Unless you understand the history of oil, you cannot understand the rise of America, WW1, WW2, the Middle East, how Xi and Putin think, secular stagnation, and basically anything else that’s happened since 1860. It was a great honor to interview Daniel Yergin, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Prize. The Prize is the greatest history of oil ever written (which makes it the greatest history of the 20th century ever written). Enjoy!
I think john calvin and Martin Luther has more to do with all mention above than oil. It's a means of transportation of energy not ideology root of energy
Also the Federal Reserve. Standard Oil was broken up in 1911, the Federal Reserve was created in 1913 (along with the ratification of the 16th Amendment which granted Congress the power to levy income taxes), and “coincidentally” World War 1 kicked off in 1914. When the victors tell/arrange the story they always say WWI started with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand - comical.
Dwarkesh has been absolutely on fire with interviewing these people. The semi-hidden gem guests who are titans in their fields of research and have so much to share. By far the best podcaster/interviewer.
I agree that his subjects are excellent, but I feel like Dwarkesh needs some media training if he’s going to make himself the brand. He’s not a particularly good speaker and his pronunciation is often garbled.
He is in his infancy, everyone that has been on TV goes through this but you just dont see it as much due to the model...online you are not lost in the news cycle and so we normally watch the whole career back... ...at first I thought he was a pain in the ass but I think it is actually really good that he plays the young eager and full of questions approach because these world-class guests are in amongst it and at the rear end of careers. He gets through so many topics and keeps it digestible... I warmed to his childish energy because normally the good guests go to the posh boys that just sit there and say "mmmhm" or ask detached questions... Dwarkesh, you have to give him full credit, always asks the questions you want 🎉 Even Pat Bet Davis is going through his growing phase but he is much older so its good to watch them both... I think Dwarkesh is going to the very top of this game. He is on great form. 🎉@@evanm8186
Norway is the gold standard for how to build a nation: a modern social democracy that leads the western world socially. The US, UK, Australia, Canada, Europe etc. none of them rate by comparison because of that one simple decision. I wouldn't even live in the US as one of the 1%. The rich should realize that its much safer to live in a country where the poor are well cared for and have real opportunities.
Norway is the gold standard of a country that makes its money off of oil and then preaches to the rest of the world that they have to be green. A bunch of hypocrites
@@matthewsheeran Norway mismanaged their migration policy. There is a lot of problems with crime, sense of safety and a lagging economy that's not diversifying or catching up to modern tech-based economy.
Dwarkesh, I reckon is gonna go to the very top of this game. He plays the perfect role with his childish eagerness and in turn always asks the questions you want to know. These guest could get lost in details very easily and he makes it remain consumable. Good form 🎉
definitely prefer a Dwarkesh interview over a Lex Friedman podcast. pure substance, excellent questions, and no philosophical bull/spin, unlike other podcasters. Dwarkesh is authentic.
I like that Dwarkesh doesn't let the momentum dro;, it's quite captivating actually compared to a Friedman podcast which is drawn out like a badly written country song. Friedman will say English is his second language in defense, I think he's just an average interviewer.
I remember when there was an actual debate in Congress about fracking around 10-15 years ago, but now that the US is out of the Middle East and Russian pipelines have cut Europes supply everyone is all for it. It’s a huge geopolitical game for energy.
Why would Russia cut off oil supply to Europe? That was how they made money. Its always been the USA telling Europe not to buy Russian/Soviet oil because the USA's Grand Strategy is to keep Europe (most especially Germany) and Russia apart.
The US is out of the Middle East? What reality are you living in? They're still bankrolling and providing weapons for an ongoing genocide, all so they cash keep their biggest military base in the middle east, Israel. Fracking has delayed US climate action, when they could have gone another route to provide for energy independence, the same route China is now taking, which is why they're now dominating in battery, EV and solar production, the US really lost out and will pay the price in the coming years.
Hey Dwarkesh, can you do a post or video about how your prepare for interviews? You've got insightful questions that get to the heart of the matter very quickly.
Excellent interview. Also: it's still worth reading The Prize after hearing this interview. It's a massive education in international business, entrepreneurship, geopolitics, multiple types of strategy, finance, human nature, economics, domestic politics in highly varied times & places. It is both long and dense.
“The Prize” was one of the most entertaining, informative and educational books I have ever read. This should be a must read for anyone wanting an understanding of the drivers of the 20th century. An amazing work!
Best podscast I've listened to all year, at least. Excellent interviewing skills and knowledge by host but also letting guest talk. And as to the guest - cannot think of a more interesting person to listen to, I've read The Prize ten or so years ago and it changed my view of the world. Thank you both and all involved. (also, subscribed, ofc)
US fracking has had a big impact on the 21st century too: lowered US emissions, killed coal, lead to the formation of OPEC+, reduced US involvement in the Middle East, saved Europe during the Ukraine war, etc.
Now, if we could just upgrade our refineries to process the 1/3 of shale oil that we bring up, rather than swapping it 1 for 1 with other countries for their crude oil.
you need the other crude oils because shale oil isn't well suited to diesel refining, it's best for gasoline and jet fuel. (this is my understanding of the situation). Crazy stuff is a clear, greenish liquid as opposed to the typical black stuff we think of
Yes, WWI had wild swings in tech. I've been using genetic genealogy to find my orphaned paternal grandfather's family (who I learned had trained to fly airplanes during WWI, but never saw action). Meanwhile, the grandfather of another family member's DNA match was a Horse Shoer in WWI for an artillery company at Meuse-Argonne. Later my father would enlist two weeks after Pearl Harbor at age 16 (his service was activated a month after he turned 17), fight at Okinawa and was posted to Bavaria once the war ended. I don't know when he was assigned to Military Intelligence (the juicy parts are still less than 60 years past), but I know he learned Arabic, attended Diplomacy 101 and served in Saudi Arabia in the mid 1960s. This is a long way of saying Thank You! for repeating the history of oil the way my dad explained it decades ago. I'm just going to refer friends to Daniel Yergin when I attempt to explain oil politics. ;)
Read his book, The Prize, and he’s right: the history of the 20th century is a history of oil exploration and use. Everything from Baku to Texas to Tripoli and Niger Delta…it’s all in there, a monumental book.
If standard oil as a monopoly or trust was such a big threat with its industry, pricing and political power, how is the modern conglomerate corporations any different? Just because there is 4 ceos now and not just one?
@@derrickruiz6814 bought or not. One company controls all the individual companies in the same industry is basically the same as one company running the whole industry.
The poorer cities in America, ex Compton,CA are going to struggle more to convert to electric vehicles because the individual houses have outdated electric systems. City infrastructure would have to grow along with house remodeling. Houses already host multi families , so it would require meeting electrical needs in a more realistic way. We would measure power, water, sanitation per person to identify the true population needs. AI is going to be the new light.
Just a little feedback for Dwarkesh (friendly, a fan). *Slow down everyone You're moving too fast Frames can't catch you when You're moving like that"-jj. I suffer the same excitement for knowledge-information-connection to present internal understanding.
The original name for tank was "land battleship" which describes it very well. "Tank" was actually a code name intended to be misleading, making any spy or leaker think that the project was simply about making large metal containers to put water or other things into.
I always find it interesting how disconnected conversations about the geopolitics of oil and it’s importance to economies are with conversations about climate change - and vice versa - both like to pretend the other doesn’t exist
@@kreek22 True, but I agree with Jake it is interesting how in-depth, intelligent conversations about one or the other rarely tend to bridge the gap and speak about the whole situation in a more holistic way. It's important to acknowledge that when trying to set goals for less emissions/fossil fuel use that this very commodity is woven into the social, economic and security fabric of the world. We can discuss both things at once.
I will have started the history of fossil fuels in England with the beginnings of the steam engine and the extraction of coal. A few years later England produced twice as much as France, although England has half the population. And I will have focused the energy debate on the barrel to barrel ratio, And global growth is correlated with the amount of energy consumed, which is mainly oil. I will also have made a detour on renewable energies, knowing that we have already known this world, it was the near industrial world where the vast majority of people were in agriculture. In other words, people who spend their day harvesting energy in chemical form, plants which themselves grow thanks to the energy of the sun. All we have done with fossil energy is consume geological pockets of sunlight that are several million years old.
Daniel would like the movie Babylon (2022). The scene when they add audio recording to filmmaking shows the comical struggle to incorporate new technology of audio to the silent film industry and more.
Industrial output, available draft age men, political consensus post Pearl Harbor: these were the main drivers of victory along with rapid technological advancement.
okay, shoutout to the audio engineer, bc this sounds perfect on a shitty bluetooth speaker. Usually podcasts come out muddy and boomy (200-1kHz range), but this is perfectly recorded and EQ'd.
22:49 up to here this interview was a truly eye opener. It really giving me a headache 😂 a good one of course, one have those that shows I've learned something complicated.
Dwarkesh, slow down, there were moments, where your questions were unintelligible because you simply spoke too fast. Mr. Yergin spoke clearly, one could easily understang every single word, that´s the way to go.
Anyone in power knew that. Its so obvious to anyone who could draw a sankey diagram. The challenge is policy makers, investors and even other tech experts did not.
@@jayshen84 in 1988 it wasn’t so obvious or at least wide spread knowledge. True that a sankey diagram might have been buried in a paper somewhere in a library 😄
What amount of oil does 1 wind turbine require a day 🤔🤔🤔 climate change/air quality is only changing because of the industry sector! And the movement of people! Encapsulating a drain of environmental resources!
oil gives us precious chemicals providing among other things the lubrication to reduce friction for our machine’s mechanical movement - it amazes me we still destructively burn it away when our energy technology has reached a point we don’t need to. And besides having very good reasons why continuing to burn fossil resources is catastrophically bad to all of us, even to the families of people making a living selling it 🤷🏻♂️
1:12:50 interesting fact: renewables in California account to 50% of electricity production in 2023. that includes wind, solar, hydro, geothermal and biomass.
Interesting? CA hydro is 10%, w dams 50-80 yrs old, and decreasing as dams are destroyed, geothermal 5% unchanged for 50 yrs, highly subsidized solar 20%, wind 10%. That’s not very interesting at all, is it. Mundane really. What’s interesting is CA has the highest utility electric rates in the mainland US, and this was not true decades ago, while today as Yergin says grid still heavily fossil.
Your subjects & guests are intersting & informative, buti wish you would slightly slow the pace of your speech. It adversely affects your enunciation & phrasing as well as word choices.
Another great and hugely insightful interview. I would be curious if you would be interested on doing an interview(s) focused on the fusion industry. Companies like Helion, TAE Technologies, and Commonwealth Fusion Systems seem very close to deploying practical fusion electrical generation plants in the next 5 years. Where are they at? What are the things slowing industrial scale rollout of those plants?
Mr Yergin wisely said his book is A history of the 20th century not THE one. There’s quite a bunch of curiosities like the fact that in the early days gasoline was nothing but a byproduct and that oil was discovered in Kuwait as early as 1938. Neither him nor the host is a profound thinker. So don’t be surprised when you hear Mr Yergin say Putin got disappointed that Europe wasn’t destroyed when the gas pipelines were shot down in the beginning of the war in Ukraine - that’s quite a naive way to look at how a man like Putin thinks. I’d rate it 6/10.
Magnficent podcast again. Right before the alert coming in, I was thinking wouldn't it be great if Dwarkesh published another one today? And you delivered. Loved the pitch to apply at Suno.
This is called ridicule through faint praise. Dwarkesh has a nice voice and he gets apparently worthwhile interviewees. Sadly, he doesn't listen to what his subjects say, so a great deal of his videos is just pure waste of electrons.
The fight over Singapore and Indonesia was also about oil. The Japanese went straight for the Dutch oil fields. During ww2, some of the officer pilots had investments in Shell Oil and other companies and would refrain from bombing certain refineries the Japanese were operating. A new lot would join the formation and usually find out when they got back to ship that “why’d you hit that refinery, damnit? I’ve got shares in that company!!!” There was a certain president that was a pilot in the pacific during ww2…
I really enjoy this interview. I fucking hate that tie. I like the color orange, but that tie is doing something to your skin tone that somehow feels like a war crime. I really enjoyed the conversation.
Here in New Zealand during the 1970s the government came up with Carless Days. Every car owner got a sticker for their car windscreen with a day of the week you couldn't drive your car. Given out randomly and colour coded so the traffic cops could spot the colour of the day from a distance (back then we had Police and Traffic Officers as two seperate entities. It was much better split up). Two car families (few and far between back then) did ok if they got different days for each car. And everybody prayed to get a Saturday or Sunday sticker. Some if they got a Saturday or a Sunday sticker would put it out for bids and swap it with another sticker and some money if they didn't care what day they got. This didn't affect our family ( just my mother and me) as we didn't have a car for the first 8 years of my life in the 70s, we walked or rode bikes everywhere or took buses. My lifetime carbon footprint is much less than many today because of these 8 years.
Yergin is among the top energy experts in the world, goes into great detail here on a range of energy topics. Yet not a comment here is about the topic, all about feel good on Yergin, feel good on the host, bro culture, like the cast of Idiocracy. Even got a “Nice suit, man”. Such a culture can not continue to maintain the energy infrastructure Yergin describes.
35:14 Did he just mention Edition and Stripe in the same pitch?! lolol...Mr Dwarkesh, you know better. I am glad at least you mentioned about Edition creating a system to distribute electricity, that's all. Thanks for that.
@@joshuamitchell9515 lol. Not sure what's at 38:08, but I am quite curious. Nice catch, I missed it completely may be cuz I was listening this 1.5x. About my comment, I was talking about the misconception around Edison. He didn’t actually invent the light bulb - he just made it more practical. Shoutout to Joseph Swan for also working on it at the same time! And as for the whole electricity distribution thing, Edison pushed for DC, but Tesla’s AC ended up having a bigger impact because it could be transmitted over longer distances and was more efficient.😂😂
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I understand, the vast majority of US oil is light, sweet crude. While the vast majority of US refining capacity is engineering for dirtier crude (although it's slowly being adapted to our internal supply). So we export lots of crude for refining elsewhere and still import lots of crude our refineries can use. I wonder effect what this paradigm will have in the near and middle future.
Oil companies and investors have been restricted and outright BLOCKED by the Government and 'Environmentalists' for many years from building and, or expanding refineries in our country. The powers that Be don't want us to have cheap, abundant Energy,. They want CONTROL.
Apparently, Ms. Neocon refuses to acknowledge that Russia has any national security interests. • According to her, Russia "behaving itself" means permitting U.S. and NATO missiles on Ukraine's border, a mere six-minute flight time from Moscow. • She expects Russia to acquiesce to an existential threat that the U.S. would never accept. • Now, why should anyone take her seriously?
THE BIGGEST PROBLEM WITH CENTRALLY GENERATED ELECTRICITY: In 1965 most of eastern Canada and the eastern US went dark, due to a transformer in Buffalo failing, At the time there were 2 of these transformers available, however if more had broken down it would take many months, or even years to manufacture additional transformers. A later security analysis pointed out that at that time there are only a dozen distribution nodes around the US relying these largest transformers and if they were sabotaged it would take months if not years to get the US electrical grid back up again now consider if millions of businesses and homes, with solar and energy storage,as well as electric vehicles, it would be damn near impossible to shut it all down and this type of distributed power generation and storage would increase National security. Unfortunately I rarely ever hear this brought up and it's the big disadvantage of centrally distributed power generation. Another point is historically wars are often start over access to energy, such as recently the access to petroleum products. However if there is no need to secure importation of energy sources, I suspect it would greatly reduce the reasons for countries to go to war. And an additional bonus would be that about 70% of the Us and other countries GDP is consumer spending, so if consumers had their own energy, it would not only lower the cost of living, (th e cost of energy is what drives inflation), the money consumers would save would give them a better quality of life because it would increase velocity of money in the economic system with more spending power, which would drive the economy to greater heights, something that businesses would appreciate. I believe the best solution would be a hybrid grid, combining most areas that could be supported locally together with distribution to take care of sudden loads or breakdowns, it's a flexible approach that would address the issues and reduce the vulnerability of sabotage. In Australia is Storm took down the power lines to a city of about 2 million, fortunately Tesla had demonstrated a few years earlier $140 megawatt storage system powered by solar and wind, which was found to be so effective that the city took on building out the grid and when that storm hit the high voltage lines going in and out of the City, the Tesla virtual power plant system kicked in within 20 milliseconds and went 11 days providing the city of 2 million with power until the power lines were restored and the HV power lines were basically distribute excess green power to other areas. Traditional power systems like coal and turbine peaker plants have now become with the economist call "stranded assets"in other words scrap value. As a bonus cost of electricity has dropped dramatically in this city. I would suggest you might wish to watch Tony Seba's & Rethinkx 1videos regarding the combination of solar wind and energy storage, was 5 days of energy storage even cities in Northern US Canada and up into Alaska this would work. Now imagine the battle in Ukraine where Russia is hitting power generation and distribution, what if in the future all houses had solar and energy storage and it went into a grid with software that could distribute it to where it had been cut off with multiple ways of connection and I believe this would result in not worrying about your energy generation being taken out and even better the money saved would increase VOM (Velocity Of Money thus driving the economy and reduce inflation, since the primary driver of inflation and cost of living is the cost of energy. Scientia Habet Non Domus, (Knowledge Has No Home) antiguajohn
Running out of whales: whales were not the main lighting source, sheep were :-) , more precisely sheep lard made from abdominal fat because it was harder when cold and you could make candles. Using the lard for lighting was allowing them to sell the meat cheaper, so everybody ate meat, far from top quality (older sheep) but they had access to meat.
Considering America's Cup sailboats with foils can do 3x the wind speed, if we were still dependant on sailpower today it wouldn't still take weeks to cross the oceans we would have moved to that technology much sooner (foiling ferries were around in the 1970s I think) and foiling is coming to more and more boats lately since the America's Cup started foiling and people saw the speeds they get with several tons of boat (almost 100kmph) and the fastest boat ever (Vestas Sailrocket 2) hit 128km or 68 knots back in 2012.
I read a wild story in the book 'the black march' (written by an SS officer on the Eastern Front in WWII). The germans took an oil refinery (near Stalingrad, I think rostov). They brought in 40 oil specialists to get the russian refinery online. Russian partisans snuck into the camp at night and slit all of their throats. Germany also used russian-speaking NKVD- uniformed Germans to seize an oil refinery.
People win wars not oil and oil led to far more people dying in WW2 than WW1. Coal gave birth to steam power for rail transport, manufacturing and electricity generation but oil gave us more flexible mobile power for vehicles, aircraft and ships. Electricity has been the most important development of the 20th century.
Convo started great until you asked why some oil countries are a mess like Libya, Syria and Iran and never mention the role of the West in destabilizing them. And then your guest says that Aramco is run well because they drew from the cultures of the people who they nationalized the oil companies FROM. So the west bears no blame in the problems of the poor countries and gets all the credit for the success of the rich ones… 😒
It always seems like dwarkesh isnt listening to the interviewee. Its like he's constantly trying to move the conversation foreward to the next question and his questions rarely conne t to the previous statement
As long as the subjects feel fine with it, it's good. His prepared questions are going to be lower risk and higher quality on expectation, until he's more experienced.
The interviewer was all over the place in this one. Feel like he jumped around a lot and asked a lot of superficial questions that didn't take advantage of the speaker's knowledge.
Please Patel. Slow down with your questioning- make the conversation flow naturally. Follow up on what your guest is saying. Let the listener hear more of the guest not you. Please I mean this in the nicest way possible. Moreover, the way you ask your questions seem so painful- I cannot describe it. But it hurts watching you ask.
Daniel Yergin is being a bit disingenuous. Shale gas is more expensive to deliver to Europe than pipeline gas from Russia. Vladimir Putin was not interested in losing the European gas market - neither from an economic nor a geopolitical point of view. On the other hand, the US was interested in eliminating a competitor from the European gas market. Therefore, I do not believe that Putin blew up Nord Stream. The divers who carried out the demolition clearly acted in the interests of the US.
Vlad Putin was interested in seizing Ukraine and making EU critically dependent on his gas, and Europeans like sheep went along, despite warnings from the US which leads the defense pact Europeans claim to be part of, created to defend Europe from Russia. It’s not about who blew up NS; it’s about WTH there was one in the first place. And hear you come saying it’s US fault like some punk in a tree fort.
America's "car culture" naturally occured as an answer to the discovery of oil. In turn, rapid expansion of the interstate highway system was carried out, and the country's disinterest in establishing comprehensive public transportation projects still persists. In terms of warfare, the Army will be the least relevant branch of the military, as air and sea requires the least human interaction. Historically, any attempt at Middle Eastern Nationalizaton of oil was met with fierce resistance. Many coups and wars were waged for this reason, but framed as a Democratic ideal.
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Unless you understand the history of oil, you cannot understand the rise of America, WW1, WW2, the Middle East, how Xi and Putin think, secular stagnation, and basically anything else that’s happened since 1860.
It was a great honor to interview Daniel Yergin, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Prize.
The Prize is the greatest history of oil ever written (which makes it the greatest history of the 20th century ever written).
Enjoy!
I think john calvin and Martin Luther has more to do with all mention above than oil. It's a means of transportation of energy not ideology root of energy
Add cell phones. The Chinese could kill us all.
Also the Federal Reserve.
Standard Oil was broken up in 1911, the Federal Reserve was created in 1913 (along with the ratification of the 16th Amendment which granted Congress the power to levy income taxes), and “coincidentally” World War 1 kicked off in 1914.
When the victors tell/arrange the story they always say WWI started with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand - comical.
The Internal Combustion Engine
@@quadpatriotactually the steam engine started it all.
Dwarkesh has been absolutely on fire with interviewing these people. The semi-hidden gem guests who are titans in their fields of research and have so much to share. By far the best podcaster/interviewer.
I agree that his subjects are excellent, but I feel like Dwarkesh needs some media training if he’s going to make himself the brand. He’s not a particularly good speaker and his pronunciation is often garbled.
He is in his infancy, everyone that has been on TV goes through this but you just dont see it as much due to the model...online you are not lost in the news cycle and so we normally watch the whole career back...
...at first I thought he was a pain in the ass but I think it is actually really good that he plays the young eager and full of questions approach because these world-class guests are in amongst it and at the rear end of careers. He gets through so many topics and keeps it digestible... I warmed to his childish energy because normally the good guests go to the posh boys that just sit there and say "mmmhm" or ask detached questions... Dwarkesh, you have to give him full credit, always asks the questions you want 🎉 Even Pat Bet Davis is going through his growing phase but he is much older so its good to watch them both...
I think Dwarkesh is going to the very top of this game. He is on great form. 🎉@@evanm8186
The girly/east cost american accent or whatever it is called in this setting is preposterous, I could definitely do without it.
@@محمدالخالد-ك5س it's abit gay
Hey what's wrong with gay? Everyone's a lil gay if they're honest@@robsmith4434
Norway is another country that also used oil to build a massive sovereign wealth fund and secure its economic prosperity
Norway is the gold standard for how to build a nation: a modern social democracy that leads the western world socially. The US, UK, Australia, Canada, Europe etc. none of them rate by comparison because of that one simple decision. I wouldn't even live in the US as one of the 1%. The rich should realize that its much safer to live in a country where the poor are well cared for and have real opportunities.
Norway is the gold standard of a country that makes its money off of oil and then preaches to the rest of the world that they have to be green. A bunch of hypocrites
@@matthewsheeran Norway mismanaged their migration policy. There is a lot of problems with crime, sense of safety and a lagging economy that's not diversifying or catching up to modern tech-based economy.
@@matthewsheeranit's all easier when others carry your defense burden. Four generations now.
Norway invested a lot in hydro. That will keep the lights on in Norway for centuries
Dwarkesh, I reckon is gonna go to the very top of this game. He plays the perfect role with his childish eagerness and in turn always asks the questions you want to know. These guest could get lost in details very easily and he makes it remain consumable. Good form 🎉
Cheerful eagerness
Fake comment, written by Indian karma farm.
😂@@RAPEDBYBLACKS
definitely prefer a Dwarkesh interview over a Lex Friedman podcast. pure substance, excellent questions, and no philosophical bull/spin, unlike other podcasters. Dwarkesh is authentic.
I like that Dwarkesh doesn't let the momentum dro;, it's quite captivating actually compared to a Friedman podcast which is drawn out like a badly written country song. Friedman will say English is his second language in defense, I think he's just an average interviewer.
Daniel's book: The Prize is one of the best books I've ever read!
I am blown away - Daniel Yergin. The Prize has to be one of the most important books ever written on how the world works nobody has heard of.
Agreed
I mean… it won the Pulitzer…?
I remember when there was an actual debate in Congress about fracking around 10-15 years ago, but now that the US is out of the Middle East and Russian pipelines have cut Europes supply everyone is all for it. It’s a huge geopolitical game for energy.
Why would Russia cut off oil supply to Europe? That was how they made money. Its always been the USA telling Europe not to buy Russian/Soviet oil because the USA's Grand Strategy is to keep Europe (most especially Germany) and Russia apart.
@@ironhammer4095Someone gets it.
@@emmanuela7528It's amazing how some people repeat the bullshit they are fed.
US made us not buy oil and gas, Russia didn't cut anything.
The US is out of the Middle East? What reality are you living in? They're still bankrolling and providing weapons for an ongoing genocide, all so they cash keep their biggest military base in the middle east, Israel.
Fracking has delayed US climate action, when they could have gone another route to provide for energy independence, the same route China is now taking, which is why they're now dominating in battery, EV and solar production, the US really lost out and will pay the price in the coming years.
Without Russian gas the European industry is done and dusted
It's taking all my self control to not watch this immediately...something to look forward to after work.❤
Not.
I felt the same way!
Lol you and me both bro
Hey Dwarkesh, can you do a post or video about how your prepare for interviews? You've got insightful questions that get to the heart of the matter very quickly.
"The two most important characters: supply and demand" 33:41 🔥🔥🔥
Addiction gets that going....dependence
Excellent interview. Also: it's still worth reading The Prize after hearing this interview. It's a massive education in international business, entrepreneurship, geopolitics, multiple types of strategy, finance, human nature, economics, domestic politics in highly varied times & places. It is both long and dense.
“The Prize” was one of the most entertaining, informative and educational books I have ever read. This should be a must read for anyone wanting an understanding of the drivers of the 20th century. An amazing work!
Informative and interesting. Liking this podcast more and more. Guests like this are amazing.
Best podscast I've listened to all year, at least.
Excellent interviewing skills and knowledge by host but also letting guest talk.
And as to the guest - cannot think of a more interesting person to listen to, I've read The Prize ten or so years ago and it changed my view of the world.
Thank you both and all involved.
(also, subscribed, ofc)
US fracking has had a big impact on the 21st century too: lowered US emissions, killed coal, lead to the formation of OPEC+, reduced US involvement in the Middle East, saved Europe during the Ukraine war, etc.
Now, if we could just upgrade our refineries to process the 1/3 of shale oil that we bring up, rather than swapping it 1 for 1 with other countries for their crude oil.
you need the other crude oils because shale oil isn't well suited to diesel refining, it's best for gasoline and jet fuel. (this is my understanding of the situation). Crazy stuff is a clear, greenish liquid as opposed to the typical black stuff we think of
It would've had a bigger impact if US shale wasn't in bed with OPEC since 2017. Absolutely criminal
Thank God for shale.
You know that shale is also a finite resource.
I'm Brazilian. I'm reading a Portuguese version of "The prize" - is excelent. (The tittle of that book in Brazil are "O petróleo" ["The petroleum"].)
You popped up in my feed randomly, and this is the first video I'd ever seen of you. What an astounding interview! Insta subbed.
Great interview
Everything is said unbiasedly.
i need these videos with the guest at 1x speed, and Dwarkesh on .75x please
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Yes, WWI had wild swings in tech. I've been using genetic genealogy to find my orphaned paternal grandfather's family (who I learned had trained to fly airplanes during WWI, but never saw action). Meanwhile, the grandfather of another family member's DNA match was a Horse Shoer in WWI for an artillery company at Meuse-Argonne. Later my father would enlist two weeks after Pearl Harbor at age 16 (his service was activated a month after he turned 17), fight at Okinawa and was posted to Bavaria once the war ended. I don't know when he was assigned to Military Intelligence (the juicy parts are still less than 60 years past), but I know he learned Arabic, attended Diplomacy 101 and served in Saudi Arabia in the mid 1960s. This is a long way of saying Thank You! for repeating the history of oil the way my dad explained it decades ago. I'm just going to refer friends to Daniel Yergin when I attempt to explain oil politics. ;)
The quality of the guest list is off the charts.
Well done gentlemen.
What a charming, intelligent, knowledgeable and civilized gentleman.
I love yergin - the prize has to be one of my favorite books
Read his book, The Prize, and he’s right: the history of the 20th century is a history of oil exploration and use. Everything from Baku to Texas to Tripoli and Niger Delta…it’s all in there, a monumental book.
This guy is amazing, I'm so glad for this
If standard oil as a monopoly or trust was such a big threat with its industry, pricing and political power, how is the modern conglomerate corporations any different? Just because there is 4 ceos now and not just one?
They are bought not independent is the difference 🫥
@@derrickruiz6814 bought or not. One company controls all the individual companies in the same industry is basically the same as one company running the whole industry.
Great interview.
Wow! What an engaging and prepared interviewer! Glad the algorithm slipped me this video!
The poorer cities in America, ex Compton,CA are going to struggle more to convert to electric vehicles because the individual houses have outdated electric systems. City infrastructure would have to grow along with house remodeling. Houses already host multi families , so it would require meeting electrical needs in a more realistic way. We would measure power, water, sanitation per person to identify the true population needs. AI is going to be the new light.
Just a little feedback for Dwarkesh (friendly, a fan). *Slow down everyone
You're moving too fast
Frames can't catch you when
You're moving like that"-jj. I suffer the same excitement for knowledge-information-connection to present internal understanding.
Great vid. Thumbs up.
What a pleasant soul. And hes crazy sharp for his age too
Thanks!
The original name for tank was "land battleship" which describes it very well. "Tank" was actually a code name intended to be misleading, making any spy or leaker think that the project was simply about making large metal containers to put water or other things into.
I always find it interesting how disconnected conversations about the geopolitics of oil and it’s importance to economies are with conversations about climate change - and vice versa - both like to pretend the other doesn’t exist
Most of the history of oil precedes the political salient period of climate change concern.
@@kreek22 True, but I agree with Jake it is interesting how in-depth, intelligent conversations about one or the other rarely tend to bridge the gap and speak about the whole situation in a more holistic way. It's important to acknowledge that when trying to set goals for less emissions/fossil fuel use that this very commodity is woven into the social, economic and security fabric of the world. We can discuss both things at once.
La voix de la raison finira par triompher un jour. Il en a toujours été ainsi. Merci à vous madame!
I will have started the history of fossil fuels in England with the beginnings of the steam engine and the extraction of coal. A few years later England produced twice as much as France, although England has half the population.
And I will have focused the energy debate on the barrel to barrel ratio, And global growth is correlated with the amount of energy consumed, which is mainly oil.
I will also have made a detour on renewable energies, knowing that we have already known this world, it was the near industrial world where the vast majority of people were in agriculture. In other words, people who spend their day harvesting energy in chemical form, plants which themselves grow thanks to the energy of the sun.
All we have done with fossil energy is consume geological pockets of sunlight that are several million years old.
What a great interview! Will get this book….thanks
Great interview; I'm getting the book asap. ;)
Daniel would like the movie Babylon (2022). The scene when they add audio recording to filmmaking shows the comical struggle to incorporate new technology of audio to the silent film industry and more.
Fracking is truly a game changer. I thought it would end oil wars….unfortunately didn’t happen.
Thanks brother for this interview
Industrial output, available draft age men, political consensus post Pearl Harbor: these were the main drivers of victory along with rapid technological advancement.
Available draft age men is a really good point.
Best conversation on the history of oil since Robert Newman ! ❤
okay, shoutout to the audio engineer, bc this sounds perfect on a shitty bluetooth speaker. Usually podcasts come out muddy and boomy (200-1kHz range), but this is perfectly recorded and EQ'd.
It would be great going forward if a shale oil field lasted as long as a conventional oil field. Energy is the economy.
Your channel got so much better over time! 👌👌
22:49 up to here this interview was a truly eye opener. It really giving me a headache 😂 a good one of course, one have those that shows I've learned something complicated.
Okay, this makes more sense than any story in town.
Dwarkesh, slow down, there were moments, where your questions were unintelligible because you simply spoke too fast. Mr. Yergin spoke clearly, one could easily understang every single word, that´s the way to go.
years ago an EE prof of mine recognized early that the innovation in wind (and inverters for solar) were the advances in power transistors.
Anyone in power knew that. Its so obvious to anyone who could draw a sankey diagram.
The challenge is policy makers, investors and even other tech experts did not.
@@jayshen84 in 1988 it wasn’t so obvious or at least wide spread knowledge. True that a sankey diagram might have been buried in a paper somewhere in a library 😄
@@kitchinsync Ah... your years ago shld be decades ago.. but from my own experience ppl still dun get it up to now.
What amount of oil does 1 wind turbine require a day 🤔🤔🤔 climate change/air quality is only changing because of the industry sector! And the movement of people! Encapsulating a drain of environmental resources!
oil gives us precious chemicals providing among other things the lubrication to reduce friction for our machine’s mechanical movement - it amazes me we still destructively burn it away when our energy technology has reached a point we don’t need to.
And besides having very good reasons why continuing to burn fossil resources is catastrophically bad to all of us, even to the families of people making a living selling it 🤷🏻♂️
Man, this is really good! Subscribed.
Detective of Money Politics is following this very informative content cheers from VK3GFS and 73s from Frank from Melbourne Australia
1:12:50 interesting fact: renewables in California account to 50% of electricity production in 2023. that includes wind, solar, hydro, geothermal and biomass.
It should also include nuclear, which is also renewable.
@@kreek22 no
Interesting? CA hydro is 10%, w dams 50-80 yrs old, and decreasing as dams are destroyed, geothermal 5% unchanged for 50 yrs, highly subsidized solar 20%, wind 10%. That’s not very interesting at all, is it. Mundane really.
What’s interesting is CA has the highest utility electric rates in the mainland US, and this was not true decades ago, while today as Yergin says grid still heavily fossil.
@@Nill757 of course it is an interesting fact lol 😂
@@senefelder Yo mom used to be interesting.
Your subjects & guests are intersting & informative, buti wish you would slightly slow the pace of your speech. It adversely affects your enunciation & phrasing as well as word choices.
Another great and hugely insightful interview. I would be curious if you would be interested on doing an interview(s) focused on the fusion industry. Companies like Helion, TAE Technologies, and Commonwealth Fusion Systems seem very close to deploying practical fusion electrical generation plants in the next 5 years. Where are they at? What are the things slowing industrial scale rollout of those plants?
A Successful prototype might be a good foundation for such a rollout.
Mr Yergin wisely said his book is A history of the 20th century not THE one.
There’s quite a bunch of curiosities like the fact that in the early days gasoline was nothing but a byproduct and that oil was discovered in Kuwait as early as 1938.
Neither him nor the host is a profound thinker. So don’t be surprised when you hear Mr Yergin say Putin got disappointed that Europe wasn’t destroyed when the gas pipelines were shot down in the beginning of the war in Ukraine - that’s quite a naive way to look at how a man like Putin thinks.
I’d rate it 6/10.
Magnficent podcast again. Right before the alert coming in, I was thinking wouldn't it be great if Dwarkesh published another one today? And you delivered. Loved the pitch to apply at Suno.
Ida Tarbell wasn't a great woman journalist. She was a great journalist.
Patel picks great topics, a little off-beat compared to everyone else repeating everyone else.
Dwarkesh, you are without doubt the best podcaster out there. Please keep going, youy are made for understanding genius.
This is called ridicule through faint praise.
Dwarkesh has a nice voice and he gets apparently worthwhile interviewees. Sadly, he doesn't listen to what his subjects say, so a great deal of his videos is just pure waste of electrons.
I gotta agree with you. The best interviewer is lex Friedman@@TheDavidlloydjones
The Battle of Stalingrad was *entirely* about stopping Hitler taking Baku.
It made Hitler run out of gas.
The fight over Singapore and Indonesia was also about oil. The Japanese went straight for the Dutch oil fields.
During ww2, some of the officer pilots had investments in Shell Oil and other companies and would refrain from bombing certain refineries the Japanese were operating. A new lot would join the formation and usually find out when they got back to ship that “why’d you hit that refinery, damnit? I’ve got shares in that company!!!”
There was a certain president that was a pilot in the pacific during ww2…
I LOVE ❤YOUR CHANNEL! FANTASTIC JOB. THANK YOU 😊
Not one word about nuclear energy during the renewable's conversation. Maybe that could be a topic for a future podcast.
Thanks!
I really enjoy this interview. I fucking hate that tie. I like the color orange, but that tie is doing something to your skin tone that somehow feels like a war crime. I really enjoyed the conversation.
Here in New Zealand during the 1970s the government came up with Carless Days. Every car owner got a sticker for their car windscreen with a day of the week you couldn't drive your car. Given out randomly and colour coded so the traffic cops could spot the colour of the day from a distance (back then we had Police and Traffic Officers as two seperate entities. It was much better split up). Two car families (few and far between back then) did ok if they got different days for each car. And everybody prayed to get a Saturday or Sunday sticker. Some if they got a Saturday or a Sunday sticker would put it out for bids and swap it with another sticker and some money if they didn't care what day they got. This didn't affect our family ( just my mother and me) as we didn't have a car for the first 8 years of my life in the 70s, we walked or rode bikes everywhere or took buses. My lifetime carbon footprint is much less than many today because of these 8 years.
If there was ww3 conflict, the inexhaustible ingenuity of Britain alone, not even counting that of our Allies, would see us to victory yet again.
Yergin is among the top energy experts in the world, goes into great detail here on a range of energy topics. Yet not a comment here is about the topic, all about feel good on Yergin, feel good on the host, bro culture, like the cast of Idiocracy. Even got a “Nice suit, man”. Such a culture can not continue to maintain the energy infrastructure Yergin describes.
35:14 Did he just mention Edition and Stripe in the same pitch?! lolol...Mr Dwarkesh, you know better. I am glad at least you mentioned about Edition creating a system to distribute electricity, that's all. Thanks for that.
I wanna know what was edited out at 38:08
@@joshuamitchell9515 lol. Not sure what's at 38:08, but I am quite curious. Nice catch, I missed it completely may be cuz I was listening this 1.5x.
About my comment, I was talking about the misconception around Edison. He didn’t actually invent the light bulb - he just made it more practical. Shoutout to Joseph Swan for also working on it at the same time! And as for the whole electricity distribution thing, Edison pushed for DC, but Tesla’s AC ended up having a bigger impact because it could be transmitted over longer distances and was more efficient.😂😂
In Agustus 2024 NEV is 54% of China car market.
. were EV(31%) and plug in hybrids(23%)
Too bad the questions aren't in some kind of order. The topics are all over the place.
my adhd brain loves it.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I understand, the vast majority of US oil is light, sweet crude. While the vast majority of US refining capacity is engineering for dirtier crude (although it's slowly being adapted to our internal supply). So we export lots of crude for refining elsewhere and still import lots of crude our refineries can use. I wonder effect what this paradigm will have in the near and middle future.
Oil companies and investors have been restricted and outright BLOCKED by the Government and 'Environmentalists' for many years from building and, or expanding refineries in our country.
The powers that Be don't want us to have cheap, abundant Energy,. They want CONTROL.
Apparently, Ms. Neocon refuses to acknowledge that Russia has any national security interests.
• According to her, Russia "behaving itself" means permitting U.S. and NATO missiles on Ukraine's border, a mere six-minute flight time from Moscow.
• She expects Russia to acquiesce to an existential threat that the U.S. would never accept.
• Now, why should anyone take her seriously?
THE BIGGEST PROBLEM WITH CENTRALLY GENERATED ELECTRICITY:
In 1965 most of eastern Canada and the eastern US went dark, due to a transformer in Buffalo failing,
At the time there were 2 of these transformers available, however if more had broken down it would take many months, or even years to manufacture additional transformers.
A later security analysis pointed out that at that time there are only a dozen distribution nodes around the US relying these largest transformers and if they were sabotaged it would take months if not years to get the US electrical grid back up again
now consider if millions of businesses and homes, with solar and energy storage,as well as electric vehicles, it would be damn near impossible to shut it all down and this type of distributed power generation and storage would increase National security.
Unfortunately I rarely ever hear this brought up and it's the big disadvantage of centrally distributed power generation.
Another point is historically wars are often start over access to energy, such as recently the access to petroleum products.
However if there is no need to secure importation of energy sources, I suspect it would greatly reduce the reasons for countries to go to war.
And an additional bonus would be that about 70% of the Us and other countries GDP is consumer spending, so if consumers had their own energy, it would not only lower the cost of living, (th e cost of energy is what drives inflation), the money consumers would save would give them a better quality of life because it would increase velocity of money in the economic system with more spending power, which would drive the economy to greater heights, something that businesses would appreciate.
I believe the best solution would be a hybrid grid, combining most areas that could be supported locally together with distribution to take care of sudden loads or breakdowns, it's a flexible approach that would address the issues and reduce the vulnerability of sabotage.
In Australia is Storm took down the power lines to a city of about 2 million, fortunately Tesla had demonstrated a few years earlier $140 megawatt storage system powered by solar and wind, which was found to be so effective that the city took on building out the grid and when that storm hit the high voltage lines going in and out of the City, the Tesla virtual power plant system kicked in within 20 milliseconds and went 11 days providing the city of 2 million with power until the power lines were restored and the HV power lines were basically distribute excess green power to other areas.
Traditional power systems like coal and turbine peaker plants have now become with the economist call "stranded assets"in other words scrap value.
As a bonus cost of electricity has dropped dramatically in this city.
I would suggest you might wish to watch Tony Seba's & Rethinkx 1videos regarding the combination of solar wind and energy storage, was 5 days of energy storage even cities in Northern US Canada and up into Alaska this would work.
Now imagine the battle in Ukraine where Russia is hitting power generation and distribution, what if in the future all houses had solar and energy storage and it went into a grid with software that could distribute it to where it had been cut off with multiple ways of connection and I believe this would result in not worrying about your energy generation being taken out and even better the money saved would increase VOM (Velocity Of Money thus driving the economy and reduce inflation, since the primary driver of inflation and cost of living is the cost of energy.
Scientia Habet Non Domus,
(Knowledge Has No Home)
antiguajohn
So the host just asks questions he knows the answers to and Interrupts his guests for an hour ?
Running out of whales: whales were not the main lighting source, sheep were :-) , more precisely sheep lard made from abdominal fat because it was harder when cold and you could make candles. Using the lard for lighting was allowing them to sell the meat cheaper, so everybody ate meat, far from top quality (older sheep) but they had access to meat.
Oil the backbone of the morden-day civilization.
Considering America's Cup sailboats with foils can do 3x the wind speed, if we were still dependant on sailpower today it wouldn't still take weeks to cross the oceans we would have moved to that technology much sooner (foiling ferries were around in the 1970s I think) and foiling is coming to more and more boats lately since the America's Cup started foiling and people saw the speeds they get with several tons of boat (almost 100kmph) and the fastest boat ever (Vestas Sailrocket 2) hit 128km or 68 knots back in 2012.
I read a wild story in the book 'the black march' (written by an SS officer on the Eastern Front in WWII). The germans took an oil refinery (near Stalingrad, I think rostov). They brought in 40 oil specialists to get the russian refinery online. Russian partisans snuck into the camp at night and slit all of their throats. Germany also used russian-speaking NKVD- uniformed Germans to seize an oil refinery.
I bought the book because of this vid just now
Yes ...the interviewer spoke way too fast while he gathered his thoughts 😡😡😡
License raj in India ended 34 years ago, modi wasn’t even in politics back then.
People win wars not oil and oil led to far more people dying in WW2 than WW1. Coal gave birth to steam power for rail transport, manufacturing and electricity generation but oil gave us more flexible mobile power for vehicles, aircraft and ships. Electricity has been the most important development of the 20th century.
Nice suit, man.
Convo started great until you asked why some oil countries are a mess like Libya, Syria and Iran and never mention the role of the West in destabilizing them. And then your guest says that Aramco is run well because they drew from the cultures of the people who they nationalized the oil companies FROM. So the west bears no blame in the problems of the poor countries and gets all the credit for the success of the rich ones… 😒
It always seems like dwarkesh isnt listening to the interviewee. Its like he's constantly trying to move the conversation foreward to the next question and his questions rarely conne t to the previous statement
Tis the tyler cowen way
The Sarah Paine interview was a ton of that.
As long as the subjects feel fine with it, it's good. His prepared questions are going to be lower risk and higher quality on expectation, until he's more experienced.
It’s cause he has no idea what they are saying
Im surprised an anarcho syndicalist didn't mention anything about how the interview glorifies the robber barons.
34:44 I wonder if there was a lesson in there somewhere for Europe about energy supply.
The interviewer was all over the place in this one. Feel like he jumped around a lot and asked a lot of superficial questions that didn't take advantage of the speaker's knowledge.
Locked and loaded. Thanks!🎉
Why don’t they use lavaliere mics. The booms are intrusive.
Please Patel. Slow down with your questioning- make the conversation flow naturally. Follow up on what your guest is saying.
Let the listener hear more of the guest not you. Please I mean this in the nicest way possible.
Moreover, the way you ask your questions seem so painful- I cannot describe it. But it hurts watching you ask.
Great guest and subject but your speech is too rapid to understand. Slow down and you will be more enjoyable
The oil that the allies depended on in Europe mostly came from Venezuela
Nope.
Daniel Yergin is being a bit disingenuous. Shale gas is more expensive to deliver to Europe than pipeline gas from Russia. Vladimir Putin was not interested in losing the European gas market - neither from an economic nor a geopolitical point of view. On the other hand, the US was interested in eliminating a competitor from the European gas market. Therefore, I do not believe that Putin blew up Nord Stream. The divers who carried out the demolition clearly acted in the interests of the US.
It was most of all in the interests of the Ukrainians, and they are the ones who did it.
Vlad Putin was interested in seizing Ukraine and making EU critically dependent on his gas, and Europeans like sheep went along, despite warnings from the US which leads the defense pact Europeans claim to be part of, created to defend Europe from Russia. It’s not about who blew up NS; it’s about WTH there was one in the first place. And hear you come saying it’s US fault like some punk in a tree fort.
Oil asdiction is the hardest one to break.
America's "car culture" naturally occured as an answer to the discovery of oil.
In turn, rapid expansion of the interstate highway system was carried out, and the country's disinterest in establishing comprehensive public transportation projects still persists.
In terms of warfare, the Army will be the least relevant branch of the military, as air and sea requires the least human interaction.
Historically, any attempt at Middle Eastern Nationalizaton of oil was met with fierce resistance. Many coups and wars were waged for this reason, but framed as a Democratic ideal.
Oil doesn't create human capital, on the contrary it creates dependency
Getting hints of pro Monopolies from the host here
fade out the speed compression, Dwarkesh, and who the hell is RODE?