24: Kai Lenny - To Play and Flirt with Giants

To Play and Flirt with Giants
Information
Guest	Kai Lenny
Length	01:55:20
Release Date	28 February 2020
YouTube Date	16 March 2020
Apple Podcasts	Listen
Links
YouTube	Watch
Portal Blog	Read
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In a world which is often slow-moving and even stagnant, there are always sectors and individuals who buck the trends. In this episode of The Portal, Eric sits down with his favorite surfing hero Kai Lenny who is pioneering a new approach to big wave surfing. By availing himself of the latest technology and dedicating his life to innovation and discipline, all-around waterman Kai Lenny is redefining what is possible with boards and waves. Whether it is kite surfing, hydrofoils, paddle boards or towing into monster waves, Kai is not only riding, but playing in the biggest surfable waves as if they were up to an order of magnitude smaller. Eric attempts to understand Kai's approach to innovation and how he can be so carefree and seemingly casual when he is always flirting with death within some of the most powerful structures and forces nature can through at a single individual from Jaws in Maui to Nazaré in Portugal.

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Eric Weinstein (right) talking with Kai Lenny (left) on episode 24 of The Portal Podcast

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Transcript

00:00:00
Eric Weinstein: Hello, this is Eric, and I wanted to give a small note to say how today's episode fits into the general arc of the portal. As many of you know, I'm a critic about what is going on in academics and in science and in the economy with respect to innovation. I feel that we're experiencing some kind of a very broad malaise and slowdown. On the other hand, whenever you allege that something is going generally environmentally wrong, it is incumbent upon you to check that you aren't, in fact, in the middle of a depressive or negative episode. One of the things that I like to do is to check and see where are the bright spots, what are the things that inspire me? Where do I see people actually pushing the envelope, making breakthroughs? If I can spot those, then I can realize that it's not me who's dead, but in fact, a memory of what is possible that is actually causing the frustration. And in these circumstances, I sometimes look very far afield to see where people are actually innovating, and one of the places that I see a tremendous amount of innovation right now is surfing. At some point, out of the corner of my eye, one particular surfer caught my attention. His name was Kai Lenny, and it wasn't as clear as it is now that he was onto something really special. As his skill has increased, he's been taking on larger and larger waves, and I don't know how to say this exactly, but playing with them. So before you watch today's episode, put in the name Kai Lenny, K-A-I L-E-N-N-Y, and maybe words like Jaws or Nazaré, and watch what he's doing, because it's unlike anything I've ever seen. Every time I look at it, it looks more like art than surfing. He's effectively playing with some of the most frightening and dangerous waves in the world, and in some sense it seems like a metaphor for where we are, that with many forces that are potentially incredibly threatening, a small number of us have the courage and strength and discipline to, instead of fretting and becoming enervated, we start playing with what the possibilities might be. Kai is experimenting in every technological dimension, every athletic dimension, and I would dare say every artistic dimension that you can imagine. His famous phrase is, "I feel like we're just getting started." It's hard for me to believe that there's that much headroom, given how close to the edge it seems that he's always playing. But even though I know that he's taking his life making these videos for us and experiencing these waves in the kind of perfect solitude that must accompany being inside a gigantic barrel or falling down the face of what can only be called a liquid cliff, I know that Kai is actually serving something greater than the human spirit. And even though we can't necessarily be in the wave with him, through the magic of helicopters or GoPro videos or any of the incredible technologies that we're now able to use to bring the experience closer to home, Kai is reacquainting ourselves with the sense of the possible, what might lie within us, both as individuals and as a society. So I hope you'll see this in this light. I hope you'll take an interest in surfing, whether you live in a landlocked country or whether you're old and maybe even disabled. What he's doing is, in fact, to me, hugely inspiring and one of the places that I turn to when I start to feel extremely frustrated. So I feel hugely honored to be able to bring you Kai Lenny. Please take a look at his videos beforehand, and then once you've understood what it is that we are all capable of through his efforts and antics, I think you'll find that this interview is much more enjoyable. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Thanks. [electronic music] Hello, you've found The Portal. I'm your host, Eric Weinstein, and I am thrilled today because my guest is none other than Kai Lenny, who I've been stalking on the internet and recently in Maui, actually. Kai, welcome to The Portal.

00:03:38
Kai Lenny: Thanks for having me on The Portal.

00:03:40
Eric Weinstein: Okay. Well, look, the, the aim of this program is to talk about breaking through to worlds that people can't even imagine exist.

00:03:48
Kai Lenny: Yeah.

00:03:48
Eric Weinstein: And there is no one who better exemplifies this at the moment than you, because what I see you as doing, before we even g- people, a lot of people aren't even gonna know who you are, um, is that you are right now in the process of expanding the vocabulary in a very unusual area so that I'm seeing things that I've never seen before, even though I'm not expert in your area. Can we talk about big wave surfing and what you're doing to it?

00:04:15
Kai Lenny: Oh, my favorite thing in the world is to talk about big wave surfing, because it's, like, the passion. I mean, just a quick background for everyone. You came and visited on Maui, and you saw my boardroom, and you saw all this equipment and stuff. Where I grew up is just down the road from we, what would I would call the Mount Everest of big waves, um, Jaws, Peahi in Hawaiian. Peahi means the beacon or to be called, which is a perfect name because when it starts to break, it almost sends this signal out to the rest of the world, and people come from all corners of life to either surf or watch or film, photograph, uh, take photos of these, uh, giant waves. And so when you're born and raised with Mount Everest in your backyard, it's inevitable you're gonna have to go try to climb it, right? In big wave surfing, you, you're in- it's inevitable you wanna go surf it as a little kid, 'cause before, you know, comic books-

00:05:12
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:05:12
Kai Lenny: ... and comic book movies-

00:05:14
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:05:14
Kai Lenny: ... um, mainly comic book movies were really big, um, in the mainstream media, um, they're, my superheroes were the guys that were riding these monster waves. You know, there was the-

00:05:27
Eric Weinstein: Wasn't there a comic book hero called The Silver Surfer?

00:05:30
Kai Lenny: The Silver Surfer, yeah, sure. I guess, but it was, like... I guess, like, w- in Hawaii, we do live in a bubble.

00:05:37
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:05:37
Kai Lenny: I'm not arguing against that at all, 'cause we're, we're not a part of the continental United States. We're middle of the ocean, 2,000 miles away, the most isolated land mass on the planet, and you, uh, y- Everything that's going on around you in Hawaii is what's going around you. You know? It's, and there's not a lot of ... There's influence from other places thanks [laughs] to the internet and stuff, but it's such a scene over there. And Hawaii is a powerful place as well, like in energy. You can really feel that, and it's almost unexplainable. There's a frequency that if you can match it, will give you some of the most incredible moments of your life, and I'll get into that more when, when, when I start talking about, like, the art of actually riding big waves-

00:06:19
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:06:19
Kai Lenny: ... and being in tune with the ocean and the frequency. And I mean, why not just sta- start talking about it now [laughs] is the, the, um-

00:06:27
Eric Weinstein: Well, no offense, I'm gonna start off-

00:06:28
Kai Lenny: Yeah

00:06:28
Eric Weinstein: ... by just contradicting you. You say that if you are out there, of course you have to ride it. You're too modest, because I talk to people who are living out there, who are surfers, who love it, and when I t- when I ask them, "Do you go and surf this particular wave?" the usual answer is, "No. Dude, I'm not crazy."

00:06:44
Kai Lenny: Uh-

00:06:44
Eric Weinstein: "I mean, this wave wh- when it, when it breaks is really, it's a beast."

00:06:50
Kai Lenny: It's a beast. But okay, so throw it back to when I was ... Gosh, my, I think one of my earliest memories as a child, you know, all of a sudden it's like you don't remember anything, and then maybe when you're four years old or even younger, like three years old, all of a sudden there's, like, a distinct memory.

00:07:06
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:07:06
Kai Lenny: One of the most distinct memories I have as a kid is standing on the cliff watching Jaws break. So there was already a seed plant from an early age. Highly, you know, um, curious kid. Um, super- my superheroes, the guys, the equivalent of the Justice League and the, um, Avengers were called the Strapped Crew, and they were the ones that pioneered Peahi, AKA Jaws, and Jaws-

00:07:36
Eric Weinstein: Do you wanna name-check them?

00:07:37
Kai Lenny: Huh?

00:07:38
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:07:38
Kai Lenny: Yeah, no, absolutely. So who, who made up this Strapped Crew were guys that invented tow-in surfing, which was the first, the first or still probably the best way to ride big waves on a high-performance level. Um, Laird Hamilton, people have probably heard of him. Dave Kalama was another. Um, Rush Randall, Darrick Doerner, Pete Cabrinha, Robbie Naish, Mike Waltze, Brett Lickel. Those guys kinda comprised this Strapped Crew, and they were all different characters. Um, a lot of them windsurfing champions, a lot of them, um, from different parts of the island, uh, islands, you know, from Oahu, uh, as well as Maui, of course. But they kind of were on Maui. Gerry Lopez, who's, like, I would say the equivalent of Yoda in surfing, you know? Like, he's the all-wise, basically all-knowing [laughs] like, master, the, the, the, the guru, um, he showed Laird this wave back in the day. Like, this is in the ... He'd been watching it since the early '80s, and in very early '90s they, um ... Gerry's like, "Okay," like he noticed Laird was really taking interest in big wave surfing on Oahu, which at the time was considered the best big waves on the planet. And he's like, "I got something you might wanna see," and they walk through the pineapple fields, they get to the edge of a cliff, and all of a sudden Laird is shown the, the golden goose, the, the, the, the best big wave on the planet. It's so perfect that if there's not someone on it for scale, it looks like a small wave. It's rare to find big waves that look six feet but are really 60 feet. And so Gerry told me when I was a kid, and I always try to get him to repeat it, is a story of, like, in the '80s when a giant swell came in. They were surfing this other break, which is also known as one of the best waves on the planet, not best big wave, but best wave, and it's very similar to how Jaws breaks, just on a smaller scale. It's called Honolua Bay. Beautiful, epic sunsets there. And he said one day after surfing they went up to Jaws to go check it, and it was so big that where we surf now would've been whitewater, and where the boats are would've been where the barrel was. So where the wave was breaking and creating a giant tube. He, he would, he would approximate the waves were probably in the 100-foot range. And there was other nicknames or other names they called it before it was coined Jaws. Jaws sort of came when Laird landed on the cover of National Geographic with a giant wave, and he was just in board shorts and it was, like, unbelievable shot, which I think he's still the only surfer to ever be on the cover of National Geographic.

00:10:22
Eric Weinstein: Well, there's so many ways that I wanna get in underneath the story before I even get to, like, you and what, what it is.

00:10:27
Kai Lenny: Sure.

00:10:28
Eric Weinstein: So, uh, but I don't even know where to begin. So first of all, one, the only thing that connects us really is that we're both fascinated by waves. I'm fascinated in physics. You're fascinated by ocean waves.

00:10:38
Kai Lenny: Yeah.

00:10:39
Eric Weinstein: And one of the things that I find fascinating is that these, these waves have, are, are sort of like intercontinental, intercontinental exploration that has only happened recently. Like, we mapped all the land masses, but somehow there are still relatively recently, um, only relatively recently has, have there been certain discoveries of these really important surfable waves, like Mavericks in, uh, Half Moon Bay-

00:11:07
Kai Lenny: Yeah

00:11:07
Eric Weinstein: ... has not been explored for that long.

00:11:10
Kai Lenny: That, yeah.

00:11:11
Eric Weinstein: And then, and then, you know, you're saying with, with Jaws, Jaws and Peahi, the thing that I find fascinating about this is that there was also this taboo around tow-in surfing, because of the, the purity of surfing culture and the ethos of it. Like, you're talking about it both as a sport and the beauty of the wave and the sunsets. Like, it is this sort of kind of complete picture and world, and there was something transgressive about towing in. Is that right?

00:11:40
Kai Lenny: I think before anybody started kind of pinning tow-in surfing as being unnatural or-

00:11:47
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:11:47
Kai Lenny: ... not soulful or whatever other kind of term they use- People were just blown away by the fact that you could ride a wave that big, and so it didn't even matter at that point. Now, fast-forward to present day, people are paddling in, and tow-in surfing is widely regarded within core surfers as cheating. But I think they forget that it's the, it would be the equivalent of going and climbing the mountain and skiing down versus-

00:12:17
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:12:17
Kai Lenny: ... taking the helicopter up and doing it 50 times. Um-

00:12:20
Eric Weinstein: But isn't there an issue about how fast the wave is moving, and if it's moving too quickly, it's almost impossible to paddle in, or has that changed?

00:12:27
Kai Lenny: Oh, I think it's changed a lot. I mean, I think what people thought was impossible to paddle into is possible. It's just, the best way I can describe it is when you're trying to paddle into a really big wave, just imagine there's a platform or, like, a launching pad-

00:12:41
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:12:41
Kai Lenny: ... that you can go from, but the bigger the wave gets, the smaller that launching pad gets-

00:12:45
Eric Weinstein: Got it

00:12:45
Kai Lenny: ... where you can take off and make it.

00:12:48
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:12:48
Kai Lenny: Because it's all about positioning. It's triangulating yourself with the land around you. So looking at shore and finding two trees or two points that you line up with, "Okay, this is where I am on part of the reef," and then looking to your left and finding another point and lining up with the point. And so you kinda triangulate yourself in, and that's where, you, by, by checking where the waves are breaking, that's how you figure out that you're gonna be in the right spot to get on that launching pad. Because if you're too much on the shoulder, which is kind of away from the critical part of the wave-

00:13:20
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:13:20
Kai Lenny: ... you're not gonna catch it. If you're too deep, you're gonna become part of the wave [laughs] and go over the falls. So it's, that's paddling-

00:13:27
Eric Weinstein: By the way, s- given that this is a non-surfing program, can we say that over the falls means getting swept up over the crest and being just shoved down-

00:13:35
Kai Lenny: Yeah

00:13:35
Eric Weinstein: ... into the ma-

00:13:35
Kai Lenny: I guess over the falls would be the equivalent of jumping into the water and going over Niagara.

00:13:40
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:13:40
Kai Lenny: Like, it's the same thing. [laughs] Like, whoa. So you become the lip. The wave picks you up and-

00:13:45
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:13:46
Kai Lenny: ... um, what we call it is the ride after the ride.

00:13:50
Eric Weinstein: Okay. So what, I, I don't really w- want to object in any way to tow in. I don't have these issues, so I, the, the main issue for me is innovation, right?

00:14:01
Kai Lenny: Yeah.

00:14:01
Eric Weinstein: Like, the reason that I find this so fascinating is that I wasn't around, uh, and conscious, like, in '68. I was three years old when, um, Dick Fosbury came up with the Fosbury Flop and changed high jumping. And if you think back to, like, table tennis, this guy from Japan, I think his name is, like, Hiroshi Sato, um, put rubber on a hard bat paddle and changed the game of table tennis forever. What I see you as doing, and I could be wrong about this, I've been looking at you for several years not knowing, because I'm not a surfing guy, why am I caring about this one guy? And it wasn't quite so evident ear- earlier than it, as it is now. That suddenly I'm seeing things that I just can't even believe I'm watching, and essentially what I think I'm seeing is that you're taking some of the world's largest waves and instead of just, like, showing that they can be ridden, like, actually just playing and doing tricks and pushing every available corner of performance to eke out things that nobody knew was, were, were possible. So you're really inventing your own vocabulary of surfing to me. And then the, the, the thing that you said that just, you know, tore at my soul, um, I was watching you on some kind of unbelievable wave doing some trick, and you said, "You know, the thing that blows my mind is I feel like we're just getting started." And I thought, "I thought we were already at the limits of what is doable," and your point of view was, "I can see how much headroom I have, and it's enormous."

00:15:38
Kai Lenny: It's, yeah, I mean, it's crazy. The, there's, I think there's more room for growth in high-performance big wave riding than there is in any part of surfing, maybe even in any part of action sports. Because, you know, I'm just starting now to do 360s on big waves and do it confidently. But there's really no reason why I shouldn't be doing a triple cork, something that Shaun White can do, you know, in a half pipe. You know, something like that. So-

00:16:06
Eric Weinstein: But your feet aren't tethered to your board, are they?

00:16:09
Kai Lenny: Um, on tow-in surfing it is.

00:16:11
Eric Weinstein: On tow-in, okay.

00:16:11
Kai Lenny: I mean, it's really the only way to do it in big waves, tow-in surfing, 'cause of the speeds you're reaching, the amount of winds. Even on a glassy day when there's no winds on the face of the wave, waves are moving fast enough they're producing their own local winds at the top. So, um, you know, probably 20 knot winds, 25 mile an hour winds on the top of these breaking waves. And so you... And the boards are heavy to go through all that chop because I'm probably hitting 55 miles an hour at times w- and even faster, potentially, in certain waves, um, riding my tow-in surf board.

00:16:45
Eric Weinstein: Got it. So what I wanna sort of just, um, induce people to do is to Google and search for some of the-

00:16:54
Kai Lenny: Mm-hmm

00:16:54
Eric Weinstein: ... epic rides that you've taken that also alerted the world to the fact that something crazy was going on. So, you know, with Laird Hamilton, a very famous, uh, alert that went out to the planet was this, uh, photograph of him in Tahiti, which must have been-

00:17:11
Kai Lenny: The millennium wave

00:17:12
Eric Weinstein: ... Did you want to s- talk about how that affected you?

00:17:15
Kai Lenny: I mean, Laird was my s- was a superhero to me, uh, even up to that point, and this is 2000. And Laird was known, is known as riding and kind of, like, pushing the limits of big wave riding where people didn't think it could go. Um, part, I think that's why I'm kind of inspired to follow in those footsteps. Like, and it might be a little different approach, but for Laird, when he rode that wave in 2000, he just kind of, like, blew the door open on what was possible.

00:17:46
Eric Weinstein: So what, what, what wave was it? Talk, is, this is Tahiti?

00:17:49
Kai Lenny: Yeah, so this is in Tahiti, French Polynesia. Most beautiful day ever. There's this wave called Teahupo. People call it Teahupoo, people call it Chopes, and it's this wave that breaks in six feet of water on a shallow reef, comes from the depths of the ocean. It's really deep on the other side. And what makes this wave so unique is it can displace the entire ocean. And instead of being sh- instead of standing up vertically, it just folds over. So it's almost like it's the closest thing to a rideable tsunami there is, because there's no back to the wave. It's just the whole ocean behind it.

00:18:24
Eric Weinstein: It, it, it is the most beautifully perfect wave I've ever seen. And, and I'm... There are two waves that have captivated me just visually, and they're the exact opposite of e- of each other. So this, and h- how should I say it? Should I not say Teahupoo?

00:18:39
Kai Lenny: Well, you can say it however you want. I mean-

00:18:41
Eric Weinstein: What does it mean? Can you translate? It's got a good name.

00:18:42
Kai Lenny: Oh, yeah. This is, this is great. So Teahupo-

00:18:46
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:18:46
Kai Lenny: ... Teahupoo is, um, translates to broken skulls.

00:18:50
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:18:51
Kai Lenny: And it's not 'cause of the wave, but that area is, like, culturally significant. They call it the end of the road. It's where the road ends, um, and that's where that wave is right at the end. But back in the day, there used to be really big battles in Tahiti.

00:19:06
Eric Weinstein: I see.

00:19:06
Kai Lenny: And, um, people's skulls were put on stakes, and they-

00:19:10
Eric Weinstein: Yikes

00:19:10
Kai Lenny: ... would be stuck in the sand there. And it just kinda fit perfect that one of the gnarliest waves that could stick you on a stake is just maybe 200, 300 yards offshore.

00:19:21
Eric Weinstein: It's a fairly shallow reef?

00:19:22
Kai Lenny: So shallow, so sharp, razors.

00:19:25
Eric Weinstein: Ooh.

00:19:25
Kai Lenny: Just imagine razor blades on the bottom. You touch it barely, it's just, you're, you get ripped apart. And a classic Tahitian tradition is you lime them after to kill any bacteria, because the reefs are so alive there-

00:19:38
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:19:38
Kai Lenny: ... that it's really easy to get staph infection.

00:19:39
Eric Weinstein: Yikes.

00:19:40
Kai Lenny: And so [laughs] instead of using anything that's, like, by modern medicine standards or less painful, they lime you. And, uh, it is hor- it's like putting acid in your wounds. It hurts so bad, 'cause, you know, the acidic, um, uh, the nature of limes are pretty acidic.

00:19:58
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:19:58
Kai Lenny: And so it just feels, it's killing everything in there, but it's also stinging horribly bad, and there's nothing worse when you get cut. You try to hide it from, like [laughs] all your friends and the local Tahitians 'cause they see and you're like, "Lime." And people, it, it's, it's hilarious, find so much pleasure in seeing you just, like, squirm as they, like, lime your back. And it's good 'cause it kills, uh, yeah, any staph that could possibly take you. But at the very same time, it's miserable. You already go through a horrible experience, and then you have to do it again. [laughs]

00:20:28
Eric Weinstein: Okay. Well, this, th- this wave is not the tallest, but it's one of the heaviest waves in the world in terms, in terms of the mass of water?

00:20:34
Kai Lenny: Yeah, I mean, it kinda defies, like, belief when people first see it, especially in person. It's not that the wave necessarily, it's not like the wave gets displaced as it comes in and hits the reef, and typically what happens is water is shot vertically, and-

00:20:49
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:20:49
Kai Lenny: ... that's what creates a tall wave. There's a back to the wave. It's usually half the size of the front of the wave, but because there's all that mass pushing behind it. But at Teahupoo, the way it hits the reef, it just shoots the lip forward, and the whole ocean's behind it, and it draws all the water off the reef back into the ocean. And so you're surfing at below sea level. If you're riding a 30-foot wave there-

00:21:13
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:21:13
Kai Lenny: ... you're 30 feet below sea level. You're in, like, a pit, and you can see the water going back up the reef in front of you.

00:21:19
Eric Weinstein: It almost doesn't make sense.

00:21:21
Kai Lenny: Yeah, no, it's just, it's a freak of nature, and certain waves do that, but this one's the king of it. It's the best... It's, I like to call it the most perfect close out on the planet. Because in all the photos you see of it, it looks like this perfect wave-

00:21:34
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:21:34
Kai Lenny: ... and it is for a little bit. But as you're riding, there's a right-hander that's coming at you. So there's a wave that's equal in size that's gonna close out, and you have to make it.

00:21:43
Eric Weinstein: Is that what blows out all that mist that, at, right at the end?

00:21:45
Kai Lenny: So that's called spit.

00:21:46
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

00:21:46
Kai Lenny: You know when you see a breaking wave, as it barrels, it'll shoot like a cannon, and all-

00:21:50
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:21:50
Kai Lenny: ... that water, it's the compression of water. These big waves, waves in general, are like cannons or like, um, guns. So when you're riding in a tube, you can feel air. It's a vortex.

00:22:02
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:22:02
Kai Lenny: It's a vortex. And so it's sucking air in like a jet engine, like [whooshes] And then the wave, there's so much water moving, the air can't escape, so it goes the least resistance-

00:22:13
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:22:13
Kai Lenny: ... which is back out the tube. And it explodes, and it shoots chunks of water that can knock you off your board, probably hundreds of pounds of, like, water that are, like, shooting you, and [smacks lips] it hurts really bad. Like, it feels, certain waves it feels so good, like getting just s- it's the only time it feels good to be spat on. [laughs]

00:22:33
Eric Weinstein: Well, you said this thing to me about barrels that I never thought of, and maybe it's a commonplace in surfing, but I'd never heard it, which is that a barrel is a unique experience, um, because of... You said something about the only time that, um-

00:22:49
Kai Lenny: Yeah. Well, riding inside a tube, a barrel, a b- a wave, basically the hollow part of the wave as it pitches over, it's unique because it's the only way we can breathe underwater without any other breathing apparatus. You're just, your own.

00:23:03
Eric Weinstein: I thought that was amazing.

00:23:04
Kai Lenny: And you feel like a fish for a second, you know? And there's something about waves that break and the negative ions they produce that, you know, make you feel so good.

00:23:16
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:23:16
Kai Lenny: So you can imagine being in this kind of capsule or this vortex. You're so focused on making it, it's all that's on the front of your mind, that there's a moment when nothing else exists and time slows down. It's like you really are almost, I don't know if accessing more parts of your brain or what it is, but what feels like 10 s- what is four seconds feels like a minute.

00:23:40
Eric Weinstein: That's amazing.

00:23:41
Kai Lenny: And you're just in there, and, and I'm watching water droplets move by me at, like, Matrix speed. Everything looks like The Matrix. And if you're really calm and, and you're really comfortable, you can look, you have time to, like, look around and absorb all this information, and then all of a sudden as it spits and you come out of the tube, it's like life just starts going back to normal speed, and you realize how life, fast life moves. Because in there it's like you have all the time in the world, it feels like. And, um- It's, it's what, it's probably the pinnacle of what you could do surfing. Better than any maneuver, any aerial-

00:24:15
Eric Weinstein: Okay

00:24:16
Kai Lenny: ... acrobatic trick-

00:24:17
Eric Weinstein: So, so-

00:24:17
Kai Lenny: ... being in the tube

00:24:18
Eric Weinstein: Well, so that tube, I just, I geek out on it because it's such an incredibly unbelievable... I can't even imagine that something that beautiful and perfect exists. The other version of beauty that I'm drawn to is this other totally different wave-

00:24:32
Kai Lenny: Yeah

00:24:32
Eric Weinstein: ... which I think you said you may be headed towards, which is the Shipstern's Bluff in-

00:24:37
Kai Lenny: Shipsterns

00:24:37
Eric Weinstein: ... Tasmania-

00:24:38
Kai Lenny: Yeah

00:24:38
Eric Weinstein: ... which is the gnarliest, ugliest-

00:24:42
Kai Lenny: [laughs]

00:24:42
Eric Weinstein: Uh, it's waves within waves. And, you know, quantum field theory is this concept beyond quantum mechanics. It's waves upon waves or i- And so this waves within waves concept, even though it's all obviously classical, uh, is really evocative to me, and there's this thing inside of this crazy Tasmanian thing which people, which forms, like, a ledge, and I've watched people fall off of it a bunch.

00:25:07
Kai Lenny: Yeah.

00:25:07
Eric Weinstein: You wanna use it as a jump.

00:25:09
Kai Lenny: Oh, absolutely. Well, you know what's interesting? There's not that many crazy, big waves in the world. There are big waves, but then there are waves that are in the league of their own. You could say Teahupo'o's in a league of its own. Um, Jaws, Nazaré, Mavericks, which is here in California, and Shipsterns is one of them as well, and they all have different personalities, and the art of riding these big waves is finding their personality and kinda matching your, the best of you with them. But what makes Shipsterns exciting, and the reason why they call it Shipsterns, is 'cause the way the cliff is situated, it looks like the front of a massive ship, maybe the Titanic or something.

00:25:43
Eric Weinstein: You been there?

00:25:44
Kai Lenny: No, but I, I know all about that wave-

00:25:46
Eric Weinstein: Okay

00:25:46
Kai Lenny: ... you know? 'Cause I've, I've been studying it, kinda getting ready to go, and I've had opportunities to go, and it hasn't worked out. I mean, big-wave surfing, you could be halfway across the world on your way, and the forecast can switch in a flash, and you turn around and go home because it's not gonna be breaking or the winds are gonna be bad. And Tasmania is very susceptible to bad weather, just 'cause it's really as close to Antarctica as you can get, and all those massive storms that produces big waves oftentimes slam that island, um, and... But what makes that wave so raw and so heavy is, well, it is really cold water, but it's the, the, the bathymetry, the bottom, the, the, what we would call the reef, which is really just rocks there, has a bunch of... It's an un- an uneven surface. And so as-

00:26:30
Eric Weinstein: You've seen it mapped?

00:26:31
Kai Lenny: Uh, no, but I just know from experience.

00:26:33
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

00:26:33
Kai Lenny: And, um, I mean, if you, y- you can look into videos about... They, they basically talk a lot about all these other big waves in the world, but-

00:26:40
Eric Weinstein: Well, 'cause I, I think in Teahupo'o I've s- I've saw underwater photography of the wave breaking from below, and it's one of the most confusing and gorgeous things I've ever seen.

00:26:50
Kai Lenny: It's pretty... I mean, there's always, like, hidden features to reefs or to the bottom contours-

00:26:56
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:26:56
Kai Lenny: ... that you don't necessarily realize. But for the most part, if you've been surfing a long time, and especially in big waves, certain things equal other things, so-

00:27:06
Eric Weinstein: So you can infer what the bottom must look like from the gnarly aspect of that face?

00:27:10
Kai Lenny: Yeah, just by seeing those ledges in-

00:27:12
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:27:12
Kai Lenny: ... in the, um, the ledges within the face. So this wave, the way it breaks is it's like a right-hander Teahupo'o, but maybe not quite as displacing of the ocean, but it has all these, like, um, steps, they call them-

00:27:26
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:27:26
Kai Lenny: ... in the face of the wave, so miniature waves within the wave. You could have, like, four miniature waves in the face, and that is like if you go to a river, and you look at a river, and, and you see a little standing wave.

00:27:36
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:27:36
Kai Lenny: Right before, you'll see some turbulence right before. That's because there's s- lightly uneven rocks right before it. And so underwater, there's these rocks that come up that kind of ever so slightly displace the wave in such a way that it makes these mini waves in between. Um, but everyone, the way people typically ride it is they kind of, those are speed bumps, and they try to get through that as quick as they can to get into the barrel. And I'd say my vision for it, and it's a scary one, anything you try new in big waves is horrifying [laughs] 'cause it's like the consequences are severe beatdowns and, you know, possibly drowning, but is hitting these small little waves and doing aerial maneuvers off of them, and then-

00:28:17
Eric Weinstein: Dude

00:28:17
Kai Lenny: ... as soon as you land, have the whole wave break over you, and you're in the tube, and then come out. It's really like being a drug addict, and you just need a harder drug or something [laughs] because you can ride big waves all the time, you can surf in general all the time, but for me, I feel like I need to constantly be upping it because it's not as satisfying as the last time I did it. And also, I'm all about progression as well. Like, I love getting the, the feeling of getting better, and maybe that go- coincides with it.

00:28:43
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:28:43
Kai Lenny: Never done drugs in my life, but I can imagine [laughs] what it might, must be like.

00:28:48
Eric Weinstein: Yes, yes, you have.

00:28:49
Kai Lenny: Yeah.

00:28:49
Eric Weinstein: Yes, you have.

00:28:49
Kai Lenny: I guess it is a drug, but a natural one.

00:28:51
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:28:51
Kai Lenny: You know? [laughs]

00:28:52
Eric Weinstein: Well, this is the, this is the thing when I look at... I mean, it, and again, I don't view you within surfing. I view you as, like, uh, Rodney Mullen or Eddie Van Halen or Alex Honnold. Like, they're just these people who are meant to change what we know about each of these sports. Now, they're all within a context. You have a lot of colleagues who you're learning from and you're teaching.

00:29:17
Kai Lenny: Yeah.

00:29:17
Eric Weinstein: But I do see you as... What do you see as differentiating your approach that, uh, you know, if everybody's got kind of a secret signature, and you were talking about your own expression relative to the wave, what would you say is defining the difference? What am I picking up? And I don't know anything about surfing at all.

00:29:35
Kai Lenny: Well, I think f- from my own personal perspective, I'm just kind of... And I think a lot of other people that do really cool things, like I think I've heard Alex Honnold talk about this as well, it's like you don't really know any better. It's just kind of who you are, and it kind of sort of happens, and it's, and in my perspective, it is sort of the environment that you've spent the most time in or that experience that led to this point. And so when I go out on the water, it's not like I'm going out there with the intention to change things or try to recreate the landscape. It's more like, "Oh, sudden I got this idea, and that sounds really fun, and I think I could do it," you know? It's like, it starts with a little whisper in your head like, "Maybe this is possible." And then you do it, and then all of a sudden you look around, and people appreciate it, and- Without people appreciating it, I don't think, um, I would know if it was significant or not

00:30:29
Eric Weinstein: You, you need the feedback loop.

00:30:30
Kai Lenny: Um-

00:30:30
Eric Weinstein: Like, I think Rodney Mullen was basically having a conversation with himself

00:30:34
Kai Lenny: ... yeah, like, well, I know what I want to do, but sometimes, like, when you're surfing a big wave, you don't know how big the wave is behind you, for example. If I never saw a photo or if no one told me if it was gnarly, I might get so used to it-

00:30:47
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:30:48
Kai Lenny: ... and so comfortable. I was talking to my brother about this the other day about being, starting to get desensitized by certain size waves now. I mean, I spent, out of the last two weeks-

00:30:58
Eric Weinstein: It's a little terrifying.

00:30:59
Kai Lenny: Yeah, it is, but you get comfortable, you know? You spend so much time in it. I spent the last eight days surfing big waves, um, out of two weeks, and I was in Nazaré, and then I went to Jaws, and-

00:31:09
Eric Weinstein: So Nazaré is this Portuguese wave that comes out of a, an underwater canyon-

00:31:14
Kai Lenny: Exactly

00:31:14
Eric Weinstein: ... where all of, like, the energy is being focused, and it may be the tallest-

00:31:19
Kai Lenny: That's a-

00:31:19
Eric Weinstein: ... close to the tallest surfable wave in the world?

00:31:21
Kai Lenny: Yeah, that is w- that's probably the most consistent big wave, and I think we should... That's an in-depth conversation to have someplace. Um, but real quick, I'm just, to, to kind of finish off this-

00:31:33
Eric Weinstein: Oh, sorry, didn't mean to-

00:31:34
Kai Lenny: No, no, no

00:31:34
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:31:34
Kai Lenny: ... but to finish off sort of this kind of thought on becoming desensitized a little bit and talking about, like-

00:31:40
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:31:40
Kai Lenny: ... how you kinda need feedback. There was this one particular wave, I'm not meaning to toot my horn at all, but there was this one particular wave w- where I got interesting feedback from my brother afterwards where the way I was approaching it, and I, you might have seen it on my social media, on my Instagram, it was that really big barrel. I was wearing an orange vest.

00:31:58
Eric Weinstein: Ah.

00:31:59
Kai Lenny: And I rode it for a long time, and I ended up getting spit out. It was probably one of my best big wave barrels ever, but the interesting about that is I was r- I was so focused on reading the curve of the wave, and when you're taking off on a wave at Jaws, the whole thing is a horseshoe. It bends around you, and taking in certain aspects of it, I could read what it's gonna do. It's like predicting the future. Like, if it hits the reef just in this way, the wave's gonna barrel really hard. I'm gonna be standing in a cave or standing in, like, a huge tunnel. And without thinking twice or how big it was, I just bottom turned. I did what we call a check turn, so it's a turn mid-face to burn my speed off the toe board, and then I just stood there, and I lived inside this tube for a couple seconds. But afterwards, I was talking to my brother, and he was like, he's like, "How was that barrel earlier?" You know, he jumped off the cliff, and I picked him up on the Jet Ski, and I was getting him some waves. And he was like, he's like, "How do you stall for that and, and, and, like, do that?" And I'm like, "Honestly, like, I don't know."

00:32:57
Eric Weinstein: You have no idea.

00:32:57
Kai Lenny: "Was it big? Like, it didn't feel that big." And he's like, "That was the biggest wave of the day so far." And, and I was like, "God, that's really kinda weird. I think I'm, like, getting a little desensitized by what I'm seeing," because it's becoming such an often occurrence that it's becoming my normal all of a sudden. And yeah, it's still terrifying. Surfing big waves at all is terrifying, but-

00:33:16
Eric Weinstein: So you took, like, a huge drop on, I think it was on Jaws, that, like, the world was buzzing about. It-

00:33:22
Kai Lenny: Yeah, yeah, that was, like, last year.

00:33:24
Eric Weinstein: And can you talk about that, and is that an example of something where you didn't realize just how gnarly it was until you looked at the footage?

00:33:30
Kai Lenny: Yeah, absolutely. So, um, I had been riding, there w- we had a big wave competition, and it got too big for paddle and surfing. So the waves were in the 60 to 70, 80-foot range, and, um, I decided to go tow-in surfing because with the-

00:33:44
Eric Weinstein: So they called this off?

00:33:45
Kai Lenny: Yeah, so we were in the middle of this contest, and the waves just got too big, and the problem with it getting too big was also the wind factor.

00:33:52
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:33:52
Kai Lenny: It got really windy, and the wind was blowing up the face, making it almo- really difficult to catch the wave, 'cause it was just trying to blow you out the back, and if you-

00:34:01
Eric Weinstein: So your surfboard turns into an airfoil.

00:34:03
Kai Lenny: It becomes a wing.

00:34:04
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:34:04
Kai Lenny: Yeah, and you start flying through the air, and to do that in competition, I mean, it's just really dangerous. I mean, that morning, the heat before they canceled it, um, guys were passing out underwater, hitting the water so hard, having concussions. They were blacking out. People were coming up spitting blood out of their lungs. Maybe one person in the final heat made a wave, and that's when the decision came, "Okay, it's, like, too gnarly." Like, we're all for big wave surfing and big wave competition-

00:34:30
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:34:30
Kai Lenny: ... but in a contest, it's never worth losing someone's life over anything, you know? It's not like big wave surfers get paid [laughs] that much either to compete.

00:34:38
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:34:39
Kai Lenny: Um, and so they, they ended up c- canceling it. It was a, a group decision from m- most of the surfers that they didn't wanna continue 'cause for fear of someone not coming home to their family. And, um-

00:34:51
Eric Weinstein: But on the other hand, a total moron might think, "Cool, there's no one in the water. I'm gonna go for it."

00:34:56
Kai Lenny: I guess I'm that moron. [laughs]

00:34:57
Eric Weinstein: That's what I'm talking about.

00:34:59
Kai Lenny: Yeah.

00:34:59
Eric Weinstein: So tell me about what happens next.

00:35:00
Kai Lenny: Well, so-

00:35:01
Eric Weinstein: I mean, I just saw this stuff-

00:35:02
Kai Lenny: Could've-

00:35:03
Eric Weinstein: ... and I, I, I flipped out.

00:35:04
Kai Lenny: Yeah.

00:35:04
Eric Weinstein: The footage is insane.

00:35:05
Kai Lenny: Well, so I couldn't paddle anymore, and with tow-in surfing, which is when, and to explain to people who don't know what tow-in surfing is, it's a Jet Ski with a w- a, a wakeboard rope on the back of it.

00:35:17
Eric Weinstein: Mm-hmm.

00:35:18
Kai Lenny: And you use it to get towed into these massive waves. So you eliminate paddling altogether, and it's just a slingshot into these giant waves, and you're riding a board that's much smaller. Versus a 10-foot board-

00:35:27
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:35:27
Kai Lenny: ... you're on a f- six-foot board. And, and so I just ended up having the best session of my life up to that point because there was no one around. Everyone didn't wanna surf because they didn't want to inj- get injured because the contest was gonna run the next day-

00:35:42
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:35:42
Kai Lenny: ... 'cause the waves would be smaller. But for me, big wave surfing was never about competing. It was always a spiritual aspect. That's where I found my s- kind of, it was almost became my religion because when you look at a big wave, it's like looking in a mirror. In that moment-

00:35:55
Eric Weinstein: Dude, this is the most transcendent thing. I think this goes under the name, uh, uh, you can find it on Kai Show, right?

00:36:01
Kai Lenny: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's, they made videos, and they called it the Kai Show because I was the only one out.

00:36:06
Eric Weinstein: I'm just saying that it's, it, you, you can, you can search on it from that.

00:36:09
Kai Lenny: Yeah.

00:36:10
Eric Weinstein: And what I got out of it was, was transcendence. Like, there's this one man- ... in this very vulnerable position. You don't need to know much about surfing to know what kind of risks you're taking out there.

00:36:22
Kai Lenny: Yeah. Well, so, a- it stems from passion first, and then it stems from a lot of hard work and focus and determination, and over- not overcoming fear, but being kind of in line with it. As soon as you eliminate fear, it's when you get injured, especially in big waves, because you make brass- brash decisions.

00:36:40
Eric Weinstein: Well, so you are, in essence, to me, a risk manager.

00:36:44
Kai Lenny: Yeah.

00:36:44
Eric Weinstein: Like, you, you wouldn't be here to be having this conversation if you weren't playing the same role that like if you were r- running a hedge fund, you have to figure out, what can I afford to take, what can't I afford to take?

00:36:54
Kai Lenny: It's a calculation.

00:36:55
Eric Weinstein: It's a calculation.

00:36:56
Kai Lenny: Yep.

00:36:56
Eric Weinstein: And so the, like, we all look at this stuff. I mean, and it's also, there's, like, a very weird aspect of the psychology. I, I mean, I don't know it in surfing, but I know it in other places. Um, on the one hand, it's like a very alpha male, uh, dominant sort of activity looking.

00:37:12
Kai Lenny: Yeah.

00:37:13
Eric Weinstein: But on the other side of that, you have to submit to the wave. Like, it, it is an-

00:37:18
Kai Lenny: Yeah, you're never gonna win against the wave [laughs]

00:37:19
Eric Weinstein: ... it is an, it is an act of submission, right? And like-

00:37:22
Kai Lenny: And acceptance

00:37:23
Eric Weinstein: ... and acceptance, because once you've committed to that thing, your choices disappear to an extent. You have a limited amount that you, you can't, you can't say, "Nah, nah, too big for me" once you've already committed. You're in.

00:37:34
Kai Lenny: Oh, yeah, no. Like, yeah, I mean, what I love most about big wave surfing and the draw is you look at a big wave and it's a mirror, and you realize who y- like, there's no hiding, there's no lying to yourself. Who you are in that moment in your life is right in front of you, and you know it clear as day. And you can either work on it or you can be stoked that, you know, of who you are in that moment. Because it's, it's ... You're, you're, you're facing death straight in the face, and fear has never been more relevant or more powerful in that moment. And, um, there's, there's something so satisfying and scary though of f- accepting, acceptance of fear. It's like a release. It's like relief. You kick out of a big wave and you were just on that, the edge of your life, and if you fell, you were just worried you may never come back up or you might get absolutely destroyed. And the fear just washes off of you like, you know, dirt in a shower, and you just stand there and, and it's just, you feel pure. You know? It's like all your [laughs] sins are forgiven or something. And, um, and, and I just, that's, I, that's what I love so much about big wave surfing, is it just makes me feel most alive. And the more I do it, I, I, I, I think it's given me, it's making everyday normal life harder, like, to, to cope with.

00:38:56
Eric Weinstein: So we ta- I've talked about this, um, recently with a pornographic actress, that there's an issue about what happens when you do something that hyper-stimulates you, and you have a trouble getting back to a normal baseline, because there is this sort of hedonic shift in what your normal is.

00:39:14
Kai Lenny: Sure.

00:39:14
Eric Weinstein: And in large measure, what I see is, how do you have a normal day after your day at the office being playing on the sides of temporary cliffs?

00:39:23
Kai Lenny: Oh, it's pu- I, I, I mean, if I'm being at all honest, it's, a normal average day is torture. Like-

00:39:31
Eric Weinstein: Torture for you

00:39:32
Kai Lenny: ... it's, it's, like, 'cause you don't have that same stimulation. You're not ... There's, I guess things start to lose purpose, because when you're riding a big wave, there's a purpose of living.

00:39:42
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:39:42
Kai Lenny: You know? And the purpose of, of, like, living in as you're not, you're, you don't wanna die, but you're also, you're also experiencing something so pure and profound, and it feels bigger than yourself, you know? Like, the act of riding a big wave feels, there's almost like that, the egotistical kind of feeling godly for one moment, you know? Like-

00:40:01
Eric Weinstein: Well, so this is the thing

00:40:02
Kai Lenny: ... flying too close to the sun like Icarus, you know? And-

00:40:04
Eric Weinstein: Exactly

00:40:05
Kai Lenny: ... waiting for your wings to melt

00:40:06
Eric Weinstein: ... hubris in front of the gods. You see-

00:40:08
Kai Lenny: Right

00:40:08
Eric Weinstein: ... that's the first element of Greek tragedy. And what I see is that I'm used to watching big waves where there's some different dot on every wave, and I watch the dot, which is this human being, just, just hang on for the ride. And if they can just do that, that was, that was what I was used to.

00:40:24
Kai Lenny: Mm-hmm.

00:40:24
Eric Weinstein: And then, like, I see the dot jump and do a 360 on the wa- like it's playing, and it do- it feels, like, mythically wrong. Like, wait, that wave is huge, but I'm gonna play with it rather than just-

00:40:41
Kai Lenny: Hmm

00:40:41
Eric Weinstein: ... just submit and accept it.

00:40:43
Kai Lenny: Well, so kinda like if you've, have you, you've watched Christopher Nolan's Inception, right? You know how they go from a dream into another dream?

00:40:50
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:40:50
Kai Lenny: The way I look at, like, riding a big wave is you have the baseline, which is just the act of riding it, going straight, surviving it, kicking out. You have that 30-second experience.

00:41:00
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:41:00
Kai Lenny: And then you can, and then there's, and, and, and there, that takes a certain amount of focus. And for me, doing maneuvers on big waves, all of a sudden it's, it's, it's like putting that one scary experience and putting it to the side, and as I'm rotating through a maneuver or a trick, like a 360 down the wave, I have to, I'm looking at the water, I'm focused on what's going on with myself, and then it's like when I land, I pop back into a different part of reality, and then when I kick out, I'm back to, like, normal reality, my, my s- my s- my baseline.

00:41:34
Eric Weinstein: So you're aware of several different Kai Lenys living between the same set of ears that trade off on an individual wave?

00:41:41
Kai Lenny: 100%.

00:41:42
Eric Weinstein: Wow.

00:41:42
Kai Lenny: Yeah, so and I could go, like, I feel like the most I've been able to go is maybe three levels deep, um, or maybe four. Four, when you go four levels deep, it's when you're riding a wave and all of a sudden you don't, you're not, you're on such the edge, you don't know that, you don't know what you're doing to make it work, and when you kick out, you start questioning what you did, and then you actually forget how you did it. You're like, "What just happened?" And it's kind of like me sitting here in s- heart of Los Angeles, I almost feel like that other Kai Lenny that does it. I sometimes question, like, gosh, well, I, I've done it a m- like, let's say I did it 100 times, but I question if I can ever do it again. Like, I don't know if I have the confidence to say that I can do it again.

00:42:27
Eric Weinstein: Well, this is the thing, like, in this convers-

00:42:28
Kai Lenny: 'Cause it's like a different person

00:42:29
Eric Weinstein: ... in this conversation, you're just some cool dude that I met in Maui. And- There's nothing that suggests that the person that I've seen on these myriad different videos is that guy. In other words, you're talking about this, but-

00:42:46
Kai Lenny: Oh, yeah

00:42:46
Eric Weinstein: ... there's no aspect of the, the person who does those incredible things. You're just now just saying, "Well, here's what I remember about that."

00:42:54
Kai Lenny: Yeah.

00:42:55
Eric Weinstein: And so when you meet somebody, like, you know, if, if you, if you're talking to Albert Einstein, and you were going to McDonald's with him and you were just ordering a hamburger, there would be nothing Albert Einstein-ish about his act of ordering a hamburger. And so, like, it's a very weird thing the way the mundane and the transcendent collide.

00:43:13
Kai Lenny: Mm-hmm.

00:43:14
Eric Weinstein: And sometimes the person who has this transcendent ability, um, s- when they're in their mundane head, they can't even imagine that that's who they are. Do you ever have that?

00:43:24
Kai Lenny: Oh, yeah. No, I, I totally have that. It's kind of like the fear, "Will I ever get to that level again?" sort of thing. But there's a, there's a moment when I, I, I'm starting to identify when the switch happens, and it usually happens... Because to get to big waves, you usually round a corner, whether it's on a boat or a car, whatever, or walking down the beach. You come around a corner and all of a sudden the wave is revealed. It's like the reveal of a movie. Like-

00:43:48
Eric Weinstein: Okay

00:43:49
Kai Lenny: ... all of a sudden you see the monster or you see the building or you see whatever it is that you're-

00:43:52
Eric Weinstein: Do you still feel that with Peahi?

00:43:53
Kai Lenny: ... searching. Oh my God, every time. So you turn the corner and you see plumes of spray going hundreds of feet in the air. And, and in the distance, maybe a mile away, you see this monster breaking, and, and your heart starts to skip a little bit, and you're like, "Oh my gosh," like, "Here we go." And I can start feeling the switch kind of starting to move. And then all of a sudden I pull up and I see the, the canvas that is the wave breaking and the perfection. And any fear that I had the night before... 'Cause I, it's not like I don't live in fear at all. Like, the night before I'm, like, scratching my head, I'm like, "What have I gotten myself into? What am I doing?"

00:44:28
Eric Weinstein: Was it like Bruce-

00:44:28
Kai Lenny: I have this whole crew come in

00:44:29
Eric Weinstein: ... Bruce Banner is gonna have to fight, and he's not the Hulk yet, and so he has to approach the fight, and before he becomes the Hulk at some level, it's terrifying because you're signing up to do something that you're not capable of doing until you make the transformation?

00:44:43
Kai Lenny: I'd say it's a great analogy. Um, definitely. Because I'll pull up on the jet ski and all of a sudden just see a wave just spit, and it's a 60-foot wave and it's terrifying. And, and, and, you know, everything about it is like you want to avoid being caught in there. You know, like, how can a human body live through something like that?

00:44:59
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:44:59
Kai Lenny: But then all of a sudden I get all this energy, and I f- and I'm like, "Let's go. Let's go." And I'm, whoever I'm with, I'm trying to rush them off the jet ski, or I'm trying to grab my board to paddle out, or I'm getting them to drive me, and I'm like, "Let's go." And I'll find myself sitting out on the water doing, like... I have kind of this breathing exercise I do where it's like breathe in for two seconds, out for two seconds. It's just really mellow. And it's just really to get a lot of oxygen in my lungs, but it's also to, like, have, like, sharpness of mind. And, and then th- sometimes four waves in a set will come in. So it's not like just one big wave comes in and breaks. There could be four stacked in the horizon. We call those a set. And, and, and it's like, it's always a bit of chess to try to figure out which one's gonna be the best wave. 'Cause I've had millions of waves where I've kicked out... Maybe not millions, but lots of waves where I've kicked out, and you see the perfect big wave behind it, and you're like, "Oh my God, why did I go on the first one?" And you're kicking yourself. But, so, so I'm usually, I'm usually really, like, I would say reserved in the fact when... Like, I hate asking people for, to go out of their way for something. Like, "Hey, you know, is it okay?" Like, even if I'm staying at someone's house, like, "Is it okay if I get some water?" You know, it's just who I am, I would say, on like a base level. But all of a sudden, I think my commander inside me or kind of like, um, the general sort of comes out where it's like my driver, I'm telling him exactly when he should... I'm like, "Number two," which is the second wave. "No, no, no, no. Faster, faster. Let's go." And all of a sudden I'm yelling. And I love this person and, and later on I feel guilty and I sometimes apologize, but they understand that I'm out there with a purpose and trying to catch a wave. And it's like-

00:46:37
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, you do have a s-

00:46:37
Kai Lenny: ... I'm trying to command a situation.

00:46:39
Eric Weinstein: You do have some kind of a split personality. Because, like, when we came out and visited you, you could not have been more hospitable to some... Like, I, I mean, the funny part is, if I understand correctly, you first found out about me because you were a Joe Rogan watcher.

00:46:53
Kai Lenny: Yeah, exactly.

00:46:53
Eric Weinstein: And I, I said, "Hey, are you watching what's going on in surfing? That's where innovation is happening now." And I shouted out your name. Then I see on Instagram, "Hey, this dude shouted out my name or something." I'm thinking like, "How, how does that guy even know that I exist?"

00:47:06
Kai Lenny: That... You know what? It's the same way how does someone like you know I exist.

00:47:09
Eric Weinstein: Oh, no.

00:47:10
Kai Lenny: It's like-

00:47:10
Eric Weinstein: I think it's funny

00:47:11
Kai Lenny: ... I just feel like, you know, w- in my world, I'm trying to break out of my own personal bubble. Like, and it's not a bubble in terms of like get seen by other people more, but it's like I think we all find ourselves in our own world. And, and, and I, and if I, if, if I've learned anything from big wave riding is, is trying to be uncomfortable more often.

00:47:32
Eric Weinstein: Mm-hmm.

00:47:32
Kai Lenny: Like, every day if I can be a little uncomfortable, it's probably positive, because it means that I'm experiencing something that I'm not used to it, whatsoever, you know?

00:47:42
Eric Weinstein: Let's talk about some of the technology that's changing what it is that you do. If you think about, like, you're a painter, you talk about canvas.

00:47:48
Kai Lenny: Yeah.

00:47:49
Eric Weinstein: All right. Well, now you got more brushes and paints to paint with. So what I see, and, and correct me if I'm not getting it from outside, is that this foil, the hydrofoil underneath, uh, the boards is making it possible to be, like, effectively Aladdin on a magic carpet, where you're surfing above the water. Then there's this kite thing going on where you're really accessing the wind to jump at levels that just seem absolutely insane. There's safety equipment-

00:48:19
Kai Lenny: Yeah

00:48:19
Eric Weinstein: ... which is weirdly, like, only recently available to decrease the, the, the- ... probability that you're gonna get held down

00:48:29
Kai Lenny: I think what all those things have in common, and this is what's really cool about water sports, um, and the, the real connection, is things are invented out of necessity, just like everything in life. But really it's, it's in- created in the name of fun. Like, "How can I have [laughs] more fun? What can we do to make it more fun? Oh, this is the solution." And like big wave surfing, it's fun until you drown. So that inflation vest you're talking about, it's a similar concept as the one that's under your seat when you fly on an airplane. CO2 canister and airbag in a wetsuit. Pull a cord, the thing inflates, and you become a buoy. And, and it's in the name of fun, because now, all of a sudden, it's given people like me the opportunity to ride these big waves and focus less on trying to not drown, but more on, what could we do on these big waves? Like, how, what kind of experiences can I have on them? And that's where I say that the limit is still yet to be totally tapped into, especially with tow-in surfing. Paddle surfing, people are pu- constantly pushing the edge, because it's, it's an act of, it's, it's really like going hunting with, you know, a, a, a knife. You know? It's like going hunting with a knife versus, you know, going out with all the technology in the world, and it's just different. It's a different approach. And some might say it's, uh, it's not pure, whatever. Well, those people don't actually surf [laughs] big waves, so who cares? Um, but, uh, for me, I love technology.

00:49:55
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:49:55
Kai Lenny: And I love when they merge with, like-

00:49:57
Eric Weinstein: What's the-

00:49:58
Kai Lenny: ... the passion

00:49:58
Eric Weinstein: ... craziest thing that you're thinking about with technology?

00:50:01
Kai Lenny: Well, I'm constantly trying to figure out how to do something better, you know?

00:50:04
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

00:50:04
Kai Lenny: And I think what blows people's minds away the most is the hydrofoil-

00:50:08
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:50:08
Kai Lenny: ... and what those capabilities are. It's like an underwater airplane attached to a large fin, attached to a board, and lets you glide like you're a seagull, and gives you an illusion of flight. And I think almost everybody has a dream of wanting to just soar through the air, you know, like be a bird. And you can't see what's lifting you up out of the water when you're riding these things. All you can s- all you feel, see is the board around you and the water moving. And when I first did it, I started when I was nine years old, but when I kind of r-

00:50:37
Eric Weinstein: How old are you now?

00:50:38
Kai Lenny: I'm 27.

00:50:39
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

00:50:40
Kai Lenny: Um, but, but there was, 2016 was kind of the year of reinvention of it, kind of the rebirth of it. Originally, it was adopted from the air chair, which was what you would ride behind a water ski boat, and those guys would sit down on. They'd do incredible maneuvers, but they had the rope and, you know, you had to be-

00:50:57
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:50:57
Kai Lenny: ... towed around a lake. And then Laird Hamilton, Rush Randall, um, Dave Kalama, Darrick Doerner, all these guys, Strapped crew, took it, put snowboard boots on it, and their goal was to ride the biggest waves ever ridden. Another problem with riding big waves, and this is what led them to the hydrofoil, was the chops going up the face of the wave gets so big that on a normal board you can't go fast enough.

00:51:21
Eric Weinstein: Mm.

00:51:21
Kai Lenny: Hydrofoil's a f- giant fin. It cuts right through it like a hot knife through butter. And so they, that was, they were pushing it in the big wave realm, and then come 2016, I had a vision of instead of trying to ride the biggest waves in the world on this, why don't we try to ride the smallest waves in the world on this? And that opened the door, the floodgates, for making terrible surf anywhere in the world feel like it's the best waves on the planet. Um-

00:51:46
Eric Weinstein: So cool

00:51:47
Kai Lenny: ... and because you don't need a perfect wave to feel like you're on one, because you, you can glide on parts of the wave that are far away from where a traditional surfboard has its limit, and it also opened the door for crossing large bodies of water. Now, for fun, what we do in Hawaii, and we do races now, is we cross between each island riding a board that's ma- at times no wider than four feet, and you're hovering, and you feel like a bird. And you go from one island to another.

00:52:17
Eric Weinstein: Do you go from, like, Molokai to, uh, Oahu?

00:52:19
Kai Lenny: Yeah, like Molokai to Oa- every island you can, you can go between. It's just how long do you wanna be out on the ocean for?

00:52:25
Eric Weinstein: Right, okay.

00:52:25
Kai Lenny: You know, what's your time? And Molokai to Oahu is for, is, um, is a, uh, 32-mile channel crossing, and I can do it just above two hours. Two-hour mark is right there-

00:52:36
Eric Weinstein: Wow

00:52:36
Kai Lenny: ... which is exciting. But the coolest thing [laughs] is, is, like, if y- f- there's a, when I first did it, there was this, there was this euphoric feeling-

00:52:44
Eric Weinstein: So you're doing this by pumping?

00:52:47
Kai Lenny: Well, so pumping is kind of like the flapping of a bird, you know? Like, that's how they create more lift when they need it. But if you play your cards right and you, the best way to read the open ocean swells is imagine you're, you're playing a game of chess or if you were playing kind of like, um, uh, you know, what's that game, like, in an arcade where the ball bounces around and it, you get a bunch of different points, and you try to get it into that one, like, 1,000-point hole? Gosh, what is it called again? Um...

00:53:15
Eric Weinstein: Not pachinko. Not the Japanese one or pinball.

00:53:17
Kai Lenny: Pinball.

00:53:18
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

00:53:18
Kai Lenny: Okay, you're trying to pinball between swells.

00:53:20
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

00:53:20
Kai Lenny: Ting, ting, ting. And if you, you go from one swell to the next to the next to the next-

00:53:24
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:53:24
Kai Lenny: ... you're, you're, you're gaining the energy and the lift underwater, the vortex that's coming up these little waves and creating lift, so you don't have to pump. So in a perfect, in a perfect line, you're, you're just turning and you're snowboarding. It feels like you're going downhill the whole time. If you, and you might pump to get to the next swell if you have to, if it's spread out far enough, and it's so, I would say more, even, it's physically taxing. You use every fiber of your body, because you're using your arms to create energy to help your legs pump this board to go faster, 'cause it's always about going quicker. And then your mind has to focus on reading the ocean, and if you mistime it or you misread it, you stop. You come to a dead stop. And so if you, r- if you're really on it, it's like reading, I f- I feel like it's w- when I read a really, like, um, dense book-

00:54:15
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:54:15
Kai Lenny: ... with lots of heavy words that [laughs] I don't understand and have to really think about it-

00:54:18
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:54:18
Kai Lenny: ... that is like doing a channel crossing, because every single wave you see isn't the same. It's all slightly different, and you're trying to navigate it, and it's playing chess, you know? You, you, if you make one mistake, all of a sudden you're You're, you're down

00:54:33
Eric Weinstein: That's interesting. I mean, I have to say I- I've seen you do this, and it doesn't have the same visual appeal if you're not part of this world. I've also seen the motorized, uh, version of this, which definitely looks like a magic carpet for sure, and it is, it is bizarre just to s- I mean, the physics almost don't feel like they make sense to see the board that far out of the water. Um-

00:54:56
Kai Lenny: It, it's funny 'cause it's all physics

00:54:58
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, it's all physics

00:54:58
Kai Lenny: It's just all... Everything that I'm doing now, I mean, obviously, um, is, is all physics, and I, I never, when I was a kid, I never thought I'd be into physics, but the only way physics un- I understand physics, it's through kind of these devices or kinda these approaches. It's almost my, my version of math. You know, it's like, well, if you take a board here, and you do this, and with the wind, and you rotate that way, you know, it's like-

00:55:24
Eric Weinstein: Well, but let's talk about this in a weird context. So there's th- now there are these engineered waves

00:55:29
Kai Lenny: Oh, yeah

00:55:31
Eric Weinstein: And people are actually saying, "Look, uh, if you want a, a regular experience, we can design a wave in a wave pool and make it, uh, as pretty and regular as you want." I don't know that we've gotten to the point where you can dial your own irregularities into it, but maybe that's coming up.

00:55:48
Kai Lenny: Yeah, I think what makes surfing so fun is when you're on the wave, it's the unpredictability. You, you can kind of read what the wave's doing, and you can make the most informed and best decisions on it, but you get on these mechanical waves like at the Surf Ranch or, you know-

00:56:03
Eric Weinstein: This is Kelly Slater's pool

00:56:04
Kai Lenny: ... Kelly Slater's pool, and it's almost, like, too perfect. You get on it, and you're, it's like you're all of a sudden, um, having to figure out your own runs, right? You're like, "Okay, I can do two turns here, and I can get barreled, and I can do this." And you can sort of do that in the ocean, but w- I mean, the wave pool is insane if you wanna get better because you get the wave of the day every single time you stand up, and [laughs] a lot of times you never get the wave of the day when you're surfing in the ocean. I think there's something about being in saltwater, and I think there's something about kinda that natural element and being in line with nature in one of her most dynamic moments-

00:56:41
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:56:41
Kai Lenny: ... that is, that is, it makes you feel good, like really, really good. But that being said, as a professional athlete, the more time I can spend in a wave pool, the better because it just means that I'm able to focus on things that I couldn't... I may only get one chance to try. That's why surfing's so hard. It's the hardest sport in the world because you go out there with the intention to learn a new trick. You may never get the opportunity, one, or you may get one opportunity, and you may blow it because you're trying to learn how to do it.

00:57:11
Eric Weinstein: Or you need a high end, and the only way to get high end is in a pool like that-

00:57:15
Kai Lenny: Yeah

00:57:15
Eric Weinstein: ... or to live, uh, you know, o-

00:57:18
Kai Lenny: You, or travel

00:57:19
Eric Weinstein: Or travel

00:57:19
Kai Lenny: You end up traveling a ton, and for most people, they can't travel a ton. For me, I'm lucky that it's in my job description to do it. With big wave surfing, now the thing about this with big wave surfing, big wave surfing is so rare. When, the times when I most wanna go out there and do something-

00:57:35
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:57:35
Kai Lenny: ... I'm the most motivated, the most physically fit, it just doesn't exist nowhere in the world. There's moments, like right now, there's nowhere on Earth that is breaking the way I would want it to break or big enough, and so it's like, "Man." You know, you're looking at the forecast, and you're jumping on flights two days before the swell hits. You arrive the day before, jet-lagged from Hawaii all the way to Europe.

00:57:55
Eric Weinstein: You said surfers t- you said to me, "Surfers are some of the world's best [laughs] meteorologists."

00:57:59
Kai Lenny: Yeah, no, surfers, without a doubt, are probably some of the best meteorologists because there's more at stake than just th- a huge storm destroying something. There's, what's at stake is your enjoyment and, and, and it's personal. It's really personal. So the people I talk to that are surfers that know how to read the ocean, read the, the, the information that comes out of NOAA or any of these other buoys that are scattered across the planet, satellites, they, they can tell you to, to basically the minute when a certain wave is gonna come in, and that's what's really cool is, like, you, without you knowing it, you're a [laughs] meteorologist because you're like, "Okay, this is, this tide mixed with this swell direction mixed with these winds is gonna make it this way." And y- and the really good guys, girls, they can call it. Like, "Okay, at 7:00 AM, the waves are gonna be pumping. It's gonna turn on." And then you show up, 6:00 AM, it's not really that good. 7:00 AM, boom, it hits. So it's, it's really almost predicting the future.

00:59:07
Eric Weinstein: So another question I had is about physics is, um, there's this question about what is possible, and I remember-

00:59:14
Kai Lenny: Yeah

00:59:14
Eric Weinstein: ... a description back in the early skateboarding days of, uh, like, uh, Dogtown.

00:59:19
Kai Lenny: Yeah.

00:59:19
Eric Weinstein: Um, there was this question about nobody knew what happened, what would happen if you went over the lip of a swimming pool. Like, they, I think they couldn't calculate the actual physical consequences, and so the question-

00:59:31
Kai Lenny: What do you mean the lip of a swimming pool?

00:59:33
Eric Weinstein: Well, like, you know, you had this drought in the early '70s in California and all the-

00:59:36
Kai Lenny: Oh, right, right, right, right. Okay, gotcha. I was, for some reason, I was thinking something different, but with skating, go above it, right?

00:59:42
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:59:42
Kai Lenny: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:59:43
Eric Weinstein: And I think Tony Alva, if I recall correctly-

00:59:45
Kai Lenny: Uh-huh

00:59:45
Eric Weinstein: ... was the first-

00:59:45
Kai Lenny: He did, like, the first air or something, right?

00:59:47
Eric Weinstein: ... was the first guy who said, like, "I'm gonna try it, and we'll find out whether..." Like, they didn't know what would happen physically or something, and it turned out that it worked, and then it was like, "Oh, okay, that is possible." Like-

00:59:58
Kai Lenny: Now look at them

00:59:59
Eric Weinstein: And now look at them.

01:00:00
Kai Lenny: My God.

01:00:01
Eric Weinstein: And I wonder, like, are there things where you're pretty sure it's possible, but you, like, you don't know whether it's physically possible?

01:00:09
Kai Lenny: Usually you get... I feel like I get about three-quarters of the way there, and any, you can't go any further, and you have to just try it at a certain point.

01:00:18
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

01:00:18
Kai Lenny: It's like, it's like, "I think I could do that." And you've wrapped... You, you've kind of played it all out in your head. Like, "I got this equipment. This equipment's gonna allow me to do that. Okay, I need this type of wave because it's gonna allow me to do this."

01:00:29
Eric Weinstein: So what are you thinking about? What's up next that might be possible that you don't know that it's possible?

01:00:34
Kai Lenny: You know what? It's so funny because a lot of the things just sort of hit you like an epiphany.

01:00:38
Eric Weinstein: Really?

01:00:39
Kai Lenny: Like, or like hit you, it's like a baseball bat to the head. All of a sudden you're just like, "What?" And I can't tell you what's next because-

01:00:47
Eric Weinstein: 'Cause you'd have to kill me.

01:00:48
Kai Lenny: Well, no, no. I don't know. It's what's crazy. I'll- this is how it happens.

01:00:53
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:00:53
Kai Lenny: I'll literally be sitting out in the water, and it's [laughs] like all the stars, all, like, m- the five brain cells I have kinda go ting, ting, ting. They all line up, and all of a sudden it's like, "Oh. Oh my God, that was right in front of me the whole time." It's like staring me in the face, but you don't see it.

01:01:09
Eric Weinstein: So give me, give me an example that, of one of those in the past that actually worked.

01:01:12
Kai Lenny: Well, the epiphany was the hydrofoil, for one, because everyone was riding big waves, and I was doing a lot of channel crossings on stand-up paddleboards or prone paddleboards or on a canoe. And that's where your, your board is a wet, the wetted surface, and-

01:01:26
Eric Weinstein: Sorry, you were the guy who thought to, to put the hydrofoil into channel crossings?

01:01:30
Kai Lenny: Yeah.

01:01:31
Eric Weinstein: I didn't know that.

01:01:32
Kai Lenny: Yeah, so that was kind of like, I guess, my sort of contribution to the sport. Um, and it was, it came from necessity to wanna go faster. So I, I basically pushed my physical limits, and I could probably be faster now as I'm older and I'm better trained, blah, blah, blah, equipment's better. But on my stand-up paddleboard, for example, it was like, "Gosh, I just wanna go fast." All my other sports are I'm going fast all the time, and here I'm limited to maybe maximum 14 miles an hour downwind at peak speed. Average, let's say nine miles an hour, 10 miles an hour. And, and so the, it was like, gosh, like, all of a sudden I put like two and two together, I'm like, "Hydrofoil." And then I put downwinder, and they sort of cross, and it's like, well, yeah, obviously that should work. I just need a bigger wing. They were just using too small of wings. That's why you couldn't. You need more lift, you get a bigger wing. And the first time I tried it in a wave, I was like, "This is gonna work. Oh my God."

01:02:30
Eric Weinstein: That's great.

01:02:30
Kai Lenny: "This is gonna work." And then I went and did it, and I ended up paddling like three miles in the middle of the ocean and got up for 100 yards maybe, 'cause the equipment wasn't quite there yet, right?

01:02:40
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:02:41
Kai Lenny: But I got up, and it was just enough to go, "Oh my God." And it just hit me like in the head, 'cause I had been foiling since I was nine years old, like on a tow board with the jet ski and how-

01:02:52
Eric Weinstein: Got it

01:02:52
Kai Lenny: ... you would do it in bigger waves. And, and then with this, it was like, God, I've been doing it since I was nine, and it took me until now, I think I was like, what, 24 or something? No, 25. 2016. And, um, for it to click, and I'm like, "Oh, God, it was right there in front of me the whole time."

01:03:10
Eric Weinstein: What's the... I don't know if you've ever heard about this guy Freeman Dyson, who was at the-

01:03:14
Kai Lenny: Heard the name, yeah

01:03:14
Eric Weinstein: ... Institute for Advanced Study. And he was a great physicist, also a mathematician, did not have a PhD in either subject. He wrote an article which I think might be called Missed Opportunities, and he talks about Freeman Dyson the physicist needed a result of Freeman Dyson the mathematician, and Freeman Dyson the h- human being, who was both of these people, was not having that conversation. So the only person who had the result was Freeman Dyson the mathematician, but the physicist, who was himself, could not figure out how to ask the question to make the connection.

01:03:48
Kai Lenny: Yeah.

01:03:48
Eric Weinstein: And so there, there is this feeling that like, the, the feeling of discovery is often a feeling of stupidity. Like, oh my God, I could've done that at any time and I just didn't.

01:04:00
Kai Lenny: Well, you just don't see it. It doesn't, it's invisible.

01:04:02
Eric Weinstein: It's invisible.

01:04:02
Kai Lenny: And then all of a sudden it's just there.

01:04:04
Eric Weinstein: That's the whole portal concept.

01:04:04
Kai Lenny: And it's clear as day. And you're just [laughs] like-

01:04:07
Eric Weinstein: Right? It's like how do you find-

01:04:08
Kai Lenny: Oh

01:04:08
Eric Weinstein: ... your way out of your, how do you find these epiphanies-

01:04:12
Kai Lenny: Yeah

01:04:12
Eric Weinstein: ... when, and, and like then you go back and you say to yourself, "Well, what was it on that particular day that caused me to look at a wall and really see that there was probably a door in it?" You know, or something like that.

01:04:24
Kai Lenny: And it's about being kind of open-minded to anything, and that's, I think-

01:04:28
Eric Weinstein: Permeable. Yeah

01:04:28
Kai Lenny: ... well, well, going back to being uncomfortable all the time. If you're willing to be uncomfortable all the time, you're willing to see things from very different perspectives, and oftentimes you're gonna surprise yourself. I always find myself talking a lot, and then I'm like, "But I, everything I'm saying I already know." I gotta, okay, you gotta listen more.

01:04:48
Eric Weinstein: You're talking to yourself.

01:04:49
Kai Lenny: You know what I mean?

01:04:49
Eric Weinstein: You're listening to yourself talking. If you don't do that, I mean, how shocking, this is something I, I don't know how to convey to people. How shocking is our own voice? Like, the, the, if you go into a room where there's nobody else and you actually start talking and you realize that you're only talking for yourself, it is a terrifying feeling realizing that the listener and the speaker are not the same person.

01:05:13
Kai Lenny: [laughs] I know. No, it's, it's split personalities for sure. Or w- w-

01:05:17
Eric Weinstein: I loved your Inception comment a- along those lines. It's layers and layers.

01:05:21
Kai Lenny: There's just layers and layers, and I, I think some people don't ever go beyond layer one because they don't want to. It's-

01:05:29
Eric Weinstein: Or they don't know that it, they don't-

01:05:30
Kai Lenny: Or they don't know to do this.

01:05:30
Eric Weinstein: But here's a question. Once you've seen that there are layers and layers, do you start looking for that everywhere in your life? Like-

01:05:37
Kai Lenny: Oh, for sure.

01:05:38
Eric Weinstein: Okay, so g- give me some, are there any other transferrable examples where the same kind of breakthrough takes place that you can talk about?

01:05:46
Kai Lenny: I mean, I think nothing, I, well, there's a lot of things, but there's, there's little wins, I call them. You know? When, when you have like minor epiphanies or little things that sort of just become apparent and, and, and obvious and, a- and I think it happens with everyone whether we know it or not, where, um, you're doing something and you've been trying it for a really long time, like a trick on a wave. You're trying it for a really, really long time, and then all of a sudden you decide to, to change one little thing, and a, a, a, a really good saying for surfing is letting go.

01:06:22
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:06:22
Kai Lenny: And it's not letting go in the fact that you relax completely, or it's relaxing, but it's different. It's not like letting go, it's like letting go of your problems, you know what I mean? It's like letting go in the sense that you have any control, and, and you just kind of like feel. It's, you let your physical being kind of be-

01:06:39
Eric Weinstein: You go into a flow state.

01:06:40
Kai Lenny: The flow state, but you also let- ... someone else take the driving wheel. You know what I mean? Like, in surfing, it's such a, a connection, and that's w- this comes to, to these moments where I feel like I'm in a movie sometimes and I'm in the passenger seat, and everything's happening around me.

01:06:58
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:06:58
Kai Lenny: But I don't feel like I'm doing it. I feel like there's someone else doing it for me, and I'm in the movie, you know? I'm, like, seeing it through someone else's eyes.

01:07:05
Eric Weinstein: So this is a weird case. Like, before, we were talking about surrendering to the wave. There's also this question about surrendering to the parts of yourself that you don't yourself control.

01:07:14
Kai Lenny: Exactly.

01:07:15
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:07:15
Kai Lenny: Well, so it's like all of a sudden I'm in a wave, and it's survival, and my, what I call it, you know, survival mode comes on. And I'm seeing everything, but my body is moving to make it all happen to work 'cause it wants to make it out, and it's like it's fully in control, and I'm just visualizing and seeing it. And then I get back to the shore, and I get back on the beach, and all of a sudden it's like the switch flips back over, and all of a sudden I'm just [laughs] going like, "How did I do that?" Like, I don't... I couldn't tell you really. I can imagine. I can try to recall, but, like, I don't really know what happened. [laughs] Like, um, like, like-

01:07:52
Eric Weinstein: Well, there's-

01:07:52
Kai Lenny: ... I'm scared I'll never be able to repeat that again.

01:07:55
Eric Weinstein: Well, because... Well, first of all, each... It's really weird that you have things that are highly regular and things, like a bowling alley, that those pins are always more or less the same.

01:08:08
Kai Lenny: Yeah.

01:08:08
Eric Weinstein: And, and the wave, it's always different. Um-

01:08:12
Kai Lenny: Well, I, so I struggled for a while. Like, when I... It's not like I started big wave surfing and it was like, "I wanna be a big wave surfer this..." It was like being a kid, standing on the cliff, going, figuring out the wave from that perspective.

01:08:25
Eric Weinstein: Got it.

01:08:25
Kai Lenny: Feeling like I knew it like the back of my hand, better than guys that were riding it. All of a sudden, I blinked, [laughs] I'm down in the water, and I'm going, "Oh, my gosh, how'd this happen so fast? I thought I had so much more time." And then blink again, and it's all of a sudden it's like, "How did I get myself into this mess?" You know? Like, how did I get myself into the point where I feel like I'm gonna die all the time? And-

01:08:45
Eric Weinstein: Do you feel that regularly?

01:08:47
Kai Lenny: Well, I used to. When I first started, it was like going, "Oh, my God," and then you have, like, sponsors, and then you have, like, boats, and you have safety team, and your people are on payroll. It's expensive to surf big waves, is what I'm saying.

01:08:59
Eric Weinstein: Well, am I right that you got yourself into trouble at some point when there was a helicopter that had been hired, and you wanted to perform for the helicopter, and you took on risks that you shouldn't have?

01:09:08
Kai Lenny: Yeah, and that's, that's a c- that's just, that is a natural sort of s- that's just natural to big wave surfing in general. Like, you're gonna have to go through sur- everyone goes through those type of situations if they're willing to go to the level that they want, or the highest level, the degree in which would be, like, a black belt or a tr- like, you have to go through that at one point. There's just... It's like someone telling you what to do, and they have all this wealth of knowledge.

01:09:36
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:09:36
Kai Lenny: But until you go through the experience on your own, you don't truly learn it for yourself. You don't go... Like, it doesn't have the weight necessarily. You can be told all you want, but you almost have to experience it on your own accord.

01:09:47
Eric Weinstein: Well, am I right that this is so unpredictable that, like, you can't say, "I've got this," because anything can happen in, in a big wave? And-

01:09:55
Kai Lenny: Absolutely. Um, yeah

01:09:57
Eric Weinstein: ... if I understand correctly, your foot at some point, uh, had the surfboard come right at it and, uh, cleave it in two?

01:10:07
Kai Lenny: Oh, yeah. No, that was, like, a classic example of, like, kinda going into what you were saying is it was probably my third full season surfing big waves. The waves were giant, and, um, we were f- we hired a helicopter. We were filming. And it was like, "I really wanna get a shot for this movie that I'm working on. I really wanna, like, have it blow people's minds." You know? There's that ego part. Ego is just the worst in big waves. It's the best and the worst, in a way, because you kinda need an ego to, like, make yourself, kinda prop yourself up to match power with power. But, um-

01:10:45
Eric Weinstein: Am I right that you... Uh, this is something I talk about, and it pisses people off like you wouldn't believe. The necessity of being both incredibly humble and an egomaniac and having the two of those selves fight each other constantly.

01:10:59
Kai Lenny: Yeah, I think it's, it's, if you're doing it at an extreme, that's a symptom-

01:11:01
Eric Weinstein: Because I hear a lot of people say, "Forget your ego," or, "You have to ha- undergo ego death," and I'm thinking, "No, you don't. You have to actually make sure that the-

01:11:08
Kai Lenny: Well, that's the thing. It's like when people talk about, "He's fearless," no, you, you f- the r- the, everything we have has been an evolution in nature, and there's a necessity towards it. Ego is... Okay, there's certain situations, it's, it's awesome and it's more pleasurable for everyone around you not to have an ego, but there's other situations, like in survival situations, where you wanna think of yourself as the best there ever was because it kind of, as a male, and this is the only way I know it 'cause I'm a male, is it's, it, it, it's that alpha inside you. And it's like m- going against... It's, it's the, the, the tribal instinct of protecting your, your tribe, protecting what is yours, your family.

01:11:53
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:11:54
Kai Lenny: But in this case, it's, it's the experiences in big waves where it's like you gotta David and Goliath, you gotta match yourself with the impossible-

01:12:02
Eric Weinstein: Well-

01:12:02
Kai Lenny: ... the undefeatable

01:12:03
Eric Weinstein: ... I also met your mom, and your mom is a total badass. Like-

01:12:06
Kai Lenny: Yeah

01:12:07
Eric Weinstein: ... you got a, you got a situation where if you're gonna make mom proud, you have to go above and beyond. [laughs]

01:12:12
Kai Lenny: S- no, exactly. And it's, um, you know, I've to- I've, I've definitely, um... One thing that I, I remember when I was a really little kid being told all the time was, like, "Don't, no one likes a big head. No one likes this." And it beat, it was, like, kinda beat into my head so much from, like, my mentors and certain people around me that, um, it made me really shy and reserved and felt like... It felt, I always felt like I could handle anything, but I, I, I don't think anyone else could. Like, like, if I said something that was maybe the truth, or if I said somebody that was like, something that was hard or very critical, it would, um, it would be damaging to someone, and I never wanted to hurt anyone. That's, like, the last thing I'd ever want to do. And so it was actually, it's been a long process trying to overcome kind of that, um, k- Um, that habit of, of like-

01:13:05
Eric Weinstein: Giving your power away

01:13:06
Kai Lenny: ... giving the power away, when in certain s- it's okay to be, like, I think the, the, the most powerful, the best-

01:13:13
Eric Weinstein: Right

01:13:13
Kai Lenny: ... the, the best athletes that I've ever met-

01:13:16
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:13:16
Kai Lenny: ... the, the, the true alphas, they're w- they know how to switch it on and off. Like, they, um, they're, they're able to be so humble and kind, and they don't feel like they need to exert some- but when the time comes for whatever it is that they do, they can turn it on, all of a sudden they're just these beasts, these monsters that are able to-

01:13:35
Eric Weinstein: But you also have to accept what it is that you are. I mean, I-

01:13:37
Kai Lenny: Yeah

01:13:37
Eric Weinstein: ... let's be honest, when I, when I called you out, there isn't another surfer on the planet that I was dying to meet. Because this, this is not, I mean, I'm aware of who Laird Hamilton is, I'm w- aware of Kelly Slater. There are tons of people, like this guy, Philip Toledo. I've, I, I'm, I'm-

01:13:52
Kai Lenny: Yeah

01:13:52
Eric Weinstein: ... I'm watching all of these guys. Um, you were the only one from outside that I absolutely had to meet because of the level of innovation. And then when I met you, it was so disarming that y- you clearly know that you're doing something very different. You can't actually deny it. You can't fully embrace it either. And so I think that one of the puzzles here is that we have to sort of pass power back and forth, which is that you give your power away to some extent, and then the community kind of with love just says, "You know, no, you really need to take this on because people are looking towards you." And it's a very weird thing to sort of have to balance these things. I think we do a terrible disservice when we tell people to get rid of their egos, because that'll never work. You have to make sure that the thing is like a Mexican standoff. It has to be in check.

01:14:45
Kai Lenny: Oh, you ha- it has to, you have to f- anything, you have to face everything. Like, i- if it's ... I was telling my friend, I had like a certain situation that I was kinda going through, like, maybe end of last year. And it's like, I told myself for this situation when I was a young kid, like, 'cause I was pretty aware about like my pe- the people around me and the mistakes they had made, and how I was like, I always, I always, when I was really young and when my ego was definitely very strong, [laughs] inside I was like, "I want to do everything perfect, and I want to do it the best anyone's ever done it. I want to be the best ever." Because as a kid, there's, you don't have to, uh, confront it yet, you know? But you can imagine, you can believe, you can do all these things because, but you don't actually have to go through it yet 'cause you're still a little kid. Um, anyway, so I told myself this one particular thing, like, "I'm gonna avoid this."

01:15:37
Eric Weinstein: Mm.

01:15:37
Kai Lenny: "And I'm gonna, and I'm gonna make sure I never end up in this situation." And inevitably, the one thing that you try to avoid is the one thing that'll end eve- eventually come for you, you know? You'll eventually meet it. And I learned that by the end of the year.

01:15:49
Eric Weinstein: Are you a fan of Kung Fu Panda?

01:15:51
Kai Lenny: Great, yeah. I love that movie.

01:15:52
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, so remember, uh, one often meets one's destiny on the road one takes to avoid it or something.

01:15:57
Kai Lenny: Oogway, yeah.

01:15:57
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, Oogway.

01:15:58
Kai Lenny: Exactly.

01:15:59
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:15:59
Kai Lenny: I know. That movie was so smart for, and it was a kids movie or whatever, but-

01:16:04
Eric Weinstein: It was not a kids movie, dude. That was a really profound movie.

01:16:07
Kai Lenny: [laughs] Well, yeah, right. Exactly. Um-

01:16:10
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:16:10
Kai Lenny: ... it's true, though. No, it's, I, I know that quote, exactly what you're saying, and it's like, it, it truly makes-

01:16:17
Eric Weinstein: And in that movie, sorry, I don't mean to cut you off, but Oogway is weirdly putting Shifu on the road to his destiny as he tries to avoid his destiny. So, like, there's this extra layer of, is Oogway actually-

01:16:33
Kai Lenny: Oh, great filmmaking. [laughs]

01:16:34
Eric Weinstein: Great storytelling.

01:16:35
Kai Lenny: Yeah, great storytelling. But it, I, it's, at least it's tell- it's k- whether you don't know it when the first-

01:16:41
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:16:41
Kai Lenny: ... time you watch it or you figure it out later-

01:16:43
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:16:43
Kai Lenny: ... it's, it's, it's helping you along in your life, you know? There's like, there's lessons, and that's what stories were all about, is meant to pass on lessons, right?

01:16:52
Eric Weinstein: What happens when you bite off more than you can chew in a situation where you, you think you can handle something, and then you look up at this thing and you're saying, "I don't really know that I can handle this, but I got no choice now. I'm over, I'm past the Rubicon"?

01:17:06
Kai Lenny: Well-

01:17:07
Eric Weinstein: Has this happened to you recently or j- more from before?

01:17:09
Kai Lenny: More from before. I mean, it's still, I mean, no matter how comfortable I've gotten in big waves-

01:17:15
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:17:16
Kai Lenny: ... [laughs] I'm, I'm, you, there's, it's impossible to totally be comfortable because it's just terrifying, you know? It's just, it's huge monsters. But the thing is, is I've many times, you know, you pop up, you d- like, this is a perfect example, actually. You're standing out there paddling. You paddle over a giant wave, and then there's mist in the air. Like, there's just, it's, it's so much spray that's coming off, it's hundreds of feet. It's torrential downpour. It's sunny, but it's downpour. And in the distance you see this black face, this black kind of wall coming in, and your heart just instantly drops and you're sprinting for your life, and you're c- and all of a sudden, you're, you're trying to escape the feeling or the situation by looking at little things and focusing on that. Like, "Look at the water just rolling off there."

01:18:00
Eric Weinstein: Oh my God.

01:18:00
Kai Lenny: Like, "Look at the sticker on my board." Just like, you're trying to find any escape. But you, you realize that there's no escape. There's no hiding.

01:18:07
Eric Weinstein: Did you see Interstellar?

01:18:09
Kai Lenny: Yeah, I love that movie. I love that movie.

01:18:10
Eric Weinstein: Do you remember where they end up on the water planet and the wave starts to form?

01:18:14
Kai Lenny: And it looks just like that. And if I ever get to meet Christopher Nolan, I'm gonna tell him-

01:18:19
Eric Weinstein: [laughs]

01:18:19
Kai Lenny: ... that that was the, that was the biggest surprise I've ever seen in a movie, because as a big wave surfer, I was like, "That's so ridable. And look, you can do a step off."

01:18:26
Eric Weinstein: Is that what you really thought?

01:18:27
Kai Lenny: 100%.

01:18:27
Eric Weinstein: Oh, man.

01:18:28
Kai Lenny: Who's, any big wave surf- I don't know if any, but I mean, think about, okay, so in the movie, the waves are created by gravitational forces, right?

01:18:38
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:18:38
Kai Lenny: And, and that's a lot, like the moon helps pull our tides, right? Um, but in the film, here I'm seeing a thousand-foot wave that's never breaking, and it's continuous for, for around the entire world. And I'm like, "That seems like the sick." You could ride a thousand-foot wave, biggest playground ever.

01:18:57
Eric Weinstein: Endless summer.

01:18:57
Kai Lenny: And if you fall, if you fall- You just [laughs] kind of go over the back, and then there's another one, and I mean, the person, the character dies because I can imagine if you're going over a thousand foot wave, you get really high on the wave, and it flicks you into the air, and you fall a thousand feet and you die, right? Or 200 feet, whatever it is. Because I'm just trying to... I was always trying to imagine how the person died in that film-

01:19:19
Eric Weinstein: Mm-hmm

01:19:19
Kai Lenny: ... 'cause they had to leave him behind or whatever.

01:19:21
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:19:21
Kai Lenny: And I'm like, "Well, the solution would've been right as you get to the top, you just duck under the water, and you stay... The water kind of conceals you, and you come back down the backside of it, and then you can stick your head back up and get air," or in that case, you're all wearing space suits. Perfect. You don't even have to, like, hold your breath underwater. That's one, one problem taken care of. And, um, and they're pressurized, so you can just go through it. But anyway, I was just like, that is like... That would be... That's one. And it made me actually start thinking, I'm like, "Gosh, I wonder if in my lifetime if space travel's really gonna be a thing, and maybe someone goes to Titan or Europa, like, 'cause there's supposedly water or some sort of liquid."

01:19:58
Eric Weinstein: Are you obsessed with Titan?

01:20:00
Kai Lenny: Um, I mean, I'm obsessed with the idea of surfing waves-

01:20:03
Eric Weinstein: In methane

01:20:04
Kai Lenny: ... outside the world.

01:20:04
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:20:05
Kai Lenny: Yeah.

01:20:05
Eric Weinstein: Sure.

01:20:05
Kai Lenny: Like, if you have the right suit on, I mean, in any element, you could probably go in, unless it's, like, lava maybe or I don't know. I'm not that smart. But what I do know is that just think of all the waves in the [laughs] universe that is just firing right now and no one out. And if we... Maybe we have the best waves in the universe, but there has to be better waves. I often look back in time at-

01:20:26
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:20:27
Kai Lenny: ... just how-

01:20:27
Eric Weinstein: Do you think there are great undiscovered waves?

01:20:29
Kai Lenny: 100%.

01:20:30
Eric Weinstein: Where? Wait, on Earth?

01:20:31
Kai Lenny: On Earth. Well, okay-

01:20:32
Eric Weinstein: Do you think we, do you think we've mapped all the great waves?

01:20:35
Kai Lenny: No. Well, okay, a great example is this wave, Nazaré. This is a great lead into Nazaré. [laughs] Nazaré was discovered nine years ago, nine years ago.

01:20:43
Eric Weinstein: By Scott McNamara?

01:20:44
Kai Lenny: Uh, by, uh, Garrett McNamara.

01:20:46
Eric Weinstein: Garrett, Garrett Mc- Sorry, Garrett McNamara.

01:20:47
Kai Lenny: And, but okay, this is just, it's so crazy. Portugal, part of European Union, like, the middle, the heart of Portugal, like, there's this wave, Nazaré, biggest wave possibly in the world, tallest, most consistent big wave, that's for sure.

01:21:03
Eric Weinstein: All right.

01:21:03
Kai Lenny: And, you know, it's 2011 [laughs] or whatever, 2012, 2011, and it's discovered. This-

01:21:12
Eric Weinstein: How?

01:21:13
Kai Lenny: I don't know. It was just-

01:21:14
Eric Weinstein: It doesn't make any sense

01:21:15
Kai Lenny: ... hiding in plain sight. It, it's, it's the things... It's, it's... Okay, we go back to that point where it's like the things that are the most obvious aren't always m- recognized right away. You know what I mean?

01:21:27
Eric Weinstein: Well, but what... See, I never got the history of it. The, it's always photographed. I mean, the most dramatic shot of it is somebody gets a picture of the observation deck looking at the wave.

01:21:39
Kai Lenny: So, yeah, I mean-

01:21:40
Eric Weinstein: And that observation deck looks like it wasn't built recently.

01:21:44
Kai Lenny: Um, no, it's a, it's a, um, lighthouse. But it's, it's so old it looks like a castle.

01:21:49
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:21:50
Kai Lenny: And so [laughs] Nazaré was s- first surfed, whatever, eight or nine years ago, less than a decade, in a modern era of-

01:22:00
Eric Weinstein: Is Garrett Hawaiian?

01:22:01
Kai Lenny: Garrett is from Hawaii, yeah.

01:22:03
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

01:22:03
Kai Lenny: He's from Wa- Oahu, and, and he's always been on the search for the best big waves. And it took someone who was always seeking it out that long to find something. Because with big waves, if they're not breaking, you don't know they exist. You know? They're, they're s- they're dormant. There's, they're... You could, we, we could literally go down to a coastline we haven't been to, somewhere in Africa that's exposed to a great part of the Atlantic Ocean, and, and look at a point and be like, "Whoa c- that could be a wave one day." But you don't realize that it's a sleeping giant, and when it wakes up, it's the biggest wave on the planet. Like, that may exist. That totally could exist.

01:22:38
Eric Weinstein: Okay, but if you were mapping the seabed, Portugal should stick out like a sore thumb, no?

01:22:44
Kai Lenny: Well, okay, the, the, the bathymetry is a freak of nature for-

01:22:47
Eric Weinstein: Wait, say that word again, 'cause I don't know it

01:22:49
Kai Lenny: ... bathymetry-

01:22:49
Eric Weinstein: Okay

01:22:50
Kai Lenny: ... which is kind of the bottom contour. You know, it's what, what, what oceanographers would-

01:22:55
Eric Weinstein: I'm gonna start dropping that into lots of sentences from now on

01:22:57
Kai Lenny: ... it makes you sound smarter than... Well, it makes me sound smarter than I am.

01:23:01
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

01:23:01
Kai Lenny: But [laughs] so what, what's unique about Nazaré is it's the largest trench in all of Europe, and I believe it's an ancient... It was once a glacier that carved out a huge valley. And when all the ice caps melted, it filled in the ocean-

01:23:17
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:23:17
Kai Lenny: ... and it covered that trench. Now, the trench allows the swell, this raw energy from the Atlantic, to come in. It gets sucked into that deep water.

01:23:27
Eric Weinstein: To focus it.

01:23:27
Kai Lenny: It focuses it, and it comes in, and then this is where the wave comes in. They call it Praia do Norte, which is, you know, nor- the north's beach, north point. Um, uh, and that's where the wave breaks in Nazaré. And so what happens is all this swell comes in, and then it all of a sudden gets accelerated onto shallow water. So there's a point with a ledge, and it's all sand. It's a giant beach. And it comes in, and then it focuses. And what makes Nazaré so big is two peaks, two waves, and this is the concept of a rogue wave. You know, you can have a really big ocean of big waves, and then it's when two big waves come together that it doubles the size.

01:24:05
Eric Weinstein: So it's the superposition.

01:24:06
Kai Lenny: It's the superposition, yeah. Like, one, the swell comes in this way, and it matches with another one, and the, the energy combines, and it doubles in height. So it, it jacks up twice as high.

01:24:17
Eric Weinstein: Geez.

01:24:17
Kai Lenny: And it's just the perfect bottom for that perfect situation, and it, um, it produces the tallest waves in the world, um, consistently. Uh, and yeah, that's Nazaré. Nazaré is a trip. You go there and it feels biblical. I mean, the word, the word Nazaré already sounds like-

01:24:36
Eric Weinstein: Right

01:24:36
Kai Lenny: ... it's from, [laughs] you know, the Old Testament. And then add to this, there's a guy there named Jesus that is, stands up on the lighthouse and calls out sets if you're tow surfing. It's like, "Okay, second set, get out there," you know? Or like, "Get the second one." And his, his name is Jesus from Nazaré, Jesus from Nazareth.

01:24:57
Eric Weinstein: That's great.

01:24:57
Kai Lenny: And it's just, it's hila- it's kind of a hilarious situation. [laughs] Like, so when you're out there, all of a sudden you're seeing this massive cliff, 200-foot cliff, and you're seeing [laughs] waves that are, like, half the size of it and, on really big days, the same size as the cliff-

01:25:10
Eric Weinstein: Oh, man

01:25:10
Kai Lenny: ... 'cause it gets that big. We haven't seen it in the time that we've surfed out there, though. You see this sort of castle lighthouse on the point, spray in the air, and- You're like, "Where am I right now? I feel like I got thrown back in time and, and this just doesn't feel real." And you're looking at these towering mountains of water that look like Interstellar. Looks the same. It's just walls popping up everywhere. And, and it's not like there's one breaking wave. There's six breaking waves at once.

01:25:38
Eric Weinstein: Jesus.

01:25:38
Kai Lenny: And there's no channel, which is the channel is the safe zone. It's where the deep water is and where it doesn't break. It's kinda breaking everywhere. It's a beach break. It's the world's biggest beach break. It's maybe one of the world's most terrifying big waves to challenge, in that there is no safe zone. When you're committed, you're committed, and-

01:25:56
Eric Weinstein: I've seen some disastrous-

01:25:57
Kai Lenny: Yeah

01:25:57
Eric Weinstein: ... rescue attempts on this thing.

01:25:59
Kai Lenny: Oh, it's great, and every time I go there, we lose a jet ski at least once.

01:26:02
Eric Weinstein: Is that right?

01:26:03
Kai Lenny: Luckily, there's sand, so it pushes back up, but imagine, like, everything around you was built bigger, and all of a sudden you felt like your scale just went really down. That's what it feels like there. Because the waves are so big, all of a sudden you feel, like, really small. The beach, the beach is really steep and massive and large, and you feel smaller on the beach. The way the waves m- the move up and down, it'll travel 50 to 60 yards up the sand before it returns back to the ocean, and you feel like this is what it feels like to be the size of a chihuahua. [laughs]

01:26:35
Eric Weinstein: Do you get off on your own insignificance, like your significance coming from your insignificance? There's no place on Earth like, like that place, that wave, to make me realize how small a human being is.

01:26:47
Kai Lenny: Yes, I've definitely gotten used to feeling, like, insignificant, and my place in this whole crazy world is not as important necessarily as I might want think, you know? Like, because you look at these waves, and they're just power, th- this power, and, and you're trying to find kind of like symmetry with it. You're trying to be one with it for just a brief moment, and you just realize, like, h- this wave's been here forever, for a long time. And, uh, you know, I guess if I can be just in line with something that's bigger than myself, that's what I f- that what's ma- that's what makes me feel really good. The best feeling I get from riding big waves is the drive home, 'cause you've just went through this whole crazy experience. You're relief, relieved. You just went through that, and, and, and you, you, you tapped into something bigger than yourself, physically bigger than yourself, too.

01:27:42
Eric Weinstein: Well, I'm used to seeing you on some of these monster waves alone, and then recently I saw you get a ride, it looked like at, uh, Jaws, with a friend of yours.

01:27:53
Kai Lenny: Yeah, Nathan Florence.

01:27:54
Eric Weinstein: And I thought, what is it like to actually ride a wave like that with somebody that you know and care about? Does it feel totally different?

01:28:04
Kai Lenny: Uh, you know what? It just, there's camaraderie-

01:28:07
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:28:07
Kai Lenny: ... involved. Um, you still feel kind of alone because-

01:28:12
Eric Weinstein: It's you on the board

01:28:12
Kai Lenny: ... it's you on the board, and it's your decisions that make the outcome, and sometimes it's not even your decision that makes the outcome. It's the, the waves that make the outcome, you know? Like, you could choose a wave, and all of a sudden it, it does something completely unforeseen and different. Riding that wave with Nathan, we ended up getting a really big barrel out at Jaws together, and to [laughs] for both of us to be in the barrel at the same time was amazing. It's your sha- it's finally, you're sharing the experience with somebody, and I think that's why there's a real brotherhood, sisterhood-

01:28:43
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:28:43
Kai Lenny: ... out in big wave surfing because you're ex- you're sharing an experience that's so extreme that, um, you know, it's like you can tell everyone all about it, but you know, you still feel like they don't understand. They, they... How do you translate the feeling? You can translate the emotions, the ideas, like the, through, like ver- like, like words, but the, that physical feeling. Like, I wish I could just plug my head into your head-

01:29:11
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:29:12
Kai Lenny: ... and you could just feel it for a second be-

01:29:13
Eric Weinstein: Oh, I know

01:29:14
Kai Lenny: ... I'm pretty sure, uh-

01:29:17
Eric Weinstein: Dude, I've gotten off by carriage

01:29:18
Kai Lenny: ... it'd mess you up. [laughs]

01:29:18
Eric Weinstein: I've gotten off by carriage. Well, I, I wish I could do the same thing for you with, like-

01:29:21
Kai Lenny: Exactly

01:29:22
Eric Weinstein: ... with mathematics. In part, that's one of the things we're try-

01:29:24
Kai Lenny: See, I'm terrible with math-

01:29:25
Eric Weinstein: Oh, you-

01:29:25
Kai Lenny: ... but I want to be good at that

01:29:26
Eric Weinstein: ... you don't know that you are

01:29:27
Kai Lenny: ... you know? It's like, oh.

01:29:27
Eric Weinstein: You don't know that you... Well, you brought up an interesting question about this, the brothers and sisters. Now, we just had... I follow this other woman whose name I, I don't wanna mangle, who was just the first woman a year or two ago to be invited into this Eddie Invitational.

01:29:40
Kai Lenny: Say it and I'll help you.

01:29:41
Eric Weinstein: Ke- hin, uh-

01:29:42
Kai Lenny: Keala?

01:29:43
Eric Weinstein: Keala. Yeah.

01:29:45
Kai Lenny: Yeah, she's

01:29:45
Eric Weinstein: She's like-

01:29:46
Kai Lenny: No way.

01:29:46
Eric Weinstein: She's-

01:29:46
Kai Lenny: She's a charger

01:29:47
Eric Weinstein: ... she's amazing.

01:29:47
Kai Lenny: She's amazing.

01:29:48
Eric Weinstein: And-

01:29:49
Kai Lenny: I was just surfing with her at Jaws like two days ago.

01:29:52
Eric Weinstein: Wow.

01:29:52
Kai Lenny: Yeah.

01:29:53
Eric Weinstein: Okay. So, like-

01:29:54
Kai Lenny: She's a hammer.

01:29:55
Eric Weinstein: So th- so s- but clearly she's going to pioneer something where other women are gonna say, "Okay, yeah, I totally see what she's done. I, I'm there, too," and, and it's changing the nature of the sport. Do you, do you think that that's gonna be a big effect coming up?

01:30:09
Kai Lenny: Yeah, there's a massive shift in women's big wave surfing, and there was, there wasn't a whole lot of progression as, until recently, and now there's major strides. The girls are... It's, it's amazing, um, how people like Keala has inspired the next generation enough to all of a sudden step into that realm. Because for the longest time, there were women that were riding big waves, but not enough... It wasn't inspire- maybe... And I don't wanna take anything away from them, but it wasn't inspiring the next, the youth or the next generation. And along with Keala and s- Paige Alms, Bianca Valente, um, they, these are like three of the top big wave female surfers.

01:30:52
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:30:52
Kai Lenny: They've r- and Maya Gabeira, who's always out at Nazaré as well, they've h- inspired the next generation of big wave girls to all of a sudden step into the realm. And I've always felt that it's, it's evol- big waves, sports in general die when there's not the next generation to take it to the next level. Like, they cease to become relevant or even of interest. And this is my own personal perspective.

01:31:18
Eric Weinstein: Sure.

01:31:19
Kai Lenny: Um, I- Because i, I feel like sports, like action sports in particular, surfing, always needs to be constantly being pushed. Um, and so I, I, I do, I do see these young girls inspiring actually the older girls to continue pushing the envelope, and when their time is up or they, they decide no longer to do it-

01:31:42
Eric Weinstein: Right

01:31:42
Kai Lenny: ... that, um, they've had their fill, that the next generation of girls take it to another level. And I've always felt the same way with me. You know, like I saw where Laird and, um, all these legends took it, and I wanted to take it from where they took it to somewhere else, and I don't know where I'm gonna take it, but I hope in the future-

01:32:02
Eric Weinstein: It's a relay race.

01:32:02
Kai Lenny: Yeah

01:32:03
Eric Weinstein: You gotta hand it off to somebody else.

01:32:05
Kai Lenny: I hope in the future that I have the privilege of mentoring and, um, helping that next generation-

01:32:13
Eric Weinstein: It's beautiful

01:32:13
Kai Lenny: ... take it to a place that, that, that I couldn't anymore, because I got it to one pos- po- position. I just ran out of time.

01:32:21
Eric Weinstein: Well, I think that there's, there's an interesting thing about breaking new ground versus what keeps it something relevant to the world. So for example, in jazz, um, there was a period where the innovators were doing innovations that were appreciated by the listenership, and at some point things get so technical that unless you're actually a performer, y- well, juggling is a good example. Um, the most technical jugglers in the world will point to one of, one of their kind and say, "Oh my God, c- did you see what that guy did?" And to me-

01:32:55
Kai Lenny: You can't even see it, huh?

01:32:56
Eric Weinstein: I can't see it because it's already so many balls, so many rings.

01:32:59
Kai Lenny: True.

01:33:00
Eric Weinstein: It's like th- the whole thing is so mind-blowing, I can't slow it down enough to understand what the innovation was, whereas at an earlier point, and this is, this is one of the reasons why I think you're kind of a very romantic figure in this story, it's because I can see those innovations. It's not, like, so technical. Very often with some of the skateboarding stuff, I have to slow it down a million times to even understand what the trick was.

01:33:23
Kai Lenny: Yeah, and I think, um, that is, that is really, really true. And, and it touches on the point that we're still only scratching the surface of big wave riding, you know? Like, it's such an act on its own, but then adding sort of next level maneuvers and positions that one could ride. At least what's nice about big waves is, and I s- always say this, is you have all, you have all the time you need on a big wave. Small waves happen really quick.

01:33:51
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:33:52
Kai Lenny: Things are like bam, bam, bam. You have to be on it really quick, and it's like, it's really fast. And big waves, I'm always... There's a saying by a big wave legend from Kauai on Hawaii. His name was Titus Kinimaka, and it was of Laird, and he's like, he has the... The quote goes like this. "He has the ability to slow himself down when everyone else wants to run like hell." And it's not slowing down in terms of the speed of your board. It's slowing down your mind.

01:34:18
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:34:18
Kai Lenny: It's like, it's like, s- uh, and I work on this every single day I ride big waves. It's like I have way more time than I think on this wave. Because when I watch the footage, I realize, well, I could've been this position, and I, um, I, I could've waited longer, or I could've done this. Like, when I go to do a 360, don't rush the 360. Let it move the way, the, the speed it's gonna move.

01:34:39
Eric Weinstein: You, you, you have to match the wave. Your m- your mind m- has to match the wave.

01:34:43
Kai Lenny: Or you just gotta know, I guess, the time you have.

01:34:46
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:34:46
Kai Lenny: And a lot of people think, a lot of people feel like they don't have the time, so their mind starts racing, and then all of a sudden the wave itself feels like it's going really fast and everything is moving, and it's how can you compute, you know, how can you keep everything, like, in line? And then all of a sudden when you try to slow yourself down a little bit, just like, "Phew." Even it's like just, I would say it's like when I sometimes ride a really big wave-

01:35:07
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:35:07
Kai Lenny: ... I'll almost just relax for a second and go, "Phew. Okay, let's continue."

01:35:14
Eric Weinstein: That's so cool.

01:35:14
Kai Lenny: And then, "Phew," and then all of a sudden I see things and I'm like, "Oh, I'm gonna hit that. Okay, here we come. All right. Doop, perfect. All right, here comes a barrel position. All right, I'm in the tube." And you calm yourself down and you, and, and I, it's like manipulating time for a second. You're just like, "All right, I'm gonna let this wave go over." And you're not talking to yourself through it. You're just kinda like breathing through it. And my biggest wave I ever rode in my life, still out at Jaws, it was my whole focus on the ride, 'cause I knew it was a big one, was just breathing.

01:35:44
Eric Weinstein: Was that the one that was photographed that I saw at your place?

01:35:46
Kai Lenny: Yeah. So that one I was just, as I was dropping in, [laughs] I was just going [breathes deeply].

01:35:52
Eric Weinstein: Wow.

01:35:53
Kai Lenny: [breathes deeply] And I was just, and what I was trying to do is I was just trying to slow everything down. Slow it down. Slow it down. The wave was like [whooshes] behind me. And I just remember going, "Okay, slow down."

01:36:05
Eric Weinstein: So the breathing is the only way that you can talk to your own autonomic nervous system effectively. It's the one thing that's under conscious control that you can try to do to, to talk to the part of you that isn't under conscious control.

01:36:17
Kai Lenny: Yeah, and I just try to, like, I'm just doing that little breathing now. I feel way more calm. [laughs] But, uh, when I'm on the wave, I like, it's like, "Okay, breathe in for two, out for two. Breathe in for three, out for three." [breathes deeply]

01:36:35
Eric Weinstein: Now I'm, I'm not going to push you to talk about something-

01:36:39
Kai Lenny: Push me.

01:36:39
Eric Weinstein: No, no, no. I can't-

01:36:39
Kai Lenny: Oh.

01:36:40
Eric Weinstein: No, it's a question about being respectful. When I was out at your place, I saw some crazy stuff you were working on, but I don't know whether that's under wraps. And I don't want to, you to talk about it if it's not ready to be talked about.

01:36:51
Kai Lenny: Um, well, it's, it can be talked about, but it's, it's not quite ready yet.

01:36:57
Eric Weinstein: Should we hold off on it, or?

01:36:59
Kai Lenny: Let's hold off, and then I'll come back and talk all about it after.

01:37:01
Eric Weinstein: I would, I, I, I was, I would, totally jazzed to do that.

01:37:03
Kai Lenny: Yeah.

01:37:03
Eric Weinstein: Let me, uh, let me ask you another question. When you're out on these waves, surfers are, are one f- life form, but you're not the only ones out there.

01:37:12
Kai Lenny: Yeah.

01:37:13
Eric Weinstein: Can you talk about the man in the gray suit and how he affects or she affects your, uh, your thinking as you realize that you're part of an ecosystem?

01:37:22
Kai Lenny: I think I've been a part of the ecosystem so much, I kinda know my place. And it's not, when you see one, it's, it's, it's a treat, like y- when you see a shark, um, or even any animal for that standard. Like, the last time I surfed out Jaws, it was one of the most beautiful days, and it's, it's, it's funny because when you surf at a place so beautiful, it's kind of like, um, you forget how gnarly it is.

01:37:47
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:37:48
Kai Lenny: You know? It's like, it's masked in the fact that it's sunny, there's rainbows, there's seals in the line, like, like monk seals, Hawaiian monk seals in the lineup. There's whales going through the lineup, like giant humpback whales. You see a shark come in, and it's just cruising, and you just realize, you know, you're in their domain because that's where they live.

01:38:07
Eric Weinstein: So that would be a tiger shark, where-

01:38:09
Kai Lenny: Well, tig- tiger shark. Could be any type of shark. Um, we kinda have 'em all in Hawaii, which-

01:38:13
Eric Weinstein: Is that right?

01:38:14
Kai Lenny: ... tiger sharks, sorry. I would say, I would give tiger sharks sort of the crown as kind of the landlords of the, that area. We do get great whites, but they typically, they typically come to Hawaii and chill. Like, they're, they're there and they're, they're taking a rest between their crossing of the Pacific from Australia to the US, or even if they come out here for... It's like vacation. Honestly, great whites come to Hawaii for vacation. We still don't know a whole lot about 'em, but what we do know is when they're out here, they're, they're, they're always full. They definitely look full, and they're kind of, like, in this migration sort of pattern, where they're just, they're just cruising. While tiger sharks are kinda the garbage men of the, the, the trash person of the, the sea n- because they just eat everything. You'll see, they'll, they'll bite tires that are floating out at sea. They'll, they'll chew anything. They kind, but they... You know what's awesome about them? They clean up kinda the death out there.

01:39:11
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:39:11
Kai Lenny: Like, dying fish. The, the weak gets culled. It's just nature, and that's how it is. So when you confront or you're given the opportunity to be around one in the water, showing, showing confidence and-

01:39:24
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:39:24
Kai Lenny: ... fear, they smell it. They know it. If you showing, like, signs of weakness, that's an opportunity.

01:39:31
Eric Weinstein: All right. So you feel that by projecting confidence, they have enough acuity to pick up that-

01:39:36
Kai Lenny: They're way smarter than you think.

01:39:39
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah.

01:39:39
Kai Lenny: Than we all think. They are... I've looked in, when you look into the, one of their big black eyes-

01:39:45
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:39:46
Kai Lenny: ... when you look in there, there's a soul living in there. It's not just a hollow shell.

01:39:49
Eric Weinstein: Well, I believe, I believe people who, who have, like, rescued sharks find that the shark becomes friendly with them. Like, it's much, our picture of how much is going on with-

01:39:59
Kai Lenny: Well-

01:39:59
Eric Weinstein: ... these animals has changed quite a bit

01:40:01
Kai Lenny: ... I liked, I mean, Albert Einstein's quote, and I'm probably gonna butcher it, but it was like, "Don't judge a fish because he can't climb a tree."

01:40:07
Eric Weinstein: Oh, yeah, yeah.

01:40:08
Kai Lenny: You know? Like, just he's a fish. And so, so, but if you don't understand, like, we don't, we can't speak their language. We don't understand them on the, the same level I understand you, so we think of things that we don't understand as being stupid or lesser than. And, and [laughs] I mean, they have fins, so they can't make, you know, technological advancements necessarily, but who knows? Maybe they have a whole thing-

01:40:32
Eric Weinstein: Opposable fins could be a real big problem.

01:40:34
Kai Lenny: It could be a pretty big problem. But I, I do, I have a huge amount of respect for 'em. I've had so much en- I've had so many encounters my entire life, and I've never once, and knock on wood, 'cause you never know, ever felt like I was in mortal danger. But I always felt like they were just these, they were the landlords. They're coming by to check you out, and if you showed, like, confidence and respect-

01:40:59
Eric Weinstein: All right

01:40:59
Kai Lenny: ... then they kinda would be like, they'd kinda, it's like that, that, they'd give you a little nod. Like-

01:41:04
Eric Weinstein: Professional courtesy.

01:41:06
Kai Lenny: It's like, "See you on-"

01:41:08
Eric Weinstein: All right. Well then what w-

01:41:09
Kai Lenny: "... Monday."

01:41:09
Eric Weinstein: So there's this island that I've been dreaming about, uh, off of Africa called Reunion that used-

01:41:15
Kai Lenny: Yeah

01:41:15
Eric Weinstein: ... to be a pretty decent surf spot. What happened to our relationship?

01:41:18
Kai Lenny: Well, um, now different sharks in different places, you know, it's like traveling in different cultures, right?

01:41:25
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:41:25
Kai Lenny: Same thing with the, the animals of the sea. Hawaii, it's one way. Um, it's, I would say really respect-based. But, like, Reunion Island, f- and this is from a lot of my friends who were born and raised there and surfed there, is the biggest, the, the, what they think is the biggest problem was, um, when it became a, a nature reserve. The moment Reunion-

01:41:47
Eric Weinstein: Uh-huh

01:41:47
Kai Lenny: ... became a nature reserve, the sharks that would once, the bull sharks that would migrate from Madagascar to Reunion all of a sudden decide to stay, 'cause here's an abundant amount of fish. "Well, let's just stay." Um, and so people forget that we are, in a sense, part of the-

01:42:02
Eric Weinstein: We altered our agreement.

01:42:04
Kai Lenny: Well, the agreement, all of a sudden, it's just like giving the keys to the apartment, but you're only a visitor. And, and, and people forget, I think people think we're not a part of the natural cycle, of, we think of ourselves too highly that we're not, like, a part of... We become a part of the ecosystem by getting a certain amount of fish. And of course, I believe we should never overfish or do-

01:42:27
Eric Weinstein: Right

01:42:28
Kai Lenny: ... any of that. But this is from, this is, like, a real-life experiment from f- people that I know that grew up there that's like, it used to be one of the premier surf destination, especially for French surfers. They'd go there all the time because the French, you know, territory, whatever. It, it all of a sudden, as soon as it became a natural, nature reserve, the bull sharks came. The bull sharks became territorial, very territorial. All of a sudden realized it's really easy to bite and attack and feed on humans because we're pretty slow in the water compared to-

01:43:01
Eric Weinstein: Right

01:43:01
Kai Lenny: ... most of their prey. And they became the dominant force in the water. And, and then there's this big argument now, it's like, "Well, don't kill the sharks," and yeah, of course, don't kill the sharks, but we gotta also, like, it's, it's also asserting our dominance and our, our, where we rank. We're the top of the food chain, too. And, and it's als- And sharks learn from one another as well.

01:43:23
Eric Weinstein: Well, I'm terrified that we have, like, this weird agreement with the orcas that we don't understand, that orcas basically essentially never Attack humans in the wild

01:43:32
Kai Lenny: They're so in- they're so... I think orcas are so smart, they realize the-

01:43:37
Eric Weinstein: It's like-

01:43:37
Kai Lenny: ... maybe the ramifications of if they did

01:43:38
Eric Weinstein: I, I swear to God, I think it's one of the greatest puzzles ever, and I, I do have the sense that they're like, "W- we should not mess with these people." It's like, "This is the one species... We, we can take anybody in the water, even the great whites. Leave these guys alone." Uh, and of course, you have local culture with orca pods, where, um, they have entirely different styles of hunting, and they pass information in ways that we have no idea about.

01:44:02
Kai Lenny: And so I, I think the fear, too, is that these bull sharks can eventually pass this information to other sharks-

01:44:09
Eric Weinstein: Damn

01:44:10
Kai Lenny: ... and their offspring be- it becomes part of their DNA that it's like, "Oh, humans are on the menu." And so I think-

01:44:16
Eric Weinstein: Or if not their DNA, their cultural memes or whatevers. Like, some-

01:44:20
Kai Lenny: Sure

01:44:20
Eric Weinstein: ... means of transmission.

01:44:21
Kai Lenny: Yeah, yeah. And, and it's, it's... I think it's, um, it's controversial, but I mean, we at a certain point have to assert our own dominance in, in certain ways if we want to-

01:44:33
Eric Weinstein: We should take back Reunion, damn it.

01:44:34
Kai Lenny: Exactly.

01:44:35
Eric Weinstein: All right.

01:44:35
Kai Lenny: Or, or not. Leave it.

01:44:37
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

01:44:38
Kai Lenny: But, but s- there's no, there's no middle ground here, you know what I mean? It's like kids are getting eaten there all the time-

01:44:46
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah, yeah

01:44:46
Kai Lenny: ... 'cause they just wanna go surfing. And-

01:44:48
Eric Weinstein: Well, I think that we get into this thing where we get into a reverential state about nature without realizing that we're part of it, and we've also break- broken... You bought it. It's a much more complicated, uh, relationship that we need.

01:44:59
Kai Lenny: Yeah.

01:44:59
Eric Weinstein: And I think it's important not to turn-

01:45:00
Kai Lenny: And it's different everywhere. It's not the same everywhere, you know? It's not the same... Like, what's happens here in California is not the same as in Reunion, you know? I think, um, we're not gods as well, so it's like trying to like understand things is, is really difficult. But it's... I th- I wanna say leave it up to the people-

01:45:20
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:45:21
Kai Lenny: ... and leave it up to, or leave it up to the people in those places, and there's... I don't think there should be any kind of backseat sort of driving from somewhere else. Because it's a different part of the world. It's a different ocean. It's a different culture. It's a different everything. And, um, let the tribes deal with those tribe things. Like, we're not, like... Everyone always argues like, "We don't wanna police the world." Well, this is exactly that situation. Yeah, we all have our own opinions on how it should be dealt with.

01:45:51
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:45:51
Kai Lenny: But no one has a better opinion than the people who live there and understand certain things, you know? Like, aren't ch- Just that's, that's my perspective on it. I think however they see fit to take care of the situation is up to them. And for me, I live m- [laughs] thousands and thousands of miles away. It's not my decision.

01:46:12
Eric Weinstein: So I have, uh, three destination questions to finish this off with. I am obsessed with three islands in the middle of the Atlantic, and I have no idea whether they have an importance in surf culture.

01:46:25
Kai Lenny: Tell me about them.

01:46:26
Eric Weinstein: All right.

01:46:26
Kai Lenny: [laughs]

01:46:27
Eric Weinstein: So we have this island, Ascension, Saint Helena, and Tristan da Cunha. Do you know about these?

01:46:32
Kai Lenny: Where is that? Where are those?

01:46:33
Eric Weinstein: Dude, you can't tell me you don't know these islands.

01:46:35
Kai Lenny: Where are they?

01:46:35
Eric Weinstein: They're right in the middle between Africa and South America. So Napoleon-

01:46:40
Kai Lenny: Oh my gosh, I know... Wait, they're really south, aren't they?

01:46:42
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:46:43
Kai Lenny: Okay, yeah. I was looking at those.

01:46:44
Eric Weinstein: Like, one of them's-

01:46:45
Kai Lenny: It gets cold

01:46:45
Eric Weinstein: ... off Namibia.

01:46:46
Kai Lenny: Yeah. No, no, it's, um, those islands, I believe that they're like, there's like, it's a nature reserve as well. Like-

01:46:53
Eric Weinstein: Well, so you have Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, which is like a settlement with 300 or so people on Tristan da Cunha, which was evacuated as, as a volcano. It's, um, like there's a book called Rockhopper Copper about the only policeman on the island. It's totally obscure. They claim it's the most remote island in the world. Saint Helena is above that, and it's-

01:47:16
Kai Lenny: Oh.

01:47:16
Eric Weinstein: Oh, man, this is a gorgeous island. They just got flights. And, um, it was so isolated that you could only visit it by ship for a long time.

01:47:26
Kai Lenny: I, I, my friend of mine sent me a picture, and in my quest to try to find the biggest waves in the world and find waves that I haven't been able to surf yet, we were looking at a place like that-

01:47:36
Eric Weinstein: Dude, I, I, I tracked-

01:47:37
Kai Lenny: ... and going like, "Gosh, it's in such a ch- a perfect place."

01:47:40
Eric Weinstein: Yeah. Well, this is the thing. I track this island. I'm obsessed with this island. And you get to know, like, the individuals on the island, the shops, because it's a tiny place. But it-

01:47:49
Kai Lenny: After this, you gotta write down the names-

01:47:51
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:47:51
Kai Lenny: ... so I can really go see-

01:47:51
Eric Weinstein: Saint Helena is actually kind of a, an outpost of civilization. It's big enough that it can have, like, tiny little towns and culture and roads and stuff. And then the other one is Ascension, which is above that. I guess it's closer to, like, the Azores and things. And I think that all three of these are British overseas territories.

01:48:11
Kai Lenny: Wow.

01:48:12
Eric Weinstein: And we... Dude, we gotta go. You know, when you said this thing to me, it was very funny. It was like, uh, y- y- you said, "Thanks for the shout-out," and you said, "We have to go surf." And I was like, "I don't surf." He's like, "Don't worry, I'll teach you." I'm thinking, "Maybe, but maybe it's too much." We should go to Saint Helena, check it out, and get Red Bull to, uh, to, to do one of their Rampages or s- a film with, uh, with, with pioneering the stuff out there.

01:48:34
Kai Lenny: Oh, yeah. No, I mean, there's... As much as we think we've kinda discovered everything out there-

01:48:38
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:48:38
Kai Lenny: ... there's... I, I have this gut feeling there's some massive waves out there that are so good and no one's even tapped into, and it's just waiting to be ridden, discovered. [laughs]

01:48:48
Eric Weinstein: Well, so we have to get, get through the portal to get to these three islands. We'll, uh, put the hive mind on it.

01:48:53
Kai Lenny: Yes.

01:48:53
Eric Weinstein: And, uh, K- come back and visit when you can talk about the thing that we were checking out, but I don't want you to do it prematurely. I want you to wait until it's ripe.

01:49:03
Kai Lenny: Yeah. No, for sure. Let's, uh... I think come, come here soon. It'll be, uh... There's a lot, there's gonna be a lot to talk about, and it's exciting. Every day is really exciting.

01:49:15
Eric Weinstein: Guys, uh, you've been through the portal with, uh, Kai Lenny, who's been a, a real dream for me to meet. Please go to your web browsers, to YouTube, and just put his name in. Am I right, Kai means wave?

01:49:29
Kai Lenny: Uh, Kai means ocean in Hawaiian.

01:49:31
Eric Weinstein: Ocean in Hawaiian. Uh, you'll be treated to some of the most amazing footage you've ever seen, and with any luck, he's, he'll keep at it and stay safe.

01:49:40
Kai Lenny: I hope so. [laughs]

01:49:40
Eric Weinstein: Um, remember to check us out, uh, on YouTube by subscribing and clicking the bell to make sure that you're notified when we drop new videos. And please subscribe to us wherever you listen to podcasts. Kai, thanks very much, and peace out. We'll see everybody real soon.

01:49:57
Kai Lenny: Shaka Zulu.