Lex Fridman

So yeah, the knowledge that it ends is the painful thing, not the actual moment of the ending, yeah.

Many times what makes moments really precious is that they're going to be gone.

I think that's not a trivial thing for us humans to really contend with.

I think religion, religious thought, the divine, I think help with that.

It's very dogmatic, yeah.

So let's go to literature, because we didn't really mention literature much, except you did briefly mention Epic of Gilgamesh.

Yeah.

So that was written in cuneiform.

It's one of the earliest works of literature.

That's right.

Can you tell me about this work?

I mean, what can you say about the telling of stories in written form during that time?

Do you think that too stretched back in time?

And many of those stories are sadly lost to time or not yet found.

You mentioned floods.

And speaking of stories that have been lost and found, you're well known for a lot of things.

One of them is decoding the so-called ARC tablet.

You got to tell me the story, this ancient Babylonian clay tablet dating 1700 BC, which contains a flood narrative that predates the biblical story of Noah by a thousand years.

At least.

At least.