In this episode we are joined by the irrepressible "Coffeezilla" (aka Stephen Findeisen), a man who is, it's fair to say, kind of a big deal on YouTube. And rightly so! His channel focuses on exposing "scams, fraudsters and fake gurus" and he has received a great deal of praise for the detail, depth, and quality of the research that he goes into for each episode. Coffeezilla has been particularly active in digging into cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and other financial Ponzi and pump and dump schemes. Indeed, he has received praise from the MSM in relation to his coverage of the infamous Sam Bankman-Fried, and has most recently managed to arouse the ire of mega-influencer Logan Paul, after covering Paul's total NFT scam ‘problematic’ failed NFT offering.

We share a lot of common interests with Coffeezilla and this interview as a result is pretty broad-ranging. To mention just a few, we discuss Elon Musk, the way unscrupulous individuals leverage capitalist financial systems, the death of expertise, modern online ecosystems, the differences and parallels between financial and secular gurus , and the psychological and technological tricks gurus use to seperate people from their hard-earned cash.

Coffeezilla's hard work on financial scammer has made him extremely knowledgeable. He's also as sharp as a tack and really fun guy to chat with. So, we were super lucky to be able to snag him as a guest. We enjoyed ourselves thoroughly, and we hope you enjoy the interview too.

Oh, and Chris and Matt talk about Lex Fridman and that damn booklist in the introduction, and introduce a new segment the 'Weekly Wisdom of Mikhaila' at the end.

Enjoy!

Links

Coffeezilla feed on YouTube

Coffeezilla's Investigating Logan Paul's CryptoZoo series

Logan Paul's attempts to address and redress

CoffeeZilla on The Lex Fridman Podcast

MIchaela's Q&A to end 2022

Lex being sad about people dunking on his reading list

Nassim Taleb on Lex

Nathan J Robinson: The Guy Who Just Loves Everyone