#451 – Rick Spence: CIA, KGB, Illuminati, Secret Societies, Cults & Conspiracies

**Lex Fridman** (0:00)
The following is a conversation with Rick Spence, a historian specializing in the history of intelligence agencies, espionage, secret societies, conspiracies, the occult and military history. And now a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. We got AG1 for nutrition, NetSuite for business, BetterHelp for the mind, MasterClass for learning, and Shopify for selling stuff online. Choose wisely, my friends. Also, if you want to get in touch with me for a bunch of different kinds of reasons, go to lexfridman.com/contact.
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**Rick Spence** (0:49)
Maybe you will too.

**Lex Fridman** (0:52)
This episode is brought to you by AG1, an all-in-one daily drink to support better health and peak performance. A drink I have not been consuming for the last few days because I'm traveling. And it's the thing that makes me miss home. I'm in San Francisco, allowing myself to be surrounded and inspired by some incredible software engineering that's going on here. And putting all the other mess of politics and social bubble stuff aside. So I'm doing a lot of programming and having a lot of really highly deep technical conversations. But I definitely miss Austin, I miss Texas, I miss Boston. And walking the halls of MID., really it's the university I intimately know now. And there's something about a university where you can shut off all the mess of the outside world and focus on ideas, on learning and on discovering. Plus the fearless energy of undergraduate and graduate students, just boldly going forward, thinking they can completely revolutionize a field. That's really inspiring to be surrounded by. And in Texas, the thing I love the most is there's a simple kindness to the hello, to the nod, to the aimless and wonderful conversation that you might have at a coffee shop or when you meet a stranger. I don't know. I really fall in love with Texas. And the long runs along the river, which I consume AG1 after. Sometimes I forget there's a sponsor, Reed Gonon. They'll give you one month supply of fish oil when you sign up at drinkag1.com/lex.
This episode is also brought to you by NetSuite, an all-in-one cloud business management system. That's the other thing about San Francisco that I'm reminded of. That there's these incredible businesses that are born. Just a couple of founders and they're quickly hiring a few folks, especially engineering-heavy teams. And they're all dreamers and they're all pushing forward and they're all trying to do the craziest shit they can. Yes, there is a San Francisco bubble. Yes, there's a bit of a tunnel vision going on in many ways, but on the pure desire to build something cool, something that has a positive impact on the world, I don't know, that's a truly inspiring desire. But of course, from my perspective, I share in that desire, but there's a great cost to it as well. And it's something that is a constant tension in my heart. I would like to do more building than talking. And I'm reminded of that when I'm here. Anyway, there is a bit of a mess, a complexity to the scaling of business and the running of a business. And that is what NetSuite can help you with. They manage all kinds of messy stuff. Over 37,000 companies have upgraded to NetSuite by Oracle. Take advantage of NetSuite's flexible financing plan at netsuite.com/lex. That's netsuite.com/lex.
This episode is also brought to you by BetterHelp, spelled H-E-L-P, help. They figure out what you need to match you with a licensed therapist in under 48 hours. I'm reminded of the work and of my conversation with Carl Dyseroth, a psychiatrist and a appreciator of the beauty in the world. What a wonderful human being. Also Paul Conti. These are all friends of Andrew Huberman and what just deep and interesting people they are. I would venture even to say very different, but both just incredible analysts of the human mind. And what a mystery the mind is. I've been reading a lot of mechanistic interpretability work, which is this whole field of analyzing neural networks and trying to understand what's going on inside. And there is just wonderful breakthroughs in that field. But whenever I'm reading the papers, I can't help but be caught by the thought that I wish we had this kind of rigor or the possibility of rigor in studying the human mind. Sort of neurobiology, neuroscience is too messy. There's too many variables. There's too much going on and you can't do control experiments like you can on neural networks. So anyway, the human mind is a beautiful and mysterious thing. And if you want to untangle the puzzles going on in there, check out betterhelp.com/lex and save in your first month. That's betterhelp.com/lex. This episode is also brought to you by Master Class, where you can watch over 200 classes from the best people in the world and their respective disciplines. Phil Ivey on poker, for example, great, great master class. There's another guy who I don't believe has a master class, although he should. Phil Helmuth. And I got a chance to meet him and hang out with him. And it was a what a cool experience. I just love that this world can produce such interesting, distinct, unique characters. And they are unapologetically true to themselves.