Skye Fitzgerald: Hunger, War, and Human Suffering

Lex Fridman (01:34.120)

and the resources to feed them exists.

Skye Fitzgerald (01:37.080)

I think the thing that disturbs me most about those figures

Lex Fridman (01:41.360)

is that many of those who are starving today

Skye Fitzgerald (01:46.360)

or going hungry today are the net result of war

Lex Fridman (01:51.360)

and intentional acts by leaders to starve entire populations.

Lex Fridman (01:56.040)

And that's the most deeply disturbing part to me.

Lex Fridman (02:00.160)

You know your history and we all know that deeply embedded

Skye Fitzgerald (02:06.120)

in the Geneva Conventions post World War II,

Lex Fridman (02:09.560)

the intent of one of those articles was to ban the use

Skye Fitzgerald (02:13.280)

of starvation as a weapon of war because of what Hitler did

Lex Fridman (02:17.480)

during World War II.

Skye Fitzgerald (02:19.600)

That's been reiterated multiple times over the years

Lex Fridman (02:23.400)

in international humanitarian law, including in 2018

Skye Fitzgerald (02:27.040)

because of the Saudi blockade over Yemen.

Lex Fridman (02:29.800)

And yet to this day, starvation as a weapon of war

Skye Fitzgerald (02:33.680)

continues to be used in Ethiopia,

Lex Fridman (02:36.200)

obviously in Ukraine right now and in Yemen

Skye Fitzgerald (02:39.080)

with the blockade over the country.

Lex Fridman (02:40.440)

And that disgusts me that the law is in place

Lex Fridman (02:43.880)

but it won't be enforced by the international bodies

Lex Fridman (02:46.240)

and the nation states that make up

Skye Fitzgerald (02:47.840)

the international community.

Lex Fridman (02:49.160)

So when the starvation is a result of human actions,

Skye Fitzgerald (02:55.000)

human decisions, that it's especially painful

Lex Fridman (02:59.240)

to make sense of.

Skye Fitzgerald (03:00.520)

For me personally, yeah.

Lex Fridman (03:02.480)

I think that if you and I sit in here,

Skye Fitzgerald (03:05.040)

didn't eat for three days and had to lay our head

Lex Fridman (03:10.000)

on the sidewalk for a couple nights,

Skye Fitzgerald (03:12.600)

I think we would take hunger and homelessness

Lex Fridman (03:17.600)

a lot more seriously.

Lex Fridman (03:19.160)

And I think that's, for some reason,

Lex Fridman (03:22.240)

that's missing at this moment in history, tragically.

Lex Fridman (03:25.560)

And I think until that we can generate enough empathy,

Lex Fridman (03:30.120)

that's immediate for all of us to understand

Lex Fridman (03:32.360)

what that means to go hungry.

Lex Fridman (03:34.080)

I'm not sure we're gonna sort of marshal

Skye Fitzgerald (03:36.480)

the global community to solve it.

Lex Fridman (03:39.480)

I did just that by the way, fasted for three days recently.

Skye Fitzgerald (03:44.640)

It was fundamentally different, I think,

Lex Fridman (03:47.360)

because the thing that would be terrifying to me

Skye Fitzgerald (03:51.840)

is not the fasting, but the hopelessness

Lex Fridman (03:54.040)

at the end of the fasting.

Skye Fitzgerald (03:55.400)

Like I wouldn't know when the next meal is coming.

Lex Fridman (03:58.880)

I always had the freedom to have the meal.

Skye Fitzgerald (04:01.360)

The fear, not just your own ability to eat and survive,

Lex Fridman (04:06.960)

but your family's.

Skye Fitzgerald (04:07.800)

If there's loved ones, that's the other thing I don't have.

Lex Fridman (04:10.400)

I'm single.

Lex Fridman (04:11.520)

So I feel like the worst suffering

Lex Fridman (04:14.800)

is watching somebody you love

Skye Fitzgerald (04:17.520)

that you're supposed to be a caretaker of

Lex Fridman (04:20.040)

and you can't take care of them.

Lex Fridman (04:23.960)

And if all of that is caused by leaders

Lex Fridman (04:30.640)

as a weapon of war, that is especially painful.

Lex Fridman (04:35.520)

So how can we help?

Lex Fridman (04:41.360)

What are the ways to help?

Lex Fridman (04:42.760)

How do we alleviate this suffering?

Lex Fridman (04:48.360)

Well, I think on the humanitarian front,

Skye Fitzgerald (04:52.800)

we have to be aggressive and attentive

Lex Fridman (04:56.520)

and intervene in significant ways.

Lex Fridman (04:59.240)

And I think on the political front,

Lex Fridman (05:01.720)

we have to hold players accountable for their actions.

Lex Fridman (05:06.600)

So the leaders that start the war.

Lex Fridman (05:08.320)

So when you say we have to speak up

Skye Fitzgerald (05:10.360)

about the decisions and the humans making those decisions

Lex Fridman (05:14.160)

that lead to the starvation.

Skye Fitzgerald (05:15.520)

For example, let's make it concrete.

Lex Fridman (05:17.160)

So when I was, I don't wanna jump ahead,

Lex Fridman (05:20.200)

but when I was filming Hunger Ward in Yemen,

Lex Fridman (05:25.000)

I met a mother who, when she gave birth, weighed 70 pounds.

Skye Fitzgerald (05:32.120)

The mother weighed 70 pounds.

Lex Fridman (05:34.440)

And so her daughter was starved in the womb.

Skye Fitzgerald (05:42.400)

When she was born, she was born into a world

Lex Fridman (05:46.560)

with no breast milk, very little formula.

Lex Fridman (05:50.120)

So she was starved before birth.

Lex Fridman (05:52.360)

She was born into a world where she continued to be starved

Skye Fitzgerald (05:56.640)

by a mother who herself was starved.

Lex Fridman (06:00.000)

I watched that child, her name is Asila, die in front of me.

Skye Fitzgerald (06:05.840)

Asila had no chance for all those things we hope for,

Lex Fridman (06:10.720)

for a child in this world.

Skye Fitzgerald (06:12.560)

She didn't have a chance to grow up.

Lex Fridman (06:14.400)

She didn't have a chance to discover love.

Skye Fitzgerald (06:16.760)

She didn't have a chance to have a career.

Lex Fridman (06:19.040)

She was robbed of all of those things

Skye Fitzgerald (06:22.200)

because of the insidious nature of hunger

Lex Fridman (06:24.440)

that she was born into.

Skye Fitzgerald (06:26.320)

She didn't have to die, she was not starving.

Lex Fridman (06:32.640)

Her mother was being starved

Skye Fitzgerald (06:34.840)

because of the blockade over the country.

Lex Fridman (06:37.040)

Now, who instituted that blockade?

Skye Fitzgerald (06:39.760)

MBS in Saudi Arabia with the reinforcement

Lex Fridman (06:43.880)

and sort of tacit approval of the United States,

Skye Fitzgerald (06:46.400)

our own government here.

Lex Fridman (06:48.520)

And so there are people who are responsible

Skye Fitzgerald (06:51.360)

for the starvation of children

Lex Fridman (06:52.800)

and I think we need to hold them accountable.

Skye Fitzgerald (06:55.520)

Now, that's incredibly difficult to do,

Lex Fridman (06:58.520)

but just because it's difficult

Skye Fitzgerald (07:00.200)

doesn't mean it ought not to be done.

Lex Fridman (07:03.320)

And we'll talk about many cases like these

Skye Fitzgerald (07:06.840)

throughout history and going on today.

Lex Fridman (07:08.960)

Let's talk about Hunger Ward.

Skye Fitzgerald (07:10.440)

Let's dive in.

Lex Fridman (07:12.920)

You've been nominated for an Oscar twice.

Skye Fitzgerald (07:14.840)

This is one of the times for a documentary.

Lex Fridman (07:21.080)

Can you please tell me what Hunger Ward,

Lex Fridman (07:24.160)

The Last Hope Between War and Starvation is about?

Lex Fridman (07:27.360)

Hunger Ward is a short documentary

Skye Fitzgerald (07:31.080)

that really is an attempt to illustrate

Lex Fridman (07:34.640)

the effects of the conflict on Yemen,

Skye Fitzgerald (07:38.240)

specifically on civilians.

Lex Fridman (07:40.200)

And we document it in both the north

Lex Fridman (07:43.720)

and the south of the country

Lex Fridman (07:44.720)

because it's a bifurcated country.

Skye Fitzgerald (07:46.680)

The south is held by the globally recognized government

Lex Fridman (07:50.240)

in the south, which up until last week

Skye Fitzgerald (07:52.320)

was run by, at least on the surface,

Lex Fridman (07:56.200)

by President Hadi holed up in Riyadh.

Skye Fitzgerald (08:00.040)

He was essentially removed from office last week

Lex Fridman (08:05.120)

by, most people would agree,

Skye Fitzgerald (08:08.360)

the Emiratis and the Saudis

Lex Fridman (08:10.400)

to put in place a presidential council.

Lex Fridman (08:12.640)

So we wanted to show that starvation was happening

Lex Fridman (08:16.400)

in very similar fashions, both in the south and the north.

Lex Fridman (08:19.680)

And we wanted to do this film

Lex Fridman (08:22.400)

because so few people in the west

Skye Fitzgerald (08:26.040)

know anything about the conflict in Yemen,

Lex Fridman (08:29.000)

nor the US's complicity in it.

Lex Fridman (08:32.640)

And so my intent with the project

Lex Fridman (08:34.240)

was try to bring it to a larger western audience

Skye Fitzgerald (08:36.680)

as an attempt to intervene

Lex Fridman (08:38.360)

and change the political status quo,

Skye Fitzgerald (08:40.120)

which allows the use of starvation in Yemen to continue.

Lex Fridman (08:44.560)

So US complicity, who are the bad guys?

Skye Fitzgerald (08:49.160)

Now, the world, unfortunately,

Lex Fridman (08:52.480)

cannot be painted in black and white

Skye Fitzgerald (08:54.400)

of good guys and bad guys.

Lex Fridman (08:56.640)

But for the purpose of conversation,

Lex Fridman (08:59.640)

who is causing suffering in the world in this situation?

Lex Fridman (09:06.160)

Who started the war?

Lex Fridman (09:07.320)

Why?

Lex Fridman (09:09.480)

And then, of course, the roots of war go back in history.

Lex Fridman (09:14.280)

But let's start at the top.

Lex Fridman (09:17.560)

Well, there are bad actors and there are less bad actors.

Skye Fitzgerald (09:20.640)

I mean, I think that's always the case in war, probably.

Lex Fridman (09:22.840)

And everybody loses in war.

Skye Fitzgerald (09:24.520)

Yeah, I concur with that statement.

Lex Fridman (09:28.000)

In the case of the status quo in Yemen right now,

Skye Fitzgerald (09:33.080)

it's a completely asymmetrical war.

Lex Fridman (09:35.960)

And so the Saudi coalition,

Skye Fitzgerald (09:38.080)

which is made up of primarily Saudi Arabia,

Lex Fridman (09:41.280)

the Emiratis, United States, France, Britain,

Skye Fitzgerald (09:46.280)

supplying weapons, but it's really driven

Lex Fridman (09:49.280)

and catalyzed by Saudi Arabia.

Lex Fridman (09:52.360)

And it's asymmetrical to a great extent

Lex Fridman (09:54.880)

just because of the incredible firepower by air

Skye Fitzgerald (09:58.680)

that the Saudis use continuously to pummel Northern Yemen.

Lex Fridman (10:04.720)

When I was there, the sheer volume of airstrikes

Skye Fitzgerald (10:08.960)

is hard to describe.

Lex Fridman (10:10.680)

And we show the result of only one in the film, really.

Lex Fridman (10:14.840)

But it's an asymmetrical war.

Lex Fridman (10:16.200)

The de facto authorities of the North,

Skye Fitzgerald (10:18.520)

Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthi rebel group,

Lex Fridman (10:23.400)

they don't have an air force, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (10:25.080)

They have a drone force, but they don't have an air force.

Lex Fridman (10:27.600)

And so from a military standpoint,

Skye Fitzgerald (10:29.800)

it's completely asymmetrical.

Lex Fridman (10:31.760)

The Saudis really don't commit troops to the ground.

Skye Fitzgerald (10:34.560)

They use only proxies to fight on the ground.

Lex Fridman (10:37.080)

What is the narrative they use to justify war?

Lex Fridman (10:42.080)

So there's a story on every side in war.

Lex Fridman (10:46.320)

Some of it is grounded in truth.

Skye Fitzgerald (10:49.040)

Some of it is not at all grounded in truth,

Lex Fridman (10:52.040)

also known as propaganda.

Lex Fridman (10:54.040)

What's the narrative used by the Saudis for this war?

Lex Fridman (10:58.440)

The Saudi line is essentially that the Houthis

Skye Fitzgerald (11:01.720)

are an illegitimate government,

Lex Fridman (11:04.400)

and that it's really a proxy war between Iran,

Skye Fitzgerald (11:08.680)

who supports the Houthis nominally,

Lex Fridman (11:10.640)

and the rest of the world.

Skye Fitzgerald (11:12.280)

That's the Saudi narrative.

Lex Fridman (11:14.000)

The reality is something altogether different.

Skye Fitzgerald (11:16.320)

While the Houthis do receive support from Iran,

Lex Fridman (11:19.600)

this is a war started by and sustained by MBS in Saudi Arabia.

Lex Fridman (11:25.000)

Who's MBS?

Lex Fridman (11:25.840)

Mohammed bin Salman.

Lex Fridman (11:27.400)

And who is he?

Lex Fridman (11:28.240)

He is the son of the ruler of Saudi Arabia.

Lex Fridman (11:32.200)

What's his power?

Lex Fridman (11:33.720)

I'm asking basic dumb questions.

Skye Fitzgerald (11:35.720)

He's the de facto ruler.

Lex Fridman (11:37.360)

Of the military and the...

Skye Fitzgerald (11:39.040)

Yes, he seized control of the country several years ago,

Lex Fridman (11:42.800)

even though he, on the surface,

Skye Fitzgerald (11:44.560)

is not the ruler of Saudi Arabia, he is.

Lex Fridman (11:46.720)

He's the crown prince.

Lex Fridman (11:47.560)

I'm sorry to interrupt often, but who is he as a man?

Lex Fridman (11:52.680)

What's your sense of the...

Skye Fitzgerald (11:53.520)

Yeah, so I've never met him,

Lex Fridman (11:55.440)

and I likely will never meet him, hopefully.

Lex Fridman (11:59.880)

But he is, I know a lot about him through his actions,

Lex Fridman (12:03.480)

sort of in the MENA region,

Skye Fitzgerald (12:05.400)

Middle East and North Africa region.

Lex Fridman (12:07.880)

And he is one of three, in my view,

Skye Fitzgerald (12:12.320)

as an American sitting here in the US,

Lex Fridman (12:14.720)

three people in the world that I think

Skye Fitzgerald (12:18.400)

has caused such an incredible volume of misery

Lex Fridman (12:23.280)

and suffering and murder on this planet

Skye Fitzgerald (12:27.040)

that I think if he weren't around,

Lex Fridman (12:33.720)

the world would be a lot better place.

Lex Fridman (12:35.320)

And I'm not a violent person by nature,

Lex Fridman (12:37.480)

but there are three human beings

Skye Fitzgerald (12:39.120)

that I think the world would be better off without.

Lex Fridman (12:42.680)

Do you mind, before I ask other questions,

Lex Fridman (12:45.360)

mentioning the three?

Lex Fridman (12:46.800)

Oh, yeah, Assad is one in Syria,

Lex Fridman (12:49.920)

and that comes out of an earlier project

Lex Fridman (12:51.800)

that I did in Syria and Turkey,

Lex Fridman (12:54.000)

and what I saw Assad as a ruler do to his own people.

Lex Fridman (13:01.200)

And Putin would be the third.

Skye Fitzgerald (13:03.520)

Those three human beings are murderers on a scale

Lex Fridman (13:08.680)

beyond imagining.

Skye Fitzgerald (13:11.600)

On MBS, are you able to think as a documentary filmmaker,

Lex Fridman (13:16.120)

as a human being, as a scholar, as a thinker,

Skye Fitzgerald (13:19.040)

with an open mind about a man like that

Lex Fridman (13:22.040)

who does evil onto the world,

Lex Fridman (13:23.760)

and what that must feel like

Lex Fridman (13:25.960)

to be inside the mind of that man?

Lex Fridman (13:28.040)

So basically, consider his worldview.

Lex Fridman (13:31.720)

With most evil people, with all people, probably,

Lex Fridman (13:35.280)

but with people who do evil onto the world,

Lex Fridman (13:37.960)

they think they're doing good.

Skye Fitzgerald (13:40.160)

They're the hero of their own story.

Lex Fridman (13:41.560)

Right, and so to be able to place yourself,

Skye Fitzgerald (13:45.120)

I feel like, for me, to understand a person,

Lex Fridman (13:47.840)

I have to literally, like the way actors

Skye Fitzgerald (13:51.160)

kind of have to do, you know,

Lex Fridman (13:54.200)

live inside the body of the person they're trying to study.

Skye Fitzgerald (13:57.200)

Inhabit the character.

Lex Fridman (13:58.120)

Inhabit the person.

Lex Fridman (13:59.600)

So are you able to do that, or because you

Lex Fridman (14:03.600)

are also studying the people who suffer

Skye Fitzgerald (14:06.600)

as a result, as a consequence of their actions,

Lex Fridman (14:10.000)

you just, you put them in a box,

Lex Fridman (14:13.040)

and you say, I hate the person in that box.

Lex Fridman (14:15.160)

I'm going to move on.

Skye Fitzgerald (14:17.840)

This goes back to your black and white statement

Lex Fridman (14:19.680)

at the beginning, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (14:20.680)

It's like, the world as a whole, of course,

Lex Fridman (14:23.920)

you know, is every gradation of gray, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (14:26.920)

My background is theater, Lex,

Lex Fridman (14:29.040)

and so I was trained long before I picked up a camera

Lex Fridman (14:32.400)

to inhabit other characters, right?

Lex Fridman (14:34.200)

I have two degrees in theater,

Lex Fridman (14:36.160)

and so that level of sort of like

Lex Fridman (14:38.520)

walking in other people's shoes

Lex Fridman (14:40.160)

and trying to understand and empathize

Lex Fridman (14:42.280)

with their worldview is fundamental

Skye Fitzgerald (14:45.120)

to how I live my life and how I do my work.

Lex Fridman (14:47.960)

So in the case of those three that I named,

Skye Fitzgerald (14:50.160)

Assad, MBS, and Putin, yeah, I can go there

Lex Fridman (14:53.520)

and think through how they came to be,

Lex Fridman (14:55.600)

who they are, right, from afar, right?

Lex Fridman (14:59.360)

And after I go through that process,

Skye Fitzgerald (15:02.720)

I still don't think there's any way

Lex Fridman (15:04.920)

that one can justify what they've done.

Skye Fitzgerald (15:10.040)

We're going to talk about each of those people, for sure.

Lex Fridman (15:14.440)

Well, I'm not an expert on any of them.

Skye Fitzgerald (15:16.960)

Well, you're a human being,

Lex Fridman (15:17.920)

which makes you a partial expert on human nature

Skye Fitzgerald (15:23.280)

because nobody's an expert.

Lex Fridman (15:24.400)

You're just as good as anyone else.

Skye Fitzgerald (15:26.360)

Anybody who actually carries a camera

Lex Fridman (15:28.680)

and listens and observe others

Skye Fitzgerald (15:31.640)

isn't especially an expert of human nature.

Lex Fridman (15:35.360)

Who's willing to take that leap

Lex Fridman (15:37.560)

and truly understand somebody of any level, not leaders.

Lex Fridman (15:41.320)

I feel like to understand a leader,

Skye Fitzgerald (15:42.640)

you have to first understand humans,

Lex Fridman (15:45.040)

and to understand humans, you have to see humans

Skye Fitzgerald (15:47.160)

at their worst and their best,

Lex Fridman (15:49.240)

which is something that you've definitely done.

Lex Fridman (15:52.280)

So let's stick on Hunger Ward.

Lex Fridman (15:54.440)

This lens that you've chosen to look at this

Skye Fitzgerald (15:56.880)

is through a single, maybe you can speak to that.

Lex Fridman (16:00.560)

You've mentioned the starvation as a result of war.

Lex Fridman (16:06.560)

What is the documentary?

Lex Fridman (16:08.480)

Like, what is the lens you've chosen

Skye Fitzgerald (16:10.000)

to give the world a peek at the results,

Lex Fridman (16:14.600)

at the suffering that's a result of this war?

Skye Fitzgerald (16:18.120)

People a lot of times will ask me

Lex Fridman (16:19.760)

if they've seen Hunger Ward, you know.

Lex Fridman (16:24.200)

They ask where the hope is, right?

Lex Fridman (16:26.760)

You read the byline earlier, The Lost Hope.

Lex Fridman (16:32.320)

And what I try to focus on in many of my films,

Lex Fridman (16:37.440)

including Hunger Ward, is in the very difficult context

Skye Fitzgerald (16:42.720)

of war, as the case is in Hunger Ward in Yemen,

Lex Fridman (16:47.760)

I look for hope, and I look for inspiration,

Lex Fridman (16:50.360)

and I do that through people who are doing incredible things

Lex Fridman (16:54.280)

under the most difficult circumstances.

Lex Fridman (16:56.720)

So when I set out to do a film

Lex Fridman (16:59.760)

about starvation in Yemen, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (17:04.080)

I mean, just listen to that statement.

Lex Fridman (17:06.240)

Where's the hope there, right?

Lex Fridman (17:08.000)

And yet what I found, what I discovered,

Lex Fridman (17:11.480)

were human beings that we could tell the story through

Skye Fitzgerald (17:14.320)

who are incredible, inspirational human beings

Lex Fridman (17:18.000)

doing amazing things every day.

Skye Fitzgerald (17:20.960)

One of those is Makiya Maji, a nurse practitioner

Lex Fridman (17:24.880)

in the north of the country at a small rural clinic.

Lex Fridman (17:27.400)

And another is Dr. Aida Al Sadiq,

Lex Fridman (17:30.040)

who's a pediatrician in the south of the country.

Lex Fridman (17:33.040)

And so we chose to tell the story

Lex Fridman (17:34.720)

sort of through their experiences as caregivers,

Skye Fitzgerald (17:38.360)

devoting their lives to try to save this entire cohort,

Lex Fridman (17:43.360)

this entire generation of children

Skye Fitzgerald (17:45.760)

that has been born into starvation.

Lex Fridman (17:48.760)

And that's an incredible, difficult task,

Lex Fridman (17:52.040)

but equally inspirational to watch these human beings

Lex Fridman (17:56.480)

devote every minute of every day to save a child.

Skye Fitzgerald (18:00.400)

I mean, in my view,

Lex Fridman (18:02.200)

nothing is more important than that action.

Skye Fitzgerald (18:04.400)

Maybe on that point, real quick.

Lex Fridman (18:07.560)

So there is suffering at scale, starvation at scale.

Skye Fitzgerald (18:11.400)

There's, I mean, the numbers,

Lex Fridman (18:15.680)

maybe you can mention in Yemen,

Lex Fridman (18:17.080)

what are the numbers in terms of people in starvation,

Lex Fridman (18:19.400)

but from a perspective of a nurse practitioner or a doctor,

Skye Fitzgerald (18:24.200)

you always have, you're treating one person in front of you.

Lex Fridman (18:28.200)

So how do you make sense of that calculus,

Skye Fitzgerald (18:31.360)

of like there's a huge number of people suffering,

Lex Fridman (18:35.120)

and then there's just the person in front of you?

Skye Fitzgerald (18:37.560)

Is that all we can do as humans,

Lex Fridman (18:43.160)

is just to help one person at a time?

Skye Fitzgerald (18:45.440)

Is that the right way to think and to approach these problems

Lex Fridman (18:49.480)

or can you actually make sense of the numbers?

Skye Fitzgerald (18:52.760)

Speaking just as a human being,

Lex Fridman (18:55.000)

I think the scale of suffering is so great in Yemen

Skye Fitzgerald (18:58.560)

that I think I'd be overwhelmed if I focused on that scale.

Lex Fridman (19:06.960)

You've probably heard that a child dies

Skye Fitzgerald (19:11.120)

every 75 seconds in Yemen from hunger.

Lex Fridman (19:14.800)

So we've been sitting here, how long?

Skye Fitzgerald (19:16.920)

35 minutes or so.

Lex Fridman (19:19.680)

That's a good handful of children

Skye Fitzgerald (19:20.920)

that have already passed away.

Lex Fridman (19:23.080)

So to overcome sort of, I think,

Skye Fitzgerald (19:25.120)

that danger of psychic numbing, which can happen

Lex Fridman (19:28.600)

when you think about suffering on such a large scale,

Skye Fitzgerald (19:32.120)

as a filmmaker, as a human being,

Lex Fridman (19:34.800)

I have to focus in on the individuals,

Skye Fitzgerald (19:36.680)

on those human beings in front of me.

Lex Fridman (19:38.840)

And I think that's exactly what Dr. Al Sadiq and Makiya do

Skye Fitzgerald (19:41.840)

to keep going each day.

Lex Fridman (19:43.480)

And one of the amazing things

Skye Fitzgerald (19:44.840)

about these two healthcare providers

Lex Fridman (19:47.840)

that we showcased in the film is that

Lex Fridman (19:50.200)

they treat anyone who shows up, right?

Lex Fridman (19:53.800)

They don't have to have money.

Skye Fitzgerald (19:55.840)

They don't have to have any resources.

Lex Fridman (19:57.240)

They just have to get to the clinic or the hospital.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:00:00.060)

it's also a creative question to capture intimate moments

Lex Fridman (1:00:04.340)

where families are dealing with suffering children

Lex Fridman (1:00:08.340)

and dying children and caretaking is active

Lex Fridman (1:00:11.700)

and ongoing all the time.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:00:13.300)

You don't want to interrupt that moment.

Lex Fridman (1:00:15.340)

And so that informs how I do things.

Lex Fridman (1:00:17.460)

So we go fleet and nimble and small.

Lex Fridman (1:00:21.220)

Those are all really good words.

Lex Fridman (1:00:22.900)

But so it's logistical on the one hand,

Lex Fridman (1:00:26.100)

but it's also a creative choice, right?

Lex Fridman (1:00:28.100)

So when we filmed Hunger Ward,

Lex Fridman (1:00:30.340)

two people were filming the entire film, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:00:32.940)

Me and my director of photography.

Lex Fridman (1:00:34.860)

That was the two people in the room?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:00:36.380)

Two people in the room.

Lex Fridman (1:00:37.220)

That's it.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:00:38.060)

Yeah, that's it.

Lex Fridman (1:00:38.900)

The whole film, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:00:39.740)

We had a field producer as well in this part of the country,

Lex Fridman (1:00:41.500)

but in terms of camera, it's just two people

Lex Fridman (1:00:43.740)

and we're doing everything.

Lex Fridman (1:00:45.060)

And we have lenses that are long enough

Skye Fitzgerald (1:00:49.860)

that we don't have to move to camera.

Lex Fridman (1:00:52.060)

We don't have to move to capture the film.

Lex Fridman (1:00:53.620)

So we can tuck into a corner sometimes, right?

Lex Fridman (1:00:56.620)

And so just what's long mean?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:00:58.300)

That means they're standing farther away

Lex Fridman (1:00:59.940)

and they can look.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:01:00.780)

Zoom lens, it's not a prime lens.

Lex Fridman (1:01:02.220)

So it's not a fixed focal length, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:01:04.060)

Because a fixed focal length,

Lex Fridman (1:01:04.900)

you have to move a lot more in order to capture action.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:01:07.740)

With a zoom lens, maybe a 105 at the long end,

Lex Fridman (1:01:12.900)

I can tuck into a corner and just film from 15 feet away

Lex Fridman (1:01:16.860)

instead of having to get right up on someone, right?

Lex Fridman (1:01:18.980)

So you're less likely to interrupt the scene

Lex Fridman (1:01:21.940)

and you can kind of become the fly on the wall sometimes.

Lex Fridman (1:01:25.900)

So I'm very intentional about that piece of it

Lex Fridman (1:01:30.180)

so that we can capture those vulnerable moments

Lex Fridman (1:01:33.540)

and not interrupt them.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:01:36.340)

That's really fascinating too, because the access,

Lex Fridman (1:01:41.540)

I don't often think about this,

Lex Fridman (1:01:42.860)

but that's probably true for me as well.

Lex Fridman (1:01:44.860)

Part of the storytelling is to be in the room.

Lex Fridman (1:01:52.180)

And that's the hard part.

Lex Fridman (1:01:53.700)

For me, most of my films, that's the hardest part.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:01:56.380)

Actually, as hard as Hunger Ward and Lifeboat were to film

Lex Fridman (1:01:59.860)

and 50 Feet From Syria,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:02:02.540)

the getting there piece of it for the last two

Lex Fridman (1:02:04.740)

was much harder.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:02:06.180)

Yeah, and it's also, it's a creative act.

Lex Fridman (1:02:09.340)

It's, I don't know if it is for you,

Lex Fridman (1:02:12.540)

but it's the kind of people you talk to.

Lex Fridman (1:02:15.140)

It's like how you live your life.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:02:18.660)

Like the kind of people I talk to right now,

Lex Fridman (1:02:21.100)

they steer the direction of my life

Lex Fridman (1:02:22.780)

and steer the direction of things I'll film.

Lex Fridman (1:02:25.620)

So it's not just like you're trying to get access.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:02:28.340)

It's like, it's everything.

Lex Fridman (1:02:30.980)

It builds, it builds and builds and builds and builds.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:02:34.580)

It builds on itself, yeah, yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:02:36.420)

I mean, part of the thing, even saying,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:02:38.820)

talking about some of these leaders

Lex Fridman (1:02:40.140)

and conversations with them,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:02:41.860)

it's almost like steering your life

Lex Fridman (1:02:45.020)

into the direction of the difficult,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:02:47.820)

of like taking the leap.

Lex Fridman (1:02:51.100)

And if you're a good human being

Lex Fridman (1:02:56.180)

and a lot of people know who you are as a human,

Lex Fridman (1:03:00.460)

like not as a name, but as really who you are,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:03:04.140)

that like putting that attention out there,

Lex Fridman (1:03:06.940)

it's somehow the world opens doors

Skye Fitzgerald (1:03:10.980)

where the access becomes,

Lex Fridman (1:03:14.300)

the access that once seemed impossible becomes possible.

Lex Fridman (1:03:18.500)

And then all of that is a creative journey

Lex Fridman (1:03:21.020)

to be in the room.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:03:22.180)

I think that probably is,

Lex Fridman (1:03:23.620)

I mean, it's true even for fiction films probably,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:03:26.620)

is like everything that led to that,

Lex Fridman (1:03:30.220)

like to be in the room, the journey to be in the room

Lex Fridman (1:03:33.380)

and to shoot the scene is maybe more important

Lex Fridman (1:03:37.700)

than the scene itself.

Lex Fridman (1:03:39.780)

And like really focus on the creative act of that.

Lex Fridman (1:03:42.820)

Yeah, that's really fascinating.

Lex Fridman (1:03:43.980)

And especially, I mean, with a documentary,

Lex Fridman (1:03:45.980)

you get one take.

Lex Fridman (1:03:47.700)

Yeah, you can't say, hey, reset, right?

Lex Fridman (1:03:49.980)

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:03:51.140)

Ah, that is so interesting.

Lex Fridman (1:03:53.140)

As you were in some of the most difficult parts of the world

Skye Fitzgerald (1:03:57.900)

in the room with some of the most difficult stories

Lex Fridman (1:04:00.780)

to be told.

Lex Fridman (1:04:02.060)

And yet, I think that's why I keep doing these stories.

Lex Fridman (1:04:05.780)

Because once you have that lived experience for me,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:04:15.260)

it's moving.

Lex Fridman (1:04:16.860)

It moves me to bear witness

Skye Fitzgerald (1:04:20.780)

to these inspiring people under difficult circumstances.

Lex Fridman (1:04:26.740)

And I can't come back to the US afterwards

Lex Fridman (1:04:31.740)

and walk down the grocery aisle

Lex Fridman (1:04:35.660)

where there's 50 different choices for canned peas, right?

Lex Fridman (1:04:40.220)

And not sort of feel that lived tension, right?

Lex Fridman (1:04:45.060)

That lived tension of the privilege

Skye Fitzgerald (1:04:47.260)

that I have here in the US.

Lex Fridman (1:04:49.220)

And then I have a choice about what to do

Lex Fridman (1:04:52.060)

with that privilege, right?

Lex Fridman (1:04:54.020)

And the last thing I wanna do is start

Lex Fridman (1:04:58.380)

doing stories about dandelions, right?

Lex Fridman (1:05:01.140)

There's far more important things to do

Skye Fitzgerald (1:05:02.740)

on this very limited time that I have on the planet.

Lex Fridman (1:05:05.700)

And I think that's catalytic for me.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:05:12.140)

Like I feel that mortality each day.

Lex Fridman (1:05:17.420)

And my goal is to tell as many of these stories

Skye Fitzgerald (1:05:25.780)

before I'm gone.

Lex Fridman (1:05:26.700)

Could you speak to the getting access?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:05:31.980)

Is this just, you know, is there interesting stories

Lex Fridman (1:05:36.180)

of how a weird or funny or profound ways

Lex Fridman (1:05:43.020)

that led you to get access to a room?

Lex Fridman (1:05:45.100)

Each one is a different adventure.

Lex Fridman (1:05:46.860)

And it's definitely an adventure.

Lex Fridman (1:05:47.700)

It's an adventure.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:05:48.540)

Everyone's an adventure, yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:05:49.860)

Probably one of the easiest ones I ever had

Skye Fitzgerald (1:05:51.980)

in the recent past was for 50 Feet from Syria

Lex Fridman (1:05:54.980)

where I literally broke my hand in a bicycle race.

Lex Fridman (1:06:01.980)

And after many months of trying to get an appointment

Lex Fridman (1:06:06.060)

with an orthopedic hand surgeon, a specialist,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:06:09.180)

I finally did and he was Syrian American.

Lex Fridman (1:06:11.700)

And the Syrian conflict had just begun

Lex Fridman (1:06:14.820)

and we just started talking about it.

Lex Fridman (1:06:16.620)

And after he looked at my hand in the first five minutes,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:06:21.060)

he's like, yeah, you need surgery, great.

Lex Fridman (1:06:23.260)

But then somehow we started talking about Syria

Lex Fridman (1:06:25.860)

and like five minutes in, he just stood up

Lex Fridman (1:06:28.380)

and like put the privacy curtain around us,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:06:30.700)

supposed to be a 15 minute appointment or so.

Lex Fridman (1:06:33.060)

And we talked for an hour, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:06:35.340)

So, you know, those moments

Lex Fridman (1:06:37.380)

of sort of mysterious confluence happen, right?

Lex Fridman (1:06:40.820)

And I think you have to be open to them when they do happen

Lex Fridman (1:06:43.340)

because I'm a storyteller, I'm always looking as well, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:06:46.700)

So, because he then contacted me later and said,

Lex Fridman (1:06:50.460)

Skye, I am going back to the Syrian border to volunteer

Lex Fridman (1:06:54.180)

as a surgeon, do you want to come with me?

Lex Fridman (1:06:56.580)

That was an easy one.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:06:57.460)

That's probably the easiest one I could give you.

Lex Fridman (1:06:58.960)

But it came out of this interesting moment,

Lex Fridman (1:07:01.220)

very personal moment, right?

Lex Fridman (1:07:02.900)

Lifeboat and Hunger Ward are completely different.

Lex Fridman (1:07:07.380)

And I had to really work hard to gain access

Lex Fridman (1:07:11.340)

to those stories.

Lex Fridman (1:07:12.420)

So you intentionally thought like what,

Lex Fridman (1:07:15.800)

I want to get access to the story.

Lex Fridman (1:07:18.340)

And then what are the different ideas?

Lex Fridman (1:07:20.500)

And they often might involve a doctor or a dentist

Skye Fitzgerald (1:07:24.500)

or just being maybe intentionally and aggressively open

Lex Fridman (1:07:31.200)

to experiences that lead you into the room.

Lex Fridman (1:07:35.580)

So it's funny you mentioned the doctor

Lex Fridman (1:07:38.900)

because I have similar experiences now.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:07:42.740)

I've just gotten access to all kinds of fascinating people

Lex Fridman (1:07:47.740)

in the same way.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:07:50.000)

They're all around us.

Lex Fridman (1:07:50.840)

They're all around us.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:07:52.160)

You just have to look.

Lex Fridman (1:07:53.000)

Yeah, exactly.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:07:53.840)

It's like there's fascinating people everywhere

Lex Fridman (1:07:55.520)

who are doing incredible things,

Lex Fridman (1:07:57.240)

but we have to be open and keep our eyes open

Lex Fridman (1:07:59.480)

and realize that there are amazing human beings everywhere.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:08:04.160)

Yeah, there's networks that connect people

Lex Fridman (1:08:07.720)

just through life.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:08:09.080)

You meet people, you share a beer or a drink

Lex Fridman (1:08:12.560)

or just you fall in love

Skye Fitzgerald (1:08:14.800)

or you share trauma together.

Lex Fridman (1:08:18.600)

You go through a hard time together.

Lex Fridman (1:08:19.920)

And those little sticky things connects us humans.

Lex Fridman (1:08:22.560)

And if you just keep yourself open

Lex Fridman (1:08:24.840)

and embrace the curiosity.

Lex Fridman (1:08:27.880)

And then also the persistence, I suppose.

Lex Fridman (1:08:30.040)

Like how long have you chased access?

Lex Fridman (1:08:36.160)

Does it take days, weeks, months, years?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:08:39.640)

Lex, I'm not the most talented filmmaker in the world.

Lex Fridman (1:08:43.080)

I'm not the smartest guy in the world.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:08:46.160)

I think if there's qualities

Lex Fridman (1:08:48.200)

that have served me well in my career,

Lex Fridman (1:08:50.640)

it's persistence and tenacity, right?

Lex Fridman (1:08:53.200)

I've always been sort of a slow burn human being.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:08:56.960)

Like I would never hit a home run,

Lex Fridman (1:09:00.240)

but I hit a first, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:09:03.240)

A single to first,

Lex Fridman (1:09:04.160)

and then I'd hit another single to first.

Lex Fridman (1:09:06.560)

So I ran a marathon when I was 18.

Lex Fridman (1:09:09.460)

And I think that is illustrative

Skye Fitzgerald (1:09:11.520)

of sort of how my career has been.

Lex Fridman (1:09:14.480)

I just keep going.

Lex Fridman (1:09:16.040)

And I believe in this notion of incremental evolution

Lex Fridman (1:09:20.640)

that with each project, I try to learn from it

Lex Fridman (1:09:23.980)

and take away lessons learned and improve my craft, right?

Lex Fridman (1:09:28.160)

And improve how I leverage that craft

Lex Fridman (1:09:33.000)

and improve how I tell the story

Lex Fridman (1:09:35.280)

from a narrative standpoint each time.

Lex Fridman (1:09:37.880)

So that on the next project, it's a little bit better.

Lex Fridman (1:09:41.800)

And that's the arc of my career

Skye Fitzgerald (1:09:43.740)

is learning, learning, evolving, evolving,

Lex Fridman (1:09:47.400)

so that I can make a little better film the next time.

Lex Fridman (1:09:50.480)

How do you gain people's trust?

Lex Fridman (1:09:53.280)

Like for example, there's a line between journalists

Lex Fridman (1:09:56.640)

and documentary filmmakers.

Lex Fridman (1:09:58.520)

Nobody really trusts journalists.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:10:00.320)

Yeah, right, exactly.

Lex Fridman (1:10:03.840)

But a documentary filmmaker,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:10:06.480)

of course I'm joking, half joking.

Lex Fridman (1:10:09.480)

I don't know which percentage joking, but some truth.

Lex Fridman (1:10:12.160)

But documentary filmmaker is a kind of storyteller,

Lex Fridman (1:10:15.560)

an artist, and somehow that's more trustworthy

Skye Fitzgerald (1:10:18.880)

because you're on the same side in some way.

Lex Fridman (1:10:22.560)

I don't know.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:10:23.400)

Maybe on the same side, yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:10:25.360)

Is there something to be said

Lex Fridman (1:10:26.640)

how you gain the trust of people to gain access?

Lex Fridman (1:10:29.600)

Are you just trying to be a good human being?

Lex Fridman (1:10:34.160)

Is there something to be said there?

Lex Fridman (1:10:35.560)

Well, so I do draw a distinction

Skye Fitzgerald (1:10:37.360)

between journalism and filmmaking

Lex Fridman (1:10:40.120)

because I think you're right, they're different.

Lex Fridman (1:10:42.520)

And there are some filmmakers who do hue

Lex Fridman (1:10:44.600)

to sort of the journalistic tenets

Skye Fitzgerald (1:10:47.880)

of who, what, where, when, why,

Lex Fridman (1:10:49.620)

fair and balanced on both sides, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:10:51.400)

Make sure everyone has a voice.

Lex Fridman (1:10:52.780)

I don't.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:10:53.620)

If you say fair and balanced,

Lex Fridman (1:10:55.080)

you're rarely either fair or balanced.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:10:58.300)

I've seen that with journalists.

Lex Fridman (1:10:59.680)

Journalists often, unfortunately, in my perspective,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:11:02.800)

sorry to interrupt you rudely and go on a rant,

Lex Fridman (1:11:05.520)

but they seem to have. Go on a rant, do it.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:11:07.640)

They seem to have an agenda.

Lex Fridman (1:11:09.760)

As opposed to seeking to truly tell a story

Skye Fitzgerald (1:11:12.160)

or to truly understand,

Lex Fridman (1:11:15.720)

especially when they're talking to people

Skye Fitzgerald (1:11:21.280)

who have some degree of evil in them.

Lex Fridman (1:11:24.240)

Well, we all have an agenda, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:11:25.740)

I think in anything we do,

Lex Fridman (1:11:27.040)

whether it's like to seek truth

Skye Fitzgerald (1:11:30.480)

or some larger principle,

Lex Fridman (1:11:32.580)

I always have an agenda.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:11:35.980)

I chose to work with civilians and caretakers in Yemen

Lex Fridman (1:11:40.820)

on Hunger Ward rather than to go interview MBS, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:11:45.800)

That's what I'm interested in

Lex Fridman (1:11:46.900)

is bringing that to the world, right?

Lex Fridman (1:11:50.540)

But in terms of building relationships and trust,

Lex Fridman (1:11:55.800)

it's really, I think about transparency

Skye Fitzgerald (1:11:59.100)

as much as anything else

Lex Fridman (1:12:00.700)

and going in in a collaborative sense.

Lex Fridman (1:12:03.340)

So I don't think of the people

Lex Fridman (1:12:09.440)

that I film with as subjects, for example.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:12:12.580)

I think of them as collaborators.

Lex Fridman (1:12:14.340)

So it's a different mindset that I go into projects with.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:12:17.700)

That's beautiful.

Lex Fridman (1:12:18.540)

And it's based on relationships, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:12:19.900)

You have to build relationships with other human beings,

Lex Fridman (1:12:22.260)

however you can, and that takes time

Lex Fridman (1:12:24.920)

and it takes listening and it's active.

Lex Fridman (1:12:28.660)

So I've talked about the notion of consent before,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:12:32.940)

which is so important in nonfiction film.

Lex Fridman (1:12:36.680)

And I hew to this idea that

Skye Fitzgerald (1:12:42.140)

you don't just slide a piece of paper in front of someone,

Lex Fridman (1:12:45.180)

have release form and have them sign it, right?

Lex Fridman (1:12:47.240)

And then you're done.

Lex Fridman (1:12:48.580)

That's not the nature of true consent in my mind.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:12:51.740)

It's you have to work on a foundation of active consent

Lex Fridman (1:12:56.740)

every single day that you're working with someone.

Lex Fridman (1:12:59.120)

And that's based on relationship, right?

Lex Fridman (1:13:01.240)

And it's based on dialogue.

Lex Fridman (1:13:02.500)

So it's trust that I'm always aiming for.

Lex Fridman (1:13:05.800)

It's the building of relationships,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:13:07.760)

which I'm always aiming for,

Lex Fridman (1:13:08.620)

which is why yesterday I got a bunch of photos

Skye Fitzgerald (1:13:13.160)

from Dr. Al Sadiq in the South of Yemen.

Lex Fridman (1:13:15.320)

And she sends me photos all the time

Skye Fitzgerald (1:13:17.360)

of the children that she's currently treating

Lex Fridman (1:13:19.920)

because we have an active relationship

Skye Fitzgerald (1:13:21.720)

that's continues on and probably will

Lex Fridman (1:13:24.560)

for many years to come.

Lex Fridman (1:13:26.160)

So it's going to continue.

Lex Fridman (1:13:28.360)

And that's the only way that I can do these kinds of films.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:13:32.020)

Let me ask you about silly little details of filming.

Lex Fridman (1:13:36.720)

Before we go to the big picture stories,

Lex Fridman (1:13:42.660)

cameras, lenses, how much do those matter?

Lex Fridman (1:13:46.080)

You mentioned director of photography.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:13:47.880)

What's your, how much do you love the feel,

Lex Fridman (1:13:52.880)

the smell of equipment that does the visual filming?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:13:56.940)

You know, there's some people, they're just like,

Lex Fridman (1:13:59.100)

ah, they love lenses.

Lex Fridman (1:14:03.100)

How much do you love that or versus how much

Lex Fridman (1:14:05.900)

do you focus on the story or the access

Lex Fridman (1:14:08.220)

and all those kinds of things?

Lex Fridman (1:14:09.060)

I'm not a tech geek, but because during the bulk

Skye Fitzgerald (1:14:14.180)

of my career, I've worked as a director of photography

Lex Fridman (1:14:18.460)

myself for other people in order to pay the bills

Skye Fitzgerald (1:14:21.540)

over the years, you know, I know the technical side of it

Lex Fridman (1:14:25.660)

because I've had to know it and I've had to train myself

Lex Fridman (1:14:29.040)

and learn it.

Lex Fridman (1:14:29.880)

So I see them as necessary tools.

Lex Fridman (1:14:33.740)

And again, because I believe, you know,

Lex Fridman (1:14:38.500)

film and cinema is and should be visually driven

Lex Fridman (1:14:43.140)

and not verbally driven.

Lex Fridman (1:14:45.680)

I want the best tools possible within my means, right?

Lex Fridman (1:14:49.460)

And within the logistical ability of the project

Lex Fridman (1:14:53.860)

because we have to go so small, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:14:56.260)

I can't afford nor can I bring a huge $100,000 lens.

Lex Fridman (1:15:00.860)

So if I gave you a trillion dollars.

Lex Fridman (1:15:02.820)

A trillion dollars?

Lex Fridman (1:15:03.800)

Yeah.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:15:04.640)

Wow.

Lex Fridman (1:15:05.480)

Unlimited.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:15:06.300)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:15:07.140)

There's still huge constraints that have nothing

Skye Fitzgerald (1:15:08.460)

to do with money.

Lex Fridman (1:15:09.300)

Yeah.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:15:10.140)

Like you just said.

Lex Fridman (1:15:10.960)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:15:11.800)

So what cameras would you use?

Lex Fridman (1:15:13.840)

You know what I'd do with a trillion dollars?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:15:16.060)

I could do a lot with a trillion dollars.

Lex Fridman (1:15:16.900)

You're not allowed.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:15:17.740)

You're only allowed to fund the film and no corrupt stuff

Lex Fridman (1:15:21.740)

where you like use the film to actually help children.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:15:24.900)

No, you're not allowed to do any of that.

Lex Fridman (1:15:26.420)

What I would do with a trillion is I wouldn't invest in it.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:15:28.540)

Well, I guess I would invest in current.

Lex Fridman (1:15:29.860)

I would increase capacity to do more films.

Lex Fridman (1:15:33.460)

What I would do.

Lex Fridman (1:15:34.300)

So I would buy basically the perfect little,

Lex Fridman (1:15:37.740)

you know, mini equipment set, right?

Lex Fridman (1:15:40.760)

But then I would train three teams maybe

Skye Fitzgerald (1:15:43.980)

to do the same thing that I've been doing

Lex Fridman (1:15:45.940)

so we could multiply and scale up.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:15:48.340)

More and more stories.

Lex Fridman (1:15:49.300)

Yeah, that's what I would do with the money.

Lex Fridman (1:15:51.060)

But the actual setup.

Lex Fridman (1:15:52.500)

Would remain small and nimble.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:15:54.700)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:15:56.620)

And what about lighting?

Lex Fridman (1:15:59.820)

Do you usually use natural light?

Lex Fridman (1:16:01.780)

Do you ever do?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:16:04.260)

I mean, sorry for the technical questions here,

Lex Fridman (1:16:06.300)

but highlighting the drama of the human face.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:16:11.760)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:16:13.940)

That's the visual.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:16:14.820)

That's art.

Lex Fridman (1:16:15.660)

That's like, to reveal reality at its deepest is art.

Lex Fridman (1:16:23.060)

And do you use lighting?

Lex Fridman (1:16:24.980)

Lighting's such a big part of that.

Lex Fridman (1:16:27.100)

Do you ever do artificial lighting?

Lex Fridman (1:16:28.460)

Do you try to do natural always?

Lex Fridman (1:16:30.120)

You know the best lighting instrument in the world?

Lex Fridman (1:16:33.260)

Is the sun.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:16:34.740)

At the right moment of the day.

Lex Fridman (1:16:37.020)

And so I predominantly use natural light

Skye Fitzgerald (1:16:40.780)

at certain moments and just shape natural light

Lex Fridman (1:16:49.020)

during the course of these small human rights stocks.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:16:51.700)

That's not to say we don't bring instruments sometimes,

Lex Fridman (1:16:54.680)

but when we do, they're very small and again, compact.

Lex Fridman (1:17:00.020)

So for example, I have this small little tube kit

Lex Fridman (1:17:05.340)

that's just three instruments, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:17:07.020)

That you can charge with USB.

Lex Fridman (1:17:08.400)

Because electricity is often a major issue where we go.

Lex Fridman (1:17:11.940)

So there's just three little tube lights with magnetic backs

Lex Fridman (1:17:15.020)

that if we find in a situation where, you know,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:17:17.780)

we can't get enough exposure for a hallway or something,

Lex Fridman (1:17:20.780)

and we have the time to throw it up,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:17:22.800)

we'll throw it up if people are walking,

Lex Fridman (1:17:24.540)

if collaborators are walking down that hallway a lot,

Lex Fridman (1:17:27.140)

for example, at night, just so we can see them, right?

Lex Fridman (1:17:29.980)

So it's instances like that.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:17:31.520)

Or if we do do an interview, which we don't do very often,

Lex Fridman (1:17:35.580)

but if we do, just so we have a key light on the face, right?

Lex Fridman (1:17:40.740)

And always bring a reflector or two, you know,

Lex Fridman (1:17:43.380)

just to shape natural light as well in ways.

Lex Fridman (1:17:46.820)

But it's about shaping rather than producing light for us.

Lex Fridman (1:17:53.060)

Got it, as we sit surrounded by black curtains

Skye Fitzgerald (1:17:55.860)

in complete natural light.

Lex Fridman (1:17:57.620)

So just so you know, this room is like a violation

Skye Fitzgerald (1:18:02.140)

of the basic principles of using the sun.

Lex Fridman (1:18:08.480)

So behind the large curtains are giant windows.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:18:13.120)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:18:13.960)

So this whole.

Lex Fridman (1:18:14.960)

Should I rip them open?

Lex Fridman (1:18:15.800)

Should I rip open the curtains real quick?

Lex Fridman (1:18:19.060)

How much of the work is done in the edit?

Lex Fridman (1:18:21.400)

That's another question I'm curious about.

Lex Fridman (1:18:24.280)

And how much do you sort of anticipate that?

Lex Fridman (1:18:28.880)

Like when you're actually shooting,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:18:30.720)

are you thinking of the final story as it appears on screen

Lex Fridman (1:18:38.000)

or are you just collecting, as a human,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:18:40.800)

collecting little bits of story here and there

Lex Fridman (1:18:42.920)

and in the edit is where most of the storytelling happens?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:18:46.560)

I've developed this sort of mental paradigm

Lex Fridman (1:18:49.400)

for myself over the years that speaks to that.

Lex Fridman (1:18:53.960)

And I call it the three creations, right?

Lex Fridman (1:18:56.720)

And so when I'm doing a film, the first creation for me

Skye Fitzgerald (1:19:00.960)

is my preconception or visualization

Lex Fridman (1:19:05.860)

of what the film is going to be before I shoot it, right?

Lex Fridman (1:19:09.440)

So I have this entire vision of what a film's gonna be.

Lex Fridman (1:19:15.080)

And sometimes it can be pretty specific.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:19:16.920)

Like I'll think through the scenes

Lex Fridman (1:19:18.640)

if I know the locations and everything,

Lex Fridman (1:19:20.800)

and I'll have this idea of what I'm gonna create, right?

Lex Fridman (1:19:24.440)

And then I'm there filming, right?

Lex Fridman (1:19:26.760)

And always without fail, reality is something

Lex Fridman (1:19:30.960)

altogether different than what I thought it would be.

Lex Fridman (1:19:33.880)

But it's still good to have the original idea.

Lex Fridman (1:19:35.520)

Yeah, yeah, but if I tried to hold to that original vision,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:19:38.560)

right, and to create a film out of that idea,

Lex Fridman (1:19:41.400)

they'd be crap, all the films would be crap.

Lex Fridman (1:19:43.440)

So I have to adapt, I have to evolve my approach

Lex Fridman (1:19:46.200)

and then embrace what is actually occurring

Skye Fitzgerald (1:19:49.880)

with the people actually doing it and then reenvision.

Lex Fridman (1:19:53.060)

So that reenvision is very active

Skye Fitzgerald (1:19:55.180)

during the entire filming process.

Lex Fridman (1:19:57.120)

And so that's the second creation,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:19:58.960)

that's the rethinking and revisualizing

Lex Fridman (1:20:02.880)

based on what we're actually experiencing and seeing

Lex Fridman (1:20:05.720)

what this film is going to be.

Lex Fridman (1:20:08.000)

And then I finished filming, right?

Lex Fridman (1:20:11.380)

And we bring the hard drives back

Lex Fridman (1:20:13.080)

and we plug in the hard drives in the edit bay.

Lex Fridman (1:20:16.600)

And oftentimes, because it's two of us filming

Lex Fridman (1:20:20.420)

most of the time, I haven't seen all the footage.

Lex Fridman (1:20:23.720)

Because in the field, it's all about just filming, right?

Lex Fridman (1:20:26.920)

And then just transferring the footage

Lex Fridman (1:20:28.740)

and getting on safely, you know, clone to multiple drives.

Lex Fridman (1:20:31.840)

I don't have a chance to review everything.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:20:33.600)

I can't do rushes like you do on a large feature.

Lex Fridman (1:20:36.400)

So because I'm filming half of it,

Lex Fridman (1:20:38.480)

I know what I've filmed, right?

Lex Fridman (1:20:40.800)

But I haven't seen everything

Lex Fridman (1:20:42.200)

the director of photography has filmed, right?

Lex Fridman (1:20:45.080)

So the next stage for me is reviewing every single frame

Skye Fitzgerald (1:20:50.080)

of what's been filmed.

Lex Fridman (1:20:51.920)

And that's where discovery happens the third time, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:20:56.040)

Or the second time rather is,

Lex Fridman (1:20:57.760)

wow, now I thought we'd filmed this,

Lex Fridman (1:21:01.580)

but actually there's this over here.

Lex Fridman (1:21:05.040)

And then I have to open up this second vision

Lex Fridman (1:21:07.400)

and turn it and transform it into a third vision

Lex Fridman (1:21:10.080)

for the film based on what's actually on the hard drive.

Lex Fridman (1:21:12.880)

So is this like a daily process?

Lex Fridman (1:21:15.640)

So what I do, my process is that

Skye Fitzgerald (1:21:17.880)

if it's a really difficult project,

Lex Fridman (1:21:21.040)

I'll take a break before I go through this

Skye Fitzgerald (1:21:23.400)

just for healing, you know,

Lex Fridman (1:21:25.160)

and some space away and fresh eyes.

Lex Fridman (1:21:27.400)

And usually that's about a month.

Lex Fridman (1:21:29.120)

And then once I reengage, I reengage whole hog,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:21:32.480)

I reengage fully and I review every single frame.

Lex Fridman (1:21:37.140)

And as I do that, I create a spreadsheet.

Lex Fridman (1:21:40.560)

And for Hunger War, that spreadsheet was,

Lex Fridman (1:21:43.240)

I don't know, 1500 lines long or something

Skye Fitzgerald (1:21:45.880)

where it's basically log notes.

Lex Fridman (1:21:48.100)

And I watch every scene and I take notes

Lex Fridman (1:21:51.320)

and I know really what we have.

Lex Fridman (1:21:54.200)

And once I've gone through that process

Skye Fitzgerald (1:21:55.880)

that takes about a month

Lex Fridman (1:21:57.320)

and I really know what we came back with,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:21:59.880)

I create an outline for the film from that.

Lex Fridman (1:22:02.800)

And that's the third visioning, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:22:05.720)

That's usually completely different

Lex Fridman (1:22:07.580)

than my original vision for the film to some extent, right?

Lex Fridman (1:22:10.800)

But I have to stay open to that entire process

Lex Fridman (1:22:14.280)

or I'd be trying to create something

Skye Fitzgerald (1:22:17.080)

that I can't really create.

Lex Fridman (1:22:19.640)

So I think those are the three creations for me.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:22:22.680)

That's so cool to know what we have,

Lex Fridman (1:22:27.500)

just to lay it all out and to load it in into your mind.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:22:31.960)

Cause like, this is the capture of reality we have.

Lex Fridman (1:22:35.820)

It's a very kind of scientific process too.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:22:37.820)

Cause you know, in science,

Lex Fridman (1:22:39.480)

you collect a bunch of data about a phenomena

Lex Fridman (1:22:41.880)

and now you have to like analyze that data,

Lex Fridman (1:22:43.700)

but now your phenomena is long gone.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:22:46.040)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, right.

Lex Fridman (1:22:46.960)

Now you just have the data.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:22:47.800)

Just the data and you have to write a paper about it,

Lex Fridman (1:22:51.240)

like analyze the data, it's similar things.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:22:54.000)

You have to like load it all in.

Lex Fridman (1:22:55.440)

Where's the story?

Lex Fridman (1:22:56.900)

How do you, that last probably profound piece

Lex Fridman (1:23:03.440)

of doing the editing, like in your mind,

Lex Fridman (1:23:07.060)

like how to lay those things out?

Lex Fridman (1:23:10.240)

Well, it's almost like the scientific process, right?

Lex Fridman (1:23:12.200)

I have a hypothesis, a creative hypothesis, right?

Lex Fridman (1:23:15.320)

Not a scientific one.

Lex Fridman (1:23:17.040)

But then I'm testing the hypothesis

Lex Fridman (1:23:19.080)

during the course of filming, right?

Lex Fridman (1:23:20.960)

And I have to stay true to what the data tells me

Lex Fridman (1:23:24.280)

in the end creatively.

Lex Fridman (1:23:25.740)

So it's very similar to the scientific processes.

Lex Fridman (1:23:27.520)

I don't know what we should, we should probably coin that.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:23:30.200)

Yeah, that's pretty good.

Lex Fridman (1:23:31.200)

Creative scientific process or something like that.

Lex Fridman (1:23:34.660)

But then you actually do the edit and then you watch,

Lex Fridman (1:23:38.260)

that's also iterative in a sense,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:23:41.300)

because maybe when you have a film,

Lex Fridman (1:23:45.200)

that's 20, 30, 40 minutes, or if it's feature length,

Lex Fridman (1:23:50.260)

like do you ever have it where it sucks?

Lex Fridman (1:23:54.600)

Like it's not at all.

Lex Fridman (1:23:55.440)

Is there a stage where it sucks?

Lex Fridman (1:23:56.720)

Like a stage where, right, right.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:23:58.720)

Like it's where it's like, no, this is not,

Lex Fridman (1:24:01.380)

this is not what I was, like when it's all put together

Skye Fitzgerald (1:24:03.900)

in this way, this doesn't, this is not working right.

Lex Fridman (1:24:07.000)

This is not right.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:24:08.780)

Or do you, is it always like an incremental step

Lex Fridman (1:24:12.100)

towards better and better?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:24:13.000)

It's incremental.

Lex Fridman (1:24:13.920)

Yeah, it's incremental.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:24:14.920)

Yeah, and there's always some moment in the editing process

Lex Fridman (1:24:18.360)

where there's a breakthrough,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:24:19.960)

where suddenly I understand how it fits together more fully.

Lex Fridman (1:24:24.360)

And you have to be, like you said, resilient.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:24:26.120)

You have to be patient that that moment will come.

Lex Fridman (1:24:28.560)

Yeah, exactly.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:24:29.480)

Are you ultra self critical

Lex Fridman (1:24:31.440)

or are you generally optimistic and patient?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:24:35.400)

I don't think those are mutually exclusive.

Lex Fridman (1:24:38.520)

Right, so you just oscillate

Lex Fridman (1:24:40.240)

or are they like dance partners or something?

Lex Fridman (1:24:42.440)

They're dance partners, yeah.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:24:44.120)

Definitely dancing all the way through the process.

Lex Fridman (1:24:47.400)

By way of advice, you know, to young filmmakers,

Lex Fridman (1:24:52.680)

how to film something that is recognized

Lex Fridman (1:24:58.380)

by the world in some way.

Lex Fridman (1:25:00.600)

I would say, you know, first off, learn your craft, right?

Lex Fridman (1:25:05.340)

Because I think craft is incredibly foundational, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:25:11.360)

To creating a powerful story.

Lex Fridman (1:25:14.440)

And sorry to interrupt, but when you say craft,

Lex Fridman (1:25:16.560)

do you mean just the raw technical,

Lex Fridman (1:25:18.740)

the director of photography, like the filming aspect?

Lex Fridman (1:25:21.760)

Is it the storytelling, is it the access, the whole thing?

Lex Fridman (1:25:24.480)

I think craft is more than just knowing

Lex Fridman (1:25:25.920)

how to push record on a camera or what lens to use, right?

Lex Fridman (1:25:28.720)

That's part of it, right?

Lex Fridman (1:25:30.480)

But I think at least in nonfiction,

Lex Fridman (1:25:35.080)

you know, I'm a product to some extent

Lex Fridman (1:25:38.640)

of having to know how to do it all, right?

Lex Fridman (1:25:42.560)

Having to teach myself how to do it all.

Lex Fridman (1:25:44.720)

Because I didn't go to film school, you know?

Lex Fridman (1:25:48.020)

But I became so enamored of telling stories through a camera.

Lex Fridman (1:25:54.600)

What was the leap, by the way,

Lex Fridman (1:25:55.720)

from theater to storyteller?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:25:57.960)

Oh, I just needed an extra class in grad school.

Lex Fridman (1:26:00.880)

I was in a MFA directing class

Lex Fridman (1:26:03.760)

and I needed an extra class and I just sort of like

Lex Fridman (1:26:06.240)

talked my way into a television directing class

Lex Fridman (1:26:09.720)

and fell in love with it.

Lex Fridman (1:26:11.720)

And the actor became the director.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:26:14.160)

Yeah, yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:26:15.500)

Well, yeah, I mean, I wasn't an actor,

Lex Fridman (1:26:18.200)

but I had to act and I had to know the craft of acting

Lex Fridman (1:26:21.640)

because I was in the theater, you know,

Lex Fridman (1:26:22.960)

to work with actors. Did you love it, though?

Lex Fridman (1:26:24.720)

Did you love acting? The theater?

Lex Fridman (1:26:27.000)

Yeah, theater?

Lex Fridman (1:26:28.180)

The first, yeah, as an undergraduate, yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:26:30.820)

But then I learned pretty quickly

Lex Fridman (1:26:32.040)

that I was pretty bad at it, or at least not very good,

Lex Fridman (1:26:36.440)

and that my skills lay elsewhere

Lex Fridman (1:26:39.320)

in more sort of behind the scenes and shaping a story.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:26:42.520)

When you started taking a class,

Lex Fridman (1:26:45.560)

but also telling stories as a director,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:26:48.760)

did you quickly realize that you're pretty good at this

Lex Fridman (1:26:53.760)

or was it a grind?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:26:56.080)

That's a good question, Max.

Lex Fridman (1:26:58.680)

I think, I definitely knew right away

Lex Fridman (1:27:02.280)

that it was more my wheelhouse, right?

Lex Fridman (1:27:05.440)

And I think part of that was because

Skye Fitzgerald (1:27:09.560)

I grew up in sort of a world of imagination.

Lex Fridman (1:27:14.160)

And I think that active imagination as a child

Skye Fitzgerald (1:27:18.040)

really lent itself well to the skillset

Lex Fridman (1:27:21.080)

that a director needs, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:27:23.960)

To shape story, to shape narrative, to shape performances.

Lex Fridman (1:27:26.760)

So I think it was a much more natural fit for me.

Lex Fridman (1:27:29.640)

Was I excellent at the beginning?

Lex Fridman (1:27:31.840)

Heck no, no, I think few people are, but I learned.

Lex Fridman (1:27:36.000)

Where was the biggest struggle for you?

Lex Fridman (1:27:37.920)

Is it, so your imagination clearly was something

Skye Fitzgerald (1:27:41.600)

that you worked on for a lifetime.

Lex Fridman (1:27:43.600)

So I'm sure that was pretty strong.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:27:46.480)

Books, came from books.

Lex Fridman (1:27:47.920)

Books.

Lex Fridman (1:27:49.320)

But the actual conversion of the imagination,

Lex Fridman (1:27:52.000)

you said shape the story.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:27:53.960)

Where was the skill most lacking

Lex Fridman (1:27:56.840)

in the shaping of the story initially?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:27:59.080)

Technical side.

Lex Fridman (1:27:59.920)

Just technical side.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:28:00.760)

Yeah, like, you know,

Lex Fridman (1:28:01.580)

cause I taught myself everything.

Lex Fridman (1:28:03.840)

What kind of microphone should I use, right?

Lex Fridman (1:28:05.640)

What kind of camera?

Lex Fridman (1:28:06.480)

What does this lens do?

Lex Fridman (1:28:07.560)

What's that lens do?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:28:08.720)

I didn't know any of that.

Lex Fridman (1:28:10.100)

And so I essentially was,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:28:11.440)

I have been self taught, technically.

Lex Fridman (1:28:14.200)

How do you get good technically,

Lex Fridman (1:28:15.600)

would you say, when you're self taught?

Lex Fridman (1:28:16.840)

Just doing it over and over again.

Lex Fridman (1:28:18.240)

And what kind of stories were you telling?

Lex Fridman (1:28:20.840)

I began shooting local commercials for.

Lex Fridman (1:28:24.280)

For money?

Lex Fridman (1:28:25.160)

For money, yeah, yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:28:26.000)

So you're doing professional projects?

Lex Fridman (1:28:27.840)

Yeah, yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:28:28.680)

And so I kind of learned on the job as I did it.

Lex Fridman (1:28:31.240)

How many hobby projects did you do,

Lex Fridman (1:28:32.840)

just for the hell of it?

Lex Fridman (1:28:34.080)

Or were you trying to focus on the professional?

Lex Fridman (1:28:35.880)

Well, I was trying to make money, right?

Lex Fridman (1:28:37.320)

Right out of grad school, just to pay the rent.

Lex Fridman (1:28:39.400)

And that's a forcing function to,

Lex Fridman (1:28:42.440)

I mean, I personally love having my back to the wall

Skye Fitzgerald (1:28:45.680)

or financially you're screwed if you don't succeed.

Lex Fridman (1:28:48.920)

So that's nice.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:28:50.480)

I mean, I lived out of the trunk of my car

Lex Fridman (1:28:51.960)

for a couple of years after grad school,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:28:53.720)

just freelancing, just like,

Lex Fridman (1:28:56.360)

but that couple of years really helped me learn fast

Skye Fitzgerald (1:29:00.320)

because I had to learn fast.

Lex Fridman (1:29:02.480)

So I did a couple of voyages around the world

Skye Fitzgerald (1:29:05.880)

for this group called Semester at Sea,

Lex Fridman (1:29:08.160)

that is a floating university

Skye Fitzgerald (1:29:09.580)

that where they go out three and a half months at a time

Lex Fridman (1:29:11.880)

with about 500 college level students

Lex Fridman (1:29:15.120)

and about 35 professors.

Lex Fridman (1:29:16.520)

And so you're shooting every day for three and a half months

Skye Fitzgerald (1:29:19.480)

in like nine different countries.

Lex Fridman (1:29:20.760)

And so that really was like instrumental to me

Skye Fitzgerald (1:29:25.240)

becoming a pretty good camera person pretty quickly.

Lex Fridman (1:29:27.680)

And you were doing most of the work yourself?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:29:29.240)

One man, one man band, yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:29:31.240)

The second voyage, I at least had an editor with me.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:29:35.440)

Yeah, but I was shooting everything.

Lex Fridman (1:29:36.920)

Yeah, what's the perfect team?

Lex Fridman (1:29:38.800)

Is it two people for nonfiction asking for a friend?

Lex Fridman (1:29:43.640)

Some kind of interested in some storytelling,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:29:45.840)

not of the level and the sophistication that you're doing,

Lex Fridman (1:29:50.040)

but more.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:29:51.040)

I think you have to allow the story

Lex Fridman (1:29:52.400)

to dictate what the size of the film should be.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:29:54.280)

For these small human rights docs I do,

Lex Fridman (1:29:55.980)

I think two or three, it means you work your butt off,

Lex Fridman (1:29:59.600)

because you're doing everything, right?

Lex Fridman (1:30:01.360)

But it allows you to tell intimate stories

Lex Fridman (1:30:03.640)

and have that access.

Lex Fridman (1:30:04.560)

I'm doing a film this summer that's a scripted piece

Skye Fitzgerald (1:30:08.560)

where we'll probably have 25 crew people.

Lex Fridman (1:30:10.520)

Oh, wow.

Lex Fridman (1:30:11.360)

So it's a completely different endeavor altogether.

Lex Fridman (1:30:14.520)

But doing it yourself, what do you think about that?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:30:18.560)

Even though you have that trillion dollars.

Lex Fridman (1:30:21.360)

Oh, I have that trillion dollars again?

Lex Fridman (1:30:23.040)

Sweet, you can write that check before I leave, right?

Lex Fridman (1:30:25.160)

Yeah, I will.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:30:26.000)

Okay, great.

Lex Fridman (1:30:26.820)

I've never seen a check for that big.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:30:30.280)

It's gonna be interesting.

Lex Fridman (1:30:31.120)

How many zeros is that?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:30:31.960)

I write them so often, I've lost track.

Lex Fridman (1:30:36.160)

Or the United States government sure as heck

Skye Fitzgerald (1:30:38.280)

writes them often.

Lex Fridman (1:30:39.360)

Okay, anyway, I mean, is there an argument

Lex Fridman (1:30:42.240)

can you steel man the case for a single person?

Lex Fridman (1:30:44.840)

Not for me, not for me, and here's why.

Lex Fridman (1:30:53.640)

What I've found is that by being a team of two filming

Lex Fridman (1:31:01.580)

with a field producer, by two people filming,

Lex Fridman (1:31:05.600)

it allows us to double our footage first off, right?

Lex Fridman (1:31:10.440)

So we have twice as much footage in the time

Skye Fitzgerald (1:31:13.240)

we're filming to come back with as opposed

Lex Fridman (1:31:14.980)

to one person filming.

Lex Fridman (1:31:15.820)

So you're each manning a camera?

Lex Fridman (1:31:18.360)

Yeah, constantly.

Lex Fridman (1:31:19.840)

And how much, sorry to keep interrupting,

Lex Fridman (1:31:22.800)

how much interaction and interplay there is?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:31:25.240)

Sometimes the director of photography is in another room

Lex Fridman (1:31:28.160)

filming a different scene, if it makes sense.

Lex Fridman (1:31:30.020)

Sometimes we're cross shooting in the same room, right?

Lex Fridman (1:31:32.760)

Just depends on the needs of the moment.

Lex Fridman (1:31:35.400)

So we come back with double the footage is one thing.

Lex Fridman (1:31:38.040)

But as a director, so that's, you know,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:31:40.480)

given how access is sometimes shaped by the events

Lex Fridman (1:31:45.240)

so that we can only, something, you know,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:31:47.800)

in Lifeboat, for example, you know,

Lex Fridman (1:31:49.680)

a rescue operation may only happen three days, right?

Lex Fridman (1:31:52.880)

So you want as much footage of that as you can.

Lex Fridman (1:31:55.000)

But the other piece of it that's really critical for me,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:31:57.360)

I found is that by having another human being

Lex Fridman (1:32:00.360)

I'm filming with, who I'm co shooting with,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:32:02.760)

it frees me up as a director to not always

Lex Fridman (1:32:05.860)

have to be shooting either.

Lex Fridman (1:32:07.480)

I can do all the other work to build relationships, right?

Lex Fridman (1:32:11.560)

To have side conversations with people,

Lex Fridman (1:32:14.040)

to sort out the right way to tell a story, right?

Lex Fridman (1:32:18.680)

Or to transfer footage, knowing that the director

Skye Fitzgerald (1:32:21.600)

of photography is still filming during all that.

Lex Fridman (1:32:23.360)

So it frees me up to think of as a director

Skye Fitzgerald (1:32:26.460)

rather than just an image acquirer.

Lex Fridman (1:32:29.960)

Yeah, cause there's also, I don't know how distracting it is.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:32:32.440)

You've obviously done it for years, but setting stuff up,

Lex Fridman (1:32:35.640)

it preoccupies your mind.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:32:40.640)

Like pressing the record button,

Lex Fridman (1:32:42.480)

and like framing stuff and all that,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:32:43.960)

that still takes up some part of your mind

Lex Fridman (1:32:46.440)

where you can't think freely.

Lex Fridman (1:32:48.240)

That's my choice, right?

Lex Fridman (1:32:49.480)

That's how I work best.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:32:51.040)

That said, the caveat there would be

Lex Fridman (1:32:53.040)

that's not the only way to do it, obviously, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:32:55.000)

Like one of my favorite documentaries of all time

Lex Fridman (1:33:00.040)

is a documentary called A Woman Captured, shot in Hungary,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:33:03.920)

by a single filmmaker with a single camera

Lex Fridman (1:33:07.120)

with a single lens, right?

Lex Fridman (1:33:09.480)

And it's brilliant, and powerful,

Lex Fridman (1:33:12.160)

and moving, and interventional.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:33:16.080)

It's incredible filmmaking, and it was a single human being

Lex Fridman (1:33:19.320)

who created that film with a collaborator or subject.

Lex Fridman (1:33:23.480)

So it can be done, it's just not how I work best.

Lex Fridman (1:33:26.800)

Yeah, how much personally would the other person,

Lex Fridman (1:33:29.980)

how important is the relationship with them

Lex Fridman (1:33:34.180)

outside of the filming?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:33:36.360)

Like.

Lex Fridman (1:33:37.200)

With the director of photography?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:33:38.020)

The director of photography, say.

Lex Fridman (1:33:39.620)

Like, how much drinking, and if you don't drink,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:33:44.500)

whatever the equivalent of that is,

Lex Fridman (1:33:46.060)

do you have to do together?

Lex Fridman (1:33:47.580)

How much soul searching?

Lex Fridman (1:33:48.940)

Or is it more like two surgeons getting together?

Lex Fridman (1:33:52.460)

Is it surgeons, or is it a jazz band?

Lex Fridman (1:33:55.940)

Well, it could be either, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:33:57.980)

Hopefully not at the same time, though,

Lex Fridman (1:33:59.240)

because I don't think surgeons and jazz bands

Skye Fitzgerald (1:34:00.980)

go well together, probably.

Lex Fridman (1:34:02.580)

They're both good with fingers, I suppose.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:34:05.740)

Exactly, but I'd rather maybe not play jazz

Lex Fridman (1:34:08.220)

while they operate on me.

Lex Fridman (1:34:09.860)

But I think, for me, I think there are moments of both,

Lex Fridman (1:34:15.500)

but usually not at the same time, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:34:17.580)

There are surgical moments where the moment is so pressing,

Lex Fridman (1:34:20.860)

you really have to be that task driven, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:34:25.000)

To capture as thoroughly as possible

Lex Fridman (1:34:27.100)

whatever's unfolding, right?

Lex Fridman (1:34:29.300)

But I think there's other times

Lex Fridman (1:34:30.380)

where you do improvise like jazz, right?

Lex Fridman (1:34:32.880)

And where you have a lot of choices ahead of you,

Lex Fridman (1:34:35.940)

and you're doing maybe a dance

Lex Fridman (1:34:38.780)

with the other camera person, right?

Lex Fridman (1:34:41.060)

In order to capture a scene as creatively

Lex Fridman (1:34:43.220)

and fully as possible during a fixed duration.

Lex Fridman (1:34:47.420)

How much, you said shaping, because it is nonfiction.

Lex Fridman (1:34:51.340)

But I feel like there's so many ways

Lex Fridman (1:34:53.380)

to tell the same nonfiction,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:34:55.420)

that is bordering on fiction.

Lex Fridman (1:34:57.820)

Yeah.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:34:58.660)

Well, it's storytelling.

Lex Fridman (1:35:03.060)

And how much shaping do you see yourself as doing?

Lex Fridman (1:35:08.820)

Like how important is your role?

Lex Fridman (1:35:10.300)

How you tell the story?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:35:14.620)

I suppose the question I'm asking is,

Lex Fridman (1:35:16.460)

how many ways can you really screw this up?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:35:20.420)

Every day you can screw it up.

Lex Fridman (1:35:22.860)

I mean, that's really the,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:35:24.780)

I think what you're asking about

Lex Fridman (1:35:25.980)

is really the ethos of documentary filmmaking, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:35:29.540)

I allow a lot of things to guide my choices.

Lex Fridman (1:35:34.100)

One of them being, am I being fair, right?

Lex Fridman (1:35:38.100)

Not balanced, but am I being fair to what I'm witnessing?

Lex Fridman (1:35:43.460)

Does the camera capturing in a fair way

Lex Fridman (1:35:46.420)

the truth of the reality?

Lex Fridman (1:35:48.580)

Some fundamental truth of it.

Lex Fridman (1:35:49.420)

And it also speaks to consent, right?

Lex Fridman (1:35:51.620)

Am I being fair in a sense of consent?

Lex Fridman (1:35:53.900)

Do I have active consent in this moment, right?

Lex Fridman (1:35:56.460)

Regardless of whether I have a signed piece of paper.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:35:58.620)

I always find some way to document it,

Lex Fridman (1:36:00.300)

whether it's just direct address to camera

Skye Fitzgerald (1:36:02.420)

or a translated release.

Lex Fridman (1:36:05.460)

So there's, actually that's an interesting little,

Lex Fridman (1:36:07.740)

so they say something to the camera that they consent

Lex Fridman (1:36:10.620)

or they sign the thing.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:36:12.060)

Yeah, so for example, the large broadcast companies

Lex Fridman (1:36:16.740)

have this formalized process

Lex Fridman (1:36:18.300)

where they present a piece of paper, right?

Lex Fridman (1:36:21.580)

And the subject reads it and they sign it

Lex Fridman (1:36:25.180)

and then you have permission and that's irrevocable, right?

Lex Fridman (1:36:28.860)

So it'll hold up in court.

Lex Fridman (1:36:30.820)

That's not how I operate, right?

Lex Fridman (1:36:32.820)

And so it's just, for example, that doesn't work

Skye Fitzgerald (1:36:38.340)

if someone's illiterate

Lex Fridman (1:36:39.700)

and can't read that piece of paper, right?

Lex Fridman (1:36:42.020)

What if they don't know how to sign their name, right?

Lex Fridman (1:36:44.300)

So instead you have to have a conversation,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:36:47.580)

ask questions, have them ask questions,

Lex Fridman (1:36:49.420)

come to a complete understanding

Skye Fitzgerald (1:36:51.580)

before you even know whether they understand

Lex Fridman (1:36:53.700)

what you're asking, right?

Lex Fridman (1:36:54.940)

And then in that case, if someone's illiterate,

Lex Fridman (1:36:57.220)

then you have that conversation,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:36:58.860)

you just sit down and it takes a long time sometimes,

Lex Fridman (1:37:00.980)

but you have to do it.

Lex Fridman (1:37:01.820)

And then if they still wanna participate

Lex Fridman (1:37:04.420)

and they give you their consent,

Lex Fridman (1:37:06.540)

they can't sign a piece of paper, right?

Lex Fridman (1:37:08.580)

So then you just do in their native language, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:37:11.780)

Direct consent to camera in their language.

Lex Fridman (1:37:14.220)

Interesting, but also you're speaking to the consent

Skye Fitzgerald (1:37:16.340)

that's just a human placing trust in you.

Lex Fridman (1:37:19.700)

Yeah.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:37:20.540)

You make a connection like this.

Lex Fridman (1:37:21.380)

That's the most important consent, yeah.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:37:23.220)

I hate papers, I hate papers and lawyers

Lex Fridman (1:37:28.860)

because they, exactly for that reason,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:37:31.420)

yeah, okay, great, but you should be focusing

Lex Fridman (1:37:35.220)

on the human connection that leads to the trust,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:37:39.060)

like real consent and consent day to day,

Lex Fridman (1:37:41.620)

minute to minute, because that can change.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:37:43.740)

Absolutely, and it does change.

Lex Fridman (1:37:46.980)

You mentioned A Woman Captured.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:37:51.340)

I'm sure you can't answer that, but I will force you.

Lex Fridman (1:37:54.100)

What are the top three documentaries of all time,

Lex Fridman (1:37:58.340)

short or feature length?

Lex Fridman (1:38:00.140)

Oh boy.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:38:01.180)

This is not your opinion, this is objective truth.

Lex Fridman (1:38:05.780)

Maybe top one, what's the greatest?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:38:09.300)

We got, let's see, March of the Penguins.

Lex Fridman (1:38:14.300)

That's probably number one for me.

Lex Fridman (1:38:15.860)

Really?

Lex Fridman (1:38:16.700)

No, I'm just kidding, I don't know.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:38:17.740)

I do seem to, the metaphor of penguins

Lex Fridman (1:38:23.180)

huddling together in hard, cold,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:38:28.820)

like in the harsh conditions of nature,

Lex Fridman (1:38:32.460)

that's something that's kind of beautiful.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:38:34.940)

I don't love all nature documentaries,

Lex Fridman (1:38:37.140)

but something about March of the Penguins.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:38:40.380)

I think Morgan Freeman.

Lex Fridman (1:38:42.580)

Yeah, he narrated it.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:38:43.500)

Narrates it, so maybe everything,

Lex Fridman (1:38:45.180)

just any documentary with Morgan Freeman,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:38:47.820)

I'm a sucker for that.

Lex Fridman (1:38:50.300)

Warner, Herzog, The Life and the Taiga, The Simple People.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:38:54.180)

I love Grizzly Man, I love Grizzly Man.

Lex Fridman (1:38:56.980)

I think that's one of his best works.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:38:59.020)

Yes, I think that's Joe Rogan's favorite documentary.

Lex Fridman (1:39:04.340)

It's both comedy and, I mean it's.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:39:06.860)

Tragic comedy.

Lex Fridman (1:39:07.700)

Tragic comedy, yeah.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:39:09.900)

Is there something that stands out to you,

Lex Fridman (1:39:11.740)

I mean I'm joking about best,

Lex Fridman (1:39:13.900)

something that was impactful to you?

Lex Fridman (1:39:15.740)

Just to put it out there,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:39:16.660)

I don't think there's any way to say

Lex Fridman (1:39:19.060)

that they're objectively the best three documentaries

Skye Fitzgerald (1:39:22.420)

of all time, but for me,

Lex Fridman (1:39:23.660)

and you may find this interesting given your background,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:39:25.660)

is that I think my top three are all

Lex Fridman (1:39:32.140)

from the Eastern Bloc, actually.

Lex Fridman (1:39:35.540)

So Aquarella by Viktor Kosokovsky is one of my favorite,

Lex Fridman (1:39:41.980)

and it's a couple years old now,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:39:43.780)

which is sort of a meditation on the place water has

Lex Fridman (1:39:47.420)

on our planet and on our lives.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:39:50.580)

I think A Woman Captured that I mentioned,

Lex Fridman (1:39:53.340)

which was shot in Hungary.

Lex Fridman (1:39:54.580)

Is it a feature length one?

Lex Fridman (1:39:56.220)

Both are feature lengths, yeah.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:39:58.500)

It is just brilliant,

Lex Fridman (1:40:00.540)

and it I think has yet to find distribution here in the U.S.

Lex Fridman (1:40:05.340)

But it's the perfect example of what they call verite,

Lex Fridman (1:40:09.540)

or direct nonfiction filmmaking.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:40:13.380)

A European woman, this is the synopsis,

Lex Fridman (1:40:15.620)

a European woman has been kept by a family

Skye Fitzgerald (1:40:17.660)

as a domestic slave for 10 years,

Lex Fridman (1:40:20.140)

drawing courage from the filmmaker's presence.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:40:23.580)

She decides to escape the unbearable oppression

Lex Fridman (1:40:27.300)

and become a free person.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:40:28.620)

Wow, so the filmmaker is part of the story.

Lex Fridman (1:40:32.540)

Part of the story, it didn't start that way,

Lex Fridman (1:40:34.740)

but during the course of the story,

Lex Fridman (1:40:36.340)

the filmmaker comes to understand

Skye Fitzgerald (1:40:39.540)

that this is actually modern day slavery.

Lex Fridman (1:40:41.940)

And rather than just allow it to be,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:40:45.380)

actually enables and assists this woman

Lex Fridman (1:40:48.420)

to free herself from slavery and become a free woman.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:40:51.020)

I wonder, sorry, on a small tangent

Lex Fridman (1:40:52.660)

before we get to number three,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:40:53.700)

like Icarus is interesting too.

Lex Fridman (1:40:57.060)

How often do you become part of the story,

Lex Fridman (1:41:00.980)

or the story is different because of your presence?

Lex Fridman (1:41:06.060)

Like you changed the tide of history.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:41:10.140)

Yeah, well, back to just like one person at a time

Lex Fridman (1:41:12.740)

that we keep talking,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:41:13.580)

we keep coming back to that theme on some level.

Lex Fridman (1:41:16.980)

So this could tie in interesting

Skye Fitzgerald (1:41:19.180)

to one of my favorite films actually.

Lex Fridman (1:41:21.180)

So the last two films that I would mention

Skye Fitzgerald (1:41:24.780)

for my top four list would be,

Lex Fridman (1:41:26.660)

the third Eastern Bloc one

Skye Fitzgerald (1:41:28.300)

would be a film called Immortal in 2019,

Lex Fridman (1:41:31.940)

which was shot in Russia by a Russian woman

Skye Fitzgerald (1:41:35.460)

that sort of examines the place of the state

Lex Fridman (1:41:41.620)

in shaping individuals to be vehicles for the state.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:41:46.020)

I mean, that's my own synopsis,

Lex Fridman (1:41:47.220)

but that's one of my takeaways

Skye Fitzgerald (1:41:49.100)

from the brilliant 60 minute doc or so.

Lex Fridman (1:41:52.180)

Again, Russian filmmaking is really quite good and powerful.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:41:57.180)

The fourth one would be a Frederick Wiseman film,

Lex Fridman (1:41:59.900)

Titicate Follies, which was filmed in the US decades ago,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:42:04.900)

inside basically the bowels of an insane asylum

Lex Fridman (1:42:09.220)

or a mental health institution.

Lex Fridman (1:42:11.180)

And I bring up Wiseman because he is really the godfather,

Lex Fridman (1:42:17.420)

so to speak, of direct cinema or cinema verite.

Lex Fridman (1:42:21.900)

And when early in my career,

Lex Fridman (1:42:25.260)

I really believed in what he expressed

Skye Fitzgerald (1:42:29.700)

as the place of the verite filmmaker,

Lex Fridman (1:42:32.940)

which is simply fly on the wall,

Lex Fridman (1:42:36.380)

which is only observational in nature, right?

Lex Fridman (1:42:41.140)

And I believe that that's how I should be

Skye Fitzgerald (1:42:44.300)

as a nonfiction filmmaker,

Lex Fridman (1:42:45.620)

that I was there only to bear witness, to observe,

Lex Fridman (1:42:48.860)

and not to intervene in any way, shape, or form.

Lex Fridman (1:42:52.340)

And that was the sort of foundation

Skye Fitzgerald (1:42:56.980)

for how I operated for many, many years.

Lex Fridman (1:43:00.060)

And then some things happened.

Lex Fridman (1:43:01.860)

So one of those things that happened was I filmed Lifeboat.

Lex Fridman (1:43:07.540)

And during the course of filming Lifeboat,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:43:10.980)

which covered rescue operations in the Mediterranean

Lex Fridman (1:43:15.300)

off the coast of Libya,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:43:16.580)

in the first three days of that rescue mission,

Lex Fridman (1:43:22.620)

we came upon over 3,000 people, asylum seekers,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:43:27.140)

floating in flimsy rafts in the water.

Lex Fridman (1:43:30.700)

And we were on the Zodiacs and we were filming.

Lex Fridman (1:43:35.340)

And within the first couple hours,

Lex Fridman (1:43:39.220)

we would come up to these rafts and these boats

Skye Fitzgerald (1:43:44.220)

that were in really dire shape,

Lex Fridman (1:43:46.540)

and people would be pushed off, and people would jump off,

Lex Fridman (1:43:49.900)

and people would fall into the water,

Lex Fridman (1:43:52.140)

and some of them couldn't swim.

Lex Fridman (1:43:57.660)

And so we found ourselves in this moment

Lex Fridman (1:44:00.260)

where we had a choice.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:44:02.060)

We could film someone drown in front of us,

Lex Fridman (1:44:05.300)

or we could put our cameras down

Lex Fridman (1:44:06.980)

and pull them out of the water.

Lex Fridman (1:44:08.740)

And so that's what we did.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:44:10.540)

We put our cameras in the bottom of the water,

Lex Fridman (1:44:13.860)

bottom of the Zodiac,

Lex Fridman (1:44:14.820)

and just started pulling people out of the water.

Lex Fridman (1:44:17.420)

And if I was Wiseman, according to his paradigm,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:44:24.100)

then we should have just filmed.

Lex Fridman (1:44:25.980)

And I didn't anticipate that moment beforehand.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:44:30.580)

I had no sort of foreknowledge

Lex Fridman (1:44:32.420)

that I was gonna find myself faced

Skye Fitzgerald (1:44:34.340)

with that dilemma of the moment as a documentarian.

Lex Fridman (1:44:38.300)

But there was no question in my mind

Skye Fitzgerald (1:44:40.020)

that I had to put my camera down

Lex Fridman (1:44:41.340)

and pull that fellow human being out of the water.

Lex Fridman (1:44:43.860)

And I don't regret it at all.

Lex Fridman (1:44:45.460)

So I've come to a different place.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:44:46.900)

I've evolved to what I believe for the kind of film

Lex Fridman (1:44:49.820)

that I do is more appropriate.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:44:52.860)

I can go to sleep at night knowing that,

Lex Fridman (1:44:56.740)

regardless of how the film would have been different

Skye Fitzgerald (1:44:58.460)

if I hadn't made that choice,

Lex Fridman (1:45:00.780)

I made the right choice as a human being.

Lex Fridman (1:45:02.820)

So I think of it as being a human being first

Lex Fridman (1:45:05.420)

and a filmmaker second in moments like that.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:45:08.340)

That's beautifully put, but I also think

Lex Fridman (1:45:11.780)

you could be a human being in small ways too,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:45:16.100)

like silly ways, and put a little bit of yourself

Lex Fridman (1:45:19.140)

in documentaries.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:45:20.940)

I tend to see that as really beautiful.

Lex Fridman (1:45:24.420)

Like the meta piece of it?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:45:26.340)

Yeah, just put yourself into the movie a little bit.

Lex Fridman (1:45:31.020)

Because break that third, fourth, whatever the wall is,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:45:35.220)

is realize that there's a human behind the camera too.

Lex Fridman (1:45:38.820)

For some reason, me as a fan, as a viewer,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:45:41.700)

that's enjoyable too.

Lex Fridman (1:45:42.900)

I think there's a real authenticity there

Skye Fitzgerald (1:45:46.780)

behind the story, especially with these hard stories

Lex Fridman (1:45:49.180)

that you're doing that there's a human being struggling to.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:45:53.060)

Like observing the suffering

Lex Fridman (1:45:57.420)

and having to bear the burden

Skye Fitzgerald (1:46:02.660)

that this kind of suffering exists in the world

Lex Fridman (1:46:05.140)

and you're behind that camera living that struggle.

Lex Fridman (1:46:09.060)

And there's small ways to show yourself in that way.

Lex Fridman (1:46:12.420)

As you know, I don't do that in a big way.

Lex Fridman (1:46:16.500)

But I actually, there are subtle moments

Lex Fridman (1:46:18.940)

where I allow that presence to live just for a second.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:46:23.180)

Like I hate belly button docs, that's what I call them.

Lex Fridman (1:46:26.580)

I don't know.

Lex Fridman (1:46:27.420)

What's a belly button doc?

Lex Fridman (1:46:28.260)

A belly button doc is navel gazing, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:46:30.420)

Where it's sort of a narcissistic filmmaking

Lex Fridman (1:46:33.900)

where someone just studies their own place in the world.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:46:38.380)

Right, I think.

Lex Fridman (1:46:39.220)

I see, yeah.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:46:40.060)

I think my, I'm more concerned

Lex Fridman (1:46:44.740)

with how I can intervene, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:46:48.980)

Yeah, well, you're trying to really deeply empathize.

Lex Fridman (1:46:52.580)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:46:53.420)

So like, if you do empathize, who am I?

Lex Fridman (1:46:55.980)

I don't wanna center myself in these stories.

Lex Fridman (1:46:57.980)

It's not about me, right?

Lex Fridman (1:46:59.380)

I am so unimportant.

Lex Fridman (1:47:02.020)

What is important is what's happening,

Lex Fridman (1:47:03.660)

what's unfolding in the world that we need to act upon.

Lex Fridman (1:47:06.300)

And I think it's selfish and narcissistic

Lex Fridman (1:47:09.180)

to push myself into these stories unnecessarily.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:47:13.380)

Now that said, I think there is some small value

Lex Fridman (1:47:16.180)

in what you're saying just to remind viewers

Skye Fitzgerald (1:47:18.900)

that there's obviously a filmmaker at play.

Lex Fridman (1:47:21.020)

So sometimes the way that I do that

Skye Fitzgerald (1:47:22.980)

is just like through a question on camera.

Lex Fridman (1:47:25.700)

I'd allow the audio to live of a question

Skye Fitzgerald (1:47:28.660)

or during a conversation I'm having with someone

Lex Fridman (1:47:31.140)

so they can just hear how it's posed, for example, right?

Lex Fridman (1:47:34.820)

And to me, that's enough.

Lex Fridman (1:47:37.180)

Yeah.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:47:38.020)

I do like moments when people recognize that you exist.

Lex Fridman (1:47:43.620)

They look at the filmmaker past the camera

Lex Fridman (1:47:47.220)

and yes, you ask the question in an interview

Lex Fridman (1:47:49.620)

or something like that and they respond to that.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:47:52.540)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:47:53.660)

Like they respond to this like new perturbation

Skye Fitzgerald (1:47:57.140)

into their reality that was created by this other human.

Lex Fridman (1:47:59.980)

Yeah.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:48:00.820)

I especially like when those questions

Lex Fridman (1:48:02.820)

or those perturbations are like a little bit absurd

Lex Fridman (1:48:07.620)

and like add something very novel to their situation

Lex Fridman (1:48:11.260)

and that novelty reveals something about them.

Lex Fridman (1:48:15.260)

So as opposed to capturing the day to day reality

Lex Fridman (1:48:18.260)

of their life, you do that plus the perturbations

Skye Fitzgerald (1:48:21.620)

of like something novel.

Lex Fridman (1:48:23.020)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:48:24.340)

But of course, there's all kinds of ways to do this.

Lex Fridman (1:48:26.860)

Let me, what was number five, by the way?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:48:29.900)

I only gave you four.

Lex Fridman (1:48:31.020)

You just.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:48:31.860)

I'm just gonna stay at four.

Lex Fridman (1:48:33.500)

There's a short doc I like, I mentioned,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:48:35.180)

they're called The Toxic Pigs of Fukushima.

Lex Fridman (1:48:38.500)

I know, I know.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:48:39.500)

I apologize.

Lex Fridman (1:48:40.340)

I know, I know.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:48:41.180)

It's dark.

Lex Fridman (1:48:42.220)

It's a great title though, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:48:43.060)

It's a great title.

Lex Fridman (1:48:43.900)

Yeah, great title.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:48:45.300)

No one's seen it, but it's great.

Lex Fridman (1:48:47.780)

It says what it sounds like.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:48:49.380)

Yeah, yeah, it's exactly what it sounds like,

Lex Fridman (1:48:51.380)

but really brilliantly executed.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:48:55.140)

Well, let me ask you about Lifeboat

Lex Fridman (1:48:56.420)

because it's extremely, I don't.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:49:04.180)

It's a really moving idea.

Lex Fridman (1:49:07.740)

Just the fact that this exists in the world,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:49:10.540)

that there's, as a metaphor, as a reality,

Lex Fridman (1:49:14.540)

that there is a set of people trying to flee desperately.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:49:18.740)

It's the desperation of it.

Lex Fridman (1:49:21.740)

And now with these refugees, the desperation of that,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:49:25.020)

of trying to escape towards a world

Lex Fridman (1:49:28.340)

that's full of mystery, uncertainty, doubt,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:49:32.460)

could be hopeless at times,

Lex Fridman (1:49:34.220)

and you're willing to do a lot for your own survival

Lex Fridman (1:49:38.060)

and for the survival of your family

Lex Fridman (1:49:39.740)

and all those kinds of things.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:49:40.740)

That's kind of the human spirit,

Lex Fridman (1:49:42.820)

and you just capture it in Lifeboat.

Lex Fridman (1:49:47.420)

Can you tell me the story behind this film

Lex Fridman (1:49:51.020)

as you started to already tell?

Lex Fridman (1:49:52.540)

Can you tell me what is it about?

Lex Fridman (1:49:56.460)

So Lifeboat really seeks to sort of lift up

Lex Fridman (1:50:03.460)

and showcase the asylum seeker crisis in the Mediterranean

Lex Fridman (1:50:10.060)

when it was at its height in 2016.

Lex Fridman (1:50:15.140)

And it came to be for many reasons,

Lex Fridman (1:50:18.980)

but one of those reasons is colleagues

Skye Fitzgerald (1:50:23.700)

in the NGO community really shared with me

Lex Fridman (1:50:26.540)

that when the borders between Greece and Turkey

Skye Fitzgerald (1:50:29.700)

were shut down, that the flow of Syrian asylum seekers

Lex Fridman (1:50:35.620)

that was initially going across from Turkey to Greece

Skye Fitzgerald (1:50:39.620)

was going to shift westward across the Mediterranean.

Lex Fridman (1:50:42.540)

So I started to research that

Lex Fridman (1:50:43.860)

and discovered that was exactly the case,

Lex Fridman (1:50:46.660)

and then further stumbled upon the fact

Skye Fitzgerald (1:50:49.420)

that nation states hadn't really stepped up to address it

Lex Fridman (1:50:54.340)

and that there were hundreds of asylum seekers

Skye Fitzgerald (1:50:57.420)

often drowning in these flimsy crafts

Lex Fridman (1:50:59.380)

that were pushed off from the shores of Libya

Skye Fitzgerald (1:51:01.780)

because the EU wasn't doing its duty

Lex Fridman (1:51:06.060)

to patrol those waters from a humanitarian standpoint.

Lex Fridman (1:51:09.540)

And so the net result of that was that

Lex Fridman (1:51:11.860)

this whole sort of like humanitarian community sprung up

Lex Fridman (1:51:16.940)

and it was civil society based

Lex Fridman (1:51:18.820)

that tried to meet the needs of those asylum seekers

Skye Fitzgerald (1:51:22.100)

to just ensure that fellow human beings

Lex Fridman (1:51:25.500)

weren't drowning, simply put.

Lex Fridman (1:51:27.380)

And one of those was the small little NGO called Sea Watch,

Lex Fridman (1:51:30.980)

which when they discovered what was happening,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:51:33.300)

just cobbled together a coalition of volunteers,

Lex Fridman (1:51:38.740)

bought a research vessel, retrofitted it,

Lex Fridman (1:51:41.740)

and motored down off the coast of Libya

Lex Fridman (1:51:44.380)

to start pulling people out of the water.

Lex Fridman (1:51:45.980)

And again, I found that inspiring, right?

Lex Fridman (1:51:48.700)

I found that inspiring that this group of volunteers

Lex Fridman (1:51:52.300)

was doing something that our leaders wouldn't, right?

Lex Fridman (1:51:56.860)

And it was something as basic and simple

Skye Fitzgerald (1:51:59.500)

as saving human beings.

Lex Fridman (1:52:03.060)

And I thought there was an inspiring story there.

Lex Fridman (1:52:06.220)

And as it turned out, there was.

Lex Fridman (1:52:08.380)

Have you ever saved someone's life

Lex Fridman (1:52:13.620)

as part of making these documentaries directly?

Lex Fridman (1:52:17.580)

And directly, I think you probably have countless lives,

Lex Fridman (1:52:22.100)

but directly, were you put in that position?

Lex Fridman (1:52:25.020)

I don't wanna, I mean, I certainly poured people

Skye Fitzgerald (1:52:29.420)

out of the water who couldn't swim, I did that.

Lex Fridman (1:52:33.540)

And that's again, speaking to the basic humanity,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:52:35.700)

put down the camera and help, yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:52:40.580)

So this is people coming from Libya,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:52:43.540)

trying to make it across the Mediterranean Sea

Lex Fridman (1:52:46.260)

on a crappy, tiny boat.

Lex Fridman (1:52:48.900)

From a filmmaker perspective, how do you film that?

Lex Fridman (1:52:51.420)

Was there decisions to capture the desperation?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:52:55.900)

Well, we were going back to this idea of access

Lex Fridman (1:53:01.180)

and how that's so fundamental to my approach.

Lex Fridman (1:53:03.420)

And we were bound by the strictures of the rescue operation

Lex Fridman (1:53:10.060)

on this Sea Watch vessel, which was 30 meters long.

Lex Fridman (1:53:12.900)

And we were two of a crew of 15, right?

Lex Fridman (1:53:16.740)

So we had to multitask all the time

Skye Fitzgerald (1:53:18.700)

because the only reason we were on that boat

Lex Fridman (1:53:21.740)

was by agreeing that if needed,

Lex Fridman (1:53:25.460)

we would do whatever necessary, right?

Lex Fridman (1:53:27.740)

To help, right?

Lex Fridman (1:53:30.700)

And so it was very active on multiple levels

Lex Fridman (1:53:33.140)

and we were making decisions each and every day

Skye Fitzgerald (1:53:38.020)

that were not only filmmaking and creative decisions,

Lex Fridman (1:53:42.220)

but also decisions about how to live that duality, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:53:53.580)

Of being a humanitarian and a filmmaker simultaneously.

Lex Fridman (1:53:56.980)

And the greatest example I can share of that was,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:54:01.980)

or with my director of photography in that project,

Lex Fridman (1:54:04.500)

Kenny Allen, Kenny's a big guy.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:54:08.940)

It's like, he's got like arms like tree trunks.

Lex Fridman (1:54:11.940)

And he, because he was so physically able and strong,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:54:18.300)

the head of mission really tasked him

Lex Fridman (1:54:22.740)

to be on the Zodiacs to pull people out of the water

Skye Fitzgerald (1:54:24.860)

because he could literally with one arm reach down

Lex Fridman (1:54:27.100)

and just oftentimes pull someone out, right?

Lex Fridman (1:54:30.460)

Whereas usually it would take two or three people, right?

Lex Fridman (1:54:33.100)

And so when we were at the height of triage

Lex Fridman (1:54:37.060)

and there were people in the water all over

Lex Fridman (1:54:39.380)

and rafts were sinking,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:54:41.780)

Kenny was out pulling people out of the water.

Lex Fridman (1:54:43.780)

And this went on for like 24 hours, right?

Lex Fridman (1:54:46.380)

And at the end of that first day,

Lex Fridman (1:54:48.380)

I remember like looking over on the deck

Lex Fridman (1:54:51.260)

and seeing Kenny like help people up from the ladders

Lex Fridman (1:54:54.380)

to walk them back, right?

Lex Fridman (1:54:56.260)

And his camera was nowhere to be seen, right?

Lex Fridman (1:54:59.780)

And so I walked over to him

Lex Fridman (1:55:01.300)

and I just grabbed him by the shoulders and said,

Lex Fridman (1:55:03.740)

Kenny, where's your camera?

Lex Fridman (1:55:07.060)

And he didn't know.

Lex Fridman (1:55:08.820)

He had no idea where his camera was, right?

Lex Fridman (1:55:11.140)

And so I just said, Kenny,

Lex Fridman (1:55:15.340)

we're here to do what you're doing,

Lex Fridman (1:55:19.380)

but we're also here to film it, right?

Lex Fridman (1:55:21.980)

To make sure that we document

Lex Fridman (1:55:24.260)

what is unfolding in front of us

Lex Fridman (1:55:26.140)

so that we have a record of it, right?

Lex Fridman (1:55:28.180)

So we can bring it to a larger audience.

Lex Fridman (1:55:30.780)

So you need to go find your camera

Lex Fridman (1:55:32.460)

so we can also document it.

Lex Fridman (1:55:34.900)

And that kind of pulled him out

Lex Fridman (1:55:36.500)

and he went and got his camera and started filming again,

Lex Fridman (1:55:38.420)

but that gives you a sense of sort of this world

Skye Fitzgerald (1:55:40.940)

that we had to live in in order to get the story done.

Lex Fridman (1:55:43.940)

But I think to be a great director of photography,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:55:47.300)

to be a great director,

Lex Fridman (1:55:48.980)

you have to lose yourself like that in the story too.

Lex Fridman (1:55:53.860)

But usually with a camera in your hand, right?

Lex Fridman (1:55:55.940)

But sometimes you forget the camera.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:55:58.100)

I mean, there's a,

Lex Fridman (1:56:00.620)

I feel like if you're obsessed with the camera too much,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:56:06.220)

you can lose the humanity of it.

Lex Fridman (1:56:08.100)

You get obsessed with the film and the story.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:56:10.420)

It can become clinical.

Lex Fridman (1:56:11.500)

Yes, it can become clinical.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:56:12.420)

Absolutely, and it's, you know, yeah, absolutely.

Lex Fridman (1:56:15.700)

And we don't wanna become,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:56:17.020)

I don't wanna become clinical in my film, certainly.

Lex Fridman (1:56:19.420)

Let me ask you a strange and perhaps edgy question.

Lex Fridman (1:56:23.500)

So some filmmakers believe it's justified

Lex Fridman (1:56:26.180)

to break the rules in order to tell a powerful story.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:56:30.860)

Warner Herzog, I read this somewhere,

Lex Fridman (1:56:36.020)

teaches young filmmakers to pick locks

Lex Fridman (1:56:37.940)

and forge documents and so on.

Lex Fridman (1:56:39.620)

Oh, I didn't know that, interesting.

Lex Fridman (1:56:41.460)

What do you think about that?

Lex Fridman (1:56:42.540)

Bending the rules in service of telling a story.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:56:46.100)

You would, of course, never break the law,

Lex Fridman (1:56:49.460)

but is there, does that, just generally speaking,

Lex Fridman (1:56:54.460)

speaking, bending the rules and so on?

Lex Fridman (1:56:58.420)

You know, just to elaborate on this question, perhaps,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:57:02.180)

I'm distinctly aware that there's parts in the world

Lex Fridman (1:57:04.820)

where the rule of law is not, like,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:57:11.140)

enforced as cleanly as it is in the United States,

Lex Fridman (1:57:15.260)

as fairly as it is in the United States,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:57:17.380)

that there's a kind of, there's a lot of bribery,

Lex Fridman (1:57:20.900)

there's a lot of, like, you don't really know to trust,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:57:25.220)

you don't know if you can trust the cops

Lex Fridman (1:57:27.580)

or basically anybody.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:57:30.300)

So, like, the rules are a very hazy kind of concept.

Lex Fridman (1:57:34.540)

And a lot of them, especially, like, it's funny,

Lex Fridman (1:57:36.540)

but authoritarian regimes often have

Lex Fridman (1:57:38.180)

a giant bureaucracy buildup that's full of rules.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:57:40.860)

There's more rules than you know what to deal with,

Lex Fridman (1:57:43.020)

and you can't actually live life

Skye Fitzgerald (1:57:44.500)

unless you break the rules.

Lex Fridman (1:57:45.940)

Anyway, laying that all out on the table,

Lex Fridman (1:57:49.180)

do you ever contend with that,

Lex Fridman (1:57:53.020)

on what are the rules I can break or should break

Lex Fridman (1:57:58.060)

to keep to the spirit of the story?

Lex Fridman (1:58:00.860)

I think you have to ask yourself, are the rules just,

Lex Fridman (1:58:03.300)

and why are they in place, right?

Lex Fridman (1:58:05.100)

So, for example, coming into the airport

Lex Fridman (1:58:07.380)

in southern Yemen, right?

Lex Fridman (1:58:10.060)

If I just tried to walk through the airport

Skye Fitzgerald (1:58:11.900)

with all my equipment, even with all the permissions

Lex Fridman (1:58:14.140)

beforehand, like we had, without having a fixer

Skye Fitzgerald (1:58:18.020)

at the airport beforehand to make sure

Lex Fridman (1:58:20.540)

we didn't go through the standard line, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (1:58:24.620)

We would have been caught up for three hours at least

Lex Fridman (1:58:28.260)

negotiating over our equipment and eventually paying

Lex Fridman (1:58:30.940)

a bribe to get it through, right?

Lex Fridman (1:58:33.500)

That's just reality in a place like Yemen.

Lex Fridman (1:58:36.660)

And so, of course, knowing that, right?

Lex Fridman (1:58:39.700)

Having talked to colleagues who had taken

Lex Fridman (1:58:41.460)

that path previously, I took a different path, right?

Lex Fridman (1:58:45.180)

Where we hire a fixer beforehand to sort it out

Lex Fridman (1:58:48.500)

beforehand, right?

Lex Fridman (1:58:50.060)

Rather than spending three hours of our time

Lex Fridman (1:58:52.260)

and paying a series of bribes, right?

Lex Fridman (1:58:54.260)

Instead, we're going to get it fixed beforehand

Lex Fridman (1:58:56.980)

so that we can walk through a different line

Lex Fridman (1:58:59.220)

and have no one look at any of our equipment.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:59:02.180)

That's a pretty good trade off in my mind.

Lex Fridman (1:59:06.420)

What about security when you're traveling in these places?

Lex Fridman (1:59:09.300)

Do you ever have bodyguards?

Lex Fridman (1:59:12.820)

Well, several questions around that.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:59:14.620)

Are you ever afraid for your life

Lex Fridman (1:59:16.820)

when you're filming in a war zone?

Lex Fridman (1:59:19.620)

Is there any way to lessen the probability of death?

Lex Fridman (1:59:27.180)

I don't have a death wish.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:59:28.420)

I try to mitigate risk however I can, however I can.

Lex Fridman (1:59:32.020)

But one of the ways I can't do it in a conflict zone

Skye Fitzgerald (1:59:35.140)

is by having armed security with me.

Lex Fridman (1:59:37.500)

And the reason for that is because,

Lex Fridman (1:59:39.300)

especially in a place like Yemen, right?

Lex Fridman (1:59:41.740)

If you have armed security, you become a target

Skye Fitzgerald (1:59:44.300)

in a way that if you're operating under sort of

Lex Fridman (1:59:47.980)

the auspices of international humanitarian law,

Skye Fitzgerald (1:59:52.020)

I actually have more protection.

Lex Fridman (1:59:53.580)

So I don't bring security.

Skye Fitzgerald (1:59:55.460)

If you're working in Northern Yemen, for example,

Lex Fridman (20:00.160)

And it's incredibly moving to see sort of the flexibility

Skye Fitzgerald (20:05.600)

of their thinking in terms of how they make that work.

Lex Fridman (20:08.840)

Makiya, for example, I saw her in the north of the country.

Skye Fitzgerald (20:12.280)

It's an incredibly rural clinic that she works at.

Lex Fridman (20:14.640)

So it's like a magnet for all the cases

Skye Fitzgerald (20:17.160)

in the north of the country.

Lex Fridman (20:18.520)

People come from hundreds of kilometers away sometimes

Skye Fitzgerald (20:21.560)

for specialty treatment of pediatric malnutrition.

Lex Fridman (20:25.520)

And one time I saw a child come in

Lex Fridman (20:28.760)

and it was a male relative that brought this young girl in.

Lex Fridman (20:33.040)

And just because of sort of the gender dynamics in Yemen,

Skye Fitzgerald (20:38.640)

there had to be a parent or a relative there

Lex Fridman (20:42.080)

to stay with the child while they're at the clinic.

Lex Fridman (20:43.960)

And it was a male relative.

Lex Fridman (20:45.560)

And so what many doctors in that instance would do

Skye Fitzgerald (20:49.920)

would just turn them away.

Lex Fridman (20:51.760)

And instead what Makiya did is she walked

Skye Fitzgerald (20:53.840)

into one of the rooms, talked to one of the other mothers

Lex Fridman (20:56.680)

and convinced them to become the temporary guardian,

Skye Fitzgerald (20:59.400)

essentially, of this child

Lex Fridman (21:01.600)

until a female relative could arrive.

Skye Fitzgerald (21:04.620)

So, you know, she's flexible.

Lex Fridman (21:06.160)

She finds solutions rather than allowing the problems

Skye Fitzgerald (21:09.360)

to deter solutions.

Lex Fridman (21:11.000)

One child at a time.

Skye Fitzgerald (21:12.200)

Yeah, yeah, one child at a time.

Lex Fridman (21:13.940)

You mentioned that you saw a child die in front of you.

Lex Fridman (21:22.820)

So when you're filming this as a filmmaker,

Lex Fridman (21:27.000)

what's that like psychologically, philosophically,

Lex Fridman (21:33.540)

creatively as a filmmaker, as a storyteller?

Lex Fridman (21:39.660)

What do you do there as a human and as a filmmaker?

Lex Fridman (21:43.860)

Or what's that whole experience like?

Lex Fridman (21:45.820)

Because you get to, like you said,

Skye Fitzgerald (21:47.420)

you take it to the whole journey

Lex Fridman (21:49.700)

of a starving mother giving birth to a starving child.

Skye Fitzgerald (21:54.600)

It's not something I want to film.

Lex Fridman (21:57.460)

It's not something that I certainly wanted to happen

Skye Fitzgerald (22:01.740)

or seek out, but it happened.

Lex Fridman (22:05.020)

And the sad truth is that it happens every week

Skye Fitzgerald (22:07.740)

at that hospital.

Lex Fridman (22:09.220)

And so when it happened in this instance,

Skye Fitzgerald (22:12.980)

I felt an incredible responsibility

Lex Fridman (22:15.820)

to do justice to that reality,

Skye Fitzgerald (22:18.880)

to acknowledge that a child had just died

Lex Fridman (22:22.200)

of starvation related causes.

Lex Fridman (22:26.980)

And to find some way, if the parents wanted us to,

Lex Fridman (22:31.780)

to integrate that into this story

Skye Fitzgerald (22:34.460)

we bring back to a Western audience.

Lex Fridman (22:39.360)

And I've filmed many difficult things over the years.

Lex Fridman (22:49.460)

And usually I really love filming.

Lex Fridman (22:54.260)

And I didn't love filming Hunger Ward.

Skye Fitzgerald (22:56.380)

It was not a process that I enjoyed

Lex Fridman (23:00.380)

on any way, show, perform, sadly, because of the content.

Lex Fridman (23:04.180)

Because who wants to watch a child die in front of them?

Lex Fridman (23:06.860)

I don't, but I did.

Lex Fridman (23:08.820)

And I had to.

Lex Fridman (23:10.060)

And when that happened,

Skye Fitzgerald (23:11.900)

I felt an incredible responsibility again,

Lex Fridman (23:14.900)

to go deep, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (23:17.220)

To go deep with that family,

Lex Fridman (23:19.180)

to tell the story of this hospital

Skye Fitzgerald (23:22.980)

with every sort of ounce of focus and talent

Lex Fridman (23:27.380)

that I could bring to the story.

Skye Fitzgerald (23:28.740)

Because people should know

Lex Fridman (23:31.260)

that children are dying of starvation right now

Skye Fitzgerald (23:34.980)

as we sit here.

Lex Fridman (23:36.100)

And that that doesn't have to happen.

Lex Fridman (23:37.940)

And it is happening because of political dynamics

Lex Fridman (23:40.300)

that we can intervene on.

Skye Fitzgerald (23:42.660)

Is there times you wanted to walk away,

Lex Fridman (23:46.780)

quit the telling of the story,

Skye Fitzgerald (23:51.220)

come back to the United States

Lex Fridman (23:54.700)

where you can just appreciate

Skye Fitzgerald (24:02.380)

the wonderful comfort you can have

Lex Fridman (24:04.260)

just sitting there and having food

Lex Fridman (24:06.180)

and freedom to do whatever you want,

Lex Fridman (24:12.500)

those kinds of things.

Skye Fitzgerald (24:13.860)

Doesn't have to be in the United States.

Lex Fridman (24:15.620)

In a lot of places in the world.

Skye Fitzgerald (24:17.580)

Well, that dynamic of sort of like survivor's guilt

Lex Fridman (24:21.340)

on some level definitely exists.

Skye Fitzgerald (24:23.860)

One of the hardest things from Hunger Report actually

Lex Fridman (24:26.220)

was eating, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (24:28.940)

Because we were in these malnutrition clinics,

Lex Fridman (24:31.240)

they're called TFCs, Therapeutic Feeding Centers,

Skye Fitzgerald (24:34.380)

where over a long period of time,

Lex Fridman (24:41.220)

children lost the ability to eat normal food, right?

Lex Fridman (24:45.340)

And couldn't digest it and just were literally starving.

Lex Fridman (24:49.580)

And the practitioners were trying to bring them back

Skye Fitzgerald (24:53.220)

to a state of thriving.

Lex Fridman (24:55.740)

But to leave those clinics, right?

Lex Fridman (24:58.100)

And to go to our camp or to go to our hotel

Lex Fridman (25:00.860)

and then to have access to food, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (25:03.380)

Because we could buy food on the streets and in the hotels.

Lex Fridman (25:08.340)

I mean, it was a very intentional act

Skye Fitzgerald (25:10.900)

throughout the course of the shoot

Lex Fridman (25:12.300)

to look at a piece of bread, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (25:14.780)

Or to look at a bowl of rice and think about that child

Lex Fridman (25:19.340)

in the TFC and think about how the privilege

Skye Fitzgerald (25:22.940)

of having that bowl of rice that I could eat and digest.

Lex Fridman (25:26.540)

So it certainly every day helped me appreciate, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (25:31.540)

The privilege I had.

Lex Fridman (25:33.340)

Every bite you take.

Skye Fitzgerald (25:34.580)

With every bite, absolutely.

Lex Fridman (25:36.780)

And so I wouldn't call it guilt.

Skye Fitzgerald (25:38.780)

It wasn't exactly guilt,

Lex Fridman (25:39.860)

but it was definitely mindfulness, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (25:42.780)

Meditate on the suffering of people who can't.

Lex Fridman (25:47.460)

That's right, exactly.

Lex Fridman (25:48.780)

So that knowledge sort of, it was catalytic in some ways.

Lex Fridman (25:52.300)

It sort of moved us forward really wanting

Skye Fitzgerald (25:55.100)

to shape the most powerful story we could

Lex Fridman (25:58.260)

because we were surrounded by so much suffering.

Lex Fridman (26:00.940)

So much suffering every day.

Lex Fridman (26:03.180)

How did filming that movie change you as a man?

Lex Fridman (26:07.900)

As a human being?

Lex Fridman (26:09.580)

You've filmed a few difficult documentaries.

Skye Fitzgerald (26:14.220)

That one is a heavy one.

Lex Fridman (26:16.740)

When you think of the person you were before you filmed it,

Lex Fridman (26:20.100)

and now when you wake up every morning

Lex Fridman (26:21.660)

and look yourself in the mirror,

Lex Fridman (26:23.260)

how is that person different?

Lex Fridman (26:25.380)

Every documentary I do changes me in a different way.

Lex Fridman (26:29.500)

Like I am not static in that sense, right?

Lex Fridman (26:32.820)

And preformed, it's like I change with every project

Lex Fridman (26:36.220)

because so many of them are difficult and challenging, right?

Lex Fridman (26:40.580)

And so in order to do them,

Skye Fitzgerald (26:43.180)

I have to allow myself to change and be changed by them.

Lex Fridman (26:46.420)

In the case of Hunger Ward,

Skye Fitzgerald (26:48.020)

you may remember the girl Omeima,

Lex Fridman (26:52.020)

who's the 10 year old girl who we showcase in Auden

Skye Fitzgerald (26:56.740)

in the south of the country.

Lex Fridman (26:58.660)

And we were there when she was admitted to the hospital.

Lex Fridman (27:04.740)

And when she was admitted,

Lex Fridman (27:08.340)

this 10 year old girl weighed 24 pounds

Lex Fridman (27:10.900)

and she could barely stand up.

Lex Fridman (27:14.060)

And we started with the permission of the family

Skye Fitzgerald (27:18.020)

to start to document her treatment

Lex Fridman (27:21.620)

and to see what would happen with this young girl

Skye Fitzgerald (27:25.020)

who is so severely malnourished.

Lex Fridman (27:27.580)

And we watched her be treated by the nurses

Lex Fridman (27:31.460)

and the doctors in Sadaka Hospital.

Lex Fridman (27:35.020)

And slowly over the course of a couple of weeks,

Skye Fitzgerald (27:38.740)

we saw her change.

Lex Fridman (27:40.660)

We saw her start to sort of gain strength

Lex Fridman (27:44.060)

and start to recover.

Lex Fridman (27:45.780)

And she also watched the caregivers very carefully.

Lex Fridman (27:50.740)

And I watched her watch them.

Lex Fridman (27:54.180)

And I'll never forget there was a moment

Skye Fitzgerald (27:58.540)

where about two and a half weeks, I think,

Lex Fridman (28:02.780)

into her treatment, we walked into a room

Lex Fridman (28:05.820)

and I saw her offering a cap full of water

Lex Fridman (28:10.100)

to another younger child who was also starving.

Skye Fitzgerald (28:15.460)

The shot's actually in the film.

Lex Fridman (28:17.420)

And so to see Omeima, this child who's starving,

Skye Fitzgerald (28:22.420)

giving sustenance to a younger, more vulnerable child

Lex Fridman (28:27.100)

who is also starving, moved me deeply.

Lex Fridman (28:31.940)

So I saw her learn from the caregivers around her.

Lex Fridman (28:38.420)

And as a human being, as a filmmaker,

Skye Fitzgerald (28:40.820)

I was incredibly inspired by Omeima.

Lex Fridman (28:44.180)

That capacity for compassion is there.

Skye Fitzgerald (28:46.460)

Even within a 10 year old girl who's starving.

Lex Fridman (28:49.420)

And so you asked what changed me.

Lex Fridman (28:52.340)

That's one moment, right?

Lex Fridman (28:54.340)

Rather than being crushed by such heavy content,

Skye Fitzgerald (28:57.060)

it was actually the opposite,

Lex Fridman (28:58.620)

where I came away inspired by a 10 year old girl.

Lex Fridman (29:02.300)

And I didn't anticipate that.

Lex Fridman (29:05.180)

I didn't think that's what this content would do,

Lex Fridman (29:07.340)

but it's what it did.

Lex Fridman (29:08.540)

It reinforced for me sort of this incredible capacity

Lex Fridman (29:13.020)

we all have as human beings, right?

Lex Fridman (29:16.100)

To do good, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (29:17.860)

To even within the most difficult circumstances,

Lex Fridman (29:20.820)

to choose who we become and what we do.

Lex Fridman (29:24.940)

And a 10 year old girl taught me that

Lex Fridman (29:27.300)

or reinforced that for me.

Skye Fitzgerald (29:29.140)

Were you able to feel the culture of the people,

Lex Fridman (29:34.140)

so the language barrier,

Skye Fitzgerald (29:37.340)

were you able to break through the language barrier,

Lex Fridman (29:39.180)

the culture barrier, to understand the people?

Skye Fitzgerald (29:45.100)

Because even suffering has a language of sorts,

Lex Fridman (29:48.940)

depending on where you are.

Skye Fitzgerald (29:50.580)

The way people joke about things,

Lex Fridman (29:52.740)

the way they cry, the way.

Skye Fitzgerald (29:55.740)

This is an interesting thing I actually wanna ask you.

Lex Fridman (29:57.540)

Sorry, I'm asking a million questions.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:00:00.660)

you're going to have someone from the de facto authorities

Lex Fridman (2:00:03.700)

with you anyway the entire time you're there.

Lex Fridman (2:00:06.740)

So the authorities are with you in form anyway.

Lex Fridman (2:00:10.940)

Regarding fear, yeah, of course.

Lex Fridman (2:00:17.340)

I mean, fear is a natural human emotion, right?

Lex Fridman (2:00:20.740)

And I think we have a weird mindset,

Skye Fitzgerald (2:00:26.980)

this sort of heroic mindset surrounding fear in the US,

Lex Fridman (2:00:29.980)

which I don't pay tribute to.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:00:34.180)

I believe as a natural human emotion,

Lex Fridman (2:00:37.780)

it's an alarm bell that I need to pay attention to.

Lex Fridman (2:00:40.180)

And I think rather than pretending to be brave,

Lex Fridman (2:00:47.340)

I think you have to just acknowledge that fear has a place

Skye Fitzgerald (2:00:52.860)

to keep you alive.

Lex Fridman (2:00:54.540)

And I think it's a matter of not letting the fear arrest you

Lex Fridman (2:01:01.100)

and allowing the fear to live and then acting anyway.

Lex Fridman (2:01:04.740)

Don't you think as a documentary filmmaker,

Skye Fitzgerald (2:01:07.620)

the fear is a really good signal

Lex Fridman (2:01:10.500)

for potentially a good thing to do

Lex Fridman (2:01:12.820)

because there's a story there?

Lex Fridman (2:01:14.900)

So is fear is an indicator that you shouldn't do it

Lex Fridman (2:01:17.340)

or is it an indicator that you should do it?

Lex Fridman (2:01:19.220)

It's probably an indication you should do it, right?

Lex Fridman (2:01:22.980)

And strangely, I think that's why,

Lex Fridman (2:01:27.700)

I think that if there's something unusual

Skye Fitzgerald (2:01:30.500)

about the work I do in some part,

Lex Fridman (2:01:32.260)

it's because of these types of stories, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (2:01:35.180)

They're hard to access, but you also have to have

Lex Fridman (2:01:38.020)

a threshold of willingness to do them when you can't,

Lex Fridman (2:01:46.940)

there is no guarantee of physical safety, right?

Lex Fridman (2:01:50.180)

And maybe that's why you should do them.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:01:52.860)

I'm very much motivated by the things that scare me.

Lex Fridman (2:01:56.260)

They seem to direct the things that are worth doing

Skye Fitzgerald (2:02:00.300)

in this all too short life.

Lex Fridman (2:02:01.980)

How often do you interact with our friendly friends

Lex Fridman (2:02:05.100)

at the police departments of various locations?

Lex Fridman (2:02:07.580)

Like, because of the humanitarian nature of your work,

Skye Fitzgerald (2:02:12.900)

are you able to avoid all such friendly conversations

Lex Fridman (2:02:17.020)

or are you often making friends with our?

Skye Fitzgerald (2:02:21.620)

I try to avoid the friendly police people

Lex Fridman (2:02:25.220)

all over the world as much as possible,

Lex Fridman (2:02:28.260)

but in some instances, it's important to be proactive,

Lex Fridman (2:02:33.260)

right, and make sure that they know what you're doing

Skye Fitzgerald (2:02:36.380)

before you do it.

Lex Fridman (2:02:37.580)

So it's all about the context and the situation.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:02:41.620)

For example, working in Northern Yemen,

Lex Fridman (2:02:43.620)

you couldn't film for five minutes

Skye Fitzgerald (2:02:45.620)

if you didn't have paperwork,

Lex Fridman (2:02:47.260)

because you'd be taken away.

Lex Fridman (2:02:48.700)

So you have to make sure you have all those permissions

Lex Fridman (2:02:50.740)

ahead of time.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:02:53.740)

50 Feet from Syria, I would love to talk

Lex Fridman (2:02:58.740)

at least a little bit about this film.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:03:00.700)

First, can you, high level, can you tell

Lex Fridman (2:03:03.900)

what this documentary is about?

Skye Fitzgerald (2:03:05.420)

Yeah, it was early in the Syrian uprising,

Lex Fridman (2:03:09.380)

and we returned to the Syrian Turkish border

Skye Fitzgerald (2:03:15.740)

with a Syrian American orthopedic surgeon

Lex Fridman (2:03:18.780)

who was volunteering, operating on refugees

Skye Fitzgerald (2:03:21.420)

as they float across the border from Syria into Turkey.

Lex Fridman (2:03:24.820)

And it was an attempt at the time,

Skye Fitzgerald (2:03:27.660)

before a lot of films had come out about the conflict,

Lex Fridman (2:03:30.580)

to really show again the effects of the war on civilians.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:03:38.660)

You've heard me echo that sentiment multiple times now,

Lex Fridman (2:03:41.820)

but people knew there was a major conflict in Syria,

Lex Fridman (2:03:47.020)

but didn't really understand the form that that was taking

Lex Fridman (2:03:50.060)

and the impact it was having.

Lex Fridman (2:03:51.740)

And so we embedded into the,

Lex Fridman (2:03:55.420)

at the time it was the only clinic in Turkey

Skye Fitzgerald (2:03:58.660)

that was sanctioned by the Turkish government

Lex Fridman (2:04:02.020)

to treat Syrian refugees.

Lex Fridman (2:04:04.900)

And so we filmed there with surgeons

Lex Fridman (2:04:08.220)

as they operated on war victims.

Lex Fridman (2:04:11.060)

And we also went into Syria into some of the camps as well.

Lex Fridman (2:04:14.060)

So in this film, there's a man who crosses the border

Skye Fitzgerald (2:04:17.780)

every day to retrieve the wounded

Lex Fridman (2:04:19.540)

and fair them safety and care.

Lex Fridman (2:04:21.580)

And you also mentioned about heroism in the United States.

Lex Fridman (2:04:25.300)

Can you tell me about this man and just people like him?

Skye Fitzgerald (2:04:29.940)

Like what's the heroic action

Lex Fridman (2:04:32.700)

in some of these places that you've visited?

Lex Fridman (2:04:35.780)

So in that instance, you know,

Lex Fridman (2:04:37.540)

I thought of him as the Turkish Schindler, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (2:04:41.100)

Because he was a human being who of his own volition,

Lex Fridman (2:04:46.180)

no one was paying him to do this,

Lex Fridman (2:04:48.820)

but he was spending much of his time.

Lex Fridman (2:04:53.580)

He was just a local businessman

Skye Fitzgerald (2:04:55.380)

who really saw the need in the camps

Lex Fridman (2:04:57.740)

right across the border 10 K away.

Lex Fridman (2:05:00.260)

And he saw the medical need in particular

Lex Fridman (2:05:04.260)

and how hard it was to get people

Skye Fitzgerald (2:05:07.380)

in desperate medical conditions across the border

Lex Fridman (2:05:11.180)

where there was a clinic just right across the border.

Lex Fridman (2:05:13.700)

But because of the security and the layers of security,

Lex Fridman (2:05:17.940)

they couldn't get out by themselves.

Lex Fridman (2:05:20.020)

So he took it upon himself as a Turkish person

Lex Fridman (2:05:24.020)

to build relationships with the Turkish guards,

Skye Fitzgerald (2:05:26.940)

which was relatively easy.

Lex Fridman (2:05:28.940)

And then he built relationships

Skye Fitzgerald (2:05:31.340)

with sort of the guards in the no man's land

Lex Fridman (2:05:34.460)

between the Syrian guards

Lex Fridman (2:05:36.220)

and sort of those who lived in the middle area.

Lex Fridman (2:05:38.460)

And then also with the Syrian guards at the camp.

Lex Fridman (2:05:41.260)

And he would drive out there daily and bring them food,

Lex Fridman (2:05:44.940)

right?

Skye Fitzgerald (2:05:45.980)

Talk them up and build relationships.

Lex Fridman (2:05:47.620)

And so every day he would bring these guards food

Lex Fridman (2:05:49.940)

and build relationships with them.

Lex Fridman (2:05:51.500)

And what that meant was eventually, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (2:05:54.380)

He had this avenue of access to and from the camps.

Lex Fridman (2:05:58.740)

And so he started using it

Lex Fridman (2:06:00.340)

and he would drive this avenue of access

Lex Fridman (2:06:05.100)

through the three layers of guards each day.

Lex Fridman (2:06:08.020)

And then they would open the gates for him

Lex Fridman (2:06:10.420)

because he had made himself trustworthy in their eyes.

Lex Fridman (2:06:13.940)

And he would receive the most desperate medical cases

Lex Fridman (2:06:18.420)

that were coming from all over Northern Syria, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (2:06:21.900)

To receive medical treatment.

Lex Fridman (2:06:23.500)

And he would, as you see in the film,

Lex Fridman (2:06:25.380)

he would ferry them into the back of his car, right?

Lex Fridman (2:06:28.980)

And then drive them to the hospital

Skye Fitzgerald (2:06:31.700)

where they would receive operations.

Lex Fridman (2:06:33.540)

And then he would bring them back if they wanted

Skye Fitzgerald (2:06:36.620)

after they'd healed and recovered back to Syria,

Lex Fridman (2:06:39.460)

if they wanted to return out post recovery.

Lex Fridman (2:06:41.900)

And he didn't get paid for that.

Lex Fridman (2:06:44.060)

He was spending his own money to do it

Skye Fitzgerald (2:06:46.580)

because he saw other human beings in need.

Lex Fridman (2:06:49.580)

And it's like we were talking about earlier.

Lex Fridman (2:06:52.820)

That's heroic, right?

Lex Fridman (2:06:54.620)

That's selfless.

Lex Fridman (2:06:55.940)

That's aspirational for me, right?

Lex Fridman (2:06:59.940)

Here's someone who is spending their time on the planet

Skye Fitzgerald (2:07:03.940)

doing something of value and good to other human beings.

Lex Fridman (2:07:07.700)

I mean, if you draw parallels to Schindler,

Skye Fitzgerald (2:07:09.380)

I feel like the fascinating thing about Schindler

Lex Fridman (2:07:13.620)

is that he's kind of a flawed human

Lex Fridman (2:07:18.260)

and is not the kind of human that does these things usually.

Lex Fridman (2:07:21.660)

But he just can't help it.

Lex Fridman (2:07:23.500)

And that's like the basic humanity.

Lex Fridman (2:07:25.060)

Despite who you are, the basic humanity shines through.

Lex Fridman (2:07:30.340)

I think the whims of war test people in those ways, right?

Lex Fridman (2:07:34.940)

They ask of you things that you may not even know

Skye Fitzgerald (2:07:39.620)

were going to be asked of you.

Lex Fridman (2:07:41.220)

And then it speaks to who you are fundamentally

Skye Fitzgerald (2:07:43.700)

as a human being.

Lex Fridman (2:07:44.980)

They reveal who you are as a human being, just as you said.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:07:51.020)

Let me ask a kind of stupid technical question

Lex Fridman (2:07:55.180)

about publications of movies and so on.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:07:58.180)

I've been recently becoming good friends with Thomas Tall,

Lex Fridman (2:08:02.340)

who was the producer.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:08:04.180)

His company, Legendary, funded some of the big

Lex Fridman (2:08:06.340)

sort of blockbuster films and so on.

Lex Fridman (2:08:08.540)

And so obviously money is part of filmmaking,

Lex Fridman (2:08:11.420)

but also the release of movies.

Lex Fridman (2:08:13.820)

And me as a consumer, with Netflix, with YouTube,

Lex Fridman (2:08:21.740)

that's one of the reasons I'm a huge fan of YouTube

Skye Fitzgerald (2:08:23.700)

is it's like out in the open.

Lex Fridman (2:08:26.860)

Access, especially historical access.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:08:30.380)

Like over time, you can look back years later.

Lex Fridman (2:08:33.940)

If you pay some money, you can watch

Skye Fitzgerald (2:08:35.860)

some of the great films ever made.

Lex Fridman (2:08:38.340)

YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, I don't know what other services

Skye Fitzgerald (2:08:41.420)

there are, HBO, Paramount.

Lex Fridman (2:08:44.100)

Paramount Plus.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:08:44.940)

Paramount Plus.

Lex Fridman (2:08:48.260)

Anyway, there's all these platforms.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:08:51.260)

Spotify now.

Lex Fridman (2:08:55.980)

I understand they want to create paywalls and so on.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:08:59.020)

It makes sense, but I'm a huge fan of openness

Lex Fridman (2:09:02.500)

and I'm really kind of torn by this whole thing.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:09:04.660)

Anyway, that's a discussion for perhaps another time.

Lex Fridman (2:09:07.300)

But the short question is why is it so hard

Skye Fitzgerald (2:09:11.820)

to watch your documentaries and other films,

Lex Fridman (2:09:15.700)

other incredible films on the internet?

Skye Fitzgerald (2:09:20.020)

If I want to pay unlimited amount of money,

Lex Fridman (2:09:24.100)

I want to pay a lot of money to watch it.

Lex Fridman (2:09:26.420)

Why is it so hard?

Lex Fridman (2:09:27.940)

Well, Lifeboat is streaming free on the New Yorker.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:09:32.180)

Yes, I saw that, which is interesting.

Lex Fridman (2:09:35.420)

That doesn't make any sense.

Lex Fridman (2:09:37.340)

And then also Hunger Ward is on Paramount Plus,

Lex Fridman (2:09:41.660)

but also it's also streaming free.

Lex Fridman (2:09:45.660)

So you can either go through a paywall

Lex Fridman (2:09:47.940)

or you can watch it with ads with Big Macs interspersed.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:09:52.180)

Big Macs.

Lex Fridman (2:09:53.060)

Sometimes.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:09:53.900)

Yeah, the contrast.

Lex Fridman (2:09:55.660)

It's tough.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:09:56.980)

Well, no, it really reveals the power of the documentary.

Lex Fridman (2:10:01.300)

No, but it's still not, even those platforms are,

Skye Fitzgerald (2:10:04.380)

I mean, they're not as easily accessible

Lex Fridman (2:10:07.780)

because you have to like, you have to use,

Skye Fitzgerald (2:10:09.580)

you have to think and you have to chase a particular.

Lex Fridman (2:10:13.300)

You have to chase it, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:10:15.180)

I guess from an economic standpoint,

Lex Fridman (2:10:17.020)

the answer to that is pretty clear, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (2:10:19.420)

It may not be what people want to watch.

Lex Fridman (2:10:22.780)

Maybe people want to watch reality.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:10:25.540)

Maybe people want to watch animal rescue shows

Lex Fridman (2:10:30.540)

here in the US, which is exactly why in part,

Skye Fitzgerald (2:10:36.260)

I think it's so vital that we continue to do stories

Lex Fridman (2:10:40.640)

on things that aren't about flowers and puppy dogs, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (2:10:44.300)

I would push back on that.

Lex Fridman (2:10:45.260)

So there's TikTok and you could say,

Skye Fitzgerald (2:10:51.060)

well, look, humans just want to watch really short content

Lex Fridman (2:10:55.880)

because they seem to be addicted to that kind of thing.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:10:58.260)

That's partially true.

Lex Fridman (2:11:00.100)

But they also watch two, three, four, five hour podcasts.

Lex Fridman (2:11:06.220)

On TikTok?

Lex Fridman (2:11:07.380)

No, there's different platforms for that.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:11:09.700)

It's a place called YouTube, I'll teach you about it.

Lex Fridman (2:11:12.060)

Okay, yeah, I've never heard of it.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:11:14.340)

It's a good place to publish documentaries, I think.

Lex Fridman (2:11:18.900)

Humans are interested in a lot of things

Lex Fridman (2:11:21.860)

and I've seen many times a thing that you think

Lex Fridman (2:11:25.900)

is a niche thing become a very big thing.

Lex Fridman (2:11:29.060)

But for them to become mainstream,

Lex Fridman (2:11:30.980)

they have to have a platform

Skye Fitzgerald (2:11:32.300)

that allows for the mainstream to happen.

Lex Fridman (2:11:35.060)

The access.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:11:35.900)

The access, the dumb, simple, frictionless access.

Lex Fridman (2:11:39.940)

The frictionless access is a really important thing.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:11:44.780)

Paywalls create friction and not just because of the money.

Lex Fridman (2:11:49.500)

It can be free, but if you have to click on a thing

Skye Fitzgerald (2:11:52.100)

or maybe sign up or put your email,

Lex Fridman (2:11:55.620)

it prevents you to enjoy the thing you would really enjoy

Lex Fridman (2:12:05.020)

and you know you would enjoy,

Lex Fridman (2:12:06.660)

but your baser human nature prevents you from enjoying

Skye Fitzgerald (2:12:10.820)

because you can just open up TikTok and keep scrolling.

Lex Fridman (2:12:14.240)

So that's just something to say about platforms

Skye Fitzgerald (2:12:17.000)

because I think the things that need platforms the most

Lex Fridman (2:12:21.660)

are things like your films.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:12:23.940)

The things that I think a lot of people would love watching.

Lex Fridman (2:12:27.260)

They're very important and they can have viral impact

Skye Fitzgerald (2:12:30.460)

on the world that is fundamentally positive.

Lex Fridman (2:12:32.860)

You know, it's just, it makes me sad

Skye Fitzgerald (2:12:35.460)

that there's not a machine for celebrating those films.

Lex Fridman (2:12:41.900)

There are lots of machines to celebrate them,

Lex Fridman (2:12:44.180)

but they're just not as always accessible as YouTube, right?

Lex Fridman (2:12:47.520)

I mean, as soon as you write me that check

Skye Fitzgerald (2:12:49.080)

for a trillion dollars when I walk out of here,

Lex Fridman (2:12:51.340)

then I'm gonna put all my films on YouTube

Skye Fitzgerald (2:12:53.340)

because then I won't have to worry about, you know,

Lex Fridman (2:12:55.380)

selling them in order so I can make the next film

Skye Fitzgerald (2:12:58.020)

because you know, film is not just an art.

Lex Fridman (2:13:00.860)

It's also an industry, right?

Lex Fridman (2:13:02.900)

And that tension between the two is a constant interplay

Lex Fridman (2:13:06.540)

that is a reality for me.

Lex Fridman (2:13:08.740)

So I always have to think about

Lex Fridman (2:13:11.980)

how can I access the largest audience,

Lex Fridman (2:13:14.800)

but also, right, go out and shoot the next film, right?

Lex Fridman (2:13:19.300)

So that longevity question is also an issue

Lex Fridman (2:13:22.320)

and the finances are part of that sort of equation

Lex Fridman (2:13:26.820)

that I constantly have to rewrite over and over again.

Lex Fridman (2:13:29.540)

How often, as a creative mind,

Lex Fridman (2:13:32.260)

do you feel the constraints, the financial constraints?

Skye Fitzgerald (2:13:37.580)

I wish I could do a lot more films

Lex Fridman (2:13:41.140)

that I can't always because of financial constraints.

Lex Fridman (2:13:44.820)

So it's the number of films.

Lex Fridman (2:13:46.180)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:13:48.100)

And is a film that you do currently,

Lex Fridman (2:13:51.540)

is a film that you do at any one time

Skye Fitzgerald (2:13:53.900)

as you're filming it already funded

Lex Fridman (2:13:56.460)

or is it the funding from previous stuff

Lex Fridman (2:13:59.040)

that you're trying to use?

Lex Fridman (2:14:01.140)

Before Hunger Ward,

Lex Fridman (2:14:05.100)

I would just take a flyer on my films, right?

Lex Fridman (2:14:08.200)

Where I would just say this meets the so what threshold.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:14:12.920)

This is a story that has to be told and I want to tell it.

Lex Fridman (2:14:17.540)

And then I could just go shoot it.

Lex Fridman (2:14:19.620)

And usually on credit, usually on a credit card, right?

Lex Fridman (2:14:22.820)

So based on a belief that Lifeboat was done that way.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:14:27.460)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (2:14:28.300)

Right?

Skye Fitzgerald (2:14:29.120)

50 Feet from Syria was done that way.

Lex Fridman (2:14:29.960)

So you're on a boat, broke.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:14:32.220)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:14:33.060)

Yeah, but it's free food, right?

Lex Fridman (2:14:34.880)

And free lodging because there's a bunk on the boat.

Lex Fridman (2:14:37.100)

But I do that not intending to stay broke, right?

Lex Fridman (2:14:41.620)

But based on a foundational belief

Lex Fridman (2:14:44.080)

that if I bring to bear

Lex Fridman (2:14:47.520)

all of my sort of quiver of creative arrows to it, right?

Lex Fridman (2:14:52.980)

That I can create something of value, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (2:14:56.640)

In the world, but hopefully also financially

Lex Fridman (2:15:00.220)

that then I can sell to someone.

Lex Fridman (2:15:01.980)

And you know, every time I've done that Lex,

Lex Fridman (2:15:05.020)

I've gotten into the black.

Lex Fridman (2:15:06.940)

So it's a risk and I have to have a certain risk threshold

Lex Fridman (2:15:11.140)

financially to do that.

Lex Fridman (2:15:12.380)

But I believe so deeply in these stories

Lex Fridman (2:15:14.420)

that I'm willing to do that.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:15:15.640)

I didn't have to do that with Hunger Ward.

Lex Fridman (2:15:17.160)

Luckily I had funders for that film.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:15:21.420)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:15:22.500)

Yeah, take risks in this life.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:15:24.420)

It's gonna pay off.

Lex Fridman (2:15:26.660)

Which reminds me of, let me ask you,

Skye Fitzgerald (2:15:28.340)

I already asked you for advice about,

Lex Fridman (2:15:31.060)

for a filmmaker, how to win an Oscar.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:15:34.260)

Well, I haven't won an Oscar.

Lex Fridman (2:15:35.780)

How to get nominated for an Oscar, that's true.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:15:39.500)

Or just how to make great documentaries,

Lex Fridman (2:15:42.080)

how to make great film.

Lex Fridman (2:15:42.920)

But let me ask, even zoom out bigger.

Lex Fridman (2:15:44.920)

You mentioned some of these things,

Skye Fitzgerald (2:15:48.220)

doing the things that you think matters.

Lex Fridman (2:15:50.420)

What advice would you give to young people,

Skye Fitzgerald (2:15:52.920)

high school, college,

Lex Fridman (2:15:55.920)

dreaming of living a life worth living?

Lex Fridman (2:16:01.000)

What advice would you give them about career

Lex Fridman (2:16:03.800)

or maybe just life in general?

Lex Fridman (2:16:06.000)

How to have a life they can be proud of?

Lex Fridman (2:16:09.820)

Yeah, I don't know how you're gonna react to this

Skye Fitzgerald (2:16:11.240)

given sort of your expertise.

Lex Fridman (2:16:13.020)

But I would say put down the smartphone,

Lex Fridman (2:16:17.320)

step away from the monitor, right?

Lex Fridman (2:16:19.480)

Because real life is not a screen, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (2:16:23.640)

I believe that sort of the foundational skills

Lex Fridman (2:16:27.040)

which are conducive and important to success

Skye Fitzgerald (2:16:31.680)

aren't necessarily those technical skills

Lex Fridman (2:16:34.800)

which we're going to learn in trade schools or university.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:16:39.440)

I think they're more foundational than that.

Lex Fridman (2:16:43.280)

They're learning how to interact and listen.

Lex Fridman (2:16:48.160)

With humans?

Lex Fridman (2:16:49.000)

With humans, yeah, to really see and listen, right?

Lex Fridman (2:16:54.840)

And observe.

Lex Fridman (2:16:55.840)

And observe, right?

Lex Fridman (2:16:58.560)

And how to step out of your door

Lex Fridman (2:17:00.600)

and if the electricity goes out, right?

Lex Fridman (2:17:03.020)

And you're five miles away from your house,

Lex Fridman (2:17:05.040)

you don't need a smartphone to get home

Skye Fitzgerald (2:17:07.320)

because you've set visual markers for yourself

Lex Fridman (2:17:10.220)

on how to get back to where you live, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (2:17:12.500)

I think we're in danger right now

Lex Fridman (2:17:16.000)

of living in a world where

Lex Fridman (2:17:18.800)

if the satellites stop functioning, right?

Lex Fridman (2:17:22.400)

Then a whole lot of people

Lex Fridman (2:17:23.480)

have become completely dysfunctional, right?

Lex Fridman (2:17:27.760)

Because we're so reliant upon the screens in our lives.

Lex Fridman (2:17:30.900)

So I think there's a lot of foundational skills

Lex Fridman (2:17:33.200)

that have nothing to do with technology

Skye Fitzgerald (2:17:34.800)

that we need to learn and everything rests upon those.

Lex Fridman (2:17:38.000)

So I would say learn those foundations,

Skye Fitzgerald (2:17:39.160)

learn how to write well.

Lex Fridman (2:17:40.800)

Read a lot, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (2:17:43.360)

It's a different kind of knowledge and wisdom

Lex Fridman (2:17:45.640)

that comes out of that.

Lex Fridman (2:17:47.400)

So reading is kind of the equivalent of listening

Lex Fridman (2:17:49.520)

and observing and writing is

Skye Fitzgerald (2:17:53.200)

kind of integration of all of that

Lex Fridman (2:17:57.020)

that you've observed and listened to

Lex Fridman (2:17:58.480)

and tried to express something with that.

Lex Fridman (2:18:00.280)

So I think my training in the theater

Lex Fridman (2:18:02.600)

has served me so well in the documentary world, right?

Lex Fridman (2:18:06.720)

Because it's all about interaction

Lex Fridman (2:18:08.960)

and listening and talking and dialogue, right?

Lex Fridman (2:18:11.920)

And that's what I do in documentaries, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (2:18:14.200)

Is I listen.

Lex Fridman (2:18:15.840)

Yeah, we mentioned fear.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:18:20.040)

Being an introvert, I'm very afraid of people

Lex Fridman (2:18:22.640)

but I'm drawn to them and fascinated by them

Skye Fitzgerald (2:18:25.840)

because of that.

Lex Fridman (2:18:26.960)

Enjoy listening to them.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:18:28.240)

Totally.

Lex Fridman (2:18:29.080)

And observing them.

Lex Fridman (2:18:31.960)

And you mentioned reading.

Lex Fridman (2:18:33.120)

You mentioned books as a catalyst,

Skye Fitzgerald (2:18:35.380)

as a stimulator of your imagination.

Lex Fridman (2:18:37.960)

Is there books in your life, a couple, one, two, three,

Skye Fitzgerald (2:18:42.380)

that kind of left an impact

Lex Fridman (2:18:46.240)

or a little bit of a spark of inspiration

Lex Fridman (2:18:50.920)

early on in life that stand out from your memory?

Lex Fridman (2:18:54.400)

I was given The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

Skye Fitzgerald (2:18:58.360)

as a graduation present from my high school

Lex Fridman (2:19:01.840)

English teacher.

Lex Fridman (2:19:03.040)

And I still have that book in a special place

Lex Fridman (2:19:05.880)

on my bookshelf because I think it speaks

Lex Fridman (2:19:08.600)

to the nature of human experience, right?

Lex Fridman (2:19:11.780)

And I return to it all the time

Lex Fridman (2:19:13.840)

because there's wisdom there, you know?

Lex Fridman (2:19:15.760)

But there's many, many books.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:19:18.240)

Fiction or nonfiction, what connects with you usually

Lex Fridman (2:19:21.760)

in the past, for the imagination?

Skye Fitzgerald (2:19:23.040)

I read mostly nonfiction most of the time.

Lex Fridman (2:19:26.480)

Ten Points is a book I love a lot.

Lex Fridman (2:19:28.920)

What is Ten Points?

Lex Fridman (2:19:30.560)

Ten Points is, I think his name is Bill Strickland.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:19:34.120)

He was the editor of, I think, Bicycle Magazine.

Lex Fridman (2:19:37.720)

And it's sort of his personal memoir

Skye Fitzgerald (2:19:40.200)

of his experience growing up with a lot of abuse

Lex Fridman (2:19:44.080)

and how that transformed him as a human being.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:19:46.700)

You know, one instrumental book for me

Lex Fridman (2:19:49.260)

that I bumped into in my early 20s,

Skye Fitzgerald (2:19:52.000)

boy, these are all nonfiction,

Lex Fridman (2:19:54.160)

except for The Princess Bride.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:19:56.960)

Have to mention, it's an outlier.

Lex Fridman (2:19:59.160)

No, no, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:20:03.280)

I read that in my early 20s,

Lex Fridman (2:20:05.440)

and I found so many of the principles in that book.

Lex Fridman (2:20:11.280)

What are the habits from that one?

Lex Fridman (2:20:14.480)

Seek first to understand, then to be understood

Lex Fridman (2:20:16.860)

is one of them, you know?

Lex Fridman (2:20:18.760)

The notion of proactivity is one of them.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:20:21.800)

It's really, and so I've held onto some of those principles

Lex Fridman (2:20:25.060)

through my life as well, for sure.

Lex Fridman (2:20:27.920)

What have been, you've observed

Lex Fridman (2:20:33.880)

suffering darker aspects of human nature

Skye Fitzgerald (2:20:37.080)

in your own personal life.

Lex Fridman (2:20:38.880)

What has been some of the darkest moments in your life,

Lex Fridman (2:20:42.960)

darkest times in your life?

Lex Fridman (2:20:45.160)

Is there something that you went through

Lex Fridman (2:20:49.400)

and then perhaps you carry it through your work?

Lex Fridman (2:20:53.000)

Yeah, probably one of the darkest moments

Skye Fitzgerald (2:20:56.520)

was an experience that I had, again, in my early 20s,

Lex Fridman (2:21:00.840)

and I was living in Southern California,

Lex Fridman (2:21:04.240)

and the Pacific Coast Highway

Lex Fridman (2:21:08.760)

that goes north and south along the beach,

Lex Fridman (2:21:10.600)

and there's that little concrete path

Lex Fridman (2:21:13.980)

that people jog and ride their bikes,

Lex Fridman (2:21:15.440)

and I was riding my bike on the PCH,

Lex Fridman (2:21:18.960)

and I was coming up to a corner on it,

Lex Fridman (2:21:21.960)

and I heard this tremendous crash, and it was really loud,

Lex Fridman (2:21:28.920)

and I came around the corner,

Lex Fridman (2:21:31.520)

and it was a car accident, a car crash.

Lex Fridman (2:21:34.680)

It was a multiple vehicle crash,

Lex Fridman (2:21:38.000)

and what had happened is that a Volvo had hit another car,

Lex Fridman (2:21:44.480)

and then when it hit it, it went over the top of the car

Lex Fridman (2:21:48.040)

and hit a Volkswagen van,

Lex Fridman (2:21:50.240)

and it peeled away the top of the Volkswagen van

Skye Fitzgerald (2:21:52.760)

when it hit it and then landed.

Lex Fridman (2:21:55.060)

So three vehicles, and it just happened,

Lex Fridman (2:21:59.480)

and lying in the middle of the road

Lex Fridman (2:22:04.160)

was a body decapitated,

Lex Fridman (2:22:08.560)

and there was another person from one of the cars

Lex Fridman (2:22:12.460)

lying in the middle of the road, still alive,

Lex Fridman (2:22:15.360)

and then on the hood of the Volvo

Lex Fridman (2:22:17.920)

was this woman who had come through the windshield,

Skye Fitzgerald (2:22:21.120)

just a mess, blood everywhere, moaning back and forth,

Lex Fridman (2:22:28.160)

and a bystander ran into the middle of the road

Lex Fridman (2:22:32.680)

and started administering first aid

Lex Fridman (2:22:34.800)

to the person lying in the road,

Lex Fridman (2:22:37.040)

and I stood there watching the scene

Lex Fridman (2:22:42.440)

and every fiber of my being,

Skye Fitzgerald (2:22:45.720)

wanted to run to the woman on the hood of the Volvo

Lex Fridman (2:22:50.720)

and do something, anything, right, just to be there,

Lex Fridman (2:22:54.640)

and it was obvious to me that she was gonna die,

Lex Fridman (2:22:59.400)

but I felt like at least if I ran there,

Skye Fitzgerald (2:23:01.640)

I could offer some comfort for her last moment,

Lex Fridman (2:23:05.760)

and right then, the sirens started to blare,

Lex Fridman (2:23:09.760)

and I knew that there'd be paramedics there

Lex Fridman (2:23:13.760)

within minutes, that people would come to help,

Lex Fridman (2:23:18.080)

and I froze, and I was scared,

Lex Fridman (2:23:23.080)

and I didn't do anything,

Lex Fridman (2:23:24.880)

and I watched while this woman died on the hood of the Volvo,

Lex Fridman (2:23:33.760)

and that experience is sort of seared into my consciousness,

Skye Fitzgerald (2:23:38.760)

the fact that I watched and didn't act,

Lex Fridman (2:23:42.600)

I feel is one of the great failures of my life,

Skye Fitzgerald (2:23:46.600)

that I wasn't able to act in a moment of need,

Lex Fridman (2:23:49.400)

no matter how small,

Lex Fridman (2:23:51.840)

and from that, I made a decision out of that experience

Lex Fridman (2:23:57.680)

that if I ever found myself in a situation

Skye Fitzgerald (2:24:00.840)

where I had the ability to act and I could act

Lex Fridman (2:24:04.280)

to help another human being,

Skye Fitzgerald (2:24:06.280)

I would act to help another human being in such need

Lex Fridman (2:24:10.800)

that I would act, that I wouldn't let fear freeze me.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:24:16.400)

Instead, I would allow that fear to catalyze me into action

Lex Fridman (2:24:22.200)

and do something and intervene in whatever way I could,

Skye Fitzgerald (2:24:25.640)

even if I didn't have the skillset.

Lex Fridman (2:24:28.560)

And in some ways, all of that echoes in your documentaries.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:24:33.720)

I'm not gonna let fear stop you from trying to help.

Lex Fridman (2:24:37.160)

I think that experience, that experience of failure,

Lex Fridman (2:24:40.800)

what I framed as just human failure on my part

Lex Fridman (2:24:46.280)

is foundational probably to my work.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:24:49.600)

I don't want that to happen again, Lex.

Lex Fridman (2:24:52.000)

I don't want to be that person who watches.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:24:54.960)

I want to do what I can when I can.

Lex Fridman (2:24:58.680)

If we zoom out, you were just one human

Skye Fitzgerald (2:25:02.720)

that witnessed that, that trauma.

Lex Fridman (2:25:06.680)

One human that witnessed so much suffering

Skye Fitzgerald (2:25:09.640)

in different parts of the world.

Lex Fridman (2:25:11.520)

And as we zoom out across space and time and look at Earth,

Lex Fridman (2:25:15.760)

why do you think we're here on this Earth?

Lex Fridman (2:25:21.400)

What's the meaning of human civilization?

Lex Fridman (2:25:24.840)

What's the meaning of your life, of individual human life?

Lex Fridman (2:25:29.840)

And broadly speaking, what is the meaning of life?

Skye Fitzgerald (2:25:33.640)

Skyfish, Cheryl.

Lex Fridman (2:25:35.760)

Oh boy, yeah.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:25:41.840)

For me, I can speak personally on that only.

Lex Fridman (2:25:44.920)

And that's that I believe that the meaning of my life

Skye Fitzgerald (2:25:49.040)

is to try to make the world a little bit better before I go.

Lex Fridman (2:25:52.680)

You know, I, when I was in theater in grad school,

Skye Fitzgerald (2:26:01.920)

I directed a play called Shadowlands by C.S. Lewis.

Lex Fridman (2:26:06.040)

And there's a quote from that, it goes like this.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:26:09.000)

We are like blocks of stone

Lex Fridman (2:26:10.880)

out of which the sculptor carves the forms of men.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:26:15.040)

The blows of his chisel, which hurt us so much,

Lex Fridman (2:26:19.000)

are what make us perfect.

Lex Fridman (2:26:20.480)

Now, I would take away the perfect part, right?

Lex Fridman (2:26:23.480)

But I think I've remembered that quote for so many years

Skye Fitzgerald (2:26:27.560)

because I believe in the underlying notion

Lex Fridman (2:26:30.840)

that the blows of the chisel,

Skye Fitzgerald (2:26:33.520)

which are the experiences that we go through,

Lex Fridman (2:26:36.040)

shape us, right, necessarily so,

Lex Fridman (2:26:39.080)

and hopefully shape us into a better human being.

Lex Fridman (2:26:42.640)

And in my case, a human being that I hope

Skye Fitzgerald (2:26:45.840)

can make the world a little better,

Lex Fridman (2:26:47.800)

you know, through those blows.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:26:50.640)

Before it's over.

Lex Fridman (2:26:51.760)

Yeah, before it's over.

Lex Fridman (2:26:53.760)

Before you go, as you said, do you think about that?

Lex Fridman (2:26:57.000)

Do you think about the going part, your mortality?

Lex Fridman (2:27:02.000)

You ever think about that?

Lex Fridman (2:27:03.160)

You said you don't have a death wish,

Skye Fitzgerald (2:27:04.640)

you try to minimize risk, but eventually it's gonna be over.

Lex Fridman (2:27:07.760)

Yeah, for all of us, absolutely.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:27:10.040)

Well, speak for yourself.

Lex Fridman (2:27:11.360)

Well, you've got other plans as well.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:27:13.560)

I tend to merge, you know,

Lex Fridman (2:27:15.680)

you've got other plans as well.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:27:18.240)

I'm going to merge with robots, embody, no, not at all.

Lex Fridman (2:27:23.360)

Yes, for all of us, unfortunately or fortunately,

Skye Fitzgerald (2:27:26.440)

or who the heck knows.

Lex Fridman (2:27:29.440)

But do you ponder your mortality?

Lex Fridman (2:27:33.240)

Are you afraid of it?

Lex Fridman (2:27:35.400)

I live with my mortality, knowing that it's fleeting,

Skye Fitzgerald (2:27:39.840)

that my life is fleeting and that I'm gonna go

Lex Fridman (2:27:43.160)

into the ground, just like everyone else,

Lex Fridman (2:27:45.160)

or maybe as ashes, you know?

Lex Fridman (2:27:48.840)

So I live with that knowledge every day,

Lex Fridman (2:27:50.280)

but I don't allow it to stop me or hold me up.

Lex Fridman (2:27:54.360)

Rather, I really, it drives me, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (2:27:58.080)

It drives me to try to get as much done

Lex Fridman (2:28:00.120)

as I can before I go, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (2:28:02.960)

Yeah, so the knowledge of your death

Lex Fridman (2:28:05.680)

is a kind of dance partner,

Lex Fridman (2:28:07.720)

and you try to dance beautifully.

Lex Fridman (2:28:10.760)

This guy, you're an incredible human,

Skye Fitzgerald (2:28:13.080)

incredible artist and filmmaker,

Lex Fridman (2:28:16.080)

and it's a huge honor that you would sit

Lex Fridman (2:28:18.000)

and spend your really valuable time with me today.

Lex Fridman (2:28:20.840)

I really, really enjoyed this conversation.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:28:22.320)

I did too, thanks for having me, Lex,

Lex Fridman (2:28:23.840)

and thanks for doing what you do.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:28:25.920)

Thanks for listening to this conversation

Lex Fridman (2:28:27.440)

with Sky Fist Gerald.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:28:29.040)

To support this podcast,

Lex Fridman (2:28:30.400)

please check out our sponsors in the description.

Lex Fridman (2:28:33.160)

And now, let me leave you with some words

Lex Fridman (2:28:35.320)

from Elie Wiesel.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:28:37.400)

The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.

Lex Fridman (2:28:41.600)

The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:28:45.760)

The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference.

Lex Fridman (2:28:49.760)

And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.

Skye Fitzgerald (2:28:54.760)

Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.

Lex Fridman (30:00.740)

I find that the people,

Skye Fitzgerald (30:02.660)

I've been talking to people in Ukraine and Russia,

Lex Fridman (30:05.980)

but in general, I've gotten a chance to talk to people

Skye Fitzgerald (30:09.420)

who've been through trauma in their life.

Lex Fridman (30:13.020)

And there's a humor they have about trauma

Skye Fitzgerald (30:18.020)

in hard times.

Lex Fridman (30:20.140)

It depends on the culture, of course.

Skye Fitzgerald (30:22.860)

Certainly, Russian speaking folk,

Lex Fridman (30:25.460)

I mean, the more suffering you've experienced,

Skye Fitzgerald (30:29.300)

for some reason, the more they joke about it.

Lex Fridman (30:31.660)

It's almost like they're able to see something deep

Skye Fitzgerald (30:35.020)

about humanity now that they have suffered

Lex Fridman (30:38.580)

and they're able to laugh at the absurdity,

Skye Fitzgerald (30:40.500)

the injustice of it all.

Lex Fridman (30:42.260)

And you could also say it's a way for them to deal with it.

Lex Fridman (30:45.780)

But that humor has a kind of profound understanding

Lex Fridman (30:53.260)

within it about what it means to be human.

Skye Fitzgerald (30:57.260)

That I just, and then you, to really understand it,

Lex Fridman (31:00.420)

you have to know the language.

Lex Fridman (31:02.060)

So I guess I'm asking, were you able to really feel

Lex Fridman (31:07.300)

the humans on the other side of the language?

Skye Fitzgerald (31:09.740)

I'd like to think so.

Lex Fridman (31:10.980)

I mean, as you noted, there are universities

Lex Fridman (31:14.340)

and there are universals in life that transcend language.

Lex Fridman (31:19.540)

I mean, suffering is suffering.

Skye Fitzgerald (31:21.940)

Love is love.

Lex Fridman (31:23.300)

Compassion doesn't take place only through language.

Skye Fitzgerald (31:28.500)

It's through actions.

Lex Fridman (31:29.460)

And so was there a language barrier?

Skye Fitzgerald (31:31.620)

Absolutely.

Lex Fridman (31:33.300)

Did we try to bridge that through other means

Lex Fridman (31:36.980)

and sort of universal emotions and experiences?

Lex Fridman (31:41.300)

Absolutely.

Skye Fitzgerald (31:42.140)

That's one of the things I always think about

Lex Fridman (31:44.100)

when I'm filming is how do we distill down to universals

Lex Fridman (31:49.780)

through imagery, through the vocabulary of cinema?

Lex Fridman (31:54.620)

Because I believe so deeply that

Skye Fitzgerald (31:56.420)

that vocabulary should be visual.

Lex Fridman (31:58.540)

So the words, what's the most powerful way

Lex Fridman (32:01.340)

to express the universal?

Lex Fridman (32:03.260)

Is it visual or is it language words?

Skye Fitzgerald (32:07.900)

I think it's visual.

Lex Fridman (32:09.860)

And we're talking about the human face

Skye Fitzgerald (32:11.660)

or human face, human body, everything.

Lex Fridman (32:14.300)

Through actions as well.

Skye Fitzgerald (32:15.540)

Actions, the dynamic.

Lex Fridman (32:16.900)

I'm thinking about a woman named Salha in the film

Skye Fitzgerald (32:20.100)

who isn't named, but you see her multiple times

Lex Fridman (32:25.380)

throughout the film.

Lex Fridman (32:26.220)

And she's basically the matron of the ward in the South.

Lex Fridman (32:29.420)

And she's the gatekeeper for the ward.

Lex Fridman (32:31.580)

So no one enters that ward without her permission.

Lex Fridman (32:33.980)

She's literally the gatekeeper at the door.

Lex Fridman (32:36.020)

So no one comes in unless Salha allows them to come in.

Lex Fridman (32:40.020)

But then she also is sort of like

Skye Fitzgerald (32:43.540)

the first point of contact for compassion in the ward.

Lex Fridman (32:47.900)

So when mothers and families are admitted,

Skye Fitzgerald (32:51.540)

she forms relationships between the moms

Lex Fridman (32:55.540)

and the grandmothers, for example,

Skye Fitzgerald (32:57.540)

who are admitted and who are living there on the ward.

Lex Fridman (33:00.180)

And she does it through hugging, right?

Lex Fridman (33:03.620)

She does it through bringing them food, right?

Lex Fridman (33:07.340)

And she forms these really rather quickly

Skye Fitzgerald (33:11.060)

deep relationships of compassion with the families.

Lex Fridman (33:15.660)

And so it's amazing to watch

Lex Fridman (33:19.100)

and no language is needed, right, to bear witness to this.

Lex Fridman (33:22.980)

And she also suffers because of that, right?

Lex Fridman (33:26.980)

And so near the end of the film, if you recall,

Lex Fridman (33:31.460)

when another child dies and the mother is wailing,

Skye Fitzgerald (33:35.860)

we actually cut away to Salha, who's in the hallway,

Lex Fridman (33:38.980)

who walks into another room and begins sobbing.

Skye Fitzgerald (33:43.020)

She's not a family member,

Lex Fridman (33:44.820)

but she has a deep relationship with that family

Skye Fitzgerald (33:48.380)

that she forged as soon as they stepped into the ward.

Lex Fridman (33:51.420)

So that's universal, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (33:53.380)

To see a woman weep because a child has died,

Lex Fridman (33:58.580)

even if they're not related to that,

Skye Fitzgerald (34:00.500)

that's a universal sort of emotional experience

Lex Fridman (34:03.500)

we can all relate to.

Lex Fridman (34:04.580)

So that's what I mean by visual vocabulary.

Lex Fridman (34:07.500)

And it's especially powerful

Skye Fitzgerald (34:08.860)

because she has seen much of this kind of suffering

Lex Fridman (34:12.380)

and she's still, maybe she has built up some callous

Skye Fitzgerald (34:17.020)

to be able to work day to day,

Lex Fridman (34:20.020)

but there's still an ocean underneath the ice.

Skye Fitzgerald (34:25.060)

She's kept her heart open

Lex Fridman (34:26.700)

despite all the pain that she sees and feels every day.

Skye Fitzgerald (34:30.060)

Somehow she's a human being who's able to do that,

Lex Fridman (34:33.020)

which is a very difficult thing to do, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (34:35.420)

She still allows herself to be vulnerable.

Lex Fridman (34:39.180)

And maybe that's why she can do what she does.

Lex Fridman (34:43.300)

What lessons do you draw from other families in history?

Lex Fridman (34:45.980)

So for me personally, one that's touched my family

Lex Fridman (34:50.540)

and one of the great families in history is in Ukraine,

Lex Fridman (34:54.140)

Holodomor in the 30s.

Lex Fridman (34:56.260)

32, 33, right?

Lex Fridman (34:57.540)

32, 33 with Stalin.

Skye Fitzgerald (34:59.820)

Maybe you could speak to the universals of the suffering here.

Lex Fridman (35:05.220)

What lessons do you draw from those other famines

Skye Fitzgerald (35:09.820)

if you looked at them or in general about famine

Lex Fridman (35:13.220)

that are manufactured by the decisions of,

Lex Fridman (35:17.220)

let's say, authoritarian leaders?

Lex Fridman (35:19.260)

Well, famine doesn't have to exist

Skye Fitzgerald (35:29.700)

or the bulk of famines on this planet,

Lex Fridman (35:31.820)

I believe don't have to exist.

Lex Fridman (35:33.180)

And most of them, or at least a good number of them

Lex Fridman (35:36.500)

are manufactured by the leaders

Lex Fridman (35:40.140)

that choose to use famine as a weapon, right?

Lex Fridman (35:44.060)

And Ukraine is one of the obvious examples right now,

Skye Fitzgerald (35:49.740)

with siege tactics that are happening

Lex Fridman (35:51.540)

in different parts of the country.

Lex Fridman (35:53.460)

And we built international humanitarian law for a reason,

Lex Fridman (36:01.980)

many years ago, and it continues to be written to this day.

Lex Fridman (36:06.500)

And it's there to prevent

Lex Fridman (36:09.500)

what's happening in Ukraine right now.

Skye Fitzgerald (36:11.500)

It's there to prevent what's been happening in Yemen

Lex Fridman (36:14.900)

for seven years.

Lex Fridman (36:16.340)

And yet there hasn't been any teeth behind it.

Lex Fridman (36:19.820)

And that's what disturbs me is that we can see

Lex Fridman (36:25.420)

how these famines are being used as weapons in war.

Lex Fridman (36:30.340)

And yet we aren't sort of using the levers of power

Skye Fitzgerald (36:34.020)

that exist in order to, I think, to call out

Lex Fridman (36:39.020)

in important and powerful ways those who are causing them

Lex Fridman (36:43.500)

and to make sure that we hold them accountable

Lex Fridman (36:46.300)

on the global stage.

Skye Fitzgerald (36:47.140)

Now, to some extent, that seems to be happening in Ukraine

Lex Fridman (36:51.300)

in a way that hasn't happened for a long time.

Lex Fridman (36:53.860)

And that gives me hope, right?

Lex Fridman (36:56.420)

And yet I don't believe we've done enough.

Lex Fridman (36:59.860)

And I think the national community needs to do far more

Lex Fridman (37:02.620)

than we are both in Yemen, in Ethiopia,

Lex Fridman (37:05.860)

and in Ukraine right now.

Lex Fridman (37:07.500)

There are certain kinds of things that captivate

Skye Fitzgerald (37:10.500)

the global attention, and it seems like starvation

Lex Fridman (37:14.140)

is not always one of them.

Skye Fitzgerald (37:16.700)

For some reason, murder and destruction

Lex Fridman (37:21.260)

gets people's attention more.

Skye Fitzgerald (37:23.620)

The death, of course, is easy to enumerate,

Lex Fridman (37:26.980)

but it's the suffering that's the problem.

Skye Fitzgerald (37:29.060)

Yeah, yeah, you know, when we went to film Hunger Ward,

Lex Fridman (37:32.820)

that was one of the creative questions

Skye Fitzgerald (37:35.100)

that I was really concerned about because starvation,

Lex Fridman (37:38.900)

you know, it's not a quick action, right?

Lex Fridman (37:41.780)

It's a long, slow, insidious process, right?

Lex Fridman (37:45.780)

Just like hunger, right?

Lex Fridman (37:47.860)

And yet when you're hungry, right, it takes you over.

Lex Fridman (37:53.700)

It becomes the most important thing, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (37:56.420)

It's just absolutely fundamental to life.

Lex Fridman (37:59.060)

It's like drawing breath.

Lex Fridman (38:00.860)

And so I really, before I filmed Hunger Ward,

Lex Fridman (38:05.300)

I struggled to sort of answer

Lex Fridman (38:07.860)

how we could creatively approach that

Lex Fridman (38:09.900)

because, you know, someone's sitting in a clinic, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (38:13.460)

Starving or being treated for starvation, you know,

Lex Fridman (38:16.780)

that's a pretty static scene, right?

Lex Fridman (38:20.420)

And what we found was that because of the volume of cases

Lex Fridman (38:24.380)

and because of the nature of sort of how quickly

Lex Fridman (38:28.380)

how quickly people were coming and going

Lex Fridman (38:32.060)

is that it was more dynamic than we anticipated.

Lex Fridman (38:35.820)

And there's something also about starvation.

Lex Fridman (38:38.820)

You get tired.

Skye Fitzgerald (38:40.260)

It's almost like it's a quiet suffering.

Lex Fridman (38:43.460)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (38:46.100)

And by the way, there's something about

Lex Fridman (38:48.100)

when I think about dark times,

Skye Fitzgerald (38:49.980)

I mean, you'll hear me chuckle, for example.

Lex Fridman (38:53.140)

I don't know what that is.

Skye Fitzgerald (38:54.420)

That's almost like, it's almost like

Lex Fridman (38:59.460)

you have to kind of laugh at,

Skye Fitzgerald (39:03.660)

you can't help but laugh at like the injustice

Lex Fridman (39:07.660)

and the cruelty in the world.

Skye Fitzgerald (39:08.780)

Somehow that helps your mind deal with it.

Lex Fridman (39:10.780)

I mean, I see this all the time.

Skye Fitzgerald (39:13.180)

Like when you're struggling, you can't feed your family.

Lex Fridman (39:16.380)

You lost your home.

Skye Fitzgerald (39:18.620)

The last thing you have is jokes about.

Lex Fridman (39:21.620)

It's humor.

Skye Fitzgerald (39:22.460)

Yeah, it's humor.

Lex Fridman (39:23.300)

It's like, ah, the fucking man fucked me over again.

Lex Fridman (39:28.180)

And there's jokes all around that.

Lex Fridman (39:30.460)

And then you laugh and you drink vodka and you play music.

Skye Fitzgerald (39:36.020)

I don't know what that is.

Lex Fridman (39:37.260)

I don't know what that is.

Lex Fridman (39:38.260)

It's gallows humor, right?

Lex Fridman (39:39.540)

It's a way of, I think, simultaneously acknowledging

Lex Fridman (39:44.340)

and allowing yourself to move forward, right?

Lex Fridman (39:46.780)

Beyond the pain and the suffering.

Lex Fridman (39:49.820)

So you mentioned Ukraine and you mentioned Putin.

Lex Fridman (39:52.780)

What are your thoughts about the humanitarian crisis

Lex Fridman (39:58.340)

and generally the suffering that's resulting

Lex Fridman (40:00.700)

from the war in Ukraine?

Skye Fitzgerald (40:02.420)

Well, first off, I think the conflict

Lex Fridman (40:03.980)

is just gonna exacerbate, you know,

Skye Fitzgerald (40:06.260)

sort of the global challenge we have with displacement.

Lex Fridman (40:12.940)

The last entire trilogy I did was about displacement

Skye Fitzgerald (40:17.540)

to great extent due to war.

Lex Fridman (40:19.540)

And, you know, this is a huge displacement of human beings

Skye Fitzgerald (40:23.060)

regardless of the cause.

Lex Fridman (40:24.740)

And that is gonna sort of have a ripple effect

Skye Fitzgerald (40:29.220)

across the globe for many, many years to come

Lex Fridman (40:31.980)

regardless of even if the conflict ended today.

Lex Fridman (40:34.940)

So there's that.

Lex Fridman (40:35.780)

That's gonna set up a whole nother strain

Skye Fitzgerald (40:38.020)

on sort of the global sort of resources

Lex Fridman (40:44.020)

that come into play to deal with refugees.

Skye Fitzgerald (40:47.740)

You know, there were 79 million displaced people

Lex Fridman (40:50.820)

on this globe prior to the Ukrainian conflict, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (40:54.780)

You probably know the numbers better than I do

Lex Fridman (40:56.580)

in terms of what the current estimates are

Skye Fitzgerald (40:59.340)

for displacement from Ukraine.

Lex Fridman (41:00.820)

It's four to six million.

Lex Fridman (41:01.940)

So what are we up to now?

Lex Fridman (41:03.220)

73, 74 million individuals on this planet now

Lex Fridman (41:07.100)

who are displaced?

Lex Fridman (41:09.260)

That's a significant bump.

Skye Fitzgerald (41:12.060)

I wish that the levers of power were used differently

Lex Fridman (41:16.220)

in situations like Ukraine and Syria, for example.

Lex Fridman (41:20.740)

So what are the levers of power?

Lex Fridman (41:23.380)

Well, military might.

Lex Fridman (41:24.500)

Let's take that for one, right?

Lex Fridman (41:26.740)

So I have always felt after working in Syria and Turkey

Skye Fitzgerald (41:34.700)

that we completely missed our opportunity

Lex Fridman (41:39.460)

as a player on the global stage with military capability

Skye Fitzgerald (41:44.380)

to prevent the killing of hundreds of thousands

Lex Fridman (41:48.700)

of civilians in Syria.

Skye Fitzgerald (41:50.860)

We had the ability and we didn't leverage that ability.

Lex Fridman (41:54.660)

You know, the fact that I talked with so many Syrians

Skye Fitzgerald (41:59.740)

during the course of doing that project

Lex Fridman (42:02.020)

who told me their stories of living in their house, right?

Lex Fridman (42:07.540)

And having a Syrian helicopter fly over their house

Lex Fridman (42:12.460)

and drop a 55 gallon drum full of explosives

Lex Fridman (42:16.260)

and shrapnel in their neighborhood

Lex Fridman (42:20.700)

over and over and over again.

Skye Fitzgerald (42:24.060)

Not focused on any military targets,

Lex Fridman (42:27.580)

only meant to kill and sow fear, right?

Lex Fridman (42:31.500)

And early in the conflict, we could have stopped that.

Lex Fridman (42:35.540)

Before Russia got involved, we could have intervened

Lex Fridman (42:39.020)

and created a no fly zone.

Lex Fridman (42:40.820)

That we, the United States or coalition

Skye Fitzgerald (42:43.780)

that we were a part of, yeah.

Lex Fridman (42:45.340)

And we didn't do it and we could have.

Lex Fridman (42:47.380)

And I think that's an example where we have

Lex Fridman (42:49.500)

the military capability to actually do good

Skye Fitzgerald (42:52.180)

in a situation like that.

Lex Fridman (42:53.420)

And we don't usually use it for those purposes.

Lex Fridman (42:55.700)

And I think that's what a military ought to be used for

Lex Fridman (42:58.660)

beyond just defending our borders is to save others

Skye Fitzgerald (43:02.620)

with the privilege that that power affords.

Lex Fridman (43:04.860)

What do you think about the power of the military

Skye Fitzgerald (43:07.460)

versus the power of sanctions

Lex Fridman (43:09.180)

versus the power of conversation?

Lex Fridman (43:12.500)

They're all different tools, right?

Lex Fridman (43:13.940)

To be used at different moments.

Lex Fridman (43:15.460)

But if words fail, if sanctions fail, right?

Lex Fridman (43:21.340)

I think there are moments in history

Lex Fridman (43:24.100)

where power is justified, right?

Lex Fridman (43:26.340)

And I think Syria was one of them.

Skye Fitzgerald (43:28.140)

I think when barrel bombs were dropping

Lex Fridman (43:31.900)

on civilian neighborhoods for months and months and months

Skye Fitzgerald (43:34.700)

with no intent to do anything

Lex Fridman (43:37.380)

other than kill Syrian civilians,

Skye Fitzgerald (43:40.060)

that's an instance I think where might is justified

Lex Fridman (43:43.540)

to shoot those helicopters out of the sky.

Skye Fitzgerald (43:45.340)

Here's the difficult thing.

Lex Fridman (43:46.660)

We've talked about Yemen.

Skye Fitzgerald (43:48.460)

Where's the line between good and evil

Lex Fridman (43:53.100)

for US intervention in different countries

Lex Fridman (43:56.820)

and conflicts in the world?

Lex Fridman (43:59.660)

It's easy to look back 10, 20, 30 years

Skye Fitzgerald (44:02.300)

to know what was and wasn't a quote unquote just war.

Lex Fridman (44:05.740)

In the moment, how do we know?

Lex Fridman (44:08.740)

I think it's incredibly difficult to answer that, right?

Lex Fridman (44:11.620)

And I think that's why leaders make the wrong choices

Lex Fridman (44:14.980)

so often, right?

Lex Fridman (44:15.820)

Is they second guess themselves.

Skye Fitzgerald (44:18.980)

I think you take all the data at your fingertips,

Lex Fridman (44:21.580)

all the intelligence that you have, right?

Lex Fridman (44:23.580)

And you look at it all very carefully

Lex Fridman (44:25.940)

and you make a decision, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (44:27.980)

There are some instances though

Lex Fridman (44:30.420)

where it's very clear what's happening, right?

Lex Fridman (44:33.980)

And leaders still don't act, right?

Lex Fridman (44:36.380)

In Yemen right now, for example,

Lex Fridman (44:38.660)

it's very clear what's happening, right?

Lex Fridman (44:40.900)

Children are being starved because of a blockade.

Skye Fitzgerald (44:44.420)

All the US would have to do is ensure that blockade,

Lex Fridman (44:48.340)

now there's a two month ceasefire in place now,

Lex Fridman (44:50.340)

but remains lifted beyond the ceasefire

Lex Fridman (44:54.020)

and children will stop starving.

Skye Fitzgerald (44:56.300)

That's pretty simple.

Lex Fridman (44:57.860)

You can trace, it's a direct connection.

Lex Fridman (45:00.660)

And we haven't had the sort of the moral wherewithal

Lex Fridman (45:04.940)

to make that decision because we're too interested

Skye Fitzgerald (45:08.020)

in maintaining positive ties with Saudi Arabia

Lex Fridman (45:10.900)

where oil flows from and so much influence

Skye Fitzgerald (45:15.980)

because Saudi Arabia has so much influence

Lex Fridman (45:17.660)

throughout the MENA region.

Skye Fitzgerald (45:19.900)

We want to keep that relationship tight

Lex Fridman (45:22.140)

despite sort of the moral wounds that come from that.

Skye Fitzgerald (45:26.300)

About half the world is under authoritarian regimes

Lex Fridman (45:30.580)

and everybody operates under narratives.

Lex Fridman (45:33.420)

And there's a narrative in the United States

Lex Fridman (45:35.820)

that freedom is good, democracy is good.

Skye Fitzgerald (45:40.180)

I have fallen victim to this narrative.

Lex Fridman (45:43.540)

I believe in it.

Skye Fitzgerald (45:46.020)

I'm saying this jokingly, but not really

Lex Fridman (45:49.620)

because who knows the truth of anything in this world?

Skye Fitzgerald (45:53.700)

I eat meat, factory farm meat,

Lex Fridman (45:57.020)

and I seem to not be intellectually

Lex Fridman (45:59.740)

and philosophically tortured by this, and I should be.

Lex Fridman (46:02.580)

There's a lot of suffering there.

Lex Fridman (46:04.980)

What do we do to lessen the suffering

Lex Fridman (46:09.300)

of the people under authoritarian regimes?

Skye Fitzgerald (46:12.620)

Again, the same question.

Lex Fridman (46:14.660)

Military conflict, diplomacy, sanctions,

Skye Fitzgerald (46:20.340)

all those kinds of things.

Lex Fridman (46:24.340)

Does that lessen suffering or increase the suffering

Lex Fridman (46:28.580)

for what you see in Yemen?

Lex Fridman (46:31.780)

Is it something that has to be healed across generations

Lex Fridman (46:36.300)

or can be healed on a scale of months and years?

Lex Fridman (46:39.260)

I'm just a guy with a camera, Alex, you know?

Lex Fridman (46:42.140)

But as a guy with a camera,

Lex Fridman (46:44.580)

I've seen a lot of things in a lot of places

Lex Fridman (46:49.460)

and I've seen the effects these decisions made

Lex Fridman (46:54.380)

by authoritarian leaders have on their own citizens.

Lex Fridman (46:59.300)

And that's what drives my thinking on this.

Lex Fridman (47:04.500)

And that's what drives and motivates me each day

Skye Fitzgerald (47:08.380)

to raise the red flag through my films

Lex Fridman (47:11.260)

and say, listen, Biden,

Skye Fitzgerald (47:15.940)

you campaigned for president in part on a platform

Lex Fridman (47:20.940)

that said that we would regain our prominence

Skye Fitzgerald (47:25.980)

on the moral stage of the world

Lex Fridman (47:28.300)

and that we would prioritize sort of a moral paradigm

Skye Fitzgerald (47:35.420)

over relationships with authoritarian regimes,

Lex Fridman (47:39.300)

Saudi Arabia being one.

Lex Fridman (47:41.500)

And yet when the CIA report came out

Lex Fridman (47:44.780)

that clearly articulated in detail

Skye Fitzgerald (47:47.780)

that MBS was responsible for Khashoggi's murder

Lex Fridman (47:51.300)

and for cutting his body into pieces

Lex Fridman (47:53.460)

and probably burning it in the backyard of the embassy,

Lex Fridman (47:57.460)

what did Biden do?

Skye Fitzgerald (47:59.500)

He didn't really make a pariah out of MBS

Lex Fridman (48:02.380)

like he said he was going to, right?

Lex Fridman (48:05.180)

What if he'd done something else

Lex Fridman (48:06.860)

and actually done what he said he was gonna do,

Lex Fridman (48:09.180)

which was make MBS?

Lex Fridman (48:10.020)

What if he had removed the ability for MBS

Lex Fridman (48:13.580)

to fly to the United States, for example?

Lex Fridman (48:16.340)

Now that's a sanction, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (48:18.060)

That's a sanction that's individual and concrete

Lex Fridman (48:21.700)

and would be hugely embarrassing for MBS.

Skye Fitzgerald (48:25.100)

That would have been Biden saying,

Lex Fridman (48:27.340)

this is unacceptable behavior, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (48:31.220)

This is something which because you executed

Lex Fridman (48:35.540)

such a horrendous act on someone living in the United States,

Lex Fridman (48:40.060)

we are not going to give you a stage here at least, right?

Lex Fridman (48:47.060)

Within the borders of our country.

Skye Fitzgerald (48:49.180)

Those are the things that leaders can do

Lex Fridman (48:51.380)

that I don't think they do often enough.

Lex Fridman (48:53.300)

And certainly our leader right now isn't doing it

Lex Fridman (48:55.820)

in the way I wish he were.

Skye Fitzgerald (48:57.260)

He certainly has taken a different stand on Ukraine

Lex Fridman (49:01.740)

and been very vocal.

Lex Fridman (49:03.100)

But there's so many instances we could talk about

Lex Fridman (49:05.420)

where I feel like the political game and ship, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (49:09.940)

Often falls into maintaining relationships

Lex Fridman (49:13.420)

like with MBS and Saudi Arabia

Skye Fitzgerald (49:15.180)

rather than doing the right thing.

Lex Fridman (49:16.820)

Rather than as a nation, a leader of a nation saying,

Skye Fitzgerald (49:20.940)

this is unacceptable.

Lex Fridman (49:22.420)

We have a higher standard than this.

Skye Fitzgerald (49:24.340)

Cause I think when leaders do that,

Lex Fridman (49:28.620)

it becomes aspirational, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (49:30.580)

It becomes aspirational for other leaders

Lex Fridman (49:34.620)

in the progressive world at least.

Lex Fridman (49:36.220)

And also it rings the alarm bells

Lex Fridman (49:38.620)

for other authoritarian leaders and says,

Lex Fridman (49:41.740)

you know what, there are lines, right?

Lex Fridman (49:44.220)

There are things that can't be done

Skye Fitzgerald (49:46.260)

or there will be significant consequences.

Lex Fridman (49:48.140)

Like you will not be able to fly into our airspace anymore.

Lex Fridman (49:51.500)

And sanctions I think need to be concrete and individual

Lex Fridman (49:55.180)

to some, in addition to the larger scope.

Lex Fridman (49:58.060)

But when they're concrete and individual,

Lex Fridman (50:01.420)

I think often they're felt in a different way.

Skye Fitzgerald (50:04.420)

You mean felt obviously by the individuals.

Lex Fridman (50:06.860)

And so the ripple effects of that

Skye Fitzgerald (50:11.700)

might have the power to steer the direction of nations.

Lex Fridman (50:18.420)

Because of the nature of authoritarian regimes, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (50:21.500)

Individuals have so much power.

Lex Fridman (50:22.780)

Exactly, right.

Lex Fridman (50:23.620)

So if Putin is put on trial in the Hague at some point,

Lex Fridman (50:30.300)

or at least there's the threat of that, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (50:32.140)

Now that's likely never to happen of course

Lex Fridman (50:34.380)

because someone has to be in custody to go on trial, right?

Lex Fridman (50:37.220)

And he's never gonna allow that to happen.

Lex Fridman (50:39.300)

But just knowing that that danger exists

Lex Fridman (50:45.780)

is going to change his travel plans in the future, right?

Lex Fridman (50:49.740)

MBS not being able to fly to the US,

Skye Fitzgerald (50:51.980)

he's gonna feel that and be embarrassed by that.

Lex Fridman (50:55.940)

So I think they have a special meaning and consequence

Skye Fitzgerald (51:00.860)

in authoritarian regimes because of that.

Lex Fridman (51:03.580)

So you said you're just a guy with a camera.

Skye Fitzgerald (51:06.100)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (51:07.780)

I would say you're a brilliant guy with a camera.

Skye Fitzgerald (51:13.940)

I'm also a kind of guy with a camera.

Lex Fridman (51:15.980)

You're a guy with a couple cameras.

Skye Fitzgerald (51:16.980)

A couple cameras.

Lex Fridman (51:17.820)

I have more.

Skye Fitzgerald (51:18.660)

A couple mics too.

Lex Fridman (51:20.340)

You got a couple mics, a couple cameras, robot over here.

Skye Fitzgerald (51:23.180)

When you can't beat them with quality,

Lex Fridman (51:25.620)

you bring the quantity.

Skye Fitzgerald (51:27.300)

That's right.

Lex Fridman (51:28.500)

So to me, that's also an interest partially

Skye Fitzgerald (51:31.740)

because I also speak Russian and a bit Ukrainian.

Lex Fridman (51:37.820)

I wanna study that part of the world.

Skye Fitzgerald (51:39.900)

I wanna talk to a lot of people.

Lex Fridman (51:41.620)

I wanna talk to the leaders.

Skye Fitzgerald (51:42.860)

I wanna talk to regular people.

Lex Fridman (51:44.540)

To be honest, and I would love to get your comments on this,

Skye Fitzgerald (51:48.700)

the regular quote unquote people

Lex Fridman (51:51.380)

are way more fascinating to me.

Lex Fridman (51:53.420)

As a filmmaker, how do you figure out how to tell this story?

Lex Fridman (51:58.340)

I'm sure a guy with a camera,

Skye Fitzgerald (52:00.300)

you're looking at war in Ukraine,

Lex Fridman (52:02.420)

but also what's going on in Yemen and Syria

Lex Fridman (52:05.900)

and other places in the world.

Lex Fridman (52:07.140)

I mentioned North Korea.

Skye Fitzgerald (52:08.380)

That's a super interesting one.

Lex Fridman (52:10.260)

Hard to bring cameras along.

Skye Fitzgerald (52:11.740)

China, in Canada, the truckers.

Lex Fridman (52:16.580)

There's all kinds of fascinating things

Skye Fitzgerald (52:18.460)

happening in the world.

Lex Fridman (52:19.780)

So you as a scholar of human suffering

Lex Fridman (52:23.780)

and human flourishing,

Lex Fridman (52:26.300)

how do you choose how to tell the story?

Lex Fridman (52:29.180)

How do I choose a story?

Lex Fridman (52:30.140)

How do I choose how to tell a story?

Skye Fitzgerald (52:31.220)

Both a story and how, I assume those are coupled.

Lex Fridman (52:35.900)

So how do you choose which story to tell?

Lex Fridman (52:38.100)

And how do you choose how to tell that story?

Lex Fridman (52:41.980)

Well, in terms of how to choose which story,

Skye Fitzgerald (52:48.380)

it's a bit of a mystery potion for me, frankly.

Lex Fridman (52:52.980)

I go often on instinct,

Lex Fridman (52:55.540)

but there's also a highly intentional piece of it

Lex Fridman (52:58.860)

for me as well.

Lex Fridman (53:00.140)

And the intentional piece is,

Lex Fridman (53:03.380)

I guess I'd call it the do I care threshold,

Skye Fitzgerald (53:06.900)

or the so what threshold.

Lex Fridman (53:08.500)

You personally, just something in your heart

Skye Fitzgerald (53:11.300)

just kind of gets excited or hurts or just feels something.

Lex Fridman (53:15.700)

So one of the things that disturbs me

Skye Fitzgerald (53:17.380)

about American culture, Lex,

Lex Fridman (53:19.020)

is that we seem to be a people

Skye Fitzgerald (53:21.380)

that's fascinated by reality television, for example.

Lex Fridman (53:24.180)

Like look at how many of us here in America

Lex Fridman (53:27.660)

watch reality television, right?

Lex Fridman (53:30.340)

That deeply disturbs me.

Skye Fitzgerald (53:31.620)

Not that I've never watched an episode,

Lex Fridman (53:33.340)

I've shot a whole season of it once to make a living, right?

Lex Fridman (53:36.020)

So it's like I know it, right?

Lex Fridman (53:38.580)

But I feel like the things we should be paying attention to

Skye Fitzgerald (53:42.620)

are the things, personally,

Lex Fridman (53:44.780)

are the things I choose to film, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (53:47.860)

As a human being, as a dad, as a filmmaker,

Lex Fridman (53:53.540)

I think we should be paying attention

Skye Fitzgerald (53:55.900)

to the fact that children are being starved in Yemen.

Lex Fridman (53:58.860)

I think we should be paying attention

Skye Fitzgerald (54:00.500)

to the fact that Ukrainians are being displaced

Lex Fridman (54:03.220)

by the millions.

Lex Fridman (54:04.580)

So there's this so what threshold that I use.

Lex Fridman (54:07.100)

And I feel like it has to be a topic

Skye Fitzgerald (54:09.580)

that if we don't cover and we don't put out in the world

Lex Fridman (54:14.100)

in the largest possible way,

Skye Fitzgerald (54:16.140)

in the hope of intervening,

Lex Fridman (54:17.580)

in the hope of marshaling maximum resources

Lex Fridman (54:20.300)

and attention to solving the problem,

Lex Fridman (54:22.780)

that's what I'm dedicated to as a filmmaker.

Skye Fitzgerald (54:25.460)

Because I didn't pick up a camera initially

Lex Fridman (54:29.100)

to film puppy dogs, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (54:31.820)

To make people smile.

Lex Fridman (54:33.420)

I believe the camera is a tool for change.

Skye Fitzgerald (54:36.460)

I believe the camera is a powerful tool

Lex Fridman (54:40.140)

that we can use to raise awareness and marshal resources

Lex Fridman (54:44.220)

and help people understand the impact

Lex Fridman (54:47.660)

that these geopolitical decisions have

Skye Fitzgerald (54:50.140)

on real people's lives.

Lex Fridman (54:51.780)

And that's the intent I create each film with.

Skye Fitzgerald (54:57.460)

Now, how I choose each story,

Lex Fridman (54:59.340)

that's the magic potion piece of it, right?

Lex Fridman (55:01.860)

And often one flows rather organically

Lex Fridman (55:04.820)

into another, frankly.

Lex Fridman (55:06.660)

So you just kind of, like you said,

Lex Fridman (55:08.140)

you go with instinct a little bit.

Skye Fitzgerald (55:09.940)

To some extent, but oftentimes I choose the next project

Lex Fridman (55:12.900)

based on relationships I've developed in the last film.

Lex Fridman (55:17.380)

Right?

Lex Fridman (55:18.220)

And so one often flows into another

Skye Fitzgerald (55:20.540)

through relationships I develop.

Lex Fridman (55:21.900)

And then a colleague will share a detail

Skye Fitzgerald (55:24.540)

about something that's happening in a certain place.

Lex Fridman (55:27.340)

And I'll go, hmm, really, I didn't know that, right?

Lex Fridman (55:30.860)

And usually it's before it's hit the world stage

Lex Fridman (55:33.860)

in a big way.

Lex Fridman (55:34.900)

And so I start to do due diligence.

Lex Fridman (55:36.740)

And often that, it reveals it to be a much bigger

Lex Fridman (55:39.340)

and more pressing topic that I wanna learn more about.

Lex Fridman (55:43.620)

Before I talk to you about Syria and Lifeboat,

Skye Fitzgerald (55:50.020)

you mentioned a camera is the best weapon.

Lex Fridman (55:52.860)

Maybe just, well, I can't take out a tank, right?

Lex Fridman (55:57.860)

But it's a good weapon.

Lex Fridman (55:58.780)

Second, top three.

Skye Fitzgerald (56:00.660)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (56:01.500)

I love the humor throughout this.

Skye Fitzgerald (56:03.300)

I really appreciate it.

Lex Fridman (56:04.860)

We were talking about such dark topics.

Skye Fitzgerald (56:07.140)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (56:07.980)

It resets the mind in a way that allows me to think.

Lex Fridman (56:12.540)

So thank you.

Lex Fridman (56:13.900)

As a filmmaker, I almost wanna talk

Skye Fitzgerald (56:20.620)

about the technical details.

Lex Fridman (56:23.740)

Uh oh.

Lex Fridman (56:24.580)

How do you choose to shoot stuff?

Lex Fridman (56:29.020)

Again, so maybe you can explain to me.

Skye Fitzgerald (56:31.700)

I work with incredible folks that care about lenses

Lex Fridman (56:37.860)

and equipment and so on.

Lex Fridman (56:40.540)

And I tend to be somebody that just wants to kinda go

Lex Fridman (56:50.340)

as like a gorilla shooting, like not plan too much,

Skye Fitzgerald (56:56.220)

just go with gritty.

Lex Fridman (56:58.580)

I'm trying to come up with words that sound positive.

Skye Fitzgerald (57:01.020)

Do a positive spin on what I try to do.

Lex Fridman (57:04.060)

But like gritty, don't over plan, use,

Skye Fitzgerald (57:08.500)

like we had a big discussion if you see this light.

Lex Fridman (57:10.780)

Yeah.

Skye Fitzgerald (57:12.180)

It's on a stand that's a very ghetto stand.

Lex Fridman (57:15.700)

Yeah.

Skye Fitzgerald (57:16.540)

You need a sandbag on that, man.

Lex Fridman (57:17.460)

Exactly.

Lex Fridman (57:18.300)

So no sandbag and like the stand is actually bending

Lex Fridman (57:23.820)

under the weight of that thing.

Skye Fitzgerald (57:25.260)

It could fall on us.

Lex Fridman (57:26.380)

It could fall.

Skye Fitzgerald (57:27.220)

It probably won't reach us, but it could fall.

Lex Fridman (57:28.060)

But the danger, live under that danger.

Skye Fitzgerald (57:30.940)

Embrace that danger.

Lex Fridman (57:32.660)

Love it.

Skye Fitzgerald (57:33.500)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (57:34.380)

Because that thing is easier to transport

Skye Fitzgerald (57:36.500)

than a heavier one.

Lex Fridman (57:37.740)

Yeah.

Skye Fitzgerald (57:38.580)

Sandbag, that's extra weight.

Lex Fridman (57:40.260)

So if you keep, like people tell me

Skye Fitzgerald (57:42.860)

there's the right way to do stuff.

Lex Fridman (57:44.660)

Like here's these giant cases with all the kinds of padding

Skye Fitzgerald (57:47.900)

for transporting stuff.

Lex Fridman (57:49.260)

I transport most of the equipment in a garbage bag.

Skye Fitzgerald (57:52.220)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (57:53.060)

So that's just a preference because that's somehow

Skye Fitzgerald (57:56.220)

that chaos allows me to ignore all the stupidity

Lex Fridman (58:00.660)

of loving the equipment and focusing on the story.

Lex Fridman (58:04.780)

So that said, I've never shot anything like worthwhile.

Lex Fridman (58:11.180)

Like there is power to the visual.

Skye Fitzgerald (58:15.620)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lex Fridman (58:16.460)

Like definitely.

Lex Fridman (58:17.820)

And so finding a certain angle, a certain light

Lex Fridman (58:22.940)

whether it's natural light or additional artificial lighting

Skye Fitzgerald (58:27.260)

just capturing a tear, capturing when the person forgets

Lex Fridman (58:32.260)

themselves for a moment and looks out into the distance

Skye Fitzgerald (58:35.740)

missing somebody, thinking about somebody.

Lex Fridman (58:38.460)

All of those like moments you can capture a lens,

Skye Fitzgerald (58:42.260)

a camera can do magic with that.

Lex Fridman (58:44.900)

I don't even know the question I'm asking you

Lex Fridman (58:46.420)

but how do both technical and philosophical,

Lex Fridman (58:51.140)

how do you capture the visual power that you're after?

Skye Fitzgerald (58:54.180)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (58:55.340)

So, so many of my films I think are built

Lex Fridman (58:59.820)

on the premise of access, right?

Lex Fridman (59:02.980)

Built on this notion that the biggest hurdle

Skye Fitzgerald (59:10.420)

to the story is getting there, being there in the room

Lex Fridman (59:14.860)

or being there on the boat while a crisis is unfolding.

Lex Fridman (59:19.860)

And that access typically is really nuanced

Lex Fridman (59:23.180)

and difficult to gain.

Lex Fridman (59:26.020)

And then trust flows from that, right?

Lex Fridman (59:28.940)

Cause usually it takes a long time to gain that access

Skye Fitzgerald (59:32.780)

because that access is so hard fought.

Lex Fridman (59:37.020)

It necessarily informs how we film, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (59:43.380)

To be in a room at Sadaka Hospital in Southern Yemen

Lex Fridman (59:47.380)

I can't have five people in that room, right?

Skye Fitzgerald (59:50.820)

I can't have a boom mic over a scene.

Lex Fridman (59:54.220)

I want in creatively the opposite of that as well.

Lex Fridman (59:58.220)

So it's not just a logistical question,