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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   17536 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 6, 2025

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This interview has attracted a lot of controversy in the weeks leading up to it, as Fridman has said that he wanted to conduct the interview in Russian, which they both speak fluently. Zelensky did not want to conduct the interview in Russian for symbolic reasons that are probably quite easy to understand. In the lead up of the interview, Fridman has a 10 minute introduction in which he tries to justify why wanted to speak Russian, and then the first ten minutes of the real interview is him trying to convince Zelensky. His main argument is that if Zelensky speaks Russian, an interpreter would not be needed, and more of Zelensky's wit and dynamism would come through, and that there wouldn't be a 2-3 second delay in their communication.

While I'm sure the symbolic reasons are a consideration, isn't it possible that Zelensky just wanted the interview to be in English to maximize the odds that an English-speaking audience would see it? I'm sure there's a lot of casual followers of Fridman who might give an episode a skip if it was entirely in Russian with subtitles.

Lex Fridman always dubs foreign language podcasts in english, and the process is quite smooth. I don't think there'd be any fewer listeners. Especially because Zelensky did spend a lot of the interview speaking Ukrainian. And in his own justification to Fridman, he said it was about the symbolic and nationalist value.

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