This book by Herman Melville has come up 2 times on Lex Fridman. 2 of those mentions were genuine on-air recommendations, not just passing references. The people who brought it up: Sean Kelly, guest. The earliest mention we indexed is from 2021-09-30 and the most recent from 2021-11-11. Every occurrence below links to the episode page and to the exact second it was said on YouTube.
What it is
"Command the murderous chalices! Drink ye harpooners! Drink and swear, ye men that man the deathful whaleboat's bow -- Death to Moby Dick!" So Captain Ahab binds his crew to fulfil his obsession -- the destruction of the great white whale. Under his lordly but maniacal command the Pequod's commercial mission is perverted to one of vengeance. To Ahab, the monster that destroyed his body is not a creature, but the symbol of "some unknown but still reasoning thing." Uncowed by natural disasters, ill omens, even death, Ahab urges his ship towards "the undeliverable, nameless perils of the whale."
Every time it came up
Neal Stephenson: Sci-Fi, Space, Aliens, AI, VR & the Future of Humanity | Lex Fridman Podcast #240
“i circle back to moby dick a lot um because we read it in a uh a really great english class i had in high school”— guest
The guest here is Neal Stephenson: Legendary science fiction author of Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, Seveneves and Termination Shock. He was Blue Origin's first employee and served as Chief Futurist at the AR company Magic Leap. Sci-fi legend Neal Stephenson on space, aliens, AI, VR, crypto, climate geoengineering, and why a good yarn is an evolutionary survival tool.
Sean Kelly: Existentialism, Nihilism, and the Search for Meaning | Lex Fridman Podcast #227
“moby dick i think is the other great novel of the 19th century so the brothers karamazov and moby dick and and they're diametrically opposed”— Sean Kelly
The guest here is Sean Kelly: A philosopher at Harvard specializing in existentialism and the philosophy of mind. Co-author with his mentor Hubert Dreyfus of 'All Things Shining,' he teaches existentialism in literature and film. Harvard philosopher Sean Kelly traces existentialism and nihilism and argues meaning comes from aliveness, listening, and responding well to a groundless world.
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