Lex Fridman vs Zelensky

How to not make peace

I watched the full interview between Lex Fridman and Zelensky. If you haven’t watched it yet, you should. It’s not the best interview ever, but it’s one we can all learn from. I’m going to analyze this from an angle you probably haven’t heard before, so strap in.

How To Not Make Peace

In the introduction to the interview, Lex Fridman claims he was prepared:

For this conversation with President Zelenskyy, for example, since February 2022 I’ve spoken with hundreds of people on the ground, I’ve read Kindle or audiobook, about 10 books fully, and then I skimmed about 20 more.

I can comfortably say that Lex Fridman was not prepared for this interview. I mean, maybe he was prepared, but it was for another interview, not this one. For example, he cites some of the books he used to prepare: a book about the Holodomor, one about the Gulags, and a book about the Third Reich. Um… that being said, what interview do you think Lex was preparing for? It seems to me like he was prepared for a Tucker Carlson and Putin interview, where Putin would wax poetic about 4753 BC and Czar Batahklan (lol).

What Putin did in that interview totally threw Tucker Carlson off; he was not prepared to talk about 4753 BC. Maybe Lex believed this would also be his fate, so he prepared for a three-hour conversation on the Holodomor. Lex had no thoughtful questions about the war, what led to the war. Lex’s questions were mostly about hoping both sides can negotiate and asking Zelensky about people like Trump and Elon Musk. There’s no good way to put it, the questions were absolutely terrible but Zelensky made the best of it. I make fun of Tucker Carlson and deservedly so, but I feel like his Putin interview was better than this one.