RACISM, EPSTEIN & PHYSICS – Eric Weinstein & Mike Rashid (YouTube Content)

RACISM, EPSTEIN & PHYSICS – Eric Weinstein & Mike Rashid
Information
Host(s)	Mike Rashid Sean Torbati
Guest(s)	Eric Weinstein
Length	02:57:53
Release Date	6 July 2020
Links
YouTube	Watch
Portal Blog	Read
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RACISM, EPSTEIN & PHYSICS was an episode of Lions, Owls & Elephants, hosted by Mike Rashid and Sean Torbati with guest Eric Weinstein.

Description

Mike Rashid King is a professional boxer, entrepreneur, fitness & lifestyle enthusiast. He began boxing as an amateur at age 12, and stopped at age 21. Picked up the sport again in 2017, and turned pro as a heavyweight a year later in 2018. Mike has also competed as a power lifter, and played many sports over the years. Mike is into optimizing his life, by means of stressing the body and mind, and learning to deal with the stress properly. He meditates, trains, and uses the sauna daily.

Transcript

00:00:00
Mike Rashid: [suspenseful music] T minus 15 seconds. Guidance is internal. 12, 11, 10, 9... Ignition sequence start. I got so many questions for you.

00:00:16
Eric Weinstein: Well, first of all-

00:00:17
Mike Rashid: [laughs]

00:00:17
Eric Weinstein: ... uh, great to meet you. I've been really enjoying our phone conversations.

00:00:21
Mike Rashid: Yeah, yeah.

00:00:21
Eric Weinstein: Thanks for reaching out, and couldn't wait to get here, so-

00:00:23
Mike Rashid: Yeah, absolutely

00:00:23
Eric Weinstein: ... thanks for having me on the show.

00:00:24
Mike Rashid: Absolutely. For everybody watching, this is Eric Weinstein.

00:00:28
Eric Weinstein: Perfect.

00:00:28
Mike Rashid: Not Weinstein, Weinstein.

00:00:30
Eric Weinstein: You've watched your Joe Rogan, where he always-

00:00:32
Mike Rashid: Exactly

00:00:32
Eric Weinstein: ... screws it up. Yeah. [laughs]

00:00:33
Mike Rashid: Exactly. So, um, um, Eric is a mathematic, mathematic physicist.

00:00:40
Eric Weinstein: I'm... I was trained, uh, in the differential geometry that is relevant to... I probably wasn't even trained, but I learned to say these words over time.

00:00:47
Mike Rashid: Right, right. [laughs]

00:00:48
Eric Weinstein: Uh, I went to school-

00:00:49
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

00:00:49
Eric Weinstein: ... to, to learn the geometric basis of physical reality.

00:00:53
Mike Rashid: Okay.

00:00:53
Eric Weinstein: Sort of try to-

00:00:54
Mike Rashid: You know what I, you know what I mean?

00:00:57
Eric Weinstein: No.

00:00:57
Mike Rashid: [laughs]

00:00:58
Eric Weinstein: Well-

00:00:58
Mike Rashid: Let's go in more depth on that then

00:00:59
Eric Weinstein: ... like our friend Albert Einstein-

00:01:01
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

00:01:02
Eric Weinstein: ... found another guy, uh, whose name was Bernhard Riemann, who was a German geometer.

00:01:07
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:01:07
Eric Weinstein: And he said, "I bet this German geometry stuff that we'd never really thought about in physical terms is actually the language by which gravity acts."

00:01:16
Mike Rashid: Mm.

00:01:16
Eric Weinstein: And so rather than Newton's action at a distance, where somehow things feel each other across, uh, you know, across a crowded room-

00:01:24
Mike Rashid: Right

00:01:24
Eric Weinstein: ... uh, Einstein said, "No, no, let's use this geometric s- stuff, and we'll just say, like, imagine that this table started to warp, and that the way in which, um, objects rolled around on the table was determined by the warping. Now, I bet that's what gravity's really doing."

00:01:39
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:01:40
Eric Weinstein: So that turned out to, to govern one out of the four known forces.

00:01:45
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:01:46
Eric Weinstein: Um, fast-forward from nine- like, 1915, when he did that, to around 1975. 60 years later, a guy named Jim Simons, who became the world's greatest hedge fund manager of Renaissance technologies, and another guy named CN Yang, a Chinese physicist by birth who, uh, did his work and probably is a US citizen, arguably the greatest living theoretical physicist if it's not a guy named Steven Weinberg. Um, these two guys came up over lunch with the idea that maybe the rest of physics was geo- geometric, except it was a different guy's geometry.

00:02:20
Mike Rashid: Mm.

00:02:20
Eric Weinstein: It was an Alsatian named Charles Hermite.

00:02:23
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:02:24
Eric Weinstein: And so now we have this weird thing where the two greatest theories we've ever had are t- are based on two different geometers, and they're two different concepts of geometry. We don't know. Everything is now geometric-

00:02:36
Mike Rashid: Okay

00:02:36
Eric Weinstein: ... but it's two different kinds of geometry.

00:02:38
Mike Rashid: Okay, with that, we have certain laws of physics that we're bound to, correct?

00:02:45
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:02:45
Mike Rashid: Um, nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.

00:02:49
Eric Weinstein: That would be Albert, yeah.

00:02:50
Mike Rashid: Okay. But I feel like when I think about the universe, the vastness of the universe, I think of, of a couple things. One, 'cause you, you can think, you can say, like, well, I know a lot of people... I love Rogan, and I know he tends to lean, and most people lean on this: if there is life out, out in the universe somewhere-

00:03:16
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:03:16
Mike Rashid: ... intelligent life, it would be superior to us. I don't think so.

00:03:22
Eric Weinstein: Yeah. You think we're top dog?

00:03:23
Mike Rashid: Why not?

00:03:24
Eric Weinstein: I like, I like where you're going.

00:03:25
Mike Rashid: Why not? Because here's the thing.

00:03:27
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:03:28
Mike Rashid: What, f- eight, eight billion years on Earth?

00:03:31
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:03:31
Mike Rashid: Okay? We've been here 200,000 years. Okay, so all the way up until now-

00:03:38
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:03:39
Mike Rashid: ... we're the first species with this kind of intel- intelligence.

00:03:43
Eric Weinstein: We think.

00:03:44
Mike Rashid: We think, right? That we know of. But this is all we know, so let's say-

00:03:48
Eric Weinstein: 'Cause we were talking about those orcas before we-

00:03:50
Mike Rashid: Right. True, true

00:03:51
Eric Weinstein: ... they turned on the microphones. Right. Yeah.

00:03:52
Mike Rashid: But orcas can't architect their world like we can.

00:03:55
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, they don't have opposable thumbs.

00:03:57
Mike Rashid: Exactly.

00:03:57
Eric Weinstein: If they ever get them, we're, we're in trouble.

00:03:58
Mike Rashid: Right, right. Man, [laughs] so we'd have to wipe them out if that was the case, but all right, so-

00:04:03
Eric Weinstein: Tough for them

00:04:03
Mike Rashid: ... so we are an anomaly in terms of life as we know.

00:04:09
Eric Weinstein: So far, yeah. I agree.

00:04:09
Mike Rashid: So far. So why would we assume that life somewhere else would be, like, the weirdest life form on Earth?

00:04:16
Eric Weinstein: Well, we're not taking responsibility first. I think-

00:04:18
Mike Rashid: Mm

00:04:18
Eric Weinstein: ... I think this is a, a, a fascinating question. There are a million ways to come at it. The most disturbing way of doing this is that we tell two stories, uh, in modern times that are the same story, and we don't recognize the implications for telling it twice. In one, there is a creator and a simulation.

00:04:35
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:04:36
Eric Weinstein: And, and in the other story, man is programming computers, and we're worried about artificial general intelligence that, you know, suddenly-

00:04:44
Mike Rashid: Mm

00:04:44
Eric Weinstein: ... AI will appear, and it'll go rogue. Okay, if you put the two stories together, then you would have the following. God would be the simulator. We would be the thing that's about to become self-aware.

00:04:57
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:04:58
Eric Weinstein: And God would be afraid of us, saying, "I don't know whether this thing that I've created is smarter than I am or more powerful."

00:05:04
Mike Rashid: Mm.

00:05:04
Eric Weinstein: Now, that thought is so blasphemous that we don't even recognize that it is implicit in the unpacking of the two fairy tales that we're telling ourselves.

00:05:12
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:05:12
Eric Weinstein: One, that we're the simulator, and the other is that we're gonna create the Golem that's gonna overcome us.

00:05:17
Mike Rashid: Right.

00:05:18
Eric Weinstein: So I think-

00:05:18
Mike Rashid: Wow

00:05:18
Eric Weinstein: ... you know, to your point, uh, y- do you think that somewhere God is checking his code saying, "Holy crap, I don't know who I just created. What if these guys come after me?"

00:05:27
Mike Rashid: You know what? I don't know. You know, it's... I think about that sometimes, and I think if we have a great architect or engineer, why would we figure it out? I don't think we'd be able to figure it out because if I was to arc- to engineer, uh, artificial life, there's no way-

00:05:46
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:05:46
Mike Rashid: ... you would ever come close to figuring anything out, right? So I don't w- I don't give, I guess I don't give us that much credit or our grand architect that little credit.

00:05:57
Eric Weinstein: Yeah. [laughs]

00:05:58
Mike Rashid: [laughs] I, I... You know what? I am... My mind, like, sometimes that keeps me up at night. I'm blown away on, because if- ... creation-

00:06:08
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:06:08
Mike Rashid: ... that there'll be like, and then the Big Bang. I'm still like, they're the same to me, you know? And then, okay, so you- as you know, like, with math and science, you, we can get to the Big Bang, right?

00:06:25
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

00:06:26
Mike Rashid: But what's before that? And what if the math is wrong? Because if the math is right, I feel like we would've figured everything out, just keep going.

00:06:34
Eric Weinstein: Well, well, okay, so-

00:06:37
Mike Rashid: [laughs]

00:06:37
Eric Weinstein: ... let's think about it.

00:06:38
Mike Rashid: Okay.

00:06:39
Eric Weinstein: What if the math tells us there are limits to what we can know? So for example, Gödel's theorem tells us that even if something is true, it may not be provably true within the system in which you inhabit.

00:06:52
Mike Rashid: Okay.

00:06:52
Eric Weinstein: So there, there can be true things that we can't actually-

00:06:54
Mike Rashid: I don't wanna cut you off, being rude. I wanna cut you off so I can understand.

00:06:57
Eric Weinstein: Sure.

00:06:58
Mike Rashid: Okay.

00:06:58
Eric Weinstein: Fir- first of all, we're both ethnic in one form or another.

00:07:02
Mike Rashid: Right.

00:07:02
Eric Weinstein: So you cut me off as much as you want to.

00:07:04
Mike Rashid: [laughs] I just wanna understand.

00:07:05
Eric Weinstein: All right.

00:07:05
Mike Rashid: That's all. I ask a lot of questions. Um, 'cause you can... Y- you're wildly intelligent, and, you know, I'm a, I'm fascinated by people like you, and I, I'm playing stuff back over and over and over and over. All right. So why would, why would we believe that there can be answers that we can't answer? Like, why, why, why is that okay?

00:07:31
Eric Weinstein: Well, let's imagine that there are things that are sort of true by accident rather than-

00:07:35
Mike Rashid: Okay

00:07:36
Eric Weinstein: ... true for a good reason.

00:07:37
Mike Rashid: Okay. And I, I believe that's everything.

00:07:39
Eric Weinstein: Well-

00:07:39
Mike Rashid: My personal belief

00:07:40
Eric Weinstein: ... like, okay, so, you know, for example, um, it is true by accident in some sense that intelligent mollusks exist, like cuttlefish and oct- octa-

00:07:59
Mike Rashid: Right

00:07:59
Eric Weinstein: ... octopus.

00:08:00
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

00:08:00
Eric Weinstein: Okay. Well, imagine that you're in a world where you don't know that that exists.

00:08:05
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:08:05
Eric Weinstein: So you're trying to make a statement about life, and then it turned out you just didn't happen to know about something because you had no reason to know about it.

00:08:12
Mike Rashid: Right.

00:08:12
Eric Weinstein: Well, there are mathematical statements that are weirdly true, but not for a good reason. They're just true because they're, they don't happen to be false. In, or within the system in which you, you are operating-

00:08:25
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

00:08:25
Eric Weinstein: ... you can have something which happens to be true by accident, but isn't true for a really deep and good reason.

00:08:31
Mike Rashid: Okay. I'm following.

00:08:31
Eric Weinstein: So that would be, like, a reason that you couldn't prove that something was true because, you know, i- if, if I, if I make certain sorts of claims, um, sometimes something is true for a profound reason, and sometimes it just happens not to be false.

00:08:48
Mike Rashid: Okay.

00:08:48
Eric Weinstein: That'd be an example.

00:08:49
Mike Rashid: You get that, Sean?

00:08:50
Sean Torbati: I do. And back on the two different paradigms that you were talking about with the creator who's eventually gonna realize that we're getting too powerful or self-aware, or us being... That's pretty deep, but I think we even have some biblical references to that being a possibility, like with stories like the ark, or man, maybe they were communicating it as the sin was too much, or they had to start over, but it could've been that.

00:09:16
Mike Rashid: Right. Right. Right.

00:09:17
Sean Torbati: That might be the way that that's written.

00:09:19
Mike Rashid: That is a... That's a Fermi paradox, right? Once said civilization gets too advanced, the more advanced guys wipe 'em out, right?

00:09:30
Eric Weinstein: Could be.

00:09:31
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

00:09:31
Eric Weinstein: That could be an answer why there's so little-

00:09:34
Mike Rashid: Start over

00:09:34
Eric Weinstein: ... could also just be that we're being k- kept in a preserve-

00:09:37
Mike Rashid: Right

00:09:37
Eric Weinstein: ... and that the people who know what's what don't want anyone contacting us the way we don't want people interfering with tribes in the Amazon.

00:09:43
Mike Rashid: Okay. All of that is fine.

00:09:44
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:09:44
Mike Rashid: That's cool. But why? Why?

00:09:48
Eric Weinstein: Well, Mike, let me ask you a question.

00:09:50
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:09:50
Eric Weinstein: What animates you and gives you purpose? Where, what, what, where does your life cash out? So, you know-

00:09:56
Mike Rashid: I'll be honest with you.

00:09:56
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:09:58
Mike Rashid: You know, my children and enjoying life. That's it.

00:10:04
Eric Weinstein: You say that's it, but I bet there's more.

00:10:05
Mike Rashid: It might be.

00:10:06
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:10:07
Mike Rashid: But I think all roads still lead back to enjoying life, if you really think about it. Because I, I, you know, maybe I'm wrong, but I think what separates us from animal kingdom is, you know, of course self-awareness, empathy, our opposable thumbs.

00:10:25
Eric Weinstein: Yes.

00:10:26
Mike Rashid: Um-

00:10:26
Eric Weinstein: Love those things. [laughs]

00:10:27
Mike Rashid: Right. But, but we, we, we, we do things out of novelty.

00:10:31
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:10:31
Mike Rashid: That's, novelty's important. Music is important to us. I, so I stare at my dog-

00:10:36
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:10:36
Mike Rashid: ... and I blast the music, he doesn't even react. He's not even annoyed. Well, I can't see it. You know, I can't tell if he's annoyed or not. It's, it's nothing to him.

00:10:44
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:10:44
Mike Rashid: That's fascinating to me. It's so, music is so important to me and us, or whatever. They don't even care. They just wanna eat and sleep and hump on something.

00:10:54
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:10:54
Mike Rashid: You know?

00:10:55
Eric Weinstein: Well, we're, we're pretty similar to that.

00:10:57
Mike Rashid: Right. But we, we love to enjoy life and be comfortable.

00:11:00
Eric Weinstein: But we don't know why we enjoy music. Nobody really has a clue why something that expensive would be that interesting to the brain. Now, intuitively, I can say, well, if you don't enjoy music, you must be dead in some kind of way in some-

00:11:13
Mike Rashid: Right

00:11:14
Eric Weinstein: ... however, if you ask me to defend it evolutionarily, like, why would, why would nature prioritize this quite this much? Nobody has a clue why.

00:11:23
Mike Rashid: That can be one of those truths that's true by accident, right?

00:11:26
Eric Weinstein: It could be.

00:11:27
Mike Rashid: There's no big, deep meaning for it.

00:11:29
Eric Weinstein: Well-

00:11:29
Mike Rashid: Reason

00:11:29
Eric Weinstein: ... I, sometimes I go back to... I, I think that actually the problem is that we have too many reasons that music is important. So one thing is that if I... Well, we were just talking about the po- power of the Bible.

00:11:42
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:11:42
Eric Weinstein: And, uh, when Jimi Hendrix took Bob Dylan's song All Along the Watchtower, which quotes Isaiah, um... You know, there's two separate scenes in the Bible. One is Christ on the cross with the joker and the thief on his two sides, I guess is-

00:11:59
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

00:11:59
Eric Weinstein: ... is one allusion.

00:12:00
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:12:00
Eric Weinstein: And the other is go and set a watchman, and come and let us, and let him say what he sees.

00:12:05
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:12:05
Eric Weinstein: And he's talking about a, the rider telling us that Babylon has fallen.

00:12:09
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:12:12
Eric Weinstein: I think that, that, that those chords, it's basically three chords, I don't know what it would be. It'd be like A minor, G, and F just repeating in sequence. Um, those chords animate the song, and they tell us to pay attention. So one thing is please pay attention. It's a way of sweetening something so that the brain remembers it. Another thing that it does completely differently, if you ever listen... I don't know if, uh... Alan Lomax used to go through the, the Deep South of the United States, particularly through the prison system.

00:12:42
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:12:42
Eric Weinstein: And, you know, people would joke that Angola Prison in Louisiana was the Juilliard of the South-

00:12:48
Mike Rashid: Mm

00:12:48
Eric Weinstein: ... because you had people like James Booker and Lead Belly coming out of there.

00:12:51
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:12:52
Eric Weinstein: And you would hear music coordinating the work, you know?

00:12:56
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I, I understand that.

00:13:00
Eric Weinstein: So, like, what is music for? Well, one, is it to get us to pay attention to particular texts that we wanted to keep before we had the ability to print and, and-

00:13:11
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

00:13:11
Eric Weinstein: ... photocopy?

00:13:12
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:13:12
Eric Weinstein: Uh, another possibility is, is, is to coordinate, uh, activities. Another possibility, um, might be to keep out the enemy, that i- if, if I know your songs and you know my songs, then at some level I can check to see that you're really one of us.

00:13:30
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:13:30
Eric Weinstein: Whereas that guy over there, he, he doesn't know these songs.

00:13:33
Mike Rashid: Or-

00:13:34
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:13:35
Mike Rashid: ... we filling up dead space to enjoy our time.

00:13:38
Eric Weinstein: Could be, but I don't think we do it that expensively.

00:13:40
Mike Rashid: No? But why not?

00:13:42
Eric Weinstein: Well-

00:13:42
Mike Rashid: Okay, back to, uh-

00:13:44
Eric Weinstein: Well, because, for example, uh, why is it that human females seem to over prioritize musical ability when they should be focusing on who can get more resources? Like, why can you steal, uh, a, a very high quality lady away from-

00:13:59
Mike Rashid: Mm

00:13:59
Eric Weinstein: ... a rich guy with the ability to play the guitar? We're not quite sure, but it does seem to indicate that the brain is in good working order.

00:14:06
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm. Well, Sean and I were talking about... We talk a lot... Every time you and I talk, me and him talk, I, I talk about our conversations 'cause we have a... We go-

00:14:16
Eric Weinstein: You cheating on me with Sean?

00:14:17
Mike Rashid: Yeah, I know. I, I actually cheated on-

00:14:18
Eric Weinstein: It's more, it's more like the other way

00:14:19
Mike Rashid: ... I cheated on Sean with you.

00:14:20
Eric Weinstein: [laughs]

00:14:21
Mike Rashid: But we have a... Before everything got closed down, it, it, it'd be a... First it was just Sean and I, then another guy joined our group. In the mornings we go train, and we hit the sauna, and then we just go there. We just talk, you know?

00:14:34
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:14:34
Mike Rashid: We just unpack things, whatever, and it's really cool. It's therapeutic. But, um, we were talking about, uh, are certain things that we do culturally and racially, is there something in that, like, in the DNA? And, and a part of me say no, 'cause I feel like everything is learned. But, like, for instance, on the plantations, because we were talking about, well, why are Blacks so musical?

00:15:05
Eric Weinstein: Mm.

00:15:06
Mike Rashid: Well, on the plantations, why wouldn't we? When we're wor- just like the coordinated sounds of the work in that prison, we did the same thing on the plantations.

00:15:15
Eric Weinstein: Oh, yeah.

00:15:16
Mike Rashid: Anywhere, we would just make it fun, you know? Um, so it's just out of a... To me, that's out of a necessity to enjoy that time. Like, I'm gonna... I gotta do this anyway.

00:15:27
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:15:27
Mike Rashid: Let me enjoy it. I gotta be here anyway. Let me figure out a way to make this fun, you know?

00:15:33
Eric Weinstein: Yeah. Although I would say-

00:15:36
Mike Rashid: Also, also-

00:15:37
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:15:37
Mike Rashid: ... in those songs, there were messages, you know? But also, some of those messages were... How can I put this? Um, let's go to white supremacy, right? Before the white supremacy movement-

00:15:54
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:15:54
Mike Rashid: ... there was still a, a certain type of white supremacy, and it was a Black inferiority, and the tactics were brilliant. It was evil, but it was brilliant. So, and it was... A huge part of it was, was the Bible, was the way Christianity was taught to us.

00:16:11
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:16:12
Mike Rashid: It was taught that Jesus was God, 'cause Jesus is not God. He's not God. This is a monotheistic religion.

00:16:20
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:16:21
Mike Rashid: No one questions that. There's three gods now, and Jesus is one of them, and Jesus was white-

00:16:27
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:16:27
Mike Rashid: ... even though he's Middle Eastern or a dark guy, and he says, "Don't make images of me," and they made a image of him of a European. So on the plantation, they also taught us that, you know, you're supposed to honor your master and you go to heaven, so be happy, and we accepted that 'cause we didn't know anything else. Just like I don't judge... People judge North Koreans. They- they're stupid. They, they believe this. I'm like, why would... They- you're born, and that's all the information that you have. Over generation after generation, you believe it. Same happened with us on plantations. So some of our songs were like, I'm paraphrasing, like Wade in the Water or whatever. It was like, "You know, this sucks now, but, you know, when we die, we'll go to heaven. It's all good." And it's tragic. It's horrible.

00:17:13
Eric Weinstein: Uh, but, but then you have to deal with coded speech.

00:17:16
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:17:16
Eric Weinstein: Right? So, like, if you look at, uh, if you look at Ne- Negro spirituals, you see... I mean, do you know Odetta by, by chance?

00:17:25
Mike Rashid: Do I know Odetta?

00:17:26
Eric Weinstein: Do you know her work?

00:17:27
Mike Rashid: No other, yeah.

00:17:27
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:17:28
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:17:28
Eric Weinstein: So she does a song called Hold On. I don't know. I can't really sing, but it's like, "Paul and Silas are locked in jail. Didn't have no one to go their bail. But keep your hands on the plow and hold on." And then, and then it sort of, "Hold on."

00:17:50
Mike Rashid: Mm.

00:17:50
Eric Weinstein: What is she really saying? It's like, this is temporary.

00:17:52
Mike Rashid: Mm.

00:17:53
Eric Weinstein: You know? So in part, the message might be about hold on till you get to the next life.

00:17:58
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:17:58
Eric Weinstein: Or it could be hold on because this is untenable and it's not going to be forever.

00:18:04
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:18:04
Eric Weinstein: And, you know, or calling Harriet Tubman Moses. Well, how, how do we know what, what they're singing about?

00:18:09
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:18:09
Eric Weinstein: Are they singing about Moses, or are they singing about some lady who's gonna help get people get off the plantation into the free North?

00:18:15
Mike Rashid: Right.

00:18:16
Eric Weinstein: I think that we don't have a clear ... concept of just how much slaves actually knew, understood, and were engaged in a battle of wits-

00:18:26
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

00:18:26
Eric Weinstein: ... um, by coding their speech.

00:18:29
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

00:18:29
Eric Weinstein: And I, and you see the same thing, for example, in Denmark during the war. There's a guy named Piet Hein who communicates to fellow Danes through cultural references that can't be understood by the Nazi occupied.

00:18:41
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:18:42
Eric Weinstein: So he comes up with this thing called grooks.

00:18:44
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:18:44
Eric Weinstein: And grooks are things that Danes will understand the true meaning of, but he can publish them openly in the Nazi-run paper because-

00:18:52
Mike Rashid: No one knows

00:18:52
Eric Weinstein: ... nobody understands-

00:18:52
Mike Rashid: Yeah

00:18:52
Eric Weinstein: ... what the actual means-

00:18:54
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

00:18:55
Eric Weinstein: ... of in-

00:18:55
Mike Rashid: Right

00:18:55
Eric Weinstein: ... of decoding are.

00:18:56
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

00:18:56
Eric Weinstein: You know, or, and then you have like, um, and then you've got really weird uses, uses of music. So for example, um, the crazy story behind Puttin' on the Ritz. Do you know it?

00:19:09
Mike Rashid: I don't. Do you?

00:19:10
Eric Weinstein: No.

00:19:11
Mike Rashid: Okay.

00:19:11
Eric Weinstein: I mean, I know the song.

00:19:11
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

00:19:12
Eric Weinstein: Do you?

00:19:12
Mike Rashid: Yeah, I know the song too.

00:19:13
Eric Weinstein: How does it, how does it go?

00:19:14
Mike Rashid: Dun, dun.

00:19:14
Eric Weinstein: All the little words.

00:19:15
Mike Rashid: I don't know the words.

00:19:15
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, we just know Puttin' on the Ritz.

00:19:16
Mike Rashid: I know the melody.

00:19:18
Eric Weinstein: Have you seen the-

00:19:18
Mike Rashid: Puttin' on the Ritz

00:19:18
Eric Weinstein: ... well-to-do up and down Park Avenue? Well, Park Avenue didn't used to be Park Avenue.

00:19:23
Mike Rashid: Okay.

00:19:23
Eric Weinstein: And it wasn't the Rockefellers.

00:19:24
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:19:25
Eric Weinstein: It was, uh, the Black help on Lenox Avenue up in Harlem, and the whites were making fun of them spending too much of their money-

00:19:34
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

00:19:35
Eric Weinstein: ... uh, in lavish-

00:19:37
Mike Rashid: Oh

00:19:37
Eric Weinstein: ... display.

00:19:38
Mike Rashid: Okay.

00:19:38
Eric Weinstein: It's the most offensive song you've ever heard.

00:19:40
Mike Rashid: Oh, okay.

00:19:41
Eric Weinstein: And then the pressure forced it to be changed-

00:19:45
Mike Rashid: Mm

00:19:46
Eric Weinstein: ... to, uh, to be about whites, uh, showing off on Park Avenue-

00:19:51
Mike Rashid: Right, I got you

00:19:52
Eric Weinstein: ... which made no sense.

00:19:53
Mike Rashid: Okay.

00:19:53
Eric Weinstein: Right? And so the issue, uh, also, you know, like, um, I, I don't, I, I don't know whether I'm allowed to use the magic horrible N-word syllables on this program, but-

00:20:07
Mike Rashid: You are.

00:20:08
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

00:20:08
Mike Rashid: We, we-

00:20:08
Eric Weinstein: [laughs]

00:20:09
Mike Rashid: Listen, this is a, this is a safe space.

00:20:11
Eric Weinstein: Well, it's not a question of that.

00:20:12
Mike Rashid: No.

00:20:12
Eric Weinstein: It's a question about u- using the factual history to talk about bigotry and prejudice.

00:20:18
Mike Rashid: Yeah, please do.

00:20:19
Eric Weinstein: So, okay. So Gilbert and Sullivan wrote this, this play and this musical called The Mikado.

00:20:26
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:20:26
Eric Weinstein: And recently, when I was in San Francisco, um, the Asian Theatre Company in San Francisco said, "You can't put on this play because it's yellowface because it's set in Japan."

00:20:38
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:20:38
Eric Weinstein: Now, previously, they had, I think, asked the Gilbert and Sullivan company for the roles of the Japanese.

00:20:45
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:20:46
Eric Weinstein: So they were actually not objecting to the play. They were saying, "We, we need those roles." When those roles weren't given, then they said, "Now we're going to object to the entire play."

00:20:53
Mike Rashid: Okay.

00:20:54
Eric Weinstein: So they had a town meeting about this, and I said, "You know, you guys are absolutely right. This play is bigoted."

00:21:00
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:21:00
Eric Weinstein: "It is backwards. It is prejudiced, but it's not prejudiced against Asians."

00:21:05
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:21:06
Eric Weinstein: "It's prejudiced against Blacks."

00:21:08
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:21:08
Eric Weinstein: So they were completely confused.

00:21:09
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:21:09
Eric Weinstein: I said, "Well, if you go to the original libretto, um, in the song A More Humane Mikado," which is one of the most famous numbers from this opera-

00:21:17
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

00:21:17
Eric Weinstein: ... operetta, uh, it uses the phrase, um, the nigger serenader and the others of his race.

00:21:24
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:21:24
Eric Weinstein: And th- they, they're on a list. And now Gilbert, W.S. Gilbert, the lyricist, was forced to change that to-

00:21:31
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

00:21:31
Eric Weinstein: ... the banjo serenader, where banjo-

00:21:34
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

00:21:34
Eric Weinstein: ... was a reference to an African instrument-

00:21:38
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

00:21:38
Eric Weinstein: ... that came and informed the American folklore tradition.

00:21:41
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

00:21:41
Eric Weinstein: Right? And so by not knowing the history, by not being able to communicate the dreaded syllables and, and, and-

00:21:50
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

00:21:50
Eric Weinstein: ... where we were-

00:21:51
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

00:21:51
Eric Weinstein: ... we don't even know that Puttin' on the Wrist has a, has a ser, Puttin' on the Ritz has a serious problem.

00:21:57
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:21:57
Eric Weinstein: We don't know that The Mikado had a serious problem. The Asians think that it's anti-Asian when it was never about Japan.

00:22:04
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:22:04
Eric Weinstein: Japan was a stand-in for the United Kingdom.

00:22:07
Mike Rashid: Right. Right.

00:22:07
Eric Weinstein: Right? So it was like a fake made-up Japan-

00:22:09
Mike Rashid: Wow

00:22:09
Eric Weinstein: ... that has never existed.

00:22:11
Mike Rashid: Fascinating.

00:22:11
Eric Weinstein: And the actual prejudice was against Blacks.

00:22:13
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:22:13
Eric Weinstein: And that's what really sort of bothered me is, is that we fictionalized our own history by telling everyone what they can and cannot say.

00:22:22
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:22:22
Eric Weinstein: So even when we're running up against bigotry and prejudice, we don't even know where it's coming from.

00:22:28
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:22:28
Eric Weinstein: We don't know, we don't know our story.

00:22:29
Mike Rashid: Right. Okay, so I wanna shift a little bit.

00:22:33
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:22:34
Mike Rashid: And I wanna ask you a question. What, why, okay, when Kaepernick, uh, did this, the peaceful protest by taking a knee, you know why. I know you know why. Like, his reasoning, it was for, to protect, protest police brutality and killing-

00:22:53
Eric Weinstein: Mm-hmm

00:22:53
Mike Rashid: ... of, of African Americans. So it got taken somewhere weird. Uh, he's disrespecting the national anthem.

00:23:01
Eric Weinstein: It got taken everywhere.

00:23:02
Mike Rashid: Yeah, it, it, uh, it, it was, that was, that is so frustrating to someone like me. It's like I can't even begin to s- explain to anyone, like, that's not what it's, it's not what it's about. It's not what it's about. But okay.

00:23:14
Eric Weinstein: Well, the knee was brilliant.

00:23:15
Mike Rashid: Right.

00:23:15
Eric Weinstein: The sitting down on the bench was not brilliant.

00:23:17
Mike Rashid: Well, he didn't know.

00:23:18
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:23:18
Mike Rashid: Well-

00:23:18
Eric Weinstein: Well, he didn't-

00:23:19
Mike Rashid: But, but still

00:23:19
Eric Weinstein: ... it took him a while to find his voice.

00:23:20
Mike Rashid: Okay.

00:23:21
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah.

00:23:21
Mike Rashid: But let's say he sat down, right?

00:23:25
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

00:23:25
Mike Rashid: I, to me, it's like, well, I mean, I'm from New York.

00:23:28
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

00:23:28
Mike Rashid: And we, what I've noticed, I've lived all over the country. In New York, we're, we learn more history. Uh, it's very cultural. I'm from Brooklyn. And you know, the further west I come, people don't know much about much history. So I'm like, "Well, I don't think anybody should salute or, or sing the national anthem. We need a new song."

00:23:50
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:23:51
Mike Rashid: You know? Um, that's not even talked about. It really fa- it's fascinating that it's not talked about, like, 'cause that's a racist song, right?

00:23:59
Eric Weinstein: It's interesting. If you go to the final, like, we only sing the first-

00:24:02
Mike Rashid: The first stanza

00:24:03
Eric Weinstein: ... right. But if you go deeper in that song, as you know, it says what? "Conquer we must when our cause it is just, and this is our motto, and God do we trust."

00:24:11
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:24:12
Eric Weinstein: So it's like when you need to conquer, you should conquer.

00:24:16
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:24:16
Eric Weinstein: Now, is that a message that people know? It's again, it's hidden, right?

00:24:20
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:24:21
Eric Weinstein: And the, um- And that song, like, let's talk about that song

00:24:26
Mike Rashid: I mean, before that stanza, though, it brags about slavery.

00:24:29
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:24:30
Mike Rashid: You know? And Francis Cress, that was the writer, right? Uh-

00:24:34
Eric Weinstein: Francis Scott Key

00:24:35
Mike Rashid: Scott Key. I'm sorry.

00:24:36
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:24:36
Mike Rashid: Cress, Cress is something, like, completely different, but open racist, pro-slavery, but the song, it literally brags about slavery.

00:24:46
Eric Weinstein: Well, and then the question is what should you do with a song that comes from, like, y- y- you know, it's weird. The Constitution was written at a time when we had slaves.

00:24:56
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:24:56
Eric Weinstein: And on the other hand, it's forward-thinking enough that you can apply it to women who didn't get the vote until, you know, the 19th Amendment-

00:25:05
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

00:25:06
Eric Weinstein: ... and post-slavery because when it talks about men, you know, weirdly, it, it, it was built with headroom even though it was built in a limited age.

00:25:15
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:25:15
Eric Weinstein: And then, you know, you have the same problem with the Bible where it talks about slavery and how, how to be ethical to the slaves-

00:25:21
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

00:25:22
Eric Weinstein: ... that you hold.

00:25:22
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:25:22
Eric Weinstein: But the spirit and the letter go in opposite directions. It was progressive for its time, but if you implemented it, the letter of the law, you'd be completely regressive.

00:25:32
Mike Rashid: Correct.

00:25:33
Eric Weinstein: If you think about the national anthem, for example, the first person I think to really understand what you're talking about was arguably José Feliciano.

00:25:45
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:25:45
Eric Weinstein: And at the, I think it was the World Series, he played a Puerto Rican sort of Latin version-

00:25:51
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

00:25:52
Eric Weinstein: ... which was super respectful and it was beautiful. It just didn't sound like the usual one.

00:25:55
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:25:55
Eric Weinstein: And he got more hate because he touched the sacred thing that you weren't supposed to do in it with any kind of adulteration.

00:26:01
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:26:02
Eric Weinstein: Now, of course, you know that the singing of the national anthem by Blacks, uh-

00:26:05
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

00:26:05
Eric Weinstein: ... you know-

00:26:06
Mike Rashid: Right

00:26:06
Eric Weinstein: ... in, in, in Washington, DC is a big issue. Jimi Hendrix saw the José Feliciano thing. He said, "Oh, I thought that was beautiful."

00:26:14
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:26:14
Eric Weinstein: "That guy's a virtuoso guitarist, but-

00:26:16
Mike Rashid: Right

00:26:16
Eric Weinstein: ... if you didn't like that, get a load of this."

00:26:18
Mike Rashid: Right.

00:26:19
Eric Weinstein: And then he just, he tore that thing to shreds-

00:26:21
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

00:26:21
Eric Weinstein: ... and he actually brought the violence-

00:26:23
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

00:26:23
Eric Weinstein: ... of that song.

00:26:24
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm. Right.

00:26:27
Eric Weinstein: Now, my, one of my problems is my f- m- one of my favorite renditions of that, y- have you ever seen Whitney Houston do it in sweats?

00:26:34
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah.

00:26:36
Eric Weinstein: And she, and she, like, she, you know, that land of the free, it's an octave and a half up.

00:26:39
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

00:26:39
Eric Weinstein: And then she punches it one octave. I think maybe she maybe punches it a second octave.

00:26:43
Mike Rashid: See-

00:26:43
Eric Weinstein: So that, the problem is, is that now you've got this thing, and it's infused with all sorts of different meaning.

00:26:50
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:26:51
Eric Weinstein: Like-

00:26:52
Mike Rashid: But is it infused with different meaning, or is it just these, like, these wildly talented artists interpret it-

00:27:02
Eric Weinstein: Well, maybe we

00:27:02
Mike Rashid: ... a, a different-

00:27:03
Eric Weinstein: ... need to agree. I don't know

00:27:03
Mike Rashid: ... because I don't, I don't even think they know what the whole song, you know-

00:27:07
Eric Weinstein: They may-

00:27:07
Mike Rashid: ... most don't.

00:27:08
Eric Weinstein: But-

00:27:08
Mike Rashid: And that's okay. It's, it's, I get it, 'cause I didn't know about it for a while, because, you know, we only sang one part.

00:27:15
Eric Weinstein: Well, let's talk about the greatest genius of them all-

00:27:17
Mike Rashid: Mm

00:27:17
Eric Weinstein: ... Louis Armstrong.

00:27:18
Mike Rashid: Okay.

00:27:19
Eric Weinstein: Now, Louis Armstrong, my understanding was, it was, uh, in North Dakota, and Louis Armstrong was an orphan-

00:27:28
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

00:27:29
Eric Weinstein: ... in New Orleans, and he had always been terrified of running afoul of white society.

00:27:35
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:27:35
Eric Weinstein: And in fact, most whites remember him as a novelty singer. You know, he's this huge, non-threatening friend.

00:27:40
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:27:40
Eric Weinstein: "Hello, Dolly," whatever.

00:27:42
Mike Rashid: Right.

00:27:42
Eric Weinstein: They don't remember him as the genius who single-handedly more or less invented our national, uh, classical music, which is jazz-

00:27:49
Mike Rashid: Mm

00:27:49
Eric Weinstein: ... in its modern incarnation.

00:27:51
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:27:52
Eric Weinstein: So they send him out as an ambassador. "Go do your cute stuff. Sing the praises of the United States." I think it was 1954. I don't know. W- maybe it was Ruby Bridges. Anyway, he got word that there were people looking to do violence to, to a young Black girl integrating a school.

00:28:11
Mike Rashid: Mm.

00:28:11
Eric Weinstein: And he grabbed the local reporter, and he said, "Hey, kid, do you want the story of a lifetime?" So Louis Armstrong, I think, brought him back to the hotel in North Dakota and proceeded to sing an obscene version of the national anthem.

00:28:25
Mike Rashid: Wow. I didn't know this. I didn't know about this. You knew?

00:28:28
Eric Weinstein: No. Well, it's Black History Month, my friend.

00:28:30
Mike Rashid: Okay. [laughs]

00:28:30
Eric Weinstein: Okay. So that thing moved me too-

00:28:35
Mike Rashid: Mm

00:28:35
Eric Weinstein: ... which is this is a canvas, and the greatest [laughs] national musician that this country has produced, who, who invented our national music, turned it into a giant middle finger to the American South.

00:28:51
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:28:53
Eric Weinstein: So now what is it? And that, that's what I wanna bring this back to.

00:28:56
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:28:56
Eric Weinstein: It's not Francis Scott Key's song anymore. It belongs to all sorts of bigots and crackers. It belongs to Whitney Houston, F- José Feliciano-

00:29:05
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

00:29:06
Eric Weinstein: ... Jimi Hendrix, and what we choose to do with it, whether we choose to defang it, whether we choose to spin it. It's like the same thing happened with When Johnny Comes Marching Home, right? It's in some sense an Irish anti-war song.

00:29:19
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:29:19
Eric Weinstein: You know, "Where are the legs with which you ran? Hoo, roo. Hoo, roo."

00:29:22
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:29:22
Eric Weinstein: "Where are the legs with which you ran when first you learned to carry a gun? Indeed, your dancing days are go- are, are done. Johnny, I hardly knew you." His legs are blown off. That's not When Johnny Comes Marching Home in a happy way.

00:29:33
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:29:33
Eric Weinstein: But both songs are maintained.

00:29:35
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:29:36
Eric Weinstein: Both the heroic war song and the anti-war song are maintained.

00:29:40
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:29:40
Eric Weinstein: And so I think what we need to do is to say, "Well, it's not... Whose song is it?" Right?

00:29:45
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:29:45
Eric Weinstein: You know, it's like wh- when Bob Dylan had his song handed back to him by Jimi Hendrix.

00:29:50
Mike Rashid: Mm.

00:29:50
Eric Weinstein: Bob Dylan's a smart guy, and he said, "Okay, forget what I wrote."

00:29:53
Mike Rashid: Right.

00:29:54
Eric Weinstein: "What that guy did to my song-"

00:29:56
Mike Rashid: Right

00:29:56
Eric Weinstein: ... "that's the version."

00:29:56
Mike Rashid: Okay.

00:29:56
Eric Weinstein: And he, and he started doing it.

00:29:58
Mike Rashid: I, I, I, I like that.

00:29:59
Eric Weinstein: And, and with Colin, with, with Colin Kaepernick, I think it's really, um, it would've been perfect if he hadn't done the intermediate thing of sitting down because taking the knee is a genius-level move.

00:30:10
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:30:11
Eric Weinstein: Right? There's nothing less threatening in a weird sense than a person who's on his knee-

00:30:18
Mike Rashid: Right

00:30:18
Eric Weinstein: ... because it says to you, "I'm not, I'm not capable of running after you right immediately."

00:30:21
Mike Rashid: So what's the, what is offensive-

00:30:25
Eric Weinstein: It's-

00:30:25
Mike Rashid: ... about sitting 'Cause I'm gonna tell you this

00:30:28
Eric Weinstein: All right, well let's-

00:30:29
Mike Rashid: That is a natural instinct for any Black person

00:30:31
Eric Weinstein: All right, well let's, let's go through it

00:30:32
Mike Rashid: Okay

00:30:33
Eric Weinstein: Because this place is not perfect.

00:30:35
Mike Rashid: Mm

00:30:35
Eric Weinstein: And it's not perfect for my family.

00:30:37
Mike Rashid: Mm.

00:30:37
Eric Weinstein: It's not been perfect for yours. I could tell you how we've been oppressed.

00:30:40
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:30:40
Eric Weinstein: I can tell you how the government came after us.

00:30:42
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:30:43
Eric Weinstein: Um, my question is, are you invested? Is this your place or it isn't?

00:30:47
Mike Rashid: Mm.

00:30:47
Eric Weinstein: And m- my feeling is this is my home.

00:30:50
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:30:50
Eric Weinstein: And it, this country, with its unspeakably negative aspects to its history-

00:30:55
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

00:30:55
Eric Weinstein: ... um-

00:30:56
Mike Rashid: I, I feel the same way. I mean, I'm not, no one's running me out of here.

00:31:01
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

00:31:01
Mike Rashid: 'Cause they say, they say, "Oh, y'all should go," I'm like, "No. We, we've been working here for 400 years."

00:31:08
Eric Weinstein: Never.

00:31:08
Mike Rashid: "We got a stake here."

00:31:09
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:31:09
Mike Rashid: But we, I'm not gonna, you know, sit and act content until things are fair, you know?

00:31:16
Eric Weinstein: Well, but nobody's asking that, hopefully.

00:31:18
Mike Rashid: Mm. Right

00:31:19
Eric Weinstein: Right? I mean, the issue is-

00:31:21
Mike Rashid: Uh, but, but sitting to me is, I usually always sit.

00:31:28
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:31:28
Mike Rashid: I never... You, unless it's very awkward-

00:31:32
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:31:32
Mike Rashid: ... then I'll stand.

00:31:33
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:31:33
Mike Rashid: But I won't put my, my heart on my hand. I'm just being honest. And for those who don't understand why, I mean, you, you guys kinda see why now. Like, it, this is not new to us, you know? George Floyd, that's not new. And, um, like I explained to you on the phone, it wasn't, it's not that we're so attached to George Floyd. We don't know him.

00:31:53
Eric Weinstein: Well, actually, you, you explained something even deeper than that.

00:31:55
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

00:31:55
Eric Weinstein: So I, I think you should just sort of say more about this, and then l- let's, let's get into it, because it's just two different views of the same thing.

00:32:03
Mike Rashid: Right. Um, 'cause you made a statement about do people really care about him, right? And I was like, no, I don't think that's it. I'm sure some people know him, of course. This, it was somewhat of a relief in a weird way that everybody got to see it for us, right?

00:32:21
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:32:22
Mike Rashid: It's what we've been saying all along. And there's been other instances of this, it just didn't hit this viral. Okay, that's one. Um, and also I think any human being with a conscious to see somebody's life get taken by a killer so cavalier with his hands in his pocket, is just so... Even though it's just a subtle movement, he's just, his knee is on his neck, it's so brutally violent and evil, you know? It's so callous, you know? But seeing somebody lose their life in that matter, it, it invokes, it has the nation, it has the world protesting. And, you know, it affect everyone that's seen it, for the most part. So that was, that, th- that particular incident plus however many more-

00:33:08
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:33:09
Mike Rashid: ... is why, you know, I don't feel it's appropriate for anybody but for me-

00:33:16
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:33:17
Mike Rashid: ... to pledge allegiance to a government that won't fix that, that don't, that... You know, and then here's the thing. Even now, I'm not a political person, but politics is everywhere and it's silly. And on the political side, you have half the people brushing it away.

00:33:36
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:33:37
Mike Rashid: "Ah, yeah, but ah, yeah, the looting, but you know, ah." And it's like, nah, let's, let's bring it back. Let's talk about it. If somebody's messing up-

00:33:44
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:33:44
Mike Rashid: ... and you point it out, they don't wanna hear it. But it's necessary, you know? It's necessary to learn, to get better, to grow.

00:33:51
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:33:52
Mike Rashid: And, um, we can never, it seems like we never get there, you know? Because when something does happen, it's brushed away. "Oh, but you guys, but you did this," or, "Why did he do this?" Or, so it's never really addressed, the underlying issues.

00:34:05
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, I don't think... Look, the video of this thing scars you for life.

00:34:12
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:34:13
Eric Weinstein: And it's exactly what you're saying. Now, I also thought that he put his hand, the cop put his hand in his pocket. I think that m- maybe that I, I had that wrong, that it, he had black gloves and it was the same color as his pants, and so it looked like he had his hand in his pocket. But either way, it doesn't really matter.

00:34:30
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:34:30
Eric Weinstein: The optics were, okay, this is like that moment where you c- you show up in an emergency room and you say, "I'm having a heart attack." And the person says, you know, "I'm sorry, but there were 17 people ahead of you, and we'll, you'll just have to wait your turn. Please stop disrupting every-"

00:34:45
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:34:45
Eric Weinstein: You know, "No, I think I need to see somebody this minute."

00:34:47
Mike Rashid: Right.

00:34:48
Eric Weinstein: The person's like, "This'll be the last time that I, you know, enforce the protocol."

00:34:53
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm. Right.

00:34:53
Eric Weinstein: The cop is not in the right head space. Somebody is dying under him.

00:34:59
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:35:00
Eric Weinstein: And he's, you can't... And, and, and the, it's clear to the crowd, so thank God for that crowd because they're making the point in real time.

00:35:06
Mike Rashid: Right.

00:35:08
Eric Weinstein: Okay. What is it that we are seeing and what is it that we're feeling is confusing. If you look at the Tony Timpa video from Dallas, it's very similar, because it's cops on top of a human being. His life is expiring. It's around the same, it's 11 plus minutes rather than eight plus minutes.

00:35:26
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:35:28
Eric Weinstein: Um, the guy's white. He's... We don't know what we're watching.

00:35:35
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:35:36
Eric Weinstein: We're making inferences.

00:35:37
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:35:38
Eric Weinstein: And the issue of George Floyd, I care about George Floyd just from what I know, which is the awesome power of the state and the inability of an individual to even say anything.

00:35:51
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:35:51
Eric Weinstein: What Dave Chappelle did, which I didn't think was Dave Chappelle's best work, but it's, the guy's a genius, so you have to l- listen to everything he does. Um, he makes this point about like, this guy is having his life snuffed out, and this big strong man is calling for his mommy. What is that like?

00:36:07
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

00:36:07
Eric Weinstein: And it's humiliating.

00:36:09
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:36:09
Eric Weinstein: And I wanna talk about Black humiliation, because I think that that is much more in part the story than an individual execution, murder, whatever you wanna call [laughs] this thing.

00:36:21
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:36:21
Eric Weinstein: Um, I, I think that in large measure you have a problem that you have a long history you, which we've never been able to talk about. And when we have a very clean example of it, like- I get— I can get more worked up about the assassination of Fred Hampton because I know that that thing is exactly what I think it is.

00:36:46
Mike Rashid: Right.

00:36:46
Eric Weinstein: Right?

00:36:47
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:36:47
Eric Weinstein: Like, somebody wanted to say to Black gangs, "Hey, cut it out. Let's stop fighting each other. Let's become a viable political movement-

00:36:53
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

00:36:54
Eric Weinstein: ... and use the, you know, supposed openness of the society-

00:36:58
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

00:36:58
Eric Weinstein: ... to hear a voice that it had never heard."

00:37:00
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:37:00
Eric Weinstein: And what did we do? We assassinated the, the man in his bed for coming up with the Rainbow Coalition.

00:37:06
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:37:08
Eric Weinstein: Okay, now that I know that, I know what Black America has been up to. When I look at the letter from Sullivan at the FBI to tell Martin Luther King to suicide himself-

00:37:19
Mike Rashid: Mm

00:37:20
Eric Weinstein: ... like, I grew up thinking that suicide was something you did, not something that you, you-

00:37:24
Mike Rashid: So you-

00:37:24
Eric Weinstein: ... you cause somebody else to do.

00:37:26
Mike Rashid: Forced, yeah.

00:37:27
Eric Weinstein: But you, you wanna know one of the most egre- maybe the, the most egregious death along racial lines. Person wasn't even Black. She was b- she was blonde from Iowa, which is Jean Seberg. And for Jean Seberg's involvement with the Black Panthers as a political cause-

00:37:43
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

00:37:43
Eric Weinstein: ... our federal government planted stories inside of the Los Angeles Times and Newsweek, and told a lie that she had, was having a baby with a Black Panther under her husband's nose.

00:37:55
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:37:55
Eric Weinstein: And that caused her to miscarry and hold a open casket funeral for her, her child-

00:38:01
Mike Rashid: Mm

00:38:01
Eric Weinstein: ... and show that the child is white.

00:38:03
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:38:04
Eric Weinstein: So our country has a history of insanity on, and I wanna say this very carefully, and I, I've, I've debated d- doing that-

00:38:12
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

00:38:12
Eric Weinstein: ... but on Black issues, because it's not a question of people of color or Black and brown.

00:38:18
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:38:18
Eric Weinstein: I mean, let's, let's say it very clearly.

00:38:20
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

00:38:20
Eric Weinstein: This country is more afraid of [laughs] Blacks than it is of people of color.

00:38:25
Mike Rashid: Correct.

00:38:26
Eric Weinstein: And we also have a different problem, which is that since the 1965 Immigration Act, um, the Black-white dynamic is being denatured. And in a weird way, that means that Black America is never gonna get satisfaction for righting these wrongs, because now there's so much stuff going on, there's so many different racial backgrounds-

00:38:48
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

00:38:48
Eric Weinstein: ... there's so many different national identities that, weirdly, we say people of color both when we mean people of color and when we mean Black-

00:38:58
Mike Rashid: Right

00:38:59
Eric Weinstein: ... because we don't know how to have the coalition.

00:39:00
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:39:01
Eric Weinstein: So in all of this, then there's a, a different question, which is, do you feel invested in the society that screwed you over? And in my case, the society has screwed my family over. The federal government, same thing that was screwing with these people-

00:39:16
Mike Rashid: Mm

00:39:16
Eric Weinstein: ... screwed with my family for our politics.

00:39:18
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:39:19
Eric Weinstein: Do I feel invested in this place? Abso-effing-lutely. We've paid our dues. This is my home.

00:39:24
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:39:25
Eric Weinstein: And I will stand, and I will salute the flag even though I've had it waved in my face by gun-toting rednecks, and it has all sorts of connotations. We... Yes, the, you know, there is so much wrong with this place, starting with the fact that we aren't the original inhabitants. Neither your group nor mine.

00:39:43
Mike Rashid: Yeah, for sure.

00:39:44
Eric Weinstein: Yeah. Right?

00:39:45
Mike Rashid: Yeah. No, 100%. Um-

00:39:47
Eric Weinstein: So living with injustice-

00:39:49
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

00:39:51
Eric Weinstein: ... and living with, like, our own humiliations, um, you know, I can talk to you about Jewish humiliation, the fact that we were pressed into sexual slavery to amuse, uh, German officers during the Holocaust-

00:40:03
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

00:40:04
Eric Weinstein: ... you know, through Joy Division or whatever.

00:40:05
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:40:05
Eric Weinstein: It's humiliating.

00:40:06
Mike Rashid: Yeah. No, I'm very familiar, and, and I have the deepest of empathy for the, what happened during the Holocaust and just other atrocities across the world where other people, you know.

00:40:18
Eric Weinstein: Amen.

00:40:18
Mike Rashid: Um, I'm, I stand shoulder to shoulder with anyone that's being oppressed or being bullied, for that matter. I've always been like that. Um, I've stood up on social media for people who I don't know-

00:40:31
Eric Weinstein: Yep

00:40:31
Mike Rashid: ... against someone that I know.

00:40:34
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:40:34
Mike Rashid: Big name, because I feel like, why are you bullying this guy? If you-

00:40:37
Eric Weinstein: Well, sometimes I'll stand up for somebody who I don't like-

00:40:40
Mike Rashid: Yeah

00:40:40
Eric Weinstein: ... to somebody who I do like-

00:40:41
Mike Rashid: Correct

00:40:41
Eric Weinstein: ... because they're, they're bullying.

00:40:42
Mike Rashid: And it's not right.

00:40:43
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, I know.

00:40:44
Mike Rashid: Right.

00:40:44
Eric Weinstein: It's tough.

00:40:44
Mike Rashid: So, um, yeah, so I'm all, all the way on board with anyone with... I'm all the way on board with what's right against what's w- what's wrong, right? So, okay.

00:40:56
Eric Weinstein: But I wanna, I wanna get back to the George Floyd stuff and how-

00:40:59
Mike Rashid: Okay.

00:41:00
Eric Weinstein: I, I'm very conflicted about this.

00:41:02
Mike Rashid: Mm.

00:41:02
Eric Weinstein: Um, I do think that we have to understand that what has gone wrong with criminal justice and race in the US is a very important and complicated subject. I am much more, I think, upset at sentencing and selective prosecution, though, than I even am about policing.

00:41:26
Mike Rashid: Mm.

00:41:26
Eric Weinstein: Because as, as bad as the policing videos are gonna be, and there, there, there are gonna be more.

00:41:31
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

00:41:31
Eric Weinstein: This is not gonna end with George Floyd, people.

00:41:33
Mike Rashid: Correct.

00:41:33
Eric Weinstein: Right?

00:41:33
Mike Rashid: It's, it's a, the whole system. It's a lot. It's so... That's the p-

00:41:37
Eric Weinstein: Well, the violence of the system of, for example, like, I have a really good friend-

00:41:41
Mike Rashid: Mm

00:41:41
Eric Weinstein: ... um, somebody who babysit, babysat my children.

00:41:45
Mike Rashid: Mm.

00:41:45
Eric Weinstein: That's how much I love this guy and trust him.

00:41:47
Mike Rashid: Right.

00:41:47
Eric Weinstein: Right now he's in federal prison for weed, and he's white. He's Jewish.

00:41:51
Mike Rashid: Mm.

00:41:52
Eric Weinstein: Okay? Now, I know that it's unusual to have-

00:41:58
Mike Rashid: Mm

00:41:58
Eric Weinstein: ... a white Jewish friend-

00:42:00
Mike Rashid: Mm

00:42:00
Eric Weinstein: ... in jail for weed.

00:42:01
Mike Rashid: Weed, right.

00:42:02
Eric Weinstein: Right? How many Black families are torn apart, and people have a stain on their resume for the rest of their life for a nonviolent crime that w- is p- prosecuted and, and seen through to sentencing based in part on racial characteristics?

00:42:17
Mike Rashid: Man.

00:42:17
Eric Weinstein: It's not small.

00:42:17
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

00:42:18
Eric Weinstein: Right?

00:42:19
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

00:42:20
Eric Weinstein: So my feeling about this is you can't ask the street for the most considered, uh, statistically aware, you know, underst- historically informed understanding of where we are.

00:42:31
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:42:31
Eric Weinstein: People were pissed, but people are pissed about everything, and for good reason, and in part- I really didn't like the idea that we, uh, glommed onto this. First of all, because I don't know what the racial content of this incident is. We have people being executed on video, uh, who are white, and if you, if you did-

00:42:53
Mike Rashid: Mm

00:42:53
Eric Weinstein: ... a deep fake and you changed the skin color-

00:42:55
Mike Rashid: Yeah

00:42:55
Eric Weinstein: ... you wouldn't know which one was being done for racial reasons or not.

00:42:58
Mike Rashid: Here's the, here's the thing with that. Um, I didn't see the guy in Dallas. I saw the guy in Mesa, the exterminator.

00:43:04
Eric Weinstein: In Arizona.

00:43:05
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

00:43:05
Eric Weinstein: Oh, boy.

00:43:05
Mike Rashid: I saw that one, and I was hot. I was pissed, right?

00:43:09
Eric Weinstein: I wanted-

00:43:10
Mike Rashid: So, but-

00:43:10
Eric Weinstein: I wanted to do something bad.

00:43:12
Mike Rashid: E- exactly.

00:43:12
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:43:13
Mike Rashid: Here's the thing. Lynching, right? And even slavery, there was white slaves, but it was 90%, 95% Black. Lynching, there was-

00:43:26
Eric Weinstein: But if you include white slavery and if you included the weirdness of, like, how we treated coal mining families, where we own their house.

00:43:33
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:43:33
Eric Weinstein: We didn't pay them in dollars.

00:43:34
Mike Rashid: Right.

00:43:35
Eric Weinstein: We paid them in script.

00:43:36
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:43:36
Eric Weinstein: We, we hired private armies to enforce it.

00:43:38
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:43:38
Eric Weinstein: Like, if you count that as slavery-

00:43:40
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

00:43:40
Eric Weinstein: ... um-

00:43:41
Mike Rashid: We're looked at as white people are, is represents God because we have pictures of Jesus in our... when we were able to have little churches.

00:43:49
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:43:50
Mike Rashid: White Jesus everywhere. He looks like the slave master. You ugly Black... y'all niggas, y'all make me sick. We hated each other because we looking at ourselves, and we was in the worst conditions ever. It sucked to be us, right? Our, our cousins that were half, you know, half, fathers of slaves-

00:44:10
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:44:10
Mike Rashid: ... slave owners, they got treated a little bit better. They was in the house. You know what I'm saying? We hated them. They hated us. They looked at us like, "Y'all dirty. Y'all uneducated. Y'all..." You know? So I grew up... Listen, I'm from New York, but my mother, she's from Florida. She's from the Deep South, Sanford, where, uh, Trayvon Martin got killed.

00:44:30
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

00:44:31
Mike Rashid: I don't like that side of the family.

00:44:32
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:44:32
Mike Rashid: You know, I just hate it out there. They used to, like... I have family members, they be like, "Y'all, y'all Black, ugly. Get y'all asses," da, da, da, da, da. Every- all my cousins, I got whooped too when I was down there. It was like slavery whippings. You know what I'm saying? Extension cords. Like, shit you would go to jail for, you know what I'm saying? But it was normal. So you, you walk by somebody window, you hear the most horrific screaming. It was so normal. You know what I mean?

00:44:57
Eric Weinstein: I do.

00:44:58
Mike Rashid: Yeah. So that was a reality that we had because our parents hated us, our aunts hated us, 'cause we looked like them, and we... This is what people don't realize. We so close to slavery. Like, the time period is not that vast. So the traditions are so the same, especially in the South, specifically in the South, right? So the residual effects, that education was never important to us, 'cause after slavery, you're sharecroppers. You're still not allowed to go to school, still not allowed to learn. And then when we were, what, 100 years ago? Like, not even that long ago, 150 years ago. So we don't have great-grandparents that... We don't have a legacy of Harvard or Spelman, anything. You know what I'm saying? So when I went to college, I, my parents didn't know how to help me with the paperwork.

00:45:49
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:45:49
Mike Rashid: I had to rough through it myself.

00:45:51
Eric Weinstein: I understand this. But I-

00:45:52
Mike Rashid: So it's so many things. Nobody... Like, our parents would use our credit when we babies.

00:45:56
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:45:57
Mike Rashid: We don't know, 'cause they didn't know any better.

00:45:59
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:45:59
Mike Rashid: So, you know, the residual effects, it compounds and compounds and compounds, and then the game is literally, literally designed for us to lose with the criminal justice, uh, uh, uh, sy- system. Literally.

00:46:13
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:46:13
Mike Rashid: I could give you very specific things that I went through that I figured my way out of, but that's, that could be another episode. But so many traps, you know?

00:46:23
Eric Weinstein: That's true. But I want in on this one, because I somehow spilled out someplace totally different.

00:46:28
Mike Rashid: Okay.

00:46:29
Eric Weinstein: So in my recent, um... So I was hanging... Let, let me just say this. Uh, I've always been a little bit astounded that I have a relatively small number of Black friends.

00:46:42
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:46:42
Eric Weinstein: And I've never quite gotten that, because my, m- my attraction to the culture is pretty high.

00:46:47
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:46:48
Eric Weinstein: Um, what Black friends I do are so effing accomplished at some psychotic level that my view of the community is so much more positive than the community's view of the community. And this is not the only instance of this. Like, when I go over to the UK-

00:47:04
Mike Rashid: I know why.

00:47:06
Eric Weinstein: Why?

00:47:06
Mike Rashid: Because, uh, you're an accomplished person yourself. You're, you're an intellectual. Your circle of associates are gonna be on a higher level, Black, white, Mexican, it don't matter, right? It doesn't matter, 'cause there's a lot of low-level whites, too.

00:47:23
Eric Weinstein: That, that's true.

00:47:24
Mike Rashid: You know?

00:47:24
Eric Weinstein: But first of all-

00:47:25
Mike Rashid: And the majority-

00:47:25
Eric Weinstein: ... mostly I don't meet low-level people no matter where I go.

00:47:28
Mike Rashid: Exactly.

00:47:28
Eric Weinstein: Because honestly, most of us are living nowhere near our potential.

00:47:32
Mike Rashid: Correct.

00:47:33
Eric Weinstein: And we don't recognize what is valuable about ourselves.

00:47:36
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:47:36
Eric Weinstein: You know? So the idea that the Greeks will reference themselves to their super Greek ancestors that they can never rival, right?

00:47:44
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:47:44
Eric Weinstein: The UK sees itself, uh, losing its empire and a once great power that is, you know, now just a-

00:47:51
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

00:47:51
Eric Weinstein: ... a playground for Arab oil money or something like this.

00:47:53
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm. Right.

00:47:54
Eric Weinstein: And, you know, I look at them and I say, "Do you not understand what Oxford and Cambridge are, what you created? Do, do you, you know, think about the following this, that, and the..." I have the same feeling about Black America, which is, honestly, this is the intellectual powerhouse that no one expected.

00:48:11
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:48:12
Eric Weinstein: That so much of our national character was authored by people who were imported for labor and turned out to be the minds that were the most important. And, and so the greatest violence, and it's not the psychotically sick physical things we did to Blacks, which... And they're unspeakable.

00:48:32
Mike Rashid: Mm.

00:48:32
Eric Weinstein: And I've started talking to people.

00:48:34
Mike Rashid: Right.

00:48:34
Eric Weinstein: Like, the idea of cutting somebody's testicles off-

00:48:36
Mike Rashid: Yeah

00:48:36
Eric Weinstein: ... feeding th- them in their mouth-

00:48:37
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

00:48:37
Eric Weinstein: ... taking pictures-

00:48:38
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

00:48:38
Eric Weinstein: ... and sending souvenirs.

00:48:39
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:48:39
Eric Weinstein: Like, barbarism beyond what my- whites understand-

00:48:43
Mike Rashid: Correct

00:48:43
Eric Weinstein: ... we did, right? I don't even, I say we and it's, I feel no connection to this, but okay. The great violence was the erasure of culture, of connection, of saying, "Okay, you exist only as in the, you're in the moment, you're here to do the work that we tell you to do. You're owned and erased."

00:49:09
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:49:09
Sean Torbati: We spoke about this actually at length on, on a podcast episode, and it really, being a little bit, uh, a little bit younger, I'm, I'm 32 yesterday, but speaking about the school system. Not only did they erase it at the time-

00:49:23
Eric Weinstein: It changed-

00:49:24
Sean Torbati: ... where, where you talk about cutting the tongues out of the first round o- of slaves, and then forbidding speaking and spreading of the culture, 'cause then like you said, 50 years later, this is history. Your history is that you're here to be a slave, so they erased that. But then even now, there's less obvious, but just as diabolical placements of this type of cultural erasure in the youth, including in me. When we, when we were growing up in elementary school, we were taught that, let's just start with Egyptian people, that they were tan white folk.

00:49:59
Eric Weinstein: Mm-hmm.

00:49:59
Sean Torbati: That's what we were taught. Like, they were, it wasn't said out loud that this is what it is, but that's how they were positioned, was like just a little bit more tan. They, they weren't positioned as incredible African culture. That's just, that's, that's a, a subtle example of what happened systematically. And, and I believe the entire US education system, um, being a product of it, like especially I, I lived in a lot of areas. We moved quite frequently, but a lot of it was in the South, in Virginia and in Georgia. And some of these like Confederate generals are really like, without you even understanding how or why, they're positioned as heroes. Uh, people who were fighting for a lifestyle that no one really agrees with now, but they're still, they were able to be woven into the fabric of, of the textbooks.

00:50:46
Mike Rashid: Not, not to cut you off, Sean, but just so they understand, they were, uh, uh, they were generals of the Confederacy, which is an enemy to the United States or to the Union. Their, their plight was to maintain slavery in a white nation. Oh, they tried to defect. United States, we won, they lost. But they wrote their own history afterwards. So what you saw in your textbooks was, uh, a product of a group of women called, uh-

00:51:16
Sean Torbati: The Daughters of the Confederate

00:51:17
Mike Rashid: ... the Daughters of the Confederate.

00:51:18
Sean Torbati: Yeah.

00:51:19
Mike Rashid: And a huge campaign on just rewriting textbooks, you know, getting monuments, the Confederate monuments erected and, and, and the whole nine. And that's how that whole... They tried to, you know, get the slavery thing off of the, out of the, uh, narrative, you know? It wasn't about slavery. That was a small issue like, like they're taught to-

00:51:37
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, but then there's all sorts, all sorts of ways that you celebrate slavery by talking about the, the beauty and the grandeur of the antebellum past, blah, blah, blah.

00:51:46
Sean Torbati: Right.

00:51:46
Mike Rashid: Correct.

00:51:46
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:51:47
Mike Rashid: Correct.

00:51:47
Eric Weinstein: And so there, there are all sorts of ways in which, uh, you, you never really fully gave up the Civil War.

00:51:52
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

00:51:53
Eric Weinstein: It's still going on, you know, skirmish by skirmish.

00:51:56
Mike Rashid: Right.

00:51:56
Eric Weinstein: And I think that that is increasingly, um, you know, as somebody who's always believed that the Civil War in some sense didn't end crisply, uh, I do think that a lot of that battle, um, is being won, um, because I don't like the idea that it will go on forever. Uh, I, I often make the point that, uh, we Jews could go after Italy, uh, which erected an entire arch to Titus for sacking of Jerusalem-

00:52:23
Mike Rashid: Mm

00:52:23
Eric Weinstein: ... and stealing all of the-

00:52:24
Mike Rashid: Mm

00:52:24
Eric Weinstein: ... all the good stuff.

00:52:25
Mike Rashid: Sure. Sure.

00:52:26
Eric Weinstein: And, you know, you have to know when to stop, and on the other hand, you have to know how to keep the ener- Like, I don't believe in forgetting.

00:52:34
Mike Rashid: Right.

00:52:34
Eric Weinstein: I don't think we should ever forget.

00:52:35
Mike Rashid: Right. Right.

00:52:36
Eric Weinstein: Um, the issue though-

00:52:38
Mike Rashid: But okay, what would satisfy you though? All right, we gotta stop at some point.

00:52:42
Eric Weinstein: Well-

00:52:42
Mike Rashid: But what would satisfy you?

00:52:43
Eric Weinstein: Well, this, this is what I'm gonna get back to-

00:52:44
Mike Rashid: Okay

00:52:44
Eric Weinstein: ... which is that one of the reasons that I'm not a huge fan, uh, of being overly courteous, uh, to Black Americans when they're wrong is that I view Black Americans as being, in some sense, the great intellectual rival of the Jews. Now, people think that that's very weird. Um, I don't know why they think it's weird, and I went into this in, on, on my, the episode of, of The Portal, which is my program with Stefan Alexander. I talk about sort of inadvertently discovering Black culture by understanding that the white music that I was listening to that was rock and roll, the people whose, wrote the songs I really cared about were these different set of names. I couldn't find out who, who was McKinley Morganfield? And you know, that turned out to be Muddy Waters. And when I swam upstream and said, "Holy cow, there's an entire musical genre here that nobody ever told me about that I like much better than rock and roll."

00:53:38
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:53:38
Eric Weinstein: And that was the beginning of a really deep relationship with this culture, which is not all positive, nor is it all negative. What it does do though is, is that I'm convinced that the invention of Black culture, in particular in the 100 years after the Civil War ended, is one of the most astounding intellectual achievements in the undoing of that erasure. And, you know, I guess what, what I just find confusing about it is we have self-hating Jews. That's a big part of being Jewish [laughs] is, is self-hatred.

00:54:14
Mike Rashid: Right. Yeah.

00:54:15
Eric Weinstein: Um, but I wanna, I wanna just challenge you. I think that it's not quite so simple as being self-hating. Like, my experience in Black culture is that Blacks understand how profound a gift it is to be Black, and what a huge pain in the ass it is simultaneously, and it's a dialectic.

00:54:37
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:54:38
Eric Weinstein: 'Cause you have to deal with all of the prejudice, all of the self-hatred, the erasure of history. On the other hand, you get to claim achievements that have lots of white kids in the suburbs pretending that they're Black because they idolize-

00:54:51
Mike Rashid: So there's complexity to that, and also a lot of complexity to my position.

00:54:56
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:54:57
Mike Rashid: So-

00:54:58
Eric Weinstein: Let's, let's do it

00:54:58
Mike Rashid: ... we're not, we're not all self-hate.

00:55:00
Eric Weinstein: No, of course.

00:55:01
Mike Rashid: You know? But it's a huge chunk that is. And there's even... It was in me at some point without me knowing, and I had to check myself and not be-

00:55:08
Eric Weinstein: How did you discover it?

00:55:10
Mike Rashid: Just recognizing every time I hated on somebody Black doing something cool.

00:55:14
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:55:15
Mike Rashid: Like, "Why did I say that?"

00:55:16
Eric Weinstein: [laughs]

00:55:16
Mike Rashid: Like, "Why did I..." You know?

00:55:17
Eric Weinstein: It was a lot of it.

00:55:18
Mike Rashid: Actually, one... It happened when, like my barber of, like years ago, he's Black, and he hated on me-

00:55:26
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:55:27
Mike Rashid: ... without him realizing it to somebody else, and I just happened to hear it. I was like, "Why would he say that?" He didn't have to say anything. It was not... It was nothing that was helping him, but it's so deeply embedded. So me seeing that is like, I just learned a lesson real quick. But, you know, when you really analyze it, you know what it is. So, and, and learning history, you see we get it legitimately. Um, and when- And I'm, I'm the first to tell you, if we're wrong, we're wrong. I don't want... I want you to be hard. I, I appreciate you.

00:55:57
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, converse. Yeah.

00:55:57
Mike Rashid: I appreciate that. I tell my circle all the time, "Please tell me if I'm fucking up." Good. I may not see it.

00:56:03
Eric Weinstein: Well, it's cheaper to hear it from your friends than it is from your enemies. Look at that.

00:56:05
Mike Rashid: Correct. Right. Right. And if you care about me, you'll tell me if I'm fucking up. So yeah, it's not that we all see it like that, but... And, and to your point that, you know, we can celebrate, you know, our, some of our achievements, we don't all see it like that because s- most of us... See, your, your, um, the people that you know is, are a minority within the minority, right?

00:56:31
Eric Weinstein: Somewhat. But like if, if I'm, if I'm talking about, um, you know, the genius of, of let's say Richard Pryor-

00:56:40
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

00:56:41
Eric Weinstein: ... uh, I, there's no way to argue with, the guy is a complete comic genius. Um-

00:56:47
Mike Rashid: Correct

00:56:48
Eric Weinstein: ... if I talk about Nicki Minaj, and I'm not so hot, uh, on some of what Nicki Minaj is doing-

00:56:55
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

00:56:55
Eric Weinstein: ... which is in some sense very Black-

00:56:57
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

00:56:57
Eric Weinstein: ... um, then I'm discriminating in some sense, saying, "Well, these parts of the tradition-"

00:57:03
Mike Rashid: According to who, though?

00:57:05
Eric Weinstein: Well-

00:57:06
Mike Rashid: I don't think so.

00:57:07
Eric Weinstein: Well, I'm just s- I'm saying I'm using a discriminating... Like the word discriminating-

00:57:11
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

00:57:11
Eric Weinstein: ... he's very discriminating is a positive.

00:57:13
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:57:13
Eric Weinstein: Whereas you're discriminating against this, but no, no, no, a problem.

00:57:16
Mike Rashid: Right.

00:57:17
Eric Weinstein: Right? So the-

00:57:17
Mike Rashid: Context.

00:57:18
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:57:18
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

00:57:18
Eric Weinstein: It is, it is definitely context. W- what I would say though is that, um, you know, at some point recently I, I, I met Stanley Jordan at a friend's birthday party by chance, and I always wanted to meet like an alien from another-

00:57:35
Mike Rashid: [laughs]

00:57:35
Eric Weinstein: ... an alien intelligence from-

00:57:36
Mike Rashid: Right

00:57:36
Eric Weinstein: ... from the universe.

00:57:37
Mike Rashid: Right.

00:57:37
Eric Weinstein: And Stanley Jordan is pretty close to being an alien intelligence from the universe.

00:57:41
Mike Rashid: Right.

00:57:41
Eric Weinstein: That guy was working out, um, chemical orbitals and what they could inform us a, uh, about chord structure. You know, the guy came from Princeton, studied with Milton Babbitt. I look at that guy and I'm, I'm thinking like, "If I have to compete with Stanley Jordan, I don't wanna give that guy a handic- I, I don't wanna take a handicap."

00:58:02
Mike Rashid: Right, right.

00:58:02
Eric Weinstein: Like I, I need to be in tip-top shape if I'm-

00:58:04
Mike Rashid: Right

00:58:04
Eric Weinstein: ... gonna outthink that guy.

00:58:05
Mike Rashid: Right.

00:58:06
Eric Weinstein: And I guess that's sort of my weird feeling about, um, you know, all of these things. Like, you know, somebody's gonna tell me about race and IQ.

00:58:13
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:58:13
Eric Weinstein: And I'm gonna say, "Okay, what was Jimi Hendrix's IQ?" Because I know much more about Jimi Hendrix's intelligence than I do about the validity of an IQ test.

00:58:22
Mike Rashid: Right.

00:58:22
Eric Weinstein: And so if, if your scores, if your thing doesn't see that, I'm pretty much more confident of, of my ability to identify genius than I am about your identity to i- interpret a multiple choice question.

00:58:35
Mike Rashid: And, and the IQ test is very, is very limited in what it's judging and what it's testing. Um, I sent you the vlog, the blogs about the nine types of intelligence.

00:58:45
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:58:45
Mike Rashid: I'm not sure if you got to check it out. But when I, when we were re- we all, we would just dive into research on a bunch of stuff, whatever we're interested in at the time. And a lot of the types of intelligence personally that I feel are more important-

00:59:01
Eric Weinstein: Mm-hmm

00:59:01
Mike Rashid: ... you won't find that on, in any kind of IQ testing.

00:59:05
Eric Weinstein: Well, it's what... I keep emphasizing, when you, whenever you have multiple choice questions-

00:59:08
Mike Rashid: Y- it's already, yeah

00:59:09
Eric Weinstein: ... I can tell you, I can tell you that you're not talking about the kind of intelligence that I want because-

00:59:14
Mike Rashid: Correct

00:59:14
Eric Weinstein: ... you know... Well, you know, let's go back to Jimi Hendrix for one second. One of the reasons that it's not very helpful to read music when you're trying to reproduce what he did is that the amount of information that the page contains about the sound that he's getting is like a 10th of what makes it interesting.

00:59:33
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:59:33
Eric Weinstein: So you can, you can play the same notes as Jimi Hendrix-

00:59:35
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

00:59:36
Eric Weinstein: ... and no one will care.

00:59:38
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

00:59:38
Eric Weinstein: It's all of the things he was thinking about, you know, at a com- sculpting the notes and, and what-

00:59:44
Mike Rashid: Correct

00:59:44
Eric Weinstein: ... what they mean and how they connect and how to get the rhythm-

00:59:46
Mike Rashid: Yeah, yeah

00:59:46
Eric Weinstein: ... and lead going at the same time. That kind of stuff will never be found in A, B, C or D or none of the above.

00:59:53
Mike Rashid: 100%.

00:59:53
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:59:54
Mike Rashid: Listen, my navigation through the industry that I'm in, I don't know any of the rules.

00:59:59
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:59:59
Mike Rashid: And I don't want 'em, wanna know 'em, right? And my partner will tell you, when it comes to us, you know, just marketing products and stuff like that-

01:00:07
Eric Weinstein: Right

01:00:07
Mike Rashid: ... I like, "Don't worry, I'll, I'll, I'll come up with something."

01:00:10
Eric Weinstein: [laughs]

01:00:10
Mike Rashid: And it's w- wrong.

01:00:11
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:00:11
Mike Rashid: Like we have a agency that we deal with.

01:00:13
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:00:13
Mike Rashid: I don't care for them that much.

01:00:15
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:00:15
Mike Rashid: 'Cause I, I just, in my mind, a marketing agency only care if you're spending millions of dollars with them. You know what I mean? So, but I'm like, they're looking at the stuff that we're coming up with like, "How did you, how did that work?" You know, because it's just a energy of like getting in, get... Like wherever I'm at, whatever I choose to do-

01:00:32
Eric Weinstein: Right

01:00:33
Mike Rashid: ... I'm pretty confident that I could do a good job at it.

01:00:35
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:00:35
Mike Rashid: So in this space, I think I know I can do a good job. Very confident at it. So I, let me just deal with these people and, and connect. Let me get what I need, right?

01:00:45
Eric Weinstein: Well, breaking rules-

01:00:46
Mike Rashid: I can't, I can't

01:00:46
Eric Weinstein: ... and breaking frames.

01:00:47
Mike Rashid: I don't wanna know the rules, right? My whole life I just come up with my own stuff. Most of my life was like underground. Like I, I didn't exist.

01:00:56
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:00:56
Mike Rashid: I wasn't even- On a-

01:00:57
Eric Weinstein: Right

01:00:58
Mike Rashid: ... you know, but when I, I got to a point to where like, all right, I gotta be a normal citizen. Um-

01:01:04
Eric Weinstein: [laughs]

01:01:04
Mike Rashid: ... I still don't, the rules is just, I got this. So all right, a lot, there are, we do rec- some of us recognize what you're talking about, and a lot of that brilliance and that, that, that wattage, that brain wattage that we have and creativity and things of that nature.

01:01:21
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:01:21
Mike Rashid: But you gotta think about this. There's a, most people-

01:01:24
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:01:24
Mike Rashid: ... they don't even have time to think about that, 'cause they're working. You know that.

01:01:27
Eric Weinstein: I don't actually believe this, Mike.

01:01:28
Mike Rashid: I do. 'Cause I-

01:01:30
Eric Weinstein: I think that they're, I think they're doing it all the time. I think-

01:01:33
Mike Rashid: They might appreciate the novelty of things, but they're, like, people will look at me-

01:01:40
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:01:41
Mike Rashid: ... yeah, but you, you can tell us that, but you got this and you got that. And I've been there.

01:01:45
Eric Weinstein: No, no, that's, that's, that's the jealousy thing.

01:01:47
Mike Rashid: But, but, but I feel them too.

01:01:49
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, me too.

01:01:49
Mike Rashid: Because life is hard.

01:01:51
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:01:51
Mike Rashid: You know? I was talking to somebody the other day, I don't know who it was, about death, right? And when I was about... T, Uncle T, when did, uh, Sule die? 2000, 2001? A friend of, of our, we met through, at a funeral, it was weird. [laughs]

01:02:08
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

01:02:08
Mike Rashid: But, uh, a friend of ours, a mutual friend, he passed away, and I remember at the time I was young and just had a bunch of problems, and life s- I enjoyed life, but it still sucked. It wasn't fun. And this guy, we, me and him had a lot of the same issues. And I remember when he died, I was like, "Dang man, I know you, I know that's a relief." Like, I was like, "He's good. He ain't gotta deal with this bullshit no more."

01:02:29
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:02:30
Mike Rashid: You know what I mean? That's the existence of most, a lot of Black people, a lot, 'cause life is hard, it's extra hard. I know everybody has their struggles.

01:02:38
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:02:39
Mike Rashid: You know? But I don't know everybody's struggles.

01:02:40
Eric Weinstein: Well, the other thing is, is that when you're Black, you n- you never know you had a negative interaction. And nobody, nobody tells you, "Okay, well, that one was racially motivated."

01:02:50
Mike Rashid: Right.

01:02:50
Eric Weinstein: Two, two, two of those interactions ago, that thing that you thought was racially motivated-

01:02:53
Mike Rashid: Oh, we, we-

01:02:53
Eric Weinstein: ... that wasn't really

01:02:54
Mike Rashid: ... we know which ones.

01:02:55
Eric Weinstein: No, you don't.

01:02:56
Mike Rashid: We have a thing, we have a term called nigga rules.

01:02:59
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

01:02:59
Mike Rashid: Like, oh, that was a nigga rule right there.

01:03:01
Eric Weinstein: [laughs]

01:03:02
Mike Rashid: Or can I, where, where's, where's your, uh, manual at? Where is that at? You know, 'cause there's things that come up on the spot-

01:03:09
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:03:09
Mike Rashid: ... like we could tell. You know what I mean?

01:03:10
Eric Weinstein: Well, there are, I'm not saying that there aren't situations where you're, you're all but positive.

01:03:14
Mike Rashid: Right.

01:03:15
Eric Weinstein: Just a lot of ambiguous stuff where you can't really-

01:03:17
Mike Rashid: True indeed, true indeed

01:03:18
Eric Weinstein: ... you can't really get at it.

01:03:19
Mike Rashid: But, but I know, and I'm not one of those people-

01:03:21
Eric Weinstein: Like, for example-

01:03:22
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:03:22
Eric Weinstein: ... when I started working for this guy Peter Thiel-

01:03:24
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:03:24
Eric Weinstein: ... who's a billionaire-

01:03:25
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:03:26
Eric Weinstein: ... the world was 30% nicer to me.

01:03:28
Mike Rashid: Mm.

01:03:28
Eric Weinstein: Now, I couldn't tell you which of the 30, which part of that was-

01:03:32
Mike Rashid: Right

01:03:32
Eric Weinstein: ... because people were aware of how much money was behind me.

01:03:34
Mike Rashid: Right. Right.

01:03:36
Eric Weinstein: But I know that there was a 30% difference in every single interaction.

01:03:40
Mike Rashid: True indeed.

01:03:40
Eric Weinstein: And I can guarantee you that if I showed up in a new city with a higher melanin content-

01:03:44
Mike Rashid: Mm

01:03:44
Eric Weinstein: ... uh, of my skin, I would have, you know, some percentage weirder interactions-

01:03:48
Mike Rashid: Mm

01:03:49
Eric Weinstein: ... than what I was used to.

01:03:50
Mike Rashid: And I can attest to when my socioeconomic status would elevate-

01:03:56
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:03:57
Mike Rashid: ... things were easier for me.

01:03:58
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:03:59
Mike Rashid: I, I know it, you know? There's a lot of things that I can navigate around because of money-

01:04:04
Eric Weinstein: Right

01:04:04
Mike Rashid: ... and, and status, and things of that nature, you know? And forget Black, most people won't get to that level, period.

01:04:13
Eric Weinstein: Well-

01:04:13
Mike Rashid: Right? But when you Black and you're not there-

01:04:15
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:04:16
Mike Rashid: ... it's a little, little, little bit harder.

01:04:17
Eric Weinstein: No, I understand that.

01:04:18
Mike Rashid: A little bit harder.

01:04:18
Eric Weinstein: But in part, one of the things that I wanna do-

01:04:21
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:04:21
Eric Weinstein: ... um, is create this much more positive... I don't understand this, I guess. I guess I'm so in awe of Black achievement, and I know about enough of it that I don't understand why the rest of us aren't excited about integration issues for greed purposes. Like, I want Blacks in physics, not because I wanna see my society reflected in theoretical physics. I think we're stuck, and I think we need different intelligence which is more generative, more flow-oriented, more creative. And quite honestly, I have better conversations, um, in a world, in music when I've got top quality players who are all, you know, genius level creative. And I can tell you that there's no way in which the Black gift, if you will, uh, doesn't dominate that conversation. It doesn't dominate it i- in terms of "All God's Children Got Rhythm," it dominates it because like, oh, I used an A suspended 13th because you just used this chord over here, and I chose that inversion in order-

01:05:36
Mike Rashid: Mm

01:05:36
Eric Weinstein: ... to open up this line. Like, people are thinking at some level that's just beyond. Um-

01:05:41
Mike Rashid: Yeah. I, I, a good friend of mine, he's in there, uh, Amir, um, we've been knowing each other for probably about 20 years, and we were roommates back in the day, and he's a musician, and I watched him teach himself to play bass guitar-

01:05:55
Eric Weinstein: Mm

01:05:56
Mike Rashid: ... well.

01:05:57
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:05:58
Mike Rashid: And he taught himself key- everything.

01:06:01
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:06:01
Mike Rashid: And then, and he's, I'm talking about top level production that he sells to the biggest artists, and I watched him teach himself videography-

01:06:11
Eric Weinstein: Right

01:06:11
Mike Rashid: ... graphic design, like, and he's exceptional at it all. You know, he's just a wily... Like, now me and him are getting into the stock market, and I'm learning from him, 'cause he-

01:06:18
Eric Weinstein: Okay

01:06:19
Mike Rashid: ... he, his brain just, it works so good with things that he's interested in. So, and I just follow his lead. I'm like, "All right, let's go."

01:06:25
Eric Weinstein: So what, so why aren't we-

01:06:27
Mike Rashid: So-

01:06:27
Eric Weinstein: ... why aren't we, why aren't we dealing with the actual legacy of Black intellectu- I don't mean Black general achievement.

01:06:34
Mike Rashid: I think, I think I know why.

01:06:34
Eric Weinstein: Black intellectual achievement.

01:06:35
Mike Rashid: I think I know why.

01:06:35
Eric Weinstein: Go ahead.

01:06:36
Mike Rashid: All right. So we need help in this country.

01:06:39
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

01:06:39
Mike Rashid: Okay? We are not, we are exalted by each other within the community, right? We're not exalted on a national level by the government, by big organizations, things of that nature. And if we are- It's for their agenda, their message. Does that make sense? Th- th- there's no, there's nobody looking out for, like... All right, let's say Jay-Z.

01:07:11
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:07:11
Mike Rashid: Right? Jay-Z, I'm so amazed by him-

01:07:15
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:07:16
Mike Rashid: ... from what he came from to where he's at. But he's no- mainstream would never embrace him. Let's say Floyd Mayweather. Let's say Floyd Mayweather.

01:07:25
Eric Weinstein: Sure.

01:07:28
Mike Rashid: This man, all right, while he was boxing for the past five, six years of his last six years of boxing-

01:07:37
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:07:37
Mike Rashid: ... he was the highest paid athlete in the world, over soccer, everything, and the only athlete to have no endorsements. Nobody else did that. He cl- he beat everybody from his sport in which he gets booed at every fight.

01:07:54
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:07:54
Mike Rashid: Right? 'Cause they were paying to watch him lose.

01:07:58
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:07:59
Mike Rashid: 'Cause White people, it was more White people here, and they want, they didn't like him 'cause he's Black and he talks a lot of shit-

01:08:03
Eric Weinstein: Okay

01:08:03
Mike Rashid: ... and he's not humble, a tactic that he learned from Muhammad Ali, you know. So-

01:08:09
Eric Weinstein: Well, how do you think White people feel about Muhammad Ali?

01:08:11
Mike Rashid: They hated him back in the day.

01:08:12
Eric Weinstein: They did?

01:08:13
Mike Rashid: 100%.

01:08:14
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:08:14
Mike Rashid: More than Floyd 'cause he didn't go to Vietnam.

01:08:16
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:08:16
Mike Rashid: Right?

01:08:17
Eric Weinstein: And then?

01:08:17
Mike Rashid: So, well, when he was old and the Parkinson's set in, like, "Oh, oh, he's lovable. He's, he's-"

01:08:23
Eric Weinstein: We had mixed feelings, my friend.

01:08:25
Mike Rashid: Yeah, but, but you know, Blacks are not accepted until they don't, aren't perceived as powerful or potentially dangerous or things of that nature. Muhammad Ali's a perfect example.

01:08:40
Eric Weinstein: Say more.

01:08:40
Mike Rashid: He did so much good for this country.

01:08:43
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:08:43
Mike Rashid: He won a gold medal for this country.

01:08:45
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:08:46
Mike Rashid: During the Iran, uh, Contra situation, they w- they had American hostages that they were not letting go.

01:08:52
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:08:52
Mike Rashid: He went and got them, right? They let... They gave him to Muhammad Ali.

01:08:56
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:08:56
Mike Rashid: You know what I mean? That's not, that's not part of his legacy according to, you know, the media, you know? So you gotta, we gotta, we gotta... People like me gotta tell people that, talk about it in videos or whatever, you know?

01:09:10
Eric Weinstein: So-

01:09:11
Mike Rashid: Some of the page, whatever

01:09:11
Eric Weinstein: ... you, you've, uh, you've alluded to a, like perhaps a different type of intelligence that Black people possess, a different perspective or way of looking at it-

01:09:21
Mike Rashid: Right

01:09:21
Eric Weinstein: ... a way of thinking. Would you guys think that it's, it's fair to say that the same way as we kind of potentially created God in our image, not vice versa, that the American institution of how you can build success, starting with the education system and then thereafter, is modeled for the way White people think, and it's, it's tough to grow and thrive in that, um, without some kinda, like, exceptional talent level, like if you were a, a Black man coming up, that it's, the game's not designed for you? Somewhat, but, uh, I also think that... Which game isn't designed for whom? Like, this is kind of the cool thing.

01:10:05
Mike Rashid: Hmm.

01:10:05
Eric Weinstein: The, um... I have a favorite example, and I use it a lot, but it's w- it's worth it, which is Minton's Playhouse in Harlem, where, that was where bebop really took off, op- open mic night at Minton's Playhouse.

01:10:21
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:10:21
Eric Weinstein: And the key thing about it was Blacks were very focused on anybody who was good enough to take the stage was welcome, because op- the open mic is the proof.

01:10:31
Mike Rashid: Terrifying. [laughs]

01:10:31
Eric Weinstein: No, but it's also, it's also the giant F- you to White America.

01:10:35
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:10:35
Eric Weinstein: It's like you need the admissions to Juilliard to be a carefully guarded secret as to how it works.

01:10:42
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:10:42
Eric Weinstein: We just have an open mic. If you're good enough, we know it. If you're not good enough, you're gonna have to leave, and it's gonna be quick.

01:10:48
Mike Rashid: Right.

01:10:48
Eric Weinstein: Right? So this is a very Black attitude.

01:10:51
Mike Rashid: Kinda like the Apollo.

01:10:52
Eric Weinstein: Yeah. Well-

01:10:53
Mike Rashid: You get booed out of there.

01:10:54
Eric Weinstein: Oh, believe me.

01:10:55
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

01:10:55
Eric Weinstein: And that, that stance, uh, at Minton's started to explore an idea, like maybe we're smarter than Whites, and I think that, you know, that's kind of obnoxious, but it's also kind of interesting. Um, maybe Whites can't think as fast as we can. Maybe they can't do all of the transformations in the, in their minds needed to take something that was in, uh, you know, waltz time and move it into, you know, s- some crazy time signature, some key that you'd never play in. We can think that fast. You can't. So let's explore our differences. Now, I think that there's a- another really interesting thing that I like to talk about, which is this photo, which is famous, called, I think, One Day in Harlem, which shows all of the jazz cats who were dominant photographed on the stoop in Harlem one day. Everyone remembers the photo as if it's Black, and it isn't. There's [laughs] Latinos. There's Whites.

01:11:58
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:11:58
Eric Weinstein: Everybody's in that photo. But because it's One Day in Harlem and because we're so expecting to see Black faces dominating jazz-

01:12:07
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:12:07
Eric Weinstein: ... we don't realize how open that culture was to merit.

01:12:11
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:12:11
Eric Weinstein: Right? And so m- my first issue is I can't begin these conversations unless somebody has my understanding of how profound the Black analytic tradition... Let's go back to Muhammad Ali. A lot of what Muhammad Ali did was intellectual. It was-

01:12:32
Mike Rashid: 100%

01:12:33
Eric Weinstein: ... [laughs] a question of understanding the mental game in fighting. He changed up the issue of being a much more athletic rather than a, just a, a high-mass individual.

01:12:43
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:12:45
Eric Weinstein: I guess what he did to destabilize Sonny Liston mentally.

01:12:48
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:12:49
Eric Weinstein: Um, the rope-a-dope strategy that he came up with-

01:12:51
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:12:51
Eric Weinstein: ... to get the ropes to absorb-

01:12:53
Mike Rashid: You ever see this one picture, I've, I've posted it over the years on my Instagram over and over, but it's a picture of him with a newspaper. Angelo Dundee is, like, right behind him, and it says, "Mental warfare."

01:13:05
Eric Weinstein: Yeah. [laughs]

01:13:07
Mike Rashid: People don't, they just see a cool picture with him and Angelo.

01:13:09
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:13:09
Mike Rashid: I'm like, "He knows what's up."

01:13:11
Eric Weinstein: Well, he- yeah.

01:13:12
Mike Rashid: But when you listen to him now, like his videos, 'cause you know there's no internet back then.

01:13:16
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:13:17
Mike Rashid: He'd be in the UK giving all, all the secrets-

01:13:20
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:13:20
Mike Rashid: ... 'cause it didn't spread back then, it, to here.

01:13:21
Eric Weinstein: Well, he, and he was also proud of it, 'cause he-

01:13:23
Mike Rashid: Right. Right

01:13:24
Eric Weinstein: ... 'cause he, he was out-thinking his opponent.

01:13:25
Mike Rashid: Exactly.

01:13:26
Eric Weinstein: And I, I think that in some sense, um, we treat as non-intellectual lots of things that in fact were mental innovations.

01:13:37
Mike Rashid: Correct.

01:13:37
Eric Weinstein: And, and you know, you, you and I were talking about Emmanuel Augustus-

01:13:40
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:13:41
Eric Weinstein: ... uh, just in terms of raw creativity. Talk about a guy who threw the entire ru- rule book out in boxing.

01:13:47
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:13:47
Eric Weinstein: Are you telling me that what made him M- Mayweather's arguably greatest opponent-

01:13:52
Mike Rashid: Mm

01:13:53
Eric Weinstein: ... uh, was his punching or was it his thinking?

01:13:55
Mike Rashid: His thinking.

01:13:55
Eric Weinstein: Was his mind?

01:13:56
Mike Rashid: His mind, exactly.

01:13:57
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:13:57
Mike Rashid: Yeah. And why, the reason why he didn't beat Mayweather is 'cause he tried too hard to beat Mayweather.

01:14:03
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:14:03
Mike Rashid: You know?

01:14:03
Eric Weinstein: Well, that's a-

01:14:04
Mike Rashid: So-

01:14:04
Eric Weinstein: We, we should, I would love to go into the story about why he didn't become more dominant.

01:14:08
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

01:14:08
Eric Weinstein: But in terms of whose demonstrated intellectual contributions-

01:14:13
Mike Rashid: Mm

01:14:13
Eric Weinstein: ... are gonna be retained-

01:14:15
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm, correct

01:14:16
Eric Weinstein: ... I think it's incredibly important that we, that we cite these things.

01:14:20
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:14:20
Eric Weinstein: And of course, you know, I've given music, science, and comedy as the three things that I tend to use of, uh, as, as indicative of the level of a mind.

01:14:28
Mike Rashid: What about athletics?

01:14:30
Eric Weinstein: I'm divided about that. Now, it could be that I've just never been wildly athletic.

01:14:35
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:14:35
Eric Weinstein: I certainly know that when I see somebody like, um, oh, I mean, I guess Michael, Michael Jordan would've been a famous example, that so many of the innovations that are coming there have to do with doing things that nobody's ever done.

01:14:50
Mike Rashid: Right, because, you know, I feel like athletics is just up there with everything because it's our minds making our bodies do whatever our body's doing, right? Our body's not just doing it on its own, so-

01:15:04
Eric Weinstein: So it d- it depends for me on the innovation.

01:15:06
Mike Rashid: Okay.

01:15:06
Eric Weinstein: Like, if somebody is just... Like, if you ask me about Mike Tyson-

01:15:10
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:15:11
Eric Weinstein: ... one thing w- I get when I'm looking at Mike Tyson is just simply the raw power of that hand.

01:15:17
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:15:18
Eric Weinstein: The other things, though, have to do with all of the strategy of Mike Tyson.

01:15:22
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

01:15:22
Eric Weinstein: So if I, if I pull those two things apart, the power of the right hand is a, is, is an awesome and frightening and humbling thing-

01:15:30
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:15:31
Eric Weinstein: ... to, to-

01:15:32
Mike Rashid: Right, right. Well-

01:15:32
Eric Weinstein: ... to look at. But-

01:15:33
Mike Rashid: He, he's, okay, he's a wildly intelligent person.

01:15:35
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:15:36
Mike Rashid: Back then when I was a kid, 'cause me and him are good, we're cool now, but before I knew him-

01:15:41
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:15:42
Mike Rashid: ... I'm, you know, I'm watching this tape. I remember this stuff as a kid. He says, "You know, I don't necessarily hit harder than anybody else, but I'm punching from down going up, and my legs is giving me more power. It's giving me leverage." 'Cause he's a small heavyweight.

01:15:57
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:15:57
Mike Rashid: So, and you think about it, if you ever watch, like, UFC-

01:16:00
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:16:00
Mike Rashid: ... ground and pound-

01:16:01
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:16:01
Mike Rashid: ... you're punching a guy, like, 20 times.

01:16:02
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:16:03
Mike Rashid: The referee has to stop it. No one's knocked out like that.

01:16:06
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:16:06
Mike Rashid: Punching up, you hurt people. You got all of this leverage. So Mike knew what's looked at, what's perceived as an impediment-

01:16:14
Eric Weinstein: Probably knew human physiology like nobody's business.

01:16:16
Mike Rashid: Correct.

01:16:16
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:16:17
Mike Rashid: He knew that, and he knew that from studying boxers of the past. His idol in boxing was Jack Dempsey-

01:16:22
Eric Weinstein: Is that right?

01:16:23
Mike Rashid: ... who was a wildly violent puncher.

01:16:25
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:16:26
Mike Rashid: Every punch was meaningful.

01:16:28
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:16:28
Mike Rashid: It's like, "Why are you so angry?" [laughs] You know? So Mike Tyson had to fight with that kind of strategy, that sense of urgency, because he's a small heavyweight, and reality is-

01:16:38
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:16:38
Mike Rashid: ... those got... You know-

01:16:39
Eric Weinstein: Well, but, but I'm just, I'm trying to agree with you.

01:16:41
Mike Rashid: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:16:41
Eric Weinstein: I'm trying to say is if I take Mike Tyson-

01:16:43
Mike Rashid: Mm

01:16:43
Eric Weinstein: ... I break him up into two components.

01:16:44
Mike Rashid: Right.

01:16:45
Eric Weinstein: One is the unrivaled awesome power of the punch.

01:16:47
Mike Rashid: Correct.

01:16:48
Eric Weinstein: And the other is the mind-

01:16:49
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:16:49
Eric Weinstein: ... that figured out how to use that weapon so devastatingly effectively, particularly in early rounds.

01:16:55
Mike Rashid: Right, right.

01:16:55
Eric Weinstein: I am absolutely of the opinion that that second thing-

01:16:59
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:17:00
Eric Weinstein: ... is a form of intellectual achievement.

01:17:02
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:17:03
Eric Weinstein: But-

01:17:03
Mike Rashid: And, and I'll tell you that that was a, a more dominant factor in his success-

01:17:08
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:17:08
Mike Rashid: ... and his legacy, was his, his ability to-

01:17:11
Eric Weinstein: Well, boxing, I, you know, w- we, sometimes we cover up the fact that it's a slugfest-

01:17:17
Mike Rashid: Mm

01:17:17
Eric Weinstein: ... and sometimes we emphasize that in fact you don't win by winning slugfests. You win by outthinking.

01:17:23
Mike Rashid: 100%.

01:17:23
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:17:23
Mike Rashid: And if it was a pure slugfest, all fights would end in the first round.

01:17:28
Eric Weinstein: I know.

01:17:28
Mike Rashid: Yeah, it's hard to land a punch in bo- a clean punch in boxing.

01:17:32
Eric Weinstein: Well, and, and that's, you know, I was gonna, I was gonna ask you about UFC-

01:17:35
Mike Rashid: Mm

01:17:35
Eric Weinstein: ... which is this, this innovation, I think it's one of the... Like, honestly, the ground and pound stuff, I don't like the last little bit, which is... I, I like all the chess stuff before-

01:17:48
Mike Rashid: Mm

01:17:48
Eric Weinstein: ... it gets down to just beating the crap out of your opponent.

01:17:50
Mike Rashid: Right, right, right, right.

01:17:51
Eric Weinstein: Uh-

01:17:51
Mike Rashid: Yeah, I, I, I, I don't, I'm not a fan of that part. If, if, if-

01:17:55
Eric Weinstein: It's part of, it's part of it

01:17:57
Mike Rashid: ... if I was in the UFC or-

01:17:58
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:17:59
Mike Rashid: ... did MMA, if I knocked the guy down, because I think it's noble and it's just more badass, I'll back him and let him get up.

01:18:07
Eric Weinstein: Well, I've seen that.

01:18:07
Mike Rashid: I don't wanna, I don't wanna attack a, "Oh, okay, I gotta hurry up and-"

01:18:10
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:18:10
Mike Rashid: That's, that's fear.

01:18:12
Eric Weinstein: Well, but it's the-

01:18:12
Mike Rashid: I wanna-

01:18:12
Eric Weinstein: ... whatever the rules of the game are.

01:18:13
Mike Rashid: Yeah, I get that.

01:18:14
Eric Weinstein: You're talking about-

01:18:14
Mike Rashid: I get that, but I would, I would have to disrupt, for me.

01:18:18
Eric Weinstein: Well, that would be cool.

01:18:19
Mike Rashid: 'Cause I think that would look, that would be-

01:18:20
Eric Weinstein: But that's also-

01:18:21
Mike Rashid: ... more, more impactful

01:18:21
Eric Weinstein: ... let's be honest about it-

01:18:22
Mike Rashid: Mm

01:18:22
Eric Weinstein: ... it's a little bit of a peacock's tail-

01:18:24
Mike Rashid: It is

01:18:24
Eric Weinstein: ... in terms of saying, "I can afford to let you get up because you're going back down." [laughs]

01:18:27
Mike Rashid: 100%. 100%. And here's the thing, that's ego.

01:18:31
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:18:31
Mike Rashid: And I have a healthy ego.

01:18:33
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:18:34
Mike Rashid: I know how to tuck it away, but I know how to bring it back when I need it.

01:18:38
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

01:18:38
Mike Rashid: And I will 100% use it right in that situation.

01:18:39
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:18:40
Mike Rashid: Because in combat, it's, you know, it's a show. It's entertainment. So the most entertaining thing would be I'ma let the guy get up.

01:18:48
Eric Weinstein: Well, that's the thing. I love watching the most eccentric guys. Like-

01:18:51
Mike Rashid: Oh, yeah

01:18:52
Eric Weinstein: ... Anderson Silva was some kind of a poet.

01:18:54
Mike Rashid: Yeah. Right.

01:18:55
Eric Weinstein: Uh, Tony Ferguson is miswired. Like-

01:18:58
Mike Rashid: Right, right

01:18:58
Eric Weinstein: ... you hurt him and he gets stronger.

01:19:00
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

01:19:00
Eric Weinstein: Like, you know, there's all this weird psychological stuff-

01:19:03
Mike Rashid: Yeah

01:19:03
Eric Weinstein: ... that I find fascinating.

01:19:04
Mike Rashid: Yeah. One, my, I love, I love UFC. I love boxing. I love- ... martial arts and combat sports in general, it's a nobility to it. People don't really see it. You have to have been in it to understand what I'm talking about some. Um, I'm sure some people can appreciate what I'm saying. But one thing that I don't like about what m- mixed martial arts have become-

01:19:27
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:19:28
Mike Rashid: ... has become, generally speaking, no more specialists, just guys that kinda do stand up and ground, you know? I liked when there was a sumo wrestler going against a karate guy.

01:19:40
Eric Weinstein: Well, well, that was exciting 'cause we didn't know what worked.

01:19:42
Mike Rashid: Right.

01:19:43
Eric Weinstein: For example, I mean, maybe the Gracies had a little bit more knowledge than the rest of us-

01:19:47
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:19:47
Eric Weinstein: ... from the Gracie Challenge.

01:19:48
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:19:48
Eric Weinstein: But I don't know that we would've guessed... I guess what the four dominant pure forms would be wrestling, Muay Thai, Brazilian jujitsu, and boxing.

01:20:00
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

01:20:01
Eric Weinstein: And, like, we didn't know that, you know-

01:20:03
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:20:03
Eric Weinstein: ... some form of aikido or kung fu was-

01:20:05
Mike Rashid: So what if a guy... How exciting would it be for a guy who's a master at jujitsu-

01:20:11
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:20:12
Mike Rashid: ... then a guy that's a master of Muay Thai-

01:20:15
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:20:15
Mike Rashid: ... and they train for each other-

01:20:17
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:20:17
Mike Rashid: ... against just that style. I would like to see that. I think that would be awesome. We didn't get to see that because everybody started out just with their particular system of fighting, and then, all right, let's learn a little bit of everything. So that's why guys have such short careers in UFC.

01:20:34
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:20:34
Mike Rashid: I don't- I w- I wanna see longer careers.

01:20:36
Eric Weinstein: Well, but-

01:20:36
Mike Rashid: I wanna see a specialist. I wanna see... I appreciate, like, in boxing-

01:20:41
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:20:43
Mike Rashid: ... Timothy Bradley fought Manny Pacquiao, and he beat him the first time. Second time, uh, Pacquiao won.

01:20:49
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:20:49
Mike Rashid: The third time, Bradley, he had, he had everything to beat Pacquiao.

01:20:55
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:20:55
Mike Rashid: But he tried to just knock him out. I'm like, "Bro, you cannot disrespect a legend like that. It's, y'all on too high of a level. That's not gonna happen."

01:21:03
Eric Weinstein: Uh-huh.

01:21:03
Mike Rashid: "You're not gonna catch him with a lucky shot." That's what I love about the mastery of you being a master at your specific system. It's not gonna be a easy shot, a lucky shot. You see that a lot in UFC, like, "Oh, he just got caught." Like, this guy was on top of the world. He just got-

01:21:18
Eric Weinstein: Well, that Ben Askren, the thing that was over in, like, four milliseconds.

01:21:22
Mike Rashid: That, see, that's [laughs]...

01:21:25
Eric Weinstein: [laughs] That was pretty wild, though.

01:21:25
Mike Rashid: And then, and then, and then you have, like, Dana White.

01:21:29
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:21:30
Mike Rashid: Good businessman, I guess, but is not good for his sport or his athletes. I know a lot of these guys-

01:21:36
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:21:36
Mike Rashid: ... high level, and they're not generally happy with him. And if you just watch it from the outside, one guy of no name can do well against somebody, and all of, all of a sudden they're ready for a t- a title. You know, it's just too fast. It's too... You know, these guys are not developing a career. Boxing, it take a little longer.

01:21:55
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:21:56
Mike Rashid: But then these guys are locked in, and they make tons of money because they have 10 years of building up equity with fans.

01:22:02
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:22:03
Mike Rashid: In UFC, these guys come and go fast.

01:22:05
Eric Weinstein: All right, but I wanna bring the, the race angle back in and maybe-

01:22:08
Mike Rashid: Okay

01:22:08
Eric Weinstein: ... explore something that makes me uncomfortable.

01:22:10
Mike Rashid: Okay.

01:22:11
Eric Weinstein: One thing that I'm worried about is I'm worried about too many young Black men focusing on athletics as their ticket.

01:22:17
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:22:17
Eric Weinstein: And I don't mind some-

01:22:20
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:22:20
Eric Weinstein: ... who are genuinely gifted, but I worry that I want... I want science a share of that pie. Like-

01:22:30
Mike Rashid: I'm with you. I'm with you

01:22:31
Eric Weinstein: ... you know, and, and-

01:22:32
Mike Rashid: I'm with you

01:22:32
Eric Weinstein: ... and-

01:22:33
Mike Rashid: Okay, I'll tell you what could help

01:22:35
Eric Weinstein: ... take it. Sure.

01:22:35
Mike Rashid: Someone like you, I'm fascinated by your brain power. You got a Hemi. [laughs] That's a Dodge Demon.

01:22:45
Eric Weinstein: [laughs]

01:22:46
Mike Rashid: 1,000 horsepowers, right? You know, we don't see that. We're wildly fascinated by it. I'm, like, Mike Eric Dyson's one of my... I love this guy. I love int- intelligent people. I'm as fascinated listening to a lecture or podcast of yours just like me watching LeBron highlights.

01:23:06
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

01:23:07
Mike Rashid: It's the same to me. It's amazing. And for a lot of us, that's the same, right? So, but we don't have a legacy of education, for obvious reasons. Like, we were b- barely allowed to go to school not that long ago. People don't realize that, but, you know, so we don't have that yet, you know? Uh, you know, Neil deGrasse Tyson is wildly popular, you know? Sean and I went to see him, like, six, six, seven years ago-

01:23:31
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:23:32
Mike Rashid: ... when people really didn't know who he was, you know? But people are fascinated by it, but we don't have many representatives of it, of it yet.

01:23:39
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

01:23:39
Mike Rashid: But we have a lot of LeBrons and Jordans-

01:23:41
Eric Weinstein: All right. But, like-

01:23:42
Mike Rashid: ... and Floyds and...

01:23:43
Eric Weinstein: Let, let's-

01:23:43
Mike Rashid: But even someone like you, like, we... All right, so science, um, math, people don't realize how important mathematics is. People don't realize the, the problems that are solved with math. It's wildly fascinating, right?

01:24:04
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:24:05
Mike Rashid: So in our communities, it's not, it's not that important. It's annoying, you know? They're like, "What do I gotta do algebra for? I'm not gonna do that at my job." You know what I mean? So it's not... And nobody goes into depth on why math is important, right? In our schools, we're getting recruited by trade, like mechanic trades, you know, trades, like blue collar trades, not the sciences. There's no STEM in urban community schools.

01:24:32
Eric Weinstein: All right.

01:24:32
Mike Rashid: You know? So-

01:24:32
Eric Weinstein: Well, then get, get your listen- get your listeners to come over to the Portal podcast and listen to my conversation with the new head of the National Society of Black Physicists, the NSBP-

01:24:44
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:24:44
Eric Weinstein: ... Stephon Alexander, Trinidadian guy who is one of the, one of the greatest saxophone players I know well.

01:24:52
Mike Rashid: Okay.

01:24:52
Eric Weinstein: Um, played with Ornette Coleman. Uh, is also doing particle theory, quantum gravity, and cosmology.

01:24:57
Mike Rashid: That man is wildly intelligent.

01:24:58
Eric Weinstein: He's just-

01:24:59
Mike Rashid: Yeah

01:24:59
Eric Weinstein: ... off the effing charts, and he needs our help. And so, you know, like-

01:25:03
Mike Rashid: Okay, so here's the thing. First of all, I'm linking your channel right below. Y'all go check out the Portal, everybody, but-

01:25:10
Eric Weinstein: But, but that episode in particular

01:25:11
Mike Rashid: ... okay.

01:25:12
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:25:12
Mike Rashid: I'll put that one in particular. Now- Sean and I, we've been, both of us have been really impacted by, this has been heavy on our hearts all the stuff that's going on right now.

01:25:23
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:25:24
Mike Rashid: And we're, like, trying to really f- we're really making an effort, uh, to figure out what we're gonna do to be of impact, and we're throwing around a lot of ideas, and we haven't landed on one yet. But one thing that is, that is necessary is, like, uh, in under-served communities, having things in place to give people more options of thing, of activities, just options period, 'cause there's nothing. And, and a lot of families are, you know, there's broken families, single, single parent households.

01:25:58
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:25:58
Mike Rashid: So, and the mothers are busy working. They don't have time to rear their children the right way, and we can't leave it up to the school 'cause they don't give a shit.

01:26:07
Eric Weinstein: All right.

01:26:07
Mike Rashid: So I feel like programs that can get people excited about science. My grandmother took me to the planetarium-

01:26:16
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:26:16
Mike Rashid: ... in New York when I was a kid, and that, that just... I'm surprised I didn't become a scientist. I study science, like, as my job now, but I've been on that odyssey since then, you know? If more people have exposure to it, it, it's too beautiful to not be fascinated by this and to start understanding what that means.

01:26:33
Eric Weinstein: So let's... So I wanted, I've had this idea since I was a, I was folklore minor in college, and I studied a lot of, like, how does, how does Black society gate-

01:26:46
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:26:46
Eric Weinstein: ... uh, and decide who's worthy of pushing up and who, who's to be pushed down? And basically it's open head-to-head competitions over and over again in-

01:26:53
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:26:53
Eric Weinstein: ... everything; chess, poetry-

01:26:55
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:26:55
Eric Weinstein: ... music, comedy. What if we had math slams, right? Or, you know, you have head cutting competitions.

01:27:03
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:27:03
Eric Weinstein: Have a, have, have a physics cutting competition-

01:27:05
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:27:05
Eric Weinstein: ... where you go head-to-head on something that's, like, some super hard problem. How much, how much progress can you make? And use an intrinsically Black idiom-

01:27:14
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:27:15
Eric Weinstein: ... to do the same thing that we do in basketball, in poetry, in spoken word-

01:27:20
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:27:20
Eric Weinstein: ... in chess.

01:27:21
Mike Rashid: Right.

01:27:21
Eric Weinstein: Right? So the idea is who's got next?

01:27:24
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:27:24
Eric Weinstein: You know?

01:27:24
Mike Rashid: I like it.

01:27:25
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:27:25
Mike Rashid: I love it.

01:27:26
Eric Weinstein: And it, and it's just like, it's, it's totally meritocratic.

01:27:28
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:27:29
Eric Weinstein: It's, uh, it's perf- it's performative in the sense of everybody gets to peacock and strut their stuff.

01:27:35
Mike Rashid: Right.

01:27:35
Eric Weinstein: And, and if you respect your opponent, then you make up afterwards and you become-

01:27:38
Mike Rashid: 100%

01:27:38
Eric Weinstein: ... fast friends, right?

01:27:39
Mike Rashid: 100%.

01:27:40
Eric Weinstein: Right? So basically, let's do the dozens but with partial differential equations instead.

01:27:44
Mike Rashid: 100%. I'm with it. I, I love that. I love the, the whole idea of just opening young people's minds to something that they didn't even know existed, you know? 'Cause I'ma tell you, like, you're so far on the spectrum of intelligence, there's probably so much that... There's probably stuff you're trying to forget that a lot of people don't even know exists with math and with science and with music and-

01:28:09
Eric Weinstein: Well, but I wanna do some more of it visually. Like, I think-

01:28:11
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:28:11
Eric Weinstein: ... one of the things that really saved me musically-

01:28:14
Mike Rashid: Mm

01:28:14
Eric Weinstein: ... was, I, I can't read music.

01:28:17
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:28:18
Eric Weinstein: Just can't.

01:28:18
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:28:19
Eric Weinstein: And I've tried it for years, and there are learning issues, and it's just not for me.

01:28:24
Mike Rashid: Right.

01:28:26
Eric Weinstein: How amazing to find an entire community of people that didn't necessarily expect to be able to... You know, when, when, when, when you've got blind people like, uh-

01:28:34
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:28:34
Eric Weinstein: ... Ray Charles and Art Tatum-

01:28:35
Mike Rashid: Right

01:28:35
Eric Weinstein: ... and, you know, a huge number of blind guitarists, all of those people were learning through theory and learning-

01:28:44
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:28:44
Eric Weinstein: ... through other, other means of transmission, okay? So my pl- my point here would be I don't wanna pretend that science is intrinsically colonized and needs to be c- colonized. I do wanna talk about your idea that if you don't have this as part of your tradition, if you can't see yourself, it's so much harder for a guy like Stephon, you know, who's the son of an immigrant cab driver, to imagine himself as a professor of [laughs] theoretical-

01:29:12
Mike Rashid: Right

01:29:12
Eric Weinstein: ... physics at Brown.

01:29:13
Mike Rashid: Right.

01:29:13
Eric Weinstein: 'Cause man, there's nobody around. And, and, you know, to, to your point about Neil deGrasse Tyson, I, I went to this dinner in New York that Stephon invited for me, uh, in- invited me to, and it was James Gates, who's probably the most well-known theoretical physicist who's Black-

01:29:30
Mike Rashid: Yeah

01:29:30
Eric Weinstein: ... Neil deGrasse Tyson, Stephon, and I was, like, the other guy.

01:29:33
Mike Rashid: Right.

01:29:33
Eric Weinstein: And so I was... I, I got a chance to, like... Well, what, what happens when, like, physics is Black and you're the white guy at the table?

01:29:40
Mike Rashid: Right.

01:29:40
Eric Weinstein: People are talking about neutrinos-

01:29:41
Mike Rashid: That's crazy. Yeah

01:29:42
Eric Weinstein: ... in a totally different e- idiom.

01:29:43
Mike Rashid: Right. Um-

01:29:44
Eric Weinstein: Is it-

01:29:44
Mike Rashid: Was it different?

01:29:45
Eric Weinstein: Y- well, I wasn't long enough for me to say whether it would have-

01:29:48
Mike Rashid: Okay

01:29:49
Eric Weinstein: ... been different as research, but I can tell you that the cadences and the, the, the role of alcohol, like, Stephon and I drink like fishes whenever we talk math.

01:29:57
Mike Rashid: [laughs] Right.

01:29:58
Eric Weinstein: Um, yeah, it was more fun, and it was much more-

01:30:01
Mike Rashid: Yeah

01:30:01
Eric Weinstein: ... like collaborating. Like, I'm not a great musician, but they-

01:30:04
Mike Rashid: Right

01:30:04
Eric Weinstein: ... these guys are always kind, and they let me hang.

01:30:06
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

01:30:07
Eric Weinstein: Um, yeah, it was this issue about how do you trade and collaborate with ideas, and first of all, everybody's gotta sort of strut their stuff and, and show, you know, I, I'm, I'm a capable person. But once you, once you've done the table manners of-

01:30:19
Mike Rashid: Right

01:30:19
Eric Weinstein: ... like understanding-

01:30:20
Mike Rashid: Right

01:30:21
Eric Weinstein: ... you know, I, I think Fats Waller was famously said when, uh, when Art Tatum walked in, "Ladies and gentlemen, God is in the house."

01:30:28
Mike Rashid: Right.

01:30:28
Eric Weinstein: You know? 'Cause, like, he-

01:30:29
Mike Rashid: God is too

01:30:29
Eric Weinstein: ... as good as Fats Waller was, he was no Art Tatum.

01:30:31
Mike Rashid: Right.

01:30:32
Eric Weinstein: Um, yeah, it was different. And, and-

01:30:34
Mike Rashid: Yeah

01:30:34
Eric Weinstein: ... and the issue is also that you can see yourself. You know, I didn't choose Stanley Jordan at random. I could see the analytic intelligence, for example.

01:30:46
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:30:46
Eric Weinstein: And the fact that I c- came to understand that it was basically Princeton and high-level mathematics and music and all this stuff-

01:30:52
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:30:52
Eric Weinstein: ... no surprise to me.

01:30:53
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:30:54
Eric Weinstein: But what we need to do is we need to be able to hold up authentic, um, exponents, and also to say, like, we have some problems here. So for example, with all the chess stuff that w- that I see going on, I think there are three grandmasters, uh, with African backgrounds.

01:31:13
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:31:14
Eric Weinstein: It's too low. I don't know why.

01:31:16
Mike Rashid: Well, well-

01:31:17
Eric Weinstein: But, but, but I don't-

01:31:18
Mike Rashid: I know why. We know why. Well, it's just-

01:31:20
Eric Weinstein: I don't

01:31:21
Mike Rashid: ... our, our history Our history's long, but it's been truncated to 400 years.

01:31:29
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:31:29
Mike Rashid: So, by, by design. So b- most Black people don't, just don't, it's not a thing, playing chess. But we kinda popularized chess.

01:31:40
Eric Weinstein: Well, that's the thing, like s- s- sorta almost street chess. And the other thing I was gonna say about it-

01:31:44
Mike Rashid: Well, no, no, no, I'm saying before that.

01:31:44
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:31:45
Mike Rashid: We, the Moors, we took it from India.

01:31:46
Eric Weinstein: Okay, so you wanna talk about it, it-

01:31:48
Mike Rashid: And then we dominate, we, you know, the Moors co- conquered Spain and Italy and-

01:31:52
Eric Weinstein: I, I was talking about American Blacks, but you know what I'm saying.

01:31:54
Mike Rashid: Okay, but, but I'm just saying-

01:31:55
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:31:55
Mike Rashid: ... if we knew the history of chess-

01:31:58
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:31:58
Mike Rashid: ... we'd know that we were huge in making it so-

01:32:04
Eric Weinstein: That's true.

01:32:04
Mike Rashid: Right.

01:32:04
Eric Weinstein: But let, but let me give you another hypothesis.

01:32:06
Mike Rashid: Okay.

01:32:07
Eric Weinstein: I don't know if it's right or wrong. Maybe chess is really badly designed, which is that the opening book in chess is this giant, monotonous thing that you have to memorize, and it has a lot to do with how good a player you are, whether you know all of the openings.

01:32:22
Mike Rashid: Correct.

01:32:22
Eric Weinstein: Bobby Fischer said, "This is a stupid thing. We should randomize the assignment of the pieces on the back ranks."

01:32:31
Mike Rashid: Hmm.

01:32:32
Eric Weinstein: "And then we should start with random configurations to make sure that that memorization stuff doesn't dominate the game." So there's the, the Fischer variation of chess-

01:32:41
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:32:41
Eric Weinstein: ... is to get rid of the opening book.

01:32:43
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:32:43
Eric Weinstein: Now, one argument that I have is is that maybe that doesn't appeal to Black America, like studying a huge amount of stuff to just repeat is boring.

01:32:54
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm. Well, I don't think so. I don't know. I learned it easy, played all my life. My sons learned it easy. Um, this is something now, now I know that it exists, and I haven't looked into it. Now, before it was chess, it was called something else, and the Africans and the Indians, the Indians created it. It's a war strategy game.

01:33:18
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:33:18
Mike Rashid: And Africans spread it all over Europe when they-

01:33:21
Eric Weinstein: And there were these var- variations on the root.

01:33:22
Mike Rashid: So, so-

01:33:23
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:33:23
Mike Rashid: ... it changed when Spain beat, kicked the Moors out-

01:33:29
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:33:29
Mike Rashid: ... of Europe, and the Queen Isabella, the young queen, she changed up some shit on the chessboard and made the queen the most powerful piece and made the king super weak. That's why s- the queen is so powerful. She just do everything.

01:33:41
Eric Weinstein: Yeah?

01:33:41
Mike Rashid: And the king just, you know, you gotta protect him.

01:33:44
Eric Weinstein: [laughs]

01:33:44
Mike Rashid: So it'd be interesting to look at the original form-

01:33:47
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:33:47
Mike Rashid: ... version of chess. I think I'ma do, I'ma look into that. I gotta ask you something.

01:33:51
Eric Weinstein: Sure.

01:33:52
Mike Rashid: We live in a fucking movie. Maybe this is a simulation.

01:33:55
Eric Weinstein: Maybe.

01:33:57
Mike Rashid: Jeffrey Epstein.

01:33:58
Eric Weinstein: Uh-oh.

01:33:59
Mike Rashid: Fuck.

01:34:00
Eric Weinstein: Fuck.

01:34:01
Mike Rashid: L- all right, so when I was watching it, when I first watched the documentary, I didn't know who, nothing about this guy until, you know-

01:34:07
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:34:08
Mike Rashid: ... he got arrested, and then seeing the documentary, I'm like, "Oh, shit." But my mind is racing. I'm like, "This is not what I see. This is not it, right? Something to this." And then I heard your understanding or theory on it, 'cause you had an interaction with him.

01:34:23
Eric Weinstein: One of my episodes, yeah.

01:34:24
Mike Rashid: Yeah, and you think he was a construct.

01:34:26
Eric Weinstein: Yep.

01:34:27
Mike Rashid: And a honeypot?

01:34:29
Eric Weinstein: Well, he was using honeypots-

01:34:30
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:34:31
Eric Weinstein: ... right and left.

01:34:31
Mike Rashid: So I think that makes perfect sense.

01:34:36
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:34:38
Mike Rashid: But I think he's alive.

01:34:39
Eric Weinstein: You think he's alive?

01:34:40
Mike Rashid: Maybe.

01:34:41
Eric Weinstein: Well, you don't, you and I don't know that, but let's put it this way.

01:34:44
Mike Rashid: Yeah, we don't know. I don't know.

01:34:44
Eric Weinstein: I would not gamble my children's life on the fact that he's dead.

01:34:48
Mike Rashid: Correct.

01:34:48
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:34:49
Mike Rashid: Right.

01:34:50
Eric Weinstein: [sighs] I don't think he's alive.

01:34:53
Mike Rashid: You don't think he's alive?

01:34:54
Eric Weinstein: No, but I don't think... You know, people have a very hard time with, like, conspiracies, because they imagine that there's something called a conspiracy theorist, and they're all crazy.

01:35:04
Mike Rashid: Alex Jones.

01:35:05
Eric Weinstein: [laughs] Yeah. Well, but I don't even know. Very often with a conspiracy theorist, they've got some wins under their belt.

01:35:12
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:35:13
Eric Weinstein: Um, because-

01:35:13
Mike Rashid: He, he had a couple.

01:35:14
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, so he might.

01:35:16
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

01:35:16
Eric Weinstein: But the... Conspiracies have always existed, and we've uncovered so many of them. It would be bizarre if we thought that they were all in the past.

01:35:26
Mike Rashid: Right.

01:35:26
Eric Weinstein: And so what are we really fearing when we're talking about somebody who's being a conspiracy? We're, we're, we're fearing that they're going to destabilize the narratives, and you also very quickly are in some sort of cloud of uncertainty.

01:35:43
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:35:43
Eric Weinstein: So it's easier to say, "I think he's alive," or, "No, he's dead, but, you know, he was an Israeli-Saudi co-project, and, and then they killed him," you know?

01:35:52
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:35:53
Eric Weinstein: Those are things that we do to decrease the cognitive load that comes from being able to say, "I don't know what happened."

01:36:00
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

01:36:00
Eric Weinstein: "And I don't know what this means."

01:36:02
Mike Rashid: I have no problem with not knowing, but I can't help but to ponder on it.

01:36:05
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, go ahead.

01:36:06
Mike Rashid: Because it just doesn't make, you know... The story as told, it just doesn't make sense.

01:36:10
Eric Weinstein: Well, we all know it.

01:36:11
Mike Rashid: Right.

01:36:11
Eric Weinstein: We all know that the story as told-

01:36:14
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:36:14
Eric Weinstein: ... is, like-

01:36:16
Mike Rashid: Let me, let me, uh, inform them on your theory.

01:36:19
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:36:20
Mike Rashid: Correct me if I'm messing anything up.

01:36:21
Eric Weinstein: No, no, shoot. Go for it.

01:36:22
Mike Rashid: Okay, so you met with him years before he got indicted and before the world knew he was a pedophile, right?

01:36:28
Eric Weinstein: Somewhere between, I can find out the exact date, but-

01:36:30
Mike Rashid: Okay

01:36:30
Eric Weinstein: ... somewhere between 2002 and 2004.

01:36:33
Mike Rashid: Okay, so it's prior to that. So in the financial world, he just didn't add up, right? His story didn't make sense?

01:36:41
Eric Weinstein: Not to me.

01:36:41
Mike Rashid: It didn't, he didn't fit the profile of a hedge fund manager. So a guy... Okay.

01:36:48
Eric Weinstein: Matt, I knew a few hedge fund managers by that time.

01:36:51
Mike Rashid: Uh-huh.

01:36:51
Eric Weinstein: And I can tell you that that didn't look anything like one of the known types.

01:36:54
Mike Rashid: Correct. Okay. And the amount of wealth he had ver- versus how he lived seemed kinda weird too.

01:37:02
Eric Weinstein: I would say he projected-

01:37:05
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:37:06
Eric Weinstein: ... that he was in 11-figure territory.

01:37:10
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:37:10
Eric Weinstein: So tens of billions.

01:37:12
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:37:12
Eric Weinstein: Now, there are not that many people with tens of billions.

01:37:14
Mike Rashid: Correct, correct.

01:37:15
Eric Weinstein: And I think there's only one or two people who've ever gotten to hundreds of billions-

01:37:18
Mike Rashid: Right

01:37:18
Eric Weinstein: ... and that's only recently.

01:37:19
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

01:37:21
Eric Weinstein: People will hear, well, he was a multimillionaire, but- The world is constructed so that people with, let's say, $20 billion aren't fooled by people with $200 million

01:37:33
Mike Rashid: Correct.

01:37:34
Eric Weinstein: Mm-hmm.

01:37:34
Mike Rashid: 100%. I get that totally.

01:37:36
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:37:36
Mike Rashid: Nowhere near those numbers, but, you know, my numbers, I know who's not around.

01:37:39
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:37:40
Mike Rashid: You know who's real and who's not. So okay, so he a-

01:37:43
Eric Weinstein: He was not acting like a, like a nine-figure-

01:37:47
Mike Rashid: What-

01:37:47
Eric Weinstein: ... 600 million guy

01:37:47
Mike Rashid: ... what was he acting like?

01:37:49
Eric Weinstein: He was acting like he was a $40 billion guy.

01:37:52
Mike Rashid: Okay. All right. Um, he is an intelligent person, correct?

01:37:56
Eric Weinstein: He was.

01:37:56
Mike Rashid: Right.

01:37:57
Eric Weinstein: Is.

01:37:57
Mike Rashid: Or was, maybe. [laughs]

01:37:58
Eric Weinstein: We don't know.

01:37:59
Mike Rashid: So-

01:38:00
Eric Weinstein: Jeffrey, if you're out there, come on the portal

01:38:01
Mike Rashid: Come on, man.

01:38:03
Eric Weinstein: [laughs]

01:38:03
Mike Rashid: [laughs] So, um, yeah, so potentially no one's asking the, the questions if he's connected or ever been connected to any intelligence agency.

01:38:14
Eric Weinstein: Isn't that weird?

01:38:15
Mike Rashid: Very. Very.

01:38:15
Eric Weinstein: [laughs]

01:38:16
Mike Rashid: Right? We gotta make more noise on that.

01:38:18
Eric Weinstein: Uh, if we wanna-

01:38:18
Mike Rashid: Okay, so-

01:38:19
Eric Weinstein: ... if we wanna remain alive, I don't know how much noise we can make.

01:38:21
Mike Rashid: Well, if they take us, y'all know why. We're martyrs to the cause.

01:38:25
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

01:38:26
Mike Rashid: Okay, so-

01:38:26
Eric Weinstein: By the way, Mike Rascci will be my personal security detail-

01:38:29
Mike Rashid: [laughs]

01:38:29
Eric Weinstein: ... if this conversation goes further.

01:38:30
Mike Rashid: I got you. Don't worry, I got you.

01:38:31
Eric Weinstein: All right.

01:38:31
Mike Rashid: Jessica is my security, so-

01:38:33
Eric Weinstein: All right

01:38:33
Mike Rashid: ... we good. We good.

01:38:34
Eric Weinstein: Talk to, talk to Jessica.

01:38:35
Mike Rashid: All right, so now the, the relevance of him being connected to an intelligent a- intelligence agency would be for him, you know... So basically, the theory is he's, you know, getting all... He's hanging around o- other wealthy, powerful, influential people-

01:38:52
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:38:52
Mike Rashid: ... um, political people, whatever, and, you know, having all the girls around, supplying everyone's vices, right?

01:38:59
Eric Weinstein: Well, I don't think he was supplying everyone's vices.

01:39:01
Mike Rashid: No? Okay.

01:39:02
Eric Weinstein: I think that a lot of people knew him, and he wasn't supplying their vices.

01:39:05
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:39:05
Eric Weinstein: So I, I think... I don't know how many of the scientists were-

01:39:11
Mike Rashid: Mm

01:39:11
Eric Weinstein: ... having their, their desires catered to.

01:39:14
Mike Rashid: Right.

01:39:15
Eric Weinstein: I think the-

01:39:15
Mike Rashid: But that was new. That wasn't... He didn't have... He wasn't around long enough to really nurture that, right?

01:39:22
Eric Weinstein: No, I don't think that's right. I think that whatever he was-

01:39:27
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:39:27
Eric Weinstein: ... there was, there was a, a VIP treatment to-

01:39:31
Mike Rashid: Mm

01:39:31
Eric Weinstein: ... the heights of depravity and criminal behavior that he probably didn't expose everybody to, because it's probably too-

01:39:37
Mike Rashid: Right

01:39:37
Eric Weinstein: ... dangerous to expose everyone to that.

01:39:39
Mike Rashid: Okay. Okay, so I, I got it wrong. So I was thinking maybe what you were saying was maybe he was gathering secrets just-

01:39:48
Eric Weinstein: I think-

01:39:48
Mike Rashid: ... to have leverage

01:39:49
Eric Weinstein: ... well, I think he was, probably.

01:39:50
Mike Rashid: Potentially. Okay.

01:39:51
Eric Weinstein: But my, my, my claim would be that maybe, um, if you're gonna do something illegal and immoral, uh, you're, you're gonna be very careful about extending that to, let's say, former presidents-

01:40:03
Mike Rashid: Mm

01:40:03
Eric Weinstein: ... or members of the British royal family.

01:40:05
Mike Rashid: Mm.

01:40:05
Eric Weinstein: But you're not going to expose every physicist or biologist you have over to your house.

01:40:12
Mike Rashid: Mm.

01:40:12
Eric Weinstein: Right?

01:40:13
Mike Rashid: Right.

01:40:13
Eric Weinstein: And so I think that a lot of people... There were three different sides that I think people saw.

01:40:18
Mike Rashid: Mm.

01:40:18
Eric Weinstein: One, they saw a financial side. Uh, two, they saw an intimate side that was not highly sexualized, or if it was sexualized, didn't dip into illegality.

01:40:31
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:40:31
Eric Weinstein: And then I think that there was a third thing, which was, like, the illegality that mi- might have compromised people and-

01:40:39
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:40:39
Eric Weinstein: ... really trapped them.

01:40:41
Mike Rashid: Right.

01:40:41
Eric Weinstein: But, you know, I, I... At some point I said that maybe what happened w- might have been that he was hired to play a Hugh Hefner role, and that he ended up playing Humbert Humbert from Lolita-

01:40:52
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:40:52
Eric Weinstein: ... as, uh, a guy who had a problem with little kids.

01:40:56
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm. Mm. Okay. Why... Okay, in your theory, why would they hire him? What, what's the intent?

01:41:03
Eric Weinstein: Well, I can easily understand an intelligence service using honeypots.

01:41:07
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm. Okay.

01:41:09
Eric Weinstein: I can't easily understand an intelligence service using children as young as 12 or below, not necessarily because I can't imagine that it wouldn't be useful-

01:41:19
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:41:19
Eric Weinstein: ... but because the danger of doing that and having to take responsibility for it-

01:41:25
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:41:25
Eric Weinstein: ... would be psychotic for any...

01:41:30
Mike Rashid: I mean, what kind of... We, we live in a pretty crazy world. What, what-

01:41:34
Eric Weinstein: Well, but that pretty crazy world has an incentive structure. So we talked before about Fred Hampton being killed, for example.

01:41:40
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:41:40
Eric Weinstein: And we came, we found out about that because the, uh, America's secret police, which we call the FBI-

01:41:47
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:41:47
Eric Weinstein: ... um, was called into question during the Church and Pike hearings in the mid-1970s.

01:41:54
Mike Rashid: Mm.

01:41:54
Eric Weinstein: They don't wanna go through that again.

01:41:55
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:41:56
Eric Weinstein: Right? Like, you don't want to have your secrets and your sources and methods discussed on Capitol Hill.

01:42:02
Mike Rashid: Right.

01:42:03
Eric Weinstein: So my feeling about it is, is that even for selfish interests of wanting power-

01:42:07
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:42:08
Eric Weinstein: ... and assume that you have no morality to you whatsoever, you're the most amoral or even immoral person-

01:42:13
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:42:13
Eric Weinstein: ... I can't easily imagine that you would try to get approval for a program that directly uses children in sex trafficking.

01:42:21
Mike Rashid: Mm.

01:42:21
Eric Weinstein: Because if that blows up on you, no matter what information you've-

01:42:25
Mike Rashid: I, you know what? Me being a risk-taker-

01:42:29
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:42:30
Mike Rashid: ... I can relate to the art of risk-taking, and I think the stakes are so high and there's so much power on that side that I could see them doing it. Because here's the thing, the way in which we were told Epstein died-

01:42:48
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:42:49
Mike Rashid: ... no one believes it. But what does it matter? What can anybody do?

01:42:53
Eric Weinstein: Well, but we didn't, we didn't know that, and the story ain't over. So I would say-

01:42:55
Mike Rashid: Mm

01:42:55
Eric Weinstein: ... that the two things is whatever Jep- Jeff Epstein started as-

01:43:01
Mike Rashid: Mm

01:43:01
Eric Weinstein: ... he started in a world in which the internet and social and mobile were in their infinance- infancy-

01:43:07
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:43:07
Eric Weinstein: ... if they were even extant at all.

01:43:09
Mike Rashid: Correct.

01:43:10
Eric Weinstein: So I don't know that we didn't start a program or some other government started a program, and then the internet cropped up-

01:43:17
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:43:17
Eric Weinstein: ... and endangered that program.

01:43:19
Mike Rashid: Mm.

01:43:20
Eric Weinstein: And I don't know that it, it be- it ended up as whatever program it started.

01:43:24
Mike Rashid: Right.

01:43:24
Eric Weinstein: But I, I know intelligence services to do some pretty screwed up things.

01:43:29
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:43:30
Eric Weinstein: This strikes me as a very hard thing to imagine.

01:43:33
Mike Rashid: Mm.

01:43:33
Eric Weinstein: It's very hard for me to imagine somebody saying, "Hey, I got a great idea."

01:43:36
Mike Rashid: Right.

01:43:37
Eric Weinstein: "What if we attract- Very powerful people-

01:43:39
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:43:39
Eric Weinstein: ... and we use 12-year-olds-

01:43:41
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:43:42
Eric Weinstein: ... you know, as, as the bait and lure to control them.

01:43:44
Mike Rashid: Right.

01:43:44
Eric Weinstein: And I would think, how does that get pushed through? Who, who-

01:43:50
Mike Rashid: Right

01:43:50
Eric Weinstein: ... who signs off on that?

01:43:51
Mike Rashid: I can see it.

01:43:52
Eric Weinstein: Really?

01:43:53
Mike Rashid: I can see it. I can see it. I mean, it's sick. It is. But I, I... it's a lot of sick... I see a lot of sick things. You know, a lot of good people sacrificed and people experimented on, and, you know, I... we go down the line. I can see it. I don't see w- w- I don't think they have any limits or any boundaries as to what they would do for their bottom line.

01:44:17
Eric Weinstein: Well, they may not have started that way.

01:44:18
Mike Rashid: Just, just, but just the fact that... Let's say like, uh, what, what is that show called on, on, um, Netflix? Ozarks, right? Now, it's a fic- it's a fiction show, but it's a lot of reality in that, right?

01:44:35
Eric Weinstein: Don't know the show.

01:44:35
Mike Rashid: Okay. It's a really good show, but there's a, there's a part when there's a guy, he's a, he's a money guy. He's a, a, he's a hedge fund manager, right? Um, what's his name, the guy, the actor? He's so good. Uh-

01:44:48
Eric Weinstein: Jason Bateman?

01:44:49
Mike Rashid: Bateman. Anyway, he's real smart. He goes down to the Ozarks, and they're a little slower, and they're offended by his intelligence, but he's just cleaning up and just doing all this stuff with money and trying to build a casino, yada, yada. Make a long story short, they're trying to... the feds are trying to get him. They're trying really hard to, like, incriminate him.

01:45:09
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:45:09
Mike Rashid: And he's doing things... He's, like, on that line of being, doing things illegal-

01:45:14
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:45:14
Mike Rashid: ... but he's doing stuff for the cartel-

01:45:15
Eric Weinstein: Okay

01:45:15
Mike Rashid: ... legally, right? So what happens is these detect- these, these FBI agents, um, he gets in a relationship with another guy that they profiled and knew that he got picked up picking up a male prostitute years ago.

01:45:30
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

01:45:30
Mike Rashid: And he's a tough guy, and, you know, he wrestles with his sexuality. And he gets in a relationship with him, and he gets him talking and records him admitting to some, some crime.

01:45:40
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:45:40
Mike Rashid: And then he just plays it for him, like, "This is what I need you to do."

01:45:43
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:45:44
Mike Rashid: Right? And, you know, that's a... true indeed, it's a, it's a, it's a movie, it's a show, but it's a lot of reality in that. It's so much in, you know, entrapment, and, you know, there's crimes that don't exist, and they're trying to put you... 'Cause they want you, they're gonna create a crime for you, you know? I don't think there's any limit to what will be done for whatever weird objective they may have.

01:46:06
Eric Weinstein: Well, I don't think we knew just how... We stumbled on the craziest thing, and we're pretending that we didn't just see, like-

01:46:15
Mike Rashid: Yeah

01:46:15
Eric Weinstein: ... three aliens get out of a cigar-shaped object in the middle of Brentwood.

01:46:19
Mike Rashid: Uh.

01:46:20
Eric Weinstein: You know?

01:46:21
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

01:46:21
Eric Weinstein: It's like, so this, this Epstein thing, nobody knew... Well, did you just see this complaint about Epstein and Donald Trump?

01:46:31
Mike Rashid: From 2016?

01:46:32
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:46:33
Mike Rashid: I did. It, it-

01:46:35
Eric Weinstein: In the middle of all this madness.

01:46:37
Mike Rashid: But what's interesting is that complaint was filed in 2016-

01:46:41
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:46:41
Mike Rashid: ... before... I didn't know anything about Epstein back then. They were connected, clearly.

01:46:46
Eric Weinstein: Well, see, I've been... Here's my uncomfortableness.

01:46:50
Mike Rashid: Mm.

01:46:50
Eric Weinstein: Since I had this meeting, let's assume it's late. So i- imagine it's as late as 2004.

01:46:55
Mike Rashid: Okay.

01:46:56
Eric Weinstein: I've been talking about this guy as a construct, because I thought he was obviously a construct-

01:47:01
Mike Rashid: Right

01:47:01
Eric Weinstein: ... for all this time.

01:47:02
Mike Rashid: And it's so bizarre to you, it stood out.

01:47:04
Eric Weinstein: Well, I've never s- I, I've never met anything or anything this weird.

01:47:08
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:47:08
Eric Weinstein: And that was before the sexual allegations.

01:47:11
Mike Rashid: Right.

01:47:12
Eric Weinstein: This was just like the weirdest meeting you could possibly have.

01:47:15
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:47:17
Eric Weinstein: And-

01:47:17
Mike Rashid: What was weird about it?

01:47:18
Eric Weinstein: Like-

01:47:19
Mike Rashid: Like what, what, what was some of the signs or, or symptoms of it, of it being unusual to you?

01:47:24
Eric Weinstein: Well, first of all, that, um, he appeared to have information about me from some source that I didn't know.

01:47:32
Mike Rashid: Was it accurate?

01:47:33
Eric Weinstein: I think so.

01:47:34
Mike Rashid: Mm.

01:47:35
Eric Weinstein: He, um, he asked me to his house, and his entire staff seemed to be beautiful women in their 20s, like, like making a point of it.

01:47:48
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:47:49
Eric Weinstein: Um, I was shown into a waiting room which had a very weird art object. When I inspected the art object, I found what I thought was a lipstick camera inside of the object meant to be looking at me. So, like, not only were there hidden cameras, but I think you were intended to find the hidden cameras.

01:48:07
Mike Rashid: Right.

01:48:08
Eric Weinstein: You're... I got-

01:48:09
Mike Rashid: So he wanted, he wanted you to be uncomfortable.

01:48:12
Eric Weinstein: He led me back to a room, or his people led me back to a room, which had an enormous long dinner table with an Am- u- an American flag as the tablecloth, which you would never-

01:48:22
Mike Rashid: That's weird

01:48:23
Eric Weinstein: ... do-

01:48:23
Mike Rashid: Yeah

01:48:23
Eric Weinstein: ... because the flag is an object of veneration.

01:48:26
Mike Rashid: Right.

01:48:26
Eric Weinstein: So for food to touch the American flag-

01:48:28
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:48:29
Eric Weinstein: ... is like y- it's a test of some kind.

01:48:32
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:48:32
Eric Weinstein: And then, you know, he, he had this, like, heiress that he was bouncing on his knee during the meeting.

01:48:38
Mike Rashid: Mm.

01:48:39
Eric Weinstein: And she was intended to jiggle and titillate-

01:48:43
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:48:43
Eric Weinstein: ... to see whether or not I would be distracted, I, I guess. I don't know.

01:48:46
Mike Rashid: Right. Yeah.

01:48:46
Eric Weinstein: And, like, the guy, he was, um, I don't know if he was the world's most handsome man, but there are people who are so physically stunning you can't take your eyes off of them. There was something very unusual about his physical appearance and character.

01:49:04
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:49:04
Eric Weinstein: He did look a bit like Ralph Lauren. He appeared to be very smart. He appeared to constantly change the topic so that you could never quite tell what he knew, what he didn't know, where he was going.

01:49:14
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm. And you recognize that as him being deliberate with that?

01:49:19
Eric Weinstein: I didn't know what it was.

01:49:20
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:49:20
Eric Weinstein: I just, I knew that it... Like, normally people say, "Look, let me tell you about my business."

01:49:27
Mike Rashid: Right.

01:49:27
Eric Weinstein: And, and they won't say anything very specifically.

01:49:29
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

01:49:29
Eric Weinstein: But they'll say, you know, "In, in this business..."

01:49:32
Mike Rashid: Did you, did you ask him any specifics?

01:49:34
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:49:35
Mike Rashid: Yeah? And he danced around it? [laughs]

01:49:37
Eric Weinstein: Well, it's normal not to be-

01:49:39
Mike Rashid: I love people. I love it

01:49:39
Eric Weinstein: ... it's normal not to, to say exactly what you're doing.

01:49:41
Mike Rashid: Right.

01:49:42
Eric Weinstein: It's not normal- To be completely evasive about the type of thing that you're doing.

01:49:49
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:49:49
Eric Weinstein: And I don't think he was doing anything.

01:49:50
Mike Rashid: Right. Mm-hmm. Hmm. That would strike me as weird.

01:49:56
Eric Weinstein: And then he had, like-

01:49:57
Mike Rashid: Yeah

01:49:57
Eric Weinstein: ... this whole office at Vollard House on Madison Avenue in Manhattan.

01:50:01
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:50:02
Eric Weinstein: And I, I dropped off materials there.

01:50:05
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:50:05
Eric Weinstein: Um, why have I never seen any analysis of the records taken out of Vollard House? Or who, who has the papers for the supposed hedge fund? I mean, are there SEC filings? Did he, did he... Was he registered with the SEC? Do you-

01:50:23
Mike Rashid: I think he wasn't.

01:50:23
Eric Weinstein: I don't know.

01:50:24
Mike Rashid: Oh, okay.

01:50:25
Eric Weinstein: Just, like, why, why aren't we asking-

01:50:27
Mike Rashid: Can, can you dig into that? Is that-

01:50:28
Eric Weinstein: Am I going to?

01:50:29
Mike Rashid: Uh, no. [laughs]

01:50:30
Eric Weinstein: Somebody else should dig into it.

01:50:31
Mike Rashid: Okay.

01:50:31
Eric Weinstein: I, I think I, I think I got enough risk-

01:50:33
Mike Rashid: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah

01:50:33
Eric Weinstein: ... on this one all by myself.

01:50:34
Mike Rashid: I... We're not saying do it, but do it.

01:50:37
Eric Weinstein: [laughs]

01:50:38
Mike Rashid: [laughs] Okay.

01:50:40
Eric Weinstein: Well, that's the thing. There's no-

01:50:41
Mike Rashid: Yeah

01:50:41
Eric Weinstein: ... reporting on this.

01:50:42
Mike Rashid: Right. That's what's interesting.

01:50:43
Eric Weinstein: How weird is that?

01:50:44
Mike Rashid: Yeah. That is very weird.

01:50:48
Eric Weinstein: And so, you know, there's a concept of blue on blue.

01:50:51
Mike Rashid: Do you think it's not because, you know, he didn't want people to, and people were intimidated by him? 'Cause it-

01:50:57
Eric Weinstein: Well, he was very intimidating.

01:50:58
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:51:00
Eric Weinstein: But he's dead, supposedly.

01:51:02
Mike Rashid: Now, yeah. So.

01:51:02
Eric Weinstein: And last I checked, we were... Like, there are very few things that bring us all together. Lay off 12-year-old girls is probably a slogan that I think almost everyone can get behind.

01:51:13
Mike Rashid: 100%.

01:51:13
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:51:14
Mike Rashid: Yeah. [laughs] Yeah. He, uh... What makes me feel like maybe he's alive is, you know, a day before he died, died, [laughs] he moved his money offshores. And in the movie, they're saying, oh, well, just to sock it to the victims. They can't sue him civilly. But is that the only reason?

01:51:33
Eric Weinstein: Is it his money?

01:51:36
Mike Rashid: I don't know. They said that it was.

01:51:37
Eric Weinstein: I don't believe that it's his money.

01:51:38
Mike Rashid: But it was, it wasn't any billions. It w- you know, it's-

01:51:41
Eric Weinstein: So assume that it's a few hundred million.

01:51:42
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

01:51:43
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

01:51:43
Mike Rashid: But maybe that's all he had liquid. I don't know.

01:51:44
Eric Weinstein: Assume it doesn't, doesn't matter.

01:51:46
Mike Rashid: Right.

01:51:46
Eric Weinstein: My question is where did the money come from?

01:51:51
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:51:52
Eric Weinstein: If that money came from trading-

01:51:53
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:51:54
Eric Weinstein: ... we should have extensive records of his trading.

01:51:57
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:51:57
Eric Weinstein: And you can't go back. Like, if I, if I said to you, "Okay, Mike, we need to create a story that you're an investing billionaire."

01:52:05
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:52:05
Eric Weinstein: "So we're gonna come up with a 10-year history of all the great trades that you did to make yourself so rich."

01:52:11
Mike Rashid: A spreadsheet ain't gonna cut it. [laughs]

01:52:13
Eric Weinstein: Well, how are you gonna do that? 'Cause you have to say, like, what exact moment was that trade filed-

01:52:17
Mike Rashid: Right. Yeah

01:52:17
Eric Weinstein: ... and then you would see what the impact on the market is.

01:52:19
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

01:52:19
Eric Weinstein: It's... You can't just go back-

01:52:21
Mike Rashid: Right

01:52:21
Eric Weinstein: ... and, and say, "Okay, I'm gonna create an entire life and thread it through everything."

01:52:25
Mike Rashid: Right. Especially that amount of money.

01:52:27
Eric Weinstein: No way.

01:52:27
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

01:52:28
Eric Weinstein: So-

01:52:29
Mike Rashid: I-

01:52:29
Eric Weinstein: ... this just doesn't add up.

01:52:29
Mike Rashid: Nah. I don't... I'm sure it's in the ballpark of that. It's gotta be. I mean, I don't know, but-

01:52:36
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, we don't have s- one of the things that we have to learn is how not to say what we think it is.

01:52:41
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:52:42
Eric Weinstein: I don't need to say what I think it is.

01:52:44
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:52:44
Eric Weinstein: Let me tell you what it isn't.

01:52:45
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:52:46
Eric Weinstein: It is not being reported accurately.

01:52:49
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:52:50
Eric Weinstein: Because anything you could ask that would fill in the story would be a sensational paper, I mean, a s- sensational article that you could write that would cause everyone to buy your paper and subscribe.

01:53:02
Mike Rashid: Right.

01:53:03
Eric Weinstein: So we know everyone cares, and we know no one's ever asked these questions.

01:53:07
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:53:07
Eric Weinstein: So what I'm doing is I'm mapping the silences.

01:53:10
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:53:11
Eric Weinstein: Is there a silence around Jeffrey Epstein and intelligence? There is.

01:53:14
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:53:14
Eric Weinstein: Is there a silence around Vollard House? There is.

01:53:17
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:53:17
Eric Weinstein: Is there a silence around how he made his money? There is.

01:53:20
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:53:20
Eric Weinstein: Is there a silence around Ghislaine Maxwell's whereabouts? You keep seeing these stories about-

01:53:24
Mike Rashid: That's so, that's... Yeah

01:53:25
Eric Weinstein: ... Ghislaine Maxwell, you know, t- takes action here. Or where is this chick?

01:53:29
Mike Rashid: Right. That's so bizarre. Yeah.

01:53:32
Eric Weinstein: Maybe she's just lost. Maybe she's in New Jersey. We don't know.

01:53:34
Mike Rashid: One thing about it, it's a juicy story all the way around.

01:53:37
Eric Weinstein: It is.

01:53:37
Mike Rashid: It's fascinating. It's a... The documentary was amazing in a bad way. It wasn't good, but it was an amazing documentary.

01:53:44
Eric Weinstein: But we've just stumbled over something, and it is imperative that we either find out what we stumbled over-

01:53:50
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:53:50
Eric Weinstein: ... or we consign ourselves to live, uh, as people with actually no rights. If we can't get an understanding of what a master pedophile is doing at the center-

01:54:01
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:54:01
Eric Weinstein: ... of power-

01:54:02
Mike Rashid: Right

01:54:03
Eric Weinstein: ... then maybe we're not a free country. I don't know. What do you think?

01:54:05
Mike Rashid: Yeah. I think free, just like democracy, democracy, you have the right to vote, to choose who you want as your leaders. Here's your choices. Pick.

01:54:17
Eric Weinstein: Well, but, you know, when the-

01:54:18
Mike Rashid: It's not a choice

01:54:18
Eric Weinstein: ... when the Republican Party, they tried to do that.

01:54:21
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:54:21
Eric Weinstein: And Donald Trump, whether you love him or hate him, figured out how to get around the fact that the Republican Party didn't want a demo- democracy.

01:54:29
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:54:30
Eric Weinstein: The Democratic Party doesn't want one.

01:54:32
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:54:33
Eric Weinstein: But at least in the Republican case, there was enough of a pretense.

01:54:37
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:54:37
Eric Weinstein: You know, like in professional wrestling, you have two kinds of things you could do. Almost everything that takes place, they call a work, and a work is some scripted thing that-

01:54:47
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:54:47
Eric Weinstein: ... that is fake, in essence.

01:54:48
Mike Rashid: Right.

01:54:49
Eric Weinstein: If you don't go along with that and you actually try wrestling when you're supposed to be acting, they call it a shoot.

01:54:55
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:54:56
Eric Weinstein: Okay, well, hey, man, I don't understand. You were supposed to be working and, and you shot on me.

01:55:01
Mike Rashid: Right.

01:55:01
Eric Weinstein: Okay? Donald Trump shot on the Republican Party-

01:55:06
Mike Rashid: Mm

01:55:06
Eric Weinstein: ... when it was supposed to be a work.

01:55:08
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:55:09
Eric Weinstein: Well, Bernie Sanders tried to shoot on the Democratic Party, but it was a work, so we went with first Hillary Clinton and now Joe Biden.

01:55:17
Mike Rashid: He wasn't... Was he just not strong enough?

01:55:19
Eric Weinstein: Yeah. Well, I've, I've looked at this thing. You know-

01:55:21
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:55:21
Eric Weinstein: ... the, the Democratic primary is not a primary.

01:55:24
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:55:25
Eric Weinstein: They, they just keep changing the rules. Like, here are the only events you can a- appear at, otherwise you're out of the race.

01:55:31
Mike Rashid: Mm.

01:55:32
Eric Weinstein: So they, they're gonna keep it to, like, CNBC and NPR-

01:55:36
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm

01:55:36
Eric Weinstein: ... and The New York Times.

01:55:37
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:55:38
Eric Weinstein: It's like, get the hell out of that pre-scripted nonsense and let us, you know, l- let Joe Rogan or Sam Harris or Coleman Hughes, somebody else-

01:55:50
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:55:52
Eric Weinstein: Ask the questions.

01:55:53
Mike Rashid: Right. It's, to me, it's like you said, are we free? Just like I say, do we live in a democracy? I think as long as people are fat and happy, it doesn't matter.

01:56:06
Eric Weinstein: Well, or you could see the power that we just put into the street. L- look, l- let me bring up a little bit of my frustration about some of the... We just saw stuff in the street that was beautiful.

01:56:17
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:56:17
Eric Weinstein: We saw stuff in the street that was horrible.

01:56:19
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:56:19
Eric Weinstein: We saw stuff in the street that was next level human beings. We saw stuff that was unbelievably stupid.

01:56:25
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:56:26
Eric Weinstein: We saw stuff that was self-righteous. We saw stuff that was self-focused, and we saw stuff that was ho- was hopeful for change.

01:56:32
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:56:34
Eric Weinstein: We have got to talk about what it was that was going on right before George Floyd got murdered or got killed. I, I, I don't know, I don't wanna say before the trial.

01:56:43
Mike Rashid: Right. Mm-hmm.

01:56:45
Eric Weinstein: We were all pissed off about a million different things, and we've gotta fix them all. This is not primarily an issue of Black policing, of policing Blacks who are unarmed and, you know, murdering them in police custody.

01:56:59
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:57:00
Eric Weinstein: This is primarily a- about a world without hope.

01:57:03
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:57:04
Eric Weinstein: Young people don't feel like they have any hope. They don't feel like they have any purpose. The numbers bear them out. They're not as rich as they're supposed to be. Peak millennials should be starting their families. The people born in, you know, 1990, 1991, as my friend Peter Thiel points out, was the peak year. A lot of those people are never gonna have their own babies, and those baby boomers are never gonna hold their own grandchildren in their arms.

01:57:25
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:57:26
Eric Weinstein: And society is grinding to a very weird halt, and as a result, we're always upset. We don't know why we're upset. We don't know what we're asking for. We're not talking about data. We don't trust our experts. And the great danger of what we just went through is that it's not principally about policing. Like, i- if you gave me the choice even to just talk about Black America and the criminal justice system, I'm not positive I wouldn't put my emphasis, uh, instead on sentencing and selective prosecution-

01:57:59
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:58:00
Eric Weinstein: ... if, if given the choice.

01:58:01
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

01:58:02
Eric Weinstein: So m- my feeling is, let's stay focused on what our real problems are. And our biggest problem affecting Black America is also affecting white America, which is that our economics are not hopeful.

01:58:14
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:58:14
Eric Weinstein: The median non-remarkable individual, I think this was, you know, your point, that w- we can't only just talk about, like, let- let's say, Black geniuses.

01:58:21
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:58:21
Eric Weinstein: We have to talk about the man in the middle.

01:58:23
Mike Rashid: Right.

01:58:24
Eric Weinstein: The median individual, Black, white, male, female, trans, doesn't matter, is not doing well.

01:58:30
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:58:31
Eric Weinstein: And that person used to have hope because all of society was moving up, and that's not happening now.

01:58:37
Mike Rashid: Right.

01:58:39
Eric Weinstein: If we don't figure out some cool stuff to do to give people purpose, not just money-

01:58:44
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

01:58:45
Eric Weinstein: ... we could UBI ourselves to death.

01:58:47
Mike Rashid: Yeah. Money's not the-

01:58:47
Eric Weinstein: Everybody needs to feel like their ac- their life matters.

01:58:51
Mike Rashid: I think, um, th- I f- I feel like our country is diseased. It's sick, and we need healing. I, I don't have the answer because it's so many areas that we need to be fixed, that we need healing at.

01:59:09
Eric Weinstein: So why'd you call me up?

01:59:10
Mike Rashid: Because I feel like I'm trying to figure it out.

01:59:13
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:59:13
Mike Rashid: And I'm actually trying to get out there and do something to really have some kind of impact, even if it's in a city.

01:59:19
Eric Weinstein: You're feeling called.

01:59:19
Mike Rashid: Even if it's in one city.

01:59:20
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:59:21
Mike Rashid: And I feel like you have the kind of brain power to help figure it out, you know? The level of thinking and, and reason that you bring to the table is amazing.

01:59:35
Eric Weinstein: I, I'm, I'm very flattered to hear that. I, I gotta tell you, I was very inspired when you reached out to me. Um, didn't know anything about you.

01:59:42
Mike Rashid: Right.

01:59:42
Eric Weinstein: And, um, I was just also really disarmed by how badly I thought you wanted to sort of like, whatever, whatever this is, let's figure it out.

01:59:51
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

01:59:51
Eric Weinstein: But in part, that's it. We've gotta start leading.

01:59:54
Mike Rashid: Correct. And, you know, um, I, personally, I need guidance from people like you. You already guiding me without knowing.

02:00:01
Eric Weinstein: Well, back at you. I learn to tell.

02:00:03
Mike Rashid: You know? So, um, that's why when I reached out to you, when I wrote to you, you know, I wanted you to know I wasn't just trying to be adversarial with, with you. I respect you. Um, I just wanted you to unders- like, let me... Because I hear a lot of things put out there, and I'm just like, "Nah, that's not it though." Like, yeah.

02:00:23
Eric Weinstein: What do you think-

02:00:23
Mike Rashid: You gotta hear, you gotta hear it from us for real, right?

02:00:27
Eric Weinstein: Do you think I've been-

02:00:27
Mike Rashid: Versus-

02:00:28
Eric Weinstein: ... evasive, or do you think I've been open to you?

02:00:30
Mike Rashid: No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no.

02:00:30
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

02:00:31
Mike Rashid: I think in your criticism, which I openly accept-

02:00:34
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

02:00:35
Mike Rashid: ... um, to Black people during this time, um, of protests and whatnot, I, I thought some of it was the, the criticism wasn't being placed in the right place, right? I thought some of it was, um-

02:00:49
Eric Weinstein: Well, say more about that

02:00:50
Mike Rashid: ... I, I, I felt like I needed to elaborate on why we say certain things and do certain things, right? To, so there's a deeper understanding for you hearing it from a Black dude who, who's successful, fairly successful, but who's also been a victim of selective prosecution-

02:01:11
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

02:01:11
Mike Rashid: ... and sentencing. Like, literally, that was a big fight of my life. You know what I mean? So, and I won. But I can s- easily see how another guy in my position would not. It's so hard. It took me a lot to win that fight.

02:01:26
Eric Weinstein: Well, how many people, for example, plead guilty to things that they didn't do because i- the game theory says, "We can send you away for a long time, so how do you wanna play it?"

02:01:35
Mike Rashid: I know, I know the game.

02:01:36
Eric Weinstein: Well, I understand, but I'm talking-

02:01:37
Mike Rashid: I know the game. And most of them don't. That's the thing.

02:01:39
Eric Weinstein: But hopefully I'm bringing some of my people to this podcast-

02:01:42
Mike Rashid: Right

02:01:42
Eric Weinstein: ... where they're gonna tune into a voice, and then-

02:01:45
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:01:45
Eric Weinstein: ... and they're gonna stay-

02:01:45
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:01:45
Eric Weinstein: ... and subscribe to yours.

02:01:47
Mike Rashid: Oh, yeah.

02:01:47
Eric Weinstein: Right?

02:01:47
Mike Rashid: Oh, yeah. For sure.

02:01:47
Eric Weinstein: And so the idea is that, in part, um, I wanna let them know that this is, that there are games That you don't know about-

02:01:57
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:01:57
Eric Weinstein: ... until you, until you plug in.

02:01:59
Mike Rashid: Right.

02:01:59
Eric Weinstein: And a lot of us, uh, over on the white side of the fence-

02:02:02
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:02:03
Eric Weinstein: ... um, have no experience with the criminal justice system up close and personal-

02:02:09
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:02:09
Eric Weinstein: ... at the level that many Black families do.

02:02:11
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

02:02:11
Eric Weinstein: I think that one of the things that you did that I thought was really helpful to me-

02:02:14
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:02:14
Eric Weinstein: ... was you put, uh, you put some color on, on George Floyd, and you said, "You know, even if you did horrible things, a lot of us Black men have parts of our pasts that we're not comfortable with, where we did the wrong thing. And so we can also see past that, which is that people in extraordinary circumstances, uh, can be good people who've done terrible things, and you're discounting that." I thought that was profound.

02:02:41
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm. I've seen it. I've, you know, I, I was, I've been incarcerated, and, um, you know, people for some reason... This is-

02:02:52
Eric Weinstein: W- what-

02:02:52
Mike Rashid: I was incarcerated-

02:02:53
Eric Weinstein: ... what area of the country? Just out of curiosity.

02:02:55
Mike Rashid: Here. Well, LA-

02:02:56
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

02:02:56
Mike Rashid: ... and Arizona.

02:02:58
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

02:02:58
Mike Rashid: The case was in Arizona, but I got arrested here for it, and I sat here for a while until I was extradited there. So, and I was there longer, so I'm... And when I was here, I, I was isolated. Um, uh, so I wasn't really dealing with anybody. It was just, just, it's horrible. But anyway, when I'm there, I'm just observing, and my life was good. You know, I was businessman, everything positive. It was just these things from the past I had to deal with. So, um, I'm... People were coming to me just to talk, just to be around me.

02:03:38
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

02:03:38
Mike Rashid: Because they, when I came, people feared me, and people, like, the... It's all racially s- it's all racial in, in, in jails on the West Coast, so it's always a leader of each race, and they tried to make me the leader.

02:03:52
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

02:03:53
Mike Rashid: I like, "Nah, I'm cool." And, but the other races still came to me as the head.

02:03:57
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

02:03:57
Mike Rashid: Because, you know, I wasn't in there just trying to fight people.

02:04:01
Eric Weinstein: Right.

02:04:02
Mike Rashid: And I was just calm, but they respected me. So everybody would come to me and talk, and I would have, like, people way older than me trying to convince me that they're good people, you know? And I'm like, I could just... I'm a very empathetic person, but I'm a realist as well, and I'm like, "This guy's..." First of all, it's crazy. You'll see there's so many people on this planet that nobody cares about. They have no family. Like, when they get arrested, their wives change their phone number, you know? Like, people are relieved that they're gone, so. Ev- and everybody in jail is not supposed to be there. It's a, it's a accident. It's a, it's a-

02:04:45
Eric Weinstein: Right

02:04:45
Mike Rashid: ... misunderstanding. I'm like, "Okay, bro. Okay." So, you know, I seen low character a lot in there.

02:04:53
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

02:04:53
Mike Rashid: But I also seen people who were just victims of their circumstance.

02:04:56
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

02:04:57
Mike Rashid: But they've been a victim so long, they'll never get it right. I seen it, and everybody in there was on psych meds.

02:05:06
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

02:05:06
Mike Rashid: It's a strange thing. I thought I'm missing out on something. Like, why do they keep lining up every day? What is that?

02:05:11
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

02:05:11
Mike Rashid: Am I supposed to be there? It's psych meds. Everybody in there. I don't know why.

02:05:17
Eric Weinstein: But you didn't do that.

02:05:18
Mike Rashid: Nah.

02:05:18
Eric Weinstein: All right.

02:05:18
Mike Rashid: No.

02:05:19
Eric Weinstein: Almost everybody.

02:05:19
Mike Rashid: Most people, most people [laughs]... Right. Most people in there I think have some drug dependency or something.

02:05:24
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

02:05:24
Mike Rashid: And what-

02:05:25
Eric Weinstein: Well, but this is, but this is also just our general feeling of hopelessness. Like-

02:05:29
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:05:29
Eric Weinstein: ... I can't tell you how many people whose lives by historical standards are much better than people who have gone before them-

02:05:36
Mike Rashid: Okay

02:05:37
Eric Weinstein: ... but that, um, we have a situation-

02:05:40
Mike Rashid: Hold on one second.

02:05:41
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

02:05:42
Mike Rashid: Jess, text Rob Bailey. He's in that group thd- thread. Tell him I'm wrapping up, and we'll be five to 10 minutes late. Okay? He's in the thread from this morning when they were trying to book me for that, uh, thing in Salt Lake. Sorry about that.

02:06:00
Eric Weinstein: No problem.

02:06:00
Mike Rashid: All right. Leggo. [laughs]

02:06:03
Eric Weinstein: Um, I think that this gets back to this issue of, of pointless lives, where even when people are, are doing pretty well by historical standards, it's harder to c- give meaning to meaning, as I like to say.

02:06:16
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

02:06:16
Eric Weinstein: That they can't figure out how to say, "Well, this is something that's worth potentially risking my life for-

02:06:22
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:06:22
Eric Weinstein: ... or sacrificing 10 years for.

02:06:24
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:06:25
Eric Weinstein: Or do I care about the world after I die?

02:06:27
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:06:27
Eric Weinstein: And I think this is one of the biggest distinctions, is that a lot of us don't care about the world-

02:06:32
Mike Rashid: That's right

02:06:32
Eric Weinstein: ... beyond, and the one place that gets reversed is if you happen to have children.

02:06:37
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:06:37
Eric Weinstein: Even if you didn't want the children, even if they happened to you by accident, it's hard not to care about the world that your children are gonna live in, because that's our answer to immortality.

02:06:47
Mike Rashid: Correct.

02:06:48
Eric Weinstein: Making babies is our answer to dying.

02:06:50
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:06:50
Eric Weinstein: And I don't think people who are afraid to have children... Like, this is a scary time. Have your babies now. Don't pretend that, like, the world will, might get better and that-

02:07:02
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:07:02
Eric Weinstein: ... the time to do it is later. How many people had babies during World War II? How many pe- had, people had babies during the worst of Jim Crow? Whatever it is.

02:07:11
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:07:11
Eric Weinstein: You gotta have confidence in future and ownership, uh, going forward, because too many people can't find the meaning in their lives.

02:07:17
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I, um, maybe because I've always been, um, aware of history and my heritage, and my father is a man of character. He may not have had much, but what he never... You know, my father didn't give, pass down a trust, couldn't help me financially with college, anything. But my father gave me, like, wisdom, and he taught me how to be a man. And, um, [coughs] excuse me. So I've always looked at life like I can't wait for my turn-

02:07:55
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

02:07:56
Mike Rashid: ... to do something good for somebody-

02:07:57
Eric Weinstein: Well, that's beautiful

02:07:58
Mike Rashid: ... or for people. Um- A friend of mine, he had to have heart transplant, and they thought that he needed a, a ki- a kidney, was it? Kidney? Kidney transplant? Yeah. People get kidneys, not livers. Yeah. And I was like, "I got you." Check, "I, I got you. You need one, I got you. I got two." You know, he, he ended up not needing it, but I'm okay with anything like that because what else is life about? And also, I want my sons to be honorable people-

02:08:32
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

02:08:32
Mike Rashid: ... and not selfish people, you know, because you get so much more out of life with that. We do this, we do, we go out, like I do a lot of events all over the country, and I was like, you know... Well, when I was, I was in Miami for a while, and I don't like do anything on the weekends. I like go out and people follow me, so I'm like, "Okay." I call people up, "Yo, y'all wanna help me tonight with something? Show up to my gym. I have a kitchen in my gym." We all, we bought this food, prepared food. I hired all the people that came out go out in the streets with me-

02:09:07
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

02:09:07
Mike Rashid: ... in the slums and give people food and water and stuff like that, and I seen how excited these kids were. You know, "I'm out here with Mike Rashid feeding the homeless." And that can look goofy to some people, but I thought that was cool. And I tell them every time we do this, whatever city we in, I said, "This is not putting a dent in homelessness, but I wanna give y'all, like plant that seed of service in y'all just so that things that's, y'all can focus on things that's important, not yourself and not, you know, things that are not important," and I feel like caring about other people is important. Doing nice things for people who can't do anything for you is important.

02:09:50
Eric Weinstein: Well, I love what you said about your dad, which is that your dad passed something to you, and it wasn't in the form of a trust fund, but it was in the form of wisdom. I fear that a lot of people now didn't have much passed by their parents.

02:10:01
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:10:02
Eric Weinstein: And as a result, they don't understand that they have an op- opportunity and an obligation to induct, to mentor, to... There have to be rites of passage, and it, you know, like I didn't really have an advisor.

02:10:15
Mike Rashid: Mm.

02:10:15
Eric Weinstein: And people think sometimes that I'm arrogant about the fact that I didn't... Like all PhDs have advisors, and you-

02:10:21
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:10:21
Eric Weinstein: ... and you didn't really.

02:10:22
Mike Rashid: Right.

02:10:22
Eric Weinstein: I had somebody sign my thesis, but he wasn't my advisor.

02:10:24
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:10:25
Eric Weinstein: Um, no, in fact, there's something beautiful about a rite of passage and about being inducted.

02:10:31
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:10:32
Eric Weinstein: You know?

02:10:32
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:10:32
Eric Weinstein: And this idea of graduating or matriculating-

02:10:35
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:10:36
Eric Weinstein: ... or being called is super important, and I think one of the things is that a lot of us who have a marginal relationship with it, maybe just in the case of your dad or, you know, I can point to one or two people who might have given me a little bit.

02:10:48
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:10:48
Eric Weinstein: I have to that, from that, I have to invent a process called mentoring and induction and l- bringing people up, and they're hungry for it because they're... Let's be blunt about it. We men were not taught how to be men sufficiently, and as a result, there's a huge discomfort with masculinity, with maleness, and you know, there's this beautiful thing I saw in France where some baby is like hanging by, you know, off, off of a ledge.

02:11:18
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:11:19
Eric Weinstein: And this immigrant from Africa just like scales the building like Spider-Man and saves him.

02:11:23
Mike Rashid: Oh, yeah. Recent, yeah.

02:11:24
Eric Weinstein: Yeah. It was not too long ago.

02:11:25
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

02:11:26
Eric Weinstein: You know? And like, okay, well, thank God for men.

02:11:30
Mike Rashid: Mm.

02:11:30
Eric Weinstein: That was a, that was a very... I'm not saying that no woman in the world could do it, but in general-

02:11:34
Mike Rashid: Right

02:11:34
Eric Weinstein: ... nine times out of 10, if somebody's gonna go straight up a building to save somebody else's child that they've never met-

02:11:38
Mike Rashid: Right, right

02:11:39
Eric Weinstein: ... it's gonna be some dude.

02:11:40
Mike Rashid: Correct.

02:11:40
Eric Weinstein: And I think that in part, even if we weren't trained to be men-

02:11:44
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:11:45
Eric Weinstein: ... we've got to invent that because that, those two generations below us, the, the millennials and the Gen Z kids-

02:11:51
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:11:52
Eric Weinstein: ... they deserve to be inducted into something. Now, the fact that I wasn't inducted into something-

02:11:56
Mike Rashid: Mm

02:11:56
Eric Weinstein: ... that means I'm gonna have to fake something in my own mind so that I can pass on a chain that was never passed to me, but I'm convinced that what you're doing is the right thing. And to get back to an earlier, to close one, one thread, I would love to do something that is not about people of color but is specifically Black in terms of science and technology and analytics, and I would love to figure out with you, to keep talking about how to use this show and some others to get the super high-end Black talent in front of the world that needs no apology for anything.

02:12:32
Mike Rashid: Right.

02:12:32
Eric Weinstein: Like, and just get people excited about Black analytic ability.

02:12:37
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:12:38
Eric Weinstein: And then let's have the conversations about all the stupid stuff.

02:12:41
Mike Rashid: Right.

02:12:41
Eric Weinstein: But un- until I can actually show you-

02:12:43
Mike Rashid: Mm

02:12:43
Eric Weinstein: ... who you've already got on your team-

02:12:45
Mike Rashid: Right

02:12:46
Eric Weinstein: ... I don't even wanna have the conversation because if you don't know these people, let me tell you, you're in for a treat. [laughs]

02:12:50
Mike Rashid: Right. Okay, we gotta close, but I wanna go on something that you said-

02:12:54
Eric Weinstein: Sure

02:12:54
Mike Rashid: ... on the phone. Um, it's hard to like really eradicate racism when, without, like, more relationships between Blacks and whites, and that's so true because people are gonna have their prejudices regardless, and that's a normal thing. I'm not even looking down on that.

02:13:11
Eric Weinstein: Right.

02:13:12
Mike Rashid: You don't know, and it's intelligent to be f- kind of fearful of the unknown. That's what keeps you alive and safe. However, when you do have relationships with people who don't look like you-

02:13:24
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

02:13:24
Mike Rashid: ... you, you understand them more. You know, and you're more comfortable with them, so you're more, you're more comfortable with someone that looks like them, and you know, you feel a part of that and vice versa. So I think there's a huge thing with that, and you know, people should... I am just an ex- an adventurous person.

02:13:43
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

02:13:44
Mike Rashid: If, uh, it was back then, I would've been an explorer or something. Like I'm not afraid of that, what's around the corner, so I'm excited about it. Like let's discover whatever we can. So with new relationships with different people, it's all fascinating to me and interesting, and, um, just like You do recognize, like, the brilliance in Black people, that excellence in someone like you is—it can't go without—that's a thing, and I think the merging of the two would be so powerful, you know? Like, if this country really collaborated for real-

02:14:20
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

02:14:21
Mike Rashid: ... respected each other and collaborated-

02:14:23
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

02:14:23
Mike Rashid: ... man, it's crazy. You know, it's so crazy. We got so many-

02:14:26
Eric Weinstein: We got so much over here.

02:14:27
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

02:14:28
Eric Weinstein: I know, I know, I know.

02:14:29
Mike Rashid: Yeah. So I think that's something that should be nurtured. Those are seeds that need to be planted and, and nurtured, you know, and cultivated because [laughs] maybe we'll be all right in a few hundred, couple hundred years, but we gotta recognize the greatness that's here. It's, this is the greatest country on the planet by far, in my opinion at least. Now, I'm not saying the most ethical, but it's-- I don't wanna be nowhere but here. You know?

02:14:56
Eric Weinstein: Well, that's the thing, but, and part of that has to do with being proud of something which is in part embarrassing. Like, if, if you know US history, some of it is pretty embarrassing how horrible we've been to ourselves and each other-

02:15:11
Mike Rashid: Yeah

02:15:11
Eric Weinstein: ... and others.

02:15:12
Mike Rashid: And one thing that we, I don't feel like we've graduated to-

02:15:15
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

02:15:15
Mike Rashid: ... um, my first time going to Germany-

02:15:17
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

02:15:18
Mike Rashid: ... you know, I don't know anything. I'm thinking it's gonna be racist and Nazis and skinheads. Matter of fact, on the train, I was in Holland before that, to, uh, Germany, the conductor sound like Hitler, what I thought Hitler sound like, you know? [laughs] When I got there, beautiful people.

02:15:35
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

02:15:35
Mike Rashid: You know, really nice, warm people, and, you know, I wanted to know what they thought about their past. And collectively from the people I knew out there, they were like, they recognized it, and they were embarrassed about their past. And it just made me-- I was happy for that, but it made me sad that no one's embarrassed about-

02:15:55
Eric Weinstein: Well, because-

02:15:55
Mike Rashid: ... the past here

02:15:56
Eric Weinstein: ... but I'll tell you the other part of that, though-

02:15:58
Mike Rashid: Mm

02:15:58
Eric Weinstein: ... which is, I am more scared when people are embarrassed and self-hating than when people are knowledgeable and they have the right kind of level of responsibility.

02:16:10
Mike Rashid: Okay, let me, let me, let me elabor- elaborate on that. I, I understand that. That was the, that was the energy that I felt. It was an embarrassment. Like, I can't believe we did that. Like, our people did that.

02:16:22
Eric Weinstein: I can't believe we did that, right.

02:16:22
Mike Rashid: It was that kind of energy, and I thought that was very immature and, and big of them. I don't know collectively of the country, of course.

02:16:31
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

02:16:31
Mike Rashid: I know nothing about their politics. I don't know anything about Germany other than it seemed like a very well-ran place, and I like their cars. [laughs] But, uh, the people that I know out there-

02:16:41
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

02:16:42
Mike Rashid: ... they talked about it. They had no prob- They knew a lot about it. They were very knowledgeable on it.

02:16:46
Eric Weinstein: They, they, they do, but then there's the self-hating component which is scaring me, which is one of the reasons why, you know, like here's a terrible transmission mechanism. Assume you feel guilty about atrocities, genocide committed within living memory in your country.

02:17:02
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:17:03
Eric Weinstein: And then as a result of that, let's imagine that you throw open your doors to a level of immigration that you can't handle.

02:17:09
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:17:10
Eric Weinstein: And then you get a backlash.

02:17:12
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:17:12
Eric Weinstein: And now people are like, "I'm tired of feeling guilty. I'm tired of this. I'm tired of that." That's when things get super scary.

02:17:18
Mike Rashid: Right.

02:17:18
Eric Weinstein: And so for me, I've actually talked about should German Jewish reconciliation be a top priority just at the t- Like, we're about to lose the last people who went through the Holocaust because they're all old-

02:17:34
Mike Rashid: Right

02:17:34
Eric Weinstein: ... at this point.

02:17:34
Mike Rashid: Right.

02:17:35
Eric Weinstein: Both the perpetrators, you know, are very few and far between, almost all of them dead.

02:17:40
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:17:40
Eric Weinstein: Um, this is the right time for Jews to potentially extend a hand to modern Germans and saying, "Don't overdo the guilt and the shame."

02:17:53
Mike Rashid: Mm.

02:17:53
Eric Weinstein: "This isn't you."

02:17:54
Mike Rashid: Okay.

02:17:55
Eric Weinstein: And in part, this is my great concern about the, the story of Black America. Like-

02:18:01
Mike Rashid: Mm

02:18:01
Eric Weinstein: ... no, no person in my family was in this country during slavery.

02:18:04
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:18:05
Eric Weinstein: We-- Nobody's enslaved anybody.

02:18:06
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:18:06
Eric Weinstein: We, we were being persecuted as Jews-

02:18:08
Mike Rashid: Right

02:18:08
Eric Weinstein: ... in the Ukraine.

02:18:09
Mike Rashid: Right.

02:18:09
Eric Weinstein: And somebody tells me, "You should pay reparations." Like-

02:18:12
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:18:13
Eric Weinstein: ... to who?

02:18:13
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:18:14
Eric Weinstein: Am I gonna get reparat- I mean-

02:18:15
Mike Rashid: Mm

02:18:16
Eric Weinstein: ... to me, that's a joke.

02:18:17
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:18:19
Eric Weinstein: It's about something deadly serious, and the thing that it's about-

02:18:21
Mike Rashid: I wanna know more about your perspective on that then.

02:18:23
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, no, no, no. Sure.

02:18:24
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

02:18:24
Eric Weinstein: But it's, it's, it's about something serious.

02:18:27
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:18:27
Eric Weinstein: It's about, and, and this, tell me if this resonates with you.

02:18:30
Mike Rashid: Mm.

02:18:30
Eric Weinstein: It may not. Right now, part of the problem of race relations is about humiliation. It's, it's about ongoing harm. It's about historical harm, but it's also about humiliation, which is like, you must see me as the kind of person who has to put up with your bullshit.

02:18:48
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:18:48
Eric Weinstein: And I don't wanna be that person.

02:18:50
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:18:52
Eric Weinstein: And that's one of the reasons why actually just pointing to the outsized contribution of Black America to the American tapestry-

02:19:01
Mike Rashid: Mm

02:19:01
Eric Weinstein: ... that's so important to me, which is-

02:19:04
Mike Rashid: Right

02:19:04
Eric Weinstein: ... you know, what are you talking about? Like, how much have you already rewritten my life? Do you have any idea whose posters were on my walls when I was growing up?

02:19:13
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:19:14
Eric Weinstein: Who, who did I wanna be like? Who did I wanna think like? Like, do you have any idea that if I died, you could offer me several kinds of person to come back as?

02:19:23
Mike Rashid: Right.

02:19:23
Eric Weinstein: Where Black American would have been in that list? Do you think it's at the bottom? Do you think I would r- wanna do anything other than that? Do you think it's at the top?

02:19:30
Mike Rashid: I, I-

02:19:31
Eric Weinstein: You don't know

02:19:31
Mike Rashid: ... but I do think that you're putting your perspective on the majority of the white consensus for white men in this country, and I do think that you are an, a minority-

02:19:42
Eric Weinstein: I appreciate that, but let me tell you something

02:19:44
Mike Rashid: ... in thought.

02:19:44
Eric Weinstein: You can't-- There's an old, terrible joke-

02:19:47
Mike Rashid: [laughs]

02:19:48
Eric Weinstein: ... which is what is the definition of a kike?

02:19:50
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:19:51
Eric Weinstein: And the answer is the Jewish gentleman who's just left the room.

02:19:54
Mike Rashid: Mm.

02:19:55
Eric Weinstein: Every room you walk into-

02:19:56
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:19:56
Eric Weinstein: ... you're Black.

02:19:57
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:19:58
Eric Weinstein: When I walk into a room, I can tell you that there are often no Black people there, and people talk.

02:20:03
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

02:20:07
Eric Weinstein: ... with the worst of that bigoted stuff.

02:20:09
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:20:09
Eric Weinstein: Uh, a little bit I heard it in finance.

02:20:11
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:20:12
Eric Weinstein: But in general, most of that has been long dead.

02:20:16
Mike Rashid: Right, but-

02:20:16
Eric Weinstein: What I do see consigned-

02:20:17
Mike Rashid: But-

02:20:17
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

02:20:17
Mike Rashid: ... that's, that's your existence, though.

02:20:20
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, but it's, it's partially my existence. It's also partially the, this issue of structural bigotry and racism-

02:20:26
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm

02:20:26
Eric Weinstein: ... which is suffused through the structure so that no particular person has to do the wrong thing.

02:20:32
Mike Rashid: Right.

02:20:33
Eric Weinstein: And they can just benefit from it.

02:20:34
Mike Rashid: Right, right, right, right.

02:20:34
Eric Weinstein: So I, I, I think that that's much more important.

02:20:37
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

02:20:37
Eric Weinstein: But I think that o- one of the things that's really important to me is that, you know, this issue of love harder. One of the things we found out when everybody went into the streets, how few white people have close Black friends with which they can talk about, like, all of the crosscurrents going on just inside of the Black experience in America.

02:20:59
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:20:59
Eric Weinstein: It's not there's, there is no Black community in the way that most white people think. Well, the Black community says ... Black community thinks a million different things that go in all different directions.

02:21:07
Mike Rashid: Right.

02:21:08
Eric Weinstein: The key thing t- that you're pointing to is getting to the point of love and trust, where we're spending time with each other and learning from each other in ways that no public service announcement is ever gonna get close to.

02:21:19
Mike Rashid: Correct.

02:21:19
Eric Weinstein: You can't watch Ebony and Ivory a thousand times and learn anything, 'cause it's not in, it's not in a beautiful gesture.

02:21:26
Mike Rashid: Right.

02:21:26
Eric Weinstein: 'Cause it's just not where it happens.

02:21:27
Mike Rashid: Correct. I [laughs], I was joking with someone the other day. I said, um, you know, 'cause I was expressing how I don't care about ... I'm not loyal to Democrat or Republican Party. I, I said, "We need a new party, the Love Party."

02:21:40
Eric Weinstein: [laughs]

02:21:40
Mike Rashid: You know? And I was joking, but that's what we need. We need, um ... I really wish that the American people would think more for thems- more independently and not rely on the notions that's put out in the media to be the dominant, uh, uh, uh, notion that they have to live by or believe in and s- and, and, and prescribe to. And understand that, you know, be more critical of politicians just because your family was this and everybody was this-

02:22:14
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

02:22:15
Mike Rashid: ... and this guy represents your team. If he's a fucked up person, fuck him, you know? And not be-

02:22:20
Eric Weinstein: I want you

02:22:20
Mike Rashid: ... loyal to, to any. Like, uh, Sean and I was talking, 'cause we were, like, researching different organizations to p- potentially put money, uh, donate, make some donations and collaborate with to do some work, and he brought up the, um, a concern of his if, what if they ... But could we heard that this particular organization donates to whatever said party. And I was just like, "Well, it makes sense because those are the issues that-"

02:22:47
Eric Weinstein: Right

02:22:47
Mike Rashid: ... you know. But I said, "I don't ... We need that. We need some kind of ... We need policymakers." And-

02:22:53
Eric Weinstein: We need to affect both of these parties-

02:22:55
Mike Rashid: Right

02:22:55
Eric Weinstein: ... by giving them a coherent message that we're not gonna put up with this bullshit.

02:22:59
Mike Rashid: That's what the people need to do.

02:23:00
Eric Weinstein: I know, and the problem is, is that the street is partially speaking, but the street is not coherent enough-

02:23:05
Mike Rashid: Correct

02:23:05
Eric Weinstein: ... to be heard.

02:23:06
Mike Rashid: Right.

02:23:06
Eric Weinstein: A- and so you're gonna get a lot of these experiments where people are gonna say, "How do we pander to this thing so we can get these people off our backs?"

02:23:12
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:23:13
Eric Weinstein: But the key thing, right, is that we need a coherent list of demands that have to do with making sure that young people have a future.

02:23:20
Mike Rashid: Right.

02:23:20
Eric Weinstein: Because if they're bought in-

02:23:22
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:23:22
Eric Weinstein: ... and they have things that they're trying to protect-

02:23:24
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:23:24
Eric Weinstein: ... and then they're struggling with the whole thing, like, "Is this my country?"

02:23:27
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:23:28
Eric Weinstein: You know? And so at some level, this doesn't feel like a lot of people's countries. I, I don't feel-

02:23:33
Mike Rashid: Right

02:23:33
Eric Weinstein: ... like that's my Democratic Party.

02:23:34
Mike Rashid: Right.

02:23:35
Eric Weinstein: I've, I've been loyal to it, but-

02:23:37
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:23:37
Eric Weinstein: ... I'm, I'm sick of it.

02:23:38
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:23:38
Eric Weinstein: And I ... Right now the important thing is we n- need something other than these two old farts competing for the presidency of the United States.

02:23:45
Mike Rashid: Correct. It's so [laughs], it's so ridiculous as a conscious Black man in this country-

02:23:54
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

02:23:54
Mike Rashid: ... to see Pelosi and all of them with the Kente cloth. I'm like, "Come on, guys. What are you doing?"

02:24:00
Eric Weinstein: Well, it's like i- i- if they suddenly started speaking Yiddish and offering me chicken soup.

02:24:04
Mike Rashid: Right. It's like, it's, it's kind of offensive.

02:24:06
Eric Weinstein: [laughs]

02:24:07
Mike Rashid: Can we, like, can we, like, not be okay with this? You know what I mean? But, you know, it's interesting because I seen no prominent Black people speaking about it at all. I don't know if people were speaking about it or not, but you don't see that on the news.

02:24:21
Eric Weinstein: Well, that's, that's the thing is, is that you don't see Black skepticism unless you go to these voices that are seen, you know, through the Coon lens-

02:24:31
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:24:31
Eric Weinstein: ... of, "Oh, well, that guy, you know, he's stumping for the Republican Party."

02:24:35
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:24:35
Eric Weinstein: That's the, the meal ticket.

02:24:36
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

02:24:36
Eric Weinstein: But the, the issue of ... Smart Black people just say, "Oh, come on, man. What are you doing?"

02:24:44
Mike Rashid: Right.

02:24:44
Eric Weinstein: [laughs]

02:24:45
Mike Rashid: So yeah. Nah, I ... Listen, I see so much, and I've been very vocal during this whole process.

02:24:53
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

02:24:53
Mike Rashid: But I kinda, like, fell back a little bit after a conversation we had. You know, let me not be as, um, I don't know. I, you know, maybe I should speak in code a little bit more.

02:25:05
Eric Weinstein: A little bit, but, but, but think about-

02:25:06
Mike Rashid: You know what I mean?

02:25:06
Eric Weinstein: ... what Killer Mike did in Atlanta.

02:25:08
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:25:09
Eric Weinstein: Right? This issue-

02:25:11
Mike Rashid: Yeah

02:25:11
Eric Weinstein: ... so one of the, one of the areas that I'm blown away by the Black American contribution is oratory.

02:25:16
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:25:17
Eric Weinstein: And his command of not only the language, but cadence, his ability to talk and t- you know, h- he talked about we, we have to beat up that prosecutor-

02:25:28
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:25:28
Eric Weinstein: ... at the ballot box.

02:25:29
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:25:30
Eric Weinstein: You know, it's like, oh, okay.

02:25:31
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

02:25:31
Eric Weinstein: The, the, like, the, there's a pause and-

02:25:32
Mike Rashid: Right

02:25:33
Eric Weinstein: ... you're using physical violence-

02:25:34
Mike Rashid: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah

02:25:34
Eric Weinstein: ... and you're channeling it.

02:25:35
Mike Rashid: 100%.

02:25:35
Eric Weinstein: You know?

02:25:36
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

02:25:36
Eric Weinstein: Well, it's like, well, what did James Brown do after Martin Luther King died? You know, he, he kept the country from going up in flames.

02:25:42
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:25:43
Eric Weinstein: And, you know, Killer Mike was evidencing ... I don't know anything about the guy. I don't know whether I'd agree with his politics.

02:25:48
Mike Rashid: He's an awesome person. I love him.

02:25:50
Eric Weinstein: Is that-

02:25:51
Mike Rashid: Yeah, yeah. He's very ... You know, he's for the cause, like, wholeheartedly. A- and he's not a racist. His, his partner, he has a rap group. It's him and another guy. He's, he's a Jewish guy.

02:26:00
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

02:26:00
Mike Rashid: White guy. So he's, you know, he, he has a show on Netflix called ... What is it called? Oh, Tri- Trigger Warning. It's real good. It's really good. It's excellent, actually. So it's about Black issues, and it's creative and it's funny and And it's, and it's gonna look, uh ... Here's the thing, like, white people are offended by ... White people love our culture, but some of our culture white people are offended by because it looks violent, it feels violent. I watched a, a interview. Have you ever seen the interview of Louis Farrakhan on Donahue?

02:26:36
Eric Weinstein: No.

02:26:37
Mike Rashid: It's really, it's really interesting. He's very calm and speaking, and-

02:26:43
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

02:26:43
Mike Rashid: ... lady said, "You just seem so violent." And we're all like, "Huh?" Because when Black people speak, you know, passionately, he wasn't even passionate on the show, but when we speak passionately, we're just passionate people. I think anyone's passionate about what they really believe in, but, you know, and there's no, there's no leaning towards violence at all. It's perceived as violent-

02:27:08
Eric Weinstein: Well, it depends

02:27:08
Mike Rashid: ... and dangerous

02:27:08
Eric Weinstein: ... it depends what you mean. If you think about, like, Malcolm X and his-

02:27:10
Mike Rashid: Mm

02:27:10
Eric Weinstein: ... gift for oratory, I mean-

02:27:12
Mike Rashid: Mm

02:27:12
Eric Weinstein: ... I love listening to him speak. He's-

02:27:14
Mike Rashid: Yeah

02:27:14
Eric Weinstein: ... he's just ... What a gift. Um-

02:27:17
Mike Rashid: Right

02:27:17
Eric Weinstein: ... on the other hand, there's no question that what he's saying is, "Hey, do you have any idea how violent you guys are? So what if we me- met you as equals?"

02:27:27
Mike Rashid: Right. Right.

02:27:27
Eric Weinstein: But, you know, a- and-

02:27:28
Mike Rashid: That's recognizing why we think-

02:27:32
Eric Weinstein: Well, but I'm just saying he-

02:27:32
Mike Rashid: Yeah, yeah. No

02:27:33
Eric Weinstein: ... he's making a very reasonable argument.

02:27:35
Mike Rashid: Yeah, yeah. For sure.

02:27:35
Eric Weinstein: He's saying, "You're this violent-

02:27:36
Mike Rashid: Yeah

02:27:37
Eric Weinstein: ... and you expect me to cower in front of you-

02:27:39
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:27:39
Eric Weinstein: ... to show you how non-violent I am."

02:27:41
Mike Rashid: Right.

02:27:41
Eric Weinstein: And again, it's, it's idiosyncratic versus systemic violence.

02:27:44
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:27:45
Eric Weinstein: And so effectively, white America is extremely systemically violent-

02:27:49
Mike Rashid: Right

02:27:49
Eric Weinstein: ... and Black America is idiosyncratically violent.

02:27:52
Mike Rashid: Right.

02:27:52
Eric Weinstein: And that's a very, it's an in- interesting exchange rate between the two.

02:27:57
Mike Rashid: Yeah. And I guess there would have to be a conversation, is that wrong? You know, is it wrong to retaliate-

02:28:03
Eric Weinstein: Or, or don't you-

02:28:04
Mike Rashid: ... or to defend

02:28:04
Eric Weinstein: ... don't you need a Malcolm X, uh, to back up your Martin Luther King, because it's not very powerful. Like-

02:28:10
Mike Rashid: Mm

02:28:10
Eric Weinstein: ... if the street doesn't threaten violence-

02:28:12
Mike Rashid: Mm

02:28:13
Eric Weinstein: ... people always talk about peaceful demonstration.

02:28:15
Mike Rashid: Mm.

02:28:15
Eric Weinstein: Cut the crap.

02:28:16
Mike Rashid: Mm.

02:28:17
Eric Weinstein: The most peaceful demonstration is an implied ability to convert to violence.

02:28:22
Mike Rashid: Correct.

02:28:23
Eric Weinstein: And that's why it works.

02:28:24
Mike Rashid: Listen, if [laughs] we don't have the capacity for violence-

02:28:30
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

02:28:31
Mike Rashid: ... we're just a victim.

02:28:32
Eric Weinstein: Well, that, that, this is what Gandhi said.

02:28:34
Mike Rashid: That's it.

02:28:34
Eric Weinstein: Gandhi said, "Violence is preferable to pacifism. The enemy is pacifism." So he had three layers.

02:28:40
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

02:28:41
Eric Weinstein: The pacifist is a coward.

02:28:42
Mike Rashid: Right.

02:28:43
Eric Weinstein: The violent person is not quite brave enough to try the ultimate, which is non-violence, which is not pacifism. People confuse the two.

02:28:51
Mike Rashid: Mm. What is non-violence?

02:28:52
Eric Weinstein: Non-violence is a pre-commitment.

02:28:54
Mike Rashid: Mm.

02:28:54
Eric Weinstein: So m- my favorite example is not Martin Luther King or, uh-

02:28:59
Mike Rashid: Malcolm X

02:28:59
Eric Weinstein: ... Gandhi.

02:29:00
Mike Rashid: Uh-huh.

02:29:00
Eric Weinstein: It's Dick Gregory.

02:29:01
Mike Rashid: Okay.

02:29:02
Eric Weinstein: Dick Gregory and his wife-

02:29:04
Mike Rashid: Mm

02:29:04
Eric Weinstein: ... who was pregnant if I'm ... said, "The civil rights cause is more important than our lives and our family-

02:29:09
Mike Rashid: Mm

02:29:10
Eric Weinstein: ... and no matter what they do to us, we will not try to protect ourselves or each other." Like, try to imagine. You're Dick Gregory. Your pregnant wife might be being kicked by a policeman.

02:29:23
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:29:24
Eric Weinstein: And you agree pre- that we are not going to defend ourselves, not because you're cowards, but because you're so badass that you're going to say, "I'm gonna throw away my most potent weapon to defend myself, and you can do whatever thing, but if you kill me, Lord knows what you're gonna do for my cause."

02:29:41
Mike Rashid: Mm.

02:29:41
Eric Weinstein: Right? So Gandhi and Martin Luther King and Dick Gregory and these guys-

02:29:45
Mike Rashid: Mm

02:29:45
Eric Weinstein: ... were next level brave.

02:29:47
Mike Rashid: Mm.

02:29:48
Eric Weinstein: W- where Gandhi hated the coward as pacifism. He, he said, "Violence is definitely preferable."

02:29:53
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:29:53
Eric Weinstein: It's ... He's very clear on it.

02:29:55
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:29:55
Eric Weinstein: And I think that that's part of what's going on, is is that the street ... One of the reasons that the looting was so unfortunate-

02:30:01
Mike Rashid: Mm

02:30:01
Eric Weinstein: ... is is that violence is much more powerful if the sword is kept in the sheath and rattled-

02:30:09
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:30:09
Eric Weinstein: ... than if-

02:30:09
Mike Rashid: Yeah

02:30:10
Eric Weinstein: ... you start to show it.

02:30:11
Mike Rashid: Right. Yeah. And listen, was there Black people looting? Yeah. But Black people, there was, that was, uh-

02:30:19
Eric Weinstein: Were there white people vandalizing? There were.

02:30:21
Mike Rashid: 100%. There was-

02:30:22
Eric Weinstein: [laughs]

02:30:22
Mike Rashid: That was opportunist. It wasn't, it wasn't-

02:30:24
Eric Weinstein: Well, or some of it might have been program ... I don't even know what it was.

02:30:27
Mike Rashid: Right. I, I, I can assure you it wasn't Black, 'cause listen, I'ma tell you something. In jail-

02:30:32
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

02:30:34
Mike Rashid: ... it's very racial, and the guards set it up. They make it like that. And they put whites and Mexicans together, and Blacks se- separate. And Blacks really just, it'd be a few of us, and we'd tear everything up.

02:30:49
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

02:30:49
Mike Rashid: Like, if Blacks decided to loot-

02:30:51
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

02:30:52
Mike Rashid: ... and terrorize, it would be crazy. It would be atrocious, because we do have a great potential of ... I don't know, we just wild sometimes, you know? And we grow up, 'cause we grow up fighting each other and, you know, survival of the fit in our own little community, and-

02:31:06
Eric Weinstein: But you also have a lot of abilities to diffuse situations as-

02:31:09
Mike Rashid: 100%, 100%

02:31:10
Eric Weinstein: ... kind of talent, that bridge.

02:31:10
Mike Rashid: But that's what I'm saying.

02:31:11
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

02:31:11
Mike Rashid: This little bit, 'cause if, if you look at it, the looting that hap- it was nothing. It wasn't crazy. So if it was us really doing it, it, we would've tore a lot of shit up and burnt a lot of shit down, and it would've been bad. But, um, I don't, I don't condone looting.

02:31:29
Eric Weinstein: Right.

02:31:29
Mike Rashid: You know, I don't, I don't think that we should. Like, I don't, I, I'm not with that. We actually was out to try to mitigate that because I didn't want to blur the lines on our cause. I didn't wanna take the attention away from it. And if I had to be out there myself, like, running people off, I was, I was there doing it. So put that ... But to me, that's a small, a small byproduct of a way bigger issue, you know? So that's not my, my ... I'm not preaching against looting.

02:32:01
Eric Weinstein: No, we have to have-

02:32:02
Mike Rashid: You know?

02:32:02
Eric Weinstein: ... a really long, involved conversation-

02:32:04
Mike Rashid: Correct

02:32:04
Eric Weinstein: ... also about what do we make of a police that is both militarized-

02:32:09
Mike Rashid: Mm

02:32:09
Eric Weinstein: ... and so more threatening, more threatening because they've got armored personnel carriers-

02:32:13
Mike Rashid: Mm

02:32:13
Eric Weinstein: ... and all sorts of next level weapon.

02:32:14
Mike Rashid: Right

02:32:16
Eric Weinstein: Militarized with sub-lethal rounds-

02:32:19
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:32:19
Eric Weinstein: ... like bean bags-

02:32:20
Mike Rashid: Yeah

02:32:20
Eric Weinstein: ... and foam and all this, like-

02:32:22
Mike Rashid: I can say this-

02:32:22
Eric Weinstein: ... weird stuff

02:32:23
Mike Rashid: ... from what I saw with my own eyes-

02:32:24
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

02:32:25
Mike Rashid: ... at a protest in Scottsdale. I went out there, like, you know, 'cause I happened to be in Arizona when protest was kicking off. And, uh, the, there were police agitating people, aiming at ... Nobody, everybody was peaceful, and they were agitating people, and people were getting louder and more riled up. And I decided to leave, 'cause I'm like, "This is, it's hurting my heart. I see what's going on here."

02:32:49
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, well, in part-

02:32:50
Mike Rashid: You know

02:32:50
Eric Weinstein: ... our police forces have also been coordinated. If you look at what happened during Occupy-

02:32:55
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:32:56
Eric Weinstein: ... they cleared out all of these Occupy encampments at the end-

02:33:00
Mike Rashid: Mm

02:33:00
Eric Weinstein: ... in one weekend, I think, because the police forces have been fused, uh, with corporate America.

02:33:07
Mike Rashid: Mm.

02:33:07
Eric Weinstein: So there are these programs, I forget what the name of it is-

02:33:09
Mike Rashid: Right

02:33:09
Eric Weinstein: ... where the police force-

02:33:11
Mike Rashid: Mm

02:33:11
Eric Weinstein: ... uh, is in fact, um, sharing data with-

02:33:14
Mike Rashid: Mm

02:33:15
Eric Weinstein: ... you know, investment banks-

02:33:16
Mike Rashid: Right

02:33:16
Eric Weinstein: ... and, uh, a- and other entities and things. We don't know what our police force is. We don't know what a militarized police force with sub-lethal rounds, with coordination between individual police departments, with corporation, uh, cooperation, and, uh, confederation with corporate America. We are talking about a structure that we don't know.

02:33:39
Mike Rashid: Right.

02:33:39
Eric Weinstein: And in part, one of the things that I think is really important is to use Black familiarity with the f- problems of the criminal justice system-

02:33:47
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:33:47
Eric Weinstein: ... to inform us, because I'll tell you one of the things that I'm most upset about is that we're a bit, at a bit of a fork in the road, where most, most folks, uh, who look like me are afraid to talk to you-

02:34:02
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:34:02
Eric Weinstein: ... because if you start to say, "Well, what about this, and what about that?" I'm like, "I, I don't know anything about it. I just-"

02:34:08
Mike Rashid: Right.

02:34:09
Eric Weinstein: "Please don't hurt me."

02:34:10
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:34:10
Eric Weinstein: Until we actually get to the point where we're ha- hanging out at each other's barbecues-

02:34:14
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:34:14
Eric Weinstein: ... and we're babysitting for each other's-

02:34:16
Mike Rashid: Comfortable enough to have those discussions

02:34:18
Eric Weinstein: ... you know, drunk.

02:34:19
Mike Rashid: Yeah. Yeah. [laughs] Right. Right.

02:34:20
Eric Weinstein: Th- then we're not gonna get to that magical place.

02:34:23
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

02:34:23
Eric Weinstein: And one, one of the things that I h- I hate is I'm looking at my community, and they are scared to open their mouth, people getting fired for not giving their students, you know, off during exams to go protest or-

02:34:36
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:34:36
Eric Weinstein: ... you know, what if you question? Like, I'm gonna question. I don't think this was all about Black Lives Matter.

02:34:40
Mike Rashid: Mm.

02:34:40
Eric Weinstein: I think that it happened that we were all upset about a million things, and then-

02:34:44
Mike Rashid: Right

02:34:44
Eric Weinstein: ... we got George Floyd's-

02:34:45
Mike Rashid: Right

02:34:46
Eric Weinstein: ... you know, execution video, effectively.

02:34:47
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:34:48
Eric Weinstein: And suddenly we're all crazy for a re- for a very good reason-

02:34:51
Mike Rashid: Right

02:34:51
Eric Weinstein: ... an understandable reason.

02:34:52
Mike Rashid: Right.

02:34:52
Eric Weinstein: But it's also the case that right now the biggest emergency we have, we've gotta get back to being the United States of America and stop constantly going between self-love and self-hatred. We need a reasonable plan to lift hundreds of millions of people into a future that makes us proud to be, you know, each other's countrymen.

02:35:13
Mike Rashid: Indeed, I agree with you. I think, um, the very first step is to have a real honest, open dialogue about the real history of this country, 'cause it's not taught. It's, it's, uh ... And like what you experienced, 'cause I never got those lessons in New York, but I heard, you know, in the South you guys were indoctrinated with a alt- a alternate reality of, you know, what happened.

02:35:42
Eric Weinstein: Sha-

02:35:42
Mike Rashid: Uh, uh-

02:35:43
Eric Weinstein: W- w- what's your family background, so I have an idea?

02:35:45
Sean Torbati: I'm Iranian.

02:35:46
Eric Weinstein: Yeah?

02:35:46
Sean Torbati: Yeah. My, my fan- my parents are both, uh, first generation immigrants. They came here to be educated, um, in college, and then made their lives here, and I was born here and raised here.

02:35:58
Eric Weinstein: They came just after the revolution?

02:36:00
Sean Torbati: No, they came before the revolution.

02:36:01
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

02:36:02
Sean Torbati: Yeah. Yeah.

02:36:04
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

02:36:04
Sean Torbati: They came to study. Uh, they, they didn't come for political asylum or anything like that. They came to study. My ... Well, my dad, completely penniless, um, just came because he had an opportunity to come. My mom was a little bit more privileged and was sent to be educated particularly, uh, along with, uh, many of her brothers and sisters, there was eight of them. So yeah, they came here, different experiences, but for the same reason, to the, the land of opportunity-

02:36:31
Eric Weinstein: Mm-hmm

02:36:32
Sean Torbati: ... what we're taught that it, that it was, and what I think you're saying we wanna get back to.

02:36:36
Mike Rashid: Right.

02:36:37
Eric Weinstein: Yeah. I, I mean, to, to me, in part ... Okay, so we got, we got the Iranian guy, the Jewish guy, the Black guy.

02:36:44
Mike Rashid: [laughs] Yeah.

02:36:44
Eric Weinstein: This is normal to me.

02:36:45
Mike Rashid: Right.

02:36:45
Eric Weinstein: And I, I think what I didn't understand-

02:36:47
Mike Rashid: It is. This is normal.

02:36:48
Eric Weinstein: This is normal. [laughs]

02:36:49
Mike Rashid: This is America.

02:36:50
Eric Weinstein: This is America.

02:36:50
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

02:36:51
Eric Weinstein: And I think that a lot of people who are either talking lovingly about multiculturalism or hatefully about it don't actually live it. Like-

02:37:02
Mike Rashid: Right

02:37:02
Eric Weinstein: ... you know, one of the things that I got, I've got interracial children. I never thought about them as being interracial children until race was talked about every four seconds.

02:37:10
Mike Rashid: Right.

02:37:11
Eric Weinstein: And q- quite honestly, it's been negative in my life, not because I wasn't aware of racial issues, but because it's both important to remember them when you're supposed to remember them and forget them when you're suppo- like, there are lots of times when it's just not ... You're making a good point, and it th- has nothing to do with our, our racial backgrounds.

02:37:29
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:37:30
Eric Weinstein: It's very frustrating that I now can't divorce anything from race. It's, it's-

02:37:35
Mike Rashid: Mm

02:37:35
Eric Weinstein: ... it's not like-

02:37:36
Mike Rashid: Yeah. And, and trust me, I don't wanna be talking about this all the time. I don't, and I usually don't.

02:37:41
Eric Weinstein: But I do, and I don't, and I do, and I don't, and now it's giving me a headache.

02:37:44
Mike Rashid: I, I, only, the only reason that I do-

02:37:46
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

02:37:46
Mike Rashid: ... is to try to, like-

02:37:47
Eric Weinstein: Get past it?

02:37:49
Mike Rashid: Well, to non-Black people-

02:37:53
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

02:37:53
Mike Rashid: ... that, you know, don't get it, to try to help them understand it in a cohesive way. And I've had many a conversations with people that just didn't understand, and they got it. They're like, "I didn't even know that."

02:38:04
Eric Weinstein: That's why, you know, I, I did a walk and talk on my, uh, Instagram feed, um, where I, or maybe it was on YouTube Live, where I talked about lynching postcards.

02:38:13
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:38:14
Eric Weinstein: And the number of people who came to me and said, "I had no idea-" About what, like the concept of lynching wasn't explicit enough for me to understand the psycho-

02:38:24
Mike Rashid: Right

02:38:24
Eric Weinstein: ... th- th- the trauma, the horror that comes out of it.

02:38:27
Mike Rashid: Just the, that postcard was violence that you talk about. Is, is visual, mental, and is, it makes us, the strange fruit, look like s- not humans. 'Cause no human would be treated that way, you know? And, uh, to other people, and then it makes us, when we see it, like, "Oh, shit, they don't give a fuck about us," you know? So a huge, um, a lot of the anger in the Black community is feeling like, oh, well, they don't, nobody gives a fuck.

02:38:59
Eric Weinstein: Well-

02:38:59
Mike Rashid: Nobody cares.

02:39:01
Eric Weinstein: Well, on that point, though-

02:39:02
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:39:03
Eric Weinstein: ... how interesting that that song, song of the century arguably-

02:39:06
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:39:06
Eric Weinstein: ... for the 20th century-

02:39:08
Mike Rashid: Strange Fruit

02:39:08
Eric Weinstein: ... was, uh-

02:39:09
Mike Rashid: Written by a white man

02:39:10
Eric Weinstein: ... well, it was written by a Jewish man-

02:39:11
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:39:11
Eric Weinstein: ... and sung by the most gifted of all-

02:39:14
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:39:14
Eric Weinstein: ... Black jazz singers.

02:39:15
Mike Rashid: Right.

02:39:15
Eric Weinstein: Right?

02:39:16
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

02:39:16
Eric Weinstein: So the idea is that, um-

02:39:19
Mike Rashid: Talking about Strange Fruit if y'all didn't catch that.

02:39:21
Eric Weinstein: The, the, uh, Billie Holiday-

02:39:23
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:39:23
Eric Weinstein: ... and, uh, Abel Meeropol was the-

02:39:25
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:39:25
Eric Weinstein: ... was the writer. Uh, we gotta get back to that, uh, hybrid vigor.

02:39:30
Mike Rashid: That collaboration.

02:39:30
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

02:39:31
Mike Rashid: Listen, this is-

02:39:32
Eric Weinstein: That's why I drove an hour to come see you.

02:39:33
Mike Rashid: And I'm so appreciative that you did. I, we-

02:39:36
Eric Weinstein: I'm so appreciative that you, you reached out

02:39:37
Mike Rashid: ... disinfected everything a million times over to make sure everything was good for you.

02:39:41
Eric Weinstein: That's perfect.

02:39:42
Mike Rashid: But yeah, this is what I really wanted to talk about, we didn't even touch. We didn't get there yet, but we will.

02:39:48
Sean Torbati: I do have a perspective-

02:39:49
Mike Rashid: Okay

02:39:50
Sean Torbati: ... that, that I wanted to bring up for people because you said you were surprised that you didn't have as many, uh, Black friends based on how much you enjoy a lot of aspects of the culture. I, I've kinda been the opposite. I've always had a lot of Black friends just for whatever reason, we've, we've got along well, and it's the combination of the opportunity, too. I've, I've been around a lot of Black people in different places I've lived. But something that I think people don't get, especially, I have the story of my own parents being immigrants, seeing this as the land of opportunity. I don't know that Black people have ever s- gotten to look at it that way, that this is the land of opportunity because it's kinda been like this land that everyone's excited to come to, even when my parents came, people came from all areas of the world and viewed this as the place they could build something. All the while, Black people were kind of held down in this environment that they could walk on now. And then, like you said, a lot of these things where people of color are all being lumped together, well, Black people are like, "Well, wait a minute. We never really got addressed. Like the, the injustice that we went through and the things that set us back were never really dealt with, and now we're just gonna treat us all, all the same, uh, when, when there's something that's gone on here that, that wasn't really fixed."

02:41:07
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm. Even, it se- and, and I'm, and I'm empa- that was a good point, and I'm empathetic about everyone, the LGBT... It's extra letters now. But we're, we're lumped in with that as well now, and I'm just like, "All right." But you're right. We do feel like that, and we don't feel included in the big conversation, especially when our president, you know, says things. Like I, I saw, I was watching C-SPAN when he was, he was doing, uh, some ki- he was meeting with, I don't know if they got their president or prime minister, whatever it's called in Norway. Uh, but it was a woman and he says, "I wanna do business with great countries like Norway, not shit countries, not those shit countries," speaking of African countries, and Haiti was thrown in there. And I'm like, "Well, thanks bro. [laughs] Thanks." You know?

02:41:59
Eric Weinstein: He's kind of a dick.

02:42:00
Mike Rashid: Yeah, but that should not, that shouldn't be allowed, and we know that he's not a king. Everybody else-

02:42:07
Eric Weinstein: He doesn't know that

02:42:07
Mike Rashid: ... everyone else should be, around him should be like, "Bro, that's not fucking cool." It just makes us feel like, "Oh, well, things are back to the, where they were," you know?

02:42:15
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, but they're not.

02:42:16
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

02:42:16
Eric Weinstein: I mean, the, the thing is, is that in part, um, it was very interesting what happened with Obama. First of all, Obama, half white, half East African.

02:42:27
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:42:27
Eric Weinstein: Not d- descendant from graduate students-

02:42:29
Mike Rashid: Right. Correct

02:42:29
Eric Weinstein: ... not slaves.

02:42:30
Mike Rashid: Right. Right

02:42:30
Eric Weinstein: ... uh, on the other hand, treated to some of the prejudice that come from, from that.

02:42:34
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

02:42:35
Eric Weinstein: So, you know, it's, it's like super complicated.

02:42:37
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

02:42:37
Eric Weinstein: And then you had a weird thing, again one of these like multiple issues at the same time. You had a lot of Bl- you had a lot of white racists who voted for Obama because they thought he was better for the country.

02:42:48
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:42:48
Eric Weinstein: So you weirdly, you couldn't tell like who's bigoted, who was voting for what.

02:42:53
Mike Rashid: Right. Right.

02:42:53
Eric Weinstein: What is the Obama legacy? I know that, you know, in a weird way a lot of racists went through this idea that, okay, the world is coming to an end because we have somebody who looks like Obama and-

02:43:03
Mike Rashid: Right

02:43:03
Eric Weinstein: ... certainly Michelle, this like incredibly elegant, hot-

02:43:06
Mike Rashid: Right

02:43:06
Eric Weinstein: ... Black first lady-

02:43:08
Mike Rashid: Right

02:43:08
Eric Weinstein: ... blew their minds. Now you've got this weird thing where Trump may actually not be as bigoted as he appears, but he's certainly willing to play with bigotry if it gets him where he-

02:43:16
Mike Rashid: Is that, is that not bigotry, though?

02:43:18
Eric Weinstein: It's an interesting question. Like, I have the sense in part that he doesn't really believe anything. He goes thr- like i- if you told me that, um, the leader of Mali in Africa was coming to see him and that he was gonna ink some deal, I could easily imagine him saying, you know, "The American people have always been friends with the beautiful people of the beautiful country of Mali."

02:43:42
Mike Rashid: Right.

02:43:43
Eric Weinstein: And then if Mali turned on him, he'd be like-

02:43:45
Mike Rashid: Yeah

02:43:45
Eric Weinstein: ... that flea-bitten.

02:43:46
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

02:43:47
Eric Weinstein: Th- th- there is no-

02:43:48
Mike Rashid: That's interesting, and I, and I can see that. I can see that because this is what I thought of him-

02:43:52
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

02:43:52
Mike Rashid: ... going into the preda- presidency. I thought he was pandering and playing towards that part of the base 'cause that's a big voting-

02:44:00
Eric Weinstein: Well, but-

02:44:00
Mike Rashid: Um, uh, you know, but I didn't think he was really-

02:44:04
Eric Weinstein: But Mike, think about it this way.

02:44:06
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:44:06
Eric Weinstein: We are all conflicted.

02:44:08
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:44:09
Eric Weinstein: And when we represent ourselves as like having our shit sorted out, we are lying.

02:44:13
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:44:14
Eric Weinstein: You know? So I'm pretty sure that I'm, for the most part, um- A pretty decent student of Black achievement and-

02:44:25
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:44:26
Eric Weinstein: But I, do I have zero bigoted thoughts that ever go through my mind? I don't know one Black person who can claim that they have no ... I have anti-Semitic thoughts that go through my mind as a Jewish person.

02:44:37
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:44:37
Eric Weinstein: You know?

02:44:38
Mike Rashid: I can honestly say I don't.

02:44:40
Eric Weinstein: You, you may or may not.

02:44:41
Mike Rashid: May- maybe I don't-

02:44:42
Eric Weinstein: But like, if I start talking-

02:44:43
Mike Rashid: Maybe I don't know enough about the Jewish culture to have-

02:44:46
Eric Weinstein: If I started talking to you about, uh, Jewish record executives who signed Black artists in the '50s and took them for every penny they had because they weren't smart enough to know what they were signing-

02:44:58
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:44:58
Eric Weinstein: ... I guarantee you'd have an anti-Semitic thought.

02:45:01
Mike Rashid: But why would I have a an-- I would say, "Fuck that guy."

02:45:03
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, but there was a whole bunch of them. Like in other words-

02:45:06
Mike Rashid: Fuck all of those guys.

02:45:07
Eric Weinstein: [laughs]

02:45:07
Mike Rashid: But why, I wouldn't, I, I prom- no, I'm being 100% honest with you.

02:45:11
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

02:45:11
Mike Rashid: Me, I'm not lumping all Jews in with that.

02:45:14
Eric Weinstein: No, but I, what I'm trying to say is, is that when we talk about, when you talk about a problem with-

02:45:18
Mike Rashid: And if I do bash-

02:45:20
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

02:45:21
Mike Rashid: ... let's say out of 100 Jews, it's 10 of them-

02:45:23
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

02:45:23
Mike Rashid: ... that are evil, these evil Jew-

02:45:25
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

02:45:25
Mike Rashid: ... these 10 evil Jews-

02:45:26
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah

02:45:26
Mike Rashid: ... that, that we have empirical evidence that these 10 guys are evil.

02:45:30
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

02:45:30
Mike Rashid: Is that bigotry?

02:45:31
Eric Weinstein: Well, here's the thing. I notice that I am aware-

02:45:36
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:45:36
Eric Weinstein: ... of a very predatory sector of the business world-

02:45:40
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:45:40
Eric Weinstein: ... some of whom are, are, are Jews and quite proud of it.

02:45:43
Mike Rashid: Right.

02:45:43
Eric Weinstein: Right? People say, "You never give the other guy an even break. Everybody's out for themselves. We gotta get ours," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

02:45:48
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:45:49
Eric Weinstein: I recognize that.

02:45:50
Mike Rashid: Right.

02:45:50
Eric Weinstein: Just the way, for example, you probably recognize some guy saying, you know, "The problem is, is that the White man has kept us down, and we-

02:45:57
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:45:57
Eric Weinstein: ... we, we, we've gotta, we gotta give him in the same terms that he's given it to us, because they only-

02:46:01
Mike Rashid: Right

02:46:01
Eric Weinstein: ... understand the language of violence."

02:46:02
Mike Rashid: Right.

02:46:02
Eric Weinstein: Now, I don't respect that perspective.

02:46:04
Mike Rashid: Uh-huh.

02:46:05
Eric Weinstein: I recognize that that is part of the Black world because I, I'm dialed into it.

02:46:10
Mike Rashid: Right.

02:46:10
Eric Weinstein: Do I rec- recognize negative Jewish things, negative Black things? Like certainly-

02:46:14
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:46:14
Eric Weinstein: ... there's no question of saying that Iran has, uh, you know, been in the forefront of some, of some real horrors with, with what came in to deal with the problems that were the Shah going far in the other direction. We've all got our shit. We, we just do.

02:46:29
Mike Rashid: But being critical-

02:46:30
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

02:46:30
Mike Rashid: ... of evil people that's in a different ethnic group-

02:46:34
Eric Weinstein: We get sloppy

02:46:35
Mike Rashid: ... is that bigotry though?

02:46:37
Eric Weinstein: When I said to you that White society is more systemically violent-

02:46:41
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:46:41
Eric Weinstein: ... that's me being critical of how we bury our violence.

02:46:45
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:46:46
Eric Weinstein: So my, my point to you is, is that, like when you're talking about the hadiths-

02:46:50
Mike Rashid: Mm

02:46:50
Eric Weinstein: ... I can tell you so many of the good points of Islamic culture, and I can tell you some of the negative points of Islamic culture.

02:46:56
Mike Rashid: Okay. All right, so on that, on religion, I'm not team religion at all.

02:47:00
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

02:47:01
Mike Rashid: But I think that generally speaking, they're all good. Like, I feel like generally speaking, any kind of government is-

02:47:07
Eric Weinstein: They're all mixed

02:47:08
Mike Rashid: ... capitalism, communism.

02:47:10
Eric Weinstein: But you can say, but-

02:47:12
Mike Rashid: I, I think anything can, it's just utility

02:47:13
Eric Weinstein: ... but like, you can say differences between them

02:47:14
Mike Rashid: ... it's just utility, right? It's just how people use it and how it's used. I, I'ma, I wanna ask you this. Muhammad Ali, he did an interview, interview somewhere in the United Kingdom-

02:47:23
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

02:47:23
Mike Rashid: ... you know, in the '60s, and they were asking him, they, he said, "Do you..." You know, when he became, he joined the Nation of Islam, they said, "Do you really feel like all White people are, we all..." He said, "We're all devils?"

02:47:36
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

02:47:36
Mike Rashid: He said, "I never said you..." He said, "I said..." He said, "We in London."

02:47:40
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

02:47:40
Mike Rashid: "I said I deal with the White people in America."

02:47:43
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

02:47:44
Mike Rashid: And he said, "How I've been treated," and then he started listing things, atrocities that our government was, you know, clearly behind. He said, "Wouldn't you say that, that guy's a devil?" And the guy was like, "Yeah, yeah, I get it."

02:47:56
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

02:47:56
Mike Rashid: You know what I mean? So it wasn't generalizing all White people.

02:47:59
Eric Weinstein: No, no, of course, but you see, like the Tuskegee medical experiment.

02:48:03
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:48:03
Eric Weinstein: You were talking about, like, using people in medical experiments.

02:48:05
Mike Rashid: Yeah, exactly.

02:48:06
Eric Weinstein: That's some effed up shit.

02:48:08
Mike Rashid: It's horrible.

02:48:08
Eric Weinstein: And, and if you ask me, if I get m- myself into that frame of mind-

02:48:13
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:48:13
Eric Weinstein: ... I'd say like, "What the hell's wrong with White people?"

02:48:15
Mike Rashid: Right.

02:48:15
Eric Weinstein: That would be an incautious thought.

02:48:17
Mike Rashid: Right.

02:48:17
Eric Weinstein: Now, can you wake me out of that and say, "Oh, did you just realize what you just said? Did you just blame all White people? Is that-

02:48:23
Mike Rashid: Mm

02:48:23
Eric Weinstein: ... wasn't that just a few bad apples?" And-

02:48:25
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:48:26
Eric Weinstein: Okay. That's what I'm trying to get at.

02:48:27
Mike Rashid: Right.

02:48:27
Eric Weinstein: When you actually become comfortable, you can say, "Look, we all, every, there's no culture on earth that doesn't have a problem with violence."

02:48:34
Mike Rashid: Right.

02:48:35
Eric Weinstein: Right? They, it might be different kinds of violence.

02:48:37
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:48:38
Eric Weinstein: There might be different aspects to culture.

02:48:40
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:48:40
Eric Weinstein: You know, the, the, uh, there, the admonition to kill the apostate comes from Judaism, not from Islam.

02:48:46
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:48:47
Eric Weinstein: Uh, but on the other hand, Islam has probably activated that more times than Jews ever had from the passage in Deuteronomy.

02:48:54
Mike Rashid: Right.

02:48:54
Eric Weinstein: So when we get to know each other-

02:48:56
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:48:57
Eric Weinstein: ... all of this mixed bag stuff starts to come out, and what I'm trying to get back to is the idea is I don't think Donald Trump is a highly consistent person. I think different things breeze through his mind, and when we're looking for racists and bigots, we don't often have an idea that that's, like, a part of their brain that's not always active, and sometimes it's much more complicated in that you'll find somebody who is fetishizing. Like, a lot of the times that we see somebody who's vehemently anti-homosexual-

02:49:29
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:49:29
Eric Weinstein: ... you're gonna find out that they're gonna be found in an airplane, uh-

02:49:33
Mike Rashid: Yeah, putting their-

02:49:34
Eric Weinstein: ... er, bathroom do-

02:49:35
Mike Rashid: Yeah

02:49:35
Eric Weinstein: ... yeah, doing something under the stall, who knows what.

02:49:37
Mike Rashid: [laughs]

02:49:37
Eric Weinstein: And what's going on there, it's ... Very often we love and hate the same things that excite our passions, and I, I think that this is a much better clue to the weirdness of Black-White relations, which is White America is fascinated, and it's love, hate, give me more, give me less. It just doesn't, it doesn't settle down.

02:49:58
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm. I, I totally understand that.

02:50:00
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

02:50:01
Mike Rashid: But what need to be understood is while White America plays that game-

02:50:08
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

02:50:09
Mike Rashid: ... we're just trying to breathe. We just trying to survive.

02:50:11
Eric Weinstein: Well, but what, Black America's playing that game right back at White America.

02:50:15
Mike Rashid: How so?

02:50:16
Eric Weinstein: Well, I think that there are lots of ways in which, like, you'll see the same thing, where people will fetishize a fair complexion, light-skinned Blacks, you know?

02:50:25
Mike Rashid: Well, I, I-

02:50:27
Eric Weinstein: Wait, wait, wait

02:50:27
Mike Rashid: ... okay, go ahead. Go ahead.

02:50:27
Eric Weinstein: And, um, you know, on the other hand, there'll be like- The same people who will be engaged in Black pride and Black consciousness raising exercises will be in the self-hating thing. Like, we have to, we have to, we have to lift ourselves up. You know, we, we, we keep screwing ourselves over. We, we, we focus-

02:50:46
Mike Rashid: But is that self-hatred or is that, like, trying to get your family to, to step it up?

02:50:50
Eric Weinstein: It depends where your energy is.

02:50:51
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:50:51
Eric Weinstein: And like, and, and you can s- I think that there's plenty of basis for mistrust.

02:50:57
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:50:57
Eric Weinstein: And I, I think that there's also plenty of basis for trust, and those are two separate things.

02:51:01
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:51:01
Eric Weinstein: One doesn't cancel the other out.

02:51:03
Mike Rashid: Right.

02:51:03
Eric Weinstein: And so that's sort of what I was trying to say-

02:51:05
Mike Rashid: I get that

02:51:05
Eric Weinstein: ... about, like, with the Fred Hampton thing. If you believe that your go- that your government ... Like, we had an active anti-Black political process going through our FBI-

02:51:18
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm

02:51:18
Eric Weinstein: ... up through the 1970s at a minimum. I don't even know whether it continues to go on.

02:51:22
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:51:23
Eric Weinstein: I am suspicious about whether or not we use incarceration to deprive Black folks of the vote. I don't know that that's the case.

02:51:31
Mike Rashid: I mean, that was ... That tactic-

02:51:34
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

02:51:34
Mike Rashid: ... was enabled when we were allowed to vote.

02:51:38
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

02:51:38
Mike Rashid: They all-

02:51:38
Eric Weinstein: Well, to say nothing of poll taxes

02:51:40
Mike Rashid: ... Black, Black, Black Code.

02:51:41
Eric Weinstein: To say nothing of, of literacy tests.

02:51:43
Mike Rashid: Yeah.

02:51:43
Eric Weinstein: Like, all of the games that white Americans have used to ... Or take, take Robert Moses-

02:51:51
Mike Rashid: Mm

02:51:51
Eric Weinstein: ... in New York City putting the bridge to Jones Beach at a very low height so that a tour bus can't use it to bring Black people to a b- beach he was trying to keep as white as possible.

02:52:01
Mike Rashid: Mm.

02:52:01
Eric Weinstein: The fact that he dumps the Triborough Bridge into Harlem-

02:52:04
Mike Rashid: Mm

02:52:05
Eric Weinstein: ... because he's using the architecture-

02:52:06
Mike Rashid: Mm

02:52:06
Eric Weinstein: ... of the goddamn city-

02:52:08
Mike Rashid: Right

02:52:09
Eric Weinstein: ... raci- in a racial fashion.

02:52:10
Mike Rashid: Right. Right.

02:52:10
Eric Weinstein: So all of this stuff, Black America would be crazy to ignore it. On the other hand, there's so much energy to say, "What is this crap?" Like, I don't wanna live in that world.

02:52:22
Mike Rashid: Yeah. Yeah. It's exhausting.

02:52:25
Eric Weinstein: [laughs]

02:52:26
Mike Rashid: It is, you know? And especially when we're all still trying to, like ... All right, we're, we're Black Americans, but we're Americans too, and we're just trying to, like, have success and be happy and raise our kids, but we gotta deal with that layer, and it's hard. Like, w- you know? Yeah. I sh- I ... Sometimes I sit and, and I, and I say, "Should I give a fuck about all of this? Should I just stay in my bubble and make sure me and mine are good?" But I gotta look at myself in the mirror at night. I'm like, you know, "You're being a coward."

02:52:58
Eric Weinstein: Do you drink?

02:52:59
Mike Rashid: Yeah, but not, not heavy. But I, I try-

02:53:00
Eric Weinstein: Well, I don't think we sh-

02:53:01
Mike Rashid: Yeah

02:53:01
Eric Weinstein: ... we should do it heavy, but-

02:53:03
Mike Rashid: Yeah. [laughs]

02:53:03
Eric Weinstein: Like, I would be happy to do some podcasting on-

02:53:06
Mike Rashid: Okay

02:53:06
Eric Weinstein: ... these and other topics-

02:53:07
Mike Rashid: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure

02:53:07
Eric Weinstein: ... o- over a little bit of alcohol and some decent food.

02:53:09
Mike Rashid: I'm down. Oh, yeah.

02:53:10
Eric Weinstein: And, and, uh, and, and, and get into stuff because, like, you know, this is what I did with, with Stefon.

02:53:15
Mike Rashid: Mm-hmm.

02:53:15
Eric Weinstein: And, and, you know, it's very funny, when I, when I podcast Eric Lewis, who's, like, by the way, the world's, one of the world's greatest piano players, check him out.

02:53:23
Mike Rashid: Okay.

02:53:25
Eric Weinstein: Um, you know, he started making fun of me when he was at the keyboard, and he starts writing this, like ... 'Cause normally we don't talk about race that much.

02:53:30
Mike Rashid: Right.

02:53:30
Eric Weinstein: We talk about music.

02:53:31
Mike Rashid: Right.

02:53:31
Eric Weinstein: And so I started talking to him about race.

02:53:32
Mike Rashid: Mm.

02:53:32
Eric Weinstein: And so he's, he's at the keyboard. He starts writing this song on the spot.

02:53:35
Mike Rashid: Mm.

02:53:36
Eric Weinstein: He goes, "Eric, you're so beautifully white, and I'm so incredibly Black."

02:53:39
Mike Rashid: Right. [laughs]

02:53:40
Eric Weinstein: It's like, "Fuck you, Eric."

02:53:41
Mike Rashid: [laughs]

02:53:41
Eric Weinstein: And so I go over and I started playing blues triplets on top-

02:53:44
Mike Rashid: Right

02:53:44
Eric Weinstein: ... of that-

02:53:44
Mike Rashid: Right

02:53:45
Eric Weinstein: ... just to, like, send it back. Intimacy is-

02:53:48
Mike Rashid: Mm

02:53:48
Eric Weinstein: ... the thing that could save us.

02:53:50
Mike Rashid: Right.

02:53:50
Eric Weinstein: Which is, what if we actually-

02:53:51
Mike Rashid: That's-

02:53:51
Eric Weinstein: ... find out that we just really enjoyed hanging out?

02:53:54
Mike Rashid: And that's usually the case. That's usually the case. All right, we gotta end this, but I'ma leave it on this. All right, so in my little stint of incarceration, when I get into my cell, my roommate is white, right? So in the jail politics, races can't feed each other. They can't help each other, whatever. So he, uh ... [laughs] They had a meeting. The whites had a meeting about me.

02:54:23
Eric Weinstein: [laughs]

02:54:24
Mike Rashid: [laughs] So he told me ... And I, and I ... Listen, I'm a thinker, so I get it. So he was like, "Um, just so you know, the meeting was about you. The first thing, they kick off, everybody's gonna jump you, so I'm just giving you a heads-up." I was like, "I'm not worried about it." [laughs] So that Friday, um, we have what's called a spread. So we get commissary on Friday. Um, I bought a bunch of stuff. And what you do is you make, like, a big, long burrito-type, weird, unhealthy, delicious, uh, little delicat- uh, uh, little treat, and you share it amongst yourselves. So, so I gave him all the items, and he says, "Uh, how many you want?" And I said, "Bring, bring one for me and one for him," the white dude. He was like, "Okay." [laughs] And he went and he did it. Everything was cool. Nothing was wrong. Like, my pod was so weird-

02:55:18
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

02:55:18
Mike Rashid: ... because I made it weird, 'cause everybody was kinda dealing with each other, and it wasn't ... People look at me, you know, they, they just look at the, the exterior, and they like, "Yo, this guy's gonna be a problem." That's why the meeting was like, "Jump this guy whenever something ha- We gotta neutralize that potential threat." And they seen that I'm not. I'm just a guy-

02:55:40
Eric Weinstein: Right

02:55:40
Mike Rashid: ... just trying to, like, get out of here, you know? And I'm honest with them, and I've stopped a lot of fights from happening, and it was, like, a sigh of relief from them. And we got to really talk. Everybody just dealt with each other as people. 'Cause look, we all ... Everybody in here fucked up. Let's ... I'm telling people, like, "Bro, stop." "Man, they violating my rights." I said, "Bro, we in jail. You have no rights. Just ride it out." You know what I'm saying? They all, they all loved it and appreciated it. That's why they all came to talk to me so much. And, um, but at the end of the day, it's like, I'm comfortable anywhere.

02:56:17
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

02:56:18
Mike Rashid: I've been dropped off in other countries, no English, non-English-speaking countries, and I figure it out. So but a lot of Blacks are not comfortable around whites and vice versa. You know what I mean? So we just need that experience with each other, and everything is chill. Racism don't stand up face to face.

02:56:34
Eric Weinstein: Not when there's good food.

02:56:35
Mike Rashid: Exactly. [laughs] Racism don't stand up face to face. You know what I mean?

02:56:39
Eric Weinstein: So it's a lot har- You gotta be pretty committed to being s- something's-

02:56:43
Mike Rashid: Right

02:56:43
Eric Weinstein: ... gotta be pretty wrong with you.

02:56:44
Mike Rashid: Right. Right.

02:56:44
Eric Weinstein: And I agree with that.

02:56:45
Mike Rashid: So that's why I tell Blacks, like, protesting is cool, but we need action. Like, you know, if your son graduating high school, he don't know what to do, put him in the military or put him in, get him in law enforcement. We need Black cops too.

02:57:02
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

02:57:02
Mike Rashid: 'Cause a lot of that shit wouldn't be happening if their partners were biracial partners. You know what I'm saying? Two minutes? We almost out? Okay. We don't got tape, but I guess we gonna run out of tape storage. All right, sir, it was a pleasure and an honor, and-

02:57:15
Eric Weinstein: Mike, really appreciate it

02:57:16
Mike Rashid: ... we're gonna do this again some more.

02:57:18
Eric Weinstein: Looking forward to it.

02:57:19
Mike Rashid: Yes, sir.

02:57:19
Eric Weinstein: There's so much more to talk about.

02:57:21
Mike Rashid: We haven't even scratched the surface.

02:57:22
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

02:57:22
Mike Rashid: We talked about what we wanted to talk about with you earlier. We didn't get there, but it's cool. I love that.

02:57:27
Eric Weinstein: All right, well, just se- s- send up a, send up a sign, and I'll come out.

02:57:30
Mike Rashid: All right, cool.

02:57:31
Eric Weinstein: And, and, and vice versa. We'll have you-

02:57:32
Mike Rashid: Yeah, I, I'd love to come out there t- uh, to where you're at as well.

02:57:35
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

02:57:36
Mike Rashid: Cool. All right, everybody, make sure ... Y'all, I don't even have to tell y'all. All the information is down below, and click the links, and we'll see y'all next time. Peace. [outro music]