 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brookshow. All right, everybody, welcome to Iran Brookshow this Friday afternoon. The reason to show this morning, so I figured I'd do one now. We'll do a quick news roundup and we'll call it a week. Tomorrow, just to remind everybody, tomorrow we have an AMA. Ask me anything at 3 p.m. East Coast time right here. I'll post a link for the show after this show or tonight sometime. We'll also do a show on Sunday, also sometime in the afternoon, and then Monday morning, Monday night, and then Tuesday morning. And then I am off on another very long trip in which I hope to do many shows. But as you know, travel is crazy and sometimes hard to tell whether we'll be able to do shows or not. All right, let's jump in. I think one of the amazing things in American politics, well, the most amazing thing in American politics is indeed Donald Trump. And I find it amazing. I just tweeted something the other day, an old quote of Donald Trump's about showing his complete and utter ignorance of economics and trade and not understanding trade and what trade deficits represented and so on. And I said something about some people would like this guy to be president again or vote for him again. And the response, a bewildering, because everybody basically responses basically, well, we don't really like Trump, but he's better than Biden. And you see that over and over and over again. Nobody likes Trump. And yet, Trump is by far leading the Republican field. Trump is by far. The choice right now, for example, right now over the next year and a half is not between Trump and Biden. The choice over the next year and a half has been between Trump and a bunch of Republicans. And indeed, a bunch of Republicans who I at least think and I think a lot of people think can actually beat Biden, whereas Trump has lost him once at least. And yet, everybody's positioning Trump as if that is it. You know, you've got a primary. You could vote against Trump in a primary. And I don't think people are going to. And this is the wonder of it. Nobody claims, nobody admits they're liking Trump, supporting Trump, being enthusiastic about Trump. And yet he has a big lead right now in the polls versus the Santas and everything else. And he continues to just do things that you think would really, really, really upset the Republican base. You think that Republicans who vote in primaries would really be upset at the extent to which Trump is just hammering at the Santas. I mean, hammering him on everything and really doing a better job than any Democrat could do in just going after the Santas left and right. And yet the Republicans don't care. They thought the Santas was going to solve their problem and free them and free them from Trump. And now the Trump's going after the Santas. They're just saying, well, okay, we'll just vote for Trump. And it's this mindlessness that somehow Trump elicits in his supporters, elicits in people, in people all around that is just, to me, just stunning, just stunning. And it's, yeah. So here's a piece of the thing that I got today in my email from the Trump Make America Greater Grand 2024 campaign. And it's called the Real Run The Santas Playbook. And this is the quote right at the top of the playbook. The real The Santas record is one of misery and despair. He has left a wake of destruction all across Florida. And people are hurting because he has spent more time playing public relations games instead of actually doing the hard work needed to improve the lives of people he represents. This is a guy who just got reelected by a massive margin. And I'm not saying he's a good governor. I do not know and I don't like the Santas at all. But this is a Republican writing this. This is a Republican spending this. And this is Trump. Trump lives in Florida. This is his state. You know, they write on the Santas's watch, Florida has become one of the least affordable states to live in in the country. In his first term as Florida governor run the Santas raised taxes on Floridians by more than 1.5 billion. The National Low-Income Housing Coalition estimated the Floridians make $10 an hour, must work 86 hours per week just to afford rent in a modest single bedroom home in Florida. The cost of living in South Florida shot up 10% in just the last year alone. You know, on and on and on and on. I mean, I thought this was written by the Democratic National Committee. While nearly half of gas stations in Miami fought a lot of deal without fuel. Floridians lucky enough to find a gas station with fuel repaying a stiff premium. Florida ranks in the 10 most expensive states in the continental United States for fuel prices. On education, Florida ranked number 39 in health and safety, number 15 in affordability, number 30 in education and childcare. Under under Santas, Florida has become among the worst states. And you can go on and on and on. This is not published by the Democratic National Committee. This is published by at the bottom it says paid for by Donald J. Trump for President 2014 Inc. And yet Trump is untouchable and yet nobody cares. And everybody's rallying around him. And again, the polls show the Santas thinking Trump rising. There was a dramatic rise after his indictment, but then it kind of went down. So I think I think the indictment effect is over. I think this is just the Trump effect and an America that can see through this guy. I don't know what what possible future could America have if they keep wanting to if Republicans, the party that's supposed to be marginally better keeps wanting to elect this guy. It's truly bewildering, stunning, amazing, depressing, really, really depressing. I can understand wanting to try somebody else, even somebody I don't like, but to go back to the same loser, to go back to the same horror, to go back to the same the same disaster. I just don't get it. And and again, for those of you say, but he's better than Biden, but there's a primary. You've got a choice. You can choose somebody else is better than Biden. Why choose a loser who's better than Biden? I just don't I just don't get that. And it really is time, really is time to Republicans to grow up. I mean, this guy is a baby, a baby. And just just wow. I mean, I don't know if you believe this list that Trump put out. Florida is like a horrible place to live. I don't know how any of you can live there. It really is bad. And yet Trump lives there. And if this is all lies, then shouldn't Trump pay a political price for attacking somebody in his own political party with such just brutal lies? I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. We will. We will see. We'll see what happens. I mean, pretty much everybody in the Republican field right now is better than Trump and everybody in the Republican field at least should get some benefit of the doubt. Given a Trump shouldn't be given to Trump. We know exactly what we're going to get. And yet people prefer this monstrosity. And the real possibility of losing to Biden on choosing somebody else and turning the bank finally on Trump. There's something magnetic about Trump that really attracts people. And that's what scares me and worries me about this country is that they fall for it. They fall for it. I mean, it's also scary and depressing that the only viable alternative seems to be DeSantis, who's awful. But at least DeSantis is different than you and Trump we know. All right. I don't want to spend too much time on that, but we'll keep coming back to Trump and looks like DeSantis because that is the rivalry. There is, it seems to be that there's a civil war broken out in Sudan. I don't have a lot to say about this. I don't consider this is super important, but it is. It is something that's dominant. It's in the news a lot and, you know, could potentially get more involved and and become more substantial. But this is a this is basically two warring factions within the within the really the elite, the political and military elite within Sudan, the the battles are between a militia and militia basically run by by one political somebody who would like to be president and the other one, which is the military representing the president and they're killing each other and they're destroying in the process a lot of civilians and a lot of a lot of people are dying in Haltoum, which is the capital of Sudan. This has some regional importance. Sudan sits between Egypt and Ethiopia. It sits on the Nile. Egypt, of course, is a is a crucial country in the Middle East, a large Arab country. It has a strong interest in seeing stability in Sudan, and it isn't out of the question that Egypt would intervene and try to intervene and try to deal with Sudan. So there's been a trouble spot for a long time. The British Empire had a lot of problems subjugating the Sudanese and indeed some of the worst defeats of the British Empire were in Sudan. There's a I forget the name of the movie, but there's a famous movie. Something with a feather, something with a feather right about about the British, the British army and British colonial army fighting the Islamic fanatics in in in Sudan. But anyway, Ethiopia is also a fairly important country because it sits at the entrance of the Red Sea. So it is it is strategic. They are also building a big dam for feathers. I think I think it's for feathers. They're sitting at the building a big dam, the dam in the Nile, which is warring both Sudan and and Egypt. So Ethiopia might want to get involved if they feel like Sudan is going to become hostile towards them. Sudan also like has a lot of other countries that border with it. It borders, you know, I think seven countries. So there are five other African countries that border with it, all pretty unstable countries, all countries that could. Make Sudan even more unstable, but also the Sudanese instability or civil war could impact those other countries. Again, this is not this is a part of the world, which is seems to be always at war. Sudan itself has split into Sudan and South Sudan and the South Sudanese, not exactly a fountain of liberal liberal government either. And potential civil war in South Sudan, South Sudan, by the way, when they split off, South Sudan took with them about three quarters of the oil that Sudan had. So South Sudan is oil rich, relatively speaking, the whole area is super poor. But you'll hear about this a lot. It's an internal battle, not about ideas, but about who should rule, who should be the authoritarian leader. I don't believe there's any right or wrong here. There's just brutality and one feels sorry for the people who have to live through it. And in a region that is, you know, obsessed with tribalism and where violence is unfortunately part of part of life. So last I saw the US military was on on high alert, not to intervene, but to get to get embassy personnel out of there, which I think they should do earlier rather than later. There's absolutely no reason to put American lives, American diplomatic lives in danger over a dispute that isn't significant for the US and the US has no stake in. So let's hope we get the Americans out of there safely and quickly and safely. All right, let's see. Yeah, it's, it's what it's 43 53. I wish it was 43 be 10 years younger. It's it's 53 years since the first Earth Day. Tomorrow is the official Earth Day 22nd of April. The first day was in 1970. It basically, I would say, launched kind of the, the, I don't know, the mainstreaming of the environmental movement. It launched kind of the the real a real successful era for the environmentalist movement in terms of government regulations, almost all our regular government regulations, at least the initial ones that that are on the books today were passed in the, in the years immediately after the first Earth Day run, basically, all under Richard Nixon, a Republican, a number of major regulatory regulatory bills were passed and to this day, including the Clean Air and Clean Water Act. Of course, they, you know, another big piece of environmental regulations was passed under Bush. So indeed, most of, I'd say most overwhelming majority of the big environmentalist bills have been passed under Republican watch. It's, it's, you have to, in commemorating the 53rd anniversary of Earth Day, I think, for us, what we need to recognize is that the environmentalists won. They won big time environmentalism is no longer a question mark, it's no longer a considered a radical radical ideology, it's not considered a controversial ideology, pretty much everybody is an environmentalist. They've managed to equate and do a very good job creating this package deal and equating environmentalism with clean air and clean water, something that all Americans do and should care about. But, but even when it comes to, I don't know, some little worm or some environmental inspections that take seven years in order to build a new highway, or just shutting down, you know, nuclear power plants or other aspects of the energy sector. It is just, it has just become standard that everybody agrees with this to some extent, maybe, maybe the approach is some of them are nutty, some of them extreme, but generally, I mean, who's against the environment. I mean, we even talk about the environment as if there is such a thing. Who's environment, human environment, the spotted hours environment, the worms environment. We just treat it as their environment and we buy into the idea that their environment is really a human environment, but that's not what the real environmentalists care about. But they've won that debate. They basically convinced us that they are the benefactors and the preservers and guardians of human life and human prosperity and clean air and clean water. And in every respect, they won the day. There's no opposition to it. It's not like the Republicans are anti-environmentalists. No, they have a soft approach to the environment, but it's still, they still are environmentalists. They all, all of them embrace that label and embrace the ideas. So it's sad. The left, you know, basically has managed to take this idea of the intrinsic value of nature, the intrinsic value of stuff out there outside of human beings and make that a standard that pretty much everybody in our country in our culture accepts. And there's almost nobody that fights against that and tries to segregate out the things that are, that we truly should care about, clean air, clean water, real pollution. And all the things that, you know, we should not, and all the overreactions and all the precautionary principle that basically says that if you can't prove that something's only going to be good, that there's no risk you shouldn't do it. And the whole baggage of the environmentalist movement that basically has always, always advocated for the sacrifice of man, for the sacrifice of human well-being, for the sacrifice of progress and technology, for the sake of nature. And, yeah, you know, that battle continues, that battle continues. But, you know, you go out there and you talk to people and this one is almost, it's almost impossible to talk about because they are, it's sowing green in it. Now, Alex Epstein is fighting against this in one dimension of it, but I don't think he's, and he's trying to reframe the debate around it in terms of human flourishing. But the reality is that even Alex, while he's had significant impact in some areas and certainly significant impact within the industry and among some politicians, the impact has not been that broad as to being into question, the whole legitimacy of the environmentalist movement, the whole legitimacy of an Earth Day, that is still far in our future if we want to challenge those things. But it's sad and tragic and one of the things that many of us have to really think about is why we're losing and how come we haven't been more successful in challenging this. All right. Finally, just some depressing statistics on life expectancy. I was going to do a whole show about this and maybe I still will because it's an important issue. I mean, life expectancy at both is a crucial measure of war being. It is a sign of a culture that is advancing or regressing. It is a sign of progress. And the reality is that since 2014, life expectancy in the United States has been in decline and you can't blame Biden for this. You can't blame Trump for this. This is an ongoing, you know, real existential challenge. The fact is that if you're born in America today, now granted, this is just an aggregate statistics that doesn't apply to any particular person and it certainly doesn't represent you as an individual and what your life expectancy can be. But it's kind of sad when you look at a country and you see the average life expectancy in the 21st century actually going down. And again, this year in 2021 to 2022 and into 2023, life expectancy at both is down. It's down significantly from its 2014 level. It's down more than a year. And, you know, it is somewhat bewildering, although the explanations are pretty clear. The first data to come out of this about the decline in life expectancy in 2014 was published by a couple of economists. And they basically identified the source of this as what they called at the time deaths of despair. Most of the decline in life expectancy was occurring among middle aged white working class males. And it was a consequence of drug overdose, alcohol abuse, kidney failure, liver failure resulting from alcohol abuse, and a result of suicide. And this was so prevalent that it actually had an impact on the aggregate statistics for the entire country. Over the last few years, that has expanded to other groups, suicide among young people, drug overdoses, but also just the obesity crisis, the fact that people are obese and don't take care of themselves. A lack of individuals taking their health seriously. A personal neglect of themselves. Again, fentanyl plays a role here, but it's not the only role. And now you're seeing younger people, younger people just middle aged white people and in other age groups. You can see them also dying at young ages, driving the average life expectancy down. I mean this is a real challenge. It's a cultural phenomena. It's something we have to think about and we have to address. And I will do a longer show about this whole concept of death and despair and what's driving that. I think it's a direct consequence of a mixed economy and a morality that provides no values and a country that is split apart and is in dramatic disunity. And yeah, a dramatic loss of value. And when people don't have values, when people don't have a purpose, when people don't have meaning in their life, then they do stupid things like take fentanyl, they do stupid things like abuse alcohol. And this is connected with loneliness, but again, loneliness that I think is the negation of the pursuit of values. And I think ultimately, obesity is a rejection for most people. And certainly there is medical, some people obese for medical reasons, but some of this obesity, I mean, is related to low self-esteem. It's related to just the disregard for one's own life and therefore a diminishing of one's own values. And you're seeing that across the country. Other thing that's really interesting about this life expectancy is that it's very, very driven by geography. This is very much a not a phenomena that is, you know, what uniform across the country. So I want to show you a map. This is a map of life expectancy across the United States. Whoops, wrong screen. That's green. And red is not Republican, although it could be given where you're seeing the red. Red is low life expectancy. And blue is indeed high life expectancy. And what might upset many of you is that the blue life expectancy tends to be in, tends to be, not uniformly, but tends to be in more democratic areas. It tends to be in the blue states and the red tends to be in the red states. That's kind of interesting. Now there is a life expectancy gap that is color skin related and has to do with all kinds of things. Again, we can get into it another time. But that doesn't justify this particular range. This range somewhat has to do with poverty. But this range also has to do with, look at it. I mean, parts of the country, the southeastern particular, has a far lower life expectancy, a life expectancy very similar to some second world countries. Then the coasts, particularly the northeast, and particularly the coast of California, which have goes to California, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, which have very high life expectancies. So there's something here as well to be talked about and discussed. I mean, some areas is pretty clear you get very low life expectancy in Indian reservations. There's a massive problem of alcoholism and drug abuse among Indian reservations. And that explains some of the low life expectancy in Arizona and certainly in the Dakotas and places like that. But much of this is a phenomenon of the south and I think is linked to those deaths of the despair of working class folks who lose meaning and purpose in life and who are taking their own life. But this is something people should pay attention to. This is an interesting map. The highest life expectancy for those interested is in a county in Colorado, a fairly wealthy county in Colorado. The lowest life expectancy is I think in South Dakota in one of the Indian reservations. But in Alaska is low life expectancy. That I guess doesn't surprise me given the cold. But look at Minnesota and Wisconsin and that's the Scandinavians who live long in Sweden but also live long in the United States. So some of this might be genetic. And as I said, there is a skin color issue. Certainly black Americans live about I think three years on average, less than white Americans do. But there's more than that going on. And it is interesting. Violence is another one. So life expectancy in certain cities is actually lower, particularly for young people if they're engaged in gang violence and things like that. So anyway, an interesting map I think. You can imagine that the left loves a map like this and it comes to all the wrong conclusions I think about it. But it is a map worth addressing because there is something going on in America that is unhealthy. Really unhealthy. In a sense it's killing us. It's killing Americans. But if you want to live long, from this map at least, it looks like you want to live in Costa California and in Massachusetts in some of the more heavily populated areas in the northeast. Or in the north of the Midwest, not in the Midwest, but in the north, in Minnesota, Wisconsin, places like that where, I don't know, something to think about. And something to consider, and something to consider about the people because I think a lot of this is determined by self-respect, by self-esteem, by people taking care of themselves. And one must ask oneself, why is it that people on the coast of California take care of themselves more than people in Mississippi or Alabama or Texas for that matter, most of Texas. That is, again, these are important questions to ask and I don't think you can quite understand America and understand the broad swath of America and what's going on in America and the tribalism in America and the politics of America without understanding these kind of issues and the kind of what's going on in the lives of people and why is this happening and this kind of real, obviously this real despair that is going on that is raising levels of either explicit suicide or slow suicide that people are engaged in. All right, to be continued, that is a topic that we will talk about in the future. All right, let's jump into the Super Chat. We're still about 150 short on the Super Chat. That's about $2 from everybody who's listening live right now. So please consider supporting these daily shows. Hopefully they will value to you and if they are value to you, value for value. Stephen, thank you. Just some of the stickers. Catherine, thank you. Equal to reality. Thank you. Thank you. It's $25. Thank you, Wes. All right. So Michael asks, will life expectancy increase for the upper middle class and wealthy while the working class dies younger due to addiction and suicide? If you have no future and live in the middle of nowhere, what is the desire to live? Yeah, I mean, I think that's a big pattern of what we're seeing. We're seeing people who are poorer, but also who haven't established a purpose in life. I think it has more to do with values. I think people who tend to be middle class, upper middle class and wealthy tend to have more purpose and tend to have a career and tend to have goals and tend to have much more mission in life and therefore have a lot more self-respect and self-esteem that drives the longer life expectancy. But it does look like there's a pattern in the United States where upper middle class and wealthy are living longer, quite a bit longer and working class and poor and whether that's in Mississippi or the Appalachee are living shorter lives and don't ever desire to live. But the way you frame the question, Michael, you frame it as if they're passive about this. As I've always said, they can get in the con, they can drive to Northeast Arkansas with their jobs, they can enroll in a training program, they can switch jobs, they can do work, they can go run every morning and get into better shape, they can drop the alcohol habit, they can drop the drug habit. This is all, all of this is not determined. This is within the scope of people's free will. But the challenges that we live in a culture that tells them that they have no chance. It tells them that they shouldn't try. It tells them that they will be taken care of by the state. It tells them that whatever, whatever their health problems or however obese they are, whatever, that's okay. Don't talk about shame-fatting, whatever it's called. And I think it's wrong to shame people for being fat and certainly without knowing what's causing them, but it's also not wrong to identify an ideal in terms of health and to encourage people to be healthy, to be healthy. But that suggests a standard, that suggests that health is a standard and people don't, you know, certain people don't like that. But yeah, it is, there is a lot of, this has to do with self-esteem and this has to do with self-confidence and this has to do with the view of oneself and this has to do with values. And in a world that doesn't really, you know, value values and a world in which self-esteem is getting a ribbon, it's not real achievement. And in a world in which we don't believe people have free will and determined by the environment or determined by the genes. In a world in which we tell everybody, don't worry the government will take care of you, surprise, surprise, people don't have the self-esteem to take control of their whole life. And one aspect of that, one manifestation for that is they die young. They die young. You know, it goes back to that great line from Shorshak Redemption, get busy living or get busy dying. And a big chunk of America is busy dying. And politically, look where they are. And that's that it tells you something about the modern Republican Party. It's a party that is dominated by people who are busy dying. Not good. James Taylor, why don't the Republicans learn that freedom is popular? Reagan won 49 states in 1984 running on a pro-liberty platform. The Santis Wanderland slide in Florida because he chose not to lock his stay down during COVID. Yeah, I mean, you would think, you would think that the Republicans would learn that, but they haven't. And maybe this, maybe that map says something about it. The Republican Party is dominated by people who have grievances against the world. The Republican Party is dominated by people who are, who are just pissed off. Who are just angry at the world, at reality, at life, at everything out there. And what they want is they want a savior. They want somebody to write in. And look, freedom, freedom actually requires you to take responsibility for your own life. Freedom requires work, as somebody said here. Freedom requires effort. Freedom requires self-esteem. Freedom requires the confidence that you can actually achieve and be something. And I think, unfortunately, the Republican Party is dominated by people who don't want to engage in that. Now, I'm not saying the Democrats are not, but the Republican Party certainly is. And it's given up on trying to attract new people. It's giving up on those independents. I mean, look at the Santis. The Santis is running a campaign aimed at alienating, alienating independents. It's aimed at fighting for the same base as Donald Trump has. And in a general election, this strategy is going to crash in his face. And he doesn't care, right? So, the Republican Party doesn't seem interested in bringing in new people. Doesn't seem interested in attracting those people who are living longer, those people who have more of an education, those people who are producing more, who are involved in innovation and creation and building and making stuff. And the Republican Party is now a party of complainers and grievances. And it's the left. The left has done everything. The left protected me from the left. A trans person might cross my path at some point. I might see a drag show by accident in some place. They're so upset. And yet the real problem of declining life expectancy in the United States, the lack of economic dynamism and economic growth, the economic stagnation, the rise of China as a potential military enemy to the United States, these things are trivialized and we obsess constantly. And we obsess constantly on, you know, important things, but on things that are existential only because of their causes, not because of the actual manifestations and the causes that we probably don't understand and don't know how to address. Like Woke, Louis-Philippe Norm, off-topics. Lesson of the week is the Elon Musk positivism around SpaceX's future. Lots of things to learn. Yes, I talked about that yesterday. I think it was yesterday. And I also talked about it, if you're interested in my ingenious video, that I think goes live today. If not, it'll go live over the weekend. But, you know, in a genious video with Robert Handishaw, we talk about what you can learn from the Elon Musk positivism. But certainly I talked about it on the show yesterday. And yes, the attitude to failure, the attitude to the rocket blowing up, the attitude, the whole way in which this is positioned. I'm here to learn. Bad stuff will happen. But I'm going to learn from that bad stuff and make it better next time. And this is how we progress. Wow. I mean imagine if that was embraced on a broader scope in our culture. All right. We're almost done with super chats. If you want to come in to help support the show, please do so in the next couple of minutes. Liam says, did you see all the leftists celebrating the Elon Musk rocket exploded, disgusting? Yeah, I did. I don't know if it's just leftists. I didn't identify them as such. But yes, a lot of people were glad to see the rocket explode and to see supposedly a Elon Musk fail, even though nobody who knows anything about what happened actually considers it failure, as a negative. Failure is something to learn from, absolutely, but not as a negative. All right. Equal to reality. This is just support. Thank you. Really appreciate it. Let's see. With $129, again, two bucks from each person watching, we would get there easily. So please consider doing something. Michael, what do you make of the Alec Baldwin's manslaughter charges being dropped, justified or leftist privilege? I doubt that it's leftist privilege. I don't know. I didn't follow the case closely enough. It does seem like it was an accident. Nobody intended it. Manslaughter would suggest that there was real negligence there. But I don't know that there was. I'd have to really delve into the case to have an opinion about it. But I don't jump to these conclusions of leftist privilege. I don't see why that would be the necessary case. And if it was privilege, why did he ever get? Why were the charges ever charged? Clark says, are transgender people being dehumanized by the right at pre-genocide levels? Well, I don't know about pre-genocide levels, but they are being dehumanized. There's no question about that. I think the approach the rightist taking is wrong with regard to transgender. I think you can make a claim about your opinion about transgender people without dehumanizing the people themselves and without treating them horribly. I think you can also make an argument about what should be done with children without completely making, what is it, vilifying every transgender person and every adult. I think it's a real psychological problem. I think it's a deeply rooted psychological problem that many people experience. I don't know how many. And we should treat these people not as villains, they're not villains, but they're people who think have deep, rooted problems and hopefully they can sort out. What we should definitely avoid is the whole treating children's whims, treating children's emotions, treating children's desires, treating children who know nothing about sex yet as if they are in a position to make a call about changing their own gender. I think that's ludicrous and absurd. If a child can't sign a contract, he can't choose to be another sex and can't choose to have surgery that is irreversible. So I think that opiability markers and all of this. I think children should be left alone once you're 18, go decide for yourself and it's your problem. It's your issue in my view. The right is very good at demonizing and throwing people. So is the left. I mean, this is why both left and right have become so brutal and unpleasant. Wyatt says, I respect you having a show since you're not CEO, but why is Todd charging $390 for a happiness community when he's supposed to be trying to build ours? Well, because he's providing you with a value. I don't think this, you know, I'm not sure whether 390 is, it's just for the same reason that you're being charged for Inran University courses. If you're going to sign up for it, now students can get a scholarship. His job is not to make you happy. His job is, you know, to promote Inran's ideas. And he's providing a specific narrow value. And why wouldn't he want you to pay for it? Now, it would be one thing if you were contributing a lot of money to the Institute and you said, look, I expect this to be one of the perks of contributing, I don't know, more than $1,000 to the Institute or more than $100,000 to the Institute. But why shouldn't you pay for the products that you receive from the Institute? You pay for Inran's books, they're not available for free. You pay for, I mean, we live in a culture in which we've just accepted that YouTube is all free. But look at the cost of that. One of the cost of that is I have to ask you guys to support the Iran Book Show because it's free. And in order to make a living off of this, you know, I need to ask you for money. But should I even ask? Shouldn't you be supporting it? You don't. So he's just charging a front like we used to do in the past. You wanted a video. You bought it. You wanted to take Lena Peacock's tape courses on philosophy. You bought them or you rented them. There were all kinds of ways. So why wouldn't you have to buy the values that somebody else is producing? Tell us, produce the value called a happiness workshop. Why wouldn't you pay for that? I just don't understand why you expect stuff for free. Quite the contrary. You should be eager to pay for it. You should be jumping up and down in excitement to pay for it. If you can afford it and if you can't afford it, then you should be asking, are there scholarships available? Are there ways in which I can participate? But if there's a scholarship available, then somebody else is paying for it. Other people who are supporting the Institute are paying for it. So one way or another, it has to be paid for. If the $399 go towards paying our salary, isn't that? That's a value, right? Tessa. Oh, thank you, Tessa. Really appreciate the support. Doron says, love the news roundups. Thank you, Doron. Really appreciate that. Daniel says, did you see Biden is imposing fees on those who have good credit? Pay 15% to 20% down or have a 40% or less debt-to-income ratio for mortgages. No, I didn't see that. So for those who have good credit, pay 15% to 20% down or have a 40% or less debt-to-income ratio. I'll have to look at that. I have not seen it. I'm not sure I understand your post, but I've been looking at it. I mean, Biden has done a bunch of stupid things the last few days, but this one I haven't seen. I'll take a look. Cole says, speaking of death, someone in my family passed away today. Sorry to hear that. That's really unfortunate. So it's rough for me today. I appreciate that. Well, I appreciate you spending time with us while it's rough. You got me interested in defending capitalism. And I go, wow, so somebody important in your life. Our thoughts are with you, Cole. I hope the day, you know, I hope you cope well and that you overcome this loss. Apollo Zeus. If I decided to start the largest TV and movie production company in the UK, would that be impressive? Well, deciding it would be somewhat impressive, but doing it would be really impressive, right? So it's just a decision. I'd be impressed by a decision like that if it was real and if it was focused and if it was actually geared towards achieving that goal. But I'd really be impressed if you actually pulled it off. We're $72 short for those interested. Stephen Harper, thank you for the $20 test. I said, thank you. Cold Cleaver Stone, thank you. Stephen Harper, I think I got it earlier. So thank you, guys. Oh, and James just says, happy Friday, Yvonne. I appreciate you. I appreciate that. I appreciate all you guys. Thank you to all of you. Thank you to all the superchatters. If you want to support the show and you're not listening live, you can actually support it. You can cheer the show. There's a little button underneath and you can still support the show through YouTube. You can also become a member of the Yvonne Book Show here on YouTube. I prefer that if you're already supported on Patreon and Subscribestar or PayPal, you stay there. YouTube takes out higher fees than those do. But if you want to add a membership to do the members only shows and other books that might be available, then you can click on the button below saying join. And at the $5 level, you can become a member. You can do both the membership and PayPal or one of the others. And of course, if you want to support the show, as I said, you can support it on Patreon or you're on bookshow.com. Support, which is basically PayPal. Thank you all. Have a fantastic weekend. I will be back tomorrow at 3 p.m. Eastern Time with Ask Me Anything show with my $25 up supporters on video, on a panel and Q&A for the rest of you. And then on Sunday, we'll also have a show sometime Sunday afternoon. So see you all tomorrow at 3 p.m. Hope you had a great week and hope you have a fantastic, amazing weekend.