 Welcome back to the Gora Cafe for more coffee and philosophy. Today I'm very happy to have joining us, my friend Gary Chartier, who is distinguished professor of law and business ethics and associate dean of the Tom and Viza Para School of Business at La Sierra University. Senior fellow at the Center for a Stateless Society, member of the board of directors of the Molinari Institute. My name is a JD from UCLA, a PhD and LLD from Cambridge University. In addition to over 40 articles and such venues as Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, legal theory, law and philosophy and religious studies. He's also authored with Cambridge University Press for books, anarchy and legal order law and politics for a Stateless Society, economic justice and natural law. Flourishing lives exploring natural law liberalism and public practice private law and essay and love marriage and state. With Paul Grave McMillan he's authored two books and ecological theory of free expression and radicalizing roles global justice and the foundations of international law. In the last she has the analogy of love divine and human love at the center of Christian theology vulnerability and community meditations on the spiritual life, and the idea of an Adventist university. Other publishers he has the logic of commitment with Routledge, a good life in the market and introduction to business ethics with the American Institute for Economic Research. In the open hand, so it's from the Californian from steeple top press. The conscience of an anarchist why it's time to say goodbye to the state and build a free society with carbon press. Yeah, he has co authored crushing the begging bowl, how entrepreneurial nonprofits can empower themselves and their customers as published with Griffin and lash. He's edited the future of Adventism theology society experience with Griffin and lash. And he has co edited the volumes markets not capitalism individuals to anarchism against bosses inequality corporate power and structural poverty published minor compositions. Social class and state power, exploring on an alternative radical tradition published with Paul Grave McMillan and the Routledge handbook of anarchy and anarchist thought forthcoming from you guessed it Routledge. And in the interest of full disclosure, I was a contrived. I was a co editor on one of those and a contributor to all three. And I'm afraid that's all we have time for now but thanks for coming on Gary, and I hope to see you another time. Very well. Actually, I think maybe we have a little bit more time. So, I thought this would just be a chance for you to tell my, tell my viewers a little bit about your background your history how you got very interested I mean you have a lot of broad obviously broad range of interests, philosophy, theology, law, literature, business, and a lot of my viewers probably know you best for your work in left wing market anarchism. So your background, your career how you got interested in some of the various things that you're interested in. Well, feel free to interrupt at any point with the more specific questions but I guess broadly I would say Social Security number. Yeah, so I'm a native Californian. I was born in Glendale which for people who don't know California is kind of broadly in the LA suburbs. And apart from a brief stint in North Carolina for about three years when I was a pretty tiny person. I spent about six months in the Napa Valley when I was a little older. And time that I spent in graduate school in England. I've lived in Southern California my whole life. My parents were were migrants to the region my mom grew up in Florida my dad in New England. They met in college there. In Texas, found their way, found their way out to California in the mid 1950s, where my dad on a route to medical school having first been an accountant actually taught for a year in the business department, and also slightly the history department at what's now Los Sierra University where I teach. I think I have had the profile of a lot of developing libertarians of my generation which is to say that I, I had Goldwater I parents, I programmed computers I read science fiction and I was socially awkward. And I, you know, sort of radicalized myself, having, you know, probably initially picked up surely on thinking my, my parents political views, began to read in, in political theory, or early on, probably in. Well, I started thinking about, about constitutions and embracing the very un, unlibertarian and certainly unanarchist view that I should be, should be emperor and trying, you know, as a junior high student to think about what a constitution that, you know, prepared me, you know, that provided the right sort of institutional environment for my imperial might look like, I suppose that's probably what got me thinking in more abstract terms about, about political theory. Early on, I read Hayek and Nozick and Rothbard. I suppose the first substantial political theory book I remember diving into was probably Hayek's The Mirage of Social Justice. And, you know, I think I was following a pretty conventional path in that respect toward libertarian adulthood. I got distracted as a university student drawn down the, the alternate path of what was in many respects a fairly sort of conventional social democratic position. And then as I like to say, George Bush and Barack Obama brought me back to anarchism and libertarianism by their abysmal, abysmal behavior in the early 2000s, which really returned me to thinking about such matters. So as I've been reflecting on related things for a while, had certainly been aware of difficulties with arguments for state authority and so forth. I really enjoyed, you know, as a graduate student and later becoming acquainted with the work of the, as it seems to underappreciated English libertarian philosopher Stephen Clark, who done quite a good job of demolishing arguments for state authority when I, when I read him, but wasn't really focused on such matters until, again, I was sort of sort of re radicalized in the early 2000s. And when I was, I was fortunate that I had access, as I really didn't back in the 80s to the work of people who could make clear their responsiveness to the left wing sensibilities that I had embraced and also to very attractive market and anti state views. And I speak here, of course, of people like Roderick Long and Sheldon Richmond and Kevin Carson and Charles Johnson, who, you know, really played an important role in helping me think through a whole range of things. So, that's where I started that's where I where I am now maybe there were other things you were interested in and if so I'm happy to talk about those. Well, can you talk a little bit about your philosophical approach to left wing market and activism. Sure. So, you know, broadly speaking in moral and political philosophy, I live in the, the angle of American analytic world. And, you know, I've learned from a whole range of people, but for the last, you know, those dozen years or so, I focused my attention on the so called new natural law new classical natural law approach to ethics law and politics. I've been aware of an appreciative of this, this approach for for much longer but I really became a sort of out enthusiast, I suppose in, you know, 2009. Broadly speaking, this is a view in the Aristotelian Thomas tradition. So it takes flourishing and fulfillment as central moral categories. And those where it differs from, you know, a lot of standard Aristotelian views and indeed from from some Thomas views is in its incorporation of the antelogical principles in its account of what it is to to seek flourishing. So of course it doesn't treat those as alien constraints but precisely as ways of reasoning about a, about a flourishing life about a good life. And so this is an approach which I think is much richer than more perhaps to some people more familiar content utilitarian approaches, which can often be seen as inattentive to the rich array of of human goods and as concerned more to adjudicate relationships among otherwise detached persons rather than to offer an account of what it is for the agent to live well. And so I think that the interpersonal dimension of ethics and law and politics is really important, but I also think that what really ought to be foundational is the question, what is a good life look like. And I'm very pleased that that's precisely where the natural law approach that I favor begins. And for a lot of people, both the natural law approach and the libertarian approach tend to be at odds with left wing values. So how do you see those three things as fitting together. Yeah. So, natural law theory is very often linked with a kind of social conservatism. And I suppose that's true both because natural law theory is itself taken to imply substantive moral views that are that are socially conservative, and also because natural law theory is seen to provide a license for state action in pursuit of socially conservative views and indeed active encouragement for for state action and pursuit of socially conservative views so I think my own approach has first of all drawn on aspects of, well, has offered an account of natural law theory let's let's put it this way I'm preferred account of natural law theory has in various ways underscored limits on state power to force more generally to get people to behave in particular ways. I've argued for a more robust conception of property rights, for instance, then I think has often been defended in natural law circles have argued against the use of state power to interfere with people's personal moral choices precisely on the grounds of these robust property rights. And also, I think, you know, in a variety of other I hope complimentary ways, pointing out the degree to which interference with people's moral choices can be an attack on the basic good of practical and so forth. You know, and it's worth pointing out in this regard that John Finnis, one of the most important contemporary natural law theorists has said that he thinks Aquinas is a view which I take him largely to endorse is pretty indistinguishable from your mills view in terms of what the state ought to be doing now. So it's not necessarily the case that natural law theorists are all interested in a busy body state, but then at the at the individual level. I've also argued against the substantive ethical views that have tended to form the heart of the social conservatism of natural law theory. I'm trying to show that reasonable adjustments to the theory, including for instance recognizing the inherent value of sensory pleasure. Things like that can help us to rethink the theory itself so that for instance views in opposition to, say for instance, same sex sexual and romantic relationships. That opposition is no longer defensible in terms of the theory and that's, that's a big part of what I try to argue for in public practice, private law. In general, I think the principle of fairness, the golden rule which does play an important part in natural law theorizing yields more egalitarian consequences I think, and more kind of individualist consequences than perhaps all the natural law theorists necessarily suppose, and that I think has consequences not just say for instance, for for something like, like sexual ethics where we need a whole range of other tweaks to the theory to get us to a more socially liberal position, so with respect to a range of issues, so say related to the workplace, where I think taking the principle of fairness seriously, certainly at least creates some some kind of presumption against, you know, the exercise of arbitrary authority and so forth in the workplace. And certainly makes it attractive to move toward flat decentralized and you know small firms related by contract rather than large indeed enormous corporate BMS that often are are impersonal and arbitrary the way they're managed. So if we affirm on natural law grounds, the kinds of robust property rights that I think we should, then, of course, affirming those robust property rights leads to the conclusion that various sorts of state interference. And with economic life will be unjustified but that in turn also means a whole range of props to the positions of the wealthy and well connected props to existing corporate hierarchies and so forth. All of these will be illegitimate. And so we get certainly left wing positions regarding these aspects of positions marked by opposition to oppressive corporate hierarchies and arbitrary authority in the workplace. I think, you know, on the basis of a combination of concern with fairness and the background background property rights which at least create space for alternatives and undermine support for these kind of authoritarian workplace features. And of course, I don't want to suggest that left wing positions are somehow limited to the workplace limited to economic life. Also just think the basic principles of fairness undercut to obviously hierarchies with respect to gender and race and so forth as well. So, roughly speaking, I guess that's how I would get at things. Now, a lot of my viewers are involved in academia either as students or as professors or sometimes students on their way to becoming professors and you've heard some interesting and provocative things about the ethics of grading. I think that some of my students would be delighted at some of your suggestions such as the, the, that it is not ethically proper to penalize people for non attendance for example, they might be dismayed at some of your other suggestions such as that extra credit is also not really proper. You can see a little bit about some of your views about the ethics of grading. Sure. I think you may be the only person who's ever asked me to talk about that in an interview and three cheers for you. So, what I want to suggest with respect to grading is that grades are first and foremost communicative. The function of a grade it seems to me is to provide a folks I call transcript readers with useful information about what students can be expected to do what what what their capacities are. So, the transcript readers well, pretty obviously their employers who look at transcripts, don't know how many really do that. And also educational institutions, typically ones to which somebody might transfer in the course of an undergrad experience, or to which somebody might apply the graduate level after completing an undergraduate experience. So, grades need to be framed with an eye to their role in informing transcript readers. And so what I want to suggest. First of all, is that if I provide a grade that really doesn't seem accurate to me and obviously I understand this, you know, tremendous wiggle in terms of what counts as an accurate grade but if the grade doesn't really seem accurate to me, then first of all, I'm lying. And while in the same book in which I discussed this, I talked about some contexts in which are some some reasons why on occasion wise might be appropriate. I certainly think we ought to begin with very strong presumption against lying in all contexts and certainly the fact that Mario accomplishing the same thing to me this morning. He may take a slightly more rigoristic view than I do. You know, I'm just glad that the two of you are still on speaking terms. Anyway, actually we conducted our conversation to semaphore. It was it was as we have getting around his having found never to speak to me again. What he's supposed to say. Yeah, that's right. He, he can certainly be trusted to to take his vows seriously. So, yeah, so first of all, I think the issue of the section there of lying that I'm troubled by. And then I just think there's a problem that when things that things that don't really have to do with the students capabilities in a given class are reflected in the grade. There's no sort of obvious straightforward way of combining them in a way that yields some sort of intelligible result. You know, certainly, we can decide that we're going to take various factors into account. We, you know, we perhaps it could just be agreed among all students all faculty members all transcript readers that a bunch of different factors would be taken into account in a certain way, and perhaps in that case I mean I'd be against doing that. Perhaps in that case, you know, there wouldn't be, you know, the same kind of model, but it seems as if in general, there isn't anything like that sort of agreement. The most obvious interpretation of an a in algebra to is that you're a strong performer, you know your competence is substantial with respect to the understood subject matter of algebra to. You know, if, you know, if it turns out to be the case that you that that a, you know, is a reflection perhaps in part of your performance of your subject matter competence is the phrase I like to use an algebra to, but also perhaps the fact that you brought me a birthday cake. And also that you were just a, you know, a friendly member of the class. I think somebody who discovers that in fact absent those extra factors, your grade, you know, might instead be a b minus might be a little trouble to have hired you for a position that presupposes some mathematical competence. So, I think, you know, that's partly a matter of concern about lying and partly just a matter of concern about the the diversity of these various factors in the sense that you know we can get more accurate grades we can communicate better if our grades focus on specific things and why not specifically subject matter competence. So, that then means I suggest that, you know, not only should we avoid giving grades, you know, as rewards for good behavior over and above, you know, whatever evidence we have of your competence, but also that, you know, we not use grades to incentivize people for various reasons, you know, might seem attractive. So, you know, I think it's very important that you have a good reason to believe that somebody subject matter competence is substantial, even though that person hasn't, you know, attended in a very reliable way or hasn't done the homework, then it just seems at that point exposed to be deceptive and otherwise problematic to base a grade on on that additional information that's really not germane to subject matter competence so, you know, in the article that you've highlighted Roderick, I go through go on to talk about a bunch of other instances in which a lot of common practices it seems to me can be objected to precisely on the grounds that they don't involve a focus on subject matter competence subject matter competence. Again, I think being important, both because of the need to avoid deception and because of the muddled character of grades that involved attention to things other than subject matter competence. That doesn't mean at all. As I try to suggest that institutions shouldn't care about other things, whether about somebody's, you know, behavior as a participant in class or somebody's, you know, apparent, you know, lack of honesty or whatever. I'd be very happy to see those things highlighted in separate transcript notations where they might actually be more importantly, valuably, effectively communicative than they would be if just folded into grades. I just think that grades themselves need to be, need to be based on a fairly narrow range of considerations. So that's that's roughly the So, you know, maybe it would be nice if obviously this would require sort of institutional change more than something that be up to an individual teacher but it'd be nice if you know maybe each course could have two different grades, one for, you know, recognition of engagement or mastery of the material and one for, you know, effort or engagement or for something like that so that someone can see both of those things if they're interested in both of those. Of course, when I was grad school, we just, I know some grad schools do this and some don't, but we just got satisfactory unsatisfactory for their courses but then the fact the teacher would write up a long, well, so it was long since it was not depending on the, you know, on the, the energy of the teacher would do a write up of various strengths and weaknesses of the student. I remember my my logic professor saying about me and I and that I seem to prefer going through solving logic problems are going through long arguments rather than short ones and I'm thinking, I clicked the shortest one I could god damn fine. But that's sort of a regression. So is that is that piece of yours on grading is that in the business that they spoke or the big or the, which books it in. Yeah, so it originally appeared in the byu education and law journal, but the current version the version that I'm happiest with is the what second or third chapter of flourishing lives exploring natural Okay, so it's not it's not in the business that they spoke in flourishing lives. Okay, I will have links to all of your books in the description for people to don't seek to melt so it's so if you're interested in reading more about the grading thing that's in flourishing lives. So recent students become sort of a a fairly strong nationwide dispute. But it's also sort of dispute sort of within left libertarian circles generally. Not exactly on on free speech per se, in terms of sort of what government, you know, what kind of interference government should be allowed to make in free speech because generally the ads would be none for the libertarians left or otherwise but questions about sort of the general culture free speech where there's often, there often seems to be a case on both sides that on the one side. We were talking about sort of non, you know, non aggressive non violent restrictions on free speech like boycotting institution to get someone fired for for expressing, you know, racist homophobic or sexist views or whatever. On the one hand, let's say this is, you know, this is creates a chilling effect on free speech. It's the wrong way to deal with free speech and other just say, No, this is a way of basically protecting people's protecting people from being being subject to sort of harmful and prejudicial attitudes influences. So, and you've, you've thought a fair bit about this when you say a little bit about your views on on that range of topics. Yeah, sure. So the main thing I want to say is, as in most interesting conversations, it's complicated. Right. So we begin with the view that it is entirely you know within the rights of of those who are concerned about the content of somebody's speech to you know to express that concern very vigorously and one and of course they in turn their own free speech rights and those rights include certainly the right to say Auburn University should fire Roderick law. So I begin of course with with that assumption. My general left libertarian dismay, I think with with corporate power makes me not want to see activists encourage encourage corporations to use legal rights that they they might well have and indeed they might well they might have in a you know, fully free society, not to use those rights to to stifle debate in most cases and so the kinds of cases that you have in mind, perhaps we can can bracket for a moment come back to those and I should indeed have written more about them than I did in my recent book on free speech but I did try to say in that book how important I thought it was that just as a general matter businesses allow as much internal dialogue as possible about matters related to their operations and as much a contribution by their workers to wider public dialogue as possible that the general values I think that we seek to serve by protecting free speech are certainly served in this way right so my view is that a fully adequate account of kind of why we care why we should care about freedom of expression includes certainly a concern for property rights which might be infringed upon by forcible interference with expressive activity but also with a concern for autonomy of speakers and the autonomy of hearers also with a concern for the role of speech in fostering the quest for for understanding and for truth I think also with some you know some concerns about you know in what ways speech might actually be said to to harm and then finally with the worries about the ways in which those empowered to make decisions that might in one way or another restrain speech ways in which those decision makers might find it easy to yield to temptations to promote their own private agendas or those of their cronies by restricting speech and I guess my point is that a number of those considerations are very much applied to private institutions as well as to ones that you know employee employee force like states and so what I want to see is those institutions take seriously the you know the kinds of concerns that might underlie a free speech regime, not as a matter of treating themselves as bound by by laws, which they certainly should be certainly be free to act badly and sometimes of course you know the absence of law gives them the freedom to act rightly in a way that you know doesn't necessarily track some very general general norm in this regard, but I would want to see norms that in general take seriously those those concerns that ought to underlie an adequate freedom of expression regime, like autonomy and the quest for truth and also doubts about the merits of decision makers behavior. All of that I think, you know matters in a private as much as a public context. I talk about it with respect to nonprofits like churches, for instance, which might sometimes want to suppress the speech of dissenters, as well as in relation to corporations that might want in one way or another to avoid public embarrassment or to shut down internal debate of one kind or another. And, you know, I can't offer some kind of general norm that is always going to apply in every case to such institutions but I at least think there's there are fairly strong presumptions there. So, you know, you talked about concern, particularly with protection, and I think that's another matter, right, where the issue is not so much a case in which, you know, that it's not that the thought is not people need to be protected from speech, but rather the fact that someone has spoken in a given way gives evidence of attitudes in virtue of which it might be quite difficult for that person to adequately perform duties that involve, you know, treating people fairly and so forth. And so, you know, that I think is a different kind of matter. It's not a matter of somehow punishing people for the content of their speech. It's using the content of their speech as evidence of their willingness adequately to perform other tasks related to their positions. And, you know, I'd obviously think that the relevant contractual constraints would be germane and we'd have to talk about the specifics, but I wouldn't want to say, in that kind of case, if it's clear, for instance, that, you know, somebody is inclined to be consistently unfair, perhaps even abusive, to some subset of students, for instance, in a class. That's certainly a reason to be, you know, inclined to reassign that person and perhaps in some cases to terminate that person. And I mean, their employment or actually terminate them. Yeah, so I'm an administrator. I don't actually shoot people. I was thinking about terminating employment. You know, abusive conduct in the classroom certainly might justify termination of employment. And the point, the point I take it is my speech might not just be in the classroom. It might be in some other context, and it might raise a question, you know, whether I could in fact behave properly in the classroom. You know, we have to dive into the specifics and what evidence we had in a particular case. I certainly wouldn't want to say we can automatically assume that you'll behave badly in the classroom because you wrote an op-ed that I might find deeply problematic. But I certainly wouldn't want to rule out consideration of your out of class speech, for instance, as a predicate for raising questions about whether you could behave with appropriate fairness, you know, in your institutional role. So we have to talk more specifically about that. But anyway, so, but as a general matter, I don't want to see private institutions any more than public ones involved in suppressing speeches such as that's how I want to perhaps try to navigate that. Okay. In libertarian circles generally and in left libertarian ones in particular, I think, you often find a hostility to religion. And you've written a fair bit about theology so you don't seem to share that hostility to religion. So could you say a little bit about how you see that hostility to religion and in libertarian circles generally or left libertarian circles, in particular, and, you know, how you see yourself as meeting it and whether you've encountered, you know, sort of any hostility or pushback from the kinds of things that you work on in that area. Yeah. You know, so the short answer to that last question is no, I really have not encountered any, any hostility on the part of the part of libertarians or the for that matter the part of philosophers to the work that I've done in philosophy, religion, philosophical theology. You know, I, so I should say, just back to my own personal narrative. I grew up in a pretty conservative Protestant home. I say pretty conservative because there were there were interesting wrinkles there some of which, you know, maybe related to the particular dynamics of 70 Adventist Protestantism and some related to, to my parents. So, you know, Adventist is a general matter, our, our Protestants in the in the Wesleyan tradition, and in many respects pretty similar to to other other Protestants. However, in significant part because of Adventist, Savitarianism. Adventists came at least in the latter part of the 19th century to see themselves as current and potentially future targets for serious religious persecution, and thus became active advocates of religious liberty. Also, here I think, you know, we need to talk more about the the relevant metaphysics and so forth but I'm just describing the position. Adventists have tended to be mortalists and materialists with respect to human persons. And for this reason, the typical Adventist view until fairly recently, I think has been pretty clearly a pro choice of you also important in that respect has been the fact that Adventists have been deeply invested in health care. And so, you know, my dad who was as I say, a Goldwater Republican in general, he might well have ended up a Trump Republican certainly he was, he was a protectionist for instance and opponent of immigration. But, you know, he was somebody who always had at least a sort of mixed view of for instance folks on the Supreme Court other conservatives might have disliked because he saw them as standing up for abortion rights and religious freedom which were both the things that he that he favored. So it's a little complicated but in any event, you know, my, my own intellectual development which involved grappling with a lot of interesting developments in contemporary and transformed Protestant thinking, Anglicanism, Catholicism, you know, undoubtedly, you know, widened my horizon this is compared to to where I was when I was, when I was a kid. And, you know, I'm as a result of that, you know, I'm certainly very appreciative of the religious liberals and proponents of free thought, who often lie at the foundation of, you know, a lot of later developments in political liberalism and thus libertarianism. I certainly don't view those people hostily, and I haven't tried to articulate my views in a way that would be that would be hostile to them. It seems to me that the classical liberal and libertarian and left libertarian skepticism let's say at minimum about about religion can often be linked with a very understandable worry about the authoritarianism of religious institutions, and the way in which religious beliefs are often propounded as, you know, dogmas to be accepted dogmata to be accepted, and, you know, as restraining individual freedom and the perception that, you know, say in a Western theistic context, God is perceived as, you know, very much like the, very much like the state. And of course we have Bakunin writing God in the state and suggesting that the authority and so forth of one is no more defensible than that of the other. So I think we need a God on stony throne to to quote my roommate. You know, so I've wanted to embrace a kind of position that's that's comfortably, you know, that's comfortably religious that's not sort of hesitatingly or apologetically religious, but that also takes very seriously the need for critical thought and dialogue, and doesn't present religious religious ideas as either sort of epistemically authority epistemically authoritarian ways, or a substantively, you know, involving arbitrary, you know, arbitrary authority, the imposition of arbitrary authority on people. You know, that doesn't mean obviously that the stance of people within within the movement should just be to blindly accept whatever I say, the nature of, I think, the kind of liberal culture I'd want to further is one in which there's you know, a lot of debate and dialogue and even if I offer a more attractive species of religious belief that may not work for people. My, my dear friend, Sheldon Richmond is a busily at work writing an atheist blog this this summer. And, you know, I don't doubt for a second that, you know, Sheldon is unconvinced by some of the things I say, that's just fine. But I think at any rate, I haven't experienced any kind of hostility in the movement. I speculate an understanding of religious belief that's at least responsive to the concerns that I think are are certainly quite understandably there in the movement with hierarchical and authoritarian and anti intellectual styles of religion. Another, another position you often find is the view that that the burden of proof lies with the defender of religious belief to prove, you know, prove the existence of God and that there's a presumption in favor of atheism and in the analogy of you raise some doubts about that whole way of thinking about the burden of proof lying there on one side or on the other. Can you say a little bit about sort of the epistemological approach you have there. Yeah, so that's interesting. So my own views about the epistemology religion reflect to a significant extent the influence of people like like Nick Wolterstorf. And Alistair McIntyre, I think in different ways, also built the late Bill Plaker. And I think the idea for all of them would be that we start where we are, and we acknowledge the limited nature of our current understanding, we are, you know, open to an engaged in dialogue with with criticisms about our current position and we refine where we where we are kind of, you know, on the way in via. And so that means that, you know, epistemic justification. So well, while truth is, I think not in any meaningful sense here relative epistemic justification is, and it reflects the situations of particular people so that I think the burden of proof seems to me rests with someone who wants to suggest that you should change your view, whatever that whatever that view happens to be. And I don't think we win points by beginning with some substantive position in favor of which there's, you know, the burden of proof always weighs in a way that's supported in that particular substance position I think the reality is, you know, to establish a burden of proof in a particular case you've got to offer, offer reasons and those reasons need to, to make sense to the person with whom you're in dialogue. And then I went on to read, you know, your discussion in reason and value of the kind of approach that you wanted to take, as I note in a footnote that I think you must have already stumbled on in the algae. I looked up all the references to me in that book. So, yeah, I think I really felt like what you were saying there seemed very much along along similar lines and I responded very positively that you weren't of course talking about these sorts of issues but it seems to me the general approach seems right to me that, you know, and you obviously had the luxury to say no you've got me wrong idiot, but, you know, I think the, the idea is the burden of proof, you've got to be right but you're still an idiot can I say that. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. It would be but that wouldn't be the first time. I'm hurt. That's possible. Anyway, I think I think I've said enough about that. Okay, on a different topic. One book of yours that I haven't read but probably should. Given that that I'm involved in a tiny helpless nonprofit is you have a co authored book on crushing the begging bowl, how entrepreneurial nonprofits can empower themselves and their customers. Can you say a little bit about what that book is about and what you say in it. Yeah, I certainly can. Let's be very clear that my role there doesn't give me credit for any, or at least almost any of the interesting ideas. So this is a joint project down betro who was for many years, the chief executive of an entity that at least when I first became aware of it was the Family Service Association of Western Riverside County and it's a slightly different name now. It's been an organization for about 30 years. My Dean John Thomas who was on the board of that organization for a couple of decades at least. And, you know, and me and my role was primarily one of polishing pros and doing the layout and design so you know I was definitely not. The key intellectual inspiration there, but I would say that roughly what what the three of us want to say with ideas here kind of inspired by Johnny and put in practice by Dom and, you know, at best sort of tweet by me is that in various ways, nonprofit organization with assets need to think about leveraging those assets. And in ways that would make sense for for profit businesses need to be more open to risk need to be open to profit making models as bases for revenue generation. The idea in any event is that crushing, you know, the begging bowl is a symbol of a certain kind of monastic approach to to sustenance the the monk is there with a bowl in hand, asking others to to contribute. Certainly, we are very much aware that part of what unavoidably goes on with an unprofit part of what goes on with nonprofits certainly is going to be the solicitation of donations, but I think it's a matter of emphasis. The idea here is that ideally idea ideally an effective nonprofit that has assets will be willing to leverage those assets. As the results use the resources that it has to ground for profit activities that then can fund it's not not for profit undertakings it's central undertakings. Be open to entrepreneurial thinking be open to using assets creatively be open to seeking profit, even if you're fundamentally a nonprofit organization, and perhaps more generally be open to risk. Thanks. Okay, so switching gears for a minute so you know you spent sometimes studying in in England. So can you see a little bit about how that came about how you decided to to throw you have that direction and what it was like to study there. Yeah, so I finished an undergraduate degree in history and political science, while taking a fair amount of coursework in philosophy and religion along the way, and you know concluding early on that I wanted to do that sort of thing in graduate school so I applied initially to the institution that then was known as Claremont graduate school and now is called Claremont graduate university. And I'm sure drove some people crazy there I initially applied for initially applied for admission to the Department of Government planning to do political philosophy in that department. I got tired of that. And I'd applied pretty early and so I moved my application over to and was accepted by the Department of Philosophy. I very much wanted to do some work with the philosopher religion john heck, who lived in that department, but was the chair of the Department of Religion in the graduate school. And I wrote a letter I remember to the then chair of the philosophy department asking about kind of how I could draw on resources from other departments and I think particularly the religion department and got a rather, you know, really note back, suggesting that yes of course I could but you know the the implication I think was that I was, you know, perhaps focused in the wrong place. So, I just switched over at that point to the religion department. And I think that was all to the good because john heck I think it was fair to say was in a probably the leading English language philosopher religion of his generation. And the religion department of Claremont more generally was a very, very fine department that included, you know, people in a number of different disciplines including both philosophical theology and biblical studies, who are really very, very impressive at the international level. A couple of years later however the National Research Council rated the Claremont PhD program number I think 71 out of 71 PhD programs and philosophy in the US. And so I think I probably dodged a bullet there in any event. So I, I spent some time working, I spent a submit, you know, I started off the fall semester 1987 working with with john, who's a great guy and with whom I remain friends until his death a few years ago. But I think I, for various reasons. I decided I wanted something a bit different, and I had the sense that what I wanted could be could be found in the UK, and I applied to a bunch of graduate programs in the UK. I think to about six or seven probably. And while, you know, to the great dismay of you know all all sensible people associated with Oxford I didn't get into Oxford I did get into Cambridge so I went to Cambridge and the environment at Cambridge was then and I presume still is great for multiple reasons right so first of all, Cambridge is a very international place, you get the chance to meet people from all over the world, probably a third of graduate students. It seems to me are people from outside the UK. And so you really get an opportunity to, to mix and mingle with, you know, with very intriguing people from from across the planet. In addition, Oxford and Cambridge as some viewers will know, operate as collegiate universities, they're made up of colleges which are not just as is true and I think a number of the American institutions that tried to copy them, sort of residential units. But the colleges are also for undergraduates and maybe for some master's students sites of instruction as well. And so the colleges then have senior members attached to them who are you know, affiliated with a variety of academic departments across the university, and there are students for a variety of academic programs as well. So why there do you apply to universities a whole or do you apply to a specific college or, or what. Yeah, so when you're applying as a graduate student at least when when I applied. You applied to indicating you wanted to work in a particular academic department and maybe I don't remember if you had to specify a particular supervisor that that was certainly part of the process was making arrangements with the supervisor. But then you also specified for colleges that you wanted your application to be considered by now. I suppose in principle, you know, if you were accepted by the department but not by any of the colleges, then, you know, I never had to discover what this was like but I presume in that case you would probably not be bounced immediately there would be some attempt to find you a college that might be willing to accommodate you but any event the value of the collegiate model I think was that, you know, I got to know lots of graduate students who were in other academic disciplines and so you know they ranged from an astrophysicist called David Waymont, who articulated Waymont's law, all conversations ultimately come around to word processing, which certainly seemed very apropos in, you know, 1989. To, you know, people just dead. Well, exactly. And to people in in philosophy in international relations in law and and so forth and so I think in that sense it was a very rich experience as well. So, I, and of course, as a PhD student, not required to do much of anything except right so I went to seminars, occasionally went to undergrad lectures but in particular there were seminars that I went to in the philosophy of religion and theology within the Div school or the Div school was a building within the Divinity faculty. And, you know, otherwise I, I wrote away and I, I had a number of other topics that initially interested me but by early 1989, which means basically one term in, I had settled on a dissertation on the idea of friendship, and when people ask me what I, what I said about it. I like to tell them that I, I said friendship was a good thing and we ought to have more of it. It seemed like an appropriate topic for dissertation but I, you know, I looked at at friendship and kind of the nature of friendship. What do we mean we talk about friendship what's friendship about. I looked at friendship and spirituality friendship and ethics and friendship and politics. What I had to say about politics was sort of proto anarchistic, and it dismayed me that I think that through a bit more. The idea was that, you know, of course in in classical political theory friendship is very important but that makes a bit more sense in the world of the policy where there are very few actual political actors and limited number of free adult males. In mass society, talking about links between friendship and politics might not seem to make much sense, but in a radically decentralized political order with much smaller institutions that the advantages of that early earlier set of arrangements might be captured. And I think even more so if you de-territorialize and so forth. In fact, I'm ironically, after 29 years, I'm going back finally and trying to turn that dissertation into a book, and I look forward to citing the book that Nathan Goodman reviewed that you call to my attention yesterday. So, you know, could have been more timely. Anyway, I better put a link into that. Yeah, it was a great review by Nathan and the book book is certainly very, very on point. So I anyway, I wrote the dissertation over the course of about three years which was kind of the standard standard timeline for people. And it was a dissertation that was, I suppose, roughly speaking, 50% theology, 40% philosophy and 10% social science, something like that crunching sort of topic that made it easy to be what it was and is the sort of topic likely to make it easy for a militant like me to, you know, spread out in all directions. So, anyway, I wrote that dissertation and I defended it in September of 1991. Yeah, it was September 1991. And so I, as is the nature of the case in UK academic programs, those evaluating the dissertation were not people who had been previously involved. So I had a, you know, a dissertation advisor who was Brian Hebbethway, who had done philosophy at Oxford and theology at Cambridge and was a perfectly good person for that kind of thing from why I learned a great deal about that and other topics. But Brian was not part of the review process instead, I had two examiners, the philosophical theologian Michael banner, and the philosopher Stephen Clark who has since become a friend but who at the time was, you know, I suppose terrifying. And so in the nature of the case, they were precluded by institutional policy from telling me what they were recommending at the end of the defense which I presume they'd already settled on having read the dissertation before anyway. And so I had to wait to find out for another six weeks or so after that. And then the degree was conferred in in December of 1991. And I'm not, you know, I worked on turning the dissertation into a book over the next couple of years and then I got distracted by various other things and actually as it happens just this week. I'm now starting on the process of trying to get it to finally print. You know, you said, you know, being full friendship as though that would be uncontroversial but I just remember that and in a recent, in one of the recent videos here, I guess it was episode nine I think I played a clip from serenade berserak where he says, I'm watching other people making friends everywhere as a dog makes friends. I mark the manner of these canine courtesies and think here comes thank heaven another enemy. So, there's a text for you to consider. Oh, my friends there is no friend. Well, actually on that note. I often when I remember like to ask my. I've asked my interviewees about works of art or literature of books, movies, music, whatever that they found particularly inspiring or engaging they might have philosophical content or they might not. There's a lot of things that, that draw you interest you and so I thought we might finish up by talking a bit about that. I thought we were just getting started. I thought you had a. In my meeting is yes in an hour and a quarter. Anyway, so, I happen to go on longer I don't have a, I don't know. So, yeah, works of literature. Wow. You know, I love to read I love to watch and I think anything I anything I say is likely to be inadequate and incomplete. You know, my father's mother's maiden name was hood and I grew up being assured by my father that we were somehow related to Robin Hood, and I certainly read a lot of Robin Hood as a kid. That's that that hardly counts as as profound literature, but I certainly enjoy it. It's an entrain to left libertarianism. It is. I started out with Roger Lancelot greens collection of Robin Hood stories that certainly also read. Yeah, I read those two. Classic Howard Pyle version as well. Yeah. But, you know, in terms of the thing, things that have been hugely so I'll tell you just things I really liked, which doesn't mean necessarily that they were profoundly influential. So, Lawrence Durell's Alexandria quartet, I think is is absolutely stunningly well written. When I was reading those books, thanks to someone a shabbani in the early, early 90s, I guess it would have been 93. I started started reading those books early 94. And I was calling people up and making them listen to my oral interpretations of things that Durell said because I thought the writing was just so spine tingly excellent. Another, you know, I think, I haven't gotten around to reading those yet but I've wanted to for a while. I'm told that that the science fiction novel I sense by Kim Stanley Robinson, whom you and I met years ago. And I'm told that at least the, you know, there's a middle portion of that book is like the Alexandria quartet said on Mars, I don't know how accurate. Okay, that is because I haven't read the Durell and you haven't read I since probably so. We're not a good epistemic position to judge that claim but I do want to get around to reading the Durell because I have heard them highly recommended by many sensible people and you among them. I thought you were going to say I've got many sensible people and also by you. Yeah. So, I really, and here of course we're closer to philosophy have really enjoyed reading what, you know, almost all of Iris Murdoch's novels. And I find her, you know, her writing here so the psychological characterization that she so definitely engages in so was really, really delightful. And I commend her very much and I think her philosophical work is interesting and important. Certainly learned from that. If that's for me I'm not here. But the novels, I think, are very rich. And, you know, typically for those who haven't read Murdoch's fiction. She's somebody who I think really usually with a few exceptions, zeroes in on a small group of interconnected people and just kind of dissect their relationships and their motivations and so forth and it's all very, it's all very interesting and engaging. One of her novels I think it's one of her earliest maybe you're very earliest under the net, which I confess they don't remember much about it now but I always intended to get to more of them. Now it is one of the earliest it doesn't remember whether that comes first or whether flight from the Enchanter which is I guess a thinly veiled depiction of her relationship with. Now it's Elias Canetti, who might well have pronounced his name Elias I don't know but in any case, I got a copy of that book as a birthday gift from a girlfriend in the 90s. But when we broke up then I just didn't feel like reading the book so absolutely got it somewhere. My, my personal favorite Murdoch's I think are a fairly honorable defeat and the book and the Brotherhood. The Brotherhood begins with the premise that a bunch of well healed friends at Oxford have decided to create a syndicate syndicate to support another friend, not so well healed, because they're all convinced that he has in him, a great work of left political theory, and so they're going to support him while he produces the book. And so of course I, you know, I mean how could I not like the thought of, you know, being being supported by a bunch of friends while I just write. I hope I'm a slightly less, you know, less unpleasant person than that character is but anyway. I heartily commend Murdoch. You know that's that's on the more on the more highbrow side. I can also enthusiastically commend well I've just been reading one of them. The many books of Lindsay Davis, most of which are quite witty mystery novels set in first century Rome. The first bunch in the under the reign of Domitian and or sorry, sorry, the second bunch of the reign of Domitian and the first under Domitian's father why am I blanking on Domitian's father. I'm reading two and I've also read a bunch of those books. Oh, you've heard of the Davis I did I didn't realize. You know, well I was going to keep reading both those and Stephen sailor who's. Oh yeah. Yeah, I've read those two. I will sit down a bit earlier during sort of the declining years of the of the Republic. I as is the case with a number of series Brooklyn detective series that I read I at some point I lost track of which ones I read which ones I hadn't. Because my capital, you know, stored away in some box somewhere. And so I stopped reading the new ones because I couldn't remember once I had but that's also true of have you have you ever read any of the works. The detective works by Donna Leon. Many of very Venice. And I'm a big fan of those like I have a blog post about them. Sure. Yeah. But again I lost track of I lost track of which ones I'd read which ones I hadn't because I just, I can't always tell from the names. And since I wanted to read them in order because there is a kind of just as with sailor and Davis there is a kind of, you know, although they're more or less standalone that they does make more sense if you read them in the right order. I wanted to read them in the right order so You know, though, Donna Leon has specifically said that her characters don't age. Yeah, well, her, her, her main characters have, you know, they have a pair of teenage kids that that never get any older as the day. That's true. However, it's also true that a character who will be a suspect in one book will turn up as a trusted friend and another books if you read those in the wrong order. You already know, oh, I guess they didn't do it. So that's one reason to read them in the right order. Yeah, fair enough. No, I certainly commend those books. I like those books. I, you know, also, also I'm very fond, I think about about kind of series of various sorts. I'm a great fan of urban fantasy. And I, I want to commend certainly the work of Stephen Brust, Bruce, who, who writes urban fantasy set in an herb that's very much not in our world. But then also the urban fantasy of people like Jim Butcher, who's wonderful. Harry Dresden novels not to be confused with them, I think dreadful TV series based on them are, you know, really engaging depictions of a wizard underworld and contemporary Chicago, and its environs. The only thing I've read by Stephen Bruce, I think, I think he's the one who wrote to rain and hell, which is not really urban fantasy, unless, unless heaven counts as an herb. But it's, you know, it belongs to genre you could sort of call, you know, theological fantasy fantasy involving angels and demons and God and, yeah. Yeah, I actually I wrote him a fan letter about that that book when I was in college and wondered about its potential links with my own religious tradition and he responded in a long and thoughtful letter. No, I read Milton. Well, it does seem like kind of a, you know, a dark spin on on Paradise Lost. Most of the works of people like Neil Gaiman. I don't know if you've ever read Neil Gaiman. I actually haven't. I mean, of course, I'm aware of him, but I haven't. Because he has never worked sort of take place, take place in, in, you know, in heaven or in hell, or in some sort of commerce between them that have the kind of satirical you know, and the first book has. Yeah, and first has written a number of standalone books but it's his vlog told us or thought of what I think perhaps is best known for. He's also got a book, and I'm forgetting the title now that he co authored with Emma bull, a book that's a kind of set. It's set in I think in 1848. Chartism and the general sort of political upheaval at the time, and angles as a character, and there's black magic. Yeah, and it's a kind of foe Victorian novel it has sort of the, you know, the structure of, and some of the characteristics of the kind of stereotypical novel of the period. And it's got a name that's rather like that, but I keep wanting to say Lawson gain which was in fact the title John Henry Newman's novel about Oxford in his student days so I'm forgetting now what, what their book is called but I will I am going to look up because I think for people interested in fantasy and politics. It might be of some interest so, you know, Brost is a Trotskyist and for those for whom that's a that's a turn off be a be aware of that. I think he's a, you know, a good nature Trotskyist and certainly the the book. Well, I'll wait to you to find the title of this before I ask. Our viewers will just be aware of this is about two new two guys whose memories are fading. Yeah, so it's not Lawson gain it's freedom and necessity. Okay, well it's X and Y. Anyway, any of Ken McLeod. The first thing I have to say is obviously, you know, Ken was nice enough to give us a blurb for for markets not capitalism and I've been aware of his for ages, but to my discredit actually read him. He's someone for whom Trotskyism and libertarianism were both major intellectual influences. And, you know, his his his first work which is a four volume series, the fall revolution, sort of draws on both in interesting ways he's he presents lots of different societies of sort of different flavors of capitalism and different flavors of anarchism and so forth and I think it's fair in that none of them is exactly utopia, but none of them is actually, you know, is most of them are not horrifically bad either. And he sort of presents, you know, what's advantageous or disadvantageous about each of them. I think it's an introduction to the to the, you know, the later edition of the series he says something like, you know, my worry was, what was what if Marx was right about capitalism and Mises was right about socialism. That's great. You know, you can see why he's, you know, he's sort of some some patica with our left libertarian stuff and Kevin Carson is a big fan of his. Kim cloud is not not, you know, he's not sort of completely, you know, he's definitely not ideologically down with all the details of of our particular project. He's broadly sympathetic to too many aspects of it. Yeah, three cheers can if you're if you're watching this, my failure to read your stuff is a deficiency on my part completely. Yeah, and then so so that's all all writing. Yeah, what have I, what have I, you know, what would I think about in terms of things I've watched that I particularly like. On the, you know, on the more high brow side. One of my favorite movies that, you know, very few people seem to know, I don't remember you and I've talked about it before so odds are you've seen it because you've seen everything is the what would it be 9192 something like that French film I'm going to be very hard in winter. Absolutely exquisite film about you know just kind of dissecting. Again dissecting relationships in a very, very low key understated way. That's just a brilliant piece of filmmaking. I, I love Peter Bogdanovich is the last picture show, as also the, the novel on which it's based and the later novels that that follow that one. That's what I think of as sort of. Yeah, well, passing passing on from high brow to not so high brow. I really love Kevin Smith's work, which wonderfully I think combines high brow and raunchy. I, I'm a huge fan as as you know Roderick of Whit Stillman, who makes a little talky kind of dramedies that I think are. Yeah, just eminently, eminently watchable careerism. Good exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, from his his first film Metropolitan, which I saw 30 years ago this summer. I think it would be also a very, you know, on a very low budget and a very narrow timeframe and taking place at Christmas time in New York and they had to film as quickly as possible because before the city took the Christmas decorations down because they weren't they weren't in charge of the decorations and they were just, they're just playing along with it and so, and you know and most of it just takes place inside, you know, inside rooms. I think it's pretty cool enough that they'll be the next movie Barcelona could be rather more expansive and it's in its budget and so you get. Well, you get Barcelona, which is pretty amazing to watch. Yeah, and then that's followed by the last days of disco and he and stillman actually writes a novel as a companion to that to that film. And the slide there's some slight overlap I think, with at least one one character appealing appearing in that film, very briefly who's in the earlier one. And then of course he goes for a very long time without making anything, and then gives us damsels and distress. Yeah, damsels and distress is very charming and of course features my, you know, happily acknowledged celebrity crush Greta Gerwig, who I think is just does wonderful things. And of course I'm so glad she's now making it as a writer and director as well as an actor. And then he of course finishes that finish his office to date with you know he's always been fond of Jane Austen, and Jane Austen's work is clearly influential on his depiction of social mores and so forth in his earlier films. Jane Austen is actually a major plot point since one of the main characters is a big Austin fan and is getting involved in relationship with someone else who simply cannot see the point of Boston at all. There's a wonderful bit in Metropolitan, where he gives all these explanations of why he thinks Austin's not a good writer and then he just admits along the way or actually never actually read her but I don't really need to read her in order to come up with a, you know, a good analysis of her deficiencies. Right, he has this general view somewhat chastened on that point. Right. I mean he has this general view that you know why read the author when you can just read good literary criticism. So he's Red Lionel Trilling on Austin, but hasn't read Austin herself and he says, you know, with with fiction, I can never forget it's all just made up by the author. Little as you know that he's a fictional character made up by which still man. That's that's disturbing. And, and you know, he's one of at least two people with significant roles in that film, who's never done any other acting, you know, I think the, I can't think of the name of that actor but he's, he's just going on to be I think like a high school teacher in Canada. Very red haired guy, very red haired, but the other guy in that film, who you might know has never gone anywhere and with some regret, is the, the resonant voiced guy that Tom and Charlie end up talking to in a bar toward the end of the film. Right. The client of the Urban Outdoors was the right and he's just not convinced by their analysis at all and that guy I think was a, you know, was a lawyer accountant. And that's what happened to know. And I remember in at least one commentary track I listened to stillman just observes that, you know, people occasionally call them and say how where can we find this guy how can we how can we place him in a film well he's not an actor. I mean, someone does tend to reuse a lot of the same. The same actors in, in somewhat different at playing sometimes similar but not entirely similar characters. Like Chris Egan who's just sort of delightful. Yeah. He just started delightful to watch and listen to makes, makes those movies for me. Oh, he's wonderful. But so what I was going to say when we got distracted was then still the does have this most recent film, which is actually a Jane Austen film. Lady Susan. So he's taken this, I guess unfinished Jane Austen text. And I guess this is the first time it's been, it's been filmed and he certainly translates it to film with his own, you know, evident sensibility very much intact. So I, I certainly commend that to know I should see that I didn't get into the last days of disco as much as into as metropolitan in Barcelona. But I'm kind of with you on that I think I actually think metropolitan remains the best of his films but I enjoy all of his stuff. So, you know, certainly want to commend him. Well, it's interesting you might know he's, you know, of course, you know, it's been such a chronicler in film of, you know, the, the untitled American aristocracy, which is probably not which was the actually but anyway. But he is a, I'm trying to think of the exact connection. But there's there is a family connection enemy rate with a digby bald cell, who was I think a sociologist the University of Pennsylvania, who was seen as the premier academic chronicler of the preppy class. And so it's perhaps not completely coincidental but he and he and still men are connected. The emperor we were trying to think of earlier was the Spasian. Yes, good job. Thank you. No, I did. I couldn't remember it despite, you know, despite the fact that I'm supposed to be sort of a part time classicist and read lots of classical history and couldn't think of the guy's name. One of the less bad emperors, I mean, you know, he was a hard ass, but he wasn't a psycho crazy. And that's, that's always a good, you know, good thing. I'm in favor of not, you know, people with lots of power not being psycho crazies. You know, I mean, I'd be all for overthrowing him and replacing with nothing but that's a, but that's a, yeah. Right. You know, so this has all been movies, I guess we're going to talk about the things that I've seen, you know, on TV, and I do have to say, I pay more attention to TV than the movies these days, I think that it's best, you know, good long arc television is sorry, it's just unbeatable. I think you've got long arc television listed somewhere somewhere on some website or somewhere you have, you have that listed this one as one of your one of your interests. Yeah, I listed it in a number of places, actually, you know, sort of a golden era for it. Because I remember, I remember, you know, growing up in the 70s, it was, there was a long arc television was very rare. You know, episodes tended to be one and done, there were some exceptions, but you know, apart from soap operas, which are generally not the, you know, not the highest quality. I think at the end of every episode, just sort of reverted to the status quo. And because they didn't want people to, because people would be viewing these things in broadcast and they didn't have an opportunity to view them online, which I think is one important reason for this. They didn't want people to feel that they'd missed something by missing an episode, because then they might just think, oh, I'm not going to bother seeing the next episode and so forth. So they want to make sure that you would be completely caught up with any episodes you saw. Well, and they wanted to know they could offer things in syndication with the recognition that in syndication they might even be in the same order. Yeah. So, yeah, I think we've really seen a dramatic shift there just in the quality of television generally. I mean, it seems to me that, you know, I would have thought at least that, you know, some of the shows on, you know, on the premium networks, things like the Sopranos and Six Feet Under just managed to raise the bar for everybody else. In the late 90s, early 2000s. You know, so one of my very, very favorite, probably in just if I had to pick one, my very favorite TV series remains Buffy the Vampire Slayer which, you know, really kind of comes online a bit before that trend, but I think perhaps presages it and certainly featuring, you know, self contained episodic plots but at the same time, long arcs that are evident from the beginning. Before that, I mean, you know, in the 80s, you've got, you've got Hill Street Blues, LA Law and Wise Guy, which I was a yes, a benefit time. You know, so there were, you know, there were some things like that. I didn't really watch LA Law, but I, but I watched when I was in college, along with some of the evening soaps like Dallas and Falcon Crafts, my roommates and I used to watch those. But, you know, I was in grad school and Wise Guy. You know, it lasted all too briefly but I was a big fan of it at the time. Yeah, I remember, remember liking that idea. It was, it was on when I was in grad school, probably to and so I was coming back and forth and not catching it when it was in regular run unless I happened to be back at, you know, in the states at the right time. And one piece of American TV that I managed to catch while I was in grad school learning on a consistent basis was 30 something. I'm pretty sure, yeah, I remember watching, I remember watching some of that. So, partly what interested me was that the main actor looked very much like a friend of mine, which is not a universally ballot aesthetic principle but it was sort of interesting. I didn't get really involved in it. I think we should probably be going to wrap things up just because, you know, my systems processing long videos is, you know, is, it's temperamental and so the longer it gets the more it whines and complains and Greeks and groans and so we are almost at the two hour point and that is just about the limit what it can handle and but I can return to have another conversation like this at another time. I just read more fun talking about, you know, talking about movies and TV then we did talking about philosophy. I don't know what that says about us and our, our seriousness as philosophers. Maybe just so it puts you less on the spot to sort of be defending your views and more just sort of talking about stuff you like. You could easily put me on the spot and demand that I defend my views of pop culture items. I could do. I'm not encouraging you to do so I'm just pointing out that you're quite good at that. And I mean that quite seriously Roderick that your your work as a, as a cultural critic of literature and a pop culture products always strikes me as, as really very careful and insightful and so you're right about that it is. Yeah. Glad we can agree about that. All right, so if you want to turn off the recorder. I can't stop you. That's true. God, I have this power. All right, then I'm about to stop recording. So, greetings to everyone out there. Well, the opposite of greetings, you know, very well. If you enjoyed this like share subscribe all that good stuff and see you on a, well, or you'll see me and we'll see you probably in a future video. So, au revoir.