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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   29203 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 6, 2025

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Summary of the Lex Fridman-President Zelensky interview

https://youtube.com/watch?v=u321m25rKXc&t=1142s

This interview has attracted a lot of controversy in the weeks leading up to it, as Fridman has said that he wanted to conduct the interview in Russian, which they both speak fluently. Zelensky did not want to conduct the interview in Russian for symbolic reasons that are probably quite easy to understand. In the lead up of the interview, Fridman has a 10 minute introduction in which he tries to justify why wanted to speak Russian, and then the first ten minutes of the real interview is him trying to convince Zelensky. His main argument is that if Zelensky speaks Russian, an interpreter would not be needed, and more of Zelensky's wit and dynamism would come through, and that there wouldn't be a 2-3 second delay in their communication. Fridman even made a warning popup saying "2-3 second delay!" when Zelensky began speaking Ukrainian and it was being interpreted. I've only seen one other Lex Fridman interview, with Milei, but there were no such warnings and disclaimers despite how it was live interpreted between Spanish and English. Zelensky does say he can explain some concepts in Russian if Fridman wants clarification but refuses to do the interview in general in Russian. Zelensky says he's also fine if Fridman speaks in Russian the whole time or switches between Russian and English. Also Fridman does understand a bit of Ukrainian himself but is not fluent.

Everyone I've seen, including Zelensky and myself, has seemed rather confused/upset by Fridman's very strong desire to do the interview in Russian, since the symbolic concerns seem to obviously outweigh those. Especially since using an interpreter is not really a big deal. Especially for a Lex Fridman interview, his interviews are known for him getting really excellent guests, but he just asks them a few vague guests and do 95% of the communicating themselves. There's little benefit to Fridman understanding Zelensky slightly better when all the listener's are going to get it dubbed anyway. Adding more fire to people thinking Fridman is a Russian sympathizer, in his introduction he goes out of his way to emphasize the nuance of the conflict and that he just wants peace for both sides. Many people would call the Russia-Ukraine war a fairly one sided war of aggression by Russia where peace could be achieved whenever Russia decided to withdraw from Ukrainian borders.

Points:

  1. Zelensky talks about Odessa, how it's a beautiful city, and fairly transparently tries to build sympathy by talking about how great and Ukrainian it is. Not that I can blame him.
  2. Zelensky talks a bit about how his father fought in WW2, and about how WW2 began. He compares Hitler to Putin in how they both are aggressive expansionists. Also Fridman continues small digs throughout the interview- "It took me a second to catch the joke", or Zelensky says "bullshit" while talking and Fridman says "I understand, I caught that one word". Fridman continues that passive-aggressive behaviour a few more times throughout the interview, I won't mention every time. And again, he did nothing like that for the Milei interview, the translation and dub was very seemless for that interview. You could miss that it even was translated if you started halfway through and didn't notice that lips were desynced from words.
  3. Zelensky talks about how in the beginning of the way, he had to make fast decisions and do a lot. They started distributing weapons to regular civilians in the capital. He also spent a lot of time communicating to the citizens of Ukraine, appearing in videos he could share through the internet, and that it was very important digital networks weren't disrupted. It was important because from day 1 there really was Russian disinformation, claiming Zelensky ran away, but he could show videos of himself just walking outside his office.
  4. In the beginning of the war, Zelensky, with the help of media contacts, would speak Russian in videos directed to Belarusians and Russians and other Russian speakers, asking them to speak out against the war and protest. He is upset about how Russian speakers seemed to have ignored him and weren't not interested in resisting Putin at all. That's part of why he doesn't want to speak Russian now, because in his experience speaking Russian doesn't actually convince any Russian speakers of his cause.
  5. Lex Fridman is confident this video will reach Russian speakers and will help, that it will spread over the internet even though youtube is blocked, that even Putin will see it. Zelensky calls Putin deaf, "even if he speaks to you".
  6. Zelensky talks about a meeting he had with Putin, I believe this one in 2019. Zelensky says he had a conversation with Putin where Putin offered a ceasefire deal, Zelensky did that math on the numbers Putin offered there and told Putin it would take 20 years for all soldiers to withdraw given those terms. Zelensky says that made him realized that Putin was not actually deeply involved in the details of what it'd take to make a withdrawal happen, that if Putin was serious he'd already have been constantly briefed on these numbers and know how to make things happen. But instead Putin was not serious or interested in a withdrawal.
  7. Zelensky says three things were agreed upon at that meeting. A deal for Germany to continue buying gas from Russia, a hostage exchange deal, and a ceasefire agreement. Russia violated the ceasefire after a month, and Zelensky called Putin in response to ask what happened. Putin didn't explain anything, there were more calls with Putin over the next few months, Putin eventually stopped responding. Zelensky wanted to make a ceasefire happen, Putin was not interested. Russia was talking bullshit, and meanwhile sending snipers into the contested areas.
  8. Zelensky says any ceasefire needs security guarantees, because lives are at stake, and Russia can't be trusted to keep their word on purely diplomatic deals with no military backing. Zelensky wants a security guarantee like partial NATO membership, and/or an arms aid package that would only be used if Russia violates the ceasefire. Zelensky is certain that if any ceasefire happens without security guarantees, Putin will just come again after three months.
  9. Zelensky wants more sanctions on Russia too, particularly on Russian energy. Zelensky wants to see the world buying more American oil instead of Russian oil.
  10. Lex Fridman's first idea for peace is "What if Ukraine and Russia are both accepted into NATO".
  11. Zelensky thinks security guarantees without the US's involvement would not be enough to stop Russia from breaking a ceasefire. Europe being involved in peace talks and Ukraine's future is important too, but the US by itself outweighs the rest of NATO/Europe combined in Zelensky's eyes.
  12. Zelensky seems to lose patience with Fridman as the interview goes along. Fridman keeps talking about Zelensky, Trump, and Putin sitting down together to strike a peace deal. Zelensky keeps trying to explaint that Putin is not a good faith actor and that strong security guarantees from the US are necessary for any peace.
  13. Another of Zelensky's security guarantee suggestions was for the US to give Ukraine Russia's 300 billion frozen assets, and then Ukraine buys American arms with that Russian money. Another suggestion is non-NATO alliance like what Israel has, where countries like the USA, France, Britain assist to shoot down missiles.
  14. Zelensky praises Trump a lot. Probably just politics because he knows he needs to brownnose Trump.
  15. Ukrainian elections will probably only be held after the war ends, because of all the difficulties with occupied territories voting, all the millions of Ukrainians who are abroad, the risk of cyber attacks. Zelensky hopes the war will end in 2025 and elections will then be held immediately. He is unsure if he'd run again himself.
  16. Ukraine has been fighting hard against corruption, it has set up sophiscated and independent anti-corruption agencies, but Ukraine is not corruption free yet
  17. The US has lots of weird, arguably corrupt, strings about how weapons purchases can happen itself. For example, Ukraine wanted to transport weapons from the US to Ukraine on its own fleet of cargo jets. The US said no, that if Ukraine wanted the America to send it weapons, they'd have to pay for American jets to move those weapons.
  18. One time in 2019 Zelensky was visiting the white house and he wanted to go for a morning jog, but US security policy would have a bunch of bodyguards in suits jogging alongside him, and he felt too awkward to make them do that when he was just in athletic wear.

In general, I got the impression Zelensky was trying hard to flatter the people he needed too and put Ukraine in the best possible light. Not that I can blame him, given his position. Lex Fridman seemed really weird in how he seemed very sympathetic to Russia but not outright saying that, despite how obvious it was.

Fridman is one of the worst popular interviewers of all time. Even his interviews with highly interesting people are either very boring or much less interesting than hearing them talk on their own, which is terrible exactly because the purpose of a good interviewer is to get the person to say/admit something interesting.

It’s actually interesting that he challenges Zelensky a bit (I assume because he still feels some kind of kinship/sympathy for Russia) because he almost never does this on any other interview.

The real enigma is Fridman’s own popularity (which is the reason, along with him being a generous interviewer, why so many important people come on his show). Why do so many young men like him? Rogan has a whiff of charisma, interesting stories of his own, a charming everyman’s naïveté and an act that works well with a lot of interview subjects. Fridman sounds like someone who doesn’t care reading from a script, like a high school student forced to give a speech or chair a panel, which is insane for one of the world’s most prolific interviewers. He’s not masculine/dominant and “alpha”. He’s not cosmopolitan and well-read. He doesn’t have the smooth-talking flow of a seasoned hustle bro. He’s just nothing.

I expect this view won’t be popular on here, but I think the fact that Fridman is a Jew helps a lot. Fellow Jews like Netanyahu and Zelenskyy feel more welcome on his podcast rather than going on Joe Rogan, for instance. “Fridman is one of us.” That gives Fridman entreé to a lot of interviews with powerful Jews that non-Jewish interviewers might not get. Hence why his podcast has accumulated so much popularity.

There are a lot of charismatic Jewish interviewers out there. Fridman’s Jewishness is probably largely incidental even if you believe claims about nepotism etc since he built his following pretty organically and clearly attracts guests because of it rather than because of his connections, the following came first (which is surprising), and many of his big guests that drove his following (Musk, Peterson) aren’t Jewish (some were of course, but I don’t know that they’re out of proportion with the percentage of important people who are Jewish).

You can’t make the case, for example, the way you could with, say, Seth Meyers or indeed with Zelensky himself, who were Jewish comedians hired by Jewish producers and eventually given big shows (whatever you think of their merits). I’m not saying either case was ethnic nepotism, but the allegation holds more than it does for Fridman, who largely built his following organically and on his own.

Seth Meyers

As far as I’m aware, Seth Meyers is only 1/8 Jewish (through his paternal grandfather) and I’m not sure that he was even raised with any connection to Jewish culture. He grew up in Michigan and then in New Hampshire. His wife is Jewish, and they’re raising their kids Jewish because of her, but as far as I’m aware everything he’s said about it is that he doesn’t think of himself as Jewish at all.

Fair enough, there actually aren’t a huge number of Jewish talkshow hosts, Maher and Stern and Jon Stewart are I guess.

Jimmy Kimmel would be the other obvious one. (EDIT: Actually, no! Another one like Meyers who just looks and acts Jewish. A crypto-gentile!) And then Larry King, Sally Jessy Raphael, and Ricki Lake before that. (Also Jerry Springer and Maury Povich, if you consider those talk shows.)

Terry Gross from NPR's Fresh Air comes to mind as probably the best of the pure interviewers. It's a testament to her skill that most of the interviews of hers I've listened to aren't of people I'd normally seek out on my own but happened to come across when flipping through the dial. Larry King just wasn't any good. His philosophy was that he should be in the same position as the average audience member who didn't know particularly much about the subject and would go on a journey of discovery or whatever, but in reality it seemed like he used it to not only excuse his lack of preparation but to make it a point of personal pride.

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