#470 – James Holland: World War II, Hitler, Churchill, Stalin & Biggest Battles

**Lex Fridman** (0:00)
The following is a conversation with James Holland, a historian specializing in WW2, who has written a lot of amazing books on the subject, especially covering the Western front, often providing fascinating details at multiple levels of analysis, including strategic, operational, tactical, technological, and of course the human side, the personal accounts from the war. He also co-hosts a great podcast on WW2 called We Have Ways of Making You Talk. And now, a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description or at lexfridman.com/sponsors. It's the best way to support this podcast. We've got Shopify for selling stuff, Element for electrolytes, AG1 for multivitamins, and Notion for team collaboration. Choose wisely, my friends. And now, on to the full ad reads. I do them differently than most podcasts do. Usually, I barely talk about the sponsors, and instead, just take this moment to talk about the things I'm reading or thinking about. A little Bob Ross, like, heart to heart between you and me. Also, unlike most podcasts, I don't do ads in the middle. So they all are bunched up here in one place. You can skip them if you like. But if you do, please still check out the sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too. If you want to get in touch with me for whatever reason, go to lexfridman.com/contact. Alright, let's go. This episode is brought to you by Shopify, a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere with a great-looking online store. Did you know that the legendary Silk Road was not actually a single road, but an extensive network of trade routes connecting East and West, spanning over 7,000 miles. In the upcoming episode on Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire, we touch on this. But of course, Silk Road spans much wider in time than the rise and fall of the Mongol Empire. It facilitated trade and cultural exchange for over 1,500 years, roughly from 130 BC. It was spices, tea, paper, gunpowder moving West, and gold, silver, glassware, and horses moving East. But I think the fascinating thing again is the exchange of culture. And the exchange of ideas. Anyway, sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com/lex. All lowercase, go to shopify.com/lex to take your business to the next level today. This episode is also brought to you by Element, my daily zero sugar and delicious electrolyte mix. Did you know that us humans can lose over two liters of sweat per hour during intense exercise, especially in hot conditions? I've gotten to study this particular physiological process across many, many years of my life when I had to cut a lot of weight. Sweat is fascinating, isn't it? But as you sweat, you're losing sodium, potassium, magnesium, and so you have to replenish it. I think about the Ultramarathon runners and the events like the Badwater Ultramarathon. I think it's 135 miles through Death Valley. In my crazier moments, I think about doing an Ultramarathon like that. Some of the coolest people I know do Ultramarathons. And some of the especially coolest people I know have done the Badwater Ultramarathon. What is it about the human mind and the human heart that pulls towards a challenge like that? It's absolutely nuts, isn't it? Anyway, get a simple pack of Element for free with any purchase, try it at drinklmnt.com/lex.
This episode is also brought to you by AG1, an all-in-one daily drink that supports better health and peak performance. Peak performance is such a fascinating concept to me, because it doesn't only entail the physical, the physiological, it also entails the psychological, stress, lowering stress, optimizing the number of hours in a day that you spend in flow, focused doing something you're passionate about. That's a tricky one. That's hard to articulate explicitly. So we focus on things that are a little bit easier to articulate, like sleep and diet and exercise. But I think about Hunter S. Thompson, and sometimes I think the top priority for health is hearing and accepting the call to adventure.
And figuring out the rest of the bullshit along the way. That said, I think sleep is really important. It's one of the puzzles I've been trying to figure out. But at the very least, it's good to do the low-hanging fruit of health. Just do the basic bullshit, like a good multivitamin. So that brings me to AG1. 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 Notion, a note-taking and team collaboration tool. They integrate AI into the note-taking and collaboration process incredibly well. Probably better than any software service I've used to date. And it's funny because I just got a notebook for some basic note-taking, like a physical notebook with a physical pen. And it feels so limiting and not limiting in a good way, like the constraints are a catalyst for creativity. I mean, limiting like I want to run some algorithms to summarize stuff, to generate some more text, to give me ideas, all of that. But I just need the notebook because sometimes I don't have any electronic devices on me. And specifically, that is one of the things I like to do for creativity, is to remove electronic devices for my life for long stretches of time, for many hours in a day, sometimes multiple days. And it just forces you to be creative in the way that devices somehow suffocate. They too easily get you to be task switching, one task to the next, to the next, to the next. And that kills the kind of deep focus that's required. First of all, to be truly present for life, for thoughts, for ideas that you're working through. And also to just focus on solving difficult puzzles, whether they're creative puzzles or engineering puzzles. So, sometimes I wish I could just use Notion and have everything else removed. Yeah, this digital technological life that we're thrust into is a real puzzle, isn't it? Try Notion AI for free when you go to notion.com/lex. That's all lowercase, notion.com/lex, to try the power of Notion AI today. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description or at lexfridman.com/sponsors. And now, dear friends, here's James Holland.