Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness | Lex Fridman Podcast #123

The following is a conversation with Manolis Kellis, his second time on the podcast. He's a professor at MIT and head of the MIT Computational Biology Group. He's one of the most brilliant, productive, and kind people I've had the fortune of talking to. A lot of my colleagues at MIT and former MIT faculty and students wrote to me after our first conversation with some version of, "Manolis is awesome, isn't he? I'm glad you guys are now friends." I am too, and I'm happy that he makes time in his insanely busy schedule to sit down and have a chat with me. Quick summary of the sponsors: Public Goods, Magic Spoon, and ExpressVPN. Please check out these sponsors in the description to get a discount and to support this podcast. As a side note, let me say that I just got back from talking to Joe Rogan on his podcast, my fifth time on there. I also got a chance to record a separate conversation with Joe on this podcast. We talked on both quite a bit about his journey and his advice for mine. One of the things that I think made his show special is that he just had fun and made choices that didn't get in the way of him having fun and loving life. I'm learning to do just that. It's tough since I'm naturally full of self-doubt and anxiety, but I'm learning to let go and have fun, even if my monotone, robotic voice sometimes sounds otherwise. (laughs) For Joe, that involved talking to his friends, comedians, especially ones that brought out the best in him. Duncan Trussell and the five-hour first episode on Spotify comes to mind as an example of that. Duncan has been a guest probably close to if not more than 50 times on Joe's podcast. My hope with amazing people like Manolis is to find my Duncan Trussell, my Joey Diaz, and yes, even my Eddie Bravo. Obviously, Joe and I are very different people, but ultimately both love life when we can interact often with people we love and who inspire us, make us smile, make us think, and make us have fun when we get behind the mic of a podcast, whether anyone is listening or not. If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review it with five stars on Apple Podcast, follow on Spotify, support on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter @lexfridman. I also this time put a link in the description to a survey for this podcast on how I can improve and also an option if you like, I don't know why you would like to, but if you like to join an inner circle of people that help guide the direction of this podcast via email or occasional video chats. If you have a few minutes, please fill it out. As usual, I'll do a few minutes of ads now and no ads in the middle. I try to make these interesting, but I give you timestamps so you can skip. But still, please do check out the sponsors by clicking the links in the description. It's the best way, honestly, to support this podcast. This show is sponsored by Public Goods, an online store for basic health and household stuff. Their products have a minimalist black and white design that I find to be just clean, elegant, and beautiful. It goes nicely, at least I think so, with the design of Crew Dragon and the recent SpaceX NASA mission that sent two humans into space. To me, very few things are as inspiring as us humans reaching out into the unknown, the harsh challenges of space. Colonizing Mars may not have obvious near-term benefits, but I believe it will challenge our scientists and our engineers to create technologies whose impact will be immeasurable for us humans here on Earth, or those of us who, uh, choose to stay here on Earth. Personally, I'm kind of a longtime big fan of this planet. (laughs) Anyway, visit, uh, publicgoods.com/lex and use code LEX at checkout to get 15 bucks off your first order. This episode is also supported by Magic Spoon, low-carb, keto-friendly cereal. You might have heard on other videos that I eat keto mostly these days, so Magic Spoon is a delicious healthy treat on a hard workout day that fits into that crazy diet. Also, they're a sponsor of Episode 100 with my dad and got my dad to buy this cereal, and he now loves it, honestly just loves it. It's kind of funny actually. The deep heartfelt nature of that conversation and the silliness of the cereal captures my dad perfectly. Much of the hardship in his life he dealt with using wit and humor. His favorite flavor happens to be cocoa. Mine is too. He hasn't bought the Eight Sleep mattress yet, though my mom wants to, but he's all about this Magic Spoon cereal. I think it's his actually favorite sponsor of this podcast, probably because they chose to sponsor the episode he's on. Anyway, click the magic spoon.com/lex link in the description and use code LEX at checkout for free shipping, to let them know I sent you, and also indirectly to make my dad happy. This show is also sponsored by ExpressVPN. Get it at expressvpn.com/lexpod. They gave me a suggested opening line of, "Using the internet without ExpressVPN is like going to the bathroom and not closing the door." This is like GPT-3 suggesting to me how to be more human-like, and I'll honestly take all the help I can get. By way of life advice, let me tell you that you need a VPN to protect you from Russians like me. In fact, this podcast is a kind of hack of your biological network where I use my monotone, low-energy voice to convince you to buy a kind of expensive cereal as a way to influence the stability of the US economy. I use ExpressVPN on both Windows and Linux to protect myself if I ever do shady things on the internet, which of course I never do and never will.So, secure your online activity by going to expressvpn.com/lexpod to get a extra three months free, and to support this podcast. And now, here's my conversation with Manolis Kellis. What is beautiful about the human epigenome?