Lex Fridman

Here's my conversation with Jeff Kaplan, a legendary Blizzard game designer of World of Warcraft and Overwatch, which are two of the biggest, most influential games ever made. Jeff is one of the most genuine & awesome human beings I've ever met: kind, thoughtful, hilarious, and still & forever a gamer through and through. This was a truly fun & inspiring conversation. We talk about it all: the lows, the highs, the memes, the details of the game design process, and the new game he's been secretely working on: The Legend of California. I got a chance to play the game with Jeff, and it's incredibly beautiful (and fun). You can wishlist it on Steam now. I can't wait to play it with all of you! Conversation is here on X in full and is up everywhere else (see comment). Timestamps: 0:00 - Episode highlight 1:27 - Introduction 4:07 - Early games: Pac-Man, Zork, Doom, Quake 18:33 - Writing career - 170 rejection letters 34:06 - EverQuest obsession 47:04 - Getting hired at Blizzard 1:02:32 - Lowest point in Jeff's life 1:08:37 - One of Us 1:12:54 - Early Blizzard culture 1:32:36 - Building World of Warcraft 1:50:20 - How WoW changed video games 2:07:42 - Single-player vs Multi-player 2:28:35 - How Blizzard made great video games 2:54:25 - Online toxicity 3:01:59 - Why Titan failed 3:19:09 - Overwatch in six weeks 3:46:07 - Best Overwatch heroes 3:54:37 - The challenge of matchmaking 3:58:01 - Rust 4:08:22 - Why Jeff left Blizzard 4:30:35 - Diablo IV 4:32:03 - Getting back to making video games 4:40:59 - The Legend of California 4:54:44 - Greatest video game of all time 5:02:51 - AI and future of video games

@kintsugiyama Awesome! I'll be there 😎

We're hosting our first public playtest next week! The Legend of California Alpha will run on Steam from March 26 - 30. Check out the links below for details and how to sign up. Sign up: bit.ly/TLOCSteam Learn more: bit.ly/TLOCAlpha

Here's the links for my conversation with Jeff Kaplan: YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=H9rF1C… Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/2MAi0BvDc… Podcast: lexfridman.com/podcast

Here's my conversation with Jeff Kaplan, a legendary Blizzard game designer of World of Warcraft and Overwatch, which are two of the biggest, most influential games ever made. Jeff is one of the most genuine & awesome human beings I've ever met: kind, thoughtful, hilarious, and still & forever a gamer through and through. This was a truly fun & inspiring conversation. We talk about it all: the lows, the highs, the memes, the details of the game design process, and the new game he's been secretely working on: The Legend of California. I got a chance to play the game with Jeff, and it's incredibly beautiful (and fun). You can wishlist it on Steam now. I can't wait to play it with all of you! Conversation is here on X in full and is up everywhere else (see comment). Timestamps: 0:00 - Episode highlight 1:27 - Introduction 4:07 - Early games: Pac-Man, Zork, Doom, Quake 18:33 - Writing career - 170 rejection letters 34:06 - EverQuest obsession 47:04 - Getting hired at Blizzard 1:02:32 - Lowest point in Jeff's life 1:08:37 - One of Us 1:12:54 - Early Blizzard culture 1:32:36 - Building World of Warcraft 1:50:20 - How WoW changed video games 2:07:42 - Single-player vs Multi-player 2:28:35 - How Blizzard made great video games 2:54:25 - Online toxicity 3:01:59 - Why Titan failed 3:19:09 - Overwatch in six weeks 3:46:07 - Best Overwatch heroes 3:54:37 - The challenge of matchmaking 3:58:01 - Rust 4:08:22 - Why Jeff left Blizzard 4:30:35 - Diablo IV 4:32:03 - Getting back to making video games 4:40:59 - The Legend of California 4:54:44 - Greatest video game of all time 5:02:51 - AI and future of video games

My conversation with Peter Steinberger (@steipete) is now translated & dubbed into German. Huge thank you to ElevenLabs (@elevenlabs) and @matiii for making it happen. It's available here and on YouTube where you can switch audio tracks by clicking the gear icon > Audio Tracks > select German. I have a lot of hope for this application of AI to break down barriers that language creates, and no one does it better than @elevenlabs. The whole ElevenLabs team has been really fun & inspiring to work with.

Here's the links for my conversation with Peter Steinberger (@steipete), creator of OpenClaw: YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=YFjfBk… Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/2MAi0BvDc… Podcast: lexfridman.com/podcast

Here's my conversation with Peter Steinberger (@steipete), creator of OpenClaw, an open-source AI agent that has taken the Internet by storm, with now over 180,000 stars on GitHub. This was a truly mind-blowing, inspiring, and fun conversation! It's here on X in full and is up everywhere else (see comment). Timestamps: 0:00 - Episode highlight 1:30 - Introduction 5:36 - OpenClaw origin story 8:55 - Mind-blowing moment 18:22 - Why OpenClaw went viral 22:19 - Self-modifying AI agent 27:04 - Name-change drama 44:15 - Moltbook saga 52:34 - OpenClaw security concerns 1:01:14 - How to code with AI agents 1:32:09 - Programming setup 1:38:52 - GPT Codex 5.3 vs Claude Opus 4.6 1:47:59 - Best AI agent for programming 2:09:59 - Life story and career advice 2:13:56 - Money and happiness 2:17:49 - Acquisition offers from OpenAI and Meta 2:34:58 - How OpenClaw works 2:46:17 - AI slop 2:52:20 - AI agents will replace 80% of apps 3:00:57 - Will AI replace programmers? 3:12:57 - Future of OpenClaw community

Here's the links for my conversation with Rick Beato (@rickbeato): YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=1SJiTw… Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/2MAi0BvDc… Podcast: lexfridman.com/podcast

Here's my conversation with Rick Beato (@rickbeato), a musician, music educator, producer, songwriter, and host of a YouTube channel that celebrates great musicians & musical ideas, and helps millions of people fall in love with great music all over again. It's here on X in full and is up everywhere else (see comment). Timestamps: 0:00 - Introduction 0:44 - Guitar solos 4:43 - Gypsy jazz and Django Reinhardt 6:14 - Bebop jazz 10:27 - Perfect pitch vs relative pitch 15:04 - Learning to play guitar 38:34 - Miles Davis 44:01 - Bass guitar 45:08 - Greatest guitar solos of all time 1:14:23 - 27 Club 1:19:04 - Elton John 1:22:18 - Metallica 1:26:48 - Tom Waits 1:32:39 - Greatest rock stars 1:36:02 - Beethoven 1:42:37 - Bach 1:45:27 - AI in music 1:59:18 - Sabrina Carpenter 2:02:49 - YouTube copyright strikes 2:08:26 - Spotify 2:19:18 - Guitars 2:23:40 - Advice

It's also on YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=KGVpKP…

Here's a video of me training with Khabib Nurmagomedov (@TeamKhabib), one of the greatest fighters of all time and a great human being. This was truly an honor for me 🙏

@tobi Every day is _the weekend_ 😎🚀

The world of software leaps forward right now _by the weekend_

@clattner_llvm @AnthropicAI Great write-up!

The Claude C Compiler is the first AI-generated compiler that builds complex C code, built by @AnthropicAI. Reactions ranged from dismissal as "AI nonsense" to "SW is over": both takes miss the point. As a compiler🐉 expert and experienced SW leader, I see a lot to learn: 👇

@NickSchmidt 🤣🤣 It was an honor to have you on 🙏

Thanks for having me on @lexfridman dream come true

@hhsun1 Keep up the great work!

what a pleasant morning. @lexfridman, not sure if your agent misclicked the “Follow” button as an unintended action 😂— but your podcasts have been a real source of inspiration. Great to be on your radar, and thanks for paying attention to agent safety and security.

The power of AI agents comes from: 1. intelligence of the underlying model 2. how much access you give it to all your data 3. how much freedom & power you give it to act on your behalf I think for 2 & 3, security is the biggest problem. And very soon, if not already, security will become THE bottleneck for effectiveness and usefulness of AI agents as a whole (1-3), since intelligence is still rapidly scaling and is no-longer an obvious bottleneck for many use-cases. The more data & control you give to the AI agent: (A) the more it can help you AND (B) the more it can hurt you. A lot of tech-savvy folks are in yolo mode right now and optimizing for the former (A - usefulness) over the the latter (B - pain of cyber attacks, leaked data, etc). I think solving the AI agent security problem is the big blocker for broad adoption. And of course, this is a specific near-term instance of the broader AI safety problem. All that said, this is a super exciting time to be alive for developers. I constantly have agent loops running on programming & non-programming tasks. I'm actively using Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and very carefully experimenting with OpenClaw. The only down-side is lack of sleep, and an anxious feeling that everyone feels of always being behind of latest state-of-the-art. But other than that, I'm walking around with a big smile on my face, loving life 🔥❤️ PS: By the way, if your intuition about any of the above is different, please lay out your thoughts on it. And if there are cool projects/approaches I should check out, let me know. I'm in full explore/experiment mode.

It might be the caffeine speaking, but I love you all ❤️ Happy Valentine's day you sexy mf'ers. I'm writing this at a coffeeshop. Rain outside. A first date happening next to me, I'm hoping they make it. I'm feeling happy & grateful for all of this, human civilization, life on Earth, a spinning rock in space. There are 100-400 billion other planets in our galaxy alone. And there are ~2 trillion galaxies in just the observable universe. And somehow we have a chance to crack open the mysteries of the universe, to solve physics, biology, intelligence, to understand our own mind, to travel out toward the stars. And at the same time, we often bicker about the stupidest shit. The whole thing is hilarious and beautiful. All of this is a miracle ❤️ PS: It's definitely the caffeine speaking 🤣

@steipete .@elevenlabs is awesome. I talked to @matiii just now and will try to make a German overdub happen 👊 This is an application of AI I'm particularly excited about. Breaking down barriers that language creates will only increase the amount of compassion in the world ❤️

Not me splitting the Lex interview into 5 chunks so I can use Elevenlabs for dubbing so I can send it to my mum. 😊

this was an honor! Also took all day 😅

@TonyLapidus @Cobratate 🤣🤣

Lex Fridman and Andrew Tate discuss books and love. @lexfridman @Cobratate

Programming is now 10x more fun with AI.