in history and their name rings like for a reason. And yeah, I mean, one of the most depressing lessons I got from 2020 is almost, it seems like, in my opinion, that we overlearn the lesson of our success and not of our failures. For example, like we have this narrative in our head that we always have the right person at the right time during crisis. And in some cases, it was true. We didn't deserve Lincoln. We didn't deserve FDR. We didn't deserve a lot of presidents at times of crisis. But then you're like, okay, George W. Bush, 9-11, that was terrible. Reconstruction andrew Johnson, awful, right? Like we had several periods in our history where the crisis was there. They were called.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have to be so I was about to say, I think the rock could do it, but does he want to do it? I mean, it's terrible. Like it's terrible gig. It's very hard to do. I don't know if the rock necessarily has the formed policy agenda. Because then here's the other problem. What if we set ourselves up for a system where these people keep winning, but like with Trump, they have no idea how to run a government. It's actually really hard, right? And you have to have the know-how and the trust to find the right people. This is where the genius element comes in is you have to understand that front and you have to understand how to execute discrete tasks.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Maybe a Mark Cuban or like Mark Cuban is a Democrat or it would have to be somebody like that. Somebody who, because here's the thing about Trump, it's not just that it was Trump. He was so fucking famous. Like people don't realize he was so famous. Like I, even when I first met Trump, I met a couple of other presidents, but when I met Trump, even I felt like kind of starstruck because I was like, yo, this is the guy from the apprentice. Yeah. I'm like, this is the dude. Because I'm like, my dad and I used to sit and watch the apprentice when I was in high school. And then one of the guys was from College Station where I grew up and we're like, oh my God, like that guy's on the apprentice. Like, it was a phenomenon. There's like that level. It's kind of like when I met Joe Rogan, I'm like, holy shit, that's Joe Rogan. I don't feel that way when I meet Mitt Romney or Tom Cotton or Josh Hall. And I meant all of them. But there's a lot of.”
2021-03-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #167 – Saagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source