The guest
Oliver Stone: Three-time Oscar-winning filmmaker behind Platoon, JFK, Nixon, and Wall Street, known for politically charged films and documentary interviews with leaders like Putin, Castro, and Chavez.
What this episode covers
Oliver Stone joins Lex Fridman to discuss Vladimir Putin, Russia, and the war in Ukraine. He opens with his upcoming nuclear-energy documentary, arguing nuclear power is the only realistic path to fight climate change. He then recounts his years of interviews with Putin, portraying him as calm, rational, and a defender of Russian sovereignty against U.S. and NATO encroachment. Stone is sharply critical of American foreign policy, the neoconservatives, and Western propaganda, while conceding Russia was wrong to invade. The conversation closes on empathy in interviewing, the threat of nuclear war, love, death, and the meaning of life.
Recommended on this episode
BookRecommended
A Bright Future
Joshua Goldstein and Staffan Qvist
“i lapped it up it was a book fact-based clear not too long and not too technical”
“i picked up a book by josh goldstein and his co-author who's swedish those two wrote a book called bright future”— Oliver Stone
The guest's own work
BookBy the guestISBN verified
Chasing the Light
Oliver Stone
“i wrote about it in my memoir it's called uh chasing the light about the professor leahy and what he did to me”— Oliver Stone
MediaBy the guest
JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass
Oliver Stone
“i've made a film jfk revisited as a documentary we released uh this year about the movie i made in 1991”— Oliver Stone
MediaBy the guest
Ukraine on Fire
Oliver Stone
“from since i made ukraine on fire uh documentary which perhaps you've seen which records the the incidents of 2014”— Oliver Stone
MediaBy the guest
The Putin Interviews
Oliver Stone
“that's a four-hour documentary four different conversations i mean we talked over two years two and a half years”— Oliver Stone
MediaBy the guest
W.
Oliver Stone
“you ever seen my movie w i think that's one of my best movies because it shows a man who's just out of his depth”— Oliver Stone
MediaBy the guest
Nixon
Oliver Stone
“when i did a movie about richard nixon it wasn't because i liked him it was because i wanted to walk in his footsteps”— Oliver Stone
MediaBy the guest
The Untold History of the United States
Oliver Stone
“extensively documents in his powerful controversial series the untold history of the united states that imperialism and the military-industrial complex”— Lex Fridman
Also referenced (named, not recommended)
MediaReferenced
Dr. Strangelove
Stanley Kubrick
“your interviews with vladimir putin to watch stanley kubrick's uh doctor dr strangelove or how i learned to stop worrying and love the bomb”— Lex Fridman
MediaReferenced
Paths of Glory
Stanley Kubrick
“the kubrick had a anti-war mentality which he showed in powers of glory as well as strange love and it's such a dire well-done scenario”— Oliver Stone
Big reveals from this episode
- Stone insists Putin is not corrupted by power and would be removed if the Russian people truly opposed him.
- Stone calls claims that Putin is the world's richest man 'ludicrous' and believes he is an honest man.
- Stone agrees Russia was wrong to invade Ukraine, calling it a series of major strategic mistakes.
- Stone claims Ukraine had 110,000 troops poised to invade Donbass before Russia's invasion, framing it as a U.S.-set trap.
- Stone warns the U.S. could itself stage a false-flag nuclear detonation in Donbass and blame Russia.
- Stone names Victoria Nuland as one of the 'worst people on Ukraine' and blames her for escalating nuclear rhetoric.
- Stone says he would interview Hitler the same empathetic way he interviewed Putin, seeking to understand, not condemn.
- Stone praises Elon Musk's Twitter purchase as resistance to what he calls 'un-American' censorship.
Worth remembering
- Stone cites nuclear as the lowest-casualty energy source, claiming roughly 50 deaths at Chernobyl and none at Fukushima or Three Mile Island.
- He blames a Rockefeller Foundation 1956 study, amplified by the New York Times, for seeding decades of nuclear fear.
- Stone says U.S. networks dub Putin with a harsher-sounding Russian voice actor than how Putin actually speaks.
- Stone credits JFK as a 'warrior for peace' who could have ended the Cold War had he lived.
- He warns that even Wikipedia gives factually unsupported, anti-Russian accounts of history.
- Stone says the U.S. has never abandoned a nuclear first-strike posture dating to an Eisenhower-era plan.
- Stone calls the ability to love the greatest virtue, the strength behind great artists and novelists.
- Having faced death in Vietnam, Stone says he is now far less afraid of dying than when he was young.
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