He also tweets a lot.

Elon Musk right here, do you want to know?

Look at you.

Look at you.

Wow.

Did I get the full order of things that you do in a day there when I was reading there?

I left out the tunnel thing at the end.

Do you work on all these things?

Yeah, I have a lot of jobs.

Do you do all these things every day?

Do you work on all of them in a single day?

No.

But I do have a long work day.

Yeah, so I work a lot.

Well, I'm so thrilled you're here because we do a show where we talk about what changes happen in the world, but we just talk.

There's very few people who actually make change happen.

You are one of those people, probably.

Thank you.

I just want to say I love this audience.

Well, you're a likable guy.

I mean, they attack you a lot.

They do.

And you seem to laugh it off, which I think is fantastic.

I love it that you have a sense of humor because a guy as important as you who makes changes, could use your powers for evil and not good.

The fact that-

Yeah, absolutely.

You could.

Of course, I would never use them for evil.

That's crazy.

No, I know, but the way I know that is because you have a sense of humor.

Yeah.

You really do.

I swear I do.

Yeah, you like laughing.

You like to be funny.

I mean, I kill me.

As opposed to somebody like Zuckerberg who I'm not even sure is a real boy.

Yeah.

I actually love comedy and I should let you know, like many years ago,

I actually was in the audience here and watched your show.

Oh, really?

So I've been a long time admirer of your show.

Oh, well, thank you.

Let me get back to you being a genius.

Okay, so, but that has always been my view is that, I was a history major, and when you study history, what you realize is that, you know, there's the great man theory and they talk about kings and princes and queens and presidents.

It's really the people in tech who change the world.

They're the people who deal the cards, whether it's fire or electricity for good or bad, or the cotton gin or the iPhone or the atom bomb.

Those are the cards and the rest of us just play it.

Would you agree with that assessment?

I think technology is the thing that causes these big step changes in civilization.

So obviously you've got things like, say, the Gutenberg Press, before which it was very difficult to get books.

They were very rare.

Even if you had a thirst for knowledge, you really couldn't do anything about it because there were very few books to read.

So, and the internet is something beyond the Gutenberg Press, I think, but, you know, it's a...

When I first saw the internet coming into being in a way that the general public could use it, it felt like the humanity as a whole was developing a nervous system.

So previously, the way that information would travel would be by osmosis, one person to another, or one person calling another.

But the access to information was very limited.

Now with the internet, it's like having a nervous system.

It's like any part of humanity has access to almost all the information of humanity.

Like you could be in the middle of the Amazon jungle with, say, a Starlink terminal and have access to more information than the president did in 1980.

Right, well, anything on your phone.

Everything.

Is...

Yeah.

Okay, so you are one of these dealers, these people who deal the cards in civilization.

I deal some memes, too.

Yes, you do.

Some, uh...

So I think a lot of people thought when you bought Twitter that this is kind of an outlier, like how does this, what doesn't fit with these other things you're doing?

I never thought that.

Because I think you're dealing with big civilizational issues and problems, and I was right on your page.

I think Twitter is one of them.

I mean, you have talked about this woke mind virus.

Yes.

In really apocalyptic terms.

Yeah.

You should explain why you don't think it's hyperbole to say things like it's pushing civilization towards suicide.

First of all, what is the woke mind virus?

And if we don't deal with this, nothing else can get done.

Tell me why you think that.

Yeah, so...

I think we need to be very cautious about anything that is anti-meritocratic, and anything that results in the suppression of free speech.

So those are two of the aspects of the woke mind virus that I think are very dangerous, is that it's often anti-meritocratic.

You can't question things.

Even the questioning is bad.

So another way to, almost anonymous, would be cancel culture.

And obviously people have tried to cancel you many times.

Many times.

Every week.

Yeah.

From left and right.

I've had it from both sides.

Yeah.

And it's interesting, people, you and I are both like in that little group of people, maybe it's a bigger group now, who are called conservative, who haven't really changed.

I don't think of you as a conservative.

I'm definitely, yeah, like,

I at least think of myself as a moderate, you know?

So, I mean, at least like,

I've spent a massive amount of my life building energy, building sustainable energy, you know, electric vehicles and batteries and solar and stuff to help save the environment.

That's not a, you know.

No, no.

No, no.

It's not exactly far right.

No, you drew that diagram once where you're here.

I related to that.

And like, the world has changed.

Right.

I feel the same way.

I feel like very often wokeness is not building on liberalism.

It's the opposite of liberalism.

I couldn't mention it.

Yes, exactly.

Many examples where it's the opposite, including free speech.

Free speech is actually, it's extremely important.

And it's bizarre that we've come to this point where, like, free speech used to be a left or liberal value.

And yet we see from, you know, the in quotes left, a desire to actually censor.

And that seems crazy.

I mean, I think we should be extremely concerned about anything that undermines the First Amendment.

There's a reason for the First Amendment.

The First Amendment is because people came from countries where they could not speak freely.

And where saying certain things would get you thrown into prison.

And they were like, well, we don't want that here.

And by the way, in many parts of the world, including parts of the world that people might think are relatively similar to the United States, the speech laws are draconian.

England is quite different.

I won't name any countries, but.

England, why are we protecting them?

They have no First Amendment.

It's very easy to prove libel in England.

Where it's here, it's almost.

I love England.

Yeah, you do, but I wouldn't want to say the wrong thing.

Or, you could be sued easier.

I mean, there are, in France,

I think if you deny the Holocaust, which I think is abhorrent, but I also think it should be part of free speech, you can be thrown into jail.

Okay, so this, I really can't emphasize this enough.

We must protect free speech.

And free speech only matters, it's only relevant when it's someone you don't like saying something you don't like.

Because obviously, the speech that you like is easy.

So it's, and it's, the thing about censorship is that, sure, for those who would advocate it, just remember, at some point, that will be turned on you.

So, this woke mind virus, how did it start?

Was it bats?

Was it an escape from a lab?

I mean, what is your assessment of why?

Because it's fairly recent.

Why, how did it start and why?

I was, so I was trying to figure out where it's coming from.

I think it's actually been a long time brewing, in that it's, I think it's been going on for a while.

And the amount of indoctrination that's happening in schools and universities is, I think, far beyond what parents realize.

And I only, I sort of came to realize this somewhat late.

The experience that we had in high school and college is not the experience that kids today are having.

And hasn't been for, I don't know, 10 years, maybe 20 years, so.

Aren't parents themselves also a big part of the problem?

Well, I suppose in some cases that parents, but I think, like, the parents are just generally not aware of what their kids are being taught, or what they're not being taught.

They're letting the kids think that they're equal.

I mean, yeah, let me give you an example that a friend of mine told me, which his daughters go to college in, sorry, go to high school in the Bay Area.

And he was asking them, like, well, so who are the, you know, who are the first few presidents of the United States?

They could name Washington.

And I said, well, what do you know about him?

Well, he was a slave owner.

What else?

Right.

Nothing.

Right.

Like, okay, that's, maybe you should know more than that.

You know, yeah.

Yeah, and that is the Wolf-Mind virus.

Yeah.