 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Iran Book Show. All right everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show on this Tuesday night. Exciting day. New University being founded. All right. So yeah, today we're going to talk about University of Austin. University of Austin, not the University of Texas at Austin, but the University of Austin. Today it was announced that that University will be, is, has been founded. Not running programs yet. Going to be a couple of years before they accept undergraduates, but three years I think before they accept undergraduates. But it has been launched, money is being raised, land is being looked for, construction will begin at some point and we're off to the races. It is an impressive project. Jonathan, thanks for the support. We're going to talk about today, we're going to talk about alternatives to the world in which we live. So we'll talk about the University, we'll talk about some attempts to start up new cities, one of a kind of a leftist character, one with, one with a kind of a libertarian character. So we will definitely talk about alternatives to the world in which we live today starting with the University of Austin in Texas. Austin's the place guys. I don't know. Why is anybody living outside of Austin? Haven't you moved yet? Jonathan, what are you doing in Chicago? It's cold. You know, Austin's the place to be. It's rocking right now. It's exciting. There's a lot going on. We'll talk about it. So University of Austin, Austin, that'll be the main thing we talk about. We'll go over the list of the Board of Advisors. We'll go over its mission statement. We'll go over what it's doing. Generally, I am very pleased. A few caveats. I have to be a few caveats. You know, you can't have me loving something without some areas to complain about, but we'll get to those as well. Yeah, abortion law sucks in Texas, but Thomas, you're probably not going to get an abortion. Anyway, abortion law is not going to be upheld by the Supreme Court. In that sense, I wouldn't worry. It is Texas, but Austin's a little different. Austin's a little different than the rest of Texas, so I encourage everybody to move to Austin. That's the big thing right now. Alright, as you know, this show is funded through support from listeners like you. So please become a supporter. You can do so on your onbookshow.com. Patreon, subscribe, star value for value. If you get value from the show, please express that value monetarily through our monthly contribution on one of those platforms. I very much appreciate it. And you will get to be part of something, I think, hopefully significant and that is helping to change the culture. You can, of course, also support the show by participating in the Super Chat that those of you who are here live that is always fun. It's exciting. We have goals. Are you guys contribute to those goals or not? And yeah, it's exciting to track and to watch the goal every night is 600 bucks of Super Chat contributions. We've exceeded that the last three nights, three shows in a row. So let's not make today an exception. We still don't have Ali. Ali's gone missing. But Catherine is here. And Catherine is going to be here, both cheerleading and motivating you and inspiring you to keep the contributions coming so we can get to our $600 goal. And she'll be tallying the amounts so we can keep track of how things are going. All right. So as you know, I have been touting Barry Weiss's substack for a while. I think some of you, because I have urged you have become subscribers to Barry Weiss's substack. Barry Weiss is a former journalist for the New York Times who was at last year kind of left the New York Times claiming that she founded a non-hospitable working environment. Her colleagues were basically harassing her for kind of the views she have. Now, what views does Barry Weiss have? Well, she has, she is kind of a centrist. She's not particularly free market. She's not particularly, you know, right, but she's not far left either. She is generally a believer in free speech and open debate in exchange of ideas. She's also, which really hurt her in the New York Times with her colleagues. She's very pro-Israel, which I think was probably more hurt her more with her colleagues than the fact that she was pro-free speech. But anyway, she left the New York Times, which I thought was quite courageous. She resigned and set off by herself and started up a substack, a substack that I've recommended to you. Many times a substack that has dealt a lot with issues like critical race theory being taught at our high schools and professors being kicked out of universities or being sanctioned by universities for their views, for things they have said. So a substack that is focused primarily, I think, on issues of speech, of critical race theory, on culture, and on really on criticizing kind of the far left and the craziness of the far left. But Weiss has had a lot of other people writing for the substack, and indeed the substack is turning into not just Barry Weiss writing, but almost like a newsletter, almost like a place where people can, where she's creating her own alternative media source, including attracting recently a reporter for the New York Times, another person for the New York Times who's going to be doing news. So maybe what we're seeing is the beginning of some independent journalism, not just independent commentary, but independent journalism, actually news reporting, seeking out, going out and investigating the news, which would be very exciting if we can, the dispatch already does that to some extent, if we can get multiple sources on substack that are providing us not just with opinion, but with news, that is going to be super excited. Anyway, this morning, in the Barry Weiss substack, there was an article from Panokalinos, and I don't know if I'm pronouncing that name right, probably not. Panokalinos is the former president of St. John's College in Indianapolis, and Annapolis, not Indianapolis, Annapolis in Maryland. St. John's College is a great books program, an undergraduate, I think great books program, so one of the last great books programs in the United States. And Pado announced the launch of a project to establish a new university, the University of Austin. A new university will talk about the principles and will talk about who the Board of Advisors is, but he wrote an essay for Barry Weiss on what's involved, so that's how I heard about it this morning. I actually knew about this, I've known about this since the summer, a good friend of mine was actually met with Pado in Austin, where the project was described to them and interest was assessed and so on. But I also have known for a few months that Joe Lonsdale is an entrepreneur. You could say from the Peter Thiel circle of entrepreneurs, Peter Thiel was an investor in Joe Lonsdale's main investment. He's a serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist, but I'd say his main new company in the last few years was Planetier, which Peter Thiel invested in and that has gone public and has made Joe Lonsdale a very, very, very wealthy man. I met Joe years and years ago in Silicon Valley. He's a fan of Iron Rans, although more of a conservative, more of a Peter Thiel style conservative than he is a free market style objectivist. Certainly not philosophically, Peter Thiel is religious and I think so is Joe Lonsdale, although I might be wrong. Anyway, Joe Lonsdale has moved to Austin. Joe I've known has been working on a secretive project to found a new private university in Austin. Well, it's no longer a secret. It was announced I think yesterday. I discovered it this morning from Barry Weiss, a sub-stack, and today there have been stories about it in New York Times, op-ed in the Washington Post. It's been all over social media primarily as a source of ridicule by the left, but it has been this announcement of this new university has been treated as big news. And I think it's been treated as big news because of kind of the mission statement. And it's been treated as big news because of the Board of Advisors, the people involved in the founding of the university, which is a super impressive list, will get to those people in a little while. But first, this is a university that is set up to counter this in terms of the existing status of universities. Primarily to counter the, you know, the anti-speech, the anti-free inquiry, the political correctness that used to be the old term, the wokeness that exists in the university campuses today. This university's mission is the pursuit of truth. The article that today was announced by Pano Canellos, and Pano Canellos is the new president of this university. So he left since John's and he is now the university, the president of the University of Austin. He says we can't wait for universities to fix themselves. So we're starting a new one. That's great. That's what markets are for. This is a beautiful development, a positive development. He says I left my post as president of St. John's College in Annapolis to build a university in Austin dedicated, and this is a beautiful mission statement. This is what a mission statement of university should be like, dedicated to the fearless pursuit of truth. That is amazing. That is great. Let's hope they stick to that. Let's hope they really are committed to the pursuit of truth and not just the pursuit of a truth that is consistent with their ideas, but the pursuit of truth where they're consistent with their ideas are not. So, you know, the idea of this university is not to be online. The attempt here is not to disrupt the educational system by a different means. The purpose here is to build a classical university, a campus. My assumption is there'll be dormitories, there'll be classrooms. The idea is a faculty and students interaction face to face. The plan is to keep expenses low by having very thin administration, not having any extracurricular things like fancy sports, you know, fancy food. You know, a lot of the Ivy League schools are not competing on the quality of the food. They expect tuition to be under 35,000 a year, so they expect to be somewhat reasonable in terms of tuition. This is interesting because there was some question about this. They are not going to try to be outside of the accredited system. They're not going to be a complete outsider to the system of universities. They are going to apply for accreditation. So even though they say they think the accreditation system needs to be reformed, they want to go through the accreditation system. They will have an undergraduate program that they will launch in 2024. They hope to launch, I think, in 2023 or 2022. Their first MA program, a master's program in entrepreneurship, and they plan to have both masters. Ultimately, they hope to have PhD granting and undergraduates. So a traditional full-scope university. Seems like it's clear they're going to have some kind of business school. It's also clear that they're going to have entrepreneurship. It's also clear that they're going to have, they want to have a law school at some point, although that's not high on the agenda, something early. In addition, they expect, but they expect all students, first two years, to be taking kind of classical, what is it, social sciences courses. So kind of a broad social science, liberal arts education. And then students will come and specialize in particular centers, very hands-on, very interactive. You know, they claim innovative curriculum and so on. So exciting. More competition is always good. And it's exciting to see university focused on truth, the discovery of truth, the advocacy for truth, and also university dedicated to not being politically correct, not toying the line of political correctness, not being woke, not kicking people out because you disagree with them, not having diversity standards, supposedly I assume, not having diversity standards, you know, not being at the university, not being an advocate for social justice and so on. Some of you are asking, will this person or that person be a professor? I don't think it's clear. I think it's still very early on. I think this probably announced, it was announced because this was going to leak. There were probably some press stories and they started to rush it because there's a lot in the plan here that is still very early, you know, and still unknown. They have done, Lex Friedman, who is involved in this. You know, Lex Friedman, he's interviewed me a couple of times. He's got this massive interview show on YouTube. Anyway, Lex Friedman is one of the board of advisors for this university. Lex also interviewed Niall Ferguson. Niall is also on the board of advisors. You don't know Niall Ferguson. He's an historian at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University, and he is also well known as the husband of Ion Hersey Ali, or maybe she is known as the wife of Niall Ferguson. But anyway, both of them are like celebrity intellectuals. They are superstars in their own right. They are both on the board of advisors. Note that none of the people I mentioned are necessarily faculty. The only faculty with a question mark listed, it's not clear the faculty, but they're called founding faculty fellows. Ion Hersey Ali, Peter Bogosian from Portland State University. I think he's a philosopher. Portland State University, if you remember, he resigned. I talked about this. I think I reported on it on the Iran book show. He quit. The university left because of the extent to which he was harassed, the extent that the university was tilting strongly towards, again, wokeness and political correctness and not accepting ideas that were outside of the mainstream, ideas that deviated from kind of the far left. I don't know how good of a philosopher Peter Bogosian is, but he's definitely a critic of CRT. He's a critic of postmodernism. So he's definitely a critic of the right things, whether he is an advocate for the right things as a philosopher, hard to tell. Kathleen Stark, also a philosopher from the University of Sessex, not Essex, Sessex, I think Sessex, also resigned from the university because of wokeness and her position on gender. I think she has this crazy, radical, insane, completely unacceptable view that I don't know men, men generally have penises and women are women and generally don't have penises. I think that's her crazy position. And anyway, she created a bit of a few around transgender issues and around gender, but so she's on the founding faculty fellows. I hope the standard for being a founding faculty or faculty at University of Austin is not having had to resign from your previous position. But, you know, so it's not just the negative. I hate the far left. That shouldn't be the criteria. Hopefully these are also good academics. These are good teachers. These are people who have interesting ideas and are successful intellectuals. I hate to see it that it's all the negative. We're anti-the-left. That would be pretty boring, ineffectual universities. So the Board of Advisors is very impressive. Faculty is yet to be determined how good they are going to be. Obviously, Ayan Hirsi Ali as a founding faculty fellow is really good. Again, I have a lot of disagreements with Ayan Hirsi Ali, particularly about philosophy. But she's a hero and smart and interesting and unbelievably courageous. And for that, I would go take a class with Ayan Hirsi Ali any day of the week. So I think that's great news. The Faculty Advisors, this is a great list. I mean, so there are two people on the list. So this is the thing. How many people are there? 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 28, 29, 30, 31. There are 31 people on the Board of Advisors of this institution. And you will be shocked to hear that of the 31 people on this Board of Advisors, I despise only two. Now that is a massive achievement for them, I think, to put together a list of 31 intellectuals. Because I don't know everybody, I might despise more of them when I get to know them. But I know almost everybody on this list. I think I know a lot about almost everybody on the list. There's a handful of people I don't know. And there's only two that I can tell right now. A few that I don't know, but only two that I actually despise. And then there's more than two that I actually like, right? That are actually good guys. So let's go over the list. You can tell me if you know who are the two I despise. And in Pano Canelo, seems like a good guy. Don't know that much about him. Seems like a good guy. Now, Ferguson is very good. He's a conservative, more conservative than I'd like. But a conservative, one of the good guys, I think, super, super, let's see if I can speak. Stop for a second. Super smart, super smart, a super interesting, good historian. Yeah, I read his books, good books, really good. Barry Weiss is on the Board of Advisors. Love Barry Weiss. Again, disagree with her on a lot of things, but, you know, she's one of the good guys. Heather Haying. Heather is, what's his name? Brett Weinstein's wife. Brett Weinstein's wife, not the other Weinstein. Yes, Brett Weinstein's wife. She's an evolutionist biologist. I mean, she's good. She's good. You know, Brett, I think went a little crazy recently, but generally Heather and Brett are pretty good. And I'm a supporter of Heather. Joe Lonsdale. Joe Lonsdale is an entrepreneur incredibly successful. As I said, I've met Joe. He's a nice guy, a bit of an Iron Man fan, not too much, but a bit of an Iron Man fan. And obviously, the financing, you know, the finances behind this, finances behind this. Actually, Legend 007, just do it. Hope you don't mind me telling them who you are. But anyway, he says, now, Ferguson had good things to say about Atlas Shrug. Yeah, I think both he and I, in history, are a positive about Atlas Shrug. They're not objective. They're not pro, but both really start. So Joe Lonsdale. Okay, Arthur Brooks. You guys know my views on Arthur Brooks. I don't despise the guys too nice of a person. But Arthur is a real Catholic, a real altruist, a very, very, very weak and undermining defender of capitalism. You know, I'm mixed on Arthur as much as I like him. I mean, I think some of these other people are better. Then I, in her CLA, I'm just reading up, oh, Glenn Lowey. I love Glenn Lowey. Glenn Lowey is fantastic. He's an economist at Brown University, and he's truly fabulous. So I'm a big fan of Glenn Lowey and really happy to see him involved in something like this. Stephen, thank you. Really, that's very generous. Really appreciate it. Robert Zimmer. Robert Zimmer is the chancellor and former president of the University of Chicago. Don't know him personally, but he is one of the people responsible for the University of Chicago being one of the only universities, certainly among the top universities in the country, that has stood by the idea of free speech, the idea of faculty inquiry, the idea of faculty independence, the idea of not victimizing people over their political views over stuff. So generally, University of Chicago came out with a very good statement about free speech that was very positive, and I think Robert Zimmer was part of that, so I'm a fan on that. And you'll see that most of the people here are very much on the side of free speech. Stephen Pinker, again, I think you know what I think of Stephen. Lots of problems, obviously left of center on many issues, wrong on free will, wrong on some other things, but generally one of the good guys I think in the culture in which we live and a good influence. Nadine Strossen. I don't know if you guys know who Nadine Strossen is, but she's a professor of law at the New York Law School. She's also the former president of ACLU, definitely leftist, but definitely pro free speech. She's one of the strongest defendants of free speech. She was part of the ACLU and the ACLU actually went out there and defended free speech. So yeah, I mean, she's great and she's a fighter. And to have her on the board of advice is terrific. Again, credentials vis-a-vis free speech, very, very strong. Lex Friedman, I guess you all know Lex. I'm really happy to see him here, kind of taking his act beyond the podcast and now kind of getting his ideas, you know, having a forum for his ideas as Lex. John Nunes, I don't know anything about John. He is a priest, a Catholic priest. He wears a collar, former president of Concordia College. I don't know how bad he is. He's a priest after all. Dorian Abbott is a geophysicist at the University of Chicago. He's the guy who, because he said some things about affirmative action and about this whole DIE, diversity, whatever, was refused or they disinvited him from giving a speech at MIT. And he's become a big spokesman for this idea of well, maybe affirmative action is not that great. And over issues relating to diversity and so on. Okay, here's one of the bad guys. Okay, I said the two guys I despise on here, the two guys that I think are really bad, they shouldn't be here. If this is supposed to be a liberal institution, a push for liberality, liberal in the sense of freedom, liberal in the sense of free speech, if this is supposed to be anti the illiberalism of the left, what you don't want is people on here who are illiberals of the right. And so Rob Amari is an illiberal of the right. And look, you don't have to believe me on this. He calls himself illiberal. He is a fighter against freedom, what he calls the libertarian streak of the right free markets. Individualism. He hates individualism. He hates the idea of individual rights and individual liberty. So it's a little discouraging to see so about Amari here. It suggests that some of the funders, maybe even Joe Lonsdale himself, some of the funders have a conservative nationalist, nationalist conservative leanings. Hopefully he doesn't have a lot of influence. He's big. Saul Amari is very big. He got into a big fight with David French about a year ago. Two years ago, I did a whole show on the struggle, maybe it's more than two years ago, between Saul Barabi and French. Saul Amari has become one of the leaders of the anti, what I'll call the anti-liberty part of the Republican Party. He is clearly a pro-statist right. And he is one of the leaders of that. Next person, Jonathan Haight. Again, good guy, left of center, very pro-free speech. Again, disagree with them on things like free speech and the role of morality and what differentiates the left and right and all kinds of things. But basically a smart guy who's interested in ideas and is interested in open discussion and open debate. So most of these people are what I'll call liberal, liberal in the classical liberal sense. Not free market, but in the liberal in terms of ideas and the pursuit of truth. Now, another one of the people I despise. This guy I probably despise more than I despise Saul Amari. This is Leon Kass, who's the dean of faculty at Shalem College. Leon Kass is a bio, he sometimes is called a bioethicist. He is anti, longevity, extending human life. He was the head of George W. Bush's in the 2002 to 2005, I think, bioethics committee. And I've despised him since then. I mentioned him on one of my shows where I described what the bioethics committee came out against life extension technologies and all the problems against gene editing, against a lot of the gene technology and changing the human genome and playing God. He's very much against all of that. So I'm a big opponent of him. Anyway, Stuart says that Jonathan Haider's written some bad stuff about Iron Man. Yeah, I mean, that's not my criteria, right? A lot of these people oppose Iron Man. There's not an objective Estonia. Not able to close the objective Estonia. And you wouldn't expect that. But a lot of the people here are anti-Iron Man. Arthur Brooks is, I mean, you know, and Stephen Peeke is not a friend of Iron Man's. So, you know, you definitely have a mixture here. Leon Cass is a real Christian. I mean, religionist. I'm not sure you might be Jewish, but he's definitely a right-wing religionist. Larry Summers is, again, left-wing Keynesian economist, although better than Krugman, significantly better than Krugman, but Keynesian economist, neo-Keynesian economist. He is the president, used to be former president of Harvard University. He was chief economic advisor to, was it Bill Clinton? Maybe Bill Clinton. He was kicked out of the University of Harvard because he said something about women not having a propensity for sciences or something that was deemed sexist and he had resigned from Harvard University again, somebody who's fought against the political correctness type of attitude. Vicky Sullivan, I don't know from Tufts University. Wolford McClay, a historian from Hillsdale, so if he's from Hillsdale, he probably leans conservative libertarian and religious. That's typically Hillsdale. Jonathan Rausch, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, against on the left, but pro-free speech, smart, leftist, bad on economics. E. Gordon Gee is president of West Virginia University, probably a pretty free market guy. West Virginia University has a number of pro-free market programs, so he's probably one of those. Kathleen Flanagan is a writer for The Atlantic. I probably read some of his stuff, but I didn't look her up, so I'm not sure. Andrew Sullivan, you all know Andrew Sullivan. I debated him. My debate with Andrew Sullivan from Clemson University is online. Andrew is a conservative, gay, conservative, anti-Trump, interesting guy, but also very bad on economics, very, very, very bad on economics. But no, I don't think there are too many leftists. These are the best of the leftists, and they're the kind of people who you would want to take a class from. From Rausch or Larry Summers or Steven Pinker. All of these guys are super smart, they're super interesting, and no. I mean, I'm not as anti-left, anybody left of center, as much as some of you guys. I'm much more sympathetic to somebody like Steven Pinker than I am to most people on the right, on the so-called right. Then of course there's Deirdre McCluskey. Deirdre, I think Deirdre is fantastic. She's a historian, economist, philosopher. Deirdre and I disagree on a number of things, but on the other hand, she's brilliant, and she's the most free market person on this by far. So she's the one that on economic issues, on liberty issues, on role of government issues, I would agree with her more than anybody else on this list. Tyler Cowan is another one, another free market guy, not as quite free market as Deirdre is or I am, but Tyler is quite free market. And a good guy, an interesting guy, clever guy, smart guy. Interesting, right? I agree with him, but really interesting. Bob Henderson, I don't really know. He's a Cambridge scholar, Cambridge University. David Merme is one of the few conservative playwrights. So he's a playwright, famous playwright that used to be a leftist and turned conservative and is on here. Smart, clever. Some of the stuff I like, some of it I don't like. Jeffrey Stone, a professor of Law at the University of Chicago, don't know him. Stacy Hook, philanthropist and investor. I think I've met Stacy. I think I know Stacy. If it's the right person, she lives in Austin. Really nice woman and a big Iron Man fan. I think that's who I'm talking about. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's who I think it is. And then finally, Joshua Katz, a classicist from Princeton. I don't know Joshua, so don't know. All right, so there we go. It's a fascinating Board of Advisors. It's the Krem Della Krem. It's generally good people. As I said, they're only two people. I had really bad things to say about. And I love the fact that Glenn Lowey's there. And this is great news. This is good news. I think it's got a nice balance of having some people from the left. I think it would be terrible if this wasn't balanced in that sense. That's the Board of Advisors. I don't have nobody else, so you can ask questions about other people. But if I didn't mention them, they're not on the Board of Advisors. It's very exciting. It's going to be very interesting to watch. It's going to be very interesting to see the bureaucratic coops that have to go through. They have to get accredited. They have to get land. They have to build a university. They have to get faculty. It's not necessarily going to be easy to get faculty. They're going to have to build out programs. Again, they're going to have to get accreditation for those programs. None of this is going to be easy. None of it's going to be simple. But, you know, if they go for STEM, if they go for science, I think they'll be able to bring in some good people. But, you know, we'll see the quality of the students. One of the things they don't want is to attract just rabid conservatives. What they want to attract is a wide spectrum of students who are coming to get a great education. They want to make sure that it's not assumed that the university is political. It should be non-partisan. It should not be political. If it turns into political, it would be terrible. And it's a great effort. This is great news. They're already being ridiculed by a lot of the mainstream media. They're being ridiculed for being like Trump University, which is ridiculous. Trump University was basically a private university, but not a substantive university. This is a substantive liberal arts university. It's being compared to Phoenix University. This is not Phoenix University. Phoenix University partially modeled the whole idea of online education, but also, again, was large numbers. And you can't say that liberal arts education was a primary or primary focus. Here it clearly is. At least that's the ambition. This is the ambition here is to create a world-class liberal arts university, more than liberal arts. I think they're going to have STEM as well. So a world-class university, capital U, with everything that then entail. And competition is fantastic. There are already good universities. There are universities that break the mold of the traditional university. There is a Hillsdale University. There is this Northwood University that I spoke at last week. There is St. John's, which does great books. The president of West Virginia University had to come out and say, I don't agree that the university system is broken because, hey, he's the president of a university. So I like this new university, but I don't agree with everything they say. So they're going to have some challenges. It's going to be interesting. They're in the process of raising $250 million, which I don't think they'll have a problem doing. They don't think they're going to have a problem doing. Some people are comparing that to Prager University, which again is a joke. And let's again hope that they're not just, you know, narrowly focused on Prager University kind of stuff that they really are. And that's why I'm glad to see a Jonathan Haidt and Roush and Stephen Pinko on there that is going to give it a much bigger scope and a much wider scope and a much greater variety of courses of areas of expertise and of, you know, political emphasis and political ideology. I think that's a good thing, a good thing. So yeah, now Foguson has written on this. You can find it in Bloomberg. Again, you can find a Barry Weisestack, Substack, which you should subscribe to. You can find the original statement. I mean, part of the thing is to create an environment in which professors are not afraid to be sacked, not afraid to be marginalized because of their opinions. And, you know, I mean, it would be nice if communists were marginalized and real fascists were marginalized. The problem is that today anybody right of the far left is in a position to be marginalized. All right, so that's University of Austin. Great news. Hopefully you're excited. Hopefully this is good news. We don't always get good news, so this is great. And it really is good to have Lex Friedman on there and to have some other people that I know. I know Ayan Hoseali and I've met Ayan Hoseali a couple of times and I know some of the other people involved. And this is great. Let me also add this. I'm not going to say too much about this, partially because there isn't a lot to say about it, but partially because a lot of it is kind of still being worked on. But, you know, attempts are being made to have some objectivist influence here. Again, I know there are people within the objectivist world who know Jolon's there quite well. There are people within the objectivist world who know many of the people involved here quite well, whether it's Lex Friedman or some of the others. There are objectivist donors who are donors to this university and I think there will be even more, some big donors who are contributing to this. There are some objectivist in the education field who are, you know, who have a lot of, done a lot of thinking about education more broadly and ways in which to revolutionize education. They are having discussions with this university. They're having discussions with people at the university. There are objectivist academics who have had some discussion with this university, names not to be mentioned. And then, of course, there's a massive, massive objectivist presence in Austin, Texas. We have a philosopher in Austin, Texas, two philosophers in Austin, Texas. We have Greg Selmieri who's at the University of Texas in Austin. It's going to be now confusing, University of Austin in Texas versus University of Texas in Austin. But who's there, who is, you know, right there and we know that Greg's, the center that Greg is part of has some overlap with some of the people who are involved in this new university. There are no objectivist on the board of advisors, they're not going to be. But again, there are some points of influence. There are points of interaction. Again, look, the reason to be excited about this is not because this is going to be an objectivist university, it will not. The reason to be excited about this is that we want alternative to the existing universities. The existing universities are the problem in our culture. And we want alternatives, we want competition, we want engagement. So, again, there are a lot of objectivists with ideas, with money, with, or with money, or with ideas, or with knowledge, or with access who are going to have an opportunity at least to engage with the people at this university and to try to have some influence. I will be at the University of Texas in Austin for my debate with Yoram Chazzoni on December 8. My guess is Yoram Chazzoni is probably, you know, knows all the people involved in this. And again, you know, again, his is a version of conservatism. I hope doesn't land up dominating this university, although it could. But again, there's a lot of intersections and there's a lot of reason to be hopeful about the potential for maybe some objectivist to, you know, that the philosophy in Texas has been there, who works for the Ironman Institute and a number of staff members at the Ironman Institute work in Austin, Texas. So, I'm excited. Not because I think this is an objectivist university, not because I think this solves the problem of the world, but because I'm a believer in competition, I like, you know, I like to see this. Somebody asked Matt Bateman is not in Austin, although he spends quite a bit of time in Austin. But the school, higher ground education, is I think now based in Austin. The headquarters are based in Austin. All right, let us see. Steven asks Steven $100. That's very generous. Really appreciate it. Thank you. Steven writes, to make up for not being able to catch a live show in weeks, being too busy back at work. Thank God in the theater business. Yeah. Wow. Back at work in the theater business is hard. I'm advancing my career. Good for you. I love what I do. Good for you. I'm getting better and better at it. That's fantastic. And I owe it to Ironman. Let it pick off in you. I don't deserve to be in that company exactly. But thank you. I really, really appreciate it. So that is, that's terrific. And thanks for the support. Yes, we are shooting for usual $600 target. We're probably at around $430, $435, something like that. Catherine hasn't updated it recently. And oh yeah, what was I talking about? There's a third objectives philosopher in Austin. The one that's been there the longest and has the strongest academic position there. And that's Tara Smith. Tara Smith is at the University of Texas in Austin. Tara is a philosopher in the philosophy department at the University of Texas. And of course, that is, that's amazing. We have three philosophers in Austin. One, a tenure in the philosophy department at Texas. One as part of a center at Texas. And one working for the Andrean Institute in Austin, Texas. I mean, there is such a thing as a critical mass. So I am super excited about the fact that the Austin, Texas is kind of the center of an intellectual world right now. And we haven't even talked about the Liberty Center, which is in the works. And might be launched here at some point, the Liberty Center, which I might be on the board of advisors to that. Who knows if it ever launches. There's a lot of fighting within the university about launching a big Liberty Center with tens of millions of dollar budget, which I would be involved in. A lot of other people would be involved in. So exciting. All right. I misspoke before. So we're $251, which means we have $350 to go to get to $600. So Amy is also, that's right. Amy Peacock is also there. She's not working in philosophy, but she's also in Austin, Texas. There are probably other people with PhDs in philosophy who are objectivists in Austin, Texas. So I'm probably out of, you know, that's four in one city. So yeah, it's, all right, let's see. What else? So yeah, so we need to get to $600. If anybody out there can do 100, 250 or a bunch of $20 questions, that would be great. We are at something like 270. So we're still, we've still got 330. We're not even halfway there. So, and we've almost gone an hour. So today's a little, it's a little lagging. It's by the fact that it's all good news. It's by the fact that we've got this fantastic project. In spite of the fact that these conservatives, mostly conservatives are raising $250 million, we're struggling to raise $600 right here. So come on guys, we should be able to do better than this. All right. What else did I want to talk about today? I'm happy to take questions about the University of Texas. I'm just scanning the questions to see if there are any, do you think this university will allow an objectivism philosophy class? That would be a good way to really see if this college is truly about truth. And that includes all points of view. I think that a college like this would allow certainly objectivism to be taught as part of a philosophy class. I think it's a kind of university that would allow for an objectivist professor to be part of a philosophy department if they qualified. Based on standard academic kind of standards, whether they would allow a teaching of a whole class on objectivist philosophy, I think would depend ultimately on who the chairman of the philosophy department is and how they land up approving different forms of curriculum. I hope they would, but it's really hard to tell. It's really hard to tell and I just don't know. A lot of these people I respect, but at the end of the day, they're not objectivists and many of them don't take objectivism seriously as a philosophy. All right, just one more pitch in terms of the financial. I don't know if we're going to have a show for another week and a half. So I might be asking you again for money in a few days if I can get a good internet connection in Guatemala. But if I can't, this might be the last show for about a week and a half. So this is going to have to hold me over for, you know, 10, 12 days or something. So take that into account. I might not be coming back to you with an ask for a while. So, you know, go for it. Let's see. One of the people who says, I hope Papa is in the mix. Well, Papa would be taught here because I'm pretty sure I and Hosea Ali is a Papa fan. I think she told me that. I think she's a big Papa fan and a big Hayek fan. So I think that she definitely comes from that perspective. Maybe now focus on those two, but certainly I and Hosea Ali does. At least that's true of, you know, when I talked to her, which is granted quite a long time ago. I'm not selling cocaine in Guatemala. No, I'm actually attending the premier free market conference in the world, which is going to be at the most free market university in the world. There's a university that has a big sculpture of Atlas Shrugged just outside the business school. Atlas Shrugged, it has a quote from Gulch Gulch at the bottom. The university has a Mises library, a Hayek auditorium, a Friedman auditorium, Milton Friedman. It has pictures of Ain Rand all over the place, quotes from Ain Rand, quotes from Hayek, quotes from Mises, quotes from Milton Friedman. A little too religious for my liking, but it is in Guatemala. It's very Catholic. But it's a beautiful university, one of the truly most beautiful universities you will find anywhere in the world. And, yeah, it's a pretty interesting, it's a fascinating university. Anyway, the Montpelerin Society meetings. I don't know how much you guys know about Montpelerin. The Montpelerin Society is a society, members only of kind of the leading thinkers with regard to free market, with regard to capitalism. It was founded by Hayek, Mises and Friedman in 1947, I believe in Montpelerin, Switzerland, and is named after the place that it was founded. And it has conferences regularly and the next conferences in Guatemala at this university, at UFM. People I will see there, people like Deirdre will be there. I think Matt Ridley is supposed to be there. And a lot of kind of the leading free market thinkers, both in the United States, but a lot of them will be from Latin America. A lot of South Americans will be there and we will have a great three days of talks and discussions and arguments and nice dinners. Yeah, it's a great crowd. I really enjoy those conferences. Even though I'm not speaking this year, I've spoken at these conferences in the past. They have had objectives speaking me. They haven't the last couple of conferences, but they don't have the same speakers over and over again. But everybody's very friendly there and it's a great environment, so I'm looking forward to that. That'll be next week. I'm hoping they have a good internet connection. I'll be able to communicate with you. All right, let's see. What were you doing? Yes, I wanted to say, I just wanted quickly. I think this university is part of the general frustration of people with what is going on in the world right now, with the politics of the left, but really not the left, the politics of statism that is dominating the world. I think this university is an attempt to kind of fight back a little bit and create some diversity and some competition within the realm of academia. I think the most important realm in the world, but there's also other ways in which combating the pervading political reality in the world has manifested itself. That is in what attempts to start new cities with new charters and new policies and new ways of doing things. One of these is actually from the left. It's called TELOSA. I don't know if you've heard of TELOSA USA. This is an entrepreneur by the name of Mark Law, who founded diapers.com and various other internet startups. He's made a few billion dollars. He's a billionaire. He wants to start this TELOSA city somewhere in the desert. Why do we need another city in the desert? I don't know, but this is going to be based on what are called geogist economic principles. This is the idea that all land and real estate is collectively owned. It's owned by the city. The city generates most of its revenue by collecting rent on these properties. It's run as an offer profit. The city is run as an offer profit. It provides services. The idea is to build a futuristic city with a first phase, which would cost, they say, 25 billion, would have 50,000 residents on 1,500 acres. Ultimately, they would build this out. It would cost 400 billion dollars to build this thing out. Of course, it needs to be built out by the city because you can't have private land ownership. Now, this is just silly. It's an attempt to create some kind of leftist utopia, I guess, but without really having a full blown leftist utopia because it's just the land. But this is supposed to be how the city will raise revenue and be able to invest in social services and all these things that will be done. Who's going to go live in the middle of the desert in a small town? How are you going to get, I mean, there's a real problem of scaling this? Obviously, the 400 billion is not easy to raise. I think it's easier to raise 250 billion for a university. And think about it. If you have to raise 250 billion for a university, it's 450 million for the university. This is 400 billion with a B. Where are you going to raise that kind of money? Why would people invest in it? Why would people go live there? Why would people invest in real estate? Why would people upkeep the real estate when they don't own it? Why would they take care of it if they don't own it? We know what central planning is like. Why would we think the centrally planned city would work? Why would we think the centrally planned maintenance of real estate would work, centrally planned rent? Rent control has been a massive failure everywhere. It's been tried. So, Tulosa is, you know, I think it will never happen. On the other hand, for years now we've been hearing about libertarians wanting to create independent cities around the world, maybe buying an island, maybe doing like that, something like that. Well, they got their wish. In 2012, I think it was, Honduras changed its constitution. In 2011, a Honduras changed its constitution. It allowed for the creation of independently independent cities that had their own laws, regulations, taxes. And they were not, the only thing that Honduras controlled was foreign policy. But these were complete independent entities that entrepreneurs could start and build and buy. By the way, just because I remember this, Singapore, almost all the housing in Singapore is owned by the state, is owned by the government. So you could argue that there is a precedent. But in terms of other economic freedoms, Singapore is a state. It's a country, not just a city. So it has managed to attract people there because of its unbelievably free market economic policies, which a city couldn't do. Because a city is still bound by state and federal law. Anyway, these cities in Honduras would not be bound by Honduran law. This was passed in 2011. In 2012, it was overturned by the Supreme Court. But then they modified it and the president also basically just fired the Supreme Court and put in a Supreme Court that he liked. The new Supreme Court approved this. And so now you could start a city in Honduras with a lot of autonomy. Not complete autonomy, but a lot of autonomy. The original idea of creating these cities was by economist Paul Roma. I think he's an overpriced winner. And anyway, he sends his abandon the project for a variety of reasons. Anyway, the first one of these cities is in the building process. It's called Prospera. From Prospera, I assume. Prospera, it's a private charter city on one of these free economic zones. It's on the island of Roatan in Honduras. It's off the coast of the northern coast. It's in the Caribbean Sea. It's going to try to appeal to entrepreneurs, crypto people. They're already building housing there. They've already got significant investment. It's already having a positive impact on the neighborhood, on towns and communities around the place. So it's happening. It's something that is actually manifesting itself in reality out there. So that is exciting. Bitcoin is now legal tender in El Salvador, but that has its own problems. This is trying to attract entrepreneurs within the field of Bitcoin and crypto because of the lack of regulations. Part of what is going to be attractive about Prospera is if you want to start like a bank in Prospera, you propose the regulations to the authorities. And then they will either give it a thumbs up or thumbs down, but you basically get to propose what kind of regulatory self-regulation you propose. You are willing to live under. Anyway, this is something to watch. It's interesting. It's another alternative in life. I believe in having choices and having alternatives and having escape routes. In a world that seems to be going nuts, crazy, crazy, left and right becoming more and more status. The world generally that is becoming more and more status. It is nice to see different alternatives rising out there. Hopefully there'll be other cities like Prospera. Long term, I don't think this is an ultimate solution because I think Honduras could change its mind. You would need a military force to defend yourself. I like that it's on an island. It's easier to defend an island than landlocked place. So let's wait and see. But if you're interested in looking for a new place to live, if you want to retire, if you want to pay much lower taxes, if you want to be surrounded by people who are freedom loving, I don't know what socially it's going to be like. I don't know what culturally it's going to be like. I don't know what else is going to be there. That's going to be part of their challenge. But I think young people as well as people retiring are going to be looking at new places like this. But those capitals are a plant city. It looks like a plant city. It's cold like a plant city. And it's very much a statist city. And it's a statist statement of a city. All right. I mean, you can say a lot more about these charter cities. And if you have questions about them, I'm happy to answer them. But we've already gone over two hours, over an hour. So I figure I'll switch to the super chat. Let me remind everybody we're at 345, so we got $254 to go. That shouldn't be a problem. We've done that in half an hour before quite easily. But I am appealing to those of you who can write big checks so we can get it to $600 as we always do. That'll make a fantastic start for the month. And also give me some cushion as we go into the rest of the month given that, you know, I might not be able to do any shows next week. It'll be nice to raise a little bit more money this week, right? Well, Brasilia is a very statist city in its architecture and its look and its feel and its vibe. And the fact that it's a capital city. It's a capital of Brazil. It's started and designed and developed to be a capital city. All right, let's see what we have here. We have $20 questions, but there are plenty of opportunities to ask $20 questions or $50 questions. Let's get up to that $600 mark. We've done it every other night this month and almost all the nights last month. So pretty phenomenal run here. You wouldn't want to break it today. All right, let's see. Justin, off topic, should mining companies be responsible to remediating mined land and who pays if the company goes bust down the track? Well, I mean, it depends who the land belongs to, right? If they're leasing the land and part of the contract will be remediating the mined land. I can speak again. If they own the land, no, it's their land. They can do whatever the hell they want with it. And if they don't remediate it, it's kind of wasted because it just sits there. You'd think they want to put it into decent shape so that they can sell it, so that it has some value. So you'd think that they would do that, but we will. So that's what I think happens. Of course, if it's government land, there shouldn't be any government land. But it's the owner of the land's responsibility taking care of that land. And to the extent that it is creating negative externalities, pollution or something else on land adjacent to it, those landowners should be in a position to sue in order to get remedies in order to them to fix the leaking, the polluting, whatever's happening from that land that goes onto their land. All right, let us see. Oh, we've got a $50 question that I don't really want to answer because this guy's just bugging me. He keeps using different names to ask this question, but it is $50. So, okay, this is the last time we're going to answer this. Eva, Chairman, whoever you are, if you will put another $50 on a question around this, that's fine. I'll take the $50, but I will not answer the question because I've answered this. I answered it a few days ago. Ragnar of the Desert, thank you. Really appreciate the support. Thank you. The Judgment Again access award founder was $60 million, the largest in Houston history. With all due respect, a paralyzed woman is not a PR distraction. Well, it is, depending on why she got paralyzed and who's responsible for it, which has not been proven in court, right? Could you explain the decision to work with men's in terms of moral principles? I don't work with men's, so there's nothing to explain here. Men's is no longer, is not working with an affiliated with the Ironman Institute. I do not work with them anymore. I do not work with the Atlas Prize. I do not work with, you know, I do not work with men's. I have, you know, men's lives in England if he committed murder or attempted murder. There is robust extradition between the UK and the United States. The US attorney could always extradite him and asked to extradite him from the UK. You know, to actually run an objective and look at this from an objective perspective, one would have to ask Richard what happened as well. But one would ask the district attorney why they haven't filed any charges against him. And I would have to go dig into this and I'm not interested since I'm not working with him and I'm not working with the prize. I'm not interested in doing the research that would be necessary in order to figure all this out. So that is my answer. It's not, if he's a murderer, obviously it's illegitimate to work with him. I don't work with him and I also don't have unequivocal proof that he is a murderer. In the United States legal system generally, we assume a person is innocent until proven guilty and I still hold that. But then again, I'm not super concerned because I am not working on it. It's 50 bucks. That's why I'm dealing with it. But that's it. We're not talking about this anymore. This guy's been trolling me about this issue for a long time and not just about this, about a lot of stuff. Generally it's somebody who hates me and has been trolling me for 20 years. This is just the latest of his agenda items. All right. How do you resolve, this is a friend's hopper. This is a $20 question. How do you resolve, are we Armstrong's fetusism, objectivism, that there's no reason to have a thing as a highest value? This is from a friend. I don't know who are we Armstrong is. It's pretty funny. P.S., this is Naruto 1341. I did a name change. Okay, friend hopper. Much better than Naruto 1341. It's like this is hopper's friend. Is hopper the guy you're asking the question for? I'm kidding. Look, I would have to go and read are we Armstrong's criticism of objectivism. But I think if this is the idea, there's no reason to have a highest value. I don't know what context that is said, but clearly reason should be one's highest value and there's a reason for that. It's a primary value because that is one's means of survival. And since your life, the purpose of morality is to guide you to life and to morality, sorry, and to happiness. So I have to have an argument, right? Just saying there's no reason to have such a thing as a highest value is meaningless. Of course, you should have a highest value because there are things since there is a degree of contribution to your life, different degrees of contribution to what makes you successful at living, different degrees of what contributes to your success at living and success at happiness. The thing that is most important for that should be your highest value. And maybe he means that life is not the highest value, but you'd have to give me a lot more for me to get into it. And I read about, and I think I actually read part of his book, where he discusses this. I think Ari actually asked me this or something related to this in a question period at some event. I did in Colorado way back and I gave the answer. So I've engaged in whatever issue Ari Armstrong raised and I'm happy to engage with it again, but I would actually have it needed in a much more thorough way than in a one liner for me to do that. So if you want me to answer that question, I just need more context. All right, guys, we're $160 short, so somebody can step in and just get us there, or we could have $820 questions, which would be fine too. Yeah, let's not break the streak. Michael asked, does altruism stem from jealousy? No, I don't think so. It might stem from envy, but I don't think so. I think altruism is something we're indoctrinated in. I don't know that it stems. I'm sure it stems. It has an appeal for certain psychologies, but I believed in altruism when I was young. I couldn't think of anything alternative. That's all I'd ever been taught. That's all that ever been had been taught to me. I couldn't conceive of an alternative until I read Iron Man. So I think it's why do philosophers come up with it? I mean, I think the origins of altruism are in power. It's a fantastic way to control other people. It's a fantastic way to keep the tribe under control, to keep the tribe disciplined, to keep the tribe listening to you. And I think that's probably its origins. It's the conspiracy between the Attila and the Witch Doctor. I think this was Iron Man's observation. And I think people who really latch onto it maybe have a certain self-hatred that results in lack of self-esteem and results in envy, and therefore they latch onto altruism. But I think the originators, it's primarily power. M-M-T-M-M-S-S-26 or something like that says just a compliment to say we appreciate you. Thank you. Oh, $20 questions. Michael also asks, it's amazing how much other neurotic humans like your peers and parents growing up can undercut your sense of life. Yes. What's the antidote? The antidote is good ideas and the antidote is art. It's comic books. It's romantic fiction. It's Iron Man. It's Victor Hugo. It's not giving up on the image of the hero. Not giving up on the heroic within man. That's the antidote. If you want an essay on this, one of the most touching, moving, powerful essays that Iron Man ever wrote is in a romantic manifesto and it's called Moral Treason. Moral Treason. And it is about peers and parents who undercut a child's sense of life and the evil of that and what can be done to combat it. So I highly recommend it. One of her best, most powerful, most emotionally resonating essays called Moral Treason. Let's see. $20. Adam says, in view of the Texas prohibition against abortion as a workable backup method for other methods of contraception, isn't Texas a dangerous place to be a woman and a frustrating place to be a heterosexual male? Yeah, but everywhere is frustrating. There's no good place to live that doesn't have something that is really obnoxious. Now first, I think the Texas prohibition against abortion, particularly this particular one, is going to be overturned by the Supreme Court. I think that'll happen within maybe by the end of the year. So pretty quickly here. Now Texas will then try to do another something else. But the Supreme Court is going to have to rule V versus Wade, Roe versus Wade at some point and we'll see where they come down on it. But look, there's no perfect place. Texas has massive advantages. It depends on what stage you are in life and what you're doing and how likely you are to require an abortion or how likely you are if you're a male to have a girlfriend who requires an abortion or a wife that requires an abortion. Some of us are not in a position where that's a problem. But it's trade-offs unfortunately. There is no perfect place. So you have to trade these things off. I live in Puerto Rico. I've done my trade-offs. You know, I live in a second world country. You know, many respects are falling and infrastructure is falling apart. Very corrupt politically. But there are positives that I'm willing to trade off against those negatives. Would I encourage a young, ambitious person to come to Puerto Rico? No. But I'm not a young, ambitious person. I'm ambitious but not young. And I'm ambitious in a way where it doesn't matter where I live. I can pursue my ambitions. Ali, thank you. Dean, thank you. I think we're getting close. Katherine is going to update us in a second. But we're definitely getting closer to our goal. If that was Adam, let's see other $20 questions. I think a few more $20 questions than we're there. So Dean's is worth about $15, I think. Well, no, maybe $20. I mean, the dollar has gone down relative to the Israeli shakers. So close to $20. So three, three and a half more questions, $20 were there. Maybe we're missing 60, 70 bucks would be my estimate right now. Okay. I saw the video about all Silicon Valley, a part of left. I think mostly they don't show the real ideas because of peer pressure. You know, maybe, but a lot of Silicon Valley are very left. Whether they all, maybe that's an exaggeration, but a lot of them all. By the way, Austin is left. Austin City government is left. Austin is definitely not a red city. I think the county that Austin is in, Travis County, I think votes Democratic. But again, I am a lot less concerned about Democrats versus Republicans, much more concerned about where this country is heading under anybody's leadership, Democrat or Republican, surrounded by red, but not particularly good red. I've been out into the hill country and into the backwaters of Texas. I wouldn't want to live there. You couldn't pay me to live there. You couldn't pay me to live there. As much as I love Austin, I like Dallas and I like Houston and I love my Texas friends. Redneck country in Austin is not a pleasant place. It is the stereotype of what unfortunately red rural America is. It is xenophobic, often racist. I used to go with my wife to little towns in the hill country when she was very pregnant. She was obviously quite pregnant. We were young and people looked at us really funny and they looked at us funny because she is dark skinned. She looks Hispanic and I'm this white guy and it was not pleasant. It was not pleasant at all. So there is definitely this undercurrent of dislike of people who are other once you get out of the metropolitan areas. I love San Antonio. I love San Antonio. San Antonio is a very Hispanic city. I love Austin. I love Dallas and Houston. Once you get out of the rural communities, it's dicey if you're different. It's dicey if what do you call it? If you're an atheist, that wasn't that long ago. Texas hasn't changed that much. I've got friends whose family live in the panhandle, live in rural Texas and they will attest to the fact that Texas hasn't changed that much. So yeah, Texas is a mixed bag. Like everywhere else. It's a mixed bag. Austin is a great city partially because it's blue. Like it or not, blue is highly correlated with culture. With opera and a symphony orchestra and theater and museums and a vibrant restaurant scene. That's correlated with being blue. It's correlated with being voting Democratic. I've often told you, you want to change that? Bring culture to the red parts of the world. Or educate the citizens of the red states to demand a culture. But sadly, the whole world is one big mixed bag. And you have to choose the trade-offs that you're willing to live with. I wish it wasn't so. I wish it wasn't so. I wouldn't live in the South. Certainly not outside of maybe like the big cities. I'd live in Charlotte. I'd live in Atlanta. But I wouldn't live in Alabama or Mississippi. And I actually, there was a point where I might have been offered a position at the University of Mississippi. And my wife and I, we decided that it would be better that I, you know, scrounge you around for jobs and get than us having to live in Mississippi. There's anti-Semitism. I experienced it when I hitchhiked through that part of the world. Again a long time ago, but I'm not sure it's that different. They, you know, they still hang and fly their Confederate flags. Puerto Rico is South. This is definitely the South. This is the South I like. All right, let's keep going with the $20 question. Ali asks, one of the reasons people staying out of left, because how it emitted in literature, TV and influence. So even by the right itself is rigid religious anti-freedom cult. The first time I get introduced to objectivism, I was, wow. Yes, I'm not trying to understand your question. Your English is difficult. You might want to spend a little bit of time slowing down on the sentence construction on the grammar. So I understand what you're saying. But my sense is people attracted, you know, people offended by the left because of what it does, offended by the right because it's religion and anti-freedom. Objectivism is neither left nor right. Neither left nor right. Now, I said the South is not the South as anti-semitic. They are anti-semitic in a larger proportion in the elsewhere. I experienced that hitchhiking through the South. I've experienced it other times in the South. I wouldn't live in certain parts of rural South. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't live in the South. It's just not a place I would want to live. It's just me. I have friends who live in the South. Yeah, Catherine says, Catherine says she lives in South Carolina. She grew up in a small town. She still gets looks when she visits home. She's ready to move to a big diverse city. Yeah, I'm with you, Catherine. And I hope you do. And there's no reason not to. Yeah. So, again, we are not left or right. I am not left or right. I don't know about you guys, but I am not left or right. I'm an individualist. The left is not individualist. And the right is not individualist. Friend Harper writes, how can an entrepreneur stay motivated if they know that the more successful they become, the more likely they'll get turned into a sacrificial animal or trophy by busybodies from the same friend. The other advantage of being successful is that you don't have to give a damn. The richer you are, the less you need to care about what they think. The richer you are, the more you can do whatever the hell you want. You can go live in Honduras in a new island. You can move to Texas and out of California or you can move to California out of Texas or you can come to Puerto Rico and not pay capital gains taxes or you could go to or you could give up your American citizenship and move to Singapore. Once you have a certain amount of money and for each person, people call it FU money. F, you know what F stands for? FU money. U stands for U. It's the kind of money where you don't have to care. Oh wow, Ali had a $50 question. Sorry Ali, I somehow missed this. Any plan to start podcast or interview like shows? I'd like to see you on discussing debating philosophy and politics with others. Yeah, I mean I've done interviews, I will continue to do interviews. Interviews are difficult to do the logistics of. I've done some interviews on the ingenuism channel. So check out ingenuism on, ingenuism on YouTube. I did an interview with Tyler Cowan who I talked about earlier. I did an interview with Didra McCluskey. I talked about her earlier. I've interviewed on this show, I've interviewed Matt Ridley and and Johann Nobog and a bunch of other objectivists, philosophers, teachers and others. I intend to continue to do that. I've got a pre-publication copy. I don't know if I'm supposed to show you this. But here it is, Matt Ridley's new book. That's all I'm allowed to show you. And so I'm going to read it and I'm interviewing him. I'm going to be one of the first people to interview him on this new book that he's written. And that'll be in a couple of weeks. That'll be on the ingenuism channel. So go to ingenuism and follow the ingenuism channel and we'll have a bunch of debates there, a bunch of interviews there. So I hope you'll come and subscribe to ingenuism.com and to the ingenuism YouTube channel. So that'll be cool. I'll be doing more interviews there and I'll try to do more interviews on the Iran book show as well. So we'll combine that. I'm hoping, I don't know, I'm getting back into a lot of traveling. So it's hard to get a regular schedule together. But I really want to start doing one interview show a week. So do four months. Part of the challenge with the interview shows is that they don't get as much super chat and they don't get as many viewers. So I give up revenue when I do them. So I don't know, Ali, if you want to sponsor some or how we could work out a sponsorship for interviews or maybe I'll talk to Action Jackson about how we could put together a sponsorship program for interviews, which reminds me, if you want to sponsor a show on a particular topic, it's $1,000. We've done a lot of topics and I think they've been really successful in the past that people have sponsored. So I encourage you to sponsor a show. It's $1,000. That way, I don't have to worry about if it's a show that's going to be popular. Not so popular, super chat, not super chat. I mean, it's great when we also get super chat and dish it to the sponsorship. But $1,000 would get a sponsorship and $500 is a movie review. I do owe Shahzabad a couple of movie reviews, a TV episode and a movie review. I will be doing it on this next trip. I will supply those after that. So I think I'll be seeing Matt Ridley at the conference next week too. Anyway, yeah, anybody want to do a sponsorship, just contact me. Iran at youronbookshow.com. Iran at youronbookshow.com, that's a way to communicate with me. You want to sponsor, you want to do something, you want to help with something, we will do it. Dean asks, off topic, do you have an opinion on Israeli settlements and settlers in general? Particle ones believe that the land was promised by God and even committed violent acts on Palestinians in the region. Look, I don't believe in violence. I don't believe in the initiation of force. I don't believe that God gave anybody anything. I don't like the settlers who are religious fanatics. I don't like their attitude. I don't like their sense of entitlement, entitlement to the land. There are reasons why Israel should have that land. They have nothing to do with God and they have nothing to do with these idiot wing crazies. So I don't like the people there. I think the settlements are fine if the land was bought or the land belonged to the Jordanian government in the past and now belongs to nobody as a consequence. If the land is taken from private owners, then I object to it. I object to taking farmland from private owners, I object to taking, and I include private ownership here. If they have been cultivating these lands for generations, but they don't have title, it's theirs, give them title. So to the extent that you're not violating the individual rights of individual Palestinians, you should be able to start a settlement anyway. You should be able to build a house anyway, buy land, cultivate it, whatever. Don't violate rights. I'm against rights violations. All right. We are now officially, whoa, only $20 short. Is that right? $30 short. Well, there we go. Stephen just solved the problem. All right. Stephen says, can you consider interviewing James Lindsay regarding CRT and its history of philosophy? Thanks for the details at the University of Austin. I have. I've approached Lindsay and asked him for an interview. He has not responded. So I did it through Twitter, which is the only means I have to get a hold of him. If you know him or if anybody out there knows him, I'd be happy to interview him. I think he went a little bit off the deep end with the support for Trump and his support for certain right-wing causes. But generally, I respect what he's done on critical race theory and I respect that he has approached it. Philosophy. The work he's done on Hegel, connecting it to Hegel. The work he's done on these other, what do you call it, post-modernism. So I would definitely be happy to interview James Lindsay. Scott says he interviewed with Michael Malice. That doesn't surprise me. Michael Malice is a lot more friendly to the kind of causes that James Lindsay was advocating for. I'm not sure if he's interested in being interviewed by me, but I have approached him. If you guys know him, if anybody knows him, you can encourage him to do it and I would be happy to engage with him. All right. Let's see. One second. I just need to copy this one over. Okay. Themaster asks, when people evade, they then forget they evaded to not confront the truth. To a large extent, that's true. Therefore, there is nothing we can say to them to change their mind unless they somehow remember their evasion. Do you agree? No, I don't. It's not exactly how it works. So what are they evading? They're often evading facts. So they can forget that they evaded, but you can point out the facts. You can introduce them to the facts. You can bring the facts forward, right? And now, in a sense, they would have to evade them again. But the question really is always, what are they evading? And if it's a fact, you can reintroduce that fact to them. So I think you're good. All right. That's Themaster. Let's see. Catherine says, from Fred Hopper. My God. Fred Hopper can't ask his own questions. He only asks questions for friends or through Catherine. It's very confusing, Fred Hopper. You're making this very, very confusing. Would you talk with Spike Cohen on something? I don't know Spike Cohen. I asked Spike on Facebook and he said he would totally do it. Send me an email with regard to who he is. What he is? Who's Spike Cohen? I don't know who Spike Cohen is. Send me an email. You're on it. You're on Bookshow.com. All right. Brian Chee says, there is an episode of Lex with an ex-Cocaine Smogulap pilot that I think you'd enjoy, a man who doesn't second-guess, uncompromising, and had a fascinating life, a real hero, sold a Christian. Very powerful interview. I don't know what sold a Christian is. Before you eat him or after you eat him. I don't know. Preserve him. To preserve him for the preservation. All right. Let's see. Thessie writes, What if a successful person doesn't like you and wants power over you to change for their sake? But you know he, the product, is not your thing and you have your own path. Should you cut the cord or be nice when detaching? I don't know. I mean, it doesn't matter. You will need to detach and whether you detach nicely or unnicely depends on the context of your relationship. To what extent is it important for you to stay, to have some kind of future with this person? Not important? To what extent do you want to make, to take a stand? So I think that's a very difficult question to answer without a lot more information about the people and the relationship and what exactly is going on. But cutting the cord is often the best way to do it and just cut it down and get on with living. Sometimes being nice just prolongs it in ways that are unhelpful and unproductive. All right. We got one, two, three, four, five more questions. We'll zip through them. There's the low dollar question so we can go fast. Michael S, who is your favorite actor? Tom Hanks? No. I mean, Tom's a good hankter. I like Tom Hanks. I like Denzel Washington a lot. Of that generation, I think those are the two best actors. But you know, I like Gregory Peck and I like Gary Cooper. I like Harry Grant. Oh, my favorite actor might be Charles Lawton in one of my favorite movies in particular. But since you guys didn't pay me to give you the list of my favorite dramas, I was very disappointed that nobody put up any money to find out what my favorite movies are. I was surprised. I was surprised. All right. They were a lot of good actors. They were a lot of good actors. Charles Lawton was spectacular, spectacular actor. Dave Goodman, is cryptocurrency to the Federal Reserve what Uber is to the taxi cab monopoly? Maybe, maybe, maybe. I don't know. I'm still not convinced about cryptocurrency. It's useful and this is money. We know Uber is useful. But, but yeah, a lot of the crypto people would like you to think that is the right analogy. It's also, it's actually cab monopolies. It's not that important to government to preserve them. The monopoly over money, really important for governments to preserve for them, for them. Do you think the university will, oh, I answered this already. Okay, Brian, no question. Just want to say I am enjoying in pursuit of wealth. Thank you. Great. I'm glad you're reading it. Not that many people bought it and read it. So if you haven't read it in pursuit of wealth with me and Don Watkins, go buy it. Go read it. Gail says, please spell the name of your opponent. Debate December 8th. Can't wait. YORAM, Y-O-R-A-M, HAZONI, H-A-Z-O-N-Y. YORAM HAZONI. In Hebrew, YORAM HAZONI. RAM HAZONI. YORAM HAZONI. HAZONI, not HAZONI, HAZONI. Okay. All right. We, we, we made it over 600. You guys are freaking amazing. Thank you. All right. Those of you who want to contribute to the show monthly, regularly on a monthly schedule, YoramBookshow.com slash support, Patreon, Subscribestar, locals, you can do that there. Oh, by the way, you know, last year we had, we had somebody do a matching grant for $5,000 for New Year's Eve. Right? We did a, like a telethon in New Year's Eve. It was a lot of fun. If anybody's interested in doing that, including the person who did that last year who wanted to stay anonymous and is anonymous, let me know. Love to do it. It was a lot of fun. And yeah, December 31st is coming up, coming up. And we raised a lot of money. We did over $6,000. I think we raised $11,000, $12,000 that day because the person matched all the way up to $6,000. So we get $12,000 in one night, which was pretty damn cool. Pretty damn cool. All right. Thanks everybody. Hope you enjoyed the show. Don't forget to like, share, do all of that. Thumbs up. We're under 100 in thumbs up. That's ridiculous. Four thumbs down. What did I say? God, some people will never be happy. I didn't even get upset at Trump once, once. All right, everybody. This is becoming like a running joke. Somebody needs to give me a thumbs down every show just to have something to talk about. I will see you all on... I don't know when. Maybe tomorrow, maybe in like 10 days.